Okay, pre-requisite to reading this post is reading my review of The Ring.
Have you read it yet?
Okay.
So, I’m still awake. And very tired. At around four AM I tried going to sleep again. This was interesting because as soon as I so much as turned out the light in the living room I started getting creeped out and turned it back on. Then I tried just leaving every light in the house on and every interior door open, but with my bedroom door fully open, I kept getting the feeling something could be standing just behind it an di had to jump up and pull it just open enough that I could see both sides of it and out the door.
I couldn’t lay on my side because that left my back exposed to things I couldn’t see, so every time I would start to roll to one side or the other I ended up jerking back onto my back and looking to make sure there hadn’t appeared something while my back was turned. I was pretty tired by this point, so I kept trying to shut my eyes, but after a couple of seconds with my eyes closed I would begin to feel like there might be someone or something standing in my room and they would burst open and search all that I could see without moving from my bed. I’m certain that if anyone could have seen this taking place they would have found it hilarious; every time I began to drift off to sleep I would jerk back awake as though there were some pending horror.
I think the most fun of the whole thing is that the pending horror in The Ring isn’t some killer lurking around a dark corner or even a known entity that uses stealth or surprize to get you. You know when you’re going to die, and throughout the movie it is left up to your imagination to determine what exactly will be doing the killing. Which I guess must be what has me so frightened; I’ve got this unknowable entity with a great fear and a constant feeling of suspense attached to it lurking in my head now. It doesn’t matter that the movie is over, that I know I’m locked safe in my home, that I know it’s fiction. I have created a greater horror in my own involuntary response organs, and you can see it in my eyes.
Between these increasingly long drift-startling wakening-drift-startling wakening-drift-etc., I probably got a couple of hours worth of sleep before leaving for my meeting this morning. The sun is shining now. I’m thinking of trying to sleep again. That the bulk of the horror of The Ring took place in broad daylight isn’t helping that, though.
Oh, and did I mention that two more of the movies I want to see are also horror movies with similar scary elements? Yep. Maybe I can push myself over the edge and become immune to it. On the other hand, i did buy a box of sleeping pills on the way home today. I will be sleeping tonight.
