Category: Uncategorized

Pain

Nurse: “On a scale of one to ten, with 10 being the worst, what’s your current pain level?”

Me: Silence. If I speak it won’t be very nice.

This didn’t happen. But it’s how it will go.

I’d say, minus the cussing and acid, “10+.”

I hurt so badly that every day is agony. The pain keeps me awake until I’m exhausted. It wakes me up an hour or less later. Then I get up, take aspirin and Tylenol, wait for them to kick in, then try again.

I really don’t want to live like this. It’s not just the pain, it’s the humiliation. It shames me to be reduced to nothing but pain. I was prescribed Celebrex but the copay is almost $150.00 USD.

I need help and I’m not getting it. I don’t know what I might do.

Rest In Peace, Queen Elizabeth II: Long Live His Royal Highness, King Charles III

There is nothing I can say about her that has not already been said, so I will not try to. Her loss is profoundly affecting me as it is countless millions. Of the deaths of many influential and famous people whom I have heard about in my life, I believe that this one hurts the most. We never needed to have met her in order to love her; it was her poise, her wisdom and love for her country that we found endearing, inspirational and in which we found quiet decency and honor.

I shall miss her, and I wish comfort for her family and many friends. I grieve with them.

May God welcome you with arms spread wide, your majesty.

Well done.

You did so well.

https://youtu.be/714JA5Z7yfI

ATTACKED!

Three weeks ago this past Sunday, I grew sleepy enough that I went to bed around 2:30 (1430 hours). I don’t remember dreaming.

Just after dark, something pushed me out of bed. With force.

I didn’t fall out of bed.

How I wish I had.

This was a push in the middle of my back, forcing me off and away from the bed so that I landed on my stomach two feet away.

On the way down, I hit an old computer desk I was using as a nightstand. The top was heavy but it came off, flipped over and landed on my legs. My lower back was wet from a glass of water I’d sat on the stand.

In the pitch dark, I tried to turn onto my back but felt my shoulders pinned to the floor. I struggled, feeling a pain on my posterior right deltoid which I couldn’t process because suddenly I was released and I turned over. Whatever was there with me in the dark, it pinned my shoulders again, on my back. I never heard anything but the crash of the table falling apart. No growling or anything or like that.

But I was being held.

I raised my head, trying to get momentum to sit up, but could not go any further.

I was scared, but not terrified. This was new for me but I know the drill from other past experiences: never show fear; it’ll only make it worse. Demons suck the energy you put out as fear right out of the air and that energy makes them stronger.

I was finally released and was so weak that getting up was still difficult nonetheless. A scratch behind my right shoulder burned and itched like an animal’s scratch.

Feeling my way in the dark, I found the lamp, impossibly further from the wall than my feet, and turned it on. How it could still be plugged in, I couldn’t say. I was in shock.

Looking around in the lit room, it hit me: it was a demonic attack, no doubt about it.

For years I could see shadows in there from where I watch TV on the sofa. I didn’t dismiss them outright. That’s foolish. You tell a doctor and they’ll medicate you with an antipsychotic. Don’t do it.

But I didn’t worry either; they were fleeting, usually a sign they’re just passing through.

This time one didn’t. It stayed long enough to get irritated, perhaps, at my snoring. More likely, though, is that it just found a target and took advantage of it.

Most physical attacks attributed to ghosts are probably not what people think. They’re either weak and give a slight push near a staircase, or they tug at your shirt. When it comes to powerful physical force, enough to empty cupboards or scratch you, I don’t care what TV “experts” say; that’s no ghost, and certainly not a poltergeist. It’s demonic and you are in danger.

One thing I know is that electricity can give them power. In the room on the side of the bed the push came from, there’s a peculiar combination. The utility room is on the other side of the wall and it holds the power main, circuit breaker panel and the mammoth Fios box. Part of it draws so much power that a hole runs through for it to plug into a socket in my bedroom. Also, in my room, is a box for a double router and the main router sits on the dresser. That’s enough to supply plenty of energy to an entity for at least a single attack, but I’m counting being pinned twice as part of the attack, too.

I haven’t slept in there since. Sooner or later I will. I’ve bought a new matress and frame, tossed the computer table and have asked for prayer intervention by a priest in New York who is powerful in his faith. A short prayer from him goes far.

But none of my stories ever end so quickly. By now, you’re probably aware of this. Because there could be a reason for the attack.

I have a friend who’s plagued by misfortune. Plagued. I’ve talked with this friend at length trying to “see” what causes so much trouble in the home. I was sent a photograph of two dolls. Out of caution and for the friend’s anonymity as well as safety I won’t give any name, nor shall I describe the dolls.

There’s one in particular that bothers her and yet I saw both as being attached by dark spirits. I mean demons.

The one bothering my friend the most — or which, more specifically, she thought was responsible — is indeed immediately troubling to look at. That’s my gift if you want to call it that. I can read photographs of places, and on rare occasions people, and see things about them that others may not. Of course, in my posts “The Cat Who Knew Too Much” and “The Angel Of Death”, I did this with a house across the street from me. But most often, in person, sensory overload prevents me from it. It’s rare. The senses are all being used and can make me unaware of what’s unseen. However, a photograph is something I’m practiced at concentrating on, and in a second can tell if a place is best avoided. When I look after that, the intuition may intensify or even get specific.

This happened recently when someone put up a photograph of a house which was of interest to someone they knew. I simply commented with, “any way they could keep looking (for a house to buy)?”

It piqued my friend’s interest and I was asked to elaborate, which I did. But in the end it seemed that friend came to other conclusions and I’ll be careful about offering my two cents henceforth.

Back to the doll my friend thought solely responsible for some of her misfortune. It isn’t. The other one has a prideful and mean attachment. It has a mischievous side as well. It picked the doll for that reason. I can’t say why. But it likes to mess with her, hide things like keys, money, trinkets or something else needful. Sometimes, I suspect, the items in question are found in weird places. I would say also that some are never found, a testament to the spirit’s true power.

Activity began immediately after the pictures were taken. My friend got upset but moreover, so did her cats. They became agitated, anxious.

I advised prayer, a Hail Mary and an Our Father. I also said to apologize for taking pictures without first asking for permission. All these things worked. My friend also blessed themself with holy water and the sign of the cross. The cats got the same and calmed down.

I can’t see a way to be rid of the dolls because if destroyed, the spirits may stay in the home and grow extremely bellicose. Someone has to knowingly and willingly take them. The Zaffis or Warren museums may take them. But until they are gone from that house, misfortune will continue. These things are cursed which is why spirits attached in the first place. If not removed, then they, as with all cursed objects, will cause misfortune. This includes problems with health and finances that don’t appear to make sense. Relationship troubles that cannot be repaired. And it isn’t usually just the person who made the initial purchase and brought them home that’s affected; everyone in the house will be treated to their own share of misery, and yes, people who are living in such conditions can die. For instance, anecdotal evidence has shown repeatedly that cancers and other maladies seem to be affected or made worse by cursed objects. All cursed objects have a demonic attachment. Otherwise the curse doesn’t work. Whoever casts the curse or no matter how it comes to be attached, an object so haunted has an attached demon who will not quit. It does not need sleep. It does not eat. It is not from the realm of the physical. And it hates all humans equally in the end even if, for a time, it can be pacified. And I wouldn’t count on that.

I also don’t recommend pacification because a demon with a fixed nature may strengthen if it prefers to affect a particular person in a household.

In both of the above cases where I tried to help, I paid for it. The attack in my bed almost immediately came after I advised against buying the house. While engaged in the ongoing attempt to see what was in there, something shut me out and it was as if I had a door slammed in my face. Whatever it was, it was very angry and very strong.

Then the attack came. Why the delay? It is normal for me to fall asleep watching TV while lying on the sofa. The attack came on the one night I slept in my room (the one with so much electricity in the wall the attack came from).

They do love revenge. Oh, demons are happy to mess with anyone from babies to seniors, but all who interfere in their affairs will eventually face their wrath, and that’s a terrible thing. Depending on the type of demon and how much power it can pull from causing fear or from electromagnetic fields, these experiences can cause deep trauma.

