Earlier this semester, Jadyn DeWald asked me to participate in a reading on campus. He asked me to do this a couple of years ago, and for that I event I wrote my short story “Paper.” Following that reading, I also wrote a post on the process behind composing the short story.
For this semester’s reading, I debated what to read. I kept oscillating between the story in this post, which I wrote after he asked me to read, and posts such as “The Quotidian and the Reproduction of Hate” or something else. While I debated this, I decided to read “This Story is Continuing to Develop.” I hope you enjoy, and stay tuned next post where I will write about the inspiration and process for writing this story.
Gasp!
Where am I?
I open my eyes and they begin to adjust to the darkness. I’m in my room, but can’t move. A figure, devoid of flesh, devoid of features, stands at the end of my bed. It’s a configuration of light, bright dots forming a figure that leers over me, forcing its weight onto my chest, keeping me from rising upright.
Gasp!
I can hear my voice reverberating in my head. My mouth carrying out the instructions from my brain to scream, but no sound escapes. The room remains silent as the figure applies more pressure on my chest. I can’t move my arms. They’re pinned to my side. I struggle. Nothing. My brain tells my fingers to move. Nothing. It tells my toes to move. Nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing.
Gasp!
Now I’m struggling to breathe. I tell myself to inhale . . . exhale . . . inhale . . . exhale . . . nothing. My chest won’t move. Too much pressure, keeping me from . . . a scream rises in my head . . . more silence. The figure stands there. Just pushing down on my chest. No other movement. I sense a voice emanating from the form, telling me I’ll be able to get up if I agree to follow it downstairs. I agree.
Gasp!
The entity releases its grasp on me, and I bolt upright in the bed, inhale . . . exhale . . . inhale . . . exhale . . . moving my extremities. I get out of bed too fast, blood rushing to my head, but I regain my balance and my eyes adjust to the darkness around me. The form maintains its shape, but the lights begin to fade. I rub my eyes, hoping it will reform. It does, briefly, then begins to disappear again. Yet, I continue to follow it to the stairs.
I descend the stairs and see spaghetti and spaghetti sauce all over the wall and floor and meatball rolling over the ground before coming to a stop at my mom’s feet. I’m hungry and ask her, “Can I have some of that sghetti?” She looks up at me, her face covered in sauce, and tells me, “Go on back up to bed honey. I’ll fix you some tomorrow, ok?”
I look at her, rub my eyes, and the figure reappears. It tells me to turn around and follow it back upstairs. I don’t know why, but I do what it says. I leave my mom to clean up the mess and walk up the stairs to my bedroom. The figure leads me, staying ever so slightly in front of me as I return to my bedroom. I crawl in bed, pull the covers up over my head and fall back to sleep.
Gasp!
How does that make you feel?
I stare at the woman seated across from me, trying to process her question. I don’t know how to feel. I found out about all of this years ago, but I still don’t know how to process it. Every so often it comes up in my brain, I mull it over for a while, asking myself questions, then I release it back from whence it came until it appears again and the process repeats itself.
Gasp!
You must feel something?
Honestly, I don’t feel anything. I should, of course, but I don’t. Did it actually happen? Is what I saw that night reality? In my head, it’s not what happened. The newspaper article I found when I was twenty-six tells me differently, but I know what I saw, what I heard, what I experienced. That’s not what I read in that article. Far from it.
Gasp!
How do you feel about your mother?
That’s a complicated one for sure. She has held things back from me before. Only last year, as we sat around the Christmas tree, did she tell me that my grandmother shot herself in the office of the house that I grew up in when I was a baby. I was forty when she told me this. I spent so much time in that room, working on the computer, reading, and just being in that space, yet I never knew what happened within those four walls, my grandmother putting a gun to her head and pulling the trigger.
Gasp!
What really happened?
I’ve told you what happened. I woke up one night gasping for air because I couldn’t breathe. A figure kept pushing down on my chest and kept me from screaming for help, even though my mom was in the house. It told me it would release me if I followed it downstairs, which I did. There, my mom was cleaning up the spilt spaghetti and told me to go back to bed. That’s what I did, following the form back to my room and pulling the covers back over my head and falling asleep.
Gasp!
I carry the newspaper article with me in my wallet. Every now and then I pull it out and read it, asking myself what really happened that night.
Homeowner Foils Attempted Robbery
September 28, 1979
Kerry Withington didn’t expect someone to break into her home as she prepared her dinner. On the night of September 27, Withington was cooking dinner in her kitchen when she heard a crash behind her. She turned around to see broken glass on the floor and a hand reaching in to unlock the door and open it.
Withington retrieved a shotgun from a nearby closet and aimed it at the door. When the intruder, forty-year-old Edward Brocato, Jr. of Morningsport, entered, she leveled the shotgun at his head and fired. Brocato fell to the ground and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Withington told officers that she shot Brocato as he stepped into the kitchen. She also told them that her six-year-old son had come downstairs following the shooting but that he did not see anything because Brocato’s body was obscured from his view as descended the stairs. She told her son to go back to bed, and he did.
No charges have been filed against Withington. Officers found she was acting in self-defense.
We will continue to update this story as it unfolds.
Gasp!
Interminable Rambling 