Scarey Noises was a drinking game which was very popular at college frat
parties during my uninspiring academic career. The participants
would draw straws, and the schmuck with the short straw was blindfolded
and tied to a tree. Then the rest of us withdrew a short distance,
and took turns trying to make the victim scream, cry, crap his pants or
otherwise express fear. If the victim survived your turn, you had
to drink. If you got a reaction, the victim had to drink and the
game started over.
We came up with lots of Scarey Noises during our short infatuation with
the game. Clanking chains and electric knives were always good for
a laugh. I had a gift for psychological warfare and almost always
won. The only real rule was no touching the victim, you had to win
by noise alone. Kind of a stupid game, in retrospect, but what frat
party drinking game isn’t rooted in stupidity? At least this one
got us out into the fresh air.
I was thinking about Scarey Noises last night, after being awakened about
3 am by a low, raspy creaking. The first time I’d heard that noise
in our new home it had caused me no end of terror, as I’d imagined stinking,
slime-coated monstrosities slithering ravenously from the back yard pond,
drawn by the smell of the warm, living, good-to-eat humans now occupying
the house. The first time I had ever heard that creaking, I spent
what seemed like hours lying ramrod-stiff in my bed, literally paralyzed
with terror. I finally ventured forth, armed with a high heeled bedroom
slipper, only to discover that our pet hamster had discovered his new -
and noisy - exercise wheel. I menaced him with the two inches of
heel in my hand, the poofy end of my neon-bright fuck-me pump sticking
to my clammy palm. The hamster continued his circular race to nowhere,
happily oblivious to the crazy woman armed with the hot pink footgear standing
over his cage.
The scariest of all Scarey Noises are those that awaken me out of a sound
sleep. Some do it suddenly and loudly while other types of noises
slowly infiltrate my dreaming mind, pulling me up from the depths of sleep
so gradually that I am unaware of actually crossing the boundary between
nightmare and reality. Until I experienced the ultimate in Sudden
and Loud awakenings, I was convinced that the infiltrators were the worst
of the two. Infiltration noises, those sly and subtle sounds that ease
my sleeping mind slowly into wakefulness, generally leave me thrashing
helplessly in my bed, bound by my own sheets and blankets as securely as
we bound our long ago Scarey Noises victims to those rough and isolated
trees.
My
conclusion about frightening nighttime noises was wrong. The worst
of all nightmarish awakenings that I ever experienced was of the sudden
and loud variety, and it happened to me several years ago. The time
was about 3 am, and oh how 3 am seems to be my own particular Witching
Hour, when ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggety beasties and things that
go bump in the night gather around my bedside to menace my sleep.
This particular night I think I would have welcomed a nice monster to battle,
instead of the faceless horror that awakened me. At least with a
monster a girl has a chance, if she can ram the heel of that fuck-me
pump into its single bloodshot eye she can make it to the flame thrower
- or the fire extinguisher if it’s a cold-sensitive monstrosity - and go
all Rambo on its ass. The thing that woke me that night, though,
was no foe small enough to be vanquished with a high-heeled shoe and a
rapid temperature change. What awakened me was Armageddon, Annihilation
and Newfangled Fire & Brimstone, all in one instantaneous package.
I was rousted from my slumber by Thermonuclear Warfare, and the bomb had
already detonated.
Obviously
anybody reading this is fully aware that there has never been a Thermonuclear
War, and my oh so patient reader is also cognizant of the fact that, since
I am sitting here writing my story, I was probably not flash fried as I
bolted upright in bed with my heart pounding and my bladder, thank you
Jesus, not emptying its contents all over my bed. Really, that latter
is quite a feat, especially considering that I was petrified with the most
absolute terror I have ever felt and had consumed mass quantities of Diet
Pepsi as we stayed up late watching the news the previous evening.
My husband Mike and I are not huge news watchers, per se, but I know of
few people who weren’t glued to their television sets or radios or computers
or some form of media input that week. My brush with death occurred
in the wee hours of September 14th, in the year 2001. This was less
than three days after the terror attacks that leveled the World Trade Center
and killed thousands of innocent people, about 30 miles from where we lived.
There’s no real need to rehash September 11th. Everybody has a 911
story, they are all important, they are all riveting, and they are all
poignant. Ours was one of the better ones. My best friend was
an office worker in the towers who just happened to be late for work that
morning. She emerged from the subway beneath the Trade Center to
find a milling crowd of fellow office workers babbling about a bomb scare
and heading for the exits. She went with the flow, happy for the
bomb scare that covered her tardiness, and, upon hitting the street, saw
what was happening and ran like Hell. Having had her life saved because
she was late for work, she swore a solemn oath to never be on time again.
