The scene or image I often have in mind might be pretty mild, but it arises in my mind from time to time and I can 't say why it pops up in my mind nor the reason it disturbs me. (I suspect might have come from some movie I’ve forgotten.)
In short, some eager young corporate-ladder climbing MBA grad has made his way through the organization, often scheming and undercutting his rivals, until finally one day he makes his way to the top floor executive suite, where he has an audience with the mega-corp’s renowned but mysterious CEO. He enters a dark room, and glimpses a figure he takes to be the CEO in the shadows. But the chief executive is more in the manner of a beast than a man, hunched over, breathing heavily, almost grunting as the young man begins to speak.
The young man begins by trying to flatter the CEO, speaking of how much he’s admired him, and talking about his own efforts to come up the ladder to meet him, by hook or by crook. The boy falters, though, as the CEO says nothing but only edges more closely to him and breaths even more noisily. The boy starts again, but quails as it seems clear the CEO doesn’t even hear his words. And then recoils, or would recoil if he could, as the CEO, still hunched, now advances rapidly and it become clear that the boss has been looking at this new entrant as one thing only, and that is food . . .
Lately I’ve been haunted by the picture this Children Collide song paints.
Early in the song there’s these lyrics: We’re curled up like sleeping kittens on the floor
Stowed aboard your big green boat
But by the end: Like a lonely kitten, sinking, drowning in the harbor
I walked the plank, your big green boat
I’ve mentioned before that I don’t tend to imagine things when hearing a story, but I can see this kitten falling through the water, twisting helplessly, little legs flailing…I like the song, but that’s pretty horrifying.
Yeah. Tuesday morning the schoolbus hit the neighbor’s dog just before picking up my daughter. (Not the driver’s fault, he stopped for the dog and it ran back in front of the tire as he started up again) Driver sent my daughter back in to let me know so I could inform the dog’s owners. I checked on it to see if anything could be done, but, well, it had been run over by a bus. I just can’t seem to get the image out of my head.
Yes, and it has to do with sexual abuse at an extremely early age. It took me until I was in my 40s to put 2 and 2 together, but there’s no other explanation for that recurring image.
I have had both gastric lavage and my lungs flushed and if I am in that twilight sleep state laying on my side with my mouth slightly open I can occasionally get the feeling of jaw blocks holding my mouth open.
[when I was 4 I ate deadly nightshade berries. I used to work as a hazmat tech.]
I used to see ads on TV when I was a kid for the Faces of Death videos (or whatever they were called – hopefully I’m not confusing that with another set of vidoes). I don’t remember everything they showed, but I always remember the commercial ending with someone on a train platform who is walking too close to the edge right as a train is about to blast through the station, and the commercial cutting off right before the person is struck. There are times when I think of that and I can’t shake it for a while.
The other is former Raiders runningback Napoleon McCallum hyperextending his knee. Link in spoiler to avoid someone inadvertently losing their lunch: [spoiler]http://www.extremesportclips.com/video/312/Napoleon-McCallum-Leg-Break.html[/spoiler] I was watching that game, and whenever someone mentions a bad leg injury, that one comes back to mind. And now I’m regretting having looked it up again.
Yeah. Several years ago my parents were up to visit, and we were driving somewhere on the freeway. In front of us, parked off to the side of the road (probably with mechanical difficulties) was a motorhome. As we watched, the back door of the motorhome opened and a small dog darted out–straight onto the freeway–followed by a child who was quickly grabbed by an adult before he could even get out the door. Before I could look away, the dog was struck by a car. To this day I occasionally see that in my mind and I wish I could just go into my brain with a tight-beam laser and carve that memory out.
There was an autopsy photo of a 10 year old boy that had be beaten to death by foster mother. Although I have seen more autopsy photos that I care to remember, this one in particular, still haunts me 4 years after seeing it.
One of the milder ones: when I was little, my aunt made me watch The Elephant Man with her, and John Merrick’s face in that movie scared the shit out of me. For weeks after seeing it, I would have intrusive thoughts where I saw his face in front of me.
Another movie one, the kid standing with his face to the wall in The Blair Witch Project. I have never had a movie scene give me nightmares before, and I was 32. :eek:
Well… maybe the blood coming from Quints mouth in Jaws. Had no idea that could happen, struck my 7 year-old brain as pretty horrible (yes, I saw the film in the theaters on first release). Don’t know if I had nightmares about it though…
When I was five, during the first week we lived in our new house there was a black cat on the sidewalk across the street (no houses - a shopping center was being built)with a stick through its chest. It obviously disturbed(to say the least) the hell out of me yet I never told anyone, nor did anyone else seem to notice it. I remember going to the window every day full of dread, praying it would be gone and not able to stop myself from looking. Poor thing must have been there for four days.
When I was ten my friend had her birthday party at the tide pools (Royal Palms in Palos Verdes). As we walked along the sidewalk at the bottom of the cliffs we came upon a throng of people. A child had fallen down the cliff. The body had been removed and there was muttering that he’d cracked his head open. The rocks were covered with blood.
As for movies, I saw “Poseidon Adventure” in the theater when I was six (yes, my parents took me to see all kinds of movies, almost always with no ill effects)and I loved it except the scene when they’re going through the engine room and they find the guy with his face all burned up. By today’s standards it was pretty midl but that image stuck with me for a looooooong time.
The last shot of “The Blair Witch Project” kept me up for several weeks. It wasn’t a great movie but that scene made it all worth it.
The Lincoln Tunnel scene from The Stand. I am hardly ever scared by books, but that scene sometimes won’t leave my head.
Also, when I was ~5th grade, we went on a tour of the Queen Mary…one of the parts of it, you went outside the ship in a walkway, and they had the huge external drive prop of the ship there, still in the water, illuminated by floodlights…they had a dummy in a period-for-the-time diving suit next to it, so you would have a sense of scale. And that image still sticks in my memory…I knew it was just a dummy, but it seemed like a drowned man just FLOATING THERE…ugh. I’ve never felt comfortable with deep water/ocean water, and seeing that didn’t help me any at all.
I used to work at a factory that made ping pong tables. One night on the assembly line, we heard a blood-curdling scream from another near-by line, and moments later a woman I had spoken to many times came up the aisle; it took a few moments longer to recognize her.
She had very long hair and had had it pulled back in a ponytail. While reaching onto a fast moving conveyor belt, her hair had fallen over her shoulder and gotten caught in the belt. It had literally scalped her, ripping ALL of her hair & flesh off. Her skull was exposed, and I swear to God it looked like her face was melting since there was nothing left to hold it up
I have never seen anything else so horrific and hope to never again, but her face still haunts my nightmares.
Another scene I cannot forget was when I was boarding my horse with my veterinarian. he had a yearling Thoroughbred filly brought in with tetnus. The owner would not allow him to euthanize her because she was insured, and there was a SMALL chance she would recover. If euthed, they would not collect the insurance money. So the poor horse (which COULD have been saved this horrible fate with a $10 tetnus shot beforehand) was left having convulsions. She was laying down and when her muscles contracted, it would pull her head & neck up & back so violently her forehead almost touched her spine. shudder
THAT was the day I decided I did not want to be a vet.