The Legend of the Ladies Beth, Prologue

In order to tell the story of There's No Time! The Midnight Vandalization Perpetrated by Elizabeth and Mary Beth, I need to tell the story of There's No Time! Oli, Patti, and Liz Narrowly Escape With Their Lives.

We had just seen Hostel at the theater. and, while certainly cringe-worthy (Ahhhh ah ah achilles!), it wasn't sleep-with-the-lights-on creepy or disturbing. By the end of the movie, when the protagonist (?) was running the gang of kids down with the van, it had devolved from torture-porn to slapstick.

But I guess the atmosphere of the film left us a little unsettled; a bit on edge. We returned to Olivia's house (an older, generally creaky home) and sat around shooting the shit in low voices, so as not to disturb her grandmother who was asleep in the adjacent room. Or so we thought. We suddenly heard a rusty knob turn. We heard the front bedroom door crrreeakk open. 

"Mama Olivia?" Olivia called out to her namesake abuela.

No response.

The three of us looked at each other, a little startled, but Patti suggested it probably just Stimpy, was one of Oli's several cats.

"Can Stimpy turn a doorknob?" I asked, hopefully.

We all stood slowly and crept towards the bedroom door, which was now ajar. Like in a Scooby-Doo cartoon, we stuck close together and moved in a single file. Olivia nudged the door open. Once again, she called out to her grandmother. Nothing. She pushed the door a little more to reveal an empty bedroom. No grandmothers, no cats. Naturally, our reaction was perfectly reasonable.

"Oh my god! It was a ghost! Let's get out of here!!"

I'm pretty sure that is verbatim dialogue from at least five Scooby-Doo episodes, but our collective nerves were wound tight from Hostel (of all things), and we tripped over each other trying to get out the front door of the house. Olivia snatched up her car keys and we flew towards the Mustang that was sitting in the driveway. She pressed the keyless entry and I was first to reach the passenger side door. I flung it open and began fiddling with the lever so I could jump in the back seat.

"There's no time!!!" Patti shrieked.

She pushed me into the front seat and jumped in next to me. Olivia started the car and we squealed out of her driveway with the passenger door hanging open.

After a few minutes of driving around, we calmed down, laughed ourselves silly and headed back to the "haunted" house. To this day, we don't know who or what opened that door, but we'll forever have "There's no time!!" It's our little inside joke. Welcome to our inside.