Have you ever been in the position of trying to help someone you wanted to run from as quickly as humanly possible?

This is a little long but I'll condense all I'm able to. Wonder if anything like this ever happened to y'all?

Was shooting the breeze with a friend. "Want to hear a scary clown story?"

"Yeah," she said. "But put it in the threads."

Here you go:

Stephen King is one of my favorite authors, especially his early efforts when he worked hard at scaring the doo-dads off folks.

I was reading 'It' - one of his best, I think. It got me twitchy enough I could only read a little at a time. He painted such vivid scenes that they stayed with me even after putting it down, most nights. A truly crafty horror tale.

My wife was prone to night terrors and a sort of sleep paralysis from which she could not wake herself, but could, and often did, ask me to help her do so.

In the midst of a passage that had every hair on my body standing upright, my breaths rapid and short, palms sweaty, you get the idea, MB suddenly stiffened so much that her back and tail arched clear of the bed. Only the back of her head and her heels touched it - and it was a water bed! She mewled helplessly, the book went flying and I tried to wake her gently. She didn't wake up, but did relax into an angelic looking repose and soon her soft breathing resumed.

Crisis averted, I got the book off the floor and went back to letting Pennywise the Creepy Clown try to make me wet my pants. Yeah, a glutton for punishment, I know. But King writes so well.

As I got to a particularly intense part, I think it was in a library and featured things like severed talking heads in refrigerators and such, Boing! She stiffened again and began lifting from the bed.

Apparently believing she hadn't scared me nearly bad enough before, she began thrashing back and forth. The sheet over her made it appear as if she was levitating. Yep, there went the book, again flying through the air.

"Baby? Aww, c'mon Kitten. Wake up now. Baby?" I touched her softly. Not because I was being gentle, but because I was afraid that I'd find her skin cold and clammy. "C'mon, baby. Wake up."

That was when she decided to ask for help and not in a way that that had EVER happened before. With echoes of Pennywise the Terrible echoing in my head, telling the kids all the horrible plans he had for'em, my better half rolled her face toward me, fear-sweat covering it, opened her eyes.

The frightened mewls suddenly started coming from ME. Her eyelids opened but her eyes were rolled back so that only the whites showed and from some deep, dank, dark part of her came a fierce growl. Unintelligible grunts and raspy, tortured sounds came out of my better half.

"Baby? Jesus H., wake up, honey!" But I was saying this as I was trying to gain a little distance from the woman doing the Linda Blair in the Exorcist imitation.

Je-e-effff. He-e-lllp meeee! Arrrggghh. Ahhhh. Hellppp meeeee...All the while thrashing, blank eyes staring. These gutteral pleas went on and on as I tried to wake her from as far away as possible.

Have you ever been in the position of trying to help someone you wanted to run from as quickly as humanly possible? Icy shivers of terror mixed with love and care clashed hard. The unbaffled water mattress hindered my escape, I couldn't get away. I couldn't wake her. I couldn't decide whether I should fight the creature beside me or what. I continued trying to talk her down.

Love and my promise to 'hold and cherish, in sickness and in health' won out, but it was a near thing. As quickly as the prior incident, she relaxed, settled into sleep and her hand reached out for me. At first, I recoiled. It's a trick! But no. I held her while she snoozed as peacefully as a new-born babe, all the time wondering why the shivers racking MY body weren't interfering with her slumber.

The damned book stayed on the floor, she slept and I shivered. Not one of my most resful nights.

True story. No fooling. Any of you folks got an entry to put in? I'm long finished with 'IT' (and her). I wouldn't mind a good scare.

Try reading SK's 'The Langoliers' on a 12 hr flight.