The House On The Hill

“I took off my Walkman headphones and looked at the house from the street. I said, “I’ve been here before.”

When I was 17, my dad dated a woman, Carmen. One night he asked me to go with them to her recently deceased mother’s house. 

About a week before I met Carmen, I had a dream. I dreamt I was with one of my friends from school and stood on the porch of a house in the middle of the night. The house was up on a hill from the street and there were concrete stairs that led up to the house. Once on the porch, we found a key at the top of a window sill and went inside. The first room was quiet. The lights did not come on. The power was off. Inside, the room had a thick carpet that absorbed all sound. It felt eerie because of that. The next room back was the kitchen. Even in the dark, It felt warm and inviting. There were a lot of really old kitchen tools and gadgets, which gave the room an oddly inviting feel to it. Down a short hallway, beyond the kitchen, a medium-sized dining room was at the back of the house. A small four-person wooden dining table stood in the middle of the room. Beyond it sat a cast iron railing that surrounded a large hole in the floor with a black iron spiral staircase going down into a room below. 

So, back to the day we went to Carmen’s mother’s house. When my dad and his girlfriend and I pulled up to the curb, I took off my Walkman headphones and looked at the house from the street. I said, “I’ve been here before.” 

My dad asked sharply, “What?” And I told him I had been here in a dream, not long ago. He and his girlfriend looked at me. Her eyes widened and she crossed her heart like a good catholic. Then we all stepped out of the old blue Dodge van.

We went up to the house where she pulled the key from her purse and opened the door. We went inside. The power was shut off, but the rooms and layout looked the same as in my dream. I felt all the hair on my arms stand up and tingle. My dad asked, “Still look like the house from your dream?” 

I nodded and said, “Yes, but the one in my dream has a spiral staircase back there in the dining room.” I pointed toward the back of the house and my dad’s girlfriend grabbed her purse and clutched it to her stomach. She ran outside and immediately fumbled for a cigarette. My dad ran after her. After they left, I went straight back to the dining room and my mouth fell open. I looked at the staircase. Indeed, it was the same cast iron stairs running down into a hole in the floor. The dark wood table stood definitely like I was supposed to check in with it before proceeding.  

My dad came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. He didn’t say anything about it. What could he say? We went out to the front of the house and Carmen opened up the garage. In the rear of the garage, there was a small door to a storage area under the house. They had brought me there to get some drums for me from the space behind the garage. His girlfriend had said I could have them a few days before and that’s why they brought me. We got the drums and left. They spoke in Spanglish on the way back. Despite being of Mexican descent, I did not speak Spanish, but I understood the word ‘Diablo,’ so I felt like she was telling my father something about me being the devil.

The drums were not what I expected. They weren’t really studio quality. But they were an unusual children’s drum set, and mostly, all that was left of the set was the main bass/kick drum. It was made of tin and the drum heads were made of a heavy plastic membrane, unlike what I was used to on my old 1930s Radio King drum kit at home. Because the drum body was made of tin, there was a haunting echo to the tone of it. Its voice was no less unnerving than the experience at the house where it came from. I loved that drum because the sound was unique. But more than that, I loved that I had been shown the future. That kind of precognitive dreaming still happens, but it’s rare, and the information is infinitely more important these days. I try to keep my mind open. I hope that one day, I can be more vigilant about remembering what I dream. 

My Dog, Buffy

“It’s a little odd, but when I think back now about her, she felt more like an older sister or an aunt than a pet.”

When I was still a toddler, my dad brought home a miniature Schnauzer puppy. My parents named her Buffy. I think that they felt bad that my dog, Samantha, ran away and wanted my brother and I to have a dog that wouldn’t push us over all the time. More about Samantha another time. 

Buffy and I grew up together. She went with us when we moved from one house to another and finally to the house I lived in when I was a teenager. Buffy had a regal demeanor. She had a lot of bark whenever someone showed up to our house, as a good dog should. Other than that, she remained quiet and observant and not noisy or obnoxious.  

