Last weekend, we were at a park with Benji, enjoying the trails. He kept pointing and giggling, saying “Chew!”, which is his word for his Chewbacca. We didn’t have the stuffie with us, but this isn’t unusual behavior for him. After a few exclamations, my writer brain switched on.

What if he was actually seeing a figure that he mistook for Chewbacca?

A thrill ran through me, and only a little of that feeling was terror. Then The Idea came.

A heartwarming, family story that lies somewhere between Harry and the Hendersons and Gremlins, with a leaning toward the funny PG horror films of the 80s. Chew, which Benji names the monster after his Chewbacca character, is a tall hairy sasquatch kind of creature with an oversized mouth that makes the name “Chew” very apropos.

I worked out some details in my head as we walked. After my wife explained that they’d hidden Chewbacca at that park before and that Ben was remembering it, I shared my idea.

She told me I had to write it out. That means I’m on to something.

In about 2 hours, I had four and a half pages, or about 2,200 words. The work was divided into three parts. First, the treatment, which helped me set the scene, as well as describe the protagonist, whom I modeled after Benji. Second (and bulk of the writing) was the beginning of the story, and finally, a list of foreshadowing items, which any good horror story needs.

Here’s an excerpt from the treatment. It was important to me to show how Ben’s autism impacts the dynamic of the story. Also, representation matters. As Ben’s father, one my responsibilities is to help the world understand what it’s like to be him.

Benji is a young nonverbal teenager with severe autism. He loves stuffed animals and action figures, but his prized possession is a medium-sized stuffed Chewbacca he calls “Chew”. As this the case for many people like him, Benji repeats the known word over and over and again, occasionally adding a “rowr!” to bring his person to life. “Person” is the term his family uses for any stuffie or other character in Benji’s toybox. You see, for a kiddo with a limited vocabulary, you believe you have to choose your words carefully, often using broad terms to ensure comprehension.

Perhaps his family doesn’t give him enough credit for what he does understand, but they are doing the best they can. As is Benji, who doesn’t seem to mind, except when they are too dim to understand what he is communicating, which is a combination of gestures and repeated words. He might have to repeat “Chew” incessantly and with increasing volume to completely convey his message.

But thirty minutes of the word “Chew”, either resulting from playing with his person or because Benji wants something, can try the patience of even the most easygoing person, and Ben’s parents, while not angry people in their nature, do have their limits.

The treatment describes a bit more about the house, Ben’s brother, and some other details. I remember my typing picking up steam at this point, and the treatment suddenly transitioned into the opening of the story.

…Benji often sits at the window, clutching his Chew. Sometimes the Wookiee dances on the sill; sometimes he leans against the glass, staring into the woods with his person, Benji. “Chew” and “rowr!” are usually repeated frequently. Today, there is a new level of urgency, as Benji sees a tall shaggy figure at the forest edge that he thinks is….

“Chew!” Benji cried out excitedly. He stood and danced and clapped and giggled, his feet echoing with a hollow sound through the ductwork that ran beneath his room. By his laughs, his family knew he was delighted, and it was a welcome sound on a weary day that had begun with the angry vocalizations of Ben’s hunger. Kirsten, his mother, walked by without looking in. “Yes, Benji! Chew.”

Ben’s delight at being understood caused him to hop, his giggles becoming deep belly laughs. His mother had seen Chew, too!

Though she really hadn’t. Kirsten and her husband Mike, being adults, didn’t look very carefully at the things their children pointed out. And perhaps they didn’t investigate every single thing their sons saw outside their windows, real or otherwise. Strange things didn’t happen in the suburbs, even if they were at the edge of the city. They’d purchased the house to get away from the noise and grey drear of the urban center where they’d started their family together. And a yard that backed up to a thousand acres of protected forest seemed exactly the kind of neighborhood they needed.

“Oof!” she exclaimed, out of sight down the hallway. She grumbled as she lifted the laundry basket that blocked the hall.

