Image by Aberrant Realities from Pixabay
“So, as horror movies go that I was supposed to be in bed for but ev'ry shut eye ain't sleep, 'Revenge of the Undead Bride' woulda been good except for all that screaming everybody was doing. Our folks would have re-deaded that whole situation long before being run around wasting all that time.”
Eight-year-old Gracie Trent was talking with her friend eight-year-old Edwina Ludlow about the latest horror movie Gracie's big siblings 21-year-old Melvin and almost-18-year-old Vanna had been watching the night before.
“Look, I totally agree, because if I'm starring as the Undead Bride, you will not have time to do all that!” Edwina said. “If I gotta die and then come back here to deal with you, you can forget all that!”
“That took a whole three hours and real adults would have had that done in 20 minutes,” Gracie said. “I really understand what they mean when they say movies and television aren't real now. I'm just going to start turning over and going back to sleep, because these people will have you thinking running around screaming is cute, and you know horror movies never have good costumes except for the villains.”
“What was the Undead Bride wearing?” Edwina said.
“Oh, they did a good job with her, because she was pale green with tangled red hair – she was young and that was kinda sad – but see, the story was that the live groom had decided to off her just before the wedding and so staged it as an accident and made everybody all upset that didn't know … so she hunted down him and everyone who was cool with it, wearing high white heels and white dress laced with cobwebs, but real pretty white ones, and black nail polish.”
“Did she get them all?”
“Yep – all that screaming and carrying on, only to get wiped out and have Melvin and Vanna cheering when she gets the last one – had them screaming and carrying on,” Gracie said. “The cold part was that she just went back to her coffin, wiped the lightning smudge off the lid, climbed back in, kicked up that heel to rock it and let it come back down and close so she could go back to sleeping in peace, the only one buried … just bodies everywhere because they didn't know what to do but yell.”
“My kind of woman!” Edwina said.
“All I'm saying is, life is harder than it needs to be when you are the only one who knows what's going on,” Gracie said. “Imagine actually trying to do good, but you gotta work with people that all they know how to do is run around and yell.”
“Probably would still end up the same way, because that would be so annoying, and I need my rest,” Edwina said. “It's called beauty sleep and people need to respect it!”
“That's why I'm saying TV and movies aren't real,” Gracie said. “Out here teaching us how to have all kinds of bad habits, because if you ever meet my mom or Vanna in the morning when they are not ready to get up and you making noise is the reason, you will understand why we can't use TV and movies to figure out how to live. Maybe how to die, but not how to live.”