/yesod

Tag: old

  • peeking

    Later…

    Sitting in the living room, talking with my wife while our daughter plays . . . I see someone peek around the corner of the entry leading into the dining room, a brief flash like someone pokes their head out for a quick look and then ducked back behind the wall when I looked in their direction.

    Still cheating with my wife, I rise and go to have a look.

    Nothing. No one.

    I sit back down and we continue our conversation. Over the next few minutes the peeking face pops out again five or six times. Irritating.

    I check again, making sure no one is there. It’s starting to wear on me. I have this feeling someone is deliberately messing with me.

    The face is round-cheeked, almost cartoonish. With high brows and a surprised expression. I am reminded, vaguely, of Randy Quaid.

    The skin on my forearms stings, as though sunburned. My hair stands on end. I am chilled.

    One last time the face pops out. This time it has changed. No longer the goofy expression, now the eyes are dark pits and the gaping mouth flaps open, an insane toothless maw. Horrid.

    When I get scared, I get angry. And I am very angry now.

    My wife asks “Are you okay?”

    “I’m having a bit of a problem at the moment.”

    After filling her in, I burn some myrrh and juniper — offering to the gods and banishing anything else.

    Nothing for the rest of the night, but the clammy feeling left by the memory of that hideous face still clings to me.

  • in the shower

    …as I’m washing my backside, someone peeks in between a seam in the shower curtain — old and wizened, though I cannot tell whether it is a man or a woman. They roll their eyes up at me, almost comical, and purse their mouth in a silent “Oooo…”

    …and then I wake with a start, my afternoon nap ruined.

  • eastern promises

    I find myself on a tour of a city somewhere in Eastern Europe. It is a dank, darkly industrial place — all smokestacks and ornate spires, brick walls stained with soot. Tagging along with a friend from junior high — he has made this trip many times before — I wander through the streets and shops, taking pictures as I go…

    …the market, full of cheap knockoffs of western products and strange gummy candies, bright as chemicals…

    …a flock of pigeons, black with soot, taking flight into a smoke filled sky…

    …the rushed tour through a defunct governmental building, paper-strewn floors and broken skylights, a crudely mimeographed guide handed out — rough paper decorated with crayon scrawls and stupid jokes about American super heroes. We join an Australian tour group, twenty or more strong, demanding their money back . . . but the scam artists operating the tour lock us out…

    …tagging along with the Australians, safety in numbers, despite the growing signs that they hide dark secrets — hints that they’ve been on this same trip for decades, damned and doomed to wander in a forgotten corner of the world…

    …gathering together in a crumbling courtyard for the night, an old movie shown on a sheet hung up on one wall . . . I am horrified to see a young girl, her wits damaged in some way, mutely servicing one of the Australian men with her hands while the movie plays, casting a sickening constellation against the jacket of the oblivious woman in front of them…

    …edging out of a brick archway, strewn with vines — no interest in seeing how the movie turns out, wanting to escape their company before the evening reveals even more distasteful secrets…

    …standing in a darkened alley, taking a picture of clothes lines fluttering overhead. Two men pass along a narrow opening. They pass by and, after some hushed t ones, they return — demanding my phone and whatever money I have. One of them is dark and menacing, the other blonde and aloof. Despite the danger, I refuse and, somehow, make my escape…

    …spending the night in an old flat, the women there gray with age and disappointment…

    …the men burst in, having tracked me to my little haven. Somehow I get the upper hand…

    …the dark man is kneeling, hands bound behind him. I slap his face roughly once, then again. His eyes raise to me, full of hate, and I pull back my balled fist…

    …and then I wake in the cold light, bare branches outside my window and my daughter murmuring across the hall.