In the last house she lived in with us, she had a favorite spot in my parents bedroom on the second floor. She could see the neighborhood well from the top of my parents bed. If someone walked by the house or knocked on the door, she would sprint off the bed and her claws clicked on my parents tile bedroom floor as she ran to the stairwell and down to the front door to inspect and confront whoever dared to approach. More often than naught, her routine began with a single bark as she kept from the bed. The sound of her routine became predictable. 

It’s a little odd, but when I think back now about her, she felt more like an older sister or an aunt than a pet. It felt as though her job was to look after us, my siblings and I. I was about twelve or thirteen when she passed. I’m not sure how it happened, but we all knew she was getting on in years. One day I came home and was told she was gone. I felt in my heart that she was still nearby, as if her presence in the house remained vigilant. I couldn’t have been more right. 

Both of my parents worked during the day and over summer vacation, I spent a lot of time on my own in an empty house. My brother, being two years older, had a summer job and my sister, five years younger than me, had a babysitter elsewhere in the neighborhood. 

One summer day, I sat alone in the living room rewiring dad’s stereo to enable me to record a tape with the equalizer adjustments applied to the recording. It was windy outside. After a while I heard the front screen door get caught by the wind. The metal door clanged against the frame and caused a loud bang. Immediately I heard the familiar click-clack sound of Buffy’s nails on the floor of my parents bedroom upstairs. I heard her sprint through the second floor hallway and her small feet quickly tapped their way down the stairs. I froze in place. Buffy had been dead for several months. I waited to see her form emerge from the stairwell, but she never did. It happened a couple more times after that, but I never saw her again. Once I stopped hearing her running through the house, then I missed her. She had finally crossed over. 

Crackers

“I don’t really know why, maybe it was all the alcohol in my veins, or the sadness, or just the stupidity of youth, but I stepped in between the rails and lay down between them.”

When I was younger, in my late teens, I ran with a gang of dance hoodlums. Yes, I used to dance and I loved it. I’m not talking about line dancing, Salsa dancing, or even Waltzing. I’m referring to the all-paws-in craziness of the late 80’s industrial dance clubs where the big, “Everybody, get off your ass and dance!” songs were Headhunter by Front 242 or New York, New York,” by MCL. I’m talking about 1987-1989, San Diego. We had some options. The go-to was SOMA, of course, downtown at Fifth and Union streets. But we got around town to other places, equally dark and overflowing with egos. We went to The Piranha Room and sometimes even crawled around in the basement of the Sports Arena when Playskool took over. But one night, The hoodlums and I went to a place near the airport. It was a place called Crackers. 

All I knew about the club was that it was LGBT friendly and I heard the music was good. There were four or five of us if I can remember. That part of my memory is fuzzy because I spent the first part of my night verbally wrestling with my then-recent ex-girlfriend and numbing my brain with rum. 

Our small group went into the club. The music was loud and pulsing. It was so loud that it made my chest shake with every beat. I lagged behind while half the group went dancing and the others slipped off somewhere I didn’t see. I leaned against a wall. Being dressed all in black, looking the part of the tortured artist, I couldn’t say I looked like a wallflower. 

Faces passed in front of me, most of them made up in white powder and heavy eyeliner with ruby lips. The dance clubs I went to always had an air of theater. But that night, I was brooding, and drunk. I opted to step out. 

Once outside, the rush of cool air cleared some of the haze. I walked and crossed the parking lot. The area across the street was quiet, other than the droning beat from the club. I saw a rise ahead of me, climbed the short hill to sit on the slope, and faced west to watch the airliners take off, just beyond the club. 

I took out a cigarette and smoked it pretty fast. Camels were short, after all. I could feel the heaviness of my heart and the loneliness from the breakup. I stood up and looked behind me where the train tracks lay on the dirt. I don’t really know why, maybe it was all the alcohol in my veins, or the sadness, or just the stupidity of youth, but I stepped in between the rails and lay down between them. My eyes stared up at the stars and despite the distant sounds from the club, the still of the night overwhelmed me. That space between the rails buffered almost all of the sounds from the city. I closed my eyes. 

At first, I heard dirt falling down from somewhere inside the rails. I felt a tugging at my pants like someone trying to get my attention. It was the mere sensation of pressure pulling down on my ankles. Then I heard more bits of dirt and pebbles dropping around my head and I sat up. A nearly imperceptible voice brushed my ear and whispered, “Get up.”

