/yesod

Tag: crying

  • Winterly

    My wife, her best friend, and I decide to drop acid for the first time.

    We lay back on the couch and each of us take the squishy pink pill and chew slowly.

    I only eat half of mine. I’m worried about what might happen if I take a whole one.

    In time, I stand up and feel my balance shift and sway like I’m on a boat.

    There are stars, drifting in the air right in front of me — like dust motes. I wave my hand and watch them scatter and dance.

    My wife has fallen asleep. So her friend and I decide to go outside and let her rest.

    We walk, talking of little things that I no longer remember.

    When I look over to her, she is no longer who I thought she was. She has become an actress that I know well from movies in the 80’s and 90’s.

    I note that this is odd but I am distracted by the little village we’re walking through and I say, with some excitement, “I need to remember this so I can include it in the book I’m writing.”

    “Yeah, you should.” Her voice is wry and I realize that’s why she brought me here.

    We go into one of the little stucco bungalows. It is dark inside, Spanish tile floors and deep red wall hangings. Little faux candles flickering in wright iron wall sconces.

    I feel a little self-conscious being with her. People are coming up to her and asking for her autograph. One woman, bursts into tears when she recognizes her. “Is it really you?”

    My companion takes it all in stride, gracious and kind and gentle with each of them. She gives the crying woman a hug and the woman’s handbag falls open, spilling out onto the dark tile floor.

    I stoop and collect the scattered items. I don’t remember much of what was there. A wallet, I think — pale leather with a gold clasp. But I do remember the handful of jelly beans, picking them up one by one.

    I also remember feeling the actress’ approving gaze on me. And I’m a little proud of myself for being chivalrous.

    When we go back outside, the actress inspects a little scrap of paper the crying woman gave her and says something I don’t quite understand about pie.

    “How sweet,” she says. “She said I can have it on my wheels.”

    I realize it’s a joke. Not “pie” but “Pi” — there’s a bicycle there, leaning against a low concrete wall.

    As she swings her leg over the seat of the bike, I ask the actress if it’s hard having all those people know who she is?

    “Who do you think that I am?”

    I’m flustered for a moment. There is a frankness in her manner and I’m embarrassed by it.

    “Uh, you’re my wife’s best friend?” I say, faltering at the end as I start to realize…

    She gives me a pitying, kind look. She steps off the bike and comes back to me. Placing her hands on my chest, she stands up on tiptoe to kiss me.

    It’s a light kiss, brief and gentle. The kiss of a sister or something an old flame would give you, long after your time together.

    And then she is gone… Away on her bicycle I suppose. I’m not sure because I’ve woken up, wondering why I would have a dream about Winona Ryder of all people.

    Then I realize who it really was.

    It hits me like a blow… but the thought is surprisingly comforting.

    Winterly

     

  • comfort

    “You were crying in your sleep last night,” my wife said this morning.

    “I was?”

    “You were whimpering. It went on for a while. I couldn’t get you to wake up.”

    I remembered then.

    I remembered waking up, her hand on my shoulder.

    I remember hearing myself crying in the dark.

    But I don’t remember why.

  • cat below

    Working late, I hear one of the cats crying below in the basement. It is a faint, plaintive sound.

    I set aside the story I’ve been working on and get up with a sigh. Our two cats have been a considerable amount of trouble lately — skittish, fighting with each other late at night, becoming more and more territorial.

    Or, like tonight, just crying in the basement for no reason.

    I open the door to my office and stop: There in the front room are both of our cats. We regard each other, eyes wide.

    I close the door again and return to work.

    Below, the basement is quiet.

  • a tornado, two corpses, and a leather sofa

    Inside the house, people are starting to panic. The sky outside is dark and green, the wind bending the trees to almost impossible angles. We can hear the sirens and, in a house this old, there is no safe place . . . every room has windows, the elderly frame flexes and creaks in the wind just like the trees outside.

    Women huddle with their children, people cover in corners and try to stay out of the way as pictures fall from walls, little knickknacks shatter to the floor.

    I can feel a pressure in the house, a suction that ebbs and flows as the storm overhead rages on. I move from room to room, peeking out of windows as I pass, making sure they stay open so that the suction won’t blow them out completely.

    Through one window, I watch as a massive trees outside comes down. The entire house shudders under the weight of it. People are screaming now.

    I look up to the mass of gray swirling in the sky, like ink in milk . . . funnel clouds dance around each other, like strands of barbed wire twisted together. I count five of them, shouting out to the people to take cover. The funnels move in.

    I head into another room and suddenly the house is vibrating, a low hum that slowly builds to unbelievable intensity. I can feel it in my eardrums, in my molars, in my gut.

    People are praying, people are crying.

    Looking back on it now, I am surprised I did not think of the gods.

    The ceiling of the room I am in begins to peel away, I move quickly to the other side of the house . . . Just in time to see something so odd, my eyes have trouble making sense of it at first.

    It is a rubble in the suddenly still air of the room, a wavering column of distortion that runs from floor to ceiling, as wide as a refrigerator and spinning. It moves across and through the opposite wall without leaving a trace of its passing.

    Then all is quiet once more — save for the sobs and cries from the other rooms.

    Later…

    The specific circumstances of it escape me now, but at some point I am helping out with a local theatre company in town. One of the actors has an old van that we need to pick up to haul props. I volunteer to go over to their house and collect it.

    They live in a seedy part of town, their house is a hoarder’s nightmare. Out back in the tall weed a is a rusty van, engine idling.

    I go to see if they’re inside, ready to go . . . only to find that while they are inside, they’ve already gone.

