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.