The Story of Josh Part Forty One: Welcome to my Nightmare
We sacked out in a seedy motel in the middle of nowhere. The girls and the boys separated into different rooms and I got my own, in the middle of the night I could hear the sounds of the kids switching rooms as Ascot and Red joined each other and the Dirty Hippy and the Hot Brainy Chick slid into the same room. A few minutes later I heard a scratching at my door. I got up and opened it to see the dog looking irritated and in the distance I could hear the two couples giving performances that would have done porn stars from the 70’s proud. I took pity on the poor put upon mutt and invited him to stay with me. He jumped up onto the double bed but he was polite enough to stay on his side.
We settle in and I quickly drift off into sleep.
The next thing I know I am walking down a dark hallway with metal walls and a wet concrete floor. The smell of dank and burned coal fills the air and I can hear the rumble of an ancient boiler system in the background. Something about all of this seems really familiar and I am not very surprised when I hear what sounds like giant nails being raked down a chalk board.
A fire in an ancient cast iron furnace erupts to life ahead of me and the silhouette of a man in a fedora with a deadly glove on his hand that I have seen a hundred times before appears. The smell of burnt flesh and wet dog fills my nostrils.
I fight down a giggle … he never scared me, even when I was a kid.
His gravely guttural voice fills the air, “I didn’t bring you hear kid. So it’s your dime say what you have to say.” Standing almost at ease he does not seem very menacing and he sounds slightly amused.
“You were always my favorite.” I tell him and am rewarded as he steps into the light revealing his burnt visage. A dark smile spreads across his broken and blistered face.
This is a therapy session and as always the therapist is in … and this time he feels like an old friend.
The first horror movie I can remember watching is Carrie on TV. My mom let me stay up and watch it when I was really little and it scared the ever loving piss out of my. I don’t remember more about the experience beyond being afraid and prom sequence but fuck did it make an impression on me. Also my dad for years kind of blamed my fear of horror and my concurrent attraction to horror on my mom.
If you NEVER did another thing for me mom I will always love you for laying the foundation for my love of horror.
I have documented my experiences with zombies and the genre of the undead in an earlier essay and I will not rehash that experience here. When I was in third grade my middle brother, he who must not be named (HWMNBN), convinced my mother to rent a Nightmare on Elm Street for us after out aunt had rented it for him one weekend when he stayed with her. I fell in love with Nightmare and watched it four times in the three days that we had the tape. There was nothing about the film that terrified me, it was scary and it made me jump but it also made me laugh. To this day the Nightmare series may very well be my favorite horror series ever.
When I was in the fifth grade HWMNBN and I spent the night at my great aunts house. Out cousin Sam rented movies for us and HWMNBN chose Friday the 13th part 3. I had never seen a Jason Voorhees movie before and it scared the living shit out of me. I mean I was filled with terror, other than the night that I watched Night of the Living Dead for the first time the nigh I was introduced to everyone’s favorite hockey masked killer was the most scared I have ever been. I did not sleep a wink that night, I stayed up in my cousin’s bed reading comic books and jumping at every noise. I was so scared that even though Sam had a stack of porno mags just sitting out in his room and I had been jerking off for years I never touched them. Just let me repeat that for you.
A perpetually horny ten year old boy that pounced on every opportunity to see nipples did NOT touch the magazines less than ten feet away.
After that I watched every scary movie that I could get my hands on. And every time I watched one I was terrified. And every time I was terrified I felt alive.
There was a downside to this. For many years sleep was a problem for me. I always had to go to bed before the adults did because if the house was dark and quiet I would lay awake for hours imagining the monsters that lurked in the darkness and in the corners. My Step Monster always seemed to find this amusing, I am pretty sure when no one was around she laughed about it.
My love of horror movies transitioned to a love of horror novels which quickly lead me to the works of HP Lovecraft and Stephen King. To this day the book The Shining is the single scariest thing I have ever had the honor to read. The works of King and Lovecraft left an indelible mark on me and helped to shape the direction that my writing style took. I would never say I can write as well as either man but I believe I owe the way I write more to them than to any other source. Although I would have to say that Mr. Isaac Asimov gets an honorable mention on that ledger sheet.
In the late 80’s and early 90’s horror returned to television in a big bad way after years of painfully vanilla fare. Tales from the Darkside, Tales from the Crypt, Monsters, Freddy’s Nightmares, and Friday the 13th the Series were my favorites. I would stay up every Friday and Saturday night when the shows were on and gorge myself on B Grade TV horror. They were not necessarily scary or terrifying but in my mind they were a hundred kinds of awesome.
But the reality was that as much as I loved horror it still scared me on a fundamental level. One night when we were staying at dad’s house HHMNBN rented Friday the 13th part 5. Later that night the Step Monster decided after we went to bed that she wanted to watch it see what dad was letting us watch. I tried to sleep but they had the volume up high, or maybe I was just so freaked out that I imagined it was loud. Finally I went out there to tell them that I was scared. My goal at 12 (yes I was twelve years old at this point) was to get them to turn it down or hopefully have it turned off. What happened instead was that I got to listen to a righteous sermon from the Step Monster and see the look in my dad’s eyes … I think he was a little embarrassed of me.
I don’t blame him.
But I am a man now and I still love horror. I still get the same wicked thrill of fear that I got when I was a kid. Oh the thrill is a little muted because it is not the thrill of a child but of a man that can still find joy in the thrill of being scared.
“So you still feel the fear?” He asks me.
“Yes” is my only reply.
He tilts his head and then asks, “If you are scared then why do you subject yourself to it?” He grins as he asks because he already knows the answer.
