I haven't been sleeping much lately. My schedule is way weird right now - working night shift for two weeks at the job I'm leaving, so that I can work days at my new, lower stress job. There isn't much room for sleep. I've had broken dreams, odd things that seem to disappear as soon as I wake, and one really upsetting one I can't really express. So, here's one that I've had many times before, and will probably have again.
I'm at an event. I'm not sure exactly what is occurring, but the area in which it is happening includes a big portion of the small town where I grew up. There seem to be multiple things going on, including a cross-country race that winds around the entire grounds.
On the ground in front of me is a great big guy. He's battered, severely injured, and unconscious. I know that I'm the one who did it, but I don't know why. I feel like I was pushed or trapped into it doing this, but I know I'll still be held accountable for it regardless, because from the appearance of his injuries, I didn't stop beating on him right away after he was down.
There are people nearby who heard the fight and are coming to see what is wrong. I back away rapidly from the man, trying to hide in the bushes before they see me. I realize I'm covered in his blood. If I don't get out of here, I'm going to be in huge trouble. I run away from the scene, barreling through a maze of snack trailers and equipment until I reach an area that seems to be outside of the event. If I can get a little further away, I might be able to make it home without being detected.
I hide between trashcans to avoid a police car driving by, then run down a series of alleyways toward my parents' house. The whole time, I'm sure someone is following me, but I can't see anyone. Finally, I get there, only to find that my whole family has gathered in the kitchen and is waiting for me. When I enter the house, they lecture me and say they are ashamed of what I've done. I beg them not to say that, telling them that what happened wasn't something I planned ahead, or even did on purpose, just a response to a situation that was inflicted upon me by the victim.
My father tells me that the man died from his injuries, that I punched him so hard in the chest that I stopped his heart. There are tears in Dad's eyes, and he asks me, "Do you have any idea how much force that takes?"
I don't know, but I figure it's a lot. I am filled with dread, realizing I've taken a life. The horror of it doesn't all dawn on me at once... at first, I just feel sorry that the man is dead, and guilty over being the cause. Then, I realize that there will be others affected by his death, people who loved him. And having killed him is a terrible crime. I'll be convicted and sentenced. I could even be sentenced to die as punishment, even with extenuating circumstances. As the reality of the situation begins to weigh on me, my family advances upon me and I understand that they mean to turn me in to the authorities. I turn to run, head out the door, and flee across the yard, pursued by everyone.
This is when I usually wake, feeling despondent, thinking about what to do next and how to survive, knowing that I would either have to hide forever, or turn myself in and face the criminal justice system. Upon waking, this dream stays with me, usually for at least a day, sometimes two or three, causing a sense of impending doom, and strong feelings of guilt, anxiety, and depression.
Just a dream
I can't even describe this one. I have the words, just not the fortitude, or the heart. I came out of it with this. This is all I can do.
EDGE
Baleful Craving
Echoing, pilfering
Wanton entreaty
Softened screaming
Heavy whisper
Nudging, edging
Trudging, hedging
Pushing, pulling
Rending, Seething
Exposed, unguarded
Dropping, falling
Down and away
Rattling on
Settling in
Infinitely bound
Unheeded, unheard
Unnoticed, unwanted
Unseen, unclaimed
Unclean, undone
EDGE
Baleful Craving
Echoing, pilfering
Wanton entreaty
Softened screaming
Heavy whisper
Nudging, edging
Trudging, hedging
Pushing, pulling
Rending, Seething
Exposed, unguarded
Dropping, falling
Down and away
Rattling on
Settling in
Infinitely bound
Unheeded, unheard
Unnoticed, unwanted
Unseen, unclaimed
Unclean, undone
And yet I miss them
To start this one, I need a bit of back story. I've always had a bit of a 6th sense. Not like in the movies, where everything is plain as day, just the ability to feel presences, hear and smell details that are not so obvious, but that others will notice when I point them out, and sometimes see auras or what I think of as energy disturbances. Sometimes I seem to pick up on "leftovers," energy or strong emotions that are attached to areas or objects. Once in a while, I'll have a full-on "psychic" experience, where I get an image, or a memory, or some other information that is hanging around waiting for someone susceptible to show up and feel it.
I've never been entirely comfortable with this, and have avoided messing too much with "the other side." I don't seek things out. If things find me, I do what I have to do to handle and extract myself from the situation, and try to have no more involvement than that, with the exception, at Samhain, of honoring those of my loved ones who have crossed over, or of helping friends handle and protect themselves from unwanted "other side" experiences that they have had.
In 1996, I moved in with a bunch of friends. When I say a bunch, I mean 7 of us all combining our resources together to rent a house. We had 1 kitchen, 1 bathroom, 3 guys 4 gals, a straight couple, a 1 -straight-1-bi couple, a lesbian couple, and a single gay man all living together. It was a beautiful disaster. We'd have made a great reality show.
The lesbians were into ghost hunting. My then fiance and I were practicing Wiccans. For some reason, the girls thought this should translate into a desire on my part to go ghost hunting with them.
It didn't. I refused. So, one day, my sweet buddies decided to take me out for fast food, then pull a half-bait-and-switch (we actually did get food) and take me to reputedly haunted places as kind of a psychic sensor without even giving me a heads-up. I was not a happy camper.
"This isn't the way home. Where are we going?"
I look around at my housemates. My fiance is in the front with SL & DK, with SL doing the driving. I'm in the middle of the back seat, between JD & TG, having just finished a fast food feast. I'm in the middle because it's the only way for me to have enough leg room. JD & TG are razzing me about my insanely huge appetite and how it doesn't go with my skinny ass. They're loud and funny, and I've been enjoying the camaraderie until this moment, when I realize they're taking me somewhere other than where they said we were going to go.
TG says, "This is the only way we could think of to get you out."
I admit, I've been cooped up since the accident, but I've also been in a lot of pain, and it's cold outside. I just recently found out that the reason my recovery from a simple whiplash injury has been so slow is that I have fibromyalgia.
ST pulls over in front of one of the area's more broken down farms. It's kind of odd in the Northwest Ohio area. Driving through the rural areas, you'll see everything ranging from state of the art to completely abandoned. This one looks abandoned. It's overgrown with weeds and brush, the buildings decaying, equipment sitting unused and rusted beside the slowly falling barn. Something about this place gives me the willies, and I shiver involuntarily.
"Everything ok? Why are we here? Is there something wrong with the car?"
The girls exchange a secretive smile. JD opens her door, gets out of the car, and before I can protest, grabs my arm and pulls me out too. TG is getting out on the other side. Everyone is exiting the vehicle. At this point, even my fiance is asking why we're here. We don't have a flat tire, and there were no funny noises from the motor.
I'm feeling a super-sized dose of get-the-hell-out-of-here from the barn. The energy here nauseates me. I feel the oddest sense of dread, like a kid who has been told "wait 'till your father gets home" and is anticipating far, far worse than just the lectures I had when I was a kid. I am shaking, fighting tears, and my back feels like it's covered in bee stings. I look around. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the car.
My fiance sees me losing the color in my face, shaking, and looking very upset. He is immediately right next to me, asking why we've stopped here and if I'm all right. I say we should leave, now. JD & TG start to look less sure of themselves, and ask what I'm "seeing."
I'm not seeing anything, but I'm feeling way too much. I try to push it away, mentally focusing on putting a divide between myself and the residual energy or feelings of this area. I don't know what's hitting me, but it feels totally awful. I use a technique I've learned in my Wicca studies with my fiance and some other people we practice with, drawing lines of strong, pure, positive energy around myself and spinning them into a hard, egg-shaped shell. That strongly mutes the "psychic" ambiance in my personal space, allowing me to take a more objective, uninfluenced look at what just hit me. In this case, the biggest relief I got was that my back felt better.
Something bad happened here, not just once, but over and over, to someone who was powerless to avoid it. I'm not skilled or practiced enough to be able to tell exactly what it was, because I don't practice this. I avoid this. I'm pissed as hell that they have done this to me. I don't want to be here. I told them that. Things like this are why.
I suspect that I'm feeling the residuals from a situation of serious abuse, but I can't feel how old it is, or whether it's attached to the building, or the property. It could have been anything; animal abuse, a family thing, an employer thing, a cruel slave owner, or mistreatment of native people by white immigrants. The only direction I have is the feeling that the origin of the dread is young and male.
