alien thoughts by kc carlson

okay...

after i said that one of the scariest things i ever saw was a doll in a pool of water, kc got to thinking about the scariest thing he ever saw...

below, he was kind enough to share his recollections with us.
thanks, kc!


Alien Thoughts
AKA The scariest thing I ever saw.

When the first Alien movie came out, it was one of those rare times that I wasn't paying any attention to what was going on movie-wise, and so I didn't have any idea at all what it was all about. When a bunch of friends decided to go see it it at a "good" theatre in Minneapolis, I was right there with them - any excuse for a road trip in those days! So one evening we drove almost 2 hours to downtown Mpls. to see a movie that I had never heard about.

When we got to the theatre, everybody wanted to sit in the very front row. I wasn't too sure about that, and I also thought it was unusual that many of the wooden armrests were broken off. The metal frame of the seats were kind of scratchy, so I grabbed two of the broken armrests and tried to hold them back on the seats with the weight of my arms and gravity. It worked pretty well, and soon I was so engrossed with the movie, I was paying no attention to the armrests.

Well, you can probably guess what happened next: The Alien bursts out of the Kane's chest. Everybody in the theatre screams, flies backwards into their seats, arms flying into the air. Except that I was still holding onto the armrests and ended up smacking myself in the head with them! "Ah, ha!" I thought. "So that's why they were all broken in the first place!"

The two-hour drive home was very animated, because everyone was really excited about the movie, although everyone was also still shaking. But it was very late, and by the time I dropped everyone off, I didn't get home until almost 3 AM.

At the time, I was living in a basement apartment which had a separate entrance from the rest of the house through the garage. There were no wall-mounted light switches anywhere in my apartment, so I had gotten used to walking * through the garage, a storage room/hallway, and all the way into my living room in the dark, when I could grab the pull-chain to turn on the light. Most of the time, this was uneventful - this night was VERY different.

The first thing I can remember when the lights went on was that I thought the walls were moving - or shimmering somehow. "Wow, I really must be tired," I thought. Then I squinted to focus -- big mistake. I realized that the walls WERE moving!

There were thousands and thousands of cockroaches climbing the walls, scrambling to escape the light.

I checked out the bathroom - there were hundreds of them in the shower. I decided to check the bedroom. It was down a long hallway and I foolishly thought it might be safe. I should have known better - I put my hand on the darkened hallway wall to steady myself and could feel them crawling over my hand. I reached the bedroom light string and pulled it - even more roaches here than in the living room!

I don't know why - maybe I thought it would be okay somehow - but I grabbed the bedding and pulled it off the bed. And there were hundreds of them in my bed. Some were crawling out of my pillowcase.

That was it. Somehow, up until then I somehow managed to hold it all together, but as soon as I saw that I started screaming like a little girl. And ran to my car. And drove around for the rest of the night. There was no way I was going to fall asleep anywhere. I drove around with the dome light on, swatting my arms at bugs that weren't actually there. In my mind, I had been scared by the Alien for two hours and now I was being tortured by thousands of its miniature cousins.

First thing the next morning, I call the idiot girl who lived in the main part of the house (who was also my landlord) and told her what happened. "Oh, yeah" she said. "I had the house fumigated yesterday. I guess they should have done the basement too, huh?" "Yeah, it would have been nice to know that," I said before screaming at her to get the exterminators back to finish the job.

I didn't go back to the house for three days, and when I did I brought a truck and empty boxes and moved the hell out of there. Gosh, it was fun shaking dead bug carcasses out of my clothes before I packed therm! (I ended up going to a laundromat and washing everything I owned. Twice.) I left a huge pile of dead bugs for her to clean up. Screw the security deposit.

--KC Carlson



* edited by roger ash