Perhapablog

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

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

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Man, that would have traumatized me for life. Having all those bugs crawling around like that.

That's a really cool story.

Brian said...

You win, hands down, no question about it, scariest story.

alison said...

Good scary stories and I can relate to kc's. Part of my first month experience living in PR included waking up with a cockroach in my hair and one crawling across my face. It's a wonder I stayed.

Todd, You are nuts actually wanting the job of walking through that place alone after everyone else has left - with or without the lights and sounds on.

Heywood Jablomie said...

yeah what brian said! frikkin creepy!

~ Wendy ~ said...

OMGosh .. ewwww. I'll be swatting at imaginary bugs all night! very, very scary and I doubt I would have been able to sleep with the light off for months after that!

Warren said...

The scaredest I've ever seen somebody was when I was a teenager back in the 70's. A bunch of us were standing around one night having a few illegal beers. We were standing under a light outside of a convenience store when this huge moth (its wings were about the size of my hands) started buzzing us. One of the idiots among us swatted the poor moth down and it lay still upon the sidewalk. We thought it was dead.

This didn't satisfy the idiot who swatted it down. He went inside the store and bought a can of lighter fluid and sprayed the poor thing. It didn't respond. I had no idea what this guy was up to, but I figured the moth was out of its misery so whatever he did it wouldn't suffer. He threw a match on it.

We found out two things about the huge moth. 1) It was still alive. 2) It could still fly even though it was on fire.

Blazing, it flew straight up into the face of the guy who set it on fire. He started screaming and trying to get away, but it followed him -- stayed right in his face -- until it finally died.

He was spooked, his face pale and he was shaking all over. He swore he'd never do something that cruel again. If I didn't know better, I'd think the moth was trying for a bit of revenge upon its tormentor before it died.

Ed Sizemore said...

KC,

Scariest movie for me was Halloween. I saw it when it first came on HBO. At the time, my family lived in a house with a large living room window. The movie ended at 2 AM. I stayed awake until the sun rose at around 6 AM terrified that someone/something was going to come through the living room window. I was still young and naive enough to believe that daylight kept the monsters away.

Great story KC! I'll be itching at imaginary bugs for the rest of the day.

todd said...

hey, warren--

what a neat creepy tale--

just read your story to sharon and we both thought it was both scary and sad. but i think we all need to learn those lessons as we go through life about being kind and compassionate--even to things we think are creepy. i know i did some things that i still regret when i was younger...

thanks for the moth story!

and ed--

i don't think halloween or any of those 80's slasher flicks scared me that much 'cause those guys all carried knives or machetes--and my dad had guns.

thanks again for your stories--and thanks kc for part one of yours.
part two tomorrow...!