Ghosted

“Every singer's heart has an angel, waiting for the doubt, to transform its light into their alter ego.”

-Fred!!!!!!

It’s not the first time, 

it’s not the second

I’ve heard that voice before. Almost always in the deepest and darker hours of the night.

I haven’t noticed it, but, b…

But it usually comes when things are tense, or when I’m being challenged or about to give up.

I don’t know where it comes from.

I don’t know who programmed it, but it looks like it’s not comfortable watching me in pain or crying. I could swear I felt it moving around the corners of the bedroom, mumbling, hissing, getting closer, and once, I’d actually felt it, like if someone were seated at the corner of my bed, then started to crawl in slowly in my direction, while leaving different unknown shapes at every step, over my white stained covers.

Till it finally reaches my ear making the same exact question :

-what do you want?

A huge silence usually follows….Then…

I woke up dripping sweat from my entire body, and my heart racing as if it were the timbal of any Latino rhythm.

Several times it has woken me up in the middle of the night when my vision is so blurred that the best I can get from the alarm clock is a: E: EE.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve found myself staring at the ceiling in silence after that, like waiting for a word or an answer, then I realized how difficult it is to get an answer when you aren’t asking anything.

Sometimes, I try to feel optimistic by waking up twice a day; and as the magic of the lonely thinking allows it all; as long as any untold or unrequested outsider advice dares to interfere…I’m always right.

The rhythm of my own heartbeat it's the most beautiful sound I can perceive in the middle of the blue dark night silence. I took a deep breath and when I noticed, I was waking up again. 

-What do you want?

I can hear scraping through the walls

-What do you want? Once more 

What do you want?

I can’t hold it 

I got to know what it is.

I pay attention to any signal, any clue, but nothing…

-What do you want? 

What do you want?

What do you want?

I usually am able to control it during the day.

But during the night it’s so intense like a deep metal party on the floor above and below at the same time, I am tired, Whole nights without sleep and my eyes, my eyes, were starting to feel so dry that begged to escape from my eyesockets to a place where my irises could be refreshed, it’s was torture…

-What do you want?

What do you want?

What do you want? 

Alhhhhhhgggg!!!!!!!

What do you want?

What do you want?

What do you want?

Leave meeee alooooooone

-Whaataaaataaaataaaa…

Duyuyuyuyuyuyu…

wayayayayayayayaaaaaaant?

I want to escape but I’ve never known how.

-What do you want? Kept asking with the same unaltered persistence.

-What do you want? - day after day, night after night until I can't think about anything else.

“What do you want” came to visit me at 3:33 in the morning one more time.

One night or another all of a sudden I heard “Mr what do you want” and exhausted and wishing to be forgotten for a while I answered:

-You know what I want.

And right away some glaring forms started to filter from the last tiles in the corner of my bedroom’s floor under the wooden wardrobe…painting my walls.

I jumped off my bed revitalized. I moved the wardrobe and I could feel the tiles getting warm. I looked for something to smash the floor of that old house and the light invaded the room entirely. I tried to grab something with my eyes closed for the strength of the light and as soon as I did it the voices came back.

But now repeating:

-Make the ritual - make the ritual

What do you want?

What do you want?

Make the ritual 

Make the ritual

Even though I was afraid, I grabbed it hard and it felt cold and burning at the same time, like dry ice.

It was a mirror, and as soon as I flipped it; I felt something burning me, so I grabbed the hand mirror encrusted on Caoba’s tree with my other hand. It was the font of the exhilarating light. When I looked, the burned skin was branded with a hexagon with a spider inside. Still hissing and red with no intention of starting healing.

I lifted the mirror again and after making facial recognition on me it kept shining but lightly.

A waving message made of clouds showed on the surface:

-Hi Fred

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but at that point, I couldn’t release the mirror either.

-What do you want? it asked one more time.

A “Make the ritual” whispered on the air

-I already told you, I screamed horrified.

-What do you want - make the ritual 

What do you want - make the ritual

Sounded very tuned and melodic.

-You got to write it

Make the ritual 

Make the ritual 

Make the ritual

-Write what?

-You got to write your wish and then ….

Another whispered “Make the ritual passed me by” followed by another.

-Make the ritual. Louder

Make the ritual. Lower

Make the ritual…murmured

Suddenly I’m lost, where am I?

