My wife and I were in for the night and decided to watch a movie together on our big screen, 5-speaker TV. “The Watcmen” was our film of choice. It seemed interesting and neither one of us knew much about it beforehand.

Several minutes into the movie we heard a very loud BOOM! It sounded like it might have come from the back yard. Although I’ve never heard what a meteor sounds like when it crashes, it sounded a bit like that. We were both startled and I paused the movie. What the hell could have made such a noise? Was our house still fully intact?

We were inebriated, I was en femme wearing makeup, and it was still daylight out. We couldn’t see any problems by looking out the windows. Not wanting to risk the neighbors figuring out who that other girl is (me), Mrs. H. had to throw on some shoes and inspect the house on the outside while I made sure everything was still in one piece on the inside.

Still uncertain of exactly where the noise came from, I headed into the basement expecting to find a collapsed beam or some shelving that had caved in. Being intoxicated, I also had visions of horror films running through my head. We all know what happens when the t-girl wanders into the basement in those things. Having spent some time playing Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles on my Wii earlier in the day, zombies were fresh on my mind.

Slow and cautious, I made my way down the stairs. It was dark and I heard noises. Of course, I didn’t think to bring a flashlight. I know how these scenes play out in the movies. There was no way I would escape the attack of living dead zombies just waiting to rip the flesh off of my crossdressing bones. I carefully approached the far wall of the basement, the noise of my high heels on the cement floor giving away my exact position each step of the way. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I realized there was a human figure just a couple feet ahead starring back at me… it looked like… a girl-zombie? No, it was just my own reflection in the large, dusty mirror sitting near the corner. Whew! No zombies in the basement and nothing was out of place. What a relief, everything seemed to be in good order.

I returned to the main floor of the house but my wife was still outside. Did she find something out there? Was she ok? I kept waiting to hear the sound of sirens rushing to the area. Someone must have phoned in something by now. That noise was too loud to have only been heard by us. Maybe it was a head-on collision on the a nearby intersection or someone’s house exploding because of an ignited gas leak.

Mrs. H. entered the house and said everything looked just fine. She reported people walking happily down the sidewalk as if nothing happened. How could they not have heard it? There should be a crowd of people gathered somewhere staring in horror at the sight of… whatever made that loud noise.

As we stood in the kitchen wondering what it was, my wife began laughing. She suggested that the noise we heard came from the movie, and not outside or in the basement. What? Come on, we’re not that stupid… but we ARE under the influence…

We quickly headed back into the living room. I rewound the movie a little and played it again. BOOM! Gah! It WAS the movie! Damn surround sound made it sound like it came from elsewhere, but it was just an unexpected loud noise in the movie. The volume was turned up a bit high, and we were kind of messed up.

Needless to say, we broke out laughing at ourselves. We laughed so hard our tears came down and our cheeks began to hurt. You see, this is not the first time this happened to us which made it even funnier. Perhaps I’ll share the story of what took place 12 years ago, that had us literally running for our lives and turned out to be nothing more than a… well, I don’t want to ruin a good story. :)

That’s our actual back yard in the photo above, by the way… minus the glowing, hot, smoking, radio active meteor. Not too shabby for a 1-hour manipulated photo job. The “meteor” was a large rock pulled from under a nearby bush. Something a bit more round would have been better, but I didn’t have the time to be picky.