Friday, July 4

Poltergeists vs. kitchen scissors

"You're all gonna die in there! All of you! You are gonna die!" - Kane, Poltergeist II.

Poltergeist II was a really bad movie.

I pulled that poetic quote from IMDb because I have almost no memory of Poltergeist II. I watched it when I was about seven or eight years old. It was a textbook case of I-wanna-watch-this-because-I'm-brave-no-wait-dear-God-this-is-traumatizing-I'll-stop-watching-before-I-get-scarred-forever-too-late.

Fast forward almost two decades, and this is what I've spent my late evening tweeting:

Full disclosure: I started tweeting to distract myself because by then I needed to pee.


In my mind, murderers and demons are interchangeable and equally plausible threats.
My exact words were, "Uh, so if there are any murderers or rapists around, could you make yourself known? Thanks..." and then legitimately waiting for a response. Holding kitchen scissors. I went for kitchen scissors because I felt like a knife was just overly dramatic, and if someone walked in on me I could always suddenly pretend to be making a salad or something.

 Girl Has Most Ironic Death Ever. 

Aaand we're back to regularly scheduled programming.

Poltergiest II probably didn't break my brain and turn me from a rowdy, confident kid into a ball of anxiety who couldn't be left in a room alone. But it certainly didn't help. Something about the way a normal big-haired 80's family had their everyday life invaded by unexpected, sticky, horrible things definitely stuck with me.

And today's Writers' Boot Camp prompt is "one of my greatest fears."

So my biggest fear - well, besides the existential stuff like never making a mark on the world - certainly my biggest-by-volume fear is the strange intruding on the familiar. A sudden grab, an unexpected voice, a pair of blinking unfamiliar eyes looming in the dark. Typical Stephen King stuff.

You know they say people spend most of their lives worrying about stuff that'll never happen? Maybe. But come on. If there were a psycho in my shower, I'd rather slam on the lights and walk confidently into the room holding kitchen scissors than just kinda assume everything will be fine.

Psychos are shit-scared of kitchen scissors. Everyone knows that.

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