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Entry for 05/08/05 @ 08:04:20 pm
Back in the basement... with another entry in the journal of Walter the Frankenstein monster. Last night I stayed up late watching a movie. I finally got around to renting Pitch Black. It wasn't the greatest movie, but it got me thinking.
Walter never liked movies much. It took me forever to find out why. One night, after trying in vain to get him to go see a show with Jerry, Chauncey, and I, I finally asked.
“ Well,” he said. “ It kind of reminds me of being dead.”
This was almost two years after Walter and Chauncey were born. Jerry and I had already gone through the troublesome task of owning up to them and explaining who they were and where they had come from. His answer didn't quite make sense to me and I pressed him further.
“ I still remember being dead. Lying there in a grave. Staring forever into the darkness. In that darkness, you can feel, and you can hear, everyone else around. All the other graves and those within them. Some of them crying. Some of them laughing. Some of them screaming.
And being in the movie theater reminds me of that.
At once you are surrounded by others and all alone. Sitting there. Watching. Waiting. I don't know how it is for everyone, but I waited there in the grave a long time. I kept hoping for an answer. Was I bound for heaven or was I bound for hell? Some people find out right away and they are whisked off as soon as they're interred. Some even before then. But those are the rare ones. Most of us wait. Wait for a judgment that is a long time in coming. And that uncertainty was unbearable.
It's the darkness that bothers me the most. It wasn't until seeing sunlight again, I realized how much I missed it. In the grave you can't move. You can't see. You can't feel. Instead, you are just aware. Aware of where you are, under the ground, in the dark. Aware of those in the graves around you. The ground is full of bugs and worms. The earth turns; first the sun passes overhead, then the moon. Everything passes you by, and you can't see a damned thing.”
I pointed out to him that he slept out in the backyard all the time and that was dark. He slept in the room we had made up for him in the basement and that was dark too.
“ There's a big difference. Outside, no matter how dark it, there's always some light. Either man-made or the stars and the moon. Inside, you can turn on a light anytime you like. You have control over the situation. I almost always sleep with the light on, just in case I wake in the middle of the night. I need to assure myself that I'm not dead again.”
I can't say that Pitch Black was that great of a movie. But it did get me thinking again of that conversation. It made me think again of what Walter must have gone through. It made me miss him a little bit more.