I’m flying again, I can see over the rooftops of my city, and the indescribable sensation of freedom makes me smile, pushing away any fear of falling. Sometimes, I feel like I’m starting to float but slowly, I keep bracing hard and anguished, remembering the fear of falling. Like if my flying skills were fading or if I’d done something wrong and my new power seemed to doubt how much I deserved it. Or maybe it’s just me feeling unworthy.

I’ve dreamed this so many times. Only this time I flew so high that I was in the middle of the clouds and I felt renewed and powerful. I feel so full of joy that I can’t stop smiling. I landed in front of some rusty but still silver gargantuan bar gates where a statement hangs:

“Only the sound of your voice can tame the beast.”

I feel a stream of fear running all over my newfound strength because no one said anything about any Beast. So for the first time, I stopped smiling. And as soon as I did it everything became dark. I smiled again and I could see everything one more time. I stopped smiling and it was only me in the middle of nowhere.

And as usual, I woke up in a bed of water, sadly formed with my own sweat.

Only this time, I felt encrusted in the slouchy, filthy, and smelly mattress. I tried to move, but nothing. I was thinking about my leg, and I knew it was there because I was able to see it as well as my body, but I couldn’t move it. It felt like watching myself from the dark side of my bedroom because I could see everything that happened but somehow was not able to change it.

I stare at myself laying there naked with that pale, skinny, and languid body as ever has been sculpted before, while the only thing I can think of “like the theorists say about the moon”, is that I was empty inside.

I started to think that maybe I was dead and my soul got trapped in this room, and then maybe it was me, whispering to myself all of this time, and I just couldn’t…could n…

I keep moving or actually floating around like a ghost…the frustration is palpable, the option to go out, totally impossible, so I focused on my body.

I tried to move my head, but nothing. I tried to move my foot but nothing and I felt as exhausted after each attempt as when you tried to walk in a desert in the middle of the day; finally, I put all of my energy into blinking but not even my eyelashes seemed to care about my desires.

I sighed deeply… and for the first time, I felt a shy pounding sound inside me.

My heart pounding…my heart pounding…hehe 

In my desperation, I took a deep breath and I really felt it, the hot air coming in so slowly through my nostrils that it hurt, but I was still here; or there?

A resounding laugh scratched all over my brain like lightning made of Mexican chili…

Awww.

I was hardly breathing. I felt relieved instantly but followed by a struggling and hurtful sensation all over my body as if the air were thicker than paper sand trying to spread under every corner of my skin. I could feel my spine twitching and tingling, life if it were my first time.

First, I tried to move my arm, and I pushed it so hard that it flew side to side over my body and landed on a pissed wet floor, where it got stuck in, because; I think I’m regaining my strength but wow, for how long have I stayed here? Focus!!!! I yelled at myself. 

I’ve used all of my force and I can’t move anything else. Till some hours later, when after a long and painful process I was able to move my whole body, this exact sensation was repeated each time scary, smashing, devastating, like tearing me apart, and like if at any time, I was going to die for real…and remain floating forever. But as scared to death as I was for the day when that would be a reality; I never stopped. 

I came back, decade to decade, year by year, month by month, day after day.

I had never felt anything like that.

It felt like I was made of nothing, like a cloud, like a ghost that everything could pass through me or me thru them, like I learned after a loooong time. I assumed that was the reason why it hurts so much every time I go back, because it weighs too much to control the factory of a body; with all of those organs and all those thoughts and stuff. 

After some months my body was looking different, more toned, defined, and mature, that impressed me a lot. Well, I started when I was really young and the look of a grown-up in such a short time was something new even though it didn’t stop me because I was most of the time ghosting myself.

After the first years, my body has aged like ten years, the third one another some, the fifth one a lot more, and so on. But I just couldn’t stop.

I felt I belonged in that place, and not here…, and as time passed by, I’m not sure what hurt me the most if the fact of having to stay away from my new reality, the idea of coming back into a body, or the act of doing it.?

The other side started living on me, being able to go up as fast as I wanted to, making me feel as free as if the air lived inside of me.

And the smell…Ohhhhh if I just could describe the smell, every day it was something different, and the happiness in me was so pure that I smiled while I walked all over, looking for an entrance or the step to follow, while enjoying the hues that paint the whole world, because when you are happy all the colors are beautiful, the light is more vibrant and the sun is made of marshmallows.

