I would be lying there waiting for sleep to come, when this sudden feeling of nothingness would come over me. Here I was, a real person, but someday I wouldn’t exist. What was even worse were the thoughts of members of my family not existing, especially my Mom and Dad. I would picture the vastness of the universe but instead of feeling wonder I saw us sucked into a big, black hole. The thought of it would have me panic-stricken, with tears pouring down my face and soaking my pillow.

So that sleep could finally come, I would try to count sheep, or think about something else, or banish the thoughts. I became pretty good at it, but occasionally the thoughts would come roaring back and I would have to start again.

Did I ever tell anyone about my fears? Not a soul until recently. I’m not sure why, but these were not the kinds of things I shared with my parents. While we belonged to a religious institution that believed in life after death, I apparently questioned that.

Eventually and thankfully, the thoughts subsided and today, I believe that I have a more mature view of life and death, and how we live on in the memories and minds of others. Both of my parents died at fairly young ages, in their fifties, yet they are still a part of me and still with me, although not physically.

© 2010, kimmanleyort. All rights reserved.

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Kimsworld gives us part 15 in her 55 word flash fiction series, The Long Road Home…

“She handed him one of the pistols, and ask him, “Do you know how to use this?”

“Yes.”

They scooted to a better firing position, and began their own assault on the chopper.

Each taking turns, firing calculated shots at the vital parts.

The fifth shot hit home, and the pilot began to lose control.

© 2010, kimsworld. All rights reserved.

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A little 55 word flash fiction piece extolling  the virtues of educating our youth…

“tffffffFFFT,” followed by a suppressed cough escaping the nose.

Passing the joint to Hank 4.0 everything since he was a child, even ag-science at OSU, “I woulda never thought brown pot would be so good. How’s come your neighbors get busted, but you don’t?”

“Because the grass is always greener on the other side.”

I read A Child’s Garden of Grass while I was attending Wright State University. I was a frosh who had just finished up a reference book of sorts about the myths surrounding marijuana and saw this book on the shelf. Thinking there may be some really cool info (I wasn’t wrong), what I got was a very funny book about the typical pot scene, as well as some very good lessons, such as the best way to grow pot.

According to the authors, who by the way claimed they never smoked herb and that all the information in the book comes from their friend Ernie Lundquist, the best way to grow pot is to take your seeds to an empty plot of land, make sure that no one is watching, and throw those seeds as far as you can then run like hell.

Even though I haven’t sparked one in over a decade, I’m sure the book would still be funny, and in some odd way, relevant.

© 2010, Alex Crabtree. All rights reserved.

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This my submission for the Extreme Writing Now Group,  Memoir Writing,  prompt of remembering fear…

When I commented on Rachel’s memoir submission, Undefineable Sound, I said I thought I was eight when that particular incident occurred. I was wrong. The memory of my first real fear has come wafting back through the filter of the dirty gauze curtains hanging over my window.

Clearly, now that I have been giving considerable thinking to this submission over the past few days, I was eleven and in the sixth grade. In fact, it was fall, and I was sitting at my desk, next to a window on the second floor of the Greek Orthodox Learning Center that was actually about a mile from the school I was attending.

Our school had become overcrowded and church classrooms were filled with the overflow.

But none of that mattered to me for about three days that fall of my sixth grade school year. It all started when I was sitting at that desk. Well, the fear did anyway. Everything that led up to that fear had been going on for at least eleven years (philosophically, I’d bet you could argue the time span to be longer).

Everywhere I looked, disaster lurked, threat beckoned, and doom was on the doorstep. For millions of children, the journey down the dead end street of life was cued up and readied to be a short trip. Everyone who had a nuclear trigger had their finger on it and were ready to apply the last half a pound on that 5 pound pull.

Don’t think we children didn’t know about the threat.

How could we not? All those ‘How to Survive a Nuclear Attack’ films we had to watch in elementary school, or how about those flicks that had just about every monster imaginable created as a result of the Nuke Kids and their happy toys? Wasn’t exactly Sponge Bob caliber stuff that infected us, was it?

And there is the fact that I was the man child of the family; not only the eldest son, but the eldest child, an honor that my parents didn’t remind me of, just my peers. I wasn’t called chubby, slim, carrot top, freckles, or dirty butt, yet the names I were called, although seemingly opposite in nature, had a similar effect. Big Al and Alexander the Great; two names that put a terrible onus on me. I wasn’t ready to shed my childhood for the responsibilities of adult manhood.

