You Bet Your Boots, #SoCS

It’s another
Stream of Consciousness Saturday, #SoCS
and I am thinking about yesterday.

I am thinking about eyes and, yes, about a lot of other random words that do and don’t include the letters “y…e…s”.

Not necessarily “yesterday” as in the actual yesterday, which is about to change, as I waited to write this until the very end of my Saturday.

I spent my actual Saturday having fun with family. That is exactly what I needed to remember what is most important and to forget the yesterdays lately, ever since November 8th, 2016.

I thought of the Beatles documentary I saw recently and their song:
Yesterday.

The “yesterday” of the times during the Beatles popular years looked a lot different from my yesterday. The world is made up of the big and the small things that make up both. Times really change a lot and yet, yes/no, they don’t, as it would appear.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, but “yes” I could. The world is not actually any worse than it was yesterday. My eyes didn’t deceive me, though I wouldn’t have a problem wording it that way.

My eyes help me less and less, though most days I don’t notice either way.

The times spent with my niece and nephews involves me and also my brother explaining more and more that we can’t see, that our eyes don’t work. Sometimes one of them tries to make sense of this by stating that “their” eyes work, as if they are trying to make sense of the fact that they can still see and to work it out in their mind.

My niece is oldest and seems to understand. My nephews are a few years younger than her and are still working it all out, but they are getting there. They need to be reminded to let us feel a toy they want to show us, for example, like on this most recent visit when my nephew wanted to show us his lip balm. I should have smelled it anyway. I soon did and it smelled like strawberries.

Yesterday I could play a game with my soon-to-be-six-years-old niece and not have to think too hard about all the things that are hard. She accepts me for me, her aunt, and she puts her small hand into mine and guides me to where she wants me to go in our games.

My eyes made it impossible to watch my nephew’s swimming lesson the other day, but I still wanted to be there.

My eyes made it impossible to read the menu at dinner with my family, but luckily they could read and we knew, pretty much, what we wanted at a restaurant we’ve been to eat at hundreds and hundreds of times before.

My yesterday of sorts had my eyes working better than my today. I can’t change that. I eat pizza with my family and it tastes just as delicious, with or without fully functioning eyes.

Yes, okay, so the world makes little sense to me, more than ever, but it’s not all bad. I can still write stream of consciousness thought and not have to be perfect or say what any one person expects me to say.

Yes, I do like living in Canada and having it become dark so early, as I feel the night has just as much to teach as the daytime.

Yes, I can focus on the good and use a positive word, instead of no no no no no all the time. I can agree that the world is out of sorts and this is a “yes” statement, instead of just being something negative, where “no” is like a shake of the head.

Yes, I have all the Cherry Coke I could possibly need right now and to last me for a long long time. Can you say sugar rush/sugar coma anyone?

Yes, if I’m not careful I will hold down the shift key for not just the first letter, “y” and onto the second letter, “e”. My computer’s voice program sounds it out like “yeeeees”. That’s how I know, but soon I will have actual braille to read from when I write, so my own editing can go more smoothly. I won’t have to rely entirely on those little subtle clues that I made a small blunder.

YEs.

🙂

I realize that this is a small thing, in the grand scheme of things. All the things, all that my eyes cannot see, so my ears pick up on instead.

Yes, I have been somewhat of a “yes girl” in my life, not wanting to say “no” if I can help it. Hearing that word, “no” isn’t always easy, but sometimes we have no choice. Yes doesn’t always give us what we want.

My yesterdays have been a mixed bag of yes’s and no’s and maybe’s because I can’t always make up my mind. I am somewhat famous for that indecision actually.

Yesterday is in the past and my broken eyes can’t look back to see what I may or may not have gotten wrong. Tomorrow is all I can do anything about now.

Yesterday is over and done with now and tomorrow is all we’ve got to work with.

Yes, I will do my best. My yesterdays’ weren’t all that bad really. It’s just easy, with working eyes or without, to see things that are in the past as being worse than what they maybe really were.

Yes, I have a lot to look forward to coming up. Yes, I am looking ahead to these things. Yes, I loved all the yesterday days I have had.

And YEEEES, I absolutely did eat some of my niece and nephew’s old Halloween candy while visiting, but it was mostly the stuff they don’t like, so it’s okay.

Howling At the Moon

The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences what other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature and its power is never diminished.

–Ming-Dao Deng, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

It draws her in, with its bright light, when the night comes. She is drawn to it, unmistakably, the pull she always felt growing stronger and stronger over time.

From a long time back, she couldn’t explain this if she tried, but lots of people love the moon. She wasn’t alone. Nothing so strange, except there was.

Her love of the night continued to grow too. It felt like home, her hours of peace and pure tranquility, when so many slept. She stayed wide awake throughout the hours of darkness and solitude. Something deep inside of her wouldn’t let her sleep anymore. It became normal and expected. It was invited, instead of fought against.

Walking along, under the moonlight, the waves crashing over the rocky shoreline. She looked up at that moon, thinking about the pull it had on the tides and on her limbs and her very spirit.

Her limbs. Speaking of her limbs.

They were changing and morphing into something alien to her, somehow, so slow and under the overhanging watchfulness of the moon. It seemed to be spying on the progress of this change in her.

It would have begun in puberty, with hair growing, suddenly. It was at the normal amount for her age group, but soon enough it was something more.

She could try to wish it away, to be like the other females, but they would look at her, under moon or under sun, and exclaim:

“Why do your legs have such thick and fast growing hair? That can’t be right.”

It wasn’t. No cream or product could touch the growth once it began. No hair remover, laser, or treatment she tried helped. She was slowly watching the hair move up her legs, out from her arms, dark and rough to the touch.