I find myself unable to keep it to myself, and end up explaining that to the girls. They're eating it up like it's some kind of entertainment, but I'm not. Even with my shield, I feel like I'm going to heave on the lawn if we don't get out of here.
My fiance can see that I'm extremely uncomfortable with being here. He tells me he'll protect me, and he steps right up next to me, puts his arm around me, and creates the same kind of shield I just did. With him standing there, the residue is not getting through as easily, and I feel better, but I still really, really want to leave.
The girls ask if I can see anything. I'm looking at the barn, but there's no shadow or figure that doesn't belong there. The creepiest thing about the place, I tell them, is that rope hanging from the ceiling which can be seen through the sagging, half-open doors.
Both girls immediately give me the hairy eyeball. I'm confused until my fiance tells me that the barn isn't falling apart, the doors are shut tight, and there's no rope that any of the rest of them can see. When he says that, I'm finally able to see through the residue of the past, as the rot, rust, and decay just sort of slowly fade away. First, I can see through everything that isn't there, then it rapidly increases in transparency until it's gone. The house isn't the same house. It's not quite in the same spot, is made of wood instead of bricks, and is bigger. The barn is in the same spot, but it's taller, in good shape, and closed up tight. There's no farm equipment sitting out. The place is deserted, but not like before.
At that moment, the air of the place changes for me. There's a sense of the dreaded moment rapidly approaching, and I physically hear someone stomping across a hardwood floor in heavy boots. The far off sound of a deep, inhuman growl makes me jump out of my skin. It almost sounds more like someone dragging something heavy across a rough surface than a voice. I cover my ears with my hands. Whatever I'm feeling nearby wasn't here before, and it's malevolent. We could be in serious danger.
JD & TG both pepper me with questions. "What is it? What do you hear? Do you see something? Is there a ghost?"
At this point, SL & DK, both of whom have just been kind of watching, are starting to get really creeped out. If I'm going to convince anyone to leave, it'll probably be them, because JD & TG are too curious, and my fiance is bent on being a knight in shining armor. I look at DK and say, "We have to move, now. It's pissed, and it knows we're here. We have to go."
That creeps her out like nobody's business, and she starts pestering SL to get back into the car and drive away. I push my fiance toward the car and tell him to get in, at the same time shoving myself away from him. I climb into the back seat. SL agrees to leave, not willing to admit it's because he's got the heebie-jeebies, but quite able to admit that DK's emotional state is a concern. JD & TG reluctantly agree to go. As we all pile in and close the doors, I'm hit with a sense of urgency, my mind picturing SL stomping the gas and shooting forward like a race car. Something is approaching the vehicle.
SL turns the key. The car turns over, but doesn't start. He cusses a blue streak, pushing the pedal to the floor once, letting it up, and trying again. I hear pounding on the ground outside, turn to look, and see a dark shadow coming out of the barn. It looks like a big black cloud of smoke, moving slowly across the yard toward the car. I hear SL flat out yell at his car to start, still swearing like mad. My fiance puts his hands on the dashboard, closes his eyes, and quietly starts singing an elemental fire chant we sometimes use in the circle. SL turns the key, and the engine roars to life as that smokey cloud crosses the drainage ditch and reaches the car. The whole vehicle rocks sideways like something slammed into it. SL floors it and peels out of there, speeding up the road for quite a distance before slowing down. No one says a word until we get home, where I remind them "I don't go ghost hunting!" before heading up to my & my fiance's room to defrag with some music.
The actual experience was almost identical to the dream, until the last paragraph. I remember getting into the car, and SL having some difficulty starting it, but we actually got out of there without that black cloud getting anywhere near us. We drove around for awhile, hung out by a reservoir, and had a second experience I also wasn't happy about. I ended up telling the girls off a little, but I didn't wander off to sulk in my room when we got home. We sat around playing video games, instead. The memory of my fiance using the fire elemental chant to start the car was from an entirely different incident, with a different car, and for the record, after the chant, the previously unresponsive car started like nothing was ever wrong.
I don't know what made me think of this last night. We ended up having a falling-out, moving out of the house, and breaking off contact with them. It's been around 15 years since I've had any contact with anyone from that car except my then fiance, who is now my ex, but still a friend. Either way, the dream has stuck with me today. I'm not hugely bothered, but I do feel kind of weird, and to be honest, I do miss those guys.
I've never been entirely comfortable with this, and have avoided messing too much with "the other side." I don't seek things out. If things find me, I do what I have to do to handle and extract myself from the situation, and try to have no more involvement than that, with the exception, at Samhain, of honoring those of my loved ones who have crossed over, or of helping friends handle and protect themselves from unwanted "other side" experiences that they have had.
In 1996, I moved in with a bunch of friends. When I say a bunch, I mean 7 of us all combining our resources together to rent a house. We had 1 kitchen, 1 bathroom, 3 guys 4 gals, a straight couple, a 1 -straight-1-bi couple, a lesbian couple, and a single gay man all living together. It was a beautiful disaster. We'd have made a great reality show.
The lesbians were into ghost hunting. My then fiance and I were practicing Wiccans. For some reason, the girls thought this should translate into a desire on my part to go ghost hunting with them.
It didn't. I refused. So, one day, my sweet buddies decided to take me out for fast food, then pull a half-bait-and-switch (we actually did get food) and take me to reputedly haunted places as kind of a psychic sensor without even giving me a heads-up. I was not a happy camper.
"This isn't the way home. Where are we going?"
I look around at my housemates. My fiance is in the front with SL & DK, with SL doing the driving. I'm in the middle of the back seat, between JD & TG, having just finished a fast food feast. I'm in the middle because it's the only way for me to have enough leg room. JD & TG are razzing me about my insanely huge appetite and how it doesn't go with my skinny ass. They're loud and funny, and I've been enjoying the camaraderie until this moment, when I realize they're taking me somewhere other than where they said we were going to go.
TG says, "This is the only way we could think of to get you out."
I admit, I've been cooped up since the accident, but I've also been in a lot of pain, and it's cold outside. I just recently found out that the reason my recovery from a simple whiplash injury has been so slow is that I have fibromyalgia.
ST pulls over in front of one of the area's more broken down farms. It's kind of odd in the Northwest Ohio area. Driving through the rural areas, you'll see everything ranging from state of the art to completely abandoned. This one looks abandoned. It's overgrown with weeds and brush, the buildings decaying, equipment sitting unused and rusted beside the slowly falling barn. Something about this place gives me the willies, and I shiver involuntarily.
"Everything ok? Why are we here? Is there something wrong with the car?"
The girls exchange a secretive smile. JD opens her door, gets out of the car, and before I can protest, grabs my arm and pulls me out too. TG is getting out on the other side. Everyone is exiting the vehicle. At this point, even my fiance is asking why we're here. We don't have a flat tire, and there were no funny noises from the motor.
I'm feeling a super-sized dose of get-the-hell-out-of-here from the barn. The energy here nauseates me. I feel the oddest sense of dread, like a kid who has been told "wait 'till your father gets home" and is anticipating far, far worse than just the lectures I had when I was a kid. I am shaking, fighting tears, and my back feels like it's covered in bee stings. I look around. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the car.
My fiance sees me losing the color in my face, shaking, and looking very upset. He is immediately right next to me, asking why we've stopped here and if I'm all right. I say we should leave, now. JD & TG start to look less sure of themselves, and ask what I'm "seeing."
I'm not seeing anything, but I'm feeling way too much. I try to push it away, mentally focusing on putting a divide between myself and the residual energy or feelings of this area. I don't know what's hitting me, but it feels totally awful. I use a technique I've learned in my Wicca studies with my fiance and some other people we practice with, drawing lines of strong, pure, positive energy around myself and spinning them into a hard, egg-shaped shell. That strongly mutes the "psychic" ambiance in my personal space, allowing me to take a more objective, uninfluenced look at what just hit me. In this case, the biggest relief I got was that my back felt better.
Something bad happened here, not just once, but over and over, to someone who was powerless to avoid it. I'm not skilled or practiced enough to be able to tell exactly what it was, because I don't practice this. I avoid this. I'm pissed as hell that they have done this to me. I don't want to be here. I told them that. Things like this are why.
I suspect that I'm feeling the residuals from a situation of serious abuse, but I can't feel how old it is, or whether it's attached to the building, or the property. It could have been anything; animal abuse, a family thing, an employer thing, a cruel slave owner, or mistreatment of native people by white immigrants. The only direction I have is the feeling that the origin of the dread is young and male.
