The Impossible

I could feel it the moment I walked through the doorframe.  I couldn’t yet see it, because I had yet to grope for the light switch on the interior wall, but disgust and terror tiptoed from the base of my spine, up my back, and onto my neck.  I darted to the bathroom as quietly yet as confidently as I could, my eyes trained straight forward.  I brushed my teeth with the intent of cleaning my mind, too, of the grossness that had infiltrated.  I could not prolong the time I spent getting ready to approach the unspeakable quite enough to satisfy.  But did I try!  I washed my face–I even exfoliated–applied lotion, used mouthwash, flossed! plucked my eyebrows, put Vaseline on my lips, clipped my nails, moistened my cuticles, brushed my hair, removed my Band-Aid, treated a pimple, wiped away nail polish, and re-organized my makeup stash! 

But then the moment came.

I know that a late fall night should equal cold hardwood floors, but the wood felt so frigid against my feet that I could swear dementors filled the walls of my room, and boy were they embodying my worst fear!  Yet I knew that no matter what I did to eradicate the trauma, that…thing…would come back to haunt me while slept.  So I did all I could do: I closed my eyes, rolled onto my tiptoes, and zipped from my bathroom doorway across the fifteen feet to the edge of my bed.  I felt for the fold of the covers and buried myself deep beneath them without so much as glancing at that monster.  Prayers flew out of my brain, as I tried to create a wall of appeals to Heaven.  And somehow, somehow, I settled into a sort of fitful sleep.

It was three a.m. when it happened.  I couldn’t help it!  I tried to stop myself!  Before I knew what I was doing, I was bolt upright, reaching for the light switch on the wall beside my bed.  And I found it!  And I flipped it!  And there in all its horror was that dreadful, deadly, heart-wrenching evil!  I knew what I had to do, so I fought the disgust to the lowest pit of my stomach, mustered up all the courage I could find, reached out my hand, and fixed that dread crooked lampshade.  Finally I could breathe again.

But I know that some of that frightening coolness followed me back under the covers.  Because when my alarm went off in a few hours, that evil piece of fabric would sit cock-eyed again.