The woman who lives across the street from me passed away yesterday. She was sweet and lovely, and every day when I walked the dog past her place I’d see her listening to the radio at her dining room table, and wave at her. She was very, very old, though, so when a bunch of police cars and an ambulance pulled up at her house with their lights on, but no sirens, I was sad, but not surprised.
I thought about her all day, and when I fell asleep last night I ended up dreaming about her. In my dream, I opened a door in my bedroom that I’d never noticed before, and on the other side was a huge, dark field, with the woman standing in the middle of it. So when I was awoken at four o’clock in the morning by the sound of something very, very large banging against the side of the house, I was already primed to be freaked the fuck out.
But the sound didn’t stop with the thumping, oh no. Next I got moaning – moaning! – capped off by an actual ear-splitting shriek. I flew over to the window like a much-less-calm version of that guy in The Night Before Christmas – and what did I see?
A pair of flashing red eyes, of course!
This, needless to say, is not an ideal way to be awoken in the middle of the night. My children concurred (a.k.a. lost their shit).
Turns out that the life-sized mummified zombie covered in spiders that I’d hung from a tree in our front lawn – the one with the motion-triggered sound effect option that I deliberately left turned off for obvious reasons – had been thrown against the house by the wind hard enough to turn said sensor back on, and it was now twisting terrifyingly in darkness, looking at me with its evil bright-red eyes…and screaming. REALLY loudly. And constantly (thanks, wind!).
I’m pretty new to the neighborhood, guys. I don’t need to be known as The House With The Screaming 4AM Zombie. So I went flying out into what felt like a pitch-black tornado (in my underwear?! in my underwear) and battled with the thing, which of course involved essentially climbing a tree (in my underwear?! in my underwear). Motion sensor having been located and de-activated, I returned to my bedroom to comfort my traumatized children, and tried to go to sleep.
But was the zombie still pounding against the side of the house? And was Archie absolutely DETERMINED to defend his family against this vicious intruder?
What do you think?
TL;DR: I need a nap. And maybe a Xanax.
