* * *
The theatre was dark and cold, and I was the only one there.
The early morning air was cold with the December wind, and I shivered across the nearly empty parking lot, walking farther than I had to, but my old habits die hard, and when classes are in session, I park far away. And I enjoy the walk across the quiet grassy pieces of campus, as fog burns itself away in the diffused morning sunlight, and birds chirp in the circle of trees outside the stage door.
I go through the usual motions, unlocking doors and turning on fluorescent lights that hum and buzz in the theatres chilly basement. Physical plant turns off the heat during the long winter recess, since theoretically no one is on campus. Except me, I work through the break while no one is there, and the presence of one lonely Technician apparently doesnt carry enough pull to require heat in the building. I dont mind, because the steam pipes and radiators tend to rattle and clank endlessly, and the heat floats up forty feet to the grid and the buildings not all that much warmer anyway. But the noises of the pipes and the hissing vents and the radiators gurgling across the stage make the whole building rumble like a living beast, barely asleep in the cold winter months, needing only one dropped hammer to stir it from its slumber and eat me alive.
Being alone in the building generally isnt an issue for me, Im not an easily startled or freaked out person, but when loud clanks come from far away and when I hear doors closing by themselves I do tend to get a little skittish. The auditorium is only really freaky when I first walk in, threading my way up to the dark house with the rows upon rows of blue seats looking in the gloom for all the world like an audience of invisible patrons, the ghost light that trickles weakly from the few fixtures left on making the house seem to be alive with a quiet, expectant audience that disappears when you look straight at them, like a ghostly optical illusion.
My boots clunk hollowly on the metal steps as I tread up the stairs to the backstage area where the lighting controls are, and I am thinking about the mounting bracket that I am working on, and how I will attach it to the wall in the sound booth, what kind of hinges to use. I am pointedly not thinking about the door I just heard close in the supposedly empty building I am in. I am not thinking about the shiver that just shook its way up the back of my neck, since its just from the cold, not from the general sense of dread that I have been sitting under, trying to ignore since last nights bout of Night Terrors struck.
This looming sense that something was just slightly amiss had managed to come back from that strange dream-space that I manage to find myself in on those particular nights when I lie awake, agitated and uneasy, until finally exhaustion sets in and I do not so much drift as tense or maybe tighten in my sheets that seem to alternate being thin layers against a painful, penetrating cold, and a thick, sweat-soaked feverish layer of bedding. Tense, tighten, maybe grip works best. I become Gripped. I am grasped by something, something comes down and I am squeezed into some sort of delirious non-sleep, some tense and terrible paralysis that takes over and leaves me terrified and unable to move. Last night it hit, but it almost came at my call, almost as though I had consciously forced myself into it, looking for anything to take me from the twitchy, uneasy restlessness that I lay in for hour upon hour, waiting for sleep that wouldnt come back once I had lost my hold on it when I awoke gasping at 4:30 AM.
As I say, this time it was slightly different, I had willed myself to some sort of meditative state after giving up on sleep, and as I lay and fell into the semi-paralyzed state that I knew from so many nights taken by Terrors, I began to focus all of that tension, to control that grip, to think of that tension as Chi or Power or something to be focused, rather than fought.
I made it into a ball.
I lay in my bed, or rather, as tends to be the case with my Night Terrors, I felt as though I lay above my bed, and I made a shining silver sphere of Energy whirl and float in front and above my stomach, whirling and sending light through and throughout my darkening room. The room that seemed to be so far away now. The room that seemed to be mere shadows of nothing at all, that seemed so inconsequential compared to the burning, shimmering silver sphere of Energy I was making as I floated higher above my bed, growing more and more terrified of what was coming up my stairs or in my window, or wherever they always come from when I am Gripped by this state. The terror always comes when I float paralyzed, and the spasm shortly thereafter shakes me gasping into wakefulness, feeling for all the world that I am dropping from somewhere above my bed, landing with a thud and a great gasp of breath.
I did it again, at least three more times after the first, each time seeming to fall more and more easily into that Grip, making the shining quicksilver ball of sparking, shimmering energy more quickly with each attempt.
Somewhere near dawn, I managed real sleep, an exhausted hours rest before groggily waking for my trek to an empty building, to make a hanging bracket for the theatre departments CD player.
My boots clunk hollowly on the metal steps as I tread up the stairs to the backstage area where the lighting controls are. I am not thinking about the cold, the chill, the door I heard, or the terrifying things that came for me every time I floated above my bed, focusing energy into a shining metallic sphere of lightning and potential.
I am pretending not to think of these things as I turn the corner into the dark backstage area to turn on the lights and walk bodily into a man fully a foot taller than me who doesnt budge as I hit his chest walking at a brisk trot and startle, jumping backwards, gasping in surprise gasping as irrational fear is made physical.
A tense moment passes in silence.
Jack Spade. The fear and initial shock drops like a stone into my stomach, and his voice is deep, hollow and lifeless.
Ive come for you.
Just like the Terror of last night, I am petrified, literally frozen into a stone statue of myself as the panic washes over me like icy water, like freezing, shimmering silver lightning.
* * *
The theatre was dark and cold, and I was the only one there.
