This is How the Movies Always Start
If you’ve been following me, you may have noticed by now that I’m something of a horror fan. One trope that reliably scares the bejesus out of me in horror movies is technology behaving badly. There’s a scene in Ju-On: The Grudge where a freaked-out woman turns on her TV only to have the picture warp and roll until it’s showing the distorted face of a ghost woman making a horrific croaking sound. That kind of thing makes me peep through my fingers.
Well, technology has been behaving rather badly in my house lately.
1. We have a fan in our master bathroom, and I always turn it on before I take a shower so the bathroom isn’t a steamy swamp when I’m finished.
A couple of weeks ago, the fan wouldn’t turn on. I’d flip the switch over and over, but nothing happened. I even tried the switch next to it just to be sure I wasn’t having a middle-aged moment. Nada. This happened a few days in a row.
I kept meaning to mention it to my husband, but by the time he’d get home in the afternoons I’d be all distracted by ooh shiny something else, and I’d completely forget to tell him about it.
And then last Friday, while he was in the bathroom, I heard the fan loud and clear.
“Has that been working for you?” I asked him. “Because it hasn’t been working for me.”
He looked at me like I’d just sprouted a nice big pair of antlers, and when I flipped the switch, the fan worked fine. It has continued to work perfectly ever since.
2. One afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I had American Psycho on HBO while I was puttering around the house not getting things done. I was looking at my iPad when I heard someone on TV say “President Trump,” which was not yet a reality in the time period when the movie is set. What the hell?
I glanced up to see Paul Ryan giving a tax policy speech. On CSPAN. Which I hadn’t turned on, and had no intention of turning on.
I glanced over to see if one of the cats had walked on the remote, but they were nowhere nearby.
The cable jumped back to HBO.
A couple of minutes later, it changed itself to Ryan on CSPAN again. And then back to American Psycho. It felt like someone somewhere was trying for a cosmic punchline.
I hopped on my local cable’s Twitter feed to see if anyone else had mentioned this, but apparently I’m the only weirdo watching psychopaths on TV in the middle of the day.
3. Last Friday, our DVD player got into the act. I was eating lunch when the DVD tray slid open all by itself, much to my confusion. I hadn’t watched a DVD that day. And nobody, either human or feline, was anywhere near the remote for the DVD player.
And then the tray slid shut.
A couple of minutes later, it opened by itself.
And then closed by itself.
Again.
I was alone in the house when these things happened. I’m writing it all down because this is how horror movies always start. And I just know this is all going to escalate until it ends with some killer ghost crawling out of our TV and doing unspeakable things.
And I want my tombstone to read I FREAKING KNEW IT.
If you enjoyed this, I’d ❤ a recommend heart. You can find a listing of my fiction on Medium here, and I blog occasionally over at my personal website.
