I know the feeling, waking up at one in the morning for no damn reason. It’s anxiety usually, but not last night. I lay awake and thought about horror movies.
A friend of mine in high school was sensitive like me, a little too overly sensitive. He couldn’t handle horror movies except a few, like Nightmare on Elm Street, only because he thought Freddy was cool. He wouldn’t watch any of them other than that. He came back from clogging class one weekend night and stayed at my house. It was a slumber party for the two of us. We lay on our stomachs right in front of the TV. My parents subscribed to HBO back then, and HBO showed schlocky horror films late at night through the week. I changed the channel to there, and it showed some guy who was trapped in a glass chamber while a bunch of scientists in lab coats watched him from the other side of the glass. We had no idea what the film was about since we’d caught the middle of it, but the bad guys (I guessed they were) observed the guy yelling at them to let him out. But they didn’t. The main bad guy nodded his head at one of the other people in the room. She flicked a switch, which triggered some sensor in the glass chamber, and the guy’s head exploded. I immediately started laughing. There’s something about a person’s head exploding in a cheap horror film that always makes me laugh, like watching a sledgehammer to a watermelon and the pulp bursting out. I laughed so hard that I started punching the carpet. But my friend didn’t think it was amusing.
“Dude, turn this off,” he said.
“No way,” I said. “This is hilarious.”
“No it’s not,” he said. “It’s not funny.” He was too damn sensitive. “Just turn it off, dude.”
“Okay, fine,” I said.
So I switched over to Cinemax, another channel my parents used to pay every month for, and it showed a movie with a steamy sex scene. My friend didn’t object to that of course. Neither of us did. The man and woman were engaging in foreplay.
“This is sweet,” my friend said.
We were waiting for the nudity to come, but a huge power drill impaled the man from the woman’s stomach and drilled him to pieces.
I started laughing again, but my friend didn’t think that was funny either, so he told me to turn it off as well. I wasn’t laughing at the cheap effects of the film per se, but also my friend’s reaction. That was the main reason for watching those films with him or any other friend. I always waited for their reactions, something I miss.
My insomnia may have come from the licorice root I took yesterday. What if it kept me up all night? The internet says the side effects from long-term use are high blood pressure, low potassium, edema, heart problems, kidney problems, hormonal imbalance, headaches, and liver problems. That’s a lot, which means it’s working.
