Remember in the Babadook? Amelia spends most of the moving crying and screaming, on the constant edge of a violent, nervous breakdown. I watched the movie alone, the third movie I watched that day, hiding under blankets, surrounded by trash and half capped pill bottles. I hadn’t slept in about three days, and I was hoping for a movie that could either put me to sleep or shock me into full wakefulness. I half watched Amelia going crazy as I floated in and out of reality, back and forth between half-dreams of drowning, the hospital white room, and the movie. I was watching that scene where she’s watching TV and the Babadook is waiting for her there in grainy black and white and men lost their heads like it was all some kind of game and she spends the entire night staring at the screen, the images changing and fading in and out—and it was then my laptop lost power, went black, and I could only see my face where Amelia’s had been, but still her swollen, crazy eyes looking back at mine.



Kirsten Reneau is working on her MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of New Orleans. A Pushcart nominee, her work can also be seen in Hippocampus Magazine, Xtra Magazine and is forthcoming in (Mac)ro(mic) and The Threepenny Review.