Broken Heel

     “THE END IS NEAR!”  “REPENT NOW!” the man was yelling in my face.  His breath smelled of spoiled milk and garlic.  His front teeth were missing.  If I wanted to be accosted by religion I would go to a church.

     I’m late.  Ten minutes until my interview and I’m stuck at this crosswalk in front of a crazed religious nut.  Jesus Christ.

     Little white walk figure appears.  Walk faster people, gez, just because you don’t have to be somewhere doesn’t me I don’t have to be.  I’m gonna be late.

     I walk up Main Street at a fast pace. Eight months after graduation and still no job.  Maybe this will be my lucky day.

     I enter the Bradford building.  The interview was short.  It was okish.  I was asked short, crazy questions.  “What animal do you want to be?” and “What if you see a coworker steal?”

Bird and report to the boss.  They said they will call me by the end of the week.

     Time to finally head home, job-hunting…ugh.  I stumble as my heel breaks from the bottom of my right heel.  “Dammit!”  I know I can’t afford a new pair.  I don’t have a job, yet.  I knocked the other heel off by banging it on the side of a brick building and hobbled home disgracefully…still unemployed.

     I didn’t get the job.

     It may have been a huge ass mistake, but I needed the money.  I can hear the people talk.  Dean’s list college grad on the pole!  I can see the shame on my father’s face, if he were alive.

***

This was written in class at school.  I had to just sit and write starting with action.  It's not what I wanted to write and I don't know how it ended the way it did.

Drug induced fog

     The past few months of my life have been insane with activity.   I’m halfway finished with school, and in two years I should have my Bachelor’s degree in Humanities.  I have no idea what I want to do, my dreams of being a dentist where crushed by the car accident I was in my senior year in high school.   Apparently a neck injury makes it hard to work hunched over all day working in the mouths of patients.  So, that is when I opted for Humanities, other cultures fascinate me.

     I awoke this morning from the same nightmare I have been having for years.  I’m in the road outside Granny’s house.   I’m sitting in the street, holding my little sister in my arms.  I am only around 9 years old, which would make Rachel about 7.  She looks like a tomboy, as I remember from our youth, and she is dying.  She cannot speak to me, but her eyes are pleading for me to save her.  She has been shot in the chest.  I’ve ripped open her top to see the wound, and there is blood coming from her chest and mouth.  I am crying and screaming, yet no one is coming to help.  I awoke whimpering and shaking, the way I always do when I have this dream.  This is sure to not be a good day.

     I showered, dressed and made my usual two eggs and hot sauce with coffee for breakfast.  I sat and watched the news, my routine never changes much.  I have philosophy class this morning and then Rachel is coming to drive me to my pain management appointment, apparently you can’t drive on valium. Damn that teen driver.

     Dr. Sanders was running about an hour behind which didn’t work well with the valium.  By the time they called me back to the procedure room, I was a ball of nerves.  They had me take two more valium and wait for them to kick in before proceeding with the injections in my back and neck.

     I sat waiting in a valium induced fog, waiting for Dr. Sanders to come back to give me my injections when I started to notice something was off.  Something strange was happening…or was it the medication?

     The nurses, their eyes, they are different somehow.  Something I hadn’t noticed before, there were no whites in their eyes.  My heart began to race, what did they give me?  Their eyes were empty and dull black.  Not all the staff looked that way, but they didn’t seem to notice the difference in their coworkers.  

     Am I high?  Surely this must be the effects of the medication, but something inside is warning me.   Something is wrong.

     I was still questioning the reality of what I was seeing when the nurse came in.  “Angie,” said the black eyed nurse, “it’s time for your procedure.”  “Uh…I’m not feeling so well, I think I need to reschedule.”  “Don’t be silly”, she says.  She looks at me and for a moment her skin appears translucent with black veins running beneath.  In the next instant, she looks normal.  All but her eyes, her eyes are still black.  She smiles.

     I don’t know if it was the look on my face that clued her in to what I saw when I looked at her, but in the next second I had a needle in my arm and I was too weak to fight.  All went black.

     I woke up in the car, Rachel was driving.  “How are you feeling?” she said, “The nurses said the medication was a little too strong and you blacked out.”

     “I…I don’t know” I say, “What happened?  How long was I in there?”  “Oh, a few hours, they did the injections and had to wait until you were coherent enough to get into the wheelchair and out to the car”

     Something was wrong, I felt sick to my stomach.  There was a sharp pain in my navel, as though I had been cut.  I lifted my shirt to look, there was nothing there, but it was sore to the touch.

     “Please get me home, I feel like I’m going to be ill”

Childhood Memories

I was around eight years old when I was lying in bed, trying to sleep and watching the small flames flicker across the floor. My sister Rachel was in the bed on the other side of the room. It was our house, it was always the house. No matter how often I saw it, it never seemed real. Little figures of fire dancing and twisting across the wooden planks on the bedroom floor, they pop up and down, flicker for a few seconds, and then quickly go out leaving smoldering spots in their wake. It happens every night, the same spots on the floor. Mama didn't believe us, she's never seen it. She saw the burns and oily marks left behind on the floor and we got our asses beat for them being there. Dad told mom that we were telling tales because of the divorce, but it did start to happen before then.

I remember seeing things and hearing things for as long as I can remember. Childhood fears is what daddy calls them. At first it was the little dancing figures across the floor. Then one night there appeared the three wet dripping and dark figures that stood outside my bedroom window, peering into my room at night. The first time it happened I went to mama's bed and asked to sleep with her, I told her that scary things were at the window, but she did not see them. I crawled in bed with her that night, and from her window they also watched me. Swaying back and forth, trembling and expressionless, and waiting for something. Looking back at those times I can swear I smelled sulfur and wet decay. "Go to sleep", Mama said, "There is no one there." "But Mama" I said, "they won't stop staring at me." Mama, clearly irritated at me because she had to work in the morning, says, "Close your eyes Angie Leigh, you won't see them then."

That was the first night they showed up outside my window, later I learned to close all my curtains before dark. But that didn't stop them from invading my dreams. After their first appearance, I enjoyed watching the harmless flames flicker across my bedroom floor, they weren't so intimidating and scary. They became a comfort. Things happened that like until I reached my teenage years then -- the fires disappeared, although the burns remained behind on the floor as evidence of their existence. And eventually I started opening my curtains again. I know I believe that the fires were real; my sister saw them as well. We don't talk about it, and in the back of my mind, I try to explain it away. I say to myself, "I was dreaming." or, "Mama dropped a cigarette." But it wasn't until I was in my twenties that I was faced with the realization that there were things I could not ignore, things that would not go away.