I sat bolt upright and found myself standing in front of a small dust devil spinning before me like a dancing girl, wiggling left and right, throwing bits of debris at my face and moving to one side, rudely forcing me to go back up the rise and towards the club parking lot. I heard my buddy Pope calling my name. Matt did the same from down the street so I walked toward them. No sooner had I cleared the tracks did a train go barreling through, laying on its loud horn, pulverizing the dust devil in its path.

Pope ran up to me and asked if I was alright. I said I was. I couldn’t make sense of what had just happened. But I didn’t die. I think everyone there kept shaking their heads wondering what I was doing. I wish I could tell them, but I don’t think I knew. Something moved me to lie down on the train tracks. Something else moved me to get out. 

My life’s been like that. If I don’t have a direction picked out, the force of the wind and dirt will eventually push me one way or another. 

The Boy & The Memorial

“I heard knocking again. I could not tell where it was coming from. It freaked me out, but I also thought maybe one of my coworkers was trying to prank me.”

A few years ago, on a camping trip, I struggled to tell a ghost story to a group of friends. It was about an experience I had at work where I saw a ghost and it followed me home. 

Everyone looked at me wondering when I was going to drop a punchline. When I realized this, I asked, “Has anyone else here ever seen a ghost?” Nobody had. So, I dropped the subject there and then.

 That’s the thing with ghosts, if you’ve seen one, you understand in a way apart from others. If you’ve never experienced the paranormal, you simply won’t get it, and chalk it up to fantasy. It’s difficult to come off as relevant and credible when talking about those things which few others perceive as real. Do you know what I mean? I have a feeling you do.

 I want to share a little about myself, so you know why I write the things I do. I’ve seen and heard things that I cannot explain. I’ve walked in darkness and come out into the light, only to find my way back in. There’s a pile of unusual situations in my past, things which to me can only be explained as paranormal. Sometimes events are planted in our minds like seeds. Once planted, they can take root and grow. I have seen ghosts, and now what grows in my mind is a great tree, a veritable ghost tree. The funny thing is, I have a bad habit of always picking the low hanging fruit. Let me tell you about that ghost story I told at camp. 

 I worked at a large university for years. As a computer tech, working in educational computing, I spent most of my time making sure the student computers worked correctly. I also maintained projectors and the large 90-inch televisions in classrooms. I am one of five people who do this work on the hardware end caring for over 2000 computers in over 110 labs. It keeps us busy.

In March 2016, I went in early to replace a projector lamp in a classroom before classes started. Since the classroom was in the basement of the building that houses our shop, I was very familiar with the space. The classroom had two entry doors. I approached the first door and passed it, pushing my cart full of tools to the second door, because it was closer to the projector. It was around 7 o’clock in the morning and I was working alone. Two of my coworkers were working in other parts of the campus.

 When I put my code into the lock, it didn’t unlock.  I figured the batteries were dead. I peered through the small window into the classroom. I saw a lone student that sat towards the center of the classroom intent on his work on a computer. I knew it was midterms, so I decided not to bother him to let me in.

 I walked back to the first door, tried my code, and the door opened. But when I got inside, I noticed Student was gone.  The computer where he was working had an illuminated screen, it was the only one that was on in the room. I also realized that when I walked into the room, the sensors turned on the lights in the room. When I first saw the student working, it was easy to see him by the light from the monitor.

 I walked across the large classroom to the other door and stepped back into the hallway to look around and see if he had gone out to let me in, but I did not see him. Shivers ran down my spine. I brought my tools inside, climbed the ladder and removed the old projector bulb. That’s when I heard someone knocking. I thought somebody else was trying to get in. Maybe the kid had gone to use the restroom. I got off the ladder and opened the door, but nobody was there. I went back to my work.

 As I was putting the new bulb in, I heard knocking again. I could not tell where it was coming from. It freaked me out, but I also thought maybe one of my coworkers was trying to prank me. I checked the door again. Nobody was there. I called both guys I was working with that day, both were in the middle of work elsewhere. So, I cleaned up and left. The job was done, and I left still feeling the chill down my spine.

