Last night was such a strange night. Just eerie in a nondescript sort of way.
I can remember when I lived in Steven’s Point, in a trailer park (yes, in my college years I fit the rough description of trailer trash… minus the mullet... and working on a college degree... and I grew bonsai trees in the lot behind the trailer) On the windy nights, when that little tin can apartment would rock in the gusts, and the moon was bright lighting the outside lot like a cinema stage. Every room had windows, every room was an "outside room", and the blue suffused everything, fell everywhere. And on the distance, not in any particular direction, not from any particular distance, but just “in the distance” the train whistle would blow. Long mournful and unrelenting.
Last night was kinda like that again. I stayed up late reading King’s “Wizzard and Glass”. From the Dark Tower series. (Which I recommend highly…. I know, I know…. You don’t read Stephen King, but these are not Stephen King novels, even by his admission, they are something altogether different) It is a surreal book in and of itself, a book that doesn’t’ end well. You know it won’t end well, and reading towards the end is like watching some inevitable tragedy that you are helpless to stop, though somehow you never quite hoping that it will turn out differently. Seriously. You know that the girl is going to die. You knew it 3 books ago. But the way it plays out, you never give up hope that things will play out differently. Right up until the end you think that her death is a mistake or some literary trick, though you know it isn’t.
Sarah was sleeping peacefully, making troubled little breathing noises. It is entirely possible that I’m insane, but I swear that you can tell when someone has entered a place of dreams. Without looking at them even. Maybe it’s just her breathing; maybe it's the stillness of her body. Maybe. But rather, I think that it is a felt distance. I know that she is far away, in another place, maybe back in her childhood, roaming the streets of another city, maybe she's not even Sarah anymore, she's someone else entirely at that moment. She has gone wandering, and I feel that distance just as I feel her absence any other time we are not together. So as I’m finishing my dark book -alone, a full moon seeping in through our battered blinds - and suddenly
*flit*
Something small gray and quicker than a shadow darts across the floor of our bedroom. It must be my imagination. A combination of the late hour and the book I’m reading.
And it was silent, it didn't make a noise. So I go back to reading. I get another chapter done, I'm just being pulled back into the book when *flit* there it goes again. It's grey. And faster than guilt. This time it darts into our room.
♫ Apartment 26 - Give me more ♫
I used to hallucinate. In the past. I don't admit it often. I'm of sound and strong mind, not the type that hallucinates or gives in to flights of fancy.... ya right. But I had these hallucinations for a good year. At first I knew they were hallucinations and it was kinda intriguing. Like a cute quirk. Then I couldn't tell when it was a hallucination and it wasn't fun anymore. All the visions had this in commons, they were grey and fast.
Once is a fluke, twice is something more. Adrenaline instantly flooded my blood, and I could feel my body flush with heat. None too gently, I woke Sarah up. Okay so I shook her and said "wake up, wake up there's a squirrel or something in the house!" And then I was out of bed in a shot. Like a stealthy ninja in my memory. Like an over weight sleepy white guy in boxer shorts in my wife's memory. And I saw it. The creature. The grey ghost. The demon plotting to erode my sanity one little shred at a time. The vision from the deepest Hades of my psyche.
I know, I know. She looks all innocent and cute. But inside the adorable fuzzy chinchilla shell lurks the dark soul of Charlie the sin-chilla.
See, that's more the look she had on her face.... ya she knew what she was doing. So the scrabbit was apprehended, and returned to her cage... umm home...
♫ Fatboy Slim - Cotton-Eyed Joe Remix ♫
I went back to bed. Sarah was out in seconds, and I was alone again. The adrenaline wore off, and surrealism and unexplained anger set in. I wrestled with it, tried to find its source, decided it was a chemical imbalance, drank a lot of water and tried to ignore it.
At about 2:30 it started raining. It was sudden. There was silence outside our window, with only the sound of the passing cars and the breeze in the leaves. There was a popping sound first. Something I thought was just distant thunder reverberating oddly off the apartment buildings, distorted by the spinning ceiling fan or something. Like the sound that you made as a kid during that lollipop song. Sticking a saliva wetted finger in your mouth and pulling against the inside of your cheek *pop*. Only the kid must have been the size of a beached whale to make a *POP* like that.
The rain moved from nothing to the sounds of sheets of water falling on the street. A sudden downpour. It neither increased nor abated over the next half hour. At 3:00 I finished my book. 3:00, the loneliest hour. Not even the early birds are up yet, and even the night owls have passed out or turned in by choice.
Still not tired, I slip out of bed and over to the window. The sounds of rain have lessened now. But it's "heavy" sounding still. Like a small down pour, and it's made me curious.
♫ DJ Encore - Walking in the Sky ♫
I could tell by the watermarks on the street that the arc of water had lessened. It had nearly hit the other side of the street at one time. There was police tape blocking off the driveway by the hydrant, and a cop car parked in the background. But nothing was moving. I watched for a while, letting ideas, hypothesis’s form and dissolve, and form again. Until a city worker pulled up, capped the damn thing off, gave a nod to the apparently empty cop car, and took off.
Finally at 3:30 I went back to bed, and fell asleep. Slipping effortlessly into dreamless sleep.
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