Nightmare Brain

One of the well known facts about me: I love scary movies.  Anyone who has any knowledge of me as a human being knows this preference to be true.  I love that horror can fit into so many different molds.  It can be supernatural (little ghost girls standing on a stairwell), it can be a psychopath hiding in plain site as a functioning member of society (Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, the list goes on and on), it can be an evil doll coming to life (usually fashioned after an odd combination of the two).  Due to my own love of horror, passed down from my father, my sister and I developed what the two of us have coined, “nightmare brain”.  Now, this love of horror has always led me to watch the things that scare me the most. The idea that someone I know and love, is willing to target me or my family in some terrifying vendetta that will end with a death of someone I love (like in Friday the 13th when EVERYONE around Jamie Lee Curtis dies). The horror movie where a seemingly well-meaning ghost turns out to have demonic tendencies and wants to set the world on fire (these ones scare me way less, because there is always that one friendly tortured soul who does his/her best to defend the person who needs to be saved, like in House on Haunted Hill, or Hocus Pocus). Then there are the dolls. My not so secret shame is that dolls scare me so much it's actually pathetic. It all started with Chucky and it just burgeoned from there. I was around 12 years old and I was flipping through the cable channels and I saw the term "Horror" and my immediate response was to see how scary it could be. Clearly, at the ripe, mature age of 12,nothing could scare me anymore. Well, watching a small ginger-haired doll chase after 2 children in a toy manufacturing plant and watching a man get doll eyes (DOLL EYES) stamped into his skull as his last earthly moment damaged me a little more than I thought. From then on, anything from china dolls, to ventriloquist dummies, to marionettes scare me endlessly. I'm not one to run screaming from a shop (I did live in Prague for a 2 month period, and they are known for their marionettes) but basically as long as they are not trying to murder me I'm okay. Still every once in a while, something randomly appears in my daily life to reference some creepy doll and it always shakes me to the core of my being.

Now, there was a vacation that I was lucky enough to house sit for a family in a nice isolated area where I could breath freely and take stock of my life.  It was meant to be a wonderful time away to reflect on my own personal growth.  By Day 2, I was completely and utterly relaxed and the dogs I was sitting were happy and the cat had only thrown up on the rug once (yay!) and the only casualty was a sickly hamster (who was unfortunate to be found propped up against the food bowl; rigor mortis had clearly set it).  Then it happened.  I was watching a crime serial, albeit an odd one, but out of nowhere in it’s coincidental oddity, this episode had a weird little scavenger hunt that led the sweet puzzle-loving nerdy forensic scientist, whose boyfriend had been murdered and clearly set this up as a romantic night for two (and oh, how romantic to be hunting down possible serial killers with a series of blindly dangerous clues!) to a wonderful little speakeasy where a simple key wound up a doll (a DOLL THAT LOOKED LIKE A VENTRILOQUIST DUMMY) with a knife (A FREAKIN’ KNIFE!) who used to do magic tricks (WHAT?  MAGIC?  IS NOTHING SACRED) but now is so old he just stabs a table blindly and wildly until he unwinds.  

For anyone who knows my face, there was a look of blind and bewildered horror on my face at this point.  Especially at the point where it stops stabbing the table with wild fervor (SERIOUSLY.  STABS.  WILDLY!) and she puts her hands on the table (UNDER A KNIFE!  UNDER THE KNIFE OF A MALFUNCTIONING TURN-KEY DOLL THAT STABS WILDLY!) to find the secret clue.  The clue was something like, “The cow jumped over the moon…” (just kidding, it said, “I love you to the moon and back…” Demonic turn-key magician doll or not, my hopeless romanticism cannot be stopped!).  While I sat there in absolute horror, nightmare brain just beginning to coil it’s snake-like existence around the entirety of my soul, the dogs began to bark.  I mean, the dogs literally bark at their own shadows and I also know that they feed off of each other, so one starts barking and they’re like a bunchh of furry, giant, drooling sheep and ALL start following suit.  This was different.  It’s my second day, in a house that I don’t know exceedingly well, with nightmare brain beginning to cripple my own everyday view of the world.  Now, the hills that comforted and relaxed me are a wild landscape. The zombie apocalypse is impending. This house was built on an elephant graveyard which causes a catastrophic ghost-stampede that will kill me! A poltergeist will magically appear and I'll slip coming out of the hot tub, and they'll find my body 2 weeks later half eaten by the dogs I was watching). Someone will come over to borrow a cup of sugar and one thing will lead to another and they'll find my head in the mailbox. (Yes, these are actual thoughts that have crossed through my head tonight after the ventriloquist magician and the dogs going ballistic).

So with nightmare brain in full-alert mode and with a sense of impending doom and murder looming in the near distance, I find myself reflecting on a random quote from one of my favorite horror movie series (yes, I mean Scream of course). In Scream 3, which finds a young McDreamy as a detective in Las Angeles, specifically Hollywood, investigating the systematic annihilation of an entire movie cast. When he finally meets Sydney Prescott, who has clearly become a hermit in the middle of nowhere due to her constant murderous surroundings, she asks him what his favorite scary movie is (classic!). In truly creepy, Scream-style fashion, he leans down dramatically (and suspiciously!) to say, "My life..." Her response was under her breath, "Mine too..." as he slowly exits the room. I find this suddenly relevant because it reminded me of something that was said earlier this weekend. I made a joke about my life experience, despite my few years on this earth, and their response was to remind me that I have, in fact, been through a lot. I agree with them, my life has had a very odd number of moments where I have struggled with difficult obstacles, and instead of being the girl who runs up the stairs instead of running out the front door, I have put on my armor and I have destroyed each and every one of those obstacles. I have more than risen to the occasion. For the first time in my life, I no longer fear my nightmare brain. Maybe it will inspire me to use it for good and try my hand at some non-fiction horror (with all the terrifying things that happen in this head, it would not be a terrible idea..). However, sitting in this quiet house, listening to the dogs snore gently, in a darkened house, in the middle of nowhere, I know that regardless of what happens, there is no way in hell anyone is going to find my head in a mailbox. I know that I will always be the girl in the final credits, who may be limping, and covered in blood and missing her shoes, but I will be victorious...always.