Movie Night Revenge

Pranks can be fun, but they can be dangerous too. In my circle of friends, we pulled most of the usual pranks such as writing on a friend’s face if they fell asleep at a sleepover, making humorously obscene phone calls -something that would probably get me arrested now-, or the classic jump scares. My friends and I routinely did this to each other until well into our teens, and at times, our relatives were often on the receiving end of our outlet for adolescent angst, but sometimes…those relatives get a little payback. Pranks are rarely fun when they’re done to you.

In my house, my target of choice for those classic jump scares was my aunt Mabela —a derivation of Mabel, at least I think so— on my mother’s side. She is actually my mom’s cousin, which would make her my second cousin, I suppose, but it’s not really important. Growing up in a Filipino family, you have aunts and uncles and grandparents that aren’t even related to you. I just found her reactions so funny that I almost couldn’t resist when I found an opportunity to give her a little scare. I would get her coming around corners or coming out of the bathroom. Coming out of the bathroom was my favorite because I would get a good close up view of that reaction that I found so amusing. There were many times that I scared that poor woman, but one sticks out most in my mind and its probably the one that sparked her plot for revenge.

I believe we were living in the house in Salinas which would have made me around thirteen years old. I think most people would agree that they too were little assholes at thirteen and I was no exception. My friends and I pulled pranks on our relatives before like when my friend and I put on Halloween masks and scared his little brother to tears -I always felt bad about that one- or when we told my little cousin that he would be invisible if he covered himself in baby powder. My aunt was in the bathroom one day when I was walking by and it was almost as it this opportunity had been ordained by the gods. Thinking back on it, maybe it was ordained by the gods for my aunt to finally get her revenge.

Normally, I make an exaggerated gesture coupled with a loud sound like a growl or ha, but this time I didn’t do any of that. I simply stood there and when she opened the door, I said, “Boo.” Nothing more, nothing less.

Her reaction, however, was nothing so understated. She jumped several inches, no exaggeration, into the air and shrieked with her arms and body flailing like she was having some kind of seizure in mid-air. I started howling with laughter almost at once garnering the attention of my nearby mother who no doubt shrugged it off as more of my typical hijinks at my aunt’s expense, but my joy came at a price.

She didn’t get me back that day, at least not completely. She did, with what I maintain was the agility and speed of Bruce Lee, snap out of her fear induced seizure, and while still in the air, reached down and grabbed her slipper. The weapon of choice for the Filipino mother, grandmother, or as it was in this case, aunt. The flip-flop was in her hand and at the ready by the time she hit the floor. And she hit the floor running. By that time, I had turned and started down the hallway laughing, but she was hot on my heels with that slipper. She slapped me repeatedly, cursing me in Tagalog which only made me laugh harder. That probably made her even more pissed now that I write this. Once she had hit me a sufficient number of times, I lost count somewhere in the twenties, she replaced the slipper and went about the rest of her day.

No doubt plotting her revenge at that very moment.

A few months later, I’m not sure if that’s correct, but it feels right, we were having a movie night. It was something that we did pretty routinely as a kid and something that I honestly miss sometimes. I suppose streaming has changed family movie nights forever. That night was a double feature with Pet Sematary and Exorcist III.

I generally don’t enjoy horror movies. I think they’re stupid most of the time. There are some exceptions obviously such as Halloween, which is still a horror masterpiece, the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Exorcist, and Scream. There are more decent horror movies, but most amount to nothing more than worthless drivel.

Pet Sematary on the other hand, while not a great movie, scarred me for life. I can still hear that creepy kid’s laugh at the end and it gives me chills. I have a new appreciation for the film now that I have read the original Stephen King novel which I found to be less of a horror story than a story about grief and despair and what those powerful emotions can do to someone, but because of the movie, I wasn’t able to read that book until decades later. I didn’t even need to watch The Exorcist III, but I soldiered through it anyway.

After the movies everyone had gone to bed with my mom and dad in one room, Mabela and my cousin, Michael, in one room, and me in my room. I don’t really remember if I was having a hard time sleeping, but I can imagine that I was after watching that fucked up little movie, and I decided that I wanted to watch a video, yes, I am that old, while I went to sleep. Something that I did until my forties, but by then I had progressed appropriately with technology.

We had the typical ranch style home that you would find in California, in fact, our house was one of only five different designs that the contractors used when building the houses around the neighborhood. There were three bedrooms on one end of the house that were separated, the master bedroom on the right and the two smaller bedrooms on the left, by a long hallway. I remember walking down the long corridor, which never felt as long as it did that night, towards the three-way intersection where the foyer to the front door, the kitchen, and the living room all met. It looked like the kind of intersection that you might find in a historical downtown area of some metropolitan city, what we used to call Old Town. The linoleum, we hadn’t put the carpet in yet, felt cold on my feet. I felt along the wall in the dark, not sure why I never thought of turning on the light in the hallway and felt along the wooden doors for the linen closet in the hall. There were only three more steps to get to the kitchen. Finally, I made it to my usual stopping point whenever I ventured to the addition on the other side of the house.

The add-on room gave me the creeps for the first few years that we lived in that house, and it seemed that my parents didn’t want to go in there either. We used the room as an extra living room, but we usually didn’t spend much time there. The room was always cold, about ten degrees colder than any other room in the house. I would later learn that it was because the heating vent for the room was stupidly put at the top of the vaulted ceiling, approximately fifteen feet up, but at the time, it gave the room a very creepy vibe. The concrete slab under the linoleum flooring always made the floor feel like ice cubes and even after we put carpet in that room it was still much colder than the rest of the house. When I lived in the room, it wasn’t uncommon to see your breath in morning like it was a winter day.