Following the conversation about the dolls, retribution came to me in nightmares, each worse than the one before. I’ve discussed nightmares before; some I’ve described as fever-induced, others brought about by PTSD, some contained warnings, and more. Demons torment lots of people in dreams because they are not of flesh and can easily get into one’s mind.

In the first place, I have to note that I was weak. Not prayed-up, which leaves us on our own. I was also under stress because of the pandemic and looming election. This stress kept me up late and I missed my chance to get a ride to early voting. That increased my stress because now I had only election day. I’m in a blue state, but I wanted to vote anyway. I believe it is a duty. A privilege, and an honor. But because of PTSD, stress comes from the most simple of things. So I was predisposed and open to attack. That’s my fault, and I didn’t even think about it.

The first dream involved me trying to protect someone who did not want my help. At first she looked like my youngest sister, but she became faceless. Dreams leave out details as the focus shifts to the need for other details. In this case, a punk she kept going to despite his being no good. At one point I was aware I spoke out loud, as in, talking in my sleep. Back in his bedroom my housemate heard me scream, “Why don’t you unlock the fucking door?” as clearly as if I were awake.

I was screaming at her (this woman I was trying to save) from outside a sliding door, looking right at her. She was in his house. But she was afraid not to open it because my anger was towering. I went in and the guy had this stupid look on his face. He was scared but defiant. I beat him so badly that he went down. His nose was flat to his face and inside his skull. Blood was everywhere and he choked on it.

I pulled a large hunting knife from a belt sheath and held the point to his throat. I was amazed that he was still conscious. The blade went into his throat a little bit and I screamed hysterically, “Touch her again, you will fucking die!”

As I awoke, feeling pretty horrible, the words popped into my mind: “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.”

Had the punk represented Jesus? I couldn’t figure it out.

The next night was worse. I was watching a weird car shaped like a triangle, a pointed nose bearing decals like green flames over a cadmium yellow paint scheme. I saw it swerving all over the place. I knew the driver wasn’t drunk; trouble was at hand. Sure enough it eventually crashed. A bad wreck with a rollover. I ran to see if I could help. The door was gull-wing, opening upward. A black man stumbled out and his right arm at the wrist was inside his ear! But when he withdrew it, with no display of pain or any emotion at all, he had no hand. His lower arm narrowed and was lobed, like an asparagus spear!

He was not alone, either. After he had removed his arm he just sat on the ground, glassy eyed and still. Behind him at uneven distances were others, also glassy eyed and motionless, but alive. What the hell was going on?

Images like these are normal in nightmares, but I could tell this dream was another one induced by a vengeful spirit, with torment its only intention. Demon dreams have two elements not found in other nightmares: they’re more vivid and detailed, and they are unforgettable. I remember every single one I’ve had. I knew something was there with me. The dreams get vile, to a degree of causing trauma and leaving me a shambles when I awaken.

I don’t want to sleep tonight.

But I must pray for redemption and forgiveness, and I must ask for protection by the Holy Trinity.

I can’t go any further, but I do want to leave you with the little bit of advice that I can after 40+ years of studying the supernatural.

First, pray often. Confess your sins and ask for protection, for deliverance from evil.

Second, obey your gut, your instincts. If something seems amiss, whether you are a believer or a skeptic, then avoid an investment like a house, something you’ll be locked into for a long time. Check the history of the house. Talk to neighbors. Previous owners.

Third, avoid antiques. All antiques, and especially anything without a known history. Avoid yard sales, garage sales and used items on Ebay. Just trust me.

Fourth, no dolls! Not only that but figurines, curios, action figures, sculptures. Both new and old. Giving a kid a doll is asking for trouble. There have been too many cases of entities attached to them attacking kids. No dolls.

Avoid heirlooms. They may not be attached, but can carry and hold residual energy from the past. The older the heirloom, the more it holds. The owners did not always live lives of strawberries and cream. You don’t want negative energy around you.

This includes the clothing, jewelry or anything else the dead leave behind. Avoid crystals and the trappings of charlatans who claim to hold your answers. Obey your gut; second guessing yourself will always lead you in the wrong direction.

Lastly, avoid all dark arts. Calling forth spirits to do your bidding will never end well. I’ve personally known people who did this, and they had to abandon their house. As in, flee from it. And once it was vacant, even a guy running a snowplow avoided that street.

Do not ghost hunt. You Tubers do this often, copying TV ghost hunters. It’s not for novices or casual fun. For my prime example I’ll use the dreadful “Ghost Adventures”, a long-running series on Travel Channel. They go in with equipment, all serious, and as soon as something goes bump in the night, they scream like adolescent girls playing at a ouija board. The rest is acting, all of it bad. Something, without fail, always attacks Zak or another one in the group. Drama queen stuff. All the while, Zak narrates in a sanctimonious voice.

It’s funny, but at the same time, dangerous. You go looking for something, you’ll eventually find it. Then you get to find out that the something didn’t want to be found. They’re silly, ghost hunters, but they take awful chances. You can be saved a lot of misery simply by not going on ghost hunts and asking for spirits to show themselves.

As for me? I’d rather not sleep anymore.

UPDATE: The friend with the dolls failed to find a place for them. Terrible things happened including a death in the apartment. Finally she left, leaving the dolls and just about everything else in there, and since then has done very well. She had an infection that cleared up after 4 years of suffering from it, and a few other things have been resolved. I know I was right about the dolls and yet she was too; she would never have wanted help if she had thought them harmless.

I take no joy in knowing what I do.

So, yeah, it’s official. I’m never sleeping again.

The Death And Triumph Of An American Hero

FOR JANE

I never even met him. I suppose that disqualifies me from eulogizing the man, except, right now, there’s this new pain deep in my heart.

On the streets of New York, some people of little means never get noticed. It’s a big city and there’s no time for little guys, especially if they’re Hispanic. Sometimes you don’t even know they’re Hispanic unless you get their name. You probably dont even care when you do hear it. The city is too big. Too busy. Too fast.

Men like Angelo Gonzales got noticed. Not usually for the best of reasons. But he knew that. People liked him for that kind of honesty. And his candor, to the police or anyone. Even when he was caught with drugs, hell, how could they bust him? New York’s finest would laugh. He couldn’t be pinched for dealing because he just gave his stuff away, didn’t make a dollar. A good cop always gets to know the hapless on their beat. The entire precinct knew him. On the street, everyone knew him, and he was able to go just about anywhere and do anything.

He was known for decades by a friend of mine and her daughter, whom he dated for a while. And when both of them had their lives going the wrong way because of drugs, it was he who gathered strength for her, because love can sometimes perform miracles. He said, “It’s time,” and she felt it, too. She told her mother it was time.

Sometimes people refuse all help, and die from drugs or alcohol. That’s a sad, sad way to go. I lost my son to an overdose, and in his short, sad life, that kind of end made it all the more unbearable for me. He was a good boy who had serious problems and always seemed at his best when helping someone else. It gave his sad heart a jolt of happiness, and his soul a reason to live one more day. I’m so grateful for my son. Not a day goes by without me missing him. Not a day goes by when I don’t regret that I couldn’t save him. Because in the end, nobody could. Call it a father’s burden when he has to live every day with that kind of loss and that kind of knowledge.

Angelo was a puzzle to me. But I’ll never forget that he saved the life of my dear sweet friend Jane, because he was strong enough, and loved her enough, not to want her to die that way.

He said, “Come on, we’re going. I’m gonna be with you all the way, so you don’t have to go it alone.”

He knew she was strong, tough, a true New Yorker, a Brooklynite. They both were. They could do this, he said. And they did it.

On the street, he was a shield for her. A human shield ever willing to tell someone to “fuck off” if he found her walking home alone. Anyone came near her, he’d gladly give his life protecting her. That’s a hero.

If you thought Governor Cuomo was being nothing but a cheerleader when he held his daily press conferences and said, “New York tough, New York strong”, then you were way off the mark. All over that state, but especially so in the city, everyone knows that credo. They live it every day.

