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Inspirational Reads

A Terrifying Tale

December 3, 2008

I had me one of them there adventures last night.

There I was, sleeping soundly at three o'clock in the morning when, BANG BANG BANG...BANG rousted me from my sweet reveries. The Buxom and Comely and Easily Terrified Boudicca also rousted herself (most likely from some equally sweet reveries), and I immediately reached for my beatin' stick.

Now, a couple of months ago, I was upstairs at my computer, the wife was working, and I was typing away on a book. I had just finished a chapter or a paragraph or an adjective or something, and I leaned back to re-read what I had just crafted. That's when I heard a noise what sounded like the back storm door closing. No one should be coming in there, so I immediately went into defensive mode. I grabbed the only weapon at my disposal...which turned out to be a 12-lb dumbbell and crept downstairs to see if my home had been violated. Everything was safely locked up, and no one was around, so I chalked it up to my imagination. But, I decided that I needed a better weapon. Thus, the beatin' stick was born. It's about three feet of solid lumber, 1x1, with the end cut at an angle. It's probably not the most wicked looked thing in the world, but I figure it'll bust someone's scalp open, should I need it to.

Anyway, the wife checks on the kids, and it wasn't either of them that made the noise. So, that meant I had to investigate the downstairs. I crept down the stairs, all Scooby-Doo like. You could almost hear the "doot, doot, doooooooooo, doot-doo-doo" music going as I moved forward. My ears were pricked, listening for any repeating noises or noises of someone deciding they needed to escape, lest they met my wrath and the business end of my cudgel. I first checked the living room, where all the plastic bins that housed the Christmas decorations were stacked, thinking that the perp might have knocked over one of those as the sound was a bit "plasticky" (if you catch my drift). Nothing. I peeped the back door, to make sure it was locked. Still locked tight. I check the front door. Nothing doing. I scope the windows. Nothing. Everything is whole and unscathed.

Then I hear something upstairs. Footsteps. Oh, they're near my family. Time to die, perp!

Only, Boudicca slinks downstairs to tell me Cookie is going to the bathroom, and that I shouldn't run up the stairs, screaming like a battle-enraged, blue-faced warrior with designs on braining her. We together do another security sweep around the perimeter, and find nothing. We wonder if, perhaps, a bat or something flew into our nice, new, awesome window in the kitchen. Shrugging, we decide that's a distinct possibility. Outside lights are on, to scare away the bad guys. We return to bed. The wife turns on the closet light, to make people think that someone is up. The hounds are released. Ninjas stand at the four corners of the house, ready to strike.

The beatin' stick was replaced in its handy location next to my side of the bed. The wife makes me turn off my humidifier, so we can listen. And we do for the next thirty minutes. Every creak and groan of the house causes one or both of us to stir. I stare, wide-eyed, at the doorway to the kids bathroom, thinking it looks somewhat like a figure standing there, knife in hand, waiting for me to sleep. But, I keep my eyelids hooded. When he comes for me, I'll knock his head clean off.

Finally, the alarm goes off. I sit up, dragging my worthless ass out of the bed. Fatigue crushes me, weighing down on me. The night was filled with fitful sleep, tossing and turning, and more listening. Always listening. Always greeted with silence.

I strip down, shuffling naked to the bathroom. Pulling back the shower curtain, I find a bottle of body wash has fallen from the top of the shower and now rests quietly in the basin of the tub. Beside it, guiltily, is the suction-cup fastener to which the bottle had been affixed. Here is my perp. Here is the reason I spent the night wondering when they were coming for me, and could I get to them before they got to my kids.

I grabbed the stick and beat the hell out of the bottle. That'll show that motherfucker to mess with the likes of me.

17 comments:

H said...

You are one badmutherf*cker!

LYDIA said...

I'll return the compliment, you have an evil streak in you. I like it very much!

Loved the mystical cleaning jellyfish.

LYDIA said...

And to quote Snoop Dogg "youse a dead motherfucker now"

Yet another not so PG-13 comment. I am on a roll!

Lisa-tastrophies said...

Good thing you wnet all Office Space on that bottle. Those suckers will sneak up on you if you don't let them know who is in charge. Now, feel free to walk around the bathroom singing "Damn, its good to be a gangsta......"

Chemgeek said...

Speaking of Christian Bale, if you want scary, check him out in the Machinist. Good gawd he got skinny for that role. He must have been a buck-o-five.


Thanks for ending my day with a laugh. I rarely laugh out loud when I read something unless it really tickles my fancy. This was a true LOL moment. My fancy has been tickled.

Scope said...

Or the bottle falling is what they want you to think, and the perp is playing all kinds of "Cape Fear" mind games on you.

BEFORE THE KILL.

And the squeegee fell off my shower door the other day and scared the carp out of me, too.

Dr Zibbs said...

Hell ya

BeckEye said...

Oh, those scrubbing bubbles will come for you one day, make no mistake.

~E said...

You should have left out the part about having to turn off your humidifier.

It lessens the "badass" effect somewhat.

Gwen said...

Good Lord you make me laugh hard, man.

Alaina said...

grrrrr Braveheart.... grrrrrr

oh, and your post was funny too

but... grrr Braveheart....

Noel said...

I love your sense of humor. Also, I hate hate hate it when that happens (the stuff falling in the bathroom). It freaks me out because in the new apartment, the bathroom sink is in the bedroom while the shower and toilet are in a small adjoining room.

So it makes every drip, creak and pop from there sound even louder.

I hate living on the bottom floor.

SouthernBelle said...

Oh Lord, this happens to me all the time. I hear one random noise in the night and it causes me to lie awake, wide-eyed with terror, waiting for the murderers to come into the bedroom.

In extreme cases I nudge (ie pointedly kick) Husband, hoping he will wake up and deal with it. Or at least be murdered first and then maybe they won't notice I'm there.

Most of the time it turns out to be something random falling over or one of the dogs snoring.

PS I'm going back to my blog to add you to my blogroll right now!

Mathdude said...

Not to scare ya*, but I once woke up in my tiny one bedroom basement apartment 25 years ago because I heard something and when I got to my bedroom door, there were a couple of punks just outside my bedroom**. It was awhile before I got a good night's sleep again.

*To scare ya
**The most disappointed burglar's every once they broke in

Frank said...

Watch out for those bottles. I got clubbed in the head once when I was in the shower. They're up to something, I tell you...

Will Shannon said...

Just think if you had the Ladle of Justice...

the iNDefatigable mjenks said...

Oh, how right you are, my good man. If I had the Ladle of Justice, I wouldn't have feared at all during the remainder of the night. Or ever.

Also, that fine club you whittled for me one winter's break had itself a Viking funeral over the summer when the flood hit. Except, I missed with the flaming arrow and the water was moving too quickly.