Wednesday, June 27, 2007

It's Enough To Give You Nightmares...

Do people get abducted, taken into flying saucers, have foreign objects inserted into their orifices while scary-looking little men with big black eyes conduct scary tests? If I'd heard those stories when I was a kid I'd have been even more paranoid than I already was. I had more than my share of nightmares about things that spooked me.

Buy hey…what about you? How about a little story about you during your childhood? You're 10-years-old, and you're with your mom and your 5-year-old sister at the library. You don't want to be there, it's a nice summer day. Mom is looking at CDs and books from Oprah's Book Club. Your little sister is in the preschool area, listening to a nice lady read a Dr. Seuss book. You're walking amongst the shelves of the kids' books when your eye is caught by this book. There's a cover painting of a flying saucer with a ray coming out of it, zapping a man by a car! Cool! You take the book over to the reading table.

Flipping through the book you start to get a little unnerved. Here's a painted illustration of some weird-looking little guys standing over a guy on an operating table. What's that thing sticking out of his head while he screams in pain?

You turn the page quick. Then there's an illustration of some dead cows with their lips cut off. Yow.

Then you see an illustration of a lady on a table, with the weird guys little around her, and according to the caption, they are removing a "humanoid fetus" from the lady. Turn the pages, quick.

Yikes! Here's the lady, holding what looks like one of the weird little guys only it's a baby! The little guys are standing around her. She's holding it like her own baby!

You quickly flip back the pages, thinking, this might've been a mistake to take this book off the shelf. Then you see it, the picture that will be in your head for years to come:

You slam the book shut, run over to Mom who is gathering up your little sister, getting ready to check out her books and CD's. She says, "Find something you like, honey?"

"Heck, NO!" you shout. People look at you.

That night you find it hard to get to sleep because of the images in your head from that awful book. You finally fall asleep but wake up after a disturbing nightmare about little guys with big eyes, holding you down on an operating table. You know they're about to do something to you and you force yourself to wake up. In the darkness you are afraid to open your eyes, afraid that something might be in the room with you. You find you cannot move your head off your pillow. It is drenched with sweat and you are moaning softly in agony. Why, oh why did you have to look at that awful scary-ass book? Suddenly you hear a noise. The door is creaking open. Omigosh, you think. It's those little men, come to take you into their spaceship. You open your eyes enough to see a silhouette of a small person, the nightlight behind it.

You suddenly start to scream. You open your mouth and you let loose with a yell that can be heard for blocks, for miles, hell, on the moon! The little person who is silhouetted shrieks at the sound of your scream, and then you realize it's just your little sister. You hear feet hitting the floor in your parents' bedroom. In come Mom and Dad, your light goes on, you are sitting in the middle of the bed, hyperventilating. Mom and Dad see that you've had a nightmare and try to calm you down. Mom even takes your soggy pillowcase and changes it for you. Then they lead your little sister back to bed, and after some soothing talk they switch off your light.

You lie there for the rest of the night, those pictures from that book going through your mind. You are thinking about the little blond boy in the barn with the awful outer space guy right behind him, a cruel look on his face. He doesn't mean that little kid any good, and the kid doesn't know what's coming! You sure wouldn't want that to be you! "Help me, God," you moan.

Dawn comes a couple of hours later and you've never been so glad for daylight in your life. You are tired, but your mom calls you downstairs for breakfast. You can hear a CD in her player. You notice a CD cover on the table and glance at it. Best Of The Byrds, it says. Huh! The Byrds! One of those corny old '60s groups your mom and dad like. You try your best to ignore it but the lines of a song they are singing register on your brain: "Hey, Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along? I won't do anything wrong. Hey, Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along for the ride."

You sit at the table and think, "Oh yeah…go along with a spaceman. I don't think so. That idea is strictly for the Byrds."

P.S. The blurb on the back of the this book just to show that it is intended for children:



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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Those are really cool.