I find myself unable to keep it to myself, and end up explaining that to the girls. They're eating it up like it's some kind of entertainment, but I'm not. Even with my shield, I feel like I'm going to heave on the lawn if we don't get out of here.
My fiance can see that I'm extremely uncomfortable with being here. He tells me he'll protect me, and he steps right up next to me, puts his arm around me, and creates the same kind of shield I just did. With him standing there, the residue is not getting through as easily, and I feel better, but I still really, really want to leave.
The girls ask if I can see anything. I'm looking at the barn, but there's no shadow or figure that doesn't belong there. The creepiest thing about the place, I tell them, is that rope hanging from the ceiling which can be seen through the sagging, half-open doors.
Both girls immediately give me the hairy eyeball. I'm confused until my fiance tells me that the barn isn't falling apart, the doors are shut tight, and there's no rope that any of the rest of them can see. When he says that, I'm finally able to see through the residue of the past, as the rot, rust, and decay just sort of slowly fade away. First, I can see through everything that isn't there, then it rapidly increases in transparency until it's gone. The house isn't the same house. It's not quite in the same spot, is made of wood instead of bricks, and is bigger. The barn is in the same spot, but it's taller, in good shape, and closed up tight. There's no farm equipment sitting out. The place is deserted, but not like before.
At that moment, the air of the place changes for me. There's a sense of the dreaded moment rapidly approaching, and I physically hear someone stomping across a hardwood floor in heavy boots. The far off sound of a deep, inhuman growl makes me jump out of my skin. It almost sounds more like someone dragging something heavy across a rough surface than a voice. I cover my ears with my hands. Whatever I'm feeling nearby wasn't here before, and it's malevolent. We could be in serious danger.
JD & TG both pepper me with questions. "What is it? What do you hear? Do you see something? Is there a ghost?"
At this point, SL & DK, both of whom have just been kind of watching, are starting to get really creeped out. If I'm going to convince anyone to leave, it'll probably be them, because JD & TG are too curious, and my fiance is bent on being a knight in shining armor. I look at DK and say, "We have to move, now. It's pissed, and it knows we're here. We have to go."
That creeps her out like nobody's business, and she starts pestering SL to get back into the car and drive away. I push my fiance toward the car and tell him to get in, at the same time shoving myself away from him. I climb into the back seat. SL agrees to leave, not willing to admit it's because he's got the heebie-jeebies, but quite able to admit that DK's emotional state is a concern. JD & TG reluctantly agree to go. As we all pile in and close the doors, I'm hit with a sense of urgency, my mind picturing SL stomping the gas and shooting forward like a race car. Something is approaching the vehicle.
SL turns the key. The car turns over, but doesn't start. He cusses a blue streak, pushing the pedal to the floor once, letting it up, and trying again. I hear pounding on the ground outside, turn to look, and see a dark shadow coming out of the barn. It looks like a big black cloud of smoke, moving slowly across the yard toward the car. I hear SL flat out yell at his car to start, still swearing like mad. My fiance puts his hands on the dashboard, closes his eyes, and quietly starts singing an elemental fire chant we sometimes use in the circle. SL turns the key, and the engine roars to life as that smokey cloud crosses the drainage ditch and reaches the car. The whole vehicle rocks sideways like something slammed into it. SL floors it and peels out of there, speeding up the road for quite a distance before slowing down. No one says a word until we get home, where I remind them "I don't go ghost hunting!" before heading up to my & my fiance's room to defrag with some music.
The actual experience was almost identical to the dream, until the last paragraph. I remember getting into the car, and SL having some difficulty starting it, but we actually got out of there without that black cloud getting anywhere near us. We drove around for awhile, hung out by a reservoir, and had a second experience I also wasn't happy about. I ended up telling the girls off a little, but I didn't wander off to sulk in my room when we got home. We sat around playing video games, instead. The memory of my fiance using the fire elemental chant to start the car was from an entirely different incident, with a different car, and for the record, after the chant, the previously unresponsive car started like nothing was ever wrong.
I don't know what made me think of this last night. We ended up having a falling-out, moving out of the house, and breaking off contact with them. It's been around 15 years since I've had any contact with anyone from that car except my then fiance, who is now my ex, but still a friend. Either way, the dream has stuck with me today. I'm not hugely bothered, but I do feel kind of weird, and to be honest, I do miss those guys.
By request
A few readers have asked me to try to draw the Doc. Though I'm not a confident (because I don't feel competent) artist when it comes to drawing, I decided to give it a shot (no pun intended.)
Instead of trying to put pencil to paper, this time I did the entire thing in photoshop. That worked out slightly better, though I couldn't focus on his relaxed state and ended up drawing the last time I saw him. I think this one came out better than the drawing of the monster. Maybe I draw better with a mouse than with a pencil.
Instead of trying to put pencil to paper, this time I did the entire thing in photoshop. That worked out slightly better, though I couldn't focus on his relaxed state and ended up drawing the last time I saw him. I think this one came out better than the drawing of the monster. Maybe I draw better with a mouse than with a pencil.
Parting shot down
This is one of those that started off with me knowing a bunch of things that had "happened," but which I didn't actually experience in the dream. I knew them as memories, though in reality, they have not occurred. There are some of them which might, though, because I'm in the process right now of changing jobs, and that was the subject of the dream.
I had finished the hiring process with the place I'm interviewing with now. I had a start date, giving me just enough time to provide my current employer and my psychotic, abusive boss with two weeks' notice and then have two days off before starting my new job. I hope that happens, but in reality, employers often don't give new employees start dates that far off, and I'll probably be unable to do anything like that.
I wanted very badly to be ungracious, tell her off, or quit without notice to make her scramble to cover my shift, but instead, I typed up a nice letter about how I was moving on to an environment that I felt was more suited to my professional capabilities. The one thing I could not bring myself to leave out of the letter was that I the work environment had strongly contributed to my decision to seek other employment. Not only is that an important truth, I was sure that if I didn't say it, my employer would try to use the letter as evidence against my retaliation claim with OSHA, because they've been that sneaky and underhanded about everything else.
I'm printing my "resignation" letter after having read it for what feels like the billionth time. I feel bad writing about the work environment in a notice like this, but I'd be more uncomfortable leaving the company with anything that gave the illusion that we were parting on good terms.
It takes three tries, because I'm so nervous about how this is going to go that I keep choosing the wrong printer, the one that isn't hooked up, instead of the one that is. Finally, I get it to print. I put it in a labeled envelope, for added formality. I throw a jacket on and head out the door to warm up the van.
It's freezing outside, and my old van doesn't want to start. Instead of fighting with it, I decide to walk there instead. Might as well. I've got two weeks before I'll be driving across town to work every day. The thought gives me a boost. I lock the van, go get my coat and gloves, and head up the street with my letter in hand.
The cold air beats on my face, but it's not bad. It's freezing, but not windy. By the time I get to work, though, my nose is red. I should have worn a scarf.
I'm early. From where I live, it actually takes me less time to walk to work than to drive. I take a moment and buy my usual - a quart of chocolate milk - to substitute for the fact that I won't get a lunch break during the first 6 or possibly 7 hours of the 9 hour shift for which I'm scheduled. In two weeks, I won't have to deal with that any more. The place where I'm going doesn't schedule past 8 hours, and has mandatory breaks. That's going to be different for me after 6 years of this place.
I take my purchase, with receipt, into the back room, and hand my boss the envelope. She's on the phone. She doesn't look at it, so she doesn't notice that it says my name, followed by "two weeks' notice" on the front. I wait until she is off the phone. She glances at the envelope, does a double-take, then gets up and walks out of the room.
Okay, fine. I'm not playing her game today. I'm in a good mood.
I wait to clock in. I can hear her "pissed off" laugh, a harsh, pounding laughter she pulls out for occasions when she wants to sound like she's not bothered or upset, but she's actually really steamed. That lets me know she definitely read the front of the envelope and is pretending not to have noticed.
Whatever. Time comes around, and I clock in, walk out, and ask which register I'm on. She tells me. I start the routine for opening that register. I'm about to ask to make sure she did read the front of that envelope, when she abruptly turns and walks into the back room again.
My co-worker asks me what set her off. I tell him. He laughs. I ask what's so funny, and he very quietly says, "She was talking about you on the phone this morning, planning how to break you down by making you work swing shifts for a month. Now, she can't. You just ruined her plans."