My husband managed to get out of Manhattan with relative ease and we were
able to watch the towers fall over and over that night in our own bed.
I felt very blessed by the escape of the two people I love most in the
world, and regarded the level of post-traumatic stress I suffered subsequent
to the attacks as a personal affront, getting myself through it by vigorously
chastising myself for my own weaknesses.
Anyway... scary noises and nuclear warfare. In the days after the
fall of the towers I went to work as usual, but evenings were spent glued
to the news and swapping conspiracy theories. A student of history,
my husband is great at coming up with more and more unsettling theories
and scenarios.
We turned off the television at 11:30 on the 13th, after watching the Daily
Show. Kissing Mike goodnight, I curled up against his warmth and
drifted off, visions of a smirking Junior Bush banished by Mike’s arm around
my waist and a purring cat with the unlikely name of Myron hogging most
of my pillow.
I was awakened by light, a flash so prolonged and brilliant that it illuminated
our bedroom even through the lowered shades and drawn curtains. It
jerked me bolt upright in bed, Mike still snoring blissfully to my right
and the cat wide awake and staring on my left. In the unnatural and
almost blinding brightness I could see that the animal was terrified, and
I scooped him to my chest, clutching him to me with my ‘tech grip’, the
one armed clutch that pins a cat in place and keeps his cute little paws
from becoming razor-tipped shredding machines.
The light lasted for several seconds, then abruptly winked out, leaving
behind absolute darkness and an equally blinding red afterimage seared
on my retinas. “Oh fuck, they nuked the city,” I said, or maybe I
just thought it really loud. “The dumb bastards nuked the city
and I looked at the fucking flash and went blind ”
I reached out towards Mike, trying to calculate how far away Manhattan
was from our small Long Island house - not far enough by a long shot -
and attempting to figure out how many seconds we had until the firestorm
swept over us. I gripped Mike’s shoulder to shake him awake, knowing
that if there were any way out of this, any possibility of survival at
all, he would find it. We had never been in a jam that he couldn’t
fix, and I reached for him knowing that if anybody could fix the end of
the world, it would be Mike.
As my fingers closed over his shoulder the rumble began, a huge and loud
roaring so intense that the house shook around us, jolting Mike out of
sleep and causing Myron to press his body and face against me. The
cat was shaking and I kissed the top of his head as I asked Mike, “Did
those crazy bastards just nuke us?”
For a long moment the roaring went on, then cut off and silence descended.
Mike and I stared at each other, and it dawned on me that I could see,
and that we should probably get moving, and that even if we did get moving
it was too late. For all of our talk on the subject, we hadn’t moved
out of New York after all. We had been caught flatfooted, asleep
at the switch, and within seconds we were going to be flash fried, no doubt
very painfully, with millions of others who hadn’t moved out of New York,
history’s largest ever order of people flambee, and the last fast food
dinner I would ever think about or give a shit about.
Just then the light flashed again, not quite as long or as bright, and
was answered seconds later by another roar of sound, also not as overwhelming.
A moment or two later, we heard and saw another flash, then two more.
“Thunderstorm,” we both said, then stared at each other and began to laugh.
I hugged poor Myron close once more, then released him from my death grip.
He stalked to the edge of the bed, the picture of ruffled feline dignity,
and sat with his back towards us, where he began to groom himself, pausing
now and then to glance dismissively back at the two of us as he cleansed
his fur of the evidence of still more human stupidity.
In the midst of our laughter, Mike paused and stared at me. “Were
you actually waking me up?” he asked me, incredulity in his tone.
“I thought we were being nuked,” I answered. “Of course I was freaking
waking you up ”
“Darling.” He was still staring at me. “Dearest. Sweetheart.
Love of my life. Why in the Hell would you wake me up when we were
about to die an agonizing death in flames?”
“I knew you’d get us out of it,” I answered promptly. “And if you
couldn’t, at least we’d go together.”
“Love. Wife. She who I worship.” His tone was too patient.
Uh oh, this was going to be bad.
“In the future...” he continued.
“Yes dear?”
“In the future. Should the world, or even our immediate vicinity,
be about to end in fire and brimstone and other painful things and I happen
to appear as if I am about to sleep through it?”
“Yes dear?”
“LET ME FUCKING SLEEP! ”
* * *
