Slumber Party Slaughter: Don’t Go Into the Shower

By Michelle Patterson

I was not the world’s most together child. In fact, up until the age of 25, I saw morbidity in every little thing and imagined the worst-case scenarios for every event in my life.

My bedroom alarm clock with the top part of the third number cut off? That meant at some point, as the third member of my family, I would be decapitated. But I would probably be in the shower when it happened. A quick skip down the street, on my way to the bus stop in the morning before school? The barking Scottish terrier—who’d been itching to taste my blood for months now—would finally break through his chain-link fence and puncture the tender skin around my right ankle. That meant I would develop rabies and wreak some real havoc in my tiny little village by ripping everyone to ribbons, while they were vulnerable in their showers. Shy girl no more.

If I forgot to turn off my bedside lamp? That meant a drifting fuzz ball would catch flame above the light bulb and burn up all of my possessions in a rapid blaze. People would be stumbling out of the building, all crinkled and streaked with ash, their hair smoking in giant clouds above their heads. They would gather, clutching their bath towels and dressed in their bathrobes, to discuss the fact that, “It was so scary. I was taking a shower and all of the sudden the door bursts open and the fire department is screaming for me to get the hell out.”

What could have made me the world’s most paranoid person not taking anti-anxiety medication? What monstrous event traumatized me for life? Why was I so obsessed with the idea that people took showers during all of these hypothetical events? Take out your old, creased Berenstain Bear books and you’re on the right path to the answer.

Towards the end of my first year of public school, which happened to be the third grade, I was finally invited to my first slumber party. Now, it didn’t matter that I was related to this girl; I was going to be rubbing elbows with cool girls and get to stay up late. I still probably wouldn’t say much of anything, but at least I’d be in the vicinity of people other than my parents, little brother, or Sunday school friends.

Something seemed amiss right off the bat when I saw the two VHS movie boxes: the hot pink cover for Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning and another featuring a pinched-mouth lady with severe bangs whose breasts were being grabbed from behind by some giant mountain man-esque hands. I figured they were both horror movies. I’d yet to encounter Jason or his hockey mask since the scariest film I’d seen up to that point starred a shaky-eyed Don Knotts. I thought to myself that this was normal and thus peeked around the corner to find a table full of snacks and soda.

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