The Midnight Game by Madeline Monoghan
“So you’ll do it?” Amanda asks me.
I sigh. Why not? What do I have to lose? It’s not like the Nightmare Man is real or anything.
i did not anticipate that this would be a drunken book review, but shit happened, and now i am drunk, and now we’re off!!! all the usual warnings about the fact that i intend to go over the entire plot, so if you do not want this story spoiled for you, do not read this review.
so here we go – the nightmare man!!! the nightmare man can be summoned following a really complicated set of rules. why would you want to summon him?? so you can boast about it on the internet, duh! amanda is a believer, kelly is a skeptic, but since amanda is too much of a fraidy-cat to summon him, it is up to kelly to show her how wrong she is.
here are the rules (asterisks mine):
THE MIDNIGHT GAME
At 11:11 you may begin prepping for the ritual – not before then, not after.
Gather all of your supplies into the room you’ll be playing the game in. Make sure you choose an open room with no doors. Doors are the gateway, and your boundaries. Whatever you do, do not open any doors in your house*, or go up/down any stairs.
Cover any windows so that they block out all possible light (natural or not).
Cut three locks of hair** and place it in the ash tray.
Write your name three times on a small rectangular piece of paper. Crumble it and put it in the ash tray.
Wait.
At 12pm***, the game will begin.
Turn off all of the lights in your house.
Take your candle, and your ashtray**** to your front door and place both directly in front of your door*****. Pierce any finger on your right hand with the needle****** and allow one drop of blood to drip over the paper and your hair*******. Light the candle and use that to light the contents of the ashtray on fire.
Leave the candle burning bright next to the ashes on your door step. If the candle burns out before you enter, do NOT relight it – end the game, leave the house, and try another night. DO NOT ENTER THE HOUSE IF THIS HAPPENS.
Knock three times on your own door. Wait for a moment, then step inside, closing the door behind you.
You have now opened the portal to invite the Nightmare Man in.
Keep nothing on your person besides your cell phone and salt********. You may use your cell phone for light only*********. Do NOT, under any circumstance, contact anyone while the game is still going. Do not call or text ANYONE – you will be putting them in grave danger. The only contact you can have is with your witness, who you must instruct to call you at exactly 3:30 PM**********, – not after and definitely not before. Then have them blow out the candle, and enter the house. This is the only way to portal can officially close.
Do not, under any circumstances, leave the house until the portal is closed.
You may now wait in your designated space for the Nightmare Man to arrive – we highly suggest you keep a wall to your back.
okay, wow, so we have a lot to cover here.
* so, i’m pretty confused about this “open room with no doors” business. this doesn’t mean no doorways, right? just no doors that can be slammed?? like so this is okay:
but this would be a no:
because otherwise, all i can think of is some weird concrete bunker that you enter through a window. which is a rare architectural design. and what about windows?? windows are kosher here? i mean, except for the covering up. but they can be open??
** what exactly does constitute “a lock” of hair?? because i always thought a lock of hair was an amount sufficient enough to be crammed into some victorian mourning locket, so three is a significant amount and pretty demanding from some specter. we will come back to this point TWO more times in this review.
*** so, um… noon?? an unorthodox time to summon a hell demon, but now i understand why the windows needed to be covered – you don’t want the noise of all the neighborhood kids running after the ice cream truck ruining your fun demon time.
**** oh, so the third time you use it you realize that “ashtray” is a compound word?? and don’t bother to correct it the first two times? lazy monsterporn writer.
***** this is when it would have been helpful to indicate that you are meant to be outside your door at this point. sloppy instructions are how people get raped and killed by demons.
****** this is the first mention of a needle. as any cookbook/crafting/home improvement author will tell you – having a list of “necessary ingredients/supplies at the BEGINNING of the instructions would be really helpful. especially in a case like this, where everything seems so delicately balances and the consequences of flubbing the steps are more serious than a burnt casserole.
******* okay, so this is when the whole “how big is a lock of hair” question resurfaces. because a single drop of blood is meant to drip over this paper AND three locks of hair?? that seems unlikely.
******** seven?? are we at seven asterisks now?? i am bad at math. okay – so this is also unclear to me. does this mean in your pockets? or on your body?? if you wear glasses, do those need to be removed? wedding rings, invisaligns, a jaunty cap??? where is the line drawn??
********* how do the keepers of the nightmare man even know about cell phones?? so this is like some modern day, tech-savvy demon and not some ancient evil?? it’s somehow less scary this way.
********** again – in the afternoon. a 5 year old could have set you straight on this.
phew! that took a lot out of me!! and i have to make dinner before project runway, so let’s call this part one of a monsterporn review, and i will finish it up next chance i get, but i do not guarantee i will still be drunk. much.
okay, here i am to finish this off, unfortunately for all of us, i am sober.
so!! we are all clear on the rules, and now it is time for amanda and kelly to have their last-minute conversation about “is it a good idea to summon demons or whatever.” kelly doesn’t believe in this shit, so she’s very boastful:
“Hey, don’t worry about me.” I raise my fists and say, “I’m going to be fine, an if any spirits come at me I can take em.”
FOOOOOOREshadowing!!!
amanda is not reassured, even though this was pretty much her idea. way to get cold feet, amanda!
“Didn’t you read the accounts I showed you online? One girl woke up with scratches all over her back, and another – well he wasn’t hurt but something got in him. Like, in his mind,” Amanda said. She looked shaken to the core.
well, spoiler alert, it’s not kelly’s mind amanda should be so concerned about the monster getting into, if you know what i mean…
but there wouldn’t be a story if they didn’t go through with it, so let’s see what happens!
