second haunting - visitations

A normal childhood?

It is hard to explain the extraordinary things which have happened in my life. For the most part I had a normal childhood; friends, pets, tree houses, and porch swing conversations watching the older kids cruise up and down the boulevard. That is where normal stayed.

Behind closed doors

The ghosts often came at night; jingling thier angry chains and yelling from the livingroom as to reach my little t-shaped roof room at the top of the stairs. It wasn't loud. It was muffled, a slithering sound, often shaped with jagged teeth and showering me with mental images I did not understand.

Nature speaks

For a long while I ignored these things, save when my grandmother looked me square in the eye and said I had the gift of sight, and I said my parents were going to divorce. I was nine. I never forgot her look. I never lost the sight. In the summer of my 13th year, my words came true. I remember wondering if the trees knew before I did. Looking up they nodded, and whispered I was like them. I cried.

The Death Card

It was the death of my childhood. It was the death of being a girl in a t shaped room with ghosts in the closets and sharp teethed shadows. Now I would be haunted by a much different thing, my own sense of the world as portrayed through the failures of others. In the beginning it would be the tears of my father. Then it would be visitation rights performed sequentially and faithfully on holidays and summers. And the ghosts rattling thier chains would follow me... for nearly a 1/4 of a century. Only then would death give up its grip and release me to yet another haunting. This one no fool but full of lovers.

The first haunting

Fortune Telling.

I was eight, when I found a chinese fortune telling game on the bookshelf. I don't remember where it came from and I am not quite sure exactly how it got to the shelf. What I do know is it captivated me. It called out of me curiosity and scoffed at the idea any such thing would hurt a cat. So, without hesitation, my hands found its edges and pulled it off of its safe ledge. I sat down on the floor to further examine this new found treasure. The images were slick, colored black and red, and the back spoke of the future if the cards were laid just so. The future. As an eight year old - the future was tomorrow and what concerned me most was if Sister Mildred was going to let us get out of math by telling us one of her ghost stories or if she was going to find the cheat sheet under Robert’s desk and make us do spelling for 2 hours.

Dealing Cards.

I shuffled. I mixed. With careful movements ushered chaos into the order of things. Then I lay out the plastic board and set the cards upon them in the order I was suppose to. Each card I flipped offered new adventure and hope. All except the last one. The last one was Death.

Death, Be not Proud.

I vaguely remember it saying I was going to witness death in an accident of some kind or be in an accident of some kind, or die in an accident. Nevertheless, at 8, that was a big deal. No longer the innocent of 10 minutes prior. Now I knew... death was going to find me. It was going to catch me by surprise. It was going to loom around me until I wasn't looking. It was going to find

Me.

But I was eight. Weeks passed and Death did not grace my world. Soon I was nine, then ten... and before long the crazy chinese fortune telling cards were sold or lost or both. Death, had died.

Speaking of Death.

Or had it. Now at 33 I have seen Death's masks. I have smelled it. I have tasted it. I have witnessed its hunger.... and it's passion. I have seen its jealous hand maliciously move me towards hope only to reveal the object of my affection - in its sights.

and of Praying.

I do pray. I do hope.

and silently, when the night air is thick with water so my tears cannot be so nearly felt, I ask for Death to meet me and discuss the terms of my affection's release.

But he never comes.

and I awake - with only sweat to remind me of the words that fell silently unheard or ignored.

Damn chinese fortunetelling cards.