“Because when my blood is pumping I feel alive.” I say returning the grin.
He chuckles and then turns to walk away. Before he does he looks over his shoulder and says “See you in your dreams kid” then he laughs and strides off.
I awake, the dog sleeping peacefully behind me.
We settle in and I quickly drift off into sleep.
The next thing I know I am walking down a dark hallway with metal walls and a wet concrete floor. The smell of dank and burned coal fills the air and I can hear the rumble of an ancient boiler system in the background. Something about all of this seems really familiar and I am not very surprised when I hear what sounds like giant nails being raked down a chalk board.
A fire in an ancient cast iron furnace erupts to life ahead of me and the silhouette of a man in a fedora with a deadly glove on his hand that I have seen a hundred times before appears. The smell of burnt flesh and wet dog fills my nostrils.
I fight down a giggle … he never scared me, even when I was a kid.
His gravely guttural voice fills the air, “I didn’t bring you hear kid. So it’s your dime say what you have to say.” Standing almost at ease he does not seem very menacing and he sounds slightly amused.
“You were always my favorite.” I tell him and am rewarded as he steps into the light revealing his burnt visage. A dark smile spreads across his broken and blistered face.
This is a therapy session and as always the therapist is in … and this time he feels like an old friend.
The first horror movie I can remember watching is Carrie on TV. My mom let me stay up and watch it when I was really little and it scared the ever loving piss out of my. I don’t remember more about the experience beyond being afraid and prom sequence but fuck did it make an impression on me. Also my dad for years kind of blamed my fear of horror and my concurrent attraction to horror on my mom.
If you NEVER did another thing for me mom I will always love you for laying the foundation for my love of horror.
I have documented my experiences with zombies and the genre of the undead in an earlier essay and I will not rehash that experience here. When I was in third grade my middle brother, he who must not be named (HWMNBN), convinced my mother to rent a Nightmare on Elm Street for us after out aunt had rented it for him one weekend when he stayed with her. I fell in love with Nightmare and watched it four times in the three days that we had the tape. There was nothing about the film that terrified me, it was scary and it made me jump but it also made me laugh. To this day the Nightmare series may very well be my favorite horror series ever.
When I was in the fifth grade HWMNBN and I spent the night at my great aunts house. Out cousin Sam rented movies for us and HWMNBN chose Friday the 13th part 3. I had never seen a Jason Voorhees movie before and it scared the living shit out of me. I mean I was filled with terror, other than the night that I watched Night of the Living Dead for the first time the nigh I was introduced to everyone’s favorite hockey masked killer was the most scared I have ever been. I did not sleep a wink that night, I stayed up in my cousin’s bed reading comic books and jumping at every noise. I was so scared that even though Sam had a stack of porno mags just sitting out in his room and I had been jerking off for years I never touched them. Just let me repeat that for you.
A perpetually horny ten year old boy that pounced on every opportunity to see nipples did NOT touch the magazines less than ten feet away.
After that I watched every scary movie that I could get my hands on. And every time I watched one I was terrified. And every time I was terrified I felt alive.
There was a downside to this. For many years sleep was a problem for me. I always had to go to bed before the adults did because if the house was dark and quiet I would lay awake for hours imagining the monsters that lurked in the darkness and in the corners. My Step Monster always seemed to find this amusing, I am pretty sure when no one was around she laughed about it.
My love of horror movies transitioned to a love of horror novels which quickly lead me to the works of HP Lovecraft and Stephen King. To this day the book The Shining is the single scariest thing I have ever had the honor to read. The works of King and Lovecraft left an indelible mark on me and helped to shape the direction that my writing style took. I would never say I can write as well as either man but I believe I owe the way I write more to them than to any other source. Although I would have to say that Mr. Isaac Asimov gets an honorable mention on that ledger sheet.
In the late 80’s and early 90’s horror returned to television in a big bad way after years of painfully vanilla fare. Tales from the Darkside, Tales from the Crypt, Monsters, Freddy’s Nightmares, and Friday the 13th the Series were my favorites. I would stay up every Friday and Saturday night when the shows were on and gorge myself on B Grade TV horror. They were not necessarily scary or terrifying but in my mind they were a hundred kinds of awesome.
But the reality was that as much as I loved horror it still scared me on a fundamental level. One night when we were staying at dad’s house HHMNBN rented Friday the 13th part 5. Later that night the Step Monster decided after we went to bed that she wanted to watch it see what dad was letting us watch. I tried to sleep but they had the volume up high, or maybe I was just so freaked out that I imagined it was loud. Finally I went out there to tell them that I was scared. My goal at 12 (yes I was twelve years old at this point) was to get them to turn it down or hopefully have it turned off. What happened instead was that I got to listen to a righteous sermon from the Step Monster and see the look in my dad’s eyes … I think he was a little embarrassed of me.
I don’t blame him.
But I am a man now and I still love horror. I still get the same wicked thrill of fear that I got when I was a kid. Oh the thrill is a little muted because it is not the thrill of a child but of a man that can still find joy in the thrill of being scared.
“So you still feel the fear?” He asks me.
“Yes” is my only reply.
He tilts his head and then asks, “If you are scared then why do you subject yourself to it?” He grins as he asks because he already knows the answer.
“Because when my blood is pumping I feel alive.” I say returning the grin.
He chuckles and then turns to walk away. Before he does he looks over his shoulder and says “See you in your dreams kid” then he laughs and strides off.
I awake, the dog sleeping peacefully behind me.
No comments have been added yet.