I wouldn’t allow myself to show weakness. I couldn’t tell anyone about my fears.

It is true that I had seen my first, freshly dead human body just weeks before my first encounter with fear. A body that hadn’t been prepped and put on display in a wooden box; some sort of morbid stage act produced to trick us all into believing that maybe the loved wasn’t really dead, and when the lid closes, it’s just the front door closing, “Pops will be back for more coffee tomorrow. Wave bye-bye to him.”

I was the first to see that old man dead. His lifeless body splayed out on his back lawn; still clutching the hedge trimmers that he was using moments before. One moment the clippings were filling the air at the hands of the old man’s artistic talents, the next moment, he was lying in the bed of clippings he’d made for himself.

That’s how it was for me on a particular fall day in 1969. Just sitting in my sixth grade make-do classroom, when I was struck with the omniscient knowledge of my own death. No vision of my mangled body. No prescient prediction of when I would die. Just my death.

The fear started as if someone had stretched a single strand of spider silk inside of my body and gave the thread a single ‘twang’ with their finger. The strength of the silk thread allowed it to build a harmonic resonance that grew stronger by the second; each frequency getting closer to the last, each peak growing taller until the fear was one lead filled shroud of dread.

I lost touch with everything that was going on around me. I was quaking hard at my core. I remember wanting to cry, but in no way could I even consider that, not in front of those who called me Alexander the Great. Not in front of my teacher.

I wanted to bolt from that classroom. I wanted to run and not stop until I was certain I beat death at the foot race.

I cannot recall any interaction with anyone for three days. What I do remember is sitting in my bedroom for two nights, looking out the window from the third story room and wondering where death was hiding, waiting to jump out at me. I was so torn by the weight of my fear and the resistance to tell anyone that I’m sure they fed off of each other.

That was the worst emotional onslaught I have ever experienced. The feeling that my life could be snuffed in an instant, because death liked to swing his sickle at the most unsuspecting moments, wore on me. My existence was becoming threadbare.

Then, almost to the moment, three days later, while sitting at that same desk, the fear began to slowly retreat until it was totally gone, and I was back to normal. Maybe.

Certain events occurred early the next school year that now lead me to believe that although I hadn’t allowed anyone in on my secret, somebody knew. I along with four other classmates, were ushered into several sessions with a “special” school counselor. Although I can’t recall the tone of those sessions, I do remember the man clearly as someone who looked like a participant in a Sigmund Freud look-alike contest.

That fear had remained locked away for many years, only to come knocking on my soul’s front door, not to haunt me about the one way dead end alley we are all in, mind you, but as a reaffirmation of my beliefs.

Life happens now. The moments passed belong to the memories that are lessons for the now, and the moments yet to come belong to memories not yet made. Live as wide as we can, and the clock will slow down.

© 2010, Alex Crabtree. All rights reserved.

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Part 14 of kimsworld’s 55 word flash fiction series, The Long Road Home…

His planned worked.

She was out of the cab and back under the truck in moments.

He ducked under the trailer and made his way back under the cab.

“You are crazy lady!”

Then she held up two semi automatic pistols.

“ I don’t know about you, but I really wasn’t planning on dying today!”

© 2010, kimsworld. All rights reserved.

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One thing I should say before I write this is that sometimes it’s best not to take everything I write in a blog post with 100% certainty…What changed my mind? One reason is it has that slowly, even this late in life, I can finally start to recognise why, as a child, I was feeling, that way and what it was I was actually feeling.

Anyway, this story of mine, isn’t about a specific event but it is about fear:

You could say that this is how and why I learnt to write. I don’t believe it was ever something I wanted to do as a career; my head was filled too much with horses. I don’t recall exactly when I started to write or even what triggered it off but I learnt that writing brought comfort and it brought safety.

My life changed for the worse when I turned 8 years old and it was around this age I started to write down everything that I felt with regards to my fears, my sadness, hurt, grief; you name it, it went down. You may be wondering why I didn’t feel I could talk about my emotions to my family.

It was fear…not the hide-behind-the-couch kind of fear but the fear of voicing those emotions out loud and the reactions it or they would receive. I learnt this extremely quickly.

