Unsystematic Denial

This probably seems silly, but the "Alien" series either scares me to hell or depresses me for days (I'm actually wondering if I might have a mild case of clinical depression...not to mention hypochondria). I suppose all this recent AVP hype has been getting to me a bit, and I guess it doesn't help that I have a morbid fascination for the alien stories as well. My kid brother went out and bought this PS2 game called "AVP: extinction", where the storyline is fairly simplistic: there's a whole bunch of aliens and human marines on a certain planet fighting it out, and the Predators drop by to say hello and win some honour if possible. It's not really a deep, engaging sort of game where you end up getting so engrossed that you play for hours on end. In fact, I quit after playing a couple of Predator campaigns, because the tactical strategies were so limited that there wasn't anything much to do except point and click and hope that your units are tougher than anything they might encounter. The aliens are a little more than fast moving squiggles, but even this pathetic game has run me down a bit, and got me wondering if I might have to sleep with the light on tonight.

Absurd, yes?

The whole alien fear/fascination thingy started when I was 14, and my elder brother brought home the original 1979 'Alien' movie. "A damned good movie", he said "We should watch it immediately". I have since learned the hard way that I shouldn't believe a word he says, though at the time I was gullible enough to be horribly interested. So we watched the accursed thing immediately. "Oh look, it's the picket fences guy", I remarked innocently. My bro then casually announced that the picket fences guy would be one of the last to die in the movie.

"Oh", I said "everybody dies?"
"Well, not everybody...that girl over there to the right doesn't die...nor does that cat."
"Ah."

I don't remember much of the movie itself (I only seem to vividly recall the scenes immediately following the one where Sigourney Weaver makes her penultimate escape...you know, the part where she very nonchalantly undresses and wanders about the bridge of the escape pod) but it had a lasting impact on me. I slept with the light on that whole week, and for months after, every time I went out at night I kept imagining that the alien was hiding behind every shrubbery, just waiting to rush at me. In retrospect, I bet everyone thought it was funny the way I moved past every bush in a martial arts stance I picked up from street fighter 2. But anyway, when I was 21, obviously much older and wiser, I thought I'd be tough enough to watch Aliens. I was wrong. Unless I'm mistaken, I gave my copy away a week after I watched it to Forge, who was delighted to receive it for some strange reason.

Anyway, apart from embarrassing revelations, I've been wondering...does everybody have this one, terrifying idea of a monster/demon that is their personal nemesis of sorts? Or am I just being silly about nothing? I've seen plenty of horror flicks, but nothing seems to surpass this one. Perhaps it's because they're too realistic in some ways. They do have an uncanny resemblance to ants: ants have some folic acid stored in their bodies, ants have organized, hierarchical societies, ants have queens that do the egg-laying business, the list goes on. And because of this, for years I couldn't help but think that statistically speaking, however remote the possibility, there probably do exist aliens exactly like the ones in the movies. And even more remotely, they found someway to hitchhike to earth (perhaps a few borrowed towels amongst them?). And exceedingly improbably, they found their way to my garden after having slaughtered my neighbors and their neighbors on the way, and were even now crawling up the walls to my bedroom window. When I think about it now, rounding off to the nearest digit, the chances are presumably zero, but nonetheless, it's not *exactly* zero. And that's enough to give a pseudo-scientific mind the creeps.

I think I might leave the light on after all. Perhaps the radio, too.