We are stocking cigarettes while we talk, grabbing packs out of cartons and stuffing them into the pack rack behind us. It's an unending task, so we're kept pretty busy even though there's not a customer in the store.
She hears our quiet voices, comes out to the front, and says, "You guys going to do any work today, or just stand around talking?" We both stop what we're doing, hands full of cigarettes, and look at her like she's grown a second head. She can see that we're performing job duties. She's just in a bad mood.
I say, "Look, just because you're annoyed about my notice doesn't mean you have to bark at us. You can see that we're working." Now that I don't have to fear unemployment, her behavior doesn't evoke the same impotent, head-down-closed-mouth resentful anger. I'm not caged any more.
My coworker chokes on thin air, coughs and sputters, and escapes the situation by heading over to brew a pot of coffee. He's not abandoning me. He's getting out of my way.
She says, "So, where will you be working?"
I remind her that, as it says in my letter, I'm not disclosing that information. What I didn't say in the letter is my reason, which is that I fully expect her to try to sabotage my new position by showing up and bad-mouthing me to my new boss before she even gets a chance to get to know me.
My boss glares at me and tells me that by refusing to answer her question, I'm being insubordinate, and she can fire me on the spot. I know that's not true. It takes the company two weeks just to write an employee up, and they can't fire me without doing that first. By the time they get anything done, I'll be at my new workplace anyway. She's just blowing smoke, and we're both aware of that.
I smile and wait. Forced to back down from what she said, she starts handing out crap duty, literally. I'm ordered to first clean the restrooms, then take lot duty. No one ever gets both of those chores in one shift, and I know it's meant as a punishment, but it doesn't bother me, because I know that's all she can do.
Then she says, "...and when you get done with that, you can meet me in the cooler."
So, I'm assigned all of the heavy lifting for the day. Okay. I can handle that.
I start the tasks, grabbing the necessary tools. While I'm in the men's room cleaning, I hear someone go into the ladies' and move around. When I go in there, it's a mess, toilet paper everywhere, wetness on the floor, walls, and bowl. I leave the cleaning equipment there, put up the wet floor sign, and go for a bucket. I can't believe she thought this would phase me. All I have to do is sweep up the paper, then pour water on everything before washing and sanitizing. There's a drain in the floor, for crying out loud.
She has this smug look on her face. I smile and wander off with the bucket and broom, as the smug look changes to confusion. When it doesn't take me any longer to do the ladies' room than to do the men's, and I don't complain about it, she has to look and make sure I actually did the chore, taking my coworker with her to witness, because she's assuming I didn't get it done. While she's doing that, I gather the stuff for lot duty. I hear the coworker say, "...looks like she washed the walls, too." as I'm on my way out the door. My boss glares at me, but what can she say? It's clean and dry.
I go through the whole series of tasks for lot without incident, taking about half an hour to get everything done, because for once, it isn't that bad. Usually, she waits until later in the day to send me out, so I'm used to the chore being messier and heavier.
I come back inside and head for the cooler, but she's not there. I find her in the back room, let her know lot is done, and I'm ready for the next thing. She tells me it can't be done that fast, and she's going to go inspect my work for short cuts. I shrug, and ask if she wants me to wait here or start in the cooler. That I'm not concerned pisses her off, and she tells me I'd better check my attitude, as if I said something different. When that also fails to bother me, she sends me on into the cooler and goes outside.
By the time she joins me in the cooler ten minutes later, I've got two "doors" filled with product and am working on the third. I work much faster when I'm in there by myself. She immediately begins working on whatever she can find that involves reaching for things that are over my head. Everywhere I go, she has to put the step ladder right over me, then climb up and reach for stuff, knocking it down so that I have to catch it to keep it from falling on me. I stop working on what I'm doing, go to the other end of the cooler where there are no shelves, and start putting away bottles of pop. She glares at me, starts telling me how worthless she thinks I am, and how it won't matter if I go someplace new because I'm never going to amount to anything. She says I'll end up in as much trouble at my new job as I am with her, calls me lazy and stupid, and accuses me of having issues with people in authority.
That finally gets to me. I've never had trouble at work like this. In my past, to which she is not privy, I've been far above the position I'm in now, and my success in the past was due to my work ethic and professionalism. She doesn't know anything about me, and has no right to make such criticisms. I grit my teeth and continue stocking, reminding myself that I've only got two more weeks to deal with her. She continues berating me, pushing and pushing, talking about the person she's made up in her head for me to be, instead of the person I know that I am. Then she starts talking about what kind of parents must have raised me.
I can handle all of it, until she starts talking about my mother. I know what she's trying to do. She thinks if she pisses me off enough, I'll hit her, and she'll be able to press charges, once again showing me the false image of me she's built up in her mind. I struggle to not lose my temper, but I've been subjected to a half-hour barrage, and I'm worn down. I finally tell her what I'm thinking. I've been a foreign ambassador for my hometown. I've been a business owner, a teacher, a professional artist, and a model. I've been not only above the position I'm in now, but above the position she's in. With the way she treats her subordinates, and the attitude she has toward other people, she'll never be anything more than the fat fish in a little pond that she is now. And it doesn't matter what she says, because I'm out from under her thumb, and there's nothing she can do about that. There's nothing more she can do to me but stupid, petty little things like this.
She turns beet red and rushes me. I try to put the cooler door between us, but she runs around it, slams into me, and knocks me into the beer cave, landing on top of me. She sits up and starts swinging at my face, calling me obscene names the whole time. I'm trying to dodge and block, but she's getting through anyway. A regular customer sees the fight, and rushes in to pull my boss off of me. I scramble away from her, backing up against a rack of 12-pack bottles. The customer is looking at us like we're from another planet, but at the same time, he's kind of grinning, and I know he's thinking, "Cool! Chick fight!"
She immediately cools off, tells the guy that this isn't what it looks like, and I attacked her. He looks at the shiner that's all ready forming under my eye, blood on my lip, bruised arms, and messed up hair, then at her undamaged face, and unruffled demeanor, and says, "Riiiiiight."
She still pulls out her phone, calls the police, and says she wants to press charges. The customer immediately tells me he'll hang around and act as a witness, and I know that the bulk of the assault is on the store's video of the beer cave, but there's no proof of what happened in the cooler, and I'll probably be arrested on her word before the whole thing gets straightened out. I hear her also tell the dispatcher that I stole a quart of chocolate milk, which is sitting in the back room without a receipt. I paid with my check card, so again, I'll be able to prove she's lying, but it's going to take time to get that proof.
She's going to try to make sure I'm unavailable to start my new job. My heart sinks, and I feel totally defeated, wondering if I'm ever going to win one instead of getting trampled all the time.
I woke today feeling pretty depressed, probably because tomorrow is my first day back after being on vacation for a week. My boss hasn't had me at work to harass every day, and I know what happens when she doesn't get her fix. After her week's vacation in December, she was intolerable for days. That's why I ended up taking these days off. I just needed to get the hell away from her. I've really been dreading going back.
A few minutes ago, I got a phone call that has changed all of that. I just got hired in to the photo center of a bigger chain store. It's going to start out part time, but I've all ready been told I'll be getting more hours soon.
I've actually got a new job. I am out from under her thumb. It's real. And unlike in my nightmares, there's going to be nothing she can do about it. I'll never have to deal with her again.
In the meantime, I'm really glad I'm not dreaming about the scary monster that has been haunting my nightmares for almost a month. Between getting through that, and the good news today, I'm feeling pretty darned good, like a thousand pound weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.
Gotta go - time to start composing my letter. ˆ֊ˆ
I had finished the hiring process with the place I'm interviewing with now. I had a start date, giving me just enough time to provide my current employer and my psychotic, abusive boss with two weeks' notice and then have two days off before starting my new job. I hope that happens, but in reality, employers often don't give new employees start dates that far off, and I'll probably be unable to do anything like that.
I wanted very badly to be ungracious, tell her off, or quit without notice to make her scramble to cover my shift, but instead, I typed up a nice letter about how I was moving on to an environment that I felt was more suited to my professional capabilities. The one thing I could not bring myself to leave out of the letter was that I the work environment had strongly contributed to my decision to seek other employment. Not only is that an important truth, I was sure that if I didn't say it, my employer would try to use the letter as evidence against my retaliation claim with OSHA, because they've been that sneaky and underhanded about everything else.