Noticing that his mother wasn’t coming to the window, Benji, slightly disappointed, returned to his viewing. He grabbed his Chew person by the head and banged him against the glass. The plastic nose clicked noisily, but did not get the attention of the shape that had returned to the woods. Ben stood at the window a few more minutes, occasionally laughing to himself as he recalled the new person he’d seen, but eventually, he left Chew at the window and went to play somewhere else.

“Mike, that latch on the back door is sticking again,” Kirsten said as she descended the stairs. “Baxter pushed his way into the yard.”

“I’m sure he just wanted to mark some territory for the fiftieth time,” Mike called back from wherever he was in the house. “I’ll have to replace the latch. I think it’s finally worn out.”

“We’re finding a lot of that around here,” she said to herself, though loudly enough that he heard her as he entered the room.

With a smile, he said, “You’re buying the land and the bones—”

“Of the house,” she said, quoting the realtor. “Not the hardware and trim.” She let herself receive a peck on the cheek before handing him the laundry basket. “You left this in the hallway. There’s a lot of that going on here, too.”

He frowned as he accepted it. “Sorry. I got distracted. I feel like I’m doing nothing but laundry lately, on top of all the repairs the house needs.”

“Such is the life of a young hausfrau. If you’d like, you can go to the office tomorrow, and I can play the author struggling against a deadline.”

“Oh no,” Mike replied, trying to raise his hands in surrender while holding the basket. “I meant it when I said I wouldn’t step another foot in an office, not even for your boss’s infamous Christmas parties.”

“They’re flying in a caterer from Nantucket this year. A famous pastry chef or something.”

“Let me get through Halloween before you start harassing me with Christmas,” he laughed. He leaned forward for another kiss, which she obliged, before taking the laundry to the basement.

“Will you bring up the decorations when you come up?” she called after him. “I especially want to try out that new reaper animatronic we got.”

“No,” he said from the bottom of the stairs.

“Come on,” she pleaded. “I’ll take care of this load of laundry so you can get started.” She heard him drop the basket with a plastic thump.

Mike bounded up the stairs two at a time and took her hand. He led her to the living room and gestured out the main window. A tall reaper character dominated the yard, rocking gently in the Autumn wind. “Ta da! Now, feel free to get started on that laundry. I’m going to watch a movie.”

Kirsten gave him a sideways look that was half bemused and half sour. “Ha ha.” Before she could turn away, a gust of wind caught the reaper and it collapsed. “Womp womp,” she teased. As she walked away, she called over her shoulder, “Who woulda thought that Death was so easy to beat?”

Mike didn’t reply. He looked at the instruction sheet in one hand and the forgotten stakes for the guylines in the other. He muttered and returned to the yard, hoping their expensive Halloween decoration hadn’t been damaged.

Fortunately, the reaper was upright again without much work. As Mike hammered the stakes into the ground, a frantic banging came from the living room window. Benji stood there, proudly displaying a number of figures he’d lined up along the edge. “Whoa! Easy, buddy! Not so hard!” he said as he stood.

But whether his words were heard or not, the attention delighted Benji and he banged harder.

“Ben! No!” Mike cried, lunging toward the house. He stalked toward the front door, muttering and wondering why no one in the house was addressing this situation. He wrenched the door open and stomped into the living room. “Ben – stop!” he said angrily.

And Benji did. His lower lip protruded, and then he started to cry.

Mike knelt before him and tried to apologize. “No, buddy. It’s just, you have to be careful with the windows. Gentle, right?” He rubbed the back of Ben’s hand in the way he always did when he wanted to convey that concept.

Ben sniffled, his face becoming defiant. He slapped the window one last time.

“That’s it,” Mike said, standing and taking Ben’s hand. “Let’s have a time out.”

