I couldn't go to the bathroom alone...... [Archive] - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

Corky Kneivel

07-09-2007, 09:19 PM

"And am I the only one who can't go to the bathroom at night alone?" - kamy

HELL and NO you are not alone.

"YOOOUUUU ARE NOT ALLLLOOOOOOONE" © Michael Jackson

"In much good company you are" © Yoda

I have lived in my new home for about 3 months now (yeah thats right...I've paid rent 3 times) and this house has an interesting feature to it...there is an addition which is really just a covered porch running along the West side of my house (the backyard). It has 8 large windows buried in the West side with an entrance door containing a dozen windows and there is 1 large window at the North and South ends. If you can imagine it...its basically a box with 3 heavily windowed sides between the original house and the back yard. On top of all that, the border between my house and this addition is a floor to ceiling window wall with a sliding glass door which is the access point from house to build-on.

Long story short...there's a caca-load of openly viewable room from the backyard straight into not only my living room, but my family room and my each one of my two daughters' bedrooms.

A big, steamy, caca-load of viewing space.

Well we moved in about two weeks after I received, and watched voraciously, Volumes 1-5 from Crystaldawn. And about 2 days after I had just found and read all about a little criminal figure affectionately named "The East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker" who was briefly profiled on one of CD's sets. This charming individual terrorized the Sacramento area about 30 years ago. He then moved Southward and continued his vicious rapes in the Contra Costa area before going on to commit about a half dozen horrific murders in SoCal.

I was more frightened by the website information I found than of the UM segments but one night I was re-watching that particular disk and the EAR/ONS popped up. I couldn't move. My daughters and my wife were all sound asleep on the floor in front of me and here I was, big brave man of the house, absolutely scared rigid and plastered in the couch up against the wall with my head swiveling right to left making sure there was no ski-masked man in my backyard. I kept peering long and hard at the windows that have Venetian blinds, not all of them did at that time (a situation that was remedied quickly the next day), to see if there was a pair of eyes or looking in at me watching TV utterly terrified. Every house shake and settle...every whir and knock of the refrigerator doing its thing...the sudden tumbling CRASH of the newly cubed ice making its way into the storage bin in the automatic ice maker...without a doubt I was 1000% positive that every single one of the myriad unidentifiable, yet wholly innocent and mundanely common, "late-night house settling" noises was the first clue that the EAR/ONS was back in the Sacramento area and had chosen my home to strike in. I kept wondering if all of his victims heard similar sounds the nights he attacked...did they just play them off in their heads? While he was slowly separating the window screens from their bases and cutting through the windows then sliding them open ever.so.slowly. as he violated the safety of their homes...did they hear it? Did they hear it and think..."Nahhh" and then told themselves that it was "nothing"...to stop being childish. At least one victim is known to have heard his attempts at gaining access to the empty "ready for sale" house. However, she dismissed the banging and disturbance as noises emanating from a washer and dryer in the garage. As her boyfriend left through the front door, the EAR/ONS might have, at that very same moment, been coming through a side or rear entrance. All of this kept running through my head and torturing me in the 2 A.M. darkness.

The 100 Watt bulbs that are spaced apart along the exterior face of the back yard were glowing brightly and I made sure there was nary a flicker of any illumination in my house aside from the TV, still flashing Unsolved Mysteries but by this time having moved on to some other dreadfully creepy tale of suspense. I sussed out long ago that if you have it dark outside your house along with lights ablaze on the inside, then you are pretty much blinded to see whatever axe-wielding maniac has decided to drop by your house that night, as long as he maniacally wields his axe on the outside. So I keeps it nice and bright out there for the stray crazies and the roaming raving lunatics.

Still, that night I sat there terrified for about an hour. Watching the segments but not really paying attention to anything but the creaks and whispers I swore I kept hearing. Sometime around 3 A.M. or so I got really mad at myself and angrily demanded, "Dam mit, Cork. You are a grown man. You have two lovely daughters and a wife you make fun of for being scared of clowns. This is just silly. The EAR/ONS hasn't struck for about 20 years and simply because you JUST NOW heard of him doesn't mean he's all of a sudden active again. You are going to stand right up and walk right through this house...YOUR HOUSE...and you will not be afraid at all."

I stood right up and puffed my chest out. No lie, I did. I tossed the DVD remote down on the couch beside me and looked straight out the sliding glass door, straight through the addition, straight through the addition's glass door, and STRAIGHT INTO A PAIR OF EYES CROUCHED NEAR THE GROUND LOOKING STRAIGHT BACK AT ME.

I figure I was about 2 seconds into my vocalizing of "WHOA-HURAGH-GURAGA-YEAGH!" before I realized the pair of eyes belonged to my neighbor's cat, but that realization didn't stop me from going on with the scream for another 5 or 6 seconds. Nor did it stop my heart from trying to beat its way out of my chest. It did, however cause me to laugh heartily at the sheer absurdity of that whole situation. I had worked myself up into such a worry about this criminal from two decades ago, who I must say committed some horribly evil acts - I do not want to make light of that, that I not only had to convince myself to be brave enough to walk through my own damn house, but a cat had made me go bat**** crazy for a few split seconds.

Like I said at the beginning, you are not alone. I've been there myself and I'm willing to bet many others reading this post have too.