Noah: I can’t imagine being stuck down a well all alone like that. How long could you survive?
Rachel Keller: Seven days.
– The Ring

Image being strapped naked to a booster rocket, cut free from the space shuttle, screaming toward space at un-godly speeds while sensing a slight deceleration that tells you that you will never actually make it to heaven. In fact, it won’t be long now before you begin the arch that will send you crashing right back down to earth where you crash with amazing force into the concrete surface of the sea, then sink silently to the bottom… and sit there waiting for a recovery. There’s my week.

I’d like to say it started with the screaming man but it didn’t. He was simply icing. No, it started many years back now but I won’t bother you with the details. The details  of the past only live in the reality of the now they helped to create.  Which of course lead in my case to a existence that sometimes looked more like something made up than something that could possibly be real culminating in a Monday where, with ears pinned back I waited to see it all come crashing down.  (Well big,  Roman columned sections any way.)  Only it didn’t. Instead, solutions appeared out of nowhere and suddenly things  went all boring. You know, normal. Boring.  When all is fixed or addressed or repaired, the very next thing is, well, nothing.  Boring. I’m sure in a week or so that will get on my nerves too, but after years of not-so-boring stresses that could challenge anyone’s sanity.. certainly mine, this sudden sense of boringness was quite nice. Well, that was until it was punctuated with the sudden death of my car. Oh, well. That’s still SORT OF boring.

So after fearing that the sky was going to come crashing in and having the reality be that it didn’t… (simply the world went on and the car died.) One cannot be too surprised that I suffered some bizarre dreams. Deep blue Hollywood horror dreams that involved tall mono-color gates, red roses, blue rooms and nudes who moved toward me while every joint of their bodies dislocated and jerked as if they had all escaped from THE RING to terrorize me. Just as I was about to be grabbed I woke up. I sat up. Not scared exactly, but un-nerved. I wouldn’t get back to sleep for a bit. It was 2am. I decided to start the automatic coffee maker and then go try to sleep a bit more. In the creeping light of a yard lamp cascading in through the window I made my way to the kitchen.  That’s when the screaming guy showed up.

There I was in the darkness save a blade of dim yellow light, in the kitchen, making coffee. Shaken from my dream I was simply trying to clear the Japanese horror imagery from my mind’s eye and loose myself in the hypnotic safety of watching coffee drip.  With the coffee dripping, I turned to head back off to bed. It was then, in the moment before that first step when quietly, carried on the breeze coming in through the half-open kitchen window was the sound of a distant scream. Not a scared scream, or a happy reunion scream, not a drunk scream, or a wake up scream, but a, “human about to die slowly with big knives”, blood curdling sort of scream. Only it was distant, soft,  horrid and lyrical, carried on a warm summer’s breeze. I froze. In the darkness. In the kitchen. I waited. I thought of bobcat screams, and for a moment I almost thought I’d simply heard a house sound, a pipe, or “settling”. Then it came again. Louder this time. Blood curdling, tortuous screaming. Closer this time. Outside my window. In the darkness I went to the window and looked outside. Outside there was only darkness. Darkness and the distant light from a neighbor’s garage across the highway.

Out of the darkness a male voice screamed, “F***********Ck You!!!!”, then dropped into mumbling. He was close now. Then the screaming started again. It was this same entity. A man. Screaming death screams. A car came out of the distance. It’s headlights picked of the silhouetted of a person walking, staggering, jerking and flinching their way along the road moving toward my house. It seemed at times that each passing car was producing screams from this man in white hoodie and jeans  and yet he would howl at the darkness as well. I took up a new vantage point at another window. I watched as an occasional car lit up the silhouette. Like some slow turn-of-the-century, monochrome animation, he moved past the house and continued away in jerks and convulsions. Shouting. Cursing. Dying. He kept moving. Until finally the night once again fell silent. An hour passed. Then another. Then the first of the morning birds called in the deep violet hint of a new sun. I let the dogs out.

That was how I started the day. The day I spent over tired and out of sorts at the car dealer. Buying a Jeep. To replace the one that I loved. The one that died. The one that died just when I thought things were getting back to normal… and blissfully boring.

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So welcome to Friday.. Mary’s eyes are swollen almost shut for some reason. Gryphon came home yesterday with a “twisted” ankle. Today his leg and foot are all one piece! So.. after I spend the morning at the docs, oh, and take the NEW jeep back to have them look at a squeaky brake… maybe.. just maybe I can get some work done… I doubt it… How’s by you?

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PPS… Yakima, do you really promise those little plastic clips will hold my boats on the roof?  Really? Promise?

Related Posts:

1. the screaming girl
2. Screaming through the silence
3. Saturday Morning Blake
4. darkness
5. In for a Pound. . .