Benji allowed himself to be led, though he occasionally stomped a foot or jumped, which was his double-stomp. When they got upstairs to his bedroom door, Ben twisted his hand free and ran to the window where Chewbacca waited. “Chew!” he called happily, pointing out the window. He knocked on the glass, but gently, to ensure his daddy knew that he was supposed to look outside.

Mike leaned against the doorframe and sighed. “Yes. Chew,” he said in resignation. But he did not look outside. He’d looked out windows a thousand times not knowing what he was supposed to see. He’d never been asked to see “Chew” before, but he didn’t need to look out the window to know he’d see nothing yet again. “Play here for a few minutes, buddy. I’ll be back in a little bit.” It was a lie, but a small one. He needed to finish staking the reaper. Just let me finish one thing today.

Benji decided to let him go. His daddy wasn’t very good at seeing all the interesting things that lived on the other side of windows, but sometimes he found the right thing. He’d see Chew soon enough.

Sunday ended and Monday arrived. A busy week of school passed for Benji. He mentioned his person Chew several times to his teachers and aides, but none seemed as interested as he did. They certainly said many nice things, and Rosemarie, his personal aide, certainly seemed excited when she claimed to see Chew on the playground. Ben ran happily to the classroom window, but he didn’t really expect to see his person there. Chew lived in the woods by his house, of course.

Benji was extra active in his desire to draw that week. He loved drawing faces, and everyone had crazy hair. He pointed to one and called him “Chew”, but all the adults around him thought that was just the word he was using to describe people that week, so they pointed at each person he drew and made “rawr” sounds.

It frustrated Ben. Even poking the paper repeatedly did not help them understand that there was only one Chew there, and they certainly weren’t identifying the correct one.

Each day, the school bus dropped Benji at home, and he excitedly looked to the front windows of the house where his daddy had lined up a number of stuffies. He ran from window to window, gesturing and giggling and hopping. “Do you see, buddy? Who do you see there? Madeline? And there’s the papa with the beard,” he added, gesturing to a Professor Dumbledore. And there, Benji saw—

“Chew!” he exclaimed as he pointed to the last window where his person waited. Then he did something he hadn’t before. He rounded the corner of the house and stopped. He pointed and stood there until his daddy arrived.

Mike saw that he wasn’t looking at another window – he’d forgotten to put any characters in the windows there – but Benji was pointing at the distant treeline.

“Chew,” Ben said definitively, as though the Star Wars character had been there a moment ago.

“Yes, Benji, but Chew is over here. Should we go find him?”

“Yuh,” Ben replied, but he didn’t move to follow his daddy. He leaned forward, as though to walk to the woods.

“No buddy, let’s go this way,” Mike said, taking his hand. “We’ll see Chew, then we’ll go inside and get him and maybe have a snack. You hungry?”

“Yuh,” Ben said again as he reluctantly allowed himself to be led around the front of the house. He didn’t look up at the window where his stuffed person waited. He was more interested in the Chew who lived in the woods, the person with the really big mouth and pointy teeth that would seem to be able to chew very well.

There’s almost no editing to this, but I’m pleased with how cohesive it already is. And how easily it flowed from thought to page.

What I like most is how accurately it captured my interpretation of Benji. As I mentioned above, representation matters, and I want the world to understand the frustrations and joys that fill his life. I need the world to empathize, because the world I grew up in wasn’t very good at that. But I also want people to squeal and cringe like we did when we saw Gremlins for the first time.

There’s one more reason I’ve shared this. A few of my recent posts have talked about the writing funk I’ve been in. Fun pieces like this, even if they’re not related to your current project, are a helpful way to regain your momentum. They remind you why writing is your passion, and they serve as the encouragement you need to push yourself back into a project, but in a way that doesn’t make it feel like a slog. It’s a great tool to put in your writer’s toolbox.

Good luck with your writing!

Mike

If you’re interested, here’s a related piece I wrote: The Nonverbal Kid’s Influence On My Writing.

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© Michael Wallevand, September 2023