Defining Terror

 

By SirWilho

 

I’m going to ease into this topic of Terror by first writing about its preceding  levels.  My order leading up to Terror would be this: Startled, Scared, Frightened, Shocked, and finally, Terror itself.

Being Startled is when your brother hides under the bed for hours waiting for you to walk by and then he grabs an ankle.  You might emit a small scream but quickly get over it.  The feeling of being startled goes away quickly and is forgotten.

In sixth grade I read the book Amityville Horror, every word in that book was burned in my head for several years.  Could I look out my bedroom window and not expect burning red pig eyes to be looking back at me, not a chance.  Did I have to keep the curtains drawn in my bedroom and my door opened a crack?  Yep, I was scared.

I’ve been frightened many times.  Was I frightened to interview a doctor on the radio? Did I not sleep for two nights prior?  Yep.  Was I frightened when the radio announcer said my name, all my hobbies, where I lived, hair color and location of every freckle then told me to tell his audience a ‘little about myself’?  Was I frightened to sing solo in Mr. Wilson’s music class?  Uh hunh.  Wasn’t actually to sing but “Use my baratone voice” per Mr. Wilson to utter /‘sing’, “Iiiii’mmmmmm heeeerrrrrreeeee”.  Only to have the Iiiiiimmmmm come out then have my lips shut vice-like and I ended up humming the ‘here’ part so it sounded like “Iiiiiimmmmm, hhhhmmmmmmmm”, did the entire class erupt in laughter for about 5 minutes straight.  Yep, again.

The level of being shocked is getting up there to near Terror, but not quite.  I could describe it with a short story.  There we were, brother Bishop, brother Gump, myself and neighbor friend Dubrav minding our own business at a tavern in Wisconsin.  Me, being the youngest at 14, Bishop was 16, Gump 19, and Dubrav 17.  We wetted our whistles for several hours then decided to take a ‘short cut’ home through the backwoods of Wisconsin.  We zoomed down the gravel roads in Dubrav’s VW Bug seemingly for an eternity and became hopelessly lost.  Brother Gump saw the humor in this and took to hollering out the window in is best Apache voice, ‘wedafugoweee, wedafugoweee, wedafugowee’.  Must have been in Native American tongue because I wasn’t able to decipher it at the time.  My mom did say that she had some Indian in her once, but then would chuckle to herself.  (I made that part up for effect)  Anyway, Brother Bishop took to navigating and was telling Dubrav the route.  About the time I heard Bishop say, “Yep, this is the road, I’m positive,” Dubrav accelerated the VW to its limits.  This is where I became shocked.  The road Bishop was ‘positive’ about, turned immediately to grass, then empty air as we sailed over the place where a bridge once stood.  We glided out 15 feet and 10 down to rest in the middle of the Brule River.  I sure was shocked to see how pretty the moonlight looked as it reflected over the churning rapids.

Terror is something you experience and live with for the rest of your life.  Terror brings nightmares, eeebee jeebies and twitching.  My terror goes like this.  Brother Gump took Sprout and I trout fishing.  We walked along the brushy banks of the Brule River looking for a good spot to enter.  Gump stumbled across a pine snake about three feet in length and put it in his fishing creel.  The snake didn’t like being in there and wiggled through the hole in the top of his basket and up his arm, he then screamed, dropped the fishing creel and the snake wiggled off.  Sprout and I laughed a hearty laugh and off we went back to walking.  Brother Gump gives a small scream again as he almost steps on the granddaddy of all pine snakes.  He chases it down through the brush as Sprout and I stand back laughing at him.  Gump finally grabs the Pringle can thick, six to seven foot boa by the tail and pulls it out of the brush to a little clearing where Sprout and I stood.  He then clamps down on the tail of the snake and starts twirling it over his head like he’s a cowboy.  All Sprout and I could hear was the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh as Gump took on the look of a helicopter.  This was all very amusing until Terror struck.  See, what Gump did next was the unthinkable.  He had the snake twirling over his head going about 100 per, when he lined me up with the snake whooshing around and then let it go.  It looked like a firehose whirling towards me and I had no place to go.  The middle section of the boa hit me square on the Adam’s apple and then, because of velocity, wrapped around my neck and chin a few more times.  I dropped to the ground while the snake had me and my fishing pole wrapped tight.  I didn’t battle the snake, because I couldn’t, terror had rendered me paralyzed and from my mouth only came sounds that aren’t describable.  I can still feel how that snake felt around my neck and how it felt on my hands as I tried to pry it away.  It did come off, after about 5 minutes. I lay in the grass, traumatized, as my loving brothers squealed with delight.  “What kind of scream was that” Sprout asked, “Never heard anything like it and couldn’t duplicate it in a million years.”

For as much joy this snake story has given everyone but me, the effects of that episode still remain.  I hate snakes with a passion.  I do play the tough guy and will wack a snake when my wife or kids are around. When one pops up in front of me, and I’m alone, I let out that scream that was shrieked 30 years ago.