i'll keep it burning bright

john legend

I will talk about Travis presently but right now there's something I forgot about, that I need to get off my chest as soon as possible, it was just that traumatizing. In Los Angeles we went to Universal City. In Universal City we went to Universal Studios theme park. In Universal Studios we went to... dum dum dum. The House of Horror. Now I've been to Universal many times and this was never around (I don't think? Perhaps my parents just steered clear?) and being the type of people who are interested in the undead and such, we decided to go in. WELL.

First of all I hate walking Haunted Houses. The Disneyland one is fine, because you just sit in a chair and it moves around, but when you have to walk? Uh, no thanks. When I'm scared my first instinct is to run to a corner and curl up in a ball, so walking Haunted Houses obviously don't suit me very well. I'm not hardcore at all.

Anyway, the place is ENORMOUS, it's DARK (seriously), COLD and when we were going in I knew it was a mistake, because the people who'd gone before us were making these awful shrieks in the rooms ahead (and it's all blind corners so you can't see a thing). And at first I was thinking that I am a brave girl and I'm so old and I won't let myself be scared by a stupid theme park thing, so I was walking quite confidently through all the rooms, "hey look a dead body," "oh, spiderwebs in my hair, some glistening goop on the walls, whatever,""I can't believe you guys are scared of a stupid place like this," "wow the decor is really realistic and elaborate," blah blah blah. THEN we went into all these HUGE FREAKY-ASS rooms, like theres a room FILLED WITH CHUCKY DOLLS, and a horrible EVIL SCIENTIST'S LAB with electricity crackling and pickled heads and mutated freaks and stuff, and many really low corridors with scary moans and shit from the walls, and a MUMMY'S TOMB filled with MUMMYS in the walls and a long maze of DUSTY CRACKED MIRRORS and stuff. There's all kinds of crap in your hair and your neck feels really cold and damp. AND ALL THESE PEOPLE IN TERRIBLE TERRIBLE COSTUMES JUMP OUT AT YOU AND GROAN AND HISS IN YOUR EARS AND LAUGH AND PULL AT YOU, OH MY GOD. They wore really freaky bloody costumes, with KNIVES AND AXES AND CHAINSAWS AND SHIT, no kidding, and ATTACKED YOU until you stumbled into the next room, grabbing your arms and shit. FRANKENSTEIN, VAMPIRES, WEREWOLF CREATURES AND PSYCHOTIC KILLERS AND FREDDY AND JASON AND EVERYTHING. Like they POP OUT at you from behind the frickin' mirrors, etc. And they just kept going no matter how much you screamed. AND the worse part was, they did it in a really mean way, by pretending to be inanimate objects or statues or something, in some dark area then when you walked past they would SUDDENLY COME TO LIFE AND REACH OUT THEIR HANDS AND CLAW AT YOU AND STUFF. It was like watching a horror movie, at the climax, except it's happening to YOU. MAKE THAT TEN MOVIES. NON-STOP.

My mother and brother completely lost it, as expected. My brother had his eyes closed after like the first minute and had to be led around by the hand. I'm sure if he had opened his eyes he would have cried. My mother kept saying things like Oh my GOD and NOOOOOOO!!! as if someone was really trying to kill her; that didn't exactly lighten the mood. My father was walking through relatively calmly (I bet he was scared. But he wasn't going to show it, like me) and in the end he had to lead all of us through the damn place because we didn't dare go first into the rooms and fall for the creatures' horrible shocks.

THE WORST ROOM was this little place where many large plastic bags were hanging from the ceiling and each one had a frickin' CORPSE inside, totally life-sized, just hanging there with great staring eyes, swaying from side to side. WHAT THE FREAK. AND IN ORDER TO GET PAST THAT ROOM YOU HAD TO PUSH APART THOSE HORRIBLE BODY BAGS AND WALK THROUGH THEM.

My mother: NO. NO. NO WAY. YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.
My brother: Whimper, whimper.

I was DEAD SCARED that when I touched them, one of them would come to life and whip out a great big knife and slash through the bag and chase me, which is exactly the kind of thing they would do, in that evil, evil place with their sick twisted minds. But then I figured that it'd be kind of dangerous to put a human being in a plastic bag all day, so most likely they were all mannequins. STILL.

And then after a particularly frightening run-in with 2 giant, insane, blood stained butchers with chainsaws, you emerge into the daylight and it's over. I was SO RELIEVED, I tell you. I mean now that it's over I'm glad I did it and all, but SHIT man, when I was IN it I was shitting myself. And seriously, I don't even consider myself especially easy to scare. IF IT WAS SOME PEOPLE FROM MY CLASS, ahem, (OK, like every other girl, and some of the guys), there would be MASS HYSTERICS and probably a lot of therapy afterwards. Seriously.