 Another one of my coworkers was up in the office when I got there to the first floor. She said I looked shaken and asked if I was OK. I didn’t say anything. She suggested we go to the café and grab something to eat and some coffee. I said that would be good and we left.

 On the way there, we turned down the main strip towards the library, it was a wide walkway that went down the middle of campus. I was just telling her what happened in the basement when she pointed out something odd along the walkway at the library. She said, “Let’s go see it.”

 We stopped, got out and looked at the bunch of vases with flowers and candles that seemed to be left from the night before. There was a framed photograph and a couple other photographs of the young man, and when I saw his face, I recognized him as the boy had seen in the classroom less than an hour ago. I told my coworker that it was the same guy and the fear on her face was clear. It was a lot to take in. I told her I wanted to leave so we left.  

The university I worked at had almost 40,000 students that year. But the boy that I saw was familiar. I didn’t know him, but I knew that I’d seen him in the building I worked in before. To makeshift memorial, which had his pictures also had his name. I looked it up on the Internet and found that he had been missing for exactly one year. There was only one small follow up about his case saying that Police had found him. He was deceased. When I searched his name, a YouTube link popped up, and there was a memorial video slideshow that some of his friends had made. And a couple of photos showed him with students that I worked with across the hallway from my office, and it made more sense to me that he was still there. Although I found no other official information about his death, what I did find is that he had gone missing from his apartment in 2015, and left his cell phone, wallet, and keys behind. Rumors speculate that there’s no information because the family wanted privacy and it is suggested that he committed suicide. All his friends remember him as being the sweetest, kindest person, and best friend you could ever have.

 When I went home from work that night, I told my wife what I seen, what I learned. And when I went to sleep that night, my eyes remained open for a long time. I stared at the ceiling as that boy walked around me, circling me, telling me he knows I can hear him. But I didn’t know what to say or do so I pretended not to hear him, and I regret that. I never saw him again.

The Visitor

The Ceiling Lamp

“It’s like that. Once the first thing happens, the family is acutely aware that something or someone is in the house with us.”

To be perfectly honest. When this type of thing happens in my family, there’s a palpable shift in the air. Everyone feels it. At least, everyone in the house, family, feels it. It’s like when someone hears, “Hey, that show is on channel six right now.” And everyone can’t help but tune in to the same wavelength. It’s like that. Once the first thing happens, the family is acutely aware that something or someone is in the house with us. 

Last night just straight-up sucked. Last night I was in the living room at about 1:00. I was tucked in trying to stay warm, and looking up at my phone. The lights were off. After a while, I put my phone down and closed my eyes, and then I heard the distinct click of the light’s dimmer switch and the lights came on. I thought someone had woken up, seen me on my phone, and wanted to get my attention without startling me too much.

Nobody else was in the room.  It took me a moment to register. I didn’t get any particular impression of who it might be. But as the situation sank in. It wasn’t friendly. I got up, crossed the room, and shut the light off. The dimmer wasn’t just barely on. It had been turned a three-quarter turn so the lights were full-on bright.

I didn’t say anything to whomever/whatever it was. I played it off like nothing weird was going on. I committed to burning sage and cleaning the house the next day. When I woke up, I told my family what had happened. Heads nodded and eyes shifted away from me as if to say, “Shit, not again. Srsly?” Yea, again, seriously. 

I dusted the house, picked up every errant thing, and put it in its place. I ran a couple of errands and made a great soup at lunchtime. Then I sent my family out to do their own thing. I wanted to make sure the smoke didn’t get to their lungs. All three of us have asthma, but mine is the least severe. My youngest daughter went to visit a friend at the park and my wife went for a walk in the canyon with one of her friends.

I pulled out the cast iron kettle and filled the bottom with some sand. I wasn’t sure how. But I wanted to make certain that whatever it was knew I meant business. I grabbed both large flight feathers, the crow, and the great horned owl from my medicine bag. It’s more of a case. Since my bag was stolen a couple of months ago. Regardless. I pulled out the bundle of smudgery:  mountain sage, sweetgrass, and Cedar, and lit the top of it on fire. 