But, in the end…

When I arrived, I could see everything across a translúcid wall protected by a golden barred door blocking the entrance of what looked like a beautiful garden, with huge and colorful fruits hanging from the copes of gigantic and clouded threes, with roots made of light and vibrant leaves, connected through streams like rivers moving in different directions and diverse speed, like open veins everywhere under the smoochy surface. With something more fascinating at every point you looked around making it very difficult to know what was up, what was on the sides, and what was down.

When I actually entered everything I knew it was different…that was the motivation to always keep coming back, to be there, to want to be part of, to belong.

But it took me years to get inside. I didn't know how many months I was standing there, seated, watching, wishing, weeping, smiling, crying, and finding reasons to smile one more time. Imagining, trying to get a glimpse of how it might feel to be inside, and how to get there and so much more being afraid of the thought of the arrival and kinda waiting for the famous beast. But smiling, almost always smiling, because as soon as I stopped doing it everything turned into a cruel and empty darkness.

It took me a while to understand that the only way to be part of it was by doing something… and the first time I decided to say a phrase that I knew very well…

-What do you want? 

The same silence followed again.

Then, I started whistling but nothing happened, I yelled at it and nothing, finally I talked and talked and talked some more and the magic happened; hearing like tiny smirks cracking and flying around at the other side and some other pieces crushing after hitting the floor, and like speaking and smiling at the same time it’s very funny I spent a lot of time speaking in the darkness, thrusting only in my ears.

For every breaking sound, I got inspired and smiled strongly so, I started talking about absolutely everything I knew. I talked about nature philosophy, psychology, and parapsychology, I talked about trolls, me trolls, deca trolls, cent trolls, kilo trolls. I talked about eaters, me eaters, deca eaters, cent eaters, kilo eaters.

I talked in French, Portuguese, German, Italian, and even Spanish, and in the vague words I knew in Chinese, Russian, and my poor Arabic, every day I kept hearing how it cracked, sometimes smaller and shy, sometimes stronger and louder.

But always some… some drops of hope, here between us sometimes I repeated the same thing in another language hoping it wouldn’t find out, but it always worked… I learned how it seemed to crack faster when I talked about trains, stars, galaxies, the travel of souls, the afterlife, and reincarnation.

But when tired to talk, I decided to sing; even with my macabre voice, a huge crack made the gates tremble, and since that day, I started to put word after word, but surfing over corcheas and modulated notes that I’m sure there were quite attuned but always accelerating the crashing. I started singing as loud as I could, while my mind tricked me, making me think that it was that fast because it would rather break than have to hear me singing.

I didn’t care… I just kept singing.

At some point, the gates opened and the huge wall disappeared leaving smashed colorful pieces as pearls spread all over but left a path totally clear for me to walk, but a thin wall of silver mirror ice remained, like a darkened silver veil with little spots of light all over it, so small that it was difficult to know what it was to my ghosted eye.

But when I got closer I noticed the circles of light became bigger and bigger as long as I approached them and when I was able to see, each light had an image of myself inside, in a different position, moving my hands, with my forehead tied, smiling, with the mouth open, frozen at any position framing a specific gesture, and smiling in a lot of them.

There I was looking at a recollection of myself from the first time I looked at the mirror.

I walk backward to stay away from the growing images that weave like a flag free of the solid wall that used to immobilize it. The more I stepped away the smaller the images became and all of a sudden the little frames of light with ghosted me’s, started to form a single image, I kept walking back till the point that my whole reflection enclosed the frame of the castle but it was a robust body of light with wings so big and bright that it wasn’t possible to see where they ended.

I walk to the wall slowly and sing at some tones that neither I knew I was able to.

As soon as I touched the veil this absorbed my hand allowing me to get in.

And everything for repeating the same ritual.

That day was the last time I waited till 3:33 am and put down my digital clock, wrote what I wanted on wood, and spun the clock 3 times counterclockwise.

Spooky stories came to life to everyone who passed by that raunchy but now “famous” house. Some said the person living there disappeared, some that committed suicide, some others that his body was taken away by djinns, and others that it was killed, dismembered, and his parts given to the wolves or hidden under the tiles of any room. But, the landlord's testimony said that the only things that he found over the smelly bed were a dry contorted spiral like the tail of a horse sea, a digital clock, and a mirror with a lot of numbers repeatedly written or scratched in its back, some in different sizes and sometimes overlaying: 3:33.

DABM