I'm terrified right now, clutching Ryo like a stuffed animal and turning my back towards the windows. My back yard can be kinda spooky at night, especially when the moon is corpse-yellow. I mean, its Suburbia, so the weirdness that I'm terrified of is probably pretty slim, but I can't help the goosebumps. Dav and I were having a night swim, which prompted a discussion of sharks in the bottom of the pool, which subsequently prompted a long, scuuury discussion about all the weird stuff in the world. Everything from flood creatures that find dead to Siberian cyclops civilizations, corpse-hoarding heads in India to Nazi resurrection schemes. And now, I'm too spooked out to sleep.
See, I'm not really that terrified of getting mugged, or killed for that matter, in Pittsburgh, New York, wherever. Honestly, the few times I was almost mugged or attacked while in Oakland were... kinda fun. But that's a different issue. No, its sorta weird to talk to my cousins about spooky things when they always bring up serial killers, or terrorists and what-not. I mean, that stuff's scary, but what really rattles my bones are ghosts and monsters. I figure the hierarchy of spooky stuff would go, from least scary to most:
Human threats - Alien threats - Earth-bound monsters - Ghosts, ghouls, phantoms, etc.
Despite the fact that ghosts and ghouls pose the least chance of physical harm out of all of those, they're the things that just, absolutely terrify me. Its the notion of seeing something that I shouldn't see. The hierarchy is constructed out of a staircase of rationality; in that humans pose the most reasonable threats, but ghosts are just utterly inexplicable. At least aliens are a statistical probability, and monsters could just be evolutionary offshoots, but ghosts defy reason. *shivers*
On a final note, my dad and I were talking one night after watching Ghostbusters about the idea of monsters. When I told my dad that this weird stuff terrifies me, he sorta chortled and agreed. Then, he set up a scenario for me. I'm gonna try to go to sleep and not think about this, but its sorta always been stuck in my head. Consider this, but think about this coming out of my dad, the most fatherly, cool dude, like, ever.
Lets say you have a creature, something inhuman, even fairly large, living in New Jersey. It could be a giant insect, something mammalian, whatever. Just imagine something straight out of your childhood nightmares, given a physical shape, hanging out in some industrial ruin. Consider just the physical landscape of New Jersey, especially the areas closest to New York, Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, all of the offshoots just teeming with people. Think about the abandoned factories that stretch on for miles in Jersey, huge, empty shelters that every now and again attract the homeless or dumb kids looking for a thrill. Think about something inhuman just hanging out in these empty man-made caverns. Now think about these creatures, lets say a family of them, and give them sentience. Intelligence. Familiarity with human culture. Every year, god knows how many people go missing around New Jersey and New York. Those are only the known ones. Think about the untraceable homeless living around these places, people whom society is easily willing to forget. So you've got a predator, a place of shelter and hiding for these things, and a large and ready food source. Oh, and one more thing. Lets say these creatures have refrigeration. Think about how much human there is, on a human. A good 150-200 pounds of sheer meat. In all likelihood, with good storage, a single person could last a family of creatures for weeks.
I mean, wouldn't it just be easy?
EDIT: It's, like, 4 hours later and I couldn't fall asleep. While I stopped thinking about the monsters and ghosts, I can't get out of my head the eyes. A long time ago, I can't really remember when, I had this really vivid nightmare. It's a long story, but this single image has kinda stuck in my head since, even though the details are shaky. I'm looking into blackness, like a doorframe with the lights out on the other side, and staring back at me are a pair of crystal-blue eyes. Blue like a robin's egg, pale, but intense. Circling the eyes, the skin is bright red. Not even blood red, like intense, fire-bright red. No face, other than the red pits and chilling blue eyes. Still scares the living hell out of me.
At least there's daylight now =_=