/yesod

Tag: choking

  • air

    As a child, very young, I was rushed to the hospital with the croup.

    As my mother tells it, I was sick and she went in to check on me when I was taking a nap . . . and I was gray.

    That was Christmas Eve 1970. I was 18 months old.

    I remember it.

    I remember being in the hospital on Christmas, opening my presents there.

    Even now, from time to time, I still dream of choking. I dream that I have no breath to draw, dream my lungs are being crushed under some unseen hand . . . dream I’ve no air to speak the words in my mouth . . . dream I am gasping for breath…

    Even now, I sometimes wake with a hard knot deep in the back of my throat that lingers for hours.

  • nephew, demon

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated September 12th, 2001]

    And in my dream my three-year-old nephew [REDACTED] — plagued by depression and despair all his short little life — has finally given into his despair, twisting a length of picture hanging wire around his neck and hanging himself. I find his stiff body eyes open, jaw clenched. Although he is dead, his body continues to move and walk. He is speechless and his face is blank, almost hateful. We all avoid him, his stiff legged roaming across the floor, his baleful gaze. When his mother comes home, it is up to me to break the news to her. His mother, in my dream, is my aunt [REDACTED] — the mother of my cousin, I know, makes no sense — but she is full of cold rage and asks me why I didn’t take the wire from around his neck she blames me, I am certain of it and I can only point in horror to his animated corpse. Ignoring me, all business now, she takes the horrid little child and her arms raising him up and speaking quietly to him. She is a Christian fundamentalist and I realize that there is something far worse at work here then death. He twists away from her, in her arms, and stares at me with a blankly cunning look — and hideous, diabolical language pours out of his mouth like vomit, demonic and awful. He spews his bubbling, babbling talk at me and in growing horror I find my breath is gone, I cannot speak, I cannot pray any words of protection, my lips are numb and my tongue is thick in my mouth, and then, With ever-growing horror, I hear my own bubbling voice respond in kind, echoing his hideous demonic voice with my own.

    I wake in horror and dread, mouthing the words “Veni Sancte Spiritus” in my gasping, choking voice.

  • the blood curse

    Blood, spelling out a hastily scrawled curse or warning:

    “IF YOU CONTINUE, YOU WON’T SEE THE END.
    IF YOU WRITE IT, IT WILL NEVER BE READ.
    IF YOU TELL THE STORY, NO ON WILL LISTEN.”

    And blood scrawling away to nothing.

    A moment to pause and gasp.

    And the voice of Constantine rises within.

    “You want to fuck with me? I’ll bloody choke you, mate.”

  • the blood curse

    Blood, spelling out a hastily scrawled curse or warning:

    “IF YOU CONTINUE, YOU WON’T SEE THE END.
    IF YOU WRITE IT, IT WILL NEVER BE READ.
    IF YOU TELL THE STORY, NO ON WILL LISTEN.”

    And blood scrawling away to nothing.

    A moment to pause and gasp.

    And the voice of Constantine rises within.

    “You want to fuck with me? I’ll bloody choke you, mate.”

  • mother, father, cat

    Do demons stand still? Can you look for them in corners or out of the way places? Do demons stop long enough for you to see them? Do demons stand near us? Where do they stand?

    In the dream, my house has been transformed into a filthy hole. The kitchen is a mess, bits of food, dirty pots and pans, and crusty dishes piled everywhere.

    My mother sits on the patio and smokes cigarettes.

    My father sits in the living room, studying Talmud.

    I try to clean up the mess.

    My cat walks though my dream, his mind embraced by madness. His mouth gapes, his eyes stare, insane light shining through. His tongue flaps out between his fangs, drooling mucous and vomit. He yowls to wake the dead.

    I call to my mother to put on her glasses. I ask her “Can you see him? Can you see the cat?” She doesn’t answer. And I ask her again, and then I say “Can you see demons..?” And I go into my earlier ideas on demons. I speak and the cat yowls and in the living room my father is a dusty corpse.

    When I woke from this dream I was saying “Do demons stand still?” in a breathless gasp.