3rd snippet for OPPOSITES DISTRACT

Harmony and Brody both believe they’ll be snowed in the next day, so stay up late, watching three old, horror movies.  Harmony’s dreams reflect that:

They flipped through channels before they found an old classic—Seven—with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman.  The seven deadly sins, and their punishments, were enough to set a creepy mood.  Then Brody found The Shining, and you’d have thought he hit the jackpot.  “One of my favorites!” he told her.  Jack Nicholson doing crazy pushed creepy to its limits.  Harmony’s eyes were getting heavy when he found The Mummy with Brendan Fraser.   The movie was scary enough, but Harmony couldn’t help it.  She fell asleep.

She half woke as he carried her upstairs to her room.  He turned down the covers and gently laid her in her bed.  She remembered smiling up at him, and then he bent and his lips claimed hers.  Damn, the man felt good.  She reached her arms around his neck and made the kiss last.  But then he pulled away, touched her cheek, and left.

Her dream started with a warm, fuzzy feeling.  She strode through a meadow filled with blooming wildflowers.  A beautiful, white building with columns and green shutters sat on a knoll in the distance, and she walked toward it.  When she stepped inside, the bright sunshine disappeared.  A forbidding gloom filled its shadowy spaces.  There was a mystery she must solve here, she knew.  A spiral staircase led to the second floor, and she climbed it, calling to see if anyone was home.  On the second floor landing, red smears covered the flowered wallpaper.  REDRUM.  Chills shivered up and down her spine, but she started down a long, narrow, white tunnel to a room at its end.  The temperature dropped the farther she walked.

When she reached the double doors, she pushed on them, and they swung open to a huge nursery.  Every cradle held a crying baby.  She ran to the first and bent to pick it up to comfort it, and Cecily’s face—the way she imagined Brody’s ex—stared back at her.  She recoiled and went to the next cradle, then the next, and the one after that.  Every cradle held an infant that looked like Cecily.  This was where Brody’s ex and her old, rich husband deposited their many offspring.  A baby, wrapped in tapes like a mummy, cried to her, “Only the first son is allowed to live with Mommy.”  Then every baby jumped out of their cradles, grabbed gleaming butcher knives, and chased her out of the room and down the hallway.  She woke when she tugged on the front door and it wouldn’t open.  Her eyes did.

She lay in bed, her heart thumping, and vowed never to watch three horror movies, back to back, ever again.  She finally left the comfort of her blankets and walked to the window.  It had quit snowing.