Horror is an awesome genre.   I grew up on Stephen King books, and have become such a horror snob I gave up on Stephen King books.  If a horror book or flick can’t make me squeal, squirm or jump in surprise, I’m not drawn into it. The best I can hope for from a gory movie that doesn’t move me is that I’m able to appreciate it in an artistic sort of way.

So when my upstairs neighbor decided, last night, to watch a horror flick with the volume up a little too high, I didn’t care. Hell, I was kicking it with a Harry Bosch novel and a candy bar. I was good to go.

Damn my imagination!

A few hours later, I came back to reality, realized it was late, and decided I should hang it up and go to bed. At the same time, my brain picked that moment to notice some positively creepy music coming through the ceiling, presumably from the horror flick. It wigged me out some, but I listened to it anyway — it was, after all, creepy yet cool. It played for about 30 seconds, then fell silent.

Then it played for about 30 seconds, and fell silent.

Then it played for about 30 seconds, and fell silent.

By about the sixth or seventh repetition, I figured out that my neighbor, who likes to drink himself into a stupor on a regular basis, had thrown back a few, turned on the movie, and passed out. The DVD player, being unaware of its owner’s impaired state, dutifully played the movie all the way through and then went back to the intro screen and the 30 seconds of creepy music.

Which it proceeded to play over and over and over and over.

I heard it in the living room.

I heard it in the kitchen.

I heard it in the bathroom.

I heard it when I stepped outside for a smoke. Outside the house.

By the time I came back inside to dispose of the butt and brush my teeth, I was halfway to being convinced that I’d open the bedroom door and discover that in the time it took me to smoke that cigarette, someone had slipped in the window, slaughtered my wife and child, and vanished, leaving blood on every uncovered surface in the room.

I figured at that point my life would be over. Nobody believes the horror movie scenarios, no matter how much sense they make to the stupid crazy people caught up in them, right?  Suffice it to say that I didn’t find a bloody gut-splattered mess when I went to bed, but you can bet your ass I turned on the light to check.

I also had to put an Enya CD on, just loud enough that I could ignore the music from upstairs, yet just soft enough that the boy didn’t stir.

Thankfully, for the lives and livlihoods of all involved, I succeded.

Fuck me.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 13:42 pm and is filed under Puppet Show. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.