Down the Rabbit Hole

Blue Monday

Blogging Circle of Friends
DAY 1125: December 14, 2015
Prompt: It's blue Monday. Write something funny to make me laugh. Write a poem (good or bad), tell a funny story. Just write something funny.

I have a taste for watching spooky shows...Ghost Hunters, American Horror Story, Hemlock Grove and the like. I typically have to catch up on them well after my daughter and husband go to sleep. I tend to overdue it, watching three or four episodes at a stretch and before I know it, its often after Midnight. I should be writing of course but these days I need to escape more and nothing expedites that better than some horror-themed, totally implausible drama that will get my heart pumping and heart jumping at every noise. Last night, I was on the fourth episode of Hemlock Grove. It was a particularly graphic episode, apparently Werewolves are messing eaters, and I was feeling more tired than I was intrigued. I headed up to bed, at least semi-conscious of how dark and silent my old house was at the late hour. I made my way up the stairs turning off the lights in my wake, trying, I realized, to race the rising darkness up the stairwell before it swallowed me.

My husband had put our daughter to bed. The video monitor sat glowing on the wide, wood mantel of the bedroom fireplace. The room was so dark it barely illuminated the space, I crossed the room to get a closer look at my sleeping daughter. She often pulled the blankets over her head in sleep, a habit that made me nervous still. I stood about a foot back from the screen, then leaned forward to peer at her image. There, three inches from my noise, just to the right of the monitor box, was a dark furry face and two dead, black eyes staring directly back at me. I thought "rat", swallowed my scream but fell backwards, landing hard on the bed frame with my right hip taking the brunt of the weight.

The "rat" turned out to be a stuffed raccoon my daughter must have left on the mantel on her way to bed. In my state of heightened alarm, it took me several more minutes to work that out than it should have. So, as a result of my ridiculous habits, I am now starting off my blue Monday with a bruise the size of a sausage patty on my hip!