Touch

Sometime in my youth, most likely in grade school formally, but also in my own free time, I read a book called The Chocolate Touch. I think most people end up reading this book at some point in their childhood. Basically, it's like King Midas, only instead of everything the protagonist touches turning to gold, it turns to chocolate. Well, the scene where he kisses his mother and she turns to chocolate has remained very vivid in my mind ever since. For me at the time, it was the scariest image I'd ever encountered.

There was some Goosebumps-like book where two kids go to the morgue and a presumably dead body under a white sheet sits up suddenly. That hair-raising moment has also remained with me ever since. Funny, as I'm writing this, I am suddenly remembering the long-lost name of this book. It was called Scared Stiff.

There was also a story in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, called "Bloody Fingers," that gave me nightmares. Despite this fact, I continually read that story (and the others in the series) throughout my childhood.

While I'm sure all of these stories are actually quite tame for me now, I know that they succeeded in scaring me at the time. How they did that, I don't think I'll ever know. That's the magic of storytelling, I suppose. They got me at the right time and in the right frame of mind.

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This post is part of the Blue-Beta Blog Coordination, a continuing series of content coordinated by theme or motif with posts from Confuzzled of I Keep Wondering, Gromit of The Dancing Newt, Redoubt of Redoubt Redux, Third Mango of Funkadelic Freestylings of Another Sort, and Xanthippe of Let’s Save Our Hallmark Moment. This week's theme: 'Touch'.