I stopped in the kitchen where the light switch was, above it was the empty telephone jack from when we used to have one of those phones with the five hundred foot cords mounted to the wall. I turned on the light and waited for a moment for my eyes to adjust. Being thrust into the bright light from nearly pure darkness can be momentarily blinding. Like usual I left the kitchen light on and made my way across the kitchen floor into the extra living room. I used the light from the kitchen to see while I was in the other room because the light switch in that room didn’t work for any of the outlets in that room, only for the kitchen, and apparently, I was too lazy to manually turn on the light in the extra room.

I made it to the entrance and suddenly my heart jumped into my chest. I gasped, but I had only caught a glimpse of my own shadow out of the corner of my eye. Like when you glimpse your own reflection in a passing mirror and scare the shit out of yourself. I imagine that most people feel like assholes when that happens to them, and I certainly did at that moment. It took me a second to catch my breath before I walked into the dark room. The room wasn’t very wide, but it stretched from the front of the house to the backyard.

The shadows in the room were scary enough, but I was thankful, at that moment, that my mom hadn’t decided to keep her doll in that room. The doll is a creepy little porcelain doll in a wedding dress that my mom still has to this day. I always felt like it was sitting in its glass cage just silently staring at me whenever I was around. If that doll had been in there, I probably would have stayed in my bedroom that night.

Visions of the decaying house from the end of the movie were playing in my mind as I slowly walked through the room. That room never felt colder than it did that night, and I could feel goose flesh along my arms. My destination was the wooden cabinets that were installed in the far corner of the addition, by the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. I had made the trek numerous times in the night, but the walk felt like it took longer than it ever had before.

At last, I was standing in front of the cabinet. I made it. The extremely low light in that far corner made it difficult to see, but I still refused to turn on the light that was on the far side of the room, toward the front of the house. I opened the top cabinet first. That was where we kept the purchased VHS tapes that we had. The recorded tapes were in the cabinet below. I was browsing through our vast selection when suddenly, the light in the kitchen went out.

My heart became a paper weight in my chest for at least a full second. I stood frozen in fear wondering how the light turned off. Had someone come out and turned it off? That had to be it, I thought. I raced from the cabinet to the entrance of the kitchen to see if I would see someone in the hall or the last sliver of light from one of their bedrooms before they closed the door. I saw nothing. There was no movement, no sound, no light. My heart went from frozen to galloping at once as I came to the realization that the light may have turned off on its own.

True fear washed over me in an awesome wave.

I’m not sure how long I stood in that entranceway trying to think of things that would explain why the light turned off. Power outage? No, the clock on the microwave in the kitchen was still blinking away. My mom? My dad? My aunt or my cousin? No sign of that either. I don’t believe in ghosts, but that movie scared the hell out of me, and I started to think about ghosts and goblins and all the other irrational explanations for what had happened. I knew that I needed to turn the light in the kitchen back on and my mind would settle down, but I was paralyzed with fear and couldn’t get myself to walk the five steps to the light switch. Quite the irony.

I did the only thing that I could think of doing at that moment, I called for my mommy. “Mom,” I said from the entranceway.

Nothing but silence.

“Mom,” I repeated, a little louder this time.

Still silence.

“Mom,” I repeated for the third time, even louder still. “Are you out there?” I stood for almost a full minute.

Still nothing but silence.

I was starting to panic. “Mom,” I began saying almost frantically. Repeating it over and over.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, my mom came out of her room. “Jesus Christ, Joshua,” she said. “What the hell are you doing?” She turned on the light.

I looked down, feeling a little bit embarrassed when the light proved that there was nothing to be afraid of. “The light went off,” was all I could muster.

My mom grumbled something that sound like, “Good lord,” and went back into her bedroom.

I forgot about my desire to watch a movie that night and headed straight to my room with slightly more fear than normal while I made the trip. Once I turned the kitchen light off again, I sprinted to my bedroom and I didn’t even see until the following morning that in my haste to get the hell out of there, I left the cabinet door open.

I didn’t know it at the time, but there was absolutely nothing supernatural about the light turning off that night. My aunt, no doubt motivated by all the stupid shit I used to do, silently crept out of her room that night and turned the light off. Being a Filipino ninja, she had no trouble getting back into her bedroom undetected and waiting for her seed to bear fruit. And she didn’t have to wait long either. Some say that revenge is a dish best served cold, and while that’s true, if you can get an immediate payoff for the opportunity, you had waited patiently for, that’s just the cherry on top, I suppose. From what I understand, she spent the entire time that I was screaming for my mommy laughing her ass off in her room.

She was very good. I have to admit that. I didn’t suspect a thing, and I didn’t even find out that she was responsible until well after she had gotten married and moved out of the house, probably several years. Shortly after that night, I can’t say for sure whether it was being that scared that night or if I had just grown out of that sort of thing, but my days of scaring my aunt had come to an end. I would imagine that the satisfaction she felt listening to me cry for my mommy that night was worth more than one million of my stupid little pranks. I can honestly say that while I may have won numerous battles, and got plenty of enjoyment watching her startled reactions, she definitely won the war.