I began in our bedroom, the far corner. I spread the smoke with the two large feathers in one hand and the burning leaves sat upright in the iron kettle. I called out and told the spirits it was time for them to go, time to leave and not come back. I began with a meek demeanor because come on, how many times do you really do this kind of thing? 

I cleared the bedroom and closed the door behind me. Curiously enough, when I reached for the door handle and pushed smoke through the doorway, I saw a shadow move out from the room and into the hallway. Just my mind playing tricks on me, right? I then cleared the hallway restroom, closing the bedroom door behind me. 

I moved into the kitchen, cleared my throat, and lit the bundle again since it threatened to go out. I spoke more forcefully and told the spirits in the house to get the fuck out. Leave my house and don’t ever come back. Then I moved into my daughter’s room. I started in her bathroom and felt especially protective of her when I ordered the spirit to get out of my house. I closed the door behind me and cleared her room from the furthest corner and out into the living room. Again I could have sworn something passed by me as I closed the door. It was like chasing a child. I got angry and said, Get out of my house, get out of my house now!”

I cleared the living room with smoke and opened the front door, “Get out of my house.” I pushed smoke through the doorway with the feathers and could feel the thing staring back at me. I chased it out and shut the door.  I didn’t feel like much had changed, but I waited. Time would tell. 

After a while. I reopened the doors and windows to clear some of that smoke. In the meantime, I ran an errand. When I got back, the house was quiet. So I started cooking dinner. The family came back and settled in. Our home had a burnt Sage aroma to it, which I enjoy. But, by the time evening rolled around, the doors and windows had run their course. I closed everything up for the night. The family split up, each to their own device. My daughter watched a movie in her room while I took a shower. My wife sat in the living room and read. 

~

I felt good about smudging the house… until I didn’t. 

When I emerged from my shower, the same day as the cleansing of the house, my wife nearly stammered, “I don’t know if I should say something now, or wait until later.” 

She didn’t wait. She said that while she was reading alone in the living room, a scratching noise came from the front door, just across the room from her. It sounded like someone was trying to get into the house with a key, but had difficulty. When she looked up, the sound stopped. Shrugging it off as possibly being one of our neighbors in the condo next door. She went back to her reading. But it happened again. Again she looked up. Again the sound quieted. This time it made her wonder. But she continued reading. Finally, the sound came a third time, so she got up and went to the door. It fell silent. She peered out the peephole and saw nothing but our empty boring stairwell. 

By now, she had been unnerved. So she decided to get ready for bed. First, she went to the bathroom to remove her contact lenses. She opened the medicine cabinet, grabbed her things, and closed the mirror. Not two seconds later, the mirror door popped open. She shut it, and as soon as she looked at the other mirror to remove her contact, the door popped open again. She decided something must be pushing it out, like a bottle or something. So she checked to see what it could be but found nothing was in the way. She closed it. Waited. It stayed shut. 

Then, she stared at the mirror, finally reaching to her eye to get her contact. The mirror door popped open again. She yelled at it, “stop it!” and she closed the door. This time it stayed shut. 

Here we are, weeks later. True to form, things like this seldom just stop. We always have to do more, focus more, and speak out more.  Last night, my wife and I met up in our bedroom, ready to watch some tv and wind down.  She had a blank look on her face and contrary to her typical, I’m-on-my-phone-now stance, she looked past me, through me at the closet.  I set to turn on the iMac and logged onto Hulu when she said, “It’s happened again.” 

My heart fell. I knew what she was talking about. I mean, how could I not? She isn’t one to mince words. She explained that while she was sitting there on the bed, reading a story on her phone, she felt like someone had come in. Just as she registered that nobody was in the room with her, she looked up, only to get a face full of alcohol breath, like someone who’d been drinking for the last hour had breathed that rancid drunken breath into her face.  She wrinkled her nose in protest and as soon as she reacted to it, it came again, a long exhale of foul liquor breath. Whatever, whoever it was seemed to be enjoying her torture.  

We talked about what it could be. Was it some sewage gas backup from the drain in the bathroom?  Could it have come in through the window? 

