The Existential Horrors of Middle Age: A Haunted House Experience!

+ some truly wild Halloween-themed vintage postcards and magazine covers

Alex Dobrenko`

Oct 25, 2022

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UPDATE: NOW WITH AUDIO!! I forgot to put audio on when I hit publish so I recorded it afterwards and added it here. Spooky!

hi all and hello. today’s post is a wee bit different from the norm in that it’s what they call a “humor piece” - I’m starting to write more of these in hopes of getting published in McSweeney’s, New Yorker, and other rags that give out tote bags during pledge drives.

But today I got the most selective, prestigious mag of them all: Both Are True. Hope ya dig it and please remember: the best tricks are also treats (both are once and forevermore true).

-Sasha

The Existential Horrors of Middle Age: A Haunted House Experience!

There is a small blue house with white trim at the end of a cul de sac. This is your home.

Tonight the wind howls like mad, slamming the rain against your cobweb-covered windows. The trees tremble with fear, thunder crashes and the lights flicker on and off, but that’s not what’s bothering you.

You are consumed by a dark, disgraceful secret that no one outside your family knows, gnawing away at you, consuming every thought: you do not own this house. You rent.

Jolt awake to the howling shrieks of a strange beast in the distance. Bleary eyed and exhausted, you tiptoe toward the blood curdling screams of the hellspawn: your bundle of joy, your very own baby child.

And it is hungry.

Tiptoe across the kitchen’s creaky floorboards, stopped dead by a stench so putrid you almost gag. The milk bottle.

It reeks. Even though you clean it like really well actually, it reeks. It will always reek.

Approach the baby with an offering of mother’s milk but, wait - the baby is asleep? And it definitely just smiled at you, knowingly.

Stagger to the bathroom to pee when, from the corner of your eye, you see something. Movement. Turn slowly to face this haggard wildebeest staring back at you with sunken eyes and yellow teeth. Is it a zombie? A monster? Worse.

It’s you.

Your hand shakes as you open the medicine cabinet when CRASH - an endless supply of anti-anxiety capsules, anti-aging tonics, and anti-balding elixirs topple upon your clearly very-not-okay face.

It’s 4am and you can’t sleep, but, look on the bright side - you’ve got a few hours to do what you really love: write.

Except you don’t write, lured by the hypnotizing siren song of that half-bird, half-human beast: The Algorithm.

You’re soothed into its melodic trance, paralyzed by the endless achievements of friends, enemies, and honestly a lot of people you’ve never met whose lives you know better than your own family’s.

SNAP back to the living room - the baby is crying. It is 7:09am and you have not written a word, but...yes, the cries have stopped (did they ever really start?), maybe you have time after all. Sprint to your computer, open a google doc and face it, the most chilling sight of your life.

The empty page.

Shudder and let The Algorithm whisk you away once more into that picturesque land, your homes away from home: Zillow.

Cruise through the demented properties as a familiar voice that sounds like your mother but with a faint echo moans “you coulda been a lawyer, look how good you are arguing with us about it - that’s what lawyers do, they argue - “

The child is wailing now, so dive into the morning routine of diapers, coffee, and a non-ironic “hey, it’s almost the weekend!” to your partner.

It’s eerie, how much your lives resemble that of your parents now - you just said TCD instead of “time to change the diaper”, turning every phrase into an acronym just like your dad.

Watch your partner shower the baby with goodbye kisses, repeating over and over “I am going to miss you so much!” then turn to you, quickly say “k bye,” and walk out the door.

In your office (living room), chat on Slack with coworkers who you are pretty sure are all just AI as the innocent, haunting laughter of your baby and babysitter crawls under your skin and worms into your brain, a realization too horrifying to even utter: the babysitter is a better parent than you will ever be.

What is that pain in your chest? Google says heart attack, but you know better: it is the unbearable weight of shame you feel complaining about the bottomless champagne problem that is your life.

Or maybe a heart attack? Back to work.

Disassociate for eight hours as the great puppetmaster Capitalism controls your every move, then awaken back in your body as the sun sets to find your partner and toddler sitting on the couch, laughing, genuinely happy with life, love and the rest while watching Bluey, a show about Australian dogs that is somehow also about everything?

Join them, feel the warmth of their bodies and - wait, what the hell is that...feeling? No. This can’t be happening, but somehow it is.

Your worst fear has come true: even though you haven’t accomplished anything of note nor been on a single Forbes 30 under 30 list, you are somehow...happy.

The fundamental belief of your life - that you must be special so that you can be happy, is false. Happy was always just right here, under your nose, you normal little ghoul you.

Decide you’ll stop trying so hard and just enjoy life - help others, make a difference, breathe. Get in bed, kiss your partner good night, and fall asleep, doomed to forget it all, cursed to repeat this day, again and again, over and -

Jolt awake to the howling shrieks of a strange beast in the distance.