by Matthew Dearden

Created on: May 16, 2009

One of the more terrifying experiences of my life began one morning at about 7:15 when I was still lying in my bed in the basement of my house back home after an especially good night of sleep. The morning was just like any other except that I was awakened from my sleep by a blood curdling scream. There were actually multiple screams. To this day I couldn't tell you how many screams there were, but just that these screams were especially blood curdling.

Now, like I mentioned before, my bed is downstairs in the basement, in the room that is farthest away from the stairs that lead to the main floor. I tried to get my bearings, and within the next ten seconds or so, I realized that these screams were coming from upstairs somewhere. As the various screams echoed through the walls of the house, my heart started accelerating in my chest, much like a chicken's would as it was being led up to the execution stump to get its head chopped off by an ax. Except this was probably worse, because chickens aren't especially bright, etc.

Excruciatingly terrible thoughts started racing through my head with detail after gory detail recounting the deaths my family was most likely facing upstairs at this very moment. I especially remember one scenario that ran through my head: some monster/alien had crashed through the garage door and was attacking the members of my family one by one in the kitchen and living room. The sad thing is, I was in high school when I thought this up. Call me a wimp, but the situation warranted quick and decisive decision making (Just as a quick side note, the alien idea wasn't too outrageous, mostly because the town I live in, Trout Lake, is known to be one of the top alien/UFO spotting places in the continental United States, behind only Roswell [and this is contested] and maybe some other place in New Mexico or Arizona. The aliens convene near the summit of 12,000 foot Mt. Adams, which can easily be seen from my bedroom window).

Within a span of seconds, I scanned my bedroom for a shotgun or some other weapon, like a broken off table leg. Unfortunately, the best thing I could find in the little time I had was a small hand-carved pocket knife I had purchased as a sixth grader in an open air market in Bangkok, Thailand. Hardly the weapon I was looking for. Regardless, I knew that as the man of the house (assuming that my father was possibly dead or somehow incapacitated) it was my duty to go and face this beast of the wild (or

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