Benign Butterfly #1

Even though I was only ten, I knew that my friend Natalie was a little weird. She wouldn’t let our Barbies be professional ice skaters – she wanted them to be strippers. It made me feel funny but she always let me play with the brown-haired doll even thought I knew it was her favorite. And she did have the camping trailer so I let it go.

The last night I ever spent at her house, her mom took us to the grocery store. She told us we could pick whatever snack and movie we wanted as long as we were quiet. I chose the food – a package of raw cookie dough that we later ate even though we burnt the cookies. She chose Salem’s Lot for our movie. It’s the 1979 tale of a vampire epidemic in a small Northwestern town.

My mother hadn’t even let me watch PG-13 movies yet. The hottest scene I’d ever watched was Prince Charming kissing Sleeping Beauty. The scene in Little Mermaid when the chef chased Sebastian with a butcher’s knife was the most violent thing I’d ever seen. And of course, I’d never seen a scary movie.

But my mom wasn’t there to tell me no and Natalie’s mom was too interested in the latest issue of The Inquirer to care what we’d picked. She let us watch the movie in her bedroom alone. We huddled in her bed only a few feet from the screen.

I was scared. Terrified. So frightened I’m not sure why I didn’t wet my pants. Natalie at least pretended to be brave so I tried to hide the fear consuming every hair on my body. The vampires growling with their milk-white faces and blood-red lips looked so close to me that I was certain that they’d reach out and grab me. When I needed to scream, I stuffed my open mouth against a pillow to hide my yelling. I wanted to die because I knew that was the only way I’d forget what I’d seen.

After the movie, it took me hours to fall asleep. I kept hearing vampire claws scraping at the window and I could feel hot vampire breathe on my neck. Finally, when I heard was sure Natalie has fallen asleep, I sobbed until I too fell asleep.

When I came home, I told my mother. I knew she’d be mad but I hadn’t yet learned to keep secrets from her. She brushed my hair behind my ears and told me it was okay. It was just a movie, it’s not real. And yet, I didn’t believe her.

Salem’s Lot rocked my world. It shattered the perfect picture of life that my parents had so carefully built. The world wasn’t so rose-colored and not every movie ends with happily ever after. That’s when I started doubting everything my parents had told me. Maybe all dogs don’t go to heaven. Maybe Santa doesn’t really have eight reindeer. Maybe my face won’t stay that way.

I can’t remember my fourth-grade teacher’s name, but I can still remember the shrill scream of the women attacked by the vampires. My perfect world has been infected with hundreds more blemishes but I’ll never forget the first pock on that image. And I am still scared shitless of horror films.