On Saturday afternoon I go out with the doggy. We step out and we are instantly engulfed in a thick, soupy mist. I can’t see the metro station – which is enormous and only about 100 yards away. After a few more steps the dog looks back at me with a ‘really?’ look on her face. I shrug at her and we move forth.
After a few more yards still we cannot see either the metro or the building – both too large to lose while being immediately nearby and not drunk on absinthe. Though I don’t put much direct thought into it, something about the scenario seems familiar. Something scary is lingering at the edges of my thought process.
But I shake away these misgivings. We’re in our front park, for Pete’s sake. And it’s Saturday at around 2 pm – Cheat Day! What could go wrong on Cheat Day? Only a monster would kill a man on the day he can eat whatever he wants. Only a monster.
And that’s when I realize what I’m reminded about – just about every horror movie I have ever seen. The one that particularly concerns me is Stephen King’s The Mist. If you haven’t seen this feelgood charmer, it’s about a group of strangers that get caught inside a grocery store together when a mist swallows their town and moves them into an alternate dimension (or moves an alternate dimension’s residents to this one). Anyone who goes into the mist dies – badly, and at the hands of other-dimensional spiders.
I am now in the mist. Like, well into the mist. I begin looking at the ground and its environs. I mistook a plastic bag for a giant spider. When I bump into a trashcan I nearly had a heart attack. My shih tzu is not the kind of dog known to fight off other-dimensional poisonous spiders. And neither am I. Since it’s 2 pm and November in Prague, it’s going to get dark soon. I pick the dog up and we run home. Once inside, I breathe a sigh.
Like most of you, I am relatively susceptible to horror movies. When I was a kid, we watched Friday the 13th at a neighbor’s house. To get home from this neighbor’s home, we had to walk through a forest. I came very close to gripping a tree and sending for my mother. This terror made itself known to me a few years later when I saw Nightmare on Elm Street with a buddy. I was underage and so was he, but his parents got us in the Eric 4 Feasterville and we felt like such big boys. That is, of course, until I went home later with a glazed mustache of movie theater popcorn and realized that I had to fall asleep. See, the catch 22 of dealing with one Mr. Frederick Kreuger is that he gets you in your dreams when you are asleep. You can’t win. I hope the guy who came up with that one has a beach house. But I also hope it’s infested with Stephen King’s spiders.
This is the fun of horror movies – the tension it creates. What could be better than being one abrupt sound – a phone-ring, a sneeze, a door-knock – away from screeching at the top of your lungs? In the movie, this tension is released by the scare, the jump, the graphic visual of a hockey-masked psychopath slicing a bikini-clad teen open with a machete. You know, the norm.
But when you get home and the girl from The Ring lurks behind each door, there’s nothing there to release the tension. Sure, you could argue that there is no real tension there because, well, you know, the girl from The Ring isn’t behind my door (right? Right?!!), but still. Horror movies are the gift that keep on giving. And so I have come to terms with the facts that every camping trip reminds me that The Hills Have Eyes. Every stay at a hotel reminds me that every boy’s best friend is his mother. Every fun afternoon at a warm beach in summertime reminds me that I thought it was safe to go back into the water. Then I look for fins. Every jaunt to an arctic research station is marred by some Thing.
Later on in the evening, I subtly try to barter doing dishes for bringing out the dog. I’ll give anything to avoid the outside, the mist isn’t gone – it’s just dark now. However, Burke has designs to hold onto the dish job. I finally relent. As I am getting on my shoes, she puts out a peace offering.
“Here, look at this shih tzu. It looks like Maisy, but a little wonkier.”
The picture is a shih tzu who has the same white and gray markings my dog has, but this one has matted fur and a tail that has seen better days. My shih tzu’s crooked teeth look a little like a graveyard. This shih tzu’s teeth are so crooked it could pick its nose with its bottom canines. And while my pup has a wonky shih tzu eye, this one is so cross-eyed it could read two different newspapers on opposite walls. Basically, it looks like a cute shih tzu who’s seen some shit.
“Cute!”
I leave with the dog.
Downstairs, I text Burke: It’s like Maisy’s ‘Us’ dog.
If you haven’t seen the movie Us by Jordan Peele, stop reading now (spoilers ahead). The plot revolves around a doomed family vacation interrupted by a facsimile of their own family. Only the other family is quite disturbed and deranged. Seems they have been kept in barracks underground where they were fed rabbits and grew more and more deranged as they were forced to act out their above-ground twins’ actions. Everyone on earth has a twin under Earth. And they are all fucked up. And on this night, they come ‘take over’ their above-Earth counterpart’s life. Pretty creepy.
I note now that my Maisy is walking me a little more quickly than usual. Towards the mist. Does her tail look the way it did when we left the house? She stops. Passing by us is one of our local bartenders, who must be on her way home from work.
Only, is that really her? Her hands look a little strange. Are her eyes darker than they were when I saw her last? Is that rabbit’s foot on her keychain? The bartender says hi – to Maisy, not me. Though admittedly, this is par for the course in el Praha. Nevertheless, I am on edge.
The dog pulls me towards the metro. I pull the other way towards home. She sits and waits. I relent. She pulls me again down towards the metro. Down. I don’t want to go down to the under-Earth people’s barracks. I don’t want to meet my under-Earth twin? What if I’m a bigger asshole? It’s not out of the realm of possibility. Hell, depending on how you know me, it might a foregone conclusion.
I realize I’m being ridiculous and I pick the dog up. She is all of 11 pounds. She is not bringing me to the under-Earth area, no matter how many times I have seen that horror movie. But as we walk home, she does let out a growl I’ve never heard before. Oh man.
Have you ever seen Cujo?