I glance down at my cell phone – it’s now two hours into the game and absolutely nothing has happen. Like I figured. We set up everything perfectly – the candle is burning bright outside my door with Amanda parked across the street, keeping an eye on the house. If anything had happened, like the candle blowing out, she would have told me.
okay, wait – according to the RULES – those confusing and convoluted RULES, how can amanda call her if the candle burns out if The only contact you can have is with your witness, who you must instruct to call you at exactly 3:30 PM, – not after and definitely not before??? does this only apply to outgoing calls?? again, this whole inclusion of cellphones in the instructions seems less mystical than it should.
even kelly is fed up with these rules:
I promised Amanda I’d follow the rules, but the rules are just so fucking boring.
and this is how she gets into trouble.
I pick up my smart phone and start browsing through my emails, which are mainly spam and ads…
that sentence made me so sad. kelly, why don’t you have any friends???
well, you’re about to make a really good friend right now because you have disobeyed!!!!
There’s nothing there. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing there. There’s something there.
it is a malevolent shadow!! and it spooks her! and, not learning from her errors, she continues to flagrantly disregard that whole rule thing and runs upstairs:
I know the rules said not to do this, but fuck the rules.
fuck the rules, indeed!
but even though she has already fooled around on the internet and checked her sad impersonal inbox (heh – inbox) and run up the stairs, breaking rules left and right, she holds herself back from breaking another rule
my thumb hovers over the buttons and I stop myself – shit, I can’t do anything or call anyone until 3:30, and it’s barely even 3am.
oh, NOW it’s “am.” again – going back and editing your monsterporn is part of the job.
and NOW you follow the rules. this is kind of the one you want to disobey – when the monster is all up in your personal space and you might need a little outside help.
oh, and you want to know what this nightmare man looks like, do you?? here you go:
I watch as the shadow takes on the a familiar, human form – but it’s anything but human. Right before my eyes, it materializes – I watch in horror as it forms long twisted legs with hoof like feet, muscular, vein covered arms with long dark claws. It’s body is huge – it must be at least 7 feet tall with a broad chest. And that face – that hollow, sunken face, with nothingness for eyes. It’s barely more than skull, with sharp teeth bared. That face will be seared into my consciousness until I die.
And then I quickly realize that I might die tonight.
there ya go!! the nightmare man!
so she has freaked out and runs into a room (upstairs!!) and barricaded the door, but – pfffft – the nightmare man is STRONG! and BOOM – breaks down the door and grabs her, holding her up in the air with her back pressed against the wall. (because HE follows the rules for her)
she begs for her life, and promises she will do anything if he will spare her.
and the nightmare man accepts her offer
“Remove,” it hisses, giving my bra a snap.
he continues his hissed demands for her disrobing and explores her with his claws.
Dear God, please don’t put that in there!
oh, but again – that wouldn’t be much of a story, would it??
so he totally does. and then he grabs her by her ankles and holds her upside-down with her legs wide apart and begins to explore her with his forked tongue.
An inexplicable moan escapes my throat as I feel it continue to worm and roll inside me.This can’t be right – why does it feel so fucking good?
well, kelly, allow me to teach you a little bit about the female anatomy: when pressure is applied to the clitoris (located above the vagina opening), it creates a pleasurable sensation because of a bundle of sensitive nerves. THAT is why it feels so fucking good.
also, it looks like a penguin
My body arches as it slivers out of me…
slivers??? ouch!
and then he throws her on the ground and puts his tongue in her mouth, then sits her up and put something else in her mouth. and it’s not a thermometer!!!!
there is some squirting, which is a really gross word, but he’s still ready for more!
he plops her on her hands and knees and continues to make love to her as only a nightmare man can. and poor kelly endures his attentions
You can do this. You can do this, I tell myself. There isn’t long to go before this wretched night is over and I’m free of this creature.
and haven’t we all been there, ladies??
and then it reads like a game of diabolical sex-twister, which i will hide beneath spoiler-tags for the sake of both the children and the grammarians:
while she is on fours,
View Spoiler »i will allow that to sink in.
are you picturing this?? this seems awkward, no? with where the feet are and how that affects the … motion of the ocean, and that tongue joining the party while that room is already occupied??? it is very complicated, demon sex….
but that “fork tongue”
hot.
aaaand that’s the story.
oh, but it’s not!! because there is a funny trick played by the demon straight out of the gremlins playbook
which causes kelly to answer her ringing phone three minutes before the approved time. (which is here stated as “am,” even though the rules specifically say pm, so who knows if it would even have mattered, since it was well before 3:30 pm)
oh, and it might not have been a gremlins trick, actually – because kelly does think – Shit, why didn’t we think to synchronize our phones?! so it might have been human error and not demon tomfoolery, but then i wouldn’t have gotten a chance to use that gremlins GIF, so let’s just roll with it.
and what do you think happened because of this early call??
kelly runs outside to amanda’s car and – OH MY GOD SHE IS GONE!!!
with three long blonde hairs placed strategically across the street. and this is where the second instance of the “what is a lock of hair” question resurfaces. (you thought i forgot, didn’t you? i never forget. that is my curse.) my conclusion is that she meant “strands” of hair and not “locks” of hair in the instructions. so if you are going to summon the demon yourself for sexxy funtimes, i think you should just use strands, because the demon isn’t gonna want some chick with raggedy hair, and no one has drops of blood that huge.
a fun game i played, which i assure you, is less blucky than the midnight game, is “count the misused apostrophes!”
the tally:
100 instances of correctly-used apostrophes. good for you!! they were mostly in words like “can’t” and “don’t.”
37 instances of incorrectly-used apostrophes. it’s and its. they are different words.
because this kind of made my head explode:
View Spoiler »ta-DAAAAAAA!! another fine monsterporn read and reviewed.