That’s why I love New York. There’s not another place on this earth like it. During this awful pandemic, the people have done the impossible. They heeded their governor’s warnings, and people’s lives have been saved. New York is a model which proves that we can beat this thing, while in South Dakota, a governor thinks it’s all nonsense and now people are needlessly dying. Cuomo wonders why his state’s example has gone unnoticed by so many.

COVID-19 couldn’t take Angelo Gonzales out. For so long, he seemed like the kind of guy who could survive anything. Including a suicide attempt in the subway. Not many others could live through jumping in front of a train. He was at a particularly low point, but somehow he had a will to live that I can relate to. He recovered. He lived with several dire medical problems, and a transition to a new life by himself in a recovery and housing program. A true survivor.

Always, he kept in touch with Jane and her mother. He’d use his food card to bring them groceries and he was never to stop being a support for Jane.

And he did, in the end, right up to the end, live to help her. This morning, he got on his bicycle in Queens, headed to Brooklyn to make sure she got to her therapist okay.

Initial word has it that Angelo Gonzales had a heart attack, but however it came about, he swerved into the path of a car.

He’s gone.

And today the world is all the lesser for it. See, guys like Mr. Gonzales may look too below average for some people to even notice. They pass them on the street and never care who they are. What they do. What they’ve been through, and what knowledge and wisdom they have to offer. That’s tragic. It isn’t fair, but it’s how things are.

And Angelo Gonzales gave his life helping a friend. His life wasn’t a waste. All those who gtreatly love are great souls. They make a difference. Love, loyalty and honor made Angelo Gonzales a great man.

We all should hope to be like him. We all should aspire to that level of heroism. That level of humanity.

Truly, his place in Heaven will be above the pious who say lyrical things but never live to sacrifice anything of themselves.

“There is no greater love than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends.” –Jesus Christ

May God welcome him to paradise with arms wide, and

Sometimes You Drink From The Wrong Cup

CAUTION: This post is for adults. It has graphic and possible triggering subject matter, crude language and sexual material.

It went on and on, the nightmare. It began badly enough, but that didn’t last for long. I was in a dream place, you know, the place in a dream that’s half real and half filled-in? Like that. I was walking out of the woods, to the old Montgomery Ward store at the old Glen Burnie Mall. Why? Hell if I know. It didn’t look right. It was alone with no mall. It had gigantic store front windows. I looked, and in both I could see dozens of nude women, painted and posing, still-life art. Erotic but not erotic. Just nude art. What the fuck is wrong with me? What, I can’t have a wet dream, I gotta be so dysfunctional that women are reduced to alabaster mannequins? Holy shit.

How long I looked, I don’t know. Not long but long enough to see that they were real, not statues. Some smiled. Well, I walked on past, shaken, never wanting to see it again. Would I have to return this way to go home? Never thought about it. The parking lot was empty. Bold as brass, along toward me walked two girls, probably about 20 years old, one dark haired and tattooed, one blonde. Both clean shaven and the blonde’s genitals high and visible. I stared, they grinned and giggled, and I turned to look when they passed. It was something new. Nudity was allowed anywhere and I just hadn’t seen a lot of it. But the times, I guess they had just changed.

Then it was night. Just dark. I entered a store, but it happened again, one doorway leading to many others, and once I picked one, I couldn’t go back. I was in a labyrinth again, this one mostly straight but still a maze all the same, and what’s worse was, I knew it. I mean I consciously knew I was dreaming, and I said, “Oh, no, not again.” Sadly, lucid dreaming isn’t a cure for nightmares. I woke up several times. I even propped my head up to watch TV, but sleep took me back like a prisoner and the dream continued. Stuck going from store to store, not buying anything because I found myself without any money, and in the next minute I had two canes, one traditional and the other metal and uncomfortable to the left hand. I needed them to walk. But did I? I didn’t remember that. As I walked along, a highway above me on top of a slope I wasn’t able to climb up to, I sometimes emerged outside, interacting with several people or groups whom I begged for help. Lots promised to help but then vanished, and others tormented me to some degree. A group of boys seemed concerned, then decided to mess with me until they realized who I was and backed away in dread, into the woods, behind a streetlight. How I had gotten up on the road I don’t know. I don’t know why the sudden realization of my identity was so terrifying to tough older teenage boys.

Some thing, some certain, specific thing happened. I don’t know what it was. An older black couple helped me get to the road, but there was nothing else they could do. Nearby I could see the giant screen of the old Governor Ritchie Drive-in theater. It was in the right place in relation to Montgomery Ward, more or less. It was too creepy. I don’t know of a Drive-in theater left in this country. I think they should be brought back, though.

Out of the maze of stores I seemed to have walked miles through, I wasn’t that far from my starting point. Yet I was helpless. Three women showed up. Not my age, a bit older, but not much. One seemed familiar and I can’t remember the other two. She was blonde, likely by coloring, had her hair in a style on top, had a gap in her front teeth, was very tall and strong-willed. She asked for my cell number but I had to struggle to remember it and I didn’t have it on me. I gave it to her, and for some reason it reached my ex and her husband. She said they were one their way, which meant that I could get out of the dream. None of this shit makes sense to me. Being trapped, and knowing I was dreaming it, and waking up several times only to have it keep going while I was awake and continue when I fell back to sleep is something I’ve never experienced. Like most people, I try to find some meaning. Why all this bizarre shit? It’s getting worse. And I don’t want to dream about nudity. I really don’t. And I hate the fucking trapped, maze-dreams I can’t escape from mostly ever, this time in a truly remarkable way.

It could be that I was filling out annual paperwork the other day. The program requires I have an emergency contact and next-of-kin. I don’t have any. Perhaps that’s part of it, dealing with that thought. Old people whose children are gone don’t have next-of-kin. Get over it.

Look. I don’t have answers. I have questions. I’m haunted. I’m trapped. I just got rapped in the nuts on prescription co-pays again. I take twelve pills in the morning and the rest of the day I’m useless. What I take later doesn’t even matter after a cocktail like that.

BITCH, BITCH, BITCH

I wish I could have more insight into my damaged brain’s workings. I don’t. And of course, some things I never want to know. Right now, I’m not by any means alone. People are experiencing sudden loss of memory, short-term, forgetting why they went somewhere, watching TV and not remembering what they’ve just seen. If it’s on demand, they have to rewind. Errands are missed, time deadlines, appointments, you name it. Things do not go well with us.

It’s not hard to see why. The COVID-19 cases are rising so sharply I’m terrified that the mass grave thing might become a thing again. I hate seeing others suffer, and so do most other people. But when we can do so little to stop it, that hurts. Yet during this time, we can help. We can wear masks, use physical distancing and stay home whenever possible. I went out today and I was very pleased with everyone but one person who seemed like she didn’t care and only wore a mask because it was required in the store. People here are serious about it. That’s good. But it ain’t like that everywhere. Pictures of people without masks, grouped too close together at restaurants, those get to me.

The BLM protests had to happen. George Floyd was murdered in cold blood. But people close together, unmasked, well, that’s a price we have to deal with. And we can bitch all we want, we can blame all we want, and we can listen to ass wipe Trump lie if we want, but he’ll still be an ass wipe, people will still die, and there won’t be any second wave of the coronavirus because we are not through the first wave yet. We ain’t even close. Trump had Pence lie yesterday. The Wall Street Journal praised Trump’s “leadership” in the crisis. You can find bullshit anywhere now; once-reliable sources are compromised, and I pray that trend doesn’t continue. Because you don’t want to be caught drinking from the wrong cup.

If you’re not on social media, forgive yourself immediately. It was toxic before Trump. It’s a deadly atmosphere now. It is bringing morale lower. The hatred is everywhere. Zuckerberg is not to be found. He took it over, now it’s a monster. He drank from the wrong cup before he was weaned.

It’s not fair. Or it’s scary. We have nightmares of being trapped, chased, and worse. Your dreams may not be as demented as mine, but I’ll wager they’re pretty awful.