I'm printing my "resignation" letter after having read it for what feels like the billionth time. I feel bad writing about the work environment in a notice like this, but I'd be more uncomfortable leaving the company with anything that gave the illusion that we were parting on good terms.
It takes three tries, because I'm so nervous about how this is going to go that I keep choosing the wrong printer, the one that isn't hooked up, instead of the one that is. Finally, I get it to print. I put it in a labeled envelope, for added formality. I throw a jacket on and head out the door to warm up the van.
It's freezing outside, and my old van doesn't want to start. Instead of fighting with it, I decide to walk there instead. Might as well. I've got two weeks before I'll be driving across town to work every day. The thought gives me a boost. I lock the van, go get my coat and gloves, and head up the street with my letter in hand.
The cold air beats on my face, but it's not bad. It's freezing, but not windy. By the time I get to work, though, my nose is red. I should have worn a scarf.
I'm early. From where I live, it actually takes me less time to walk to work than to drive. I take a moment and buy my usual - a quart of chocolate milk - to substitute for the fact that I won't get a lunch break during the first 6 or possibly 7 hours of the 9 hour shift for which I'm scheduled. In two weeks, I won't have to deal with that any more. The place where I'm going doesn't schedule past 8 hours, and has mandatory breaks. That's going to be different for me after 6 years of this place.
I take my purchase, with receipt, into the back room, and hand my boss the envelope. She's on the phone. She doesn't look at it, so she doesn't notice that it says my name, followed by "two weeks' notice" on the front. I wait until she is off the phone. She glances at the envelope, does a double-take, then gets up and walks out of the room.
Okay, fine. I'm not playing her game today. I'm in a good mood.
I wait to clock in. I can hear her "pissed off" laugh, a harsh, pounding laughter she pulls out for occasions when she wants to sound like she's not bothered or upset, but she's actually really steamed. That lets me know she definitely read the front of the envelope and is pretending not to have noticed.
Whatever. Time comes around, and I clock in, walk out, and ask which register I'm on. She tells me. I start the routine for opening that register. I'm about to ask to make sure she did read the front of that envelope, when she abruptly turns and walks into the back room again.
My co-worker asks me what set her off. I tell him. He laughs. I ask what's so funny, and he very quietly says, "She was talking about you on the phone this morning, planning how to break you down by making you work swing shifts for a month. Now, she can't. You just ruined her plans."
We are stocking cigarettes while we talk, grabbing packs out of cartons and stuffing them into the pack rack behind us. It's an unending task, so we're kept pretty busy even though there's not a customer in the store.
She hears our quiet voices, comes out to the front, and says, "You guys going to do any work today, or just stand around talking?" We both stop what we're doing, hands full of cigarettes, and look at her like she's grown a second head. She can see that we're performing job duties. She's just in a bad mood.
I say, "Look, just because you're annoyed about my notice doesn't mean you have to bark at us. You can see that we're working." Now that I don't have to fear unemployment, her behavior doesn't evoke the same impotent, head-down-closed-mouth resentful anger. I'm not caged any more.
My coworker chokes on thin air, coughs and sputters, and escapes the situation by heading over to brew a pot of coffee. He's not abandoning me. He's getting out of my way.
She says, "So, where will you be working?"
I remind her that, as it says in my letter, I'm not disclosing that information. What I didn't say in the letter is my reason, which is that I fully expect her to try to sabotage my new position by showing up and bad-mouthing me to my new boss before she even gets a chance to get to know me.
My boss glares at me and tells me that by refusing to answer her question, I'm being insubordinate, and she can fire me on the spot. I know that's not true. It takes the company two weeks just to write an employee up, and they can't fire me without doing that first. By the time they get anything done, I'll be at my new workplace anyway. She's just blowing smoke, and we're both aware of that.
I smile and wait. Forced to back down from what she said, she starts handing out crap duty, literally. I'm ordered to first clean the restrooms, then take lot duty. No one ever gets both of those chores in one shift, and I know it's meant as a punishment, but it doesn't bother me, because I know that's all she can do.
Then she says, "...and when you get done with that, you can meet me in the cooler."
So, I'm assigned all of the heavy lifting for the day. Okay. I can handle that.
I start the tasks, grabbing the necessary tools. While I'm in the men's room cleaning, I hear someone go into the ladies' and move around. When I go in there, it's a mess, toilet paper everywhere, wetness on the floor, walls, and bowl. I leave the cleaning equipment there, put up the wet floor sign, and go for a bucket. I can't believe she thought this would phase me. All I have to do is sweep up the paper, then pour water on everything before washing and sanitizing. There's a drain in the floor, for crying out loud.
She has this smug look on her face. I smile and wander off with the bucket and broom, as the smug look changes to confusion. When it doesn't take me any longer to do the ladies' room than to do the men's, and I don't complain about it, she has to look and make sure I actually did the chore, taking my coworker with her to witness, because she's assuming I didn't get it done. While she's doing that, I gather the stuff for lot duty. I hear the coworker say, "...looks like she washed the walls, too." as I'm on my way out the door. My boss glares at me, but what can she say? It's clean and dry.
I go through the whole series of tasks for lot without incident, taking about half an hour to get everything done, because for once, it isn't that bad. Usually, she waits until later in the day to send me out, so I'm used to the chore being messier and heavier.
I come back inside and head for the cooler, but she's not there. I find her in the back room, let her know lot is done, and I'm ready for the next thing. She tells me it can't be done that fast, and she's going to go inspect my work for short cuts. I shrug, and ask if she wants me to wait here or start in the cooler. That I'm not concerned pisses her off, and she tells me I'd better check my attitude, as if I said something different. When that also fails to bother me, she sends me on into the cooler and goes outside.
By the time she joins me in the cooler ten minutes later, I've got two "doors" filled with product and am working on the third. I work much faster when I'm in there by myself. She immediately begins working on whatever she can find that involves reaching for things that are over my head. Everywhere I go, she has to put the step ladder right over me, then climb up and reach for stuff, knocking it down so that I have to catch it to keep it from falling on me. I stop working on what I'm doing, go to the other end of the cooler where there are no shelves, and start putting away bottles of pop. She glares at me, starts telling me how worthless she thinks I am, and how it won't matter if I go someplace new because I'm never going to amount to anything. She says I'll end up in as much trouble at my new job as I am with her, calls me lazy and stupid, and accuses me of having issues with people in authority.
That finally gets to me. I've never had trouble at work like this. In my past, to which she is not privy, I've been far above the position I'm in now, and my success in the past was due to my work ethic and professionalism. She doesn't know anything about me, and has no right to make such criticisms. I grit my teeth and continue stocking, reminding myself that I've only got two more weeks to deal with her. She continues berating me, pushing and pushing, talking about the person she's made up in her head for me to be, instead of the person I know that I am. Then she starts talking about what kind of parents must have raised me.
I can handle all of it, until she starts talking about my mother. I know what she's trying to do. She thinks if she pisses me off enough, I'll hit her, and she'll be able to press charges, once again showing me the false image of me she's built up in her mind. I struggle to not lose my temper, but I've been subjected to a half-hour barrage, and I'm worn down. I finally tell her what I'm thinking. I've been a foreign ambassador for my hometown. I've been a business owner, a teacher, a professional artist, and a model. I've been not only above the position I'm in now, but above the position she's in. With the way she treats her subordinates, and the attitude she has toward other people, she'll never be anything more than the fat fish in a little pond that she is now. And it doesn't matter what she says, because I'm out from under her thumb, and there's nothing she can do about that. There's nothing more she can do to me but stupid, petty little things like this.
She turns beet red and rushes me. I try to put the cooler door between us, but she runs around it, slams into me, and knocks me into the beer cave, landing on top of me. She sits up and starts swinging at my face, calling me obscene names the whole time. I'm trying to dodge and block, but she's getting through anyway. A regular customer sees the fight, and rushes in to pull my boss off of me. I scramble away from her, backing up against a rack of 12-pack bottles. The customer is looking at us like we're from another planet, but at the same time, he's kind of grinning, and I know he's thinking, "Cool! Chick fight!"
She immediately cools off, tells the guy that this isn't what it looks like, and I attacked her. He looks at the shiner that's all ready forming under my eye, blood on my lip, bruised arms, and messed up hair, then at her undamaged face, and unruffled demeanor, and says, "Riiiiiight."