The early morning air was cold with the December wind, and I shivered across the nearly empty parking lot, walking farther than I had to, but my old habits die hard, and when classes are in session, I park far away. And I enjoy the walk across the quiet grassy pieces of campus, as fog burns itself away in the diffused morning sunlight, and birds chirp in the circle of trees outside the stage door.
I go through the usual motions, unlocking doors and turning on fluorescent lights that hum and buzz in the theatres chilly basement. Physical plant turns off the heat during the long winter recess, since theoretically no one is on campus. Except me, I work through the break while no one is there, and the presence of one lonely Technician apparently doesnt carry enough pull to require heat in the building. I dont mind, because the steam pipes and radiators tend to rattle and clank endlessly, and the heat floats up forty feet to the grid and the buildings not all that much warmer anyway. But the noises of the pipes and the hissing vents and the radiators gurgling across the stage make the whole building rumble like a living beast, barely asleep in the cold winter months, needing only one dropped hammer to stir it from its slumber and eat me alive.
Being alone in the building generally isnt an issue for me, Im not an easily startled or freaked out person, but when loud clanks come from far away and when I hear doors closing by themselves I do tend to get a little skittish. The auditorium is only really freaky when I first walk in, threading my way up to the dark house with the rows upon rows of blue seats looking in the gloom for all the world like an audience of invisible patrons, the ghost light that trickles weakly from the few fixtures left on making the house seem to be alive with a quiet, expectant audience that disappears when you look straight at them, like a ghostly optical illusion.
My boots clunk hollowly on the metal steps as I tread up the stairs to the backstage area where the lighting controls are, and I am thinking about the mounting bracket that I am working on, and how I will attach it to the wall in the sound booth, what kind of hinges to use. I am pointedly not thinking about the door I just heard close in the supposedly empty building I am in. I am not thinking about the shiver that just shook its way up the back of my neck, since its just from the cold, not from the general sense of dread that I have been sitting under, trying to ignore since last nights bout of Night Terrors struck.
This looming sense that something was just slightly amiss had managed to come back from that strange dream-space that I manage to find myself in on those particular nights when I lie awake, agitated and uneasy, until finally exhaustion sets in and I do not so much drift as tense or maybe tighten in my sheets that seem to alternate being thin layers against a painful, penetrating cold, and a thick, sweat-soaked feverish layer of bedding. Tense, tighten, maybe grip works best. I become Gripped. I am grasped by something, something comes down and I am squeezed into some sort of delirious non-sleep, some tense and terrible paralysis that takes over and leaves me terrified and unable to move. Last night it hit, but it almost came at my call, almost as though I had consciously forced myself into it, looking for anything to take me from the twitchy, uneasy restlessness that I lay in for hour upon hour, waiting for sleep that wouldnt come back once I had lost my hold on it when I awoke gasping at 4:30 AM.
As I say, this time it was slightly different, I had willed myself to some sort of meditative state after giving up on sleep, and as I lay and fell into the semi-paralyzed state that I knew from so many nights taken by Terrors, I began to focus all of that tension, to control that grip, to think of that tension as Chi or Power or something to be focused, rather than fought.
I made it into a ball.
I lay in my bed, or rather, as tends to be the case with my Night Terrors, I felt as though I lay above my bed, and I made a shining silver sphere of Energy whirl and float in front and above my stomach, whirling and sending light through and throughout my darkening room. The room that seemed to be so far away now. The room that seemed to be mere shadows of nothing at all, that seemed so inconsequential compared to the burning, shimmering silver sphere of Energy I was making as I floated higher above my bed, growing more and more terrified of what was coming up my stairs or in my window, or wherever they always come from when I am Gripped by this state. The terror always comes when I float paralyzed, and the spasm shortly thereafter shakes me gasping into wakefulness, feeling for all the world that I am dropping from somewhere above my bed, landing with a thud and a great gasp of breath.
I did it again, at least three more times after the first, each time seeming to fall more and more easily into that Grip, making the shining quicksilver ball of sparking, shimmering energy more quickly with each attempt.
Somewhere near dawn, I managed real sleep, an exhausted hours rest before groggily waking for my trek to an empty building, to make a hanging bracket for the theatre departments CD player.
My boots clunk hollowly on the metal steps as I tread up the stairs to the backstage area where the lighting controls are. I am not thinking about the cold, the chill, the door I heard, or the terrifying things that came for me every time I floated above my bed, focusing energy into a shining metallic sphere of lightning and potential.
I am pretending not to think of these things as I turn the corner into the dark backstage area to turn on the lights and walk bodily into a man fully a foot taller than me who doesnt budge as I hit his chest walking at a brisk trot and startle, jumping backwards, gasping in surprise gasping as irrational fear is made physical.
A tense moment passes in silence.
Jack Spade. The fear and initial shock drops like a stone into my stomach, and his voice is deep, hollow and lifeless.
Ive come for you.
Just like the Terror of last night, I am petrified, literally frozen into a stone statue of myself as the panic washes over me like icy water, like freezing, shimmering silver lightning.
* * *
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
you should come to the sg burlesque show in cleveland with everyone...i'll be there...
as for the afro... yes. i had an afro until i turned 18, moved out of my dad's, and started to grow my hair out... i was bad