When we drink from the wrong cup, nothing good can happen. I did that once.

THE WRONG CUP

It was the dry summer of 1994. During a heatwave the devil in hell himself would have bitched about. I don’t know much about it. I had no idea it was coming, and I had driven to Glen Burnie to the mall. I stopped on the way to get a Big Gulp from 7-eleven. I always had one with me. I got to the mall, parked at the section for Montgomery Ward. I was headed to Radio Shack. All of the sudden, the sky turns olive green, thunder cracks the sky, and I had never, until then, seen rain like that except from the remnants of Hurricane Agnes. I opened my door to see if it could really be that bad, and barely got part of my head out and it was soaked. In an instant, as if a five-gallon bucket of water had been poured over me. I shut the door, but immediately faced a problem: between the Big Gulp and the rain, I had to piss. It was okay. I had an empty Big Gulp cup on the passenger side floor. I pulled down my jeans, arched my back and filled the cup. I had plenty more left, so I quickly emptied the cup outside, then finished pissing. I wasn’t about to open the door again, so I sat the piss cup on the console and smoked a Winston. The radio had a tornado warning out for the area. I could believe it.

Long minutes passed. It didn’t let up. I was guessing five inches fell in short order. It was like that. Downhill, the parking lot sloped toward Montgomery Ward’s entrance. Water was almost up to the doors. I saw someone cross the water. Knee deep. I sat and waited. Thirsty, I picked up the Big Gulp and took a drink. I was dry after the smoke. I immediately opened the door to spit and throw up. It was piss! I’d forgotten all about it. I tossed the cup on the pavement, rinsed with soda, and ever after threw my cups away before getting another soda. Fuck that.

We’re all having nightmares. Even if we don’t remember them, we do have them. We have never been in such a position as we are in now, and it’s scary. We forget why we are in the store. What we went to the bedroom for. It takes three trips for us to get it right. We’re in a daze. Shell-shocked. And there’s more to come. Stay on your toes, and to the extent that you can manage, remain awake, and pray your souls are not taken over by darkness. Do good things for yourself and others, and whatever you do, don’t drink from the wrong cup.

And Bear, fuck you. Telling people to drink piss. What’s the matter with you, anyway?

Nightmares Of A Different Kind

Look. I’m a wreck from head to toe and it was already bad enough before I got sick. By my count I’ve had the flu four times since Christmas, or the same one with relapses, I can’t really tell. The fever, cough, diarrhea, headaches…. Running nose.

But lately the worst by far would be the runaway nightmares. Not quite like PTSD nightmares, yet the same except they’re jacked up on steroids and LSD. Because they are vile.

Do you ever dream about being chased or trapped? Of course you do. Almost everyone experiences those, maybe not regularly, but at times in their lives when they are most stressed, or feeling isolated. Beyond that thin requirement, no one really knows why our own minds torture us so.

In fact….No one even knows why or how we dream. It’s the Undiscovered Country. We still can’t figure out why we get sleepy and then sleep, although case histories have informed us that going too long without it can induce a myriad of horrifying symptoms, one of the worst being hallucinations. Go beyond that and the person simply dies. There is a specific disorder, Fatal Insomnia, and like the name says, you get it, you die.

That would be merciful next to PTSD nightmares which are augmented by fever, as I am finding out on my own. I do have insomnia and sleep apnea, a seemingly unlikely combination, yet it is so. And since Christmas, I don’t remember any nightmares being as fucking traumatic as those of the past week. They’ve been during deep sleep, however brief, and they’re some of the worst I’ve ever had.

I’ve talked about dreams before. In my post “Bolero Hats and Thunder” (see my archives) I described a particular nightmare that had prophetic elements to it. Oh, I lived to tell the tale. That’s not really all that good. The demon comes back.

Don’t start thinking I’m being hard on myself here or saying something controversial because I fancy myself some asshole who’s been through enough to know everything. I only have one reason I want attention. That is so you or someone you love never ends up like this. Early intervention with PTSD can ease some of the suffering. I recommend regular therapy whether single or in trauma groups by experts you must personally vet. I also recommend talking to your doctor about possibly taking certain medications and absolutely you must consider exercise and diet. See a dietician who can access your records, don’t rely on web sources and, whatever you do, please don’t buy snake oil from TV ads and infomercials. Those should be banned by the FCC. Nothing about them is proven. “Doctors” who endorse these fucking products are quacks. Remember what’s at stake here. Your mental health and your physical health are not separate things. This is your life we’re talking about.

I have no answers for PTSD dreams. The syndrome is an actual physical condition: post traumatic stress disorders cause multiple symptoms in people including eating disorders, panic episodes, flashbacks which can lead to a dissociative state of mind, resulting in the mental reliving of incidents that may have happened long ago (studies by hospital trauma teams have turned up a disturbing connection between PTSD and serious accidents in the workplace and on the highways because of “distraction” by episodes of dissociative states), nightmares and sleep disorders, coronary disorders including heart attack, blood pressure disorders, digestive system disorders including IBS and IBSD, severe depression and severe hypomania which resemble bipolar disorder but really aren’t, and behavioral changes of each end of the spectrum, notably a disinterest in sex or a promiscuous and risky hypersexual lifestyle. There’s more, but the combination of any of these are different in all subjects; no two people are alike.

Articles, books and papers by professionals have tried for at least a century to lay out what PTSD is and what causes it and how to cure it.

In ancient times warfare caused the same psychological effects as it does today. By the time of Alexander the Great, battlefields were strewn with bodies and body parts. Guts, brains, entrails filled the air with a stench any medic or close combat veteran or villager today knows and can never forget. The night would bring sieges of battlements by crude artillery, or it would fall silent except for the screaming and piteous cries of the dying. For some, one battle was enough. Others took longer. To even think PTSD wasn’t real is to overestimate humans then compared to now. What always happened was something recorded as far back as ancient Assyria. That’s not even considering what happened before. Hunters wounded in a violent battle in prehistory by a mammoth or an even worse animal trying to claim the kill would never be the same. It would not be called “PTSD” until late 1979 when Vietnam veterans were in- country one day, on a jet the next, arriving home in 48 hours. We can assume a little about veterans of earlier wars. Post-World War Two and Korean Conflict veterans were treated at Veterans hospitals stateside, and depending on their symptoms, kept for the rest of their lives or released. Others went straight home. One distinct difference between 1941-1945 and what followed is that returned soldiers could proudly wear their dress uniforms and be welcomed home by adoring crowds even in small towns. To some this and the travel time on a ship to the states could have been a help in transition. Buddies supported each other, some listening, some talking, but even with that, heroes always had problems. Artilleryman Frank Cunningham once had to take a Thompson or an M-1 Garand and charge a Nazi machine gun nest. The MG-42 was the heavy machine gun feared by allied infantry and artillery alike; it spat bullets at such a high rate that charging a position was considered suicide. The troops called it “the zipper” and there was rarely only one. A fixed gun in a bunker window was called a “murder hole”. The weapon had only one weakness: the assistant gunner had to change barrels because the rate of fire made them overheat. While the change and reload time could be fast, it did give infantry time to find better cover, or, in Frank’s case, time to get close and toss a grenade and eliminate the position. He was awarded a medal, one of several.

In a report I once read, the authors claimed that mild cases of PTSD cleared up on their own or with minimal professional treatment. I dismissed it out of hand then and I still do. MRI studies have shown that there are actual changes to the brain and they’re not just real, they’re permanent injuries. Some images show profound changes while others seem minimal, and yet no matter what, the subject suffers from the same range of symptoms. That means that a dramatic change has taken place which disrupts everything down to the interruption of neurotransmitters and how they are used by their receptors. That’s really tragic. Soldiers come home different. Storybook marriages end, sometimes messy, sometimes deadly. Victims of domestic abuse, from battered spouses to sexuality abused children lose who they were. In the case of protracted emotional and violent physical abuse accompanied by sexual abuse, the surviving child will, at the instant of the first abusive act, cease to develop normally. Development is arrested and a new child evolves and continues to do so in progressively dysfunctional ways long into adulthood, even after the brain has finished development, in the late 20s. This is due in part to learned behavior, which is collectively known as personality disorders, of which there are many elements within each that can combine to defy any certain disorder being named. The resultant diagnosis is “Personality Disorder, Unspecified”. And it’s damnably maddening to treat just it is for a patient to cope with even if he or she understands the mechanisms involved. Later I’ll put it differently: the symptoms of personality disorders and PTSD often appear to be the same.

