Domestic Horrors

With Halloween only days away, perhaps it was fitting that I woke my husband up from a dead sleep last night with shrieks of horror. "It's ok, it's ok," he whispered at me, "you're just having a bad dream." He patted me on the back twice and fell immediately back to sleep, satisfied he'd scared off whatever monsters had woken his wife up in the middle of the night.

He was too sleepy to notice that I was actually lying in bed laughing at myself. The nightmare?

I dreamed I was in my own kitchen, cleaning off the dinner table after a meal. My arms were laden with dirty dishes from wrist to shoulder, and the hot water was running in the sink, the microwave was beeping, and I was trying to open the dishwasher with my foot. Sitting in their respective seats at our kitchen table, my youngest daughter had her nose buried in a National Geographic Kids magazine, my older daughter concentrated on a book, and my husband was playing long distance Scrabble with his sister on the iPad.

"Hello? A little help here?" I said in the dream, the dishes clinking precariously in my arms. "Hello? Anyone notice that I need some help cleaning up?" They just kept reading as I hopped on one foot, kicking at the dishwasher door with the other. 

Finally, desperate to get them to put down their reading and notice me, I screamed like a B list actress, waking myself and my husband up in the process.

Forget some masked maniac at Camp WannaPeePee chasing me down with a silvery butcher knife as I try to run uphill through maple syrup without shoes. I've become much more constricted in my fears. Evidently having to clean my actual kitchen by myself while my actual family relaxes in front of me is the real  nightmare.

With this in mind I thought I'd revisit some beloved slasher movie killers and decide what I'd probably nag them about, you know, apart from the homicides.

• Jason Voorhees, Friday the 13th: I swear to God, Jason, if I find your ski mask on the floor in the front hall again, I am THROWING IT OUT. Do you hear me? It's your trademark? Well, if that were true I doubt you'd be so careless as to throw it on the floor where the dog will step on it.

• Freddy Krueger, Nightmare on Elm Street: Those were brand new sheets, Frederick. They still had the creases in them. If you were going to suck Johnny Depp down into a bed and expel him in liquid format, couldn't you have just waited until the old blue sheets were on the bed? THINK next time, please. 

• Chucky, Child's Play: Hammers, baseball bats, axes, air pumps. What do they have in common? These are all outdoor toys, young man. Take them back to the garage or yard where you found them, please.

• Michael Myers, Halloween: Do you think it's easy to get reliable babysitters who can drive and don't have such active social lives that they are busy every Saturday night? And now I bet Laurie will warn her friends not to work for us either. Pat yourself on the back there, buddy, because now your parents will never get a date night again. And guess who's going to suffer for that?

• Ghostface, Scream: That's what you're wearing out to dinner? Again with the black tatters? What's wrong with the jeans and button down shirt you just had me buy you at the Gap? Oh no, it's fine. But I'll remember this next time you tell me you need something new.

So be forewarned, if you are trick or treating in my neighborhood this Sunday: there's an Angry Mom on the loose, and she may be coming for you.