Be a mess of gorgeous chaos.

As many of you know I work as an actor in a haunted house. This is a fun job for many reasons, but witnessing people’s reactions to being scared is by far the best. I’m a scare window actor, which means I hide behind a section of the wall that is held up by a latch that I can lift and drop away suddenly, scaring people with both my scream, and the loud sound my window makes upon being dropped. I have a small hole drilled in the wall to look through to see people passing.

The smoothest human being on the planet wore a white hoodie. He came in a group with three other friends. I did not expect to scare him much. After a while you can kind of gauge just by what you can glimpse from your peephole whether someone will be a good scare or not. Men in their 20’s in a mixed group of friends typically do not get scared easily. But this guy was wearing white in my blacklight-equipped hallway, so he had made himself an easy target and I had to take advantage.

I dropped my window precisely when he was in front of it.

He leapt back toward the wall on the other side of my narrow hallway and his drew back his arm like he meant to punch me.

“This is it.” I thought. “I’m finally going to be socked in the face for scaring someone.”

But I was wrong.

His arm kept curling back behind his head. Smoothly, flawlessly, effortlessly he tucked his hand behind his head, leaned back on the wall opposite me, and propped a foot up on the plywood frame of my open window, reclining with ease.

“So, come here often?” He asked.

All of this occurred within the span of a second. Maybe two.

I was shook. I was stunned. I almost broke character.

I shrugged. “Only on the weekends.” I replied with my character voice. His group laughed. He double finger gunned me and walked on.

I will never forget him.

I cannot stress enough how perfect his transition from his fear reaction to his playboy act was. It flowed so naturally.