“No, this was deliberate.” She said she felt like she was being harassed at a frat party.  “It was right in my face. I could feel the breath on my face. Something is very wrong. “ 

And then we watched some tv and forgot all about it for now. What could we do? It happens, but then it always stops for a while. I think we’re getting way too used to it.  But we will need to smudge the house again. Crossing my fingers. This is what our life is like. It’s always been this way. How about you? Did you see something? Send us your story and we just may post it here for you to share. I can keep your name out of it, if you’d feel better about it. You aren’t alone. 

The Accident

(The Neighborhood I Grew Up In)

“Pain ran into my chest and spread to my arms. My chest felt instantly cold. I could feel my heart beating hard, and then I knew I’d made a mistake. “

A lot of the things I remember from when I was very small are the things that just stand out because they were important moments for me. I remember being about two years old in Virginia and being upset that I couldn't go play in the snow with my brother and our friends. I remember running from my first dog, Samantha, as she chased me around the backyard, up and over the swing-set slide. She was such a cool, big dog. And I remember kissing little, sandy-blonde-haired Ronda in the yard between our two houses when I was about five or six. My parents and my aunt had a nickname for her, "Raunchy Ronda." I didn't know about that nickname until I was in my twenties and told them about that first kiss. When I think back to it, I remember it being pretty darn good.

Of all the things I remember, one of the clearest memories in my head took place when I was about six years old, living in Poway, at the high end of a hill-sloped street called Hillcountry Drive. Our house sat one house down from the top of the hill. Across the street, two of the houses had swimming pools. At the height of summer, it was great. We often got to visit the home of one of the neighborhood couples, Al and Brenda, to enjoy the water. They didn’t have kids and they liked us to come to visit whenever we could, so we took the liberty of going over to swim in their tropical, bright blue pool; however, I did not really know how to swim. I never had lessons. My parents didn’t think it was a big deal and so I didn’t either. You could find me most summers clinging to the side of the pool, crab-walking along the concrete lip of it, skinny as a string bean and dark as a kid from India. The sun darkened me like you wouldn’t believe. It's my Mexican roots that bring it out in me.

Anyway... the accident happened in the middle of winter. It was after school and we were not at Al and Brenda’s. I’d gone over to see the kid two doors down from Al & Brenda’s. His name was Jay-Jay. He was a scraggly little blonde-haired kid with very few rules enforced upon him by his parents. They were very hippy-like if I remember correctly. Anyway... Jay Jay was a little pain in the butt. He was a year younger and ten times more immature.

It was cold out and early in the afternoon. Jay Jay and I were looking into the cold water of the deep end of his parents’ black-bottomed pool. He had this big single glass oval-shaped pair of goggles as you see in all the old movies. We took turns sticking our eyes and part of our face underwater at the deep and of the pool to see the things we’d thrown in: a rock, a shoe, and his toy boat that we sank with the rock and the shoe. I think that I instigated Jay Jay’s aggressive nature because I joked with him by putting my hands on his sides and pretending to shove him in, but holding him back from falling in for real. So, in retrospect, not really something nice to joke about. No joke at all, really. Maybe I provoked him, but the next time I knelt down and readied myself to stick my head in the water, I felt him kick my butt as hard and fast as he could-not to pretend, but a real shove.

It was cold that day, windy, and partly cloudy. I had on this very heavy wool and cloth jacket. It really did make me look like a sheep, now that I think about it.
Going under the water, the whole world changed. It got dark. All I could see around me were the black walls of the pool, then I turned over and saw the sun beaming in through the surface of the water. I had no chance to catch my breath, I went in so fast. All the air in my lungs left quickly trailing off in tiny bubbles. That wool jacket felt like it was made of rocks and I went straight down.

I struggled to swim, but I didn’t know how. I started to panic and I saw Jay Jay’s face looking down at me, a look on his face like fascination, like he was watching a fly whose wings he'd just plucked off. He sat, intrigued to watch it walk around out of its element. I remember trying to breathe underwater and it hurt. Pain ran into my chest and spread to my arms. My chest felt instantly cold. I could feel my heart beating hard, and then I knew I’d made a mistake.