IN YOUR DREAMS

When he came home, no one really noticed anything about him that seemed to stand out. Frank Cunningham married, had one child and never spoke of his experiences in Europe under Generals Bradley and Patton. A few times, he told his daughter a small story. She became a nurse and came to know he had to have nightmares and other problems. So strong was he that there was never anything again that he was afraid of. That’s also a symptomatic response to the hell he endured and witnessed. After a war, what is there to be afraid of? Once, as a political figure, he threatened infamous mobster Crazy Joe Gallo, the man who was suspected of taking part in the public hit of mob boss Albert Anastasia, head of the Anastasia crime family. Crazy Joe even hired a black hitman to assassinate Joe Colombo, the head of the former Profaci crime family, now the Colombo family, after Colombo drew undue attention with his pronounced activities in Italian-American civil rights, as they knew it was a scam he used to make money from donations while calling out the FBI for carrying out biased operations to target Italians as gangsters. Colombo was shot at a rally and paralyzed, and died 6 years and change later. Between these incidents, Crazy Joe once badly frightened a schoolgirl when she was going home from school. When Frank Cunningham heard of this, he waited for Joe Gallo. When next he saw the mobster, Cunningham somehow put the fear of God into the man. He was one of very few Crazy Joe ever backed away from. To put this into perspective, Joe Gallo was as evil and dangerous a man as any other gangster in the Mafia’s heyday. Being a rogue and having earned his mob sobriquet, he was a loose cannon, and as such, perhaps one of the most dangerous men in New York. Gallo was shot to death while dining in Little Italy in 1972. He went out shooting and bravely drawing fire to himself by charging to the front door to protect his family. Now picture a man who towered over him one day and made a man like Crazy Joe Gallo walk away. He never did fuck with a civilian in Cunningham’s considerable jurisdiction again.

That’s just one possible outcome of PTSD. You fear nothing. You’ll protect anyone no matter who threatens them.

Along the same line as fearlessness is something far worse and far more dangerous: daredevil, disinhibition, compulsive risk taking behaviour. The exact mechanisms for this are still being studied, but what we seem unable to agree on is that thrill seekers and professional daredevils have a different and opposite set of key instigators than risk takers. Complications of the argument are that dopamine and MAO are certainly involved. But what’s the difference?

Academically, I cannot say. I disagree with some conclusions based on my own experience. A thrill seeker can be labeled with a “personality type” which frankly I don’t have any patience for. I see them as people who like the rush of hazardous sports and activities, with personal injury avoided with skill gained by experience. Racing accidents, downhill skiing matches, cliff diving and extreme sports are never without casualties, but that is hardly anyone’s intent.

On the other hand the risk takers are without such concern, usually acting compulsively or impulsively; consequences and hazards are put on the periphery or completely disregarded. When still a fairly new driver, I loved driving fast. But I had neither the experience, and therefore skill set, to perform at high speed. I came very close to dying or killing someone else multiple times. It wasn’t as if I constantly drove insanely, but at times and under certain conditions, something came over me that I have never been able to describe. A warm summer evening, a good rock tune on the radio, girls watching from another car…. Who can tell? When the light turned green, I floored it. Nuts. Who can really tell me what the hell that was? Because I was fearless unless I saw the bright blue bubble gum machine on my bumper. I started to be more aware and made sure those 1977 Pontiacs were not in sight before letting whatever chemical that took over loose. Chased many times, but in a high speed chase, never caught. Why that was a point of pride shames me now but I didn’t care then. Oh, I didn’t want to be caught; the risk was the fun. I even lost choppers twice, and that’s almost impossible.

Along the way though, I racked up over 35 accidents, including totalling the same car three times. I know, I know. Sounds like bullshit. But it’s true. It was a ’93 Mazda 323, a tiny but tough car. Eventually I was just too scared, as my condition worsened, that I had beaten the odds for far too long. It wasn’t a question of if I would kill someone; it was a question of when I would.

But also, there were accidents when I wasn’t speeding, doing donuts, cornering or ruining tires by burning the rubber clean down to the steel belts and kicking up sparks in the night. The dissociation that hit me without warning also made me ram several cars in the rear. But the risky, uninhibited behavior wasn’t limited to driving. It fueled my sex life, it egged me into dangerous situations and I never seemed to learn my lesson.

Be careful; taking risks, mood swings and serious depression, feelings of being worthless, suicidal thoughts, dysfunctional relationship history and other symptoms of behavior can be diagnosed mistakenly as borderline personality disorder, or BPD. You have to be clear when consulting a doctor. The overall behavior involved with PTSD can closely resemble BPD. The problem is how you proceed with treatment and the incredible stigma of BPD as compared to PTSD. People who are diagnosed with BPD are shunned very often. Although the disorder is treatable and has been observed to ease with age while PTSD does not, word searches for it have sad questions. People ask if a BPD patient is dangerous, is sociopathic, lies constantly or if they’re even capable of love.

Any person is potentially dangerous, and there’s no use in denying it. How many times have you seen a reporter stick a microphone in some shocked person’s face after a neighbor shot and killed someone? Know what they say? “He was always so pleasant. He’d do anything for anyone.”

There’s no stone engraved that says only certain types of people can kill. Nothing, by the same playbook, says that a person with PTSD can’t perform a job, raise a family, be a good mother or father. In fact, people prove it every day. The same is true of schizophrenics, behavior disorder patients, those with OCD, autism and everything else. What remains to be solved and mitigated are the dark dreams of the sufferers of trauma.

We know so little of the brain and dreams, that nightmares are bound to be, as you’ve probably found out yourself, a mystery. Some sources claim a difference between stages of sleep and dream intensity. Some still cling to old school beliefs that people don’t dream except in the REM state, although we know by now that every stage of sleep can produce dreams. The data show several periods of dream sleep during a normal night, with dreams lasting seconds to perhaps even an hour. During the deepest sleep if a nightmare occurs, and people are awakened suddenly, sleep paralysis, that warm place which coming fully awake from is a long and frightful struggle, keeps one from moving or speaking. Experiences tell us of a history of”old hag attacks” during this time, when people feel a “weight on their chest” and see some witch or ancient demon sitting astride them. That would be fine if sleep paralysis alone could account for it, but it doesn’t even come close. The reason: a large amount of literature on the subject contradicts it completely. Not that sleep paralysis isn’t real. But cases go back as far as ancient history of other people witnessing the hag attacking someone else who was sleeping while the witness was awake. Last year I heard a first-hand account of such a case. A mother and daughter sharing a studio apartment: the mother, apparently unaware, slept. The daughter awoke suddenly and saw a hag attacking her mother. She of course woke her mother up and the hag vanished. What’s even more frightening is that the daughter swore adamantly that the “hag” was sucking energy from the mother’s mouth into its own mouth. Steeped in folkloric horror stories, this unfortunately seems quite likely to be very true. It explains why victims wake to feel weight on their chest and trouble breathing. Indeed, the realm of sleep is one of both delight and suffering. It also accounts for six to eight hours of sleep leaving one feeling sick and weakly lethargic.

AUGMENTED NIGHTMARES

There are many things that can cause nightmares to become so severe that they are actually traumatic in their own way. Factors such as health, diet, drugs (OTC, prescription and illicit), smoking, increased stress during the day’s work routine, the deterioration of a relationship, having a loved one gravely ill, financial situation and others all seem to play a part, like extras on a film set. You may not notice them, but they affect the quality of a film nonetheless. For a silly example, I give you Jurassic Park 2: “The Lost World”. It was a silly movie from the beginning to the end, but some of it had sillier moments than others. The extras made for some of the most hilarious bits, like when the T-REX was chasing its infant, carried in the back seat of a convertible by Ian Malcolm. On a street scene, some Japanese tourists are running away, in a tip of the hat to classic Godzilla movies. It’s so quick that if you blink you’re going to miss it. But all things considered, bit players are not so trivial after all.