    Her face is bloated, her lank gray hair matted to her skull with sweat and vomit. There’s no way of telling how long she’s been this way.

    Repulsed, I back away.

    And later still…

    “I need to talk to you,” my son tells me. I nod and suggest we go out back where it is quieter and the people at the party won’t bother us.

    Why we are having the cast party in the dead woman’s house, I don’t know. It didn’t seem odd at the time, but I have a vague recollection of being worried that she might be discovered back there and somehow spoil things for everyone.

    On the rickety back porch, I see the van in the weeds — the engine has long since run out of gas — and I suddenly remember that I never called the police.

    My son is already down the steps, trying the side door of the van. I call to him to leave it be but he is curious. Something dark and vile has pooled at one corner in the grass below, running from the door frame like a faucet accidentally left on.

    He opens the door and I hear his disgust. He starts to move the body, to try and get her out but she’s become a liquid, gelatinous mess. I tell him to leave things as they are, otherwise the police might suspect him of trying to cover something up.

    He runs inside to call 911.

    Standing there in the dead grass, I turn my head to look down the broad alley at the back of the house. A few yards down there is a splintered wooden fence, leaning to one side. A large dead tree bends low over it, the skeletal boughs hanging over the alley.

    Caught in the boughs is the body of a small child.

    And just before I wake…

    My wife and I are walking through the house, we cannot believe that we are so lucky to have a place of our own at last. In the attic room we find an old leather sofa that the previous owners have left behind. I flop down on it in exhaustion. Under my hand, the dull surface gleams as I wipe the dust away.

    My wife stands at the gable window and looks out onto the street below. She turns and raises her blouse over her head, tosses it aside. Her jeans and panties follow. By the time she gets to me, I am ready for her.

    She straddles me and we begin to move, the old sofa creaking under us.

    Somewhere down below in the house, we hear a door slam. A woman calls out, we hear the voices of children, little feet running up the stairs…

  • the girl in the warehouse

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated May 4th, 2000]

    …and because I have been thrown out of my house, lost any connection to my wife and children, I am living in an old building adjacent to where I work — downtown, in the old industrial district, where an empty warehouse is easy to find.

    I barely have any clothes and none of my belongings, but I make due — hiding my shame by getting to work extra early each day and staying late.

    Shortly I come to realize that the place where I am staying is haunted — a small girl with dark hair and pale clothes flits about shyly in the evenings. She is sad and somewhat horrible as well. The is a demoniac sense to her, the way she pops up without warning.

    Late in the evening, on my way back to my new “home”, I pass by a bar and some women out front shout at me. One of the comes over and after a brief conversation she suggests I bring her home with me. I do.

    We get back to my small room. She is already all over me.and before I can lock the door she is kneeling on the bed, unclothed, pulling her dress up over her head.

    I turn to see her there, and I stop for a moment.

    She smiled wide and warm, and then I see her eyes dart to a place beside me and her smile falters.

    There dark girl is there, hideous and livid.

    And I suddenly realize that she is not a ghost, never was a ghost — this thing was never alive, never drew breath or felt joy. What has come is older than anything in creation, masquerading,

    She looks at my companion, frozen in a parody of her formerly seductive pose, and she speaks.

    I don’t remember what was said, but the truth of it strikes home with such force that my “date” is driven from the room, sobbing and weeping.

    And, alone with that terrible pale girl, I wait. She looks at me for a moment.

    And then she is gone.

    The next day, in my dream, my secret is found out by the people I work for. I can’t recall how, but it is discovered.

    The big surprises: First, they aren’t angry with me for being there, they’re sympathetic in fact. I find out that one of them also did a similar thing with his ex-wife — he stayed where I am staying.

    Face with this information, I don’t say anything but I know my face tells it all.

    “Yeah, I was there for a few weeks,” he says, watching me.

    “Is the ghost still there?” He asks, offhand.

    “Yes.” I am dumbfounded.

    “Man, she used to scare the shit out of me.” He laughs.

    One of the others says “What’s this ghost?”

    We tell him and, goaded by his fascination, I offer to bring him down.

    “I gotta see this,” he says.

    As we walk down the hallway, it begins.

    Far up the hall, we can see her standing there watching us.

    As we approach, I recognize a familiar feeling of cold dread.

    Brackets and boxes fly off shelves, thrown at us by unseen forces.

    Prepared for this, nerves ringing like an alarm, I knock them away from us — grabbing a broom and brandishing it like a sword.

    My friend marvels at my skill.

    “Yeah, I’ve got a high midichlorian count.”

    We continue on towards the girl. She is hideous and pale, and the lines other face are very dark, her eyes like pits.

    I know what she is, and it is no ghost — she is something far older, engaged in a grotesque masquerade, playacting the child in a diabolically ironic manner.

    We sit and speak of childish things. I am hoping to draw her away from my real thoughts but I can feel the rage boiling within her and I cannot stop it when it finally surfaces.

    Nearby an old man sleeps on the sidewalk, drunk beyond all waking.

    She finally reveals what I already know.

    I am talking with her, realizing that my phony jocular child voice is not only annoying to her, but entirely unnecessary… I know she knows that I know what she truly is, and I know that she knows that I know that she knows that I know.

    But I keep up the pretense; I can see her fighting it at every step.

    Finally, we discuss the colder weather and Halloween is coming soon, I remark.

    And with that, she goes ballistic — force and rage radiating off of her, she’s halfway levitating, screaming with rage.

    And then I wake up, frightened by one of my own dreams for the first time in a very long time.

    [2013 Addendum: Although this dream raised a number of disturbing feelings, I remember being very proud of the Star Wars joke. In fact, I still am.]