「故事·听力」I Met A Horrible Creature In The Darkness

I Met A Horrible Creature In The Darkness

Hi, this girl’s name is Grethy, and she wants to tell you about the time when she bravely fought a scary monster in a big, empty, dark house.

But first she needs to explain something to you. The thing is...she’s afraid of the dark. She’s not sure why. Maybe when she was a little girl she saw something scary on TV and her imagination did the rest.

Of course, this is not the most important thing about her, but it’s still had a lot of influence over her. When she was little, she closed the door to her bedroom every night in order make sure the monsters were kept out while she was asleep. She would check her closet to make sure there was ABSOLUTELY nobody in there. And when she was in bed Grethy would curl up really tight under her blanket to make sure that no monsters could grab her leg. Sometimes she would gather up enough courage to take her dad’s golf club and poke around under her bed. Thankfully she never found any monsters under there, otherwise they would have been dead! And of course, she never switched off her night light.

Now that she’s all grown up, she can do without those complicated rituals. She still keeps her night light on, but all the other childish things are over! Of course, now she KNOWS that there’s nobody in her bedroom.

Nevertheless, as soon as she’s left in plain darkness, her room fills with strange creatures. She can see their profiles at the door. She sees their paws sticking out from behind the curtains. She feels that there’s somebody looking at her from behind the closet door. And that’s before she’s even got to the tentacles that surround her bed like a giant octopus entwining a ship. She knows that it's impossible for anyone to be there, but she swears that they ARE!

Grethy doesn't go hiking, or camp out overnight, or sleep over at her friends' houses because of her phobia. They probably wouldn’t laugh at her if she started shrieking from fear or trembled all night from panic, but she still doesn't want to risk them finding out.

She even visited the school psychologist, but all she told her was to avoid watching horror movies, to stop playing scary video games, and to quit reading scary books...but she doesn't like any of that stuff anyway!

She also advised her to try to be around more positive people. But her friends are cool and happy and the teachers at school are also nice…well, most of them, anyways.

She suggested that Grethy go for walks more often, and to get as much exercise as possible. Well, she decided to combine these things, and started jogging. Not in the morning, but at dusk. She never saw any monsters jumping out at her from the dark, but she barely escaped getting bitten by a stray dog once and gave it up, and decided not to visit any more psychologists.

In general though, her fears didn't really have that much of an impact on her life, and she decided to just concentrate on not feeding them. She focused on keeping her imagination in check and never letting it play games with her. But who would have guessed that sometimes, in the dark, you could meet REAL monsters?

Grethy’s story happened on a cold and windy evening in the middle of the Fall. She rarely stayed home alone, but on this occasion her parents were away for a romantic weekend to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

She tried to get three of her friends to come sleep over at her house, but all of them had different excuses for saying no. So she made herself a couple of hot sandwiches, and while pondering the dramatic idea that she didn't have any friends anymore, she found herself a movie to watch. You don’t really need a psychologist to tell you that watching horror movies when it's dark outside and a cold Fall wind is howling is a bad idea. So of course, she chose a romantic comedy. What could go wrong?

Later, at the very moment when John was about to tell Mary how he felt about her, the power went off. Completely.

She quickly finished off her sandwich like someone was about to take it from her, and curled up on the sofa. She told herself: “It's just a bad storm, Grethy. The wind probably damaged the power lines. All you have to do is wait a little while. Everything will be OK soon.” And she really started to calm down. Yes, it was dark outside and her imagination had already made up some scary stories, but none of them really had much impact. What she should have done is just washed her plate and gone to bed.

But then she heard some strange sound coming from the backyard, as if the door was opening slooooowlyyyy and then slammed shut by the wind. THIS was definitely real.