Normally something like this would scare me, but having this older man by my side makes me not only feel safe, but makes me want to go inside. The fact that he’s older is like some sort of Halloween voodoo, casting a spell over me.
Still, he’s not too old by any stretch of the imagination. Too old is when a man has no vitality and is a dark cloud to the young woman he meets. Not Henry. In a strange way I feel like my smile lights him up, and he does nothing to dim or hide the brightness I feel like I’m providing.
Before I’d felt like a wet blanket, a cloud on a sunny day. He makes me feel like a sunny day and he’s like the mid-winter tourist in Cancun, lying out on the beach without sunscreen on the first day, absorbing every possible UV ray humanly possible…in a good way.
We enter the line and as we get closer to the area to pay there’s a blue light which washes over the crowd and it’s only then I notice some silver hair decorating his temples, making him look even more refined, distinguished, and sexier to me.
“Twenty for you and ten for your daughter,” the man at the cash register says.
I go to open my mouth to correct him, but Henry pulls me in tight for a side hug and points at the sign that reads ‘half off for family members.’
We both laugh and after we pay we step forward, next to enter.
“Daughter, wife, it doesn’t really matter what he called us. I’m not going to get in a needless argument right now. I’m having too much fun and the point of the sign was correct. We’re
family.”
“Because you were so close with my dad?”
“That and because of the future that’s in store for us.”
“You have no future!” a voice cries out and I look in time to see strobe lights flashing right in our faces and a man in a Freddy Krueger outfit rushing our way with the knife blades on his hand slicing through the air.
“Aaaah!” I scream, and I feel Henry’s thick fingers pull me in tight and he turns his body, putting himself between me and the ‘attacker.’
It’s one of those crazy tricks of human psychology. Even though you know it’s a haunted house and you know people are here to scare you, heck you’re paying them to do so, it’s still scary…even though you’re expecting it.
Freddy Krueger tries to lean around Henry’s body to get his knife blade hand closer to me, but Henry’s too broad, his shoulders too thick.
I’m safe. Protected, in all ways and it feels foreign, and…amazing.
I never felt like I needed rescuing, and in a lot of ways I don’t think I do. It’s just something about knowing that there’s someone in life who has your back, a safety net so to speak, not to mention someone you trust, are insanely attracted to, and after this person opens up to you so honestly, and so quickly, you realize you have so much in common too.
We continue through the haunted house and I nuzzle into Henry’s chest every time the frightful characters and creatures manage to startle and frighten me. It’s more fun that I’ve had in longer than I can remember, despite my stomach feeling like I’m in the midst of an upside down tilt-a-whirl.
“There should be a ghost up here on the left,” I say as we approach a dark curve in the haunted house.
Henry says nothing, and I just look up at him and see him smirking, as if he knows something I don’t.
“What?” I ask.
Suddenly a body comes down from the ceiling, hanging upside down right in front of me. I scream bloody murder and then chastise myself. “I should have known!” I repeat endlessly. “Why didn’t I think of that? They misdirect you and that’s how they get you.”
“Remember what I said about self talk, my Little Treat,” Henry says. “Feeling tricked is part of the Halloween experience, heck it’s all about trick or treat, right? But don’t dwell on it. It’s not personal. It’s just fun.”
“It’s just that I should have known. I can’t believe I fell for it. I’m so dumb.”
Henry’s eyes narrow. “I asked you to stop and you didn’t, young lady. You’ve just earned your first punishment, and there will be more…until you can follow orders.”
I swallow hard. “Punishment?”
Henry cocks his head to the side and then raises an eyebrow, saying nothing before he taps the back of the fingers of one of his hands into the palm of the other.
Is he planning on…spanking me?
I was never disciplined as a child and don’t know how I feel about it, especially as an adult. At least I don’t know how I feel about it until I imagine those thick fingers of his that pulled me in tight earlier coming down hard on my backside, hopefully staying in place and kneading my globes.
The more I think about it the more I think I might just have to break the next rule he deems fit to issue.