Of all the bit players when it comes to PTSD nightmares, one of the most powerful is a low-grade fever. You don’t need much, but a fever tends to strengthen at night. When I’ve dreamt this last week, the result was always so bad that my attempts to stay hydrated during the day ended up with something getting drenched in urine during deep, dreadful dreams I couldn’t escape.

I don’t mind telling you this. These are things rarely addressed openly except for the distilled and impersonal websites that range from reliable information to medical myths. The internet is a digital minefield.

WHAT YOU DREAM MAY HAVE SIGNIFICANT MEANING OR NONE AT ALL, DEPENDING ON WHAT YOU READ

I’m a believer that for every nightmare, there are infinite possible reasons, and none are simple. If I agree that the human brain is still the real Undiscovered Country, then dreams are important. They do carry significant meaning, no matter what experts want to fight about. Leaving their quarrels behind is easy for me; I know that ultimately, they tangle so because they don’t know.

LABYRINTHINE TRAPS: RECURRING

My first nightmare of the week was memorable. Influenced no doubt because I fell asleep watching TV, and was surrounded by electronic devices which affect the level of ambient electromagnetic energy (which is claimed by various studies to affect the brain), I found myself with Rachel Maddow in some sort of after hours setting. She was a really funny, charming and somewhat eccentric. Or she’d had a few drinks. We were alone for a second and she was dressed in her normal suit. Then the fever and my PTSD kicked in and ruined my brief time with someone I admire.

She suddenly had guests and she was kicking back. Somehow she had long hair and let it down. She got wild, and began showing strangers large flip cards which morphed into gifs with sexual acts. Different kinds, all graphic. Then she turned into a full figured blonde who was evil and menacing. She chased me, and the building was old, very old, with once stained wainscoting and hardwood floors, all now gone to seed; scuffed and dust-covered. The hallways stank of old urine long ago soaked forever into the hardwood by pets. In a building with no air conditioning. I was running, trying to escape her. To escape it. This place was a true labyrinth, dark, dusty, no way out, one hallway turning a corner and leading to another. I never got out, but toward the end, the corridors shortened, there was little room to move, and yet several doors lined the dim scene. I knew that none would lead to freedom.

Of course, I awoke with wet crotch to find that the second airing, which begins at midnight eastern time, was halfway through. Rachel Maddow was calmly interviewing a guest. I turned the fucking TV off and went to the kitchen to kill the fever. A combination of one Alka Seltzer tablet in half a glass of water chased two Extra Strength Tylenol. Fuck a fever, I thought. Fuck Rachel Maddow too. I’m never watching her again unless I have a pot of caffeine-loaded Starbucks Veranda brewing. No offense, Rachel, mon ami.

Two nights later, weary from the constant coughing that had my intercostal muscles either sore or excruciating, depending on whether they were upper or lower, and again with a fever that rose as the sun set, I fought sleep. I drank coffee and took Tylenol. You think it helped, right? Cause you really want this post over already, don’t you?

No. It didn’t work out that way. Never does, for assholes. Why on Earth would you have imagined otherwise? Did you forget whose site you’re on? Shame, shame on you.

And this time it was even more terrifying than the first. A long time ago I had a 1970 Mustang Mach One. It was white with black GT stripes. I was traveling, not in the past, but some weird-ass future, a road somewhere in Columbia, when it turned suddenly into a dirt track with steep earthen sides, a deep cut into the ground, if you will. I got out to search on foot for the way out, as one wasn’t visible and had to be hidden in the repeated colors of piles and cliffs of clay and dirt. I knew I had passed a yellow diamond caution sign but the symbols on it made no sense. Why had the road stopped? Why had I continued to follow the way forward into a trench? What the hell was this, anyway? Was some tunnel being built? That made no sense; but I found myself climbing a less steep part of the trench’s side and was horrified. Huge “Safety Yellow” construction equipment worked at digging and moving dirt and typical Maryland clay. Menacing things, more than double the size of anything I’ve ever seen. At the top I also saw that so much dirt had been excavated that towering piles of it like mountains prevented me from seeing the way out. I slid down to return to my car and a guy in a hardhat said it was gone. I looked back to where I had left it and it was gone. Looking around I could see part of the right side under a new steep pile of dirt. The hardhat dude handed me a large manilla envelope and a red file folder and said to file a claim later, but for now get out of the area.

This began a frantic flight to freedom. First I found a shack for the construction company, entered it and found secretaries at desks like they were in a corporate building. What the fuck! Scared, but refusing to panic, I followed their directions through a door. I kept coming to places that got lighter over time, with a few windows to see the sunshine I had not seen at the beginning.

How long it all went on, I don’t know. Buildings seemed to connect through a single unmarked door. The doors gave way to new carpeted hallways and large spaces ranging from sparsely furnished and deserted to a doctor’s waiting room with sick children, all unaccompanied by adults. I got the hell out of there by asking a receptionist which of the many doors led to the street. I used the one she lazily pointed to as if she had to answer the question every day.

It went on and on. At one point I became aware that I was coming awake but I went right back to it. The next large space I found had a tall ceiling, full of big windows. The doors were big, leading out to wide, concrete steps and a concourse to a courtyard. All ultra modern, very pretty, but a dead end for me. I found that it was enclosed by tall stone walls with planters on top with ornate trees. I was able to hear traffic close by, but there was no way to scale the walls. They were at least a dozen feet tall.

I finally saw a highway through one section of a building but there was no exit. Two Russian women cursed me and said I was never leaving.

EVEN WORSE

Last night was a real ordeal. Fighting like hell to stay awake was useless. Somehow I found myself in a hybrid version of my childhood house in Pasadena and the worst house I ever lived in and still have nightmares about despite its demolition in early 2005. Parts of it were dirty and old, I found myself cramped onto a cot in a small modified section next to my older sister. For all intents and purposes we are enemies and have not spoken since summer, 1988. In the dream, we were close. A long time had passed and we were older. Our parents, now long dead, could be heard downstairs. Hurling curses and insults at both of us. My sister had a boyfriend but he turned out to be a real turd and left her. We were both desperate to escape the house. I climbed down an unfinished addition being built and I think I was scouting places to go for refuge. I’d seen the houses in real life but not since the 1970s because they’re in Greensboro, NC. But we weren’t there. We were in Pasadena.

Coming back with no ideas, I hugged my sister and cried. It looked like escape meant running with no place to go. I didn’t want that for her. But then it got really twisted. For comfort we became closer over time. Not in a good way, but not exactly crossing a line. One night I saw her getting dressed and holy shit, she had a penis!

What the hell? She’d managed to have a kid while being a hermaphrodite?

This wasn’t my sister! I knew who it was but there was no time to even cope. My parents were sex offenders but had passed some test and qualified to house orphaned children. They began taking up spaces until I had no choice but to leave. I frantically packed what I could in a backpack, but as the children settled in, they began to attack each other with extreme violence, including sexual assault and flesh eating. Before I could escape, I awoke, once again wet of crotch and deeply troubled. The sound of blood gushing through arteries filled my ears even as I gave up trying to forget my horror and revulsion. I took a half milligram of Klonopin, drank coffee, having washed and changed into my day clothes.

Interestingly I had not fallen asleep with the TV on. The power to everything was off. And chillingly, I awoke at the stroke of three, same as the night before: the third hour, the hour of shadows, or demons.

I have had evil spirits haunt my dreams and torment me many times. These experiences are not to be trivialized; they can do damage science denies. Have you ever heard of someone who died of a heart attack in their sleep and someone invariably says, “At least he didn’t suffer”?

How do they know that? If needing to find a restroom in a dream (as happened in the three dreams I’ve described) ends in either waking up a wet mess or making it to the bathroom in time and pissing for ten minutes straight, then demonic and torturous nightmares can certainly trigger a heart attack.