She still pulls out her phone, calls the police, and says she wants to press charges. The customer immediately tells me he'll hang around and act as a witness, and I know that the bulk of the assault is on the store's video of the beer cave, but there's no proof of what happened in the cooler, and I'll probably be arrested on her word before the whole thing gets straightened out. I hear her also tell the dispatcher that I stole a quart of chocolate milk, which is sitting in the back room without a receipt. I paid with my check card, so again, I'll be able to prove she's lying, but it's going to take time to get that proof.
She's going to try to make sure I'm unavailable to start my new job. My heart sinks, and I feel totally defeated, wondering if I'm ever going to win one instead of getting trampled all the time.
I woke today feeling pretty depressed, probably because tomorrow is my first day back after being on vacation for a week. My boss hasn't had me at work to harass every day, and I know what happens when she doesn't get her fix. After her week's vacation in December, she was intolerable for days. That's why I ended up taking these days off. I just needed to get the hell away from her. I've really been dreading going back.
A few minutes ago, I got a phone call that has changed all of that. I just got hired in to the photo center of a bigger chain store. It's going to start out part time, but I've all ready been told I'll be getting more hours soon.
I've actually got a new job. I am out from under her thumb. It's real. And unlike in my nightmares, there's going to be nothing she can do about it. I'll never have to deal with her again.
In the meantime, I'm really glad I'm not dreaming about the scary monster that has been haunting my nightmares for almost a month. Between getting through that, and the good news today, I'm feeling pretty darned good, like a thousand pound weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.
Gotta go - time to start composing my letter. ˆ֊ˆ
The sun will show no mercy
I feel watched, but not immediately threatened.
Slowly and carefully, I take inventory of myself, focusing first on my own spirit and my energy, looking for anything that doesn't belong. I find the marker again, but aside from that, there is nothing, only me. I turn my focus to the physical.
I feel the hard mat under my back, pillow of leaves under my head. The blanket is flat, pulled up to my throat, tucked up under my chin. I'm still half-sitting, half-supine, with my hands flat by my sides. The pain is gone. The numbness is gone, too. There is no discomfort.
In my right hand is a small object. Under the blanket, concealed by my resting form, I turn it over in my hand, testing it with my fingertips. What am I holding? It's cold... round, but not solid, thin on one side, becoming thicker as I feel around it, then thinner again; a ring. I focus attention on it, keeping just a little behind to keep my face expressionless, my breathing normal. I reach inside the smooth, cold metal, and the little stone set into it, to feel the ring's energy.
There is warmth here, familiarity. In my mind's eye, I can see it's form; cut amethyst set in a slender, delicate sliver circle. I remember this ring. A host of emotions slam through me as the memory eclipses everything.
"What's this for?" I ask, holding the ring in the palm of my hand. Instead of answering, she picks it up and draws my fingers apart, sliding the ring on next to my wedding band. It doesn't fit, falls right off, and she gives me the most melodramatic sad face. It tears my heart out, but at the suddenness of it, I have to stifle a giggle.
I pick it up, put it on my middle finger. "Is this ok?" I'm rewarded with a nod. I ask again, "But what is it for?" It's not a gift giving occasion. Is this the commitment she's been wavering on?
She smiles an affectionate, but half-troubled smile, and answers, "For now."
The moment, so sweet when it happened, is a hard blow to my heart now. Awash in a sea of conflicting impulses, I fight just to breathe at all. The craving that hits me brings with it stabbing pangs of regret and a deep, dragging concern. Why the hell did I bring this with me? As I struggle to maintain control, my mind touches on another scene, the moment when I realized that the monster had put on her form to trick me. My heart protests... you had no right. Who would be next? My friends? My Husband?
My son? As the thought crosses my mind, I know that he would. The monster will use anything to twist me into something he can use.
The present pain is joined by a conflagration of heady wrath, and I realize why I need this ring. I seize on the emotion, feeling it try to expand, blaze wild, and erupt. This is mine. My memories, my rage, my struggle. I have fought this battle. I know all of the steps. In a second, I'm holding within myself a hot ball of righteous indignation, not blind rage. The feeling is bright, white-hot, and pure, fueled not by my hatred and fear of him, but the almost territorial devotion I feel for my loved ones. And I still feel watched.
The monster is waiting.
I open my eyes to see him staring at me from across the room. I failed to control my face, my breathing. He isn't stepping forward.
Instead, I feel a blanket of dank, bleak energy rising across me, poking and prodding at my presence. Light pressure grazes above my forehead, lingers and pokes, then falls between my eyes and lingers there and prods, followed by my throat, right above the thyroid. I feel the touch fall to my heart, searching, as the monster's jaw sets, his eyes narrow, and his ears stand straight up. The energy rolls toward my belly, and that indignation rises, bringing with it the impulse to administer a hard slap. I push the impulse forward, feeling my will strike a blow, and the pressure stops.
I sit up, push the blanket off of me, turn to let my feet hit the floor, rest my elbows on my knees, watch, and wait. The more I look at him, the hotter that ball becomes, melting into a pool of liquid outrage, but a calm settles over my consciousness. I've been here before, not with him, not in this way, but I've been here. This is my charge.
We sit like that for several moments; I, relaxing on the edge of the bed, and he, studying me warily. He knows I've cleared myself of his poison, but I haven't expelled the marker. I know that he's trying to size me up, figure out what I'm doing and how capable I might actually be of doing it. He's probably also confused, because I haven't put up a shield.
Finally, I decide there's been enough waiting, and ask why he let me build my strength back up, "...and don't tell me you still 'want through,' because that's bullshit. You could have taken that while I was down. What are you really after?"
He sits down with a slightly surprised, suspicious look on his face. I feel that prodding at my belly again, and I shove it away with another slap. "Mitts off. It's not there. If you want it back, look behind me. Are you gonna answer my question, or not?"
This time, the surprise isn't so slight. He shoots forward, moving almost faster than I can see. One second, he's sitting on the floor a few yards away from me, and the next, he's to my right, reaching behind me, poking at the mat with his fingers. I resist the impulse to move away. I'll not give him any ground, and besides, it could be worse. At least he isn't groping my chakras any more.
Finding the residue of his attitude soaked into the mat, he falls back into that sitting position, bemused, muttering something I don't understand, then says something to me about not realizing I was that sentient.
Finally, he answers my question. He struggles to describe some of the concepts, but gets across to me that it's rare for him to encounter someone who carries his favorite flavor of torment, who isn't either insensitive to anything beyond physical consciousness, entirely self-destructive, or a one-time producer. Most are all three. He can use them for a while, but they get used up. They don't replenish, or they damage themselves to death, and then he can't find them any more.
The callousness of his description pisses me off, my heart going out to his previous victims, but I keep myself calm, tell myself not to lose sight of what I have to do. I have to know what kind of mindset I'm dealing with. I ask, "What has that got to do with me?"
He answers, "You're the rarity."
My stomach turns. I think I know where this is going. The molten pool inside me boils. I keep my face neutral and watch him.
He frowns. "But you're a stubborn (gibberish). I can dominate you enough to take what I need, but not enough to take what I want. Your friends are going to protect you to death again, and I'll have to look for you again." It's almost as if he's thinking out loud instead of talking to me.
He looks up with eyes as red as blood, leans forward, says my Name with striking gravity, and tells me, "This is the covenant I offer. I will see you protected from my kind, and any other. I will educate you beyond the knowledge of your peers, and provide you with material wealth. I will not dominate your will. In return, you agree to completely surrender your torment to me upon demand, and to admit my marker, that others know not to trespass, and you will remember to yield."
For one dimwitted moment, I feel horribly threatened by his posture and the glow in his eyes, especially combined with that gravelly, dragging voice. I want to crawl backward, hide on the other side of the bed from whatever this thing is, that is leaning into my face. Then, it dawns on me. He wants me to agree to be used as livestock, wear his mark of ownership, and periodically feed him the most tremendous challenge of my being, as if everything I've invested in refining myself were worthless. Oh, HELL NO. My control is tenuous at this point. It's ready, and it's going to blow if I don't make a move.
"What do I have to do?" I beat back the fear and disgust, focus on my outrage and my goal. I bring back the image of the moment when she gave me the ring, permit the pain of knowing where it is now to assail my heart, and draw tears. It has to look real. He has to think it's what I want.
"Be still."
The monster pretends to care. I can see through the charade, but he in his eagerness, he isn't even trying to look through mine. He pulls himself to his knees before me, facing me at eye level, arranges his face in a terrible mockery of compassion that could only fool someone who didn't want to know any better. Behind it is a ghastly, slavish voracity that I'm sure he doesn't know I can see. It takes every ounce of my will to maintain the facade when he takes my hands. My inner self cringes away, revolted, horrified, and enraged.
