Member-only story
When I was a kid, I loved Goosebumps. I’m not talking liked, as in I had a couple and had fun reading them. No, I loved them. I had every single book, even the make your own story ones and the DVDs. My parents didn’t understand, because I had horrible nightmares growing up and eventually threw all of it away thinking my nightmares would go away with the scary stories. What they didn’t understand was that my nightmares didn’t have mummies or ventriloquist dummies (though I do find those to be absolutely horrifying).
My nightmares had the real monsters of the world: people.
Normal everyday humans in positions of power. I would wake up screaming bloody murder after a nightmare with abusive doctors. As I got older, President Bush and the White House started making appearances. Then it was Brittany Spears for a while, and a news person on Good Morning America. My cruel summer camp counselors were a favorite of my subconscious, along with an army of everyday, normal looking men and women. Even as a child, it seemed I knew that the real monsters weren’t Sabre from Welcome To Camp Nightmare or Slappy from Night of the Living Dummy.
The real monsters were everyday humans, capable of inflicting lasting damage to small children, pets, and other defenseless things. The creatures that walk in broad daylight, making policies that break the already broken. The…