My greatest worries, fears, pain, etc. were ignored, negated and laughed at when I voiced them. This didn’t happen once or twice;  this happened all the time. So often that I became frightened (or perhaps it was physically unable) of verbalising my feelings to all who could hear them. That deep inside fear that a sensitive child couldn’t identify or recognise for what it was.  If I couldn’t recognise it, how could I express it or how could I explain to others what it was I was even experiencing; how could I even know how to deal with it?

My own emotions were alien even to me.

But, it wasn’t just my emotions that I had to watch out for, it was my opinions, too.

The biggest date, which I, unsurprisingly, have forgotten the exact date, is a day in 1986 (when I was 16) when my stepfather wrote in his diary, the words, “Carrie was right for once.”

That fear has left a very severe mark and is one that I cannot seem to shake or recover from. I find it very difficult to say what my greatest or strongest emotions are to anyone or I choose the wrong people to do so to (more pain), I also cannot voice my opinions; my mind is blank. It’s difficult to even imagine or understand how or why that can happen. Surely, everyone has an opinion, right? Don’t be too sure.

But, are you sitting on the edge of your seat, yet?

© 2010, Carrie White. All rights reserved.

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I was on my way to pick up my oldest daughter that night.  About 10 days earlier, her car had been stolen from a parking lot.  The police had called and said the car had been found and we could pick it up at the Impound Lot that evening. I was to meet her at the bagel shop she managed, help her close up and we would retrieve her vehicle.  As I drove in traffic hitting every single stop light on the way, I became really frustrated. Our plan was perfectly orchestrated to get to that lot before it closed and these delays were throwing it all off. What I didn’t know was that I was driving toward the most frightening night of my life and the gods of time had their own schedule for the events about to unfold.

As I approached the bagel shop looking for a parking space, I saw the guy behind the counter with the ski mask on.  I whipped my car into the first space I saw.  I got out, locked the doors and started towards the shop thinking I was going to really lay into my daughter for joking around like that, someone might think they were being robbed for crying out loud.  As I started to go through the door, my daughter looked at me with such terror in her eyes and mouthed, “No! Mom!”

“Holy Crap! It isn’t a joke this guy IS robbing her. Think quick, Bev. Don’t alarm him. Go get help but don’t be obvious. MOVE Woman!” I listened to the voice in my head and tried to act nonchalant backing away from the door like I had changed my mind about going in. I think I even snapped my fingers like I had forgotten something.  So I walked out of sight and then I ran like a crazy woman to the bar a couple of doors down the street where cops were known to hang out on a regular basis.

I stormed through the door and did a quick scan of the place. Not an obvious cop in the whole joint! So I yell out, “Are there any cops in here?”

“No lady. No men in blue in here tonight. You got troubles?” the bartender yells back.

“Well then call the cops!  The bagel shop is being robbed and my daughter is in there by herself!”

I see the bartender pick up the phone and I turn and start back to the bagel shop with about half of the bar behind me. As I get to the door, there is no one in sight.  No guy in a black ski mask and no daughter, the place looks empty.  I start to barge in to see if I can find her but two strong hands yank me back.  I swear the guy actually picked me up and sat me down.  “Now lady you need to stay out here! The cops are on the way, I can hear the sirens. Just stay here and let the cops do their jobs. If you go in there, they might hurt her and you too.” says the burly bouncer looking guy that is holding me in place.

All sorts of awful scenarios start playing in my head. They could have hit her over the head and she was bleeding on the floor somewhere.  If the guy had a gun and he saw me run for help, he might have shot her. He might have decided to take her hostage. All I knew was I saw the terror in her eyes and now I couldn’t see her at all and I was more frightened than I’ve ever been in my life!

The cops swarm the place from the front and back with guns drawn walking slowly and clearly not seeing my daughter or they would have stopped.  That is when I started to talk…

“Lord, you know I’m not strong enough to lose that girl! Listen Lord, if it is written in a book somewhere that she is supposed to go home with you tonight, take me instead! Don’t take her! I offer myself right now in her place, take me but not her!”

A woman with an angelic face stepped into my vision and said so very softly, “No one is going home with Him tonight.” I didn’t see her walk away, it is like she vanished. What I did see was my daughter walking out with the cops from the back. She was alive! She didn’t seem hurt, shaken but not hurt.

