It sometimes feels like horror monsters have been reduced to vampires, werewolves, zombies, demons and, at a push, ghosts. You just need to look at the classic Universal horrors of the 1930s, or the Hammer cycle of the late 1950s and early 1960s, to realise there any many more monsters to choose from. Personally, my favourite will always be the mummy. Look at Boris Karloff’s charismatic portrayal of Im-Ho-Tep in The Mummy (1932) (link is http/blog.icysedgwick.com/2013/04/a-to-z-m...), in which the undead priest was a far more attractive romantic lead than the pathetic ‘hero’. Christopher Lee turned his Kharis into a formidable powerhouse in The Mummy of 1958. Even Arnold Loos’ mummy in The Mummy (1999) was an awesome prospect, simply because he wanted his old love back.

I love mummies for three reasons. Unlike vampires, who are the aristocracy of the horror world, or zombies who are sometimes coded as the working class, mummies are quite classless. They belong to another world, and another time, and their exoticism adds to their appeal. Furthermore, they don’t necessarily have to suffer the same limitations as other monsters. Aside from cats, Loos’ Imhotep fears nothing, and is all powerful. He isn’t restricted by time of day, or the time of the month. Finally, mummies actually exist. Granted, they’re not rampaging around a city near you, but it’s possible to visit a museum and see one for yourself. The mummy, even in its inert state, represents something more tangible than that of the vampire.

When it comes to choosing my horror monsters, I have to rely on that old cliché – “Mummy knows best!”

Icy Sedgwick is based in the North East of England, where she teaches design and is working on a PhD in horror cinema. She has had several stories included in anthologies, while her first book, a pulp Western named The Guns of Retribution (link is http/www.amazon.com/The-Guns-of-Retributio...), was re-published in May 2013 by Beat to a Pulp. Her next novella, TheNecromancer’s Apprentice, features bloodthirsty mummies with destruction in mind. Find her mummy flash fictions on her blog here (link is http/blog.icysedgwick.com/search/label/mummies).

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