Despair Has Its Own Calms

Nothing cracks me up like watching  a Dracula movie and seeing the Count pop up completely vertical in his coffin. Maybe they filmed it in reverse. It’s like a time lapse of a flower blooming. Hilarious.
But I can remember being afraid of Dracula. I was about 4 or 5, and I feared his arrival in the night. There were 2 windows facing the street, and from my bed I anxiously darted my eyes from one to another, looking for any sign of bat entry. There was nothing inherently spooky about the suburban development we lived in, but I always feared what I could not see. For years I insisted on sleeping with my bedroom door open and a light on in the hallway. I don’t know what I had seen or heard earlier in the day, but one night I realized that someone must have already invented some kind of electronic computerized anti-Dracula mechanism and that it was installed on the outside of all homes these days, like pre-fab garlic bulb siding. I laughed at how silly I had been not to realize it sooner.