Keeping eye contact, he says, "You don't have to fight any more." What a pro... I am so disgusted. He doesn't know much about human women. I sniff, hiccup, and look as pitiful as I can, holding that eye contact.
"Do you have to use that... thing... on me?" I don't have to act for this part. That aversion is totally real.
"Not if you don't resist." One hand moves up to my face. I have to struggle to stifle the urge to vomit, or to fight, holding that blistering inner fire in check for the right moment. "Be still. I'm not going to hurt you." His face is a mask of false concern, the stark craving barely hidden behind contrived sympathy. The act is so practiced. How many people has he consumed? At that thought, the awareness of being in the grasp of a soulless predator threatens to freeze me. My blood is like ice, but I hold on.
Suddenly, I'm wrapped in a many-armed embrace. His face is beside mine, his body pressed against me. I didn't even see him move. I hear, "Hold on," and my reflex forces me to do just that, as the world falls out from under me. There's a pull on my mind, searching for a connection. Jagged claws and cold fingertips graze my cheek, and he closes the gap. At that moment, I release not the sick, impotent rage he's looking for, not my lifelong onus, but the blinding, searing light I've built up inside. It erupts from me with a deafening shriek. I give it a massive shove, feel it pouring out of me, striking home, expelling the marker and lighting up the monster's insides.
Shock registers in his eyes as he chokes on the barrage of righteous anger. He tries to pull out of the embrace, but I'm not giving up. I grab a hand full of his filthy, matted hair, and hold him up to the assault. My voice is joined by a howl of agony as my attack rages through his system, burning him from the inside out. The red in his eyes fades, replaced by brilliant light. He pounds my back with his fists, kicks and squirms, struggling to escape from my grip. The molten, bubbling anger continues to erupt, flowing through the connection he chose to make. I feel him shaking, and I push again. The howl rises from that low, guttural tone to an animalistic scream, and I can actually feel heat emitting from his chest.
His hands stop beating on me. His arms drop, hanging limply at his sides. I release the hand full of hair, and his head rocks back, exposing his throat. His eyes are totally expressionless. The last of my shriek dies down. The energy stops flowing. I can feel the mat beneath me, but it's soft now, as if it's not completely formed. I lower him to the floor, laying him on his back, meaning to examine him carefully.
Before I can, there's a loud crackling noise, and fissures begin to appear all over his skin. I flee to the doorway, fearing an explosion, but instead, the body collapses onto the floor. I go back for a closer look, but there's nothing recognizable left, just clumps of what appears to be gray dirt on the floor. Even the clothing is gone.
I look down at the dust, as cracks spread across the floor toward the walls, and the bed collapses in on itself. That's all he is now? That's the scary monster? That's nothing. I kick at the dirt on the floor.
"I told you not to touch me."
I turn around and walk out the door...
...and find myself waking.
Picked on as a child, dumped on as an adult, kicked aside, smacked around, a person can only take so much. I always let it go, suck it up, and drive on, until it gets to something that I can't tolerate. Before I learned control, this is where the meltdown would happen, with uncontrolled verbal storms raging indiscriminately out of the furthest place from my true heart, lashing out at whoever happened to be closest, cutting deep, leaving other people's fragile psyches burned, scarred, and broken. Even the people I love.
Especially the people I love.
Nothing in my life has ever hurt me more than looking at the damage I've done to others. I can't even pretend it's not my fault, because I have this clingy, telescopic memory that focuses on things like that, gets a grip on them, and holds them up to me long after my victims have worked past the incident and moved on. I call the effect my overactive guilt gland.
Years of hard work have gone into the battle with my disposition. It took me twenty years just to realize I couldn't get rid of my temper. It isn't going to go away; it's part of what I am. It's not that I'm charged with overcoming the existence of it; I'm responsible for refining and controlling it, so that it doesn't shape who I am. And it took another decade to get a shaky handle on that. It's been nearly a fourth decade since it clicked inside me, the ability to detach myself from the emotional experience, and act outside of it, separating my tone from my timbre, so to speak. Just because it's loud, doesn't mean I have to be obnoxious.
I've been practicing that control the whole time, and I still slip up on occasion, but I've mostly gotten to a level at which I can let the emotion be the motivational fuel that pushes me to solve a conflict, without letting it be the hand that shapes the method I choose to address that. Only a true fool would ask me to give up now.
Slowly and carefully, I take inventory of myself, focusing first on my own spirit and my energy, looking for anything that doesn't belong. I find the marker again, but aside from that, there is nothing, only me. I turn my focus to the physical.
I feel the hard mat under my back, pillow of leaves under my head. The blanket is flat, pulled up to my throat, tucked up under my chin. I'm still half-sitting, half-supine, with my hands flat by my sides. The pain is gone. The numbness is gone, too. There is no discomfort.
In my right hand is a small object. Under the blanket, concealed by my resting form, I turn it over in my hand, testing it with my fingertips. What am I holding? It's cold... round, but not solid, thin on one side, becoming thicker as I feel around it, then thinner again; a ring. I focus attention on it, keeping just a little behind to keep my face expressionless, my breathing normal. I reach inside the smooth, cold metal, and the little stone set into it, to feel the ring's energy.
There is warmth here, familiarity. In my mind's eye, I can see it's form; cut amethyst set in a slender, delicate sliver circle. I remember this ring. A host of emotions slam through me as the memory eclipses everything.
"What's this for?" I ask, holding the ring in the palm of my hand. Instead of answering, she picks it up and draws my fingers apart, sliding the ring on next to my wedding band. It doesn't fit, falls right off, and she gives me the most melodramatic sad face. It tears my heart out, but at the suddenness of it, I have to stifle a giggle.
I pick it up, put it on my middle finger. "Is this ok?" I'm rewarded with a nod. I ask again, "But what is it for?" It's not a gift giving occasion. Is this the commitment she's been wavering on?
She smiles an affectionate, but half-troubled smile, and answers, "For now."
The moment, so sweet when it happened, is a hard blow to my heart now. Awash in a sea of conflicting impulses, I fight just to breathe at all. The craving that hits me brings with it stabbing pangs of regret and a deep, dragging concern. Why the hell did I bring this with me? As I struggle to maintain control, my mind touches on another scene, the moment when I realized that the monster had put on her form to trick me. My heart protests... you had no right. Who would be next? My friends? My Husband?
My son? As the thought crosses my mind, I know that he would. The monster will use anything to twist me into something he can use.
The present pain is joined by a conflagration of heady wrath, and I realize why I need this ring. I seize on the emotion, feeling it try to expand, blaze wild, and erupt. This is mine. My memories, my rage, my struggle. I have fought this battle. I know all of the steps. In a second, I'm holding within myself a hot ball of righteous indignation, not blind rage. The feeling is bright, white-hot, and pure, fueled not by my hatred and fear of him, but the almost territorial devotion I feel for my loved ones. And I still feel watched.
The monster is waiting.
I open my eyes to see him staring at me from across the room. I failed to control my face, my breathing. He isn't stepping forward.
Instead, I feel a blanket of dank, bleak energy rising across me, poking and prodding at my presence. Light pressure grazes above my forehead, lingers and pokes, then falls between my eyes and lingers there and prods, followed by my throat, right above the thyroid. I feel the touch fall to my heart, searching, as the monster's jaw sets, his eyes narrow, and his ears stand straight up. The energy rolls toward my belly, and that indignation rises, bringing with it the impulse to administer a hard slap. I push the impulse forward, feeling my will strike a blow, and the pressure stops.
I sit up, push the blanket off of me, turn to let my feet hit the floor, rest my elbows on my knees, watch, and wait. The more I look at him, the hotter that ball becomes, melting into a pool of liquid outrage, but a calm settles over my consciousness. I've been here before, not with him, not in this way, but I've been here. This is my charge.
We sit like that for several moments; I, relaxing on the edge of the bed, and he, studying me warily. He knows I've cleared myself of his poison, but I haven't expelled the marker. I know that he's trying to size me up, figure out what I'm doing and how capable I might actually be of doing it. He's probably also confused, because I haven't put up a shield.
Finally, I decide there's been enough waiting, and ask why he let me build my strength back up, "...and don't tell me you still 'want through,' because that's bullshit. You could have taken that while I was down. What are you really after?"
