Things That Go Bump in the Night

I haven't blogged in a while mostly because I've fallen in a black hole. Maybe a wormhole even. Most of it has to do with being sick and starting a new medication requiring me to worship at the porcelain goddess for hours each day, but . . . none of it is particularly worth b*tching about because there's nothing that can be done but get the hell over it. There. Over it.

Now, here's the thing about being sick in the middle of the night. You can watch a lot of Law & Order. Or you can read. I do both. And I started this book of my Mom's. Then last night I (playfully) yelled at her. For ME, it should have come with a warning label. It is a book by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston called Brimstone. And it is scaring the CR*P outta me.

I realize these guys have legions of fans and I am late to the party, but I was stuck by how good the writing was. And by how friggin' scared I am. In fact, I'm not sure I can finish it, unless I draft my 15-year-old son (who is six-feet tall and growing by the hour) to sleep in a sleeping bag on my floor (or vice versa, I can go camp in HIS room). WHY I think Oldest Son would be a match for the devil? Well, he's tall. (Then again, so am I.) And he's REALLY nice. Like supernaturally nice. Must count for something.

And all this got me thinking about how you serve up what scares you and the things that go bump in the night. See . . . I don't worship at a church. And I actually think I've encountered some pretty mean people this last year, but the DEVIL? Hmmm. I don't know. Maybe. See, ever since The Exorcist, the idea of the devil scares me. I would never INTENTIONALLY pick up "torture porn." I would never intentionally watch something like Hostel. Or worse, The Human Centipede. I mean, people, that's just SICK. And I would be bothered by it, but not necessarily SCARED because I frankly am not going to go hiking in Europe and stay in a questionable hostel.

But the devil? I'll admit. Kind of freaks me out. I believe there is some power of evil that operates. And maybe it is supernatural. Do I buy "the devil made me do it"? Not really either. So I guess my feelings about it qualify as a big jumble of superstition and a healthy dose of freak-out. But yeah . . . this book makes me wonder about things that go bump in the night.

And as long as we're sharing here . . . the following things also scare the you-know-what outta me:

Clowns
Cockroaches
The dark (not a fan)
Serial killers (but see, I'm talking the ones just hanging around, not the ones in a hostel)


I think given my series of Pirate Boy posts lately on FB that I am prepared for the zombie apocalypse, so that's off my list.

How about you?

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.