I rebuke you!

Every house has horrors to behold

Dear Grams,

So, how did Halloween go for you? I assume, since I didn’t get a call from the cops, you either didn’t cause too much trouble or you’re still in lock-up. And yes, thank you, I had a fun, safe, incredibly tame night. A bunch of us just watched a couple of scary movies and ate way too much sugar. 

I didn’t even dress up! But honestly, it’s been hard to get into the spirit with the election looming overhead. It’s like those dreams where you have to run away or fight someone and suddenly it’s a struggle to move at all, like you’ve been submerged in pudding. It’s an infuriating, desperate feeling to be so helpless. 

Naive as it sounds, it seems like this reality should be impossible. How can so many people be charmed by this orange egomaniac’s power trip? A lot of my friends are jokingly talking about looking into getting visas and passports to other countries if he wins, but what can we actually do to protect ourselves?

I don’t think it’s extreme to consider all the ways that Trump and the goons will try to herd us women into pens, cut off our liberties, and press their boots down on our necks. We’re only 50 years into being able to get our own credit cards and having bodily autonomy. Spousal rape has only been illegal nationwide for about 30 years. 

Considering the average age of these politicians is fossil fuel-adjacent, these milestones are well within their lifetimes, which makes me wonder what exactly they think they're restoring by endangering our rights. I read somewhere that young women are trending more liberal, while young men are drifting conservative, and it doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me. 

For so long, it was a common opinion that women were best off providing a picture-perfect life for their husbands, running his life and homestead, popping out kids, and keeping dinner hot and ready on the table. Then we started telling girls that they could have it all; they could have a career as long as they were still the perfect mother and wife. 

Then, their girls grew up and saw what a false promise that was. There is no way to have it all, and so more of them decided to create a life not designed to make anybody else’s life easier. Meanwhile, did anybody bother teaching the boys that they wouldn’t be able to lean on that infrastructure of free labor?

I’m sorry this isn’t a happy email, but it’s sometimes hard to see straight from this slurry of anger, disappointment, and terror. 

Anyway, hope you’re doing better than I am!

Love - 

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Hey hun, 

To answer your first question, my Halloween went pretty well! But I think, after all these decades, it’s time to come clean about something. Remember how I always used to make you and your siblings go into the basement to get things for me? 

At the time I said it would help build character and get you over your fear of the dark. Well, the truth is that I asked you to do it because I have always hated going down there. I know! I know! I still feel guilty about it.

To be fair, nothing in the basement is actually dangerous, only slightly haunted. Of course, I’ve had to go down there plenty all these years – I can’t avoid doing laundry just because of some heebie jeebies. I just have a little ritual that I do to help me through it. 

I swing open that heavy, accursed door, flick on that single lightbulb, and yell, “Ok, I’m comin’ down now, you stinkin’ ghosts! I rebuke you with the power of Christ! Here’s the light that shines straight outta his asshole!”

Then, I grab one of those knee cap-snapping flashlights off the shelf and go about my business. But, if that single lightbulb ever dies while I’m down there, I’m fucked, Christ’s asshole or no. 

Anyway, I’m only bringing this whole thing up because I’d been putting off pulling up those Halloween decorations I mentioned because it’s in that area of the basement. You know, where it’s a little extra cobwebby and pungent, like colonial-era mothballs are buried there. 

Yes, I have wondered once or twice over the years why we ever bought a house with a cursed basement. It was clearly spiritually foul when we first saw it! But in New England, you get only a few options when it comes to house buying: built in a swamp, five-and-a-half foot ceilings, a secret cemetery, or a cursed basement. And so, here we are. 

Luckily for me, just as I’m about to force myself down there, I got a phone call from Trevor! He is officially off house-sitting duties since Eve and Julian are back from their world adventures. So, I invited him to come for a visit and be the next victim for the demons in the basement. 

That reminds me that I need to call Eve and see if traveling brought her and Julian closer together or not. I give it a good 50/50.

When Trevor made it down, we had a little date of Halloween shopping and decorating. It was a ton of fun running around and making ourselves giddy with anticipation with how creepy we made the house look. Trevor rigged up a giant bat to a black rope that he could yank from the porch as people came up the driveway and he was particularly proud of it. I warned him that it wasn’t likely that we’d get that many visitors. 

However, it was worth it because we did get one lurker that I was beginning to think had long retreated from my shores. But there she was, Beast Barbie, more frightening than any mask at the store. She leaned against the fence and sucked what’s left of her teeth while surveying our work. 

“It’s nice to see that you’re finally attempting to fix the place up, but I would hardly consider these improvements!” She threw her head back and cackled, making her a perfect victim for Trevor’s bat trap. The rubber thing swooped down with surprising realism as she shrieked. 

“Watch out! I have a bat infestation!” I yelled, but I’m not sure if she heard me as she ran back to her house. Trevor and I howled with laughter and that was enough to fulfill our Halloween wishes for the evening. It’s a good thing, too, because true to my promise, there were hardly any trick-o-treaters. Oh well, all the more candy for us!

No, I’m not ignoring your worries about the election (yes, I got my sticker for voting already), but I just wanted to put a smile on your face for a minute. Here’s the thing: I’m old as shit and I’ve seen a lot of bad men and even more bad turns, and even I don’t fully understand how we got here. 

I mean, I do, but I can promise that it doesn’t make it any better. It generally runs that someone can always be made a scapegoat for somebody else’s problems, and the best of the worst have always been skilled at working that to their advantage. 

All I can say is that if things don’t go our way, if the bigots and idiots get their man, you’re going to have roll out of bed the next day all the same. When you crumble or run away, you’re only making it easier for them to stomp all over you.

So, say the dawn after the election brings no hope, you’re just going to have to bring your own. Grab your nut-busting flashlight and run down those basement steps hollering. Scream and put up a fight, do not go quietly into the night (Oo, that sounds good, doesn’t it? Who said that?).

The idea that you ever needed permission to live whatever life you wanted was, of course, created by restrictions put on our lives and reinforced by years of injustice and prejudice. I know, how encouraging, right? It’s hard for me not to say everything will be alright, or that it will get better. Things will just be, and you must continue on, too. 

I’ll be holding my breath right alongside yours tonight as the results start to come in. Make sure you stay safe, and maybe buy a bottle of wine, and remember that no matter what happens, it’s always the beginning and never the end. 

Love, 

Grams