A few days ago, I was walking towards the elevator, and its doors opened while I was still about 8 feet away. I fully expected someone to step out of it, but nope, it was empty. So, I did the obvious thing, walk right in.
Only when I reached my office did I realize that, had I been in a horror movie, it would have been the obvious setup for some gory trap.
Needless to say, I’m still alive (I think), but I’ll be taking the stairs from now on.
Have you ever been faced with an unusual but seemingly mundane event that made you glad in retrospect that you were not an expendable character?
I was walking home from a party once in a fairly inebriated state and I heard a tapping noise behind me, I turned around and saw that I was being followed by a large billy goat, the tapping was his hooves on the footpath, once I stopped he just wandered into the bushes at the side of the road, I kept walking and didn’t think much about it at the time, but thinking back it could have been the opening to a horror movie.
Does standing there trying to get into a hotel room when your keycard isn’t working count? “Damn, that one didn’t work, where did I put the extra one? Ah, it’s not working either? Did I swipe it correctly? Which way is the arrow pointing?” All the while, the killer creeps up behind me.
I thought I knew all the horror movie tropes, but I’m not sure what trope this would be. You should have checked to make sure the door wasn’t opening on an empty elevator shaft, plunging you to your doom?
Or, Leatherface or Jason may have been up against the front side wall of the elevator, making it only look empty, and you should have checked more thoroughly before stepping in?
I have opened and closed mirrored bathroom cabinets more times than I can possibly remember and yet so far have not been jump-scared by a demonic being/psycho killer appearing behind me, so I must be pushing my luck by now. Surely only a matter of time before I get my comeuppance.
I just realized last night that my car interior lights aren’t coming on when I open the door. If someone was hidden behind the driver’s seat, I wouldn’t know until it was too late.
I don’t think this is a The Situation Is Bad cliché from the movies, but I yammer on and on about how I figure it should be: I was in the hospital, and they put an IV in my arm — you know, like in the movies, when they a want a quick way to show you that the character is seriously in need of medical help.
And then they put an IV in my other arm, prompting me to think, wait, how have I never seen this in a movie? Because if it happened in a movie, it’d neatly signal to the audience that, hey, this is Really Serious for the injured firefighter or the hero cop or whatever.
And only then did I think, oh, hang on: I guess this is Really Serious, here in real life, for me.
This of thing is why I don’t watch common or garden-variety horror or slasher movies, the kinds with jump scares and bad things clinging to elevator ceilings. I don’t want everyday events in real life to trigger anxiety, there is quite enough real anxiety in the world without signing up for that kind.
Along those lines, I’ve never been the one black kid in the group of teenagers, or the captain of the football team that bullies the nerdy kid into walking into the Haunted Basement…
(Hey, I could’ve been a jock, but I know who gets decapitated first when things get spooky…)
I have learned, so never once when I’m with my friends or spouse and have forgotten “something” do I say “You all go on without me, I’ll catch up in a moment!”. That’s just inviting a horrible, possibly pun-based death around some version of “I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached.”
Whatever it was, it’s never that important, or if it was, they can all come with me.