He sits down with a slightly surprised, suspicious look on his face. I feel that prodding at my belly again, and I shove it away with another slap. "Mitts off. It's not there. If you want it back, look behind me. Are you gonna answer my question, or not?"
This time, the surprise isn't so slight. He shoots forward, moving almost faster than I can see. One second, he's sitting on the floor a few yards away from me, and the next, he's to my right, reaching behind me, poking at the mat with his fingers. I resist the impulse to move away. I'll not give him any ground, and besides, it could be worse. At least he isn't groping my chakras any more.
Finding the residue of his attitude soaked into the mat, he falls back into that sitting position, bemused, muttering something I don't understand, then says something to me about not realizing I was that sentient.
Finally, he answers my question. He struggles to describe some of the concepts, but gets across to me that it's rare for him to encounter someone who carries his favorite flavor of torment, who isn't either insensitive to anything beyond physical consciousness, entirely self-destructive, or a one-time producer. Most are all three. He can use them for a while, but they get used up. They don't replenish, or they damage themselves to death, and then he can't find them any more.
The callousness of his description pisses me off, my heart going out to his previous victims, but I keep myself calm, tell myself not to lose sight of what I have to do. I have to know what kind of mindset I'm dealing with. I ask, "What has that got to do with me?"
He answers, "You're the rarity."
My stomach turns. I think I know where this is going. The molten pool inside me boils. I keep my face neutral and watch him.
He frowns. "But you're a stubborn (gibberish). I can dominate you enough to take what I need, but not enough to take what I want. Your friends are going to protect you to death again, and I'll have to look for you again." It's almost as if he's thinking out loud instead of talking to me.
He looks up with eyes as red as blood, leans forward, says my Name with striking gravity, and tells me, "This is the covenant I offer. I will see you protected from my kind, and any other. I will educate you beyond the knowledge of your peers, and provide you with material wealth. I will not dominate your will. In return, you agree to completely surrender your torment to me upon demand, and to admit my marker, that others know not to trespass, and you will remember to yield."
For one dimwitted moment, I feel horribly threatened by his posture and the glow in his eyes, especially combined with that gravelly, dragging voice. I want to crawl backward, hide on the other side of the bed from whatever this thing is, that is leaning into my face. Then, it dawns on me. He wants me to agree to be used as livestock, wear his mark of ownership, and periodically feed him the most tremendous challenge of my being, as if everything I've invested in refining myself were worthless. Oh, HELL NO. My control is tenuous at this point. It's ready, and it's going to blow if I don't make a move.
"What do I have to do?" I beat back the fear and disgust, focus on my outrage and my goal. I bring back the image of the moment when she gave me the ring, permit the pain of knowing where it is now to assail my heart, and draw tears. It has to look real. He has to think it's what I want.
"Be still."
The monster pretends to care. I can see through the charade, but he in his eagerness, he isn't even trying to look through mine. He pulls himself to his knees before me, facing me at eye level, arranges his face in a terrible mockery of compassion that could only fool someone who didn't want to know any better. Behind it is a ghastly, slavish voracity that I'm sure he doesn't know I can see. It takes every ounce of my will to maintain the facade when he takes my hands. My inner self cringes away, revolted, horrified, and enraged.
Keeping eye contact, he says, "You don't have to fight any more." What a pro... I am so disgusted. He doesn't know much about human women. I sniff, hiccup, and look as pitiful as I can, holding that eye contact.
"Do you have to use that... thing... on me?" I don't have to act for this part. That aversion is totally real.
"Not if you don't resist." One hand moves up to my face. I have to struggle to stifle the urge to vomit, or to fight, holding that blistering inner fire in check for the right moment. "Be still. I'm not going to hurt you." His face is a mask of false concern, the stark craving barely hidden behind contrived sympathy. The act is so practiced. How many people has he consumed? At that thought, the awareness of being in the grasp of a soulless predator threatens to freeze me. My blood is like ice, but I hold on.
Suddenly, I'm wrapped in a many-armed embrace. His face is beside mine, his body pressed against me. I didn't even see him move. I hear, "Hold on," and my reflex forces me to do just that, as the world falls out from under me. There's a pull on my mind, searching for a connection. Jagged claws and cold fingertips graze my cheek, and he closes the gap. At that moment, I release not the sick, impotent rage he's looking for, not my lifelong onus, but the blinding, searing light I've built up inside. It erupts from me with a deafening shriek. I give it a massive shove, feel it pouring out of me, striking home, expelling the marker and lighting up the monster's insides.
Shock registers in his eyes as he chokes on the barrage of righteous anger. He tries to pull out of the embrace, but I'm not giving up. I grab a hand full of his filthy, matted hair, and hold him up to the assault. My voice is joined by a howl of agony as my attack rages through his system, burning him from the inside out. The red in his eyes fades, replaced by brilliant light. He pounds my back with his fists, kicks and squirms, struggling to escape from my grip. The molten, bubbling anger continues to erupt, flowing through the connection he chose to make. I feel him shaking, and I push again. The howl rises from that low, guttural tone to an animalistic scream, and I can actually feel heat emitting from his chest.
His hands stop beating on me. His arms drop, hanging limply at his sides. I release the hand full of hair, and his head rocks back, exposing his throat. His eyes are totally expressionless. The last of my shriek dies down. The energy stops flowing. I can feel the mat beneath me, but it's soft now, as if it's not completely formed. I lower him to the floor, laying him on his back, meaning to examine him carefully.
Before I can, there's a loud crackling noise, and fissures begin to appear all over his skin. I flee to the doorway, fearing an explosion, but instead, the body collapses onto the floor. I go back for a closer look, but there's nothing recognizable left, just clumps of what appears to be gray dirt on the floor. Even the clothing is gone.
I look down at the dust, as cracks spread across the floor toward the walls, and the bed collapses in on itself. That's all he is now? That's the scary monster? That's nothing. I kick at the dirt on the floor.
"I told you not to touch me."
I turn around and walk out the door...
...and find myself waking.
Picked on as a child, dumped on as an adult, kicked aside, smacked around, a person can only take so much. I always let it go, suck it up, and drive on, until it gets to something that I can't tolerate. Before I learned control, this is where the meltdown would happen, with uncontrolled verbal storms raging indiscriminately out of the furthest place from my true heart, lashing out at whoever happened to be closest, cutting deep, leaving other people's fragile psyches burned, scarred, and broken. Even the people I love.
Especially the people I love.
Nothing in my life has ever hurt me more than looking at the damage I've done to others. I can't even pretend it's not my fault, because I have this clingy, telescopic memory that focuses on things like that, gets a grip on them, and holds them up to me long after my victims have worked past the incident and moved on. I call the effect my overactive guilt gland.
Years of hard work have gone into the battle with my disposition. It took me twenty years just to realize I couldn't get rid of my temper. It isn't going to go away; it's part of what I am. It's not that I'm charged with overcoming the existence of it; I'm responsible for refining and controlling it, so that it doesn't shape who I am. And it took another decade to get a shaky handle on that. It's been nearly a fourth decade since it clicked inside me, the ability to detach myself from the emotional experience, and act outside of it, separating my tone from my timbre, so to speak. Just because it's loud, doesn't mean I have to be obnoxious.
I've been practicing that control the whole time, and I still slip up on occasion, but I've mostly gotten to a level at which I can let the emotion be the motivational fuel that pushes me to solve a conflict, without letting it be the hand that shapes the method I choose to address that. Only a true fool would ask me to give up now.
Trying my hand
I decided I needed an image to give more visual idea of what the monster from my recent nightmares looks like. It didn't come out right, but I'm posting it anyway. Since I've had zero training in drawing techniques (unless public school elementary art class from 30 years ago counts) I warn you, I totally suck at drawing (and you can tell by the hand, which I should have positioned with the fingers curling more around the arm.) I did do the original outline by hand before editing for color in photoshop (during which the program decided to crash about 20 times, which is unusual.) The image isn't going to look like a photograph, it's going to look like a badly drawn cartoon version of the guy. But, it at least gives a visual of the eyes, the boots (which I am pretty sure are steel-toed,) and the (originally) gaunt face. I chose the pose because I had something in that same pose to look at, and because he's actually stood almost like that at one point.
On a side note, no, I didn't draw the wall. It's a small section of Zane Cavern in Ohio, where I shot like 500 photos when I visited. I pasted it in layers and manipulated it to create the two walls shown in the image.
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