It’s time to come clean

Last night, Ben scared the bejeezus out of me my sneaking up behind me while I was lost in a fantasy about zombies attacking the house. Yes, zombies. In light of that event, I’ve decided it’s time to come clean: I’ve previously confessed to an unreasonable terror of Garbage Can Jumpers, so now I’m going to fess up about the rest of my irrational scary-thing-in-the-dark fears. (Yes, I’m turning 28 later this month and still have bogeyman fears. What about it?)

Click for a bigger image. Oh go on. You know you want to.

At night, I can’t go to sleep uncovered, no matter how hot the room is. I just can’t – the last thing I need is to suddenly feel something freaky drooling on my leg while I drift off to sleep. But as everyone knows, bedsheets provide an impenetrable fortress from monsters, so as long as I stay at least partly covered, I should be safe from becoming something’s midnight snack.* True, there probably aren’t any monsters, but would you really want to take that kind of risk? REALLY?

Would you believe I've never actually seen The Shining?

I also won’t open a closet in a dark room, since that’s nothing but a good way to free the axe wielding maniac within. Exactly how the axe wielding maniac can create a savage master plan, narrow his potential victims down to me, sneak into the house unnoticed – and without tracking blood all over the carpet – and then get trapped in a closet and lack the mental facilities to figure out how to get out again is a unsolvable mystery.

I tried to find a scary picture of Lugosi, since he was the best Dracula EVER. But instead I found this one, which is very "I want YOU...to join the vampire corps!" Which is also kind of awesome.

Similarly, I avoid looking in the mirror in a dim room – for some reason, I’m convinced this will allow me to see the vampire standing behind me. (Yes, I’m fully aware this flies in the face of conventional vampire lore, since it’s generally accepted that mirrors don’t reflect their image. I never said any of this was logical.) Ben, on the other hand, won’t even bother flipping on the bathroom light when he brushes his teeth at night. Clearly he is ignorant of the undead’s prowess at slipping unnoticed into darkened rooms – and needless to say, some day this shall be his undoing.

Heebie jeebies. For realsies.

Remember that scene in The Sixth Sense where the little girl ghost grabs the boy’s ankle from under the bed? Nearly made me pee my pants, because that’s another of my fears. Even with my current bed, which only has about three inches of clearance from the floor, a small part of my mind remains stubbornly convinced that someone could still sneak under there. And of course, this impossibly flat person will have scaly clutching hands with preternaturally long fingers and scraping talons to wrap around my ankles. Oddly, this little fantasy never progresses past the shock and horror of the initial grasp, probably because the likely outcome after the screams faded would be that I’d just end up standing there with nothing else to do, the flat person holding on but unable to do much more than that. Eventually I’d probably offer them a cup of tea and make small talk about the weather.

This is from ZombieTools, which sells - you guessed it - tools to kill zombies. Plus shirts and whatnot, since I'm guessing the zombie killing tool trade is probably a little slow.

Finally of course, there is the zombie phobia. It was never a problem until filmmakers decided zombies would change from slow moving slabs of dead meat that you could knock over with a plank of wood into freakishly fast cannibals joined by a collective consciousness. However, I recently discovered the existence of two books, which may very well be the most important written in modern times. They are The Zombie Survival Guide and the sequel, The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks.


I think I may need them. Especially if Ben keeps inviting the undead into our house by brushing his teeth in the dark.

*Am I the only fan of The Far Side here? I tried really hard to find a picture of Larson’s “Monster Snorkel” cartoon (“The Monster Snorkel: Allows you child to breathe comfortably without exposing vulnerable parts to attack”) but Far Side comics are notoriously difficult to find online. Damn copyright…