My Brain’s Bedtime Stories Are Always Scary (Until I Changed Them)
Every night at 10:40, right after I turn off the lamp, my brain clears its throat and begins to read me a bedtime story.
It is never a nice one. It has a narrator with a very smooth voice, a dramatic soundtrack, and a plot I have heard so many times that I could recite it in my sleep, if only I could sleep.
That Sunday, the story was called Tomorrow’s Presentation.
“Once upon a time, Lina stood up in front of the whole class and forgot every single word. The silence lasted nine hours. Nobody ever forgot it. The end.”
The end. Like it was a fact.
What if I really do freeze?
What if my voice shakes and everyone hears?
What if it goes exactly like the story?
A narrator with a very smooth voice
Here is something I had never noticed before. The story was well told. It had details: my hands shaking, a cough from the back row, a clock ticking in the silence. A story with that many details feels like a memory. But it was not a memory. It had not happened. I had made it up, one scary page at a time.
My brain, it turns out, is an excellent author. It just only writes one genre.
I told Zoe about it the next morning, while we sat on the floor of the hallway with our backs against the lockers. She tilted her head, the pencil in her curls tilting with it.
“So you wrote a horror story,” she said, “and then you got scared of it.”
“…Yes?”
“Lina. That’s like building a haunted house and then being surprised you can’t sleep in it.”
I laughed, which was annoying, because I wanted to stay serious about my terror.
· · ·
Three endings
“Okay,” said Zoe, pulling a stack of index cards out of her backpack, as if she had been waiting all her life for this exact emergency. “Authors can edit. Give me three endings.”
“Three?”
“The scary one. The silly one. And the most likely one. Not the best one, not the worst one. The one that a boring, honest reporter would write.”
So we sat there with our cards and our colored pens.
The scary ending was easy. I had it memorized. On the silly one, Zoe suggested that a parrot flew in through the window and finished my presentation for me, which made me snort so hard I got hiccups. And then, slowly, I wrote the third one.
I will feel shaky. I will look at my notes. I will take one breath and keep going. It will not be perfect, and then it will be over.
I read it twice. It was a boring ending. It had no thunderstorm in it, no silence lasting nine hours. And it was, by far, the one that sounded the most like real life.
“See?” said Zoe. “A story needs a plot. Not a prophecy.”
The ending I put under my pillow
I wish I could tell you the scary story never came back. It did, the very next night. Same voice, same dramatic soundtrack. This time, though, I knew what to do. I turned on the lamp and took out my cards.
I did not argue with the story. I just picked up the third card, I will feel shaky, take one breath, and keep going, and read it aloud, in a boring reporter voice. Then I put it under my pillow, like a coin for a very tired fairy.
The scary narrator still tried to speak. But now, every time, I had a reply. Thanks. I have another ending.
The presentation, by the way, was fine. I stumbled over one word, I breathed, I kept going. Nobody coughed. Nobody remembered it for nine hours. Ms. Alvarez said, “Clear and calm,” and moved on to the next slide, and that was it.
I still have a shelf of cards. Some say Scary. Silly. Likely. and some just say Likely. My brain still tells me bedtime stories. They are just shorter now, and I am allowed to write the ending.
With love,
Lina