It’s a matter of contention, but the ancient Hebrews believed that nocturnal emissions (ejaculation during sleep) was a grave sin. Even the old testament relates the unlikely tale of a bride of several husbands who refused to impregnate the woman, “spilling their seed on the bed” or, in modern lexicon, “pulling out” instead. So God killed them.

So prevalent this belief in sin seemed that some scholars claim that the demonic succubus was invented. This was a female demon which sexually assaulted men in their sleep, thus accounting for the mess they awoke in.

Really? Like, everyone else automatically knew that a guy in their tribe or camp had a wet dream? Well, according to some interpretations of the law, he had to confess to it, and a succubus became the perfect reason to let him off the hook. Not being an expert on ancient Hebrews or their laws, I take the tale as true simply because incubi and succubi really do date far back to ancient times.

Then again, so do satyrs. The fact remains: there’s still so much we don’t know about the brain and the weird things it does. I’m so often amazed at what humanity has accomplished in the relatively short history it’s had on Earth. Pyramids that morons still claim humans could not have built, and therefore were erected by extraterrestrials. Angkor Wat, an enormous city surrounded by the largest religious structure ever built. So many wondrous things we as humans have done. Leaps in disease diagnosis and treatment, machines that can detect damaged areas of the brain, caused by great psychological trauma. We’ve sent men to the moon despite legions of idiots who say it was all faked by Hollywood.

Yet myths and false and dated beliefs are not going away anytime soon. We still don’t know why we dream. We guess. We do sleep study after sleep study. We can treat mental illness but not cure it. We can’t even cure the worst sleep disorder in existence.

All we can really know is what we experience and share. Eventually, who knows what we’ll find? Knowledge doesn’t come easily and usually not very quickly. We search. We learn from small clues.

All I know is this: mental illness sucks. PTSD sucks. Nightmares suck. Fevers suck. And PTSD nightmares combined with a fever?

Absolutely dreadful.

With the coronavirus spreading, let’s take a moment to remember that if you’re experiencing fever, you’re going to have your dreams change to black and terror-filled shit that no one should have to endure.

A CHRISTMAS STORY: A True Story Of Loss, A Curse And The Quest For Redemption

And when he gets to heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell, “One more father reporting, Sir. I’ve done my time in Hell.”

I awoke late today. First I thought it was Monday. I drifted off again. When I next woke up, I thought it was Sunday. It was near 13:20 hours. Past noon. The nightmare had continued each time I awoke, a relentless, haunting, vile affair which held me in its vise-like grip, and once asleep again, it took me to places I didn’t want to go, where I saw faces I didn’t wish to see.

NIGHTMARES IN REAL LIFE

These things are not rare for me. It happens all the time. Each time I can, usually, find something to rationalize the ugly and frightful dreams. Like last evening when I was forced to take Benadryl. I was feverish, freezing, every joint, every muscle in different stages of aches and pains. I’ve had my flu shot. It’s just a bad cold, I tell myself. I could have gotten it anywhere.

But then, I’m shaken by the nature of my nightmares. I see my parents. I hear them talking. Talking to me. Teasing, taunting, telling me I’m shit, trash, like they told me all my life. The faces of my children are there. Benign. Silent. Impassive. I don’t know why they don’t save me from the horror. Don’t they know I’m being tortured?

It would be wrong to blame them if they refused to come to my aid. After all, did I not let them die? Was I not able to save them? Is a father’s guilt not inexcusable?

DECEMBER 24, 1994

It was cold. You know, really, really cold. I was delivering pizza for Papa John’s. The store closed early, around dusk.

With nothing to do, I wandered around Dundalk. I worked there but was staying with a younger brother in Pasadena. I didn’t want to go there and sit the rest of the night.

I had been dealing with an eye infection, and since I was recently separated, my heart was broken. I was allowed to see my kids on Christmas, but I had no plan to visit. Working for nothing more than gas for my car, I hadn’t the means to buy even one small gift for each of them. And on this, my first Christmas not living with them, I wasn’t showing up empty-handed. That was unthinkable to me.

THE STORY AND THE CURSE

I went to Bayview Hospital in Baltimore after treating my growling stomach to a Wendy’s triple. Which emptied my wallet of my tips. By 23:00 I walked in from the parking lot to the emergency entrance. My eye had this weird infection that clouded my sight. I would wake up to find a white paste on my left eyelid. It affected my vision, made it hard to see street signs and house addresses at night. So I didn’t care how long I’d be there; it needed care and I had nowhere to go the next morning.

The waiting room was full. Parents with sick children, adults with injuries, probably nothing serious, but pain is pain, and suffering is suffering. I checked in and went back outside to smoke.

Continue reading “A CHRISTMAS STORY: A True Story Of Loss, A Curse And The Quest For Redemption” →

The House Of Pain

Yes, I have led a life full of misery and pain beyond anything I could have imagined. Even as it all began.

Welcome. Pull up a chair, grab yourself a cup of tea, and I’ll tell you a story. I warn you now that it is disturbing and may trigger you. I advise care, and reading slowly so that if you need to, you can close this post. The last thing I want is to hurt you.

Sometime in or around 1964, I had a bedroom facing east in a brand new house in North Shore On The Magothy, a development in Pasadena, Maryland. I had the room to myself, but I was not alone. I was never alone. Something else was in there with me, something not human. And I could see it. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. Kids see things. Monsters, boogeymen. Except this, my friends, was not the Boogeyman, nor was it a big monster that lived in my closet. At the time my young mind knew nothing of what it was or why it was there. It just was. It looked like it was made of a drawing. Gray lines that crossed each other to form a shape. I would liken it to the animated character that represented Dennis the Menace on the live-action TV series: A tornado wearing a traditional fireman’s helmet. But it wasn’t solid, and I never saw it in midair. It was only a few inches tall, and it was always on a wall. It hid a lot, usually in the same corner, but occasionally, it would dart across the room, seeming to stick to the ceiling as it moved. It was fast, challenging my visual acuity, but I still kept sight of it. In daylight, it looked like it had one eye. It was the height of the golden age of chrome-trimmed cars, when bumpers, mirrors, window frames and door frames were all chrome, as were some types of wheels and wheel covers. You know, hubcaps. If I was lying in bed for an afternoon nap, I would see cars going past on the road out front reflect the afternoon sun into my window and on my walls. These reflections changed as the cars moved, traveling along a wall or the ceiling. I had something to compare the shadow with, and I knew no car was causing it.

Besides, I could feel it. It was full of malice, full of evil. I could feel the hate it had, and I knew it was something living. It grew stronger with time, and my fear more than likely fed it. I’d see it, and scream for my mommy. Unfortunately, my father was always there; his office was downstairs. And he hated screaming. If he was working, that was bad enough, but he also had migraine headaches that were relentless. He called them what everyone did back then, “sick headaches.” That’s because migraines often make the sufferer vomit. He had a hair trigger temper, with or without the headache. And did I mention that he hated screaming? Because, even at age four, upsetting him meant the belt. A thin leather men’s belt made long before the 1970s and the stupid extra-wide belts worn by hippies and jetsetters alike. This belt made for an excellent whip. I had two sisters at that time. And two older half brothers. They didn’t live with us. If the three of us did something he didn’t like, he’d line us all up, get behind us and the whipping would start. It would leave blistered stripes on our backs, and these would weep with clear sweat or water, I’m not sure which. He would swing until he was literally physically spent. Our screams of pain and loud sobbing would be met with more lashes until we were reduced to sighs that kids make when trying hard not to cry.

