Things That Go Bump in the Night

I am operating on about three hours of sleep courtesy of my air conditioning breaking on the hottest day of the year, with the heat index around 110. I was in bed, heart racing from the heat, feeling like I was suffocating. When I finally DID fall asleep, my baby son's musical potty chair malfunctioned and went off.

Yes, I said a musical potty chair. You pee, it plays a song. What will they think of next? But the chair decided it needed to play at odd hours of the night, and I went and hid the thing in the closet, thinking then I wouldn't hear it--but no, it was loud enough in a quiet house to hear even from the closet.

And THEN, when I finally dozed, because I wasn't properly in my sleep cycle, I had some killer nightmares.

From what I remember, the main one had to do with a rat biting my hand and latching on. I could FEEL its tail wrapping around my wrist, and the pain in my hand as its jaws tightened, and I woke up gasping for air, crying.

Now, I "get" why I had this dream. Once every three weeks or so, my significant other brings home a rat for Lydia, the python, to consume. The snake is my son's and she started out about the width of a pencil. Suffice it to say she is now over a foot long and pretty thick. She's very docile, but I just cannot even bring myself to touch her. When Lydia came home, I was very upset because I didn't, as a Buddhist, like the idea of sacrificing little animals to feed her. But I was overruled. So I basically told my son when he goes off to college in a few years, his roomie better like reptiles, because Lydia will be booted.

Anyway, this whole Wild Kingdom drama plays out every three weeks. I cry over the rat, my son consoles me and tells me to go outside while the kill is taking place. I sometimes even light a candle for the poor rats. BUT . . . BUT . . . I hate rats. I truly do. I would rather touch the snake than touch a rat. I hate them, hate them, hate them. Hence the nightmare--a combo of guilt and revulsion.

So there you go. I also have a really morbid fear of clowns (even Jimmy Stewart playing Buttons in The Greatest Show on Earth). Cockroaches send me over the edge. But I am surprisingly cool about spiders. I still sleep with a nightlight on though, and when I stay in hotel rooms when I travel alone to NYC, I always check under the bed and in the closet and the shower stall.

As a writer, I really think about these fears and phobias, because a good writer will use universal fears, as well as other creepy, crawly elements to make us pull the covers up as we read.

So . . . what is it that scares you? That when a masterful movie or book depicts it, you want to crawl under the blankets? What goes bump in the night.

E

P.S. And if I start having nightmares about singing, talking mutant toilets, I'll let you know.