Haunted by the Signs

One of these days I'll stop harping on about life's little (or not so little) signs and get on to more exciting things like anti-hero worship, purple shirts of sex, hand porn, netflixing your time away and more (really, I have a list). However, the reason for my day skip in posting schedule happened because I was a bit taken aback by something that occurred yesterday.
Understatement -- I came thiiiiiiis close to having a mini breakdown.
See, it's all well and good when you're on the lookout for signs during life, and when you're getting encouraging nudges to certain things. It's kind of empowering to feel like your current situation of being trapped in a soul-sucking job that barely pays your bills is not the right choice for you, because YOU say it isn't, and life is encouraging you in fits and starts to seek out other possibilities.
It's not so refreshing when the universe slaps you in the face with just how out of place you are.
Imagine you're living in a home and the home is, potentially, haunted. You feel uneasy there. Just being in that environment drains you. It's kind of a nebulous feeling and you're constantly uncomfortable and stressed. Occasionally the furniture rearranges itself and you're deeply unsettled, but you take the oddly stacked chairs off the table and move on with your day. You can't afford to move, but you're looking at other places nonetheless. You're trying to make a plan of escape, but it might take awhile. Then, one morning, out of the blue, you hear a voice. You don't just hear it, there's an apparition with it. A spectral presence with only slight transparency comes right up to you, inches from your face, looks you right in the eye, and says, "GET OUT."
That, in essence is what happened to me yesterday. At my job.
Needless to say I didn't need any coffee after that encounter -- I was shocked into alertness. And then I panicked. And then I got angry. And then I tried to once again look at the wreckage this poltergeist has made of my life and tried to put some logical reasoning in place. There was a fair amount of denial and bargaining internally with what I saw and heard. So by the end of the day I wasn't good for much beyond going home, facebooking, twittering, and Netflixing.
Today is a new day, however. The presence has made itself known loud and clear and I don't intend to ignore it. I'm getting out. Soon.
But I'm still going to do it on my terms -- no matter how many times you rearrange my furniture or drag me towards the abyss of the TV.

Please don't kill me giant demon, I wanna be in the sequel!

Come out and take your medicine!

Re-read The Shining before Doctor Sleep comes out, I said.
You'll want the refresher, I said.
Don't pay any attention to the terrifyingly accurate depictions of addiction, I said.
You won't be emotionally traumatised by the concept that Danny Torrance succumbs to alcoholism as an adult despite his absolute horror of it as a child, I said.
The relationship between Jack, Wendy, and Danny will not emotionally destroy you as it has the previous three times you've read this book, I said.

I'm an effing moron.

You couldn't be that small.

October Read #1: Hell House - Richard Matheson

With the exception of the adapted Dracula for Marvel comics, which I have not read though I've read the novel dozens of times, this is the only 're-read' on my list. I've read Hell House probably four to five times over the past several years. Each time I read it I find more to like about it, more that gets under my skin, and more that makes me excited to read it again.
Hell House is a true American ghost story, building on the base of the traditional and adding to it the exploration (and in some cases, the breakdown) of science, sexuality, faith, and personality. As a reader you're rather left to your own preconceptions to decide if the psychology of the house and how it affects people is caused by their own ideologies, or by paranormal entities. Each character has their individual ideas, and each seems plausible in the face of how situations are posed to us. The fact that their own beliefs cause (and cloud) their judgment makes each one an unreliable narrator several times through the course of the narrative and it's only in the last twenty pages that we are let in on the definitive answers.
It's not a story without loss, as no horror story really ever achieves acceptance in its genre without it, but the losses are incredibly calculated and important. It's not the body count which is important, it's the timing, the effect, and the reasoning which make them impactful. Matheson doesn't always excel at character development, but in this instance there is beautiful detail and specificity to each character. And I'm just going to say it now: I love Ben Fischer. If anything, he is the core of this novel and in a lot of ways the closest lens the reader gets to a 'typical' person being trapped in that environment. Yet he is truly anything but typical in his abilities.
Overall, the story is engaging, horrific, detailed, and insightful. It's also not a long, complex read. Clocking in at just over 300 pages, it doesn't talk down to the reader in terms of its scientific and parapsychological terminology, yet remains accessible. It's creepy and cool, with a resolution that doesn't feel cheated or forced, and will keep you thinking after completion without making you want to sleep with the lights on for a week.