It gets worse. That thing in my room wouldn’t go away. When I saw it, I cried for mommy, not my father. By the age of four, I was already afraid of him, and since my memory doesn’t go back much further, I can give a pretty good guess as to why. Sometimes he would try to sit me on his lap, but I would cry until he let me go. Then later, I would be yelled at for never wanting anything to do with him. Then one day he brought home a Popeye nightlight. I no longer had to sleep in the dark. You’d think that would help. But now, instead of sensing that thing on the wall in the dark and being very often frozen in terror and unable to call mommy, I could also see it. I didn’t care if I got a whipping. Several times I was able to scream, and finally the light was left on in my room. That of course did not help. One night I saw it on the wall above my closet. I called out, and both mommy and my dad came running in. By this time it had happened so often that I could tell they were taking me seriously. I believe they could sense something; this night they were visibly upset, but not at me. Lying in bed, I pointed right at the thing. “Don’t you see it?”

Mommy said something like, “What is that?“

And it jumped on her. She gave a scream, not too loud, but it was full of terror. She could feel it. She ran out of the room, trying to shake something off as if a squirrel had jumped on her.

That was the night she stopped being my mommy. She was never the same. That summer, I had my fourth birthday. Our next door neighbor baked my birthday cake. I got a pop gun and an army helmet. The gun fired a cork tied to a string, so you could put the cork back in, cock the rifle and shoot again. Outside, on a sunny July day, with no one to play with, I played soldier by myself. And just outside my father’s downstairs office, I spotted something I had never seen. Wondrous creatures, like tiny birds. They hovered around something stuck to the brick wall. Never imagining what would happen, I shot at the thing on the wall. Yellowjackets immediately set upon me, and they hurt. Stinging and burning, I screamed, cried, and ran to the kitchen door for my mommy. But before I could get treatment for my stings, I got the belt for screaming.

Everything changed. She used to defend me from my father. She used to put salve on my stripes. She used to hug me. One day she brought home an orange drink in a half pint carton, opened it and put a straw in it, and told me to go outside and drink it so my sisters wouldn’t see and get jealous. Times were hard, and she could only afford the one. I never forgot that day. I felt so special. I felt loved. Mommy was so kind, gentle, always humorous, always ready to give me a bit of attention because I was sandwiched between two sisters. I was lonely. She would draw me pictures of Batman. If I was sick, she took me to the doctor and then to Bob’s Village Drugs for my medicine. If I could handle it, she would let me have a fountain Coke at the soda fountain counter. Served in an old-fashioned Coca-Cola glass with crushed ice and a paper straw. Once in a while a small toy would find its way home with me. Well, maybe it was small, but it was priceless to me.

A year earlier, when we had almost no furniture, and no carpet yet, she would sit in a dim light with us in the living room and we would play games. But after the night that thing jumped on her, she wasn’t my mommy anymore. Never again. Anything good in her died there and then.

But the horror was only beginning. In 1966, my older sister was given a Ouija board for Christmas. She got weird shit, too. I liked my Captain Action and G.I.Joe dolls, but I always asked for things that went with them but were sold separately, like the Captain America outfit for Captain Action, and the Jeep and the Sea Sled for Joe. You know who got them? My older sister. It was like my father was torturing me even without the belt. Even so, most of my memory during this time is full of gaps. One thing, though. A year, maybe even two, after my older sister got the Ouija Board, she had two friends over. It was after school, in the fall, when it got dark early. They turned out the light. They came out screaming. My father had the worst time getting rid of that bloody thing. The two girls, I never saw them again even though one lived right down the street. She was older, so I didn’t ride the same school bus and I just never saw either one of them after that. My sister would not, even decades later, tell me what happened. She told our parents. He threw it in the trash.

Next day it was back on her closet shelf and as she was getting ready for school, she saw it and screamed. Now my tough big sister, who often bullied or pranked me into shit that wasn’t funny, to hear her scream, that was extraordinary. I ran into her room, a forbidden zone for me, and I saw the thing sitting there along with older games like Candyland, Hi-Ho Cherry-O and Green Ghost, and a stack of others. Our father broke the board in half. I swear he was hysterical with terror. He stomped the glass and plastic planchette and smashed it.

After the next trash pickup, it was back. Same place, in one piece, even the box. He wound up burning them in a nice hot wood fire in the fireplace. I cannot recall whether blue or green, but the board, box and plastic melted and burned with a color I asked my father about. He had no real answer.

That was when everything in that house changed for the worse, when real evil was done. Again, you and I are here having tea together, but I warn you, this gets very dark from here onward.

There’s a belief about Ouija boards that goes like this: If you have made contact with a hostile entity with it, you must close the session by moving the planchette to “Goodbye”, and you cannot burn the board if the entity has entered your home. Some say it may still be attached to the board, and burning it releases the entity into your home, where it essentially has free run. Well, that’s exactly what happened.

Mom and dad began to take me out of my bedroom at night and into the den, in order to teach me about sex. They did some things together, but most of it was her having sex with me. I was seven-years-old.

At one point, they did something that would ultimately prove their undoing: They had me and one younger sister together doing things with them, and a few times, each other. They showed us 8mm porn reels, and moved me out of my old room into the old office downstairs, because dad had a warehouse and trucking terminal in Glen Burnie, a town between Pasadena and Baltimore. Usually, though, my night was Saturday. At the time, I had no idea that all of the kids were going through this except the older sister, who for some reason was left out. Probably because she was cold-blooded mean and had threatened to run away or call the police. But whatever, I didn’t know. As kids were added to our family, eventually four girls and two boys plus two half brothers, that house saw more child abuse than I can picture even to this day.

Years went by. Dysfunctional and afflicted, I would make friends, then lose them. I had horrible nightmares, trouble sleeping, and even though I never saw that shadow thing again, I guessed it was still in that room upstairs, or in my mother. It was the beginning of my experiences with demons, dark spirits described and fought by Jesus of Nazareth.

Every Saturday night, just hours away from Sunday School, my mother would come into my room late, after everyone else was asleep, and fondle me. I tried to pretend I was asleep. Sometimes I tried to fake being sick. She would put a hand to my forehead, say “You don’t have a temperature,” and if I still resisted, my father would come in and say, “Get your ass out here, boy.” And threaten me with the belt. How sick could you get? Threatening to beat your son for not wanting to have sex with his mother?

Oh, I know what some of you are thinking. That every adolescent dreams of having sex with his mother. Well, there are three things I’ve studied in my life. One is the paranormal. One is PTSD. The other is incest. All three still baffle me, but there are some things I’ve learned. First of all, having a sexual fantasy, no matter what it is, should never be allowed to come true. Reality is not the same. People get hurt, scarred, and victims commit suicide or crimes in the aftermath. Second, not many boys really do fantasize about having sex with their mothers; it may occur for a short time, but it’s fleeting. I always had this sick feeling in my gut that it was wrong, all wrong, and that there was a good reason for me to be sick about it, to resist the way I did. Another thing I’ve learned is that first-person porn stories, like the old “Penthouse Forum” letters, are very often about incest, but they’re bullshit. Today these types of porn live on with the internet, but much of the time, it’s written by men who have little sexual experience and less knowledge of anatomy and physiology. Many stories written as if by a woman talk about being penetrated in their cervix. Sick, but laughable; it’s almost impossible. Women who need cervical exams often have to be given pain medication, it has to be dilated by drugs, and any procedure may involve general anesthesia. Because it fucking hurts. But I digress.

Incest happens more often than I can stand to think. It usually involves rape, although sometimes even a fourth degree sex offense is so traumatic that the victim’s development arrests at the moment it is initiated. Whatever their age, their psychological, emotional maturity will stop and proceed abnormally from there. There is no cure for post traumatic stress disorder. Only time and treatment can help the most severe cases, and personally, I count every case as severe. Until the age of sixteen, I went through this. My social behavior got worse and worse. I wound up with literally no friends but tons of enemies. Any relationship I did have was dysfunctional from the beginning. My teen romances ended badly, with a girlfriend’s parents totally freaked out and pissed. By the time my father was involving himself in threesomes with my mother, I was finally able to defy him and demand it all stop. Sensing something in me he didn’t want to test, he agreed. But the damage was done.

In a community called North Shore On The Magothy, in a house no longer resembling the one I lived in, there was once a bunch of children tormented, tortured and raped. It has a new owner now; has for years. I’ve seen it on Google Street, and I don’t recognize it. But I will always know it as the House Of Pain.