This is an excerpt from the first chapter of The Dead Travel Fast, in which I apply to, and briefly work at, a haunted house. The application/interview process was brutal--here is my actual interview to work as a monster. It appears in the book pretty much verbatim to the actual interview.
We sat around the House of Terror cafeteria for about another 20 minutes before our table was called. Once we reached the front of the interviewing line, we saw four tables, with two managers on one side and an interviewee on the other. The interviewee would take a seat, then some questions and polite conversation would go back and forth. At the end of each interview, the interviewee would scream, thank the interviewers, and leave.
When my turn came, I answered the standard questions, but my mind was on the scream. What was it for? Would I have to scream? Would I be asked to scream, or was it just something that one person did to impress the managers, then others started to follow suit?
Then, one of the managers told me that being an actor in a haunted house was tough, thankless work. I’d have to perform for hundreds, if not thousands of people a night, and I’d have to give as good a performance to the last person as I had to the first. As a sign of my acting skills, she asked for my best scream.
“Now?” I asked.
“Yes,” she responded, looking confused, as if she wondered how I had missed the 70 other screams that morning.
“Okay, what am I screaming at?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, like…”
“I mean, what is my motivation?”
“For screaming?”
“Yeah.”
“Because I told you to.”
Fair enough. With that, I let out my best scream. Well, it was a shriek, actually. The kind of high-pitched shrill yelp you’d expect from a teenaged girl when Jason or Freddy Krueger jumps out from behind the sofa.
My two interviewers looked at each other, then back at me.
“Do you want to try that again?” one asked.
“Was that bad?” I responded.
“Well,” said the other. “We’re kind of looking for scary, not scared.”
“But I want to play a vampire,” I said.
“That’s fine, but vampires scream, too.”
“Why?”
“I’m sorry,…”
“Why would a vampire scream?”
“Because we told him to.”
I tried again. Slightly better, though still hoping anyone I know didn’t hear me.
“Very nice, you can expect a call next week.”
“So, I’m in?” I asked.
“We’ll call you if we need you,” she replied, extending her hand in an obvious gesture that our time together was over.
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