Hands and fingers, even the thumb. It was relentless, unnatural. She was being stared at, so she hid and only showed her face when the light of the moon was all there was to show herself off with.

The hair, it crept up and around each arm, to her shoulder blades, to the small of her back. Everybody has hair, fine and unnoticeable, over most of the surface area of the body, other than the bottom of the feet and palms of the hands. It should be undetectable, in most places, or you were a freak of nature.

The moon didn’t care. The night didn’t reveal. The solitude was her friend.

One morning she happened to notice the hair taking over most of her face, chin and cheeks, lip and inching its way from the eyebrows to the sideburns. The hair became the thickest, on her head, it had ever been. Where wasn’t their hair most harshly spreading?

The next full moon was just a few nights away. The hair caused her to finally become a shut-in. People knocked on her door and she ignored them all, shying away and shrinking from the knocking that kept coming. Then, suddenly, the moon was at its brightest and she came out.

She’d stare at her hairy hands, now hairy palms, and know there was no denying it, no going back.

The moon pulled her out, all resistance disappearing, and the cold night air nipped at her cheeks, but the hair there kept her warm from its bite. Her fingernails had grown, in those days she’d remained hidden away, and now they were long and like weapons.

She knew what she had become and she did not hide from it, all horror films aside, and she would embrace her fate. She would belong to the night, with so many nocturnal creatures. It was where she belonged now. Her love of the moon made much more sense to her this time. It had called to her, even when she hadn’t realized why. Now she had only to examine her hand to know it and to fully believe.

The howl escaped her before she’d realized what was happening. The moon brought it out of her. It felt as natural as breathing. She was home.

Nyctophobia

Happy Halloween!

For the final edition of Frightful Fiction Friday I have gathered some excellent inspiration for my final phobia story.

I took part in a

Ghost Tour of Niagara,

last weekend in Niagara On The Lake and if it weren’t for the guide with the candle, well I was pretty much in the dark the entire time anyway. Let’s see what I can dream up.

Check out my previous story,

Acrophobia,

and now…enjoy getting lost in the darkness.

***

5.
Darkness. Nothing tightens our breath or sends chills down our spine like the idea of walking through a dark forest, alone. We know it’s full of trees and timid squirrels, but we know that’s beneath the sunlight. The night tells a different story. The night is dark and quiet, and unknown. We hate when we have to trust that there’s nothing following us and we hate to be lost for we know there are times when the strength of our mind and the strength of our legs simply isn’t enough.

***

This historical ghost walk is going to be a peace of cake, she thinks. After all, she is in a fairly large group of people. What could possibly go wrong?

She wakes suddenly. Something is not quite right. Her head is swimming and she reaches out in the dark that surrounds her and in the blank part of her own mind. She can’t remember what happened, how she ended up here, or indeed where here even is.

It is dark. That is all she knows.

She stands unsteadily and fully takes in her situation. She had been exploring this historic site with a group of other curious people. Where had they gone?

She couldn’t stay here. The tree roots caused her to stumble as she began to grasp the fact that she was totally alone.

The others must have not noticed she was missing or they would have sent someone to find her. Surely those who knew this spot best would have found her, no problem.

As she moved slowly through the ever enveloping darkness she heard noises somewhere out there and shivered. Was this some bad dream she was having in response to her decision to go on that bloody, excuse the term, ghost tour that evening? She probably should have just stayed home. Lesson for next time: trust her instincts.

There was no more group of people surrounding her, allowing her to shake off her nervousness. No longer was there a confident tour guide with a candle to lead the way. The darkness felt heavy and seemed to weigh heavily on her limbs.

She spotted one of the buildings up ahead, a dark shape looming out of the rest of the darkness. She approached it with a mixture of relief and hesitancy. Something told her this building wouldn’t hold the safety and protection she hoped it would. It would be just as dark, or darker inside. Maybe she was better off staying out here.

She reached for the wall and slumped down, her back to it. Any strength she may have had was waning. What if she didn’t make it to morning and the relative certainty of rescue?

No no no. What a silly thought. Someone would be back and they would find her and apologize profusely for losing track of her like this. This definitely was not a part of the tour.

Suddenly a horrible moaning came from somewhere out there. It was a sound unlike anything she had ever heard. It was, undoubtedly, the sound of someone experiencing great suffering.

She had the urge to run to and from it. She wanted to help who ever that was in such agony, but at the same time she could not escape the darkness and wished to run in the opposite direction, even if it brought her into more unknown, pitch blackness. She could not go, and yet she could not move.

A figure came near then, running and dropping something as it passed her. It seemed to take no notice of her, but ran from the direction of the screams.

“Wait!”
The fleeing figure did not stop and appeared not to notice or hear her.
She stood in fear and picked up what the passerby had let fall.

She felt the sticky rag between her fingers, but could not see what this was in all the dark.

All she could do was smell the thick metallic odour and she knew it was the blood of the one letting out those terrible sounds, somewhere out there in the abyss.

The darkness seemed to take over than and the last thing she heard was more screams and moans and the scent of blood on the rag in her hand choked her as she slid down into a darkness so thick she felt like she would be trapped in this black pit for eternity.

***

So there you go and here we are at the end of October and the end of this series.

I don’t know if I frightened you with any of my stories, but I sure frightened myself. I wrote about fears I have had and I want to thank

Young And Twenty,

one more time for providing the blog post and the inspiration these last five Fridays, with her:

5 Fears and What They Say About Us.

Are you afraid of the dark?? I don’t require lights on to get around my house in the middle of the night. You’d think I had no fear of the dark if I had been so used to it, but depending on my circumstances I can be very jumpy.

What are you most afraid of? Do you have a phobia of some kind? How has it affected you?