What to Not Read Before Bed

          I suppose I felt invincible the other night, because for reasons which escape me right now, I thought I would be fine if I did a little reading before bed from a book called World War Z, which is about the zombie apocalypse. I climbed into bed, unaware of the horror which awaited me, curled up with my novel, and picked up where I left off.  The problem was, I didn't anticipate how much I would identify with the story...

"I can't wait to be lulled to sleep by some masterful story telling!"

          I started to read, "We never thought that the zombies would come to where we lived. We were just in some suburb in the middle of Northern California." Huh, I thought. Weird. I live in a suburb in the middle of California. It continued, "Another thing we never thought about was how there was a forest behind our house, the perfect place for the zombies to mass before they started crawling towards our back yard." 

"What are you doing? Turn off your television! Can't you hear them?!"

          "Huh," I thought as I laughed nervously to myself. "There's a forest behind my house too." The next paragraph began, "It never occurred to us how many windows there were on our first floor, effectively eliminating any chance of defense. That is, until the zombies crashed through the sliding glass door and into our living room."

"FIGHT, DAMN YOU! FIGHT TO SURVIVE!"

          "I HAVE LOTS OF WINDOWS DOWNSTAIRS," I thought, breaking out into a faint sweat and eyeing my bedroom door nervously. "As the glass shattered, my husband leaped up and began to struggle with them, and I heard the children screaming in another room. I ran in to rescue them, knowing as I fled that my husband and my dogs were already dead." 

          "I HAVE DOGS. I COULD HAVE A HUSBAND. I HAVE A LIVING ROOM. SHIT, SHIT SHIT." I curled tighter and tighter into the fetal position, covers securely tucked around me as I tried to put down the book and take some calming breaths. But the masochist in me needed to know what happened to the children! (Hint: they didn't make it.)

           Three hours later, I was still awake, ears perked for any signs of dead bodies dragging themselves through foliage. 

"I AM NEVER GOING TO SLEEP AGAIN."

          You should try sleeping sometime while your adrenaline spikes because you can't stop obsessively planning out how you'd hold off the living room so that your puppy can survive. Optimally on a night when you have work the next day. Then, if your boss asks you why you're so sleepy, you can try and think of an excuse to tell her, or at least something that makes you seem less insane than "I was worried the zombies would eat me."