Suddenly, white light erased everything and I was warm again like I had been sucked up into a vacuum. I suddenly found myself high up in the sky, hovering over the backyard of Jay-Jay’s parent’s house. I felt light, detached and everything was silent. There was almost no sound at all. I looked down behind the houses and saw the canyon and the creek which led to the pond. The pond was nearly dried up, just black and mucky then. I looked out and realized I could see all the way to the ocean, I was so high up. I tried to focus below me. I saw Jay-Jay sitting on the side of the pool and then I saw someone come out of the house. It was Jay Jay’s dad. He looked angry. He saw me in the water. Then, I saw myself in the water! I was a white lump of jacket fluff lying at the bottom of the pool and my arms and legs stretched out, limp, lifeless, and I just lay there face up on the bottom, unmoving.

Jay Jay’s dad pulled his shirt off as he got closer to the water and he jumped in quickly. I saw him pull me up and he kept trying to hold me right side up, but my head just kept lolling over. He walked up the concrete stairs at the shallow end of the pool with me in his arms, then he tipped me over. He hit my back and nothing happened.

I looked around from the sky and thought how beautiful it was there. It was so quiet. I saw our house and my mom was in the backyard watering some plants. I looked back at where I was lying on the pavement next to the grass. They rolled me onto the grass and beat on my back. Jay Jay's dad had me on his knee. There were a few people out there now. Jay Jay’s mom and older sister, and some other kid I didn’t recognize were all out there. Jay Jay’s mom had her hand on her mouth in horror, and I remember she was wearing a sleeveless top and I thought, “Isn’t she cold?”
Suddenly, I was on the grassy ground, coughing and throwing up water, and it was weird because it was like my lungs were expelling the water out like you’d wring out a wet washcloth constricting and squeezing in bursts. It hurt. I felt cold, sick, and embarrassed. Jay Jay’s dad got up and looked at me and then at Jay Jay. He just said, “You, go home.” And then to Jay Jay, “Get inside!”

My clothes were soaked. I remember my legs were shaking like I almost couldn’t walk. Jay Jay’s mom helped me stand up. I went out the side gate to the front of the house. It was a short walk up the street to my house and my mom met me at the door asking me what happened. I told her I fell into the pool. But that's all I said. She brought me inside and I don’t remember anything after that.

Years later I asked my mom if she remembered me falling into the pool and she doesn’t remember. I never really made a big deal of it since I thought I was in big trouble. I never really thought about how my perspective changed from being in the water and then being high in the air. It felt natural.
I know I’ll never forget that feeling though. It’s the feeling I tried to recreate when I wrote about a dream I had “The Silence.” Some things are hard to forget. “It’s the silence I remember most. The silence, and the air rushing by.”

I’m Still Alive

“Death, you have got to do better. How many times are you going to choke me before you succeed?”

Deal with it. You tried to kill me but you didn’t succeed. You missed the second time, too. And the third. The fourth, and so on; you just keep missing, and here I stand. Ok, here I sit. That last time, you sure gave it your best shot, but Covid didn’t kill me either.   

You got closer with that other virus. What was that one? Oh, yeah, Mononucleosis. Good one. I can’t believe you got me to completely block my airway so I couldn't draw a single breath when I woke up. But, guess what? I could breathe through my nose, and here I am, cabron.   

Death, you have got to do better. How many times are you going to choke me before you succeed? We shall see. But not today.   

I’m going to have to shake your hand one day. But until I screw up, I’m going to write about all that crap that’s happened, yeah, all of it. Just me? Oh, no. Not a chance. We all have the four-one-one on you. I have stories about me, sure. But the stories that linger in doorways, or dark basements and shuffle in behind people are some good stories too. You leave some big assed breadcrumbs, amigo. Not everyone just dies and goes on their merry way.  

You think you’re tuff, a professional. Not even close. I’ve seen those ghosts you leave behind. I see them. I can feel their breath on my neck. I can hear them calling my name. Sometimes they follow me home. Last week, one even turned on my ceiling light to wake me up and that light is on a dimmer! You’re sloppy. And for that, I will call you out.  

I’m just getting started. I’ll see you soon enough. Until then, I’ve got some words to share.