Hector Barski

I portray a serial killer at The Haunted Woods every October at The Bear Den Zoo. I “discovered” he had an actual persona after a friend asked to borrow my outfit to use in a short independent film he was shooting. As I was handing it over to him I was compelled to describe elements of this characters personality. I realized I knew more about this guy than I had previously acknowledged. I decided that he deserved a little more spotlight then was allowed by his one month out of the year surfacing. Considering I am a musician first and foremost, I wrote a song about him. It came out ok but he still seemed to deserve more. After some deliberation I settled on writing a fiction novel based around him.

It occurred to me that he needed a name. The idea of trying to give a name to this character filled me with dread. I hated trying to come up with names for the bands I was in and this was the same deal. The problem is trying to come up with a name that wasn’t eye-rollingly campy. I decided that since he evolved out of me, I would try to use an anagram of my name. I quickly decided that I don’t have the patience or vocabulary to do this on my own. I resorted to the internet and found an online anagram generator, typed in “Chris Koterba” and hit enter. Scrolling through the result I found it. It was PERFECT. I immediately ran a search on it to see if it was a real person and it wasn’t. I was elated. My character had a name.

Hector Barski

I couldn’t believe my luck. Just saying the name in a lowered voice evokes imagery from any number of slasher flicks (Jason, Freddy, Michel, Hector, ect.) Now that Hector has been identified I could begin writing a novel based on him. There was, of course, one large and looming problem; I don’t know haw to write novels. I have enjoyed reading since I was able to read and still to this day have at least one book that I’m reading. That does not qualify me to write one. I did very poorly in most of my English classes throughout school. Being a slightly dyslexic, left-hander with a hyper-active imagination made several classes very difficult much less a one that required me to write things out in long hand. I believe I am, however, a story-teller at heart so I figured I would give it a try.

I have been working on it sparingly over the last two years. I have spent most of that time researching psycho/sociopaths and various elements of psychology. I have also put together a list of Hector’s victims (58 in total) along with a timeline of when they were killed. This is not a novel that will be seen for quite a while but I am enjoying the creative process involved in slowly illuminating the dark world of Hector Barski.