After what seemed like an eternity the police finally let me in to hold my daughter and they took my statement. I couldn’t stop shaking.  The fear of losing my daughter to some punk with a gun had a solid grip on my heart! And then I realized that the gods of time had orchestrated the whole thing in perfect timing. They delayed me so that I would be able to get help for her and I had to be thankful for that.  They knew that I would dig deep for the strength to get help. The going just a little crazy and offering myself as a sacrifice might have surprised them a tad.  I still don’t appreciate having to face the mortality of my daughter like that, a mother shouldn’t have to see that sort of terror in her child’s eyes, not ever.

© 2010, Bev Owens. All rights reserved.

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If you have ever traveled from El Paso, Texas to Dallas, Texas on the interstate you have passed the location of this story. A seemingly unmemorable stretch of road with nothing but scrub brush, rolling hills, and rocky sand. But, one night that stretch of road burned an imprint on memory that I will remember forever. This was certainly not the first time I felt fear, but it is one I will never forget.

My now ex-husband and I were each going Dallas. He was driving one truck and I another. We had been driving for many hours and fatigue was starting to set in. By the time we exited I- 10 onto I-20, I was getting uncomfortably sleepy. Having traveled this stretch of highway often, I knew there was a picnic area just a few miles up the road.

I told him that I needed to stop and get a short nap before continuing on. He understood, and asked me if I wanted him stop also. I told him no, because I knew he wasn’t ready to stop. I told him I would see him tomorrow at the delivery place. He agreed and we said our ushy, gushy, I Love You’s and he was gone.

I pulled up behind another truck and set the brakes. After, throwing out a few expletives, that even Alex would be proud of, about this job and way of life I crawled back in the sleeper. Any other time I would have been that tired, I would have just laid on bed with my clothes on. I wasn’t planning sleeping but a couple of hours anyway, but Nanny, my husband’s grandmother, had given me a beautiful white cotton night gown. I knew she would ask me how I liked it when we got home, and I didn’t want to lie to her. So, I put the gown on, and snuggled down in the covers. I fell asleep almost instantly.

I was in bed for less than an hour and sleeping good. Suddenly, I bolted up right in bed. I was terrified. I had not been dreaming that I can recall. All I knew was that I had to get out of there. Every molecule in my body was screaming LEAVE NOW!….. LEAVE…. LEAVE…… LEAVE.

I tried to calm myself but couldn’t. My heart was pounding, I was gasping for breathe and shaking. As I slid into the drivers seat my skin was riddled with goose bumps. I did not hesitate when I reach up and pushed in the knobs that released the brakes. Still shaking I put the truck in gear and started to drive.

The darkness was so intense that it seemed to absorb the light from the headlights. I checked twice to make sure, I had turned them on. They were on, but it was like they could not penetrate the night. I pressed on and the feeling lingered. It wasn’t until I saw the lights of the town about 40 miles up the road, that my fears started wane.

Now, even more exhausted than I started out, I pulled in the truck stop, wearing my night gown of all things. I had been so scared I did not take the time to get dressed. For once, I welcomed to too bright halogen lights in the parking lot. I pulled into a parking space, set the brakes and smoked at least a half a pack of cigarettes. The eerie presence in the air was dispelled by light or maybe because there were other people around. Whatever the case, the evil that was lurking on that night went away. Even sitting here recounting the story scares me. I almost have goose bumps right now.

The one thing that consoles me, is that while I was telling a friend about the incident, an old black man, was hanging on every word. He waited until I was finished then told me that it was my guardian angel who woke me up and saved me that night. He said,” Something bad was going to happen, and that my angel got me out of there.”

I believe him.

© 2010, kimsworld. All rights reserved.

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Kimsworld gives us part 13 in her 55 word flash fiction series, The Long Road Home…

Through the spray of bullets, she felt what she was looking for.

“Got it!” she exclaimed.

Jake knew if he didn’t do something, she would never make it out alive.

He began running wildly down the side of the trailer, to draw their fire.

They were gunning for him anyway, not her.

© 2010, kimsworld. All rights reserved.

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Guess I better get moving with the details before I start confusing myself.

We will be using the Memoir Writing group prompt, first memory of fear,  for this week as the bellwether for our contest. Each submission as a blog post here will be given a link on the wall at the EWN FaceBook Fan Page.  The submitter whose entry has the most FaceBook likes, by 12 midnight EST, Saturday July 31, 2010, will win their choice of one of two  Natalie Goldberg books; Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir and Wild Mind: Living a Writer’s Life.

Bribe your kids, badger your family, and extort your friends;  get them to visit the page and vote for you submission!

© 2010, Alex Crabtree. All rights reserved.

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