Bad Things

Shall we chat, you and I?  Will we speak of dark times when we have no stars or moon to light our way?  May we talk of feelings which jolt us awake in the middle of the night?  Of things which make our hearts race while our skin crawls?


The unease felt while reading a horror novel may be ended  simply by closing the book, thus returning us to a comfortable reality.


But sometimes we experience horrors which are not fiction, but all too real fact.


We have seen the terrors of 911, of wars and tragic acts of nature.  We can imagine the sudden death of a loved one...of the diagnosis of a deadly disease or the abduction of our children.


A well-used movie plot has the hero or heroine overcome some act of happenstance or evil by the end of the film.  Real life does not allow us a scriptwriter to create our happy ending;  we are on our own, unprepared for the trauma that we are enduring.  We may scamper around in panic or stare in abject fear as the threat asserts itself.


Watch the evening news and you will find terrible things happening: some created by nature, some by the acts of man.  Imagine the depth of the evil which spawned the terror of 911.  Imagine yourself on one of those burning towers.  What do you think you would feel?  What do you think you would do?


Halloween has always been a time to observe diminutive ghosts, witches and goblins, scampering happily from house to house, collecting candy and treats.  But underneath this joy, there is a pulsating sense of menace...perhaps a reminder of real life.


As we pursue our day to day lives, we are apt to forget that there are threats to our happiness waiting somewhere in our future.  These threats may be happenstance or they may be evil, but we must be prepared to act as our own hero and not expect anyone to come to our rescue...there will be no writer waiting to pen a happy ending.


So you must beware.  You must know that somewhere ahead of you, likely waiting around a dark corner, there are things that are going to test your moral and physical courage...


Bad things...