Stories

31 Ghosts 2018: October 2 – When You Meet Yourself

I don’t remember seeing the car that hit us. Hell, I don’t remember being hit… I remember getting in the car with Jeff. I remember heading out to the movie theater. I remember the podcast he put on. And then I don’t remember.

Until I woke up in the hospital two weeks later with my family around me. But not Jeff… After the doctors ran tests, shone lights in my eyes, MRIs… after all of that, they told me about Jeff. But even though I don’t remember what happened – the accident itself – I knew he was gone. I could feel it. And I was told.

Let me back up…

Between the accident and waking up in the ICU, I have a gap in my memory. I can’t tell you anything about the SUV t-boning us at high speed, about the jaws-of-life, the Life Flight, surgeries, transfusions, laying in a coma – I can’t speak to that. But during that time I can tell you what happened.

At one point on that fateful night, lying on the operating table in the trauma center I died. No one told me that. I haven’t asked about it because I was there. I opened my eyes and saw myself lying there on the table, surrounded by doctors running around frantically while that steady whine of the EKG machine flatlining – the same one we’ve all heard in a million hospital procedurals. But you don’t expect to hear it while watching your body on the table. Bloody.

Then I found myself up in the corner of the room, seemingly floating, staring down as they brought in the crash cart, yelled “clear!” and jolted my chest. Nothing. They were charging to try again when I heard a rush like the sound of an enormous wave on a beach – exactly like a wave on a beach! The room brightened to blinding and I had to close my eyes against it.

Opening my eyes, I no longer stood – or floated – in the operating room. It was dark and heavy garments pressed against me. Before I had a chance to make sense of it, the darkness parted as a pair of doors accordioned open in front of me.

“There you are!” my uncle Dave smiled at me. “What are you doing in the closet?” I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know what I was doing in a closet myself. He reached a big hand in towards me and I took it, pulling myself past the hanging jackets and scarves and out into the light of the foyer… of my childhood house. I stared around, remembering the multi-colored throw rug that dominated the floor, the fake-thatch textured gold wallpaper… I heard voices down the hall and turned towards them.

“Hey, Amy,” my uncle Dave’s voice turned me around to face him. He stood smiling at me in his beige suede sports jacket, the wide lapels of his shirt overlapping the collar of the coat, the shirt itself unbuttoned far enough to show copious chest hair. “Amy, are you with me, girl?”

“Uncle Dave?”

“Who else?” his face creased into a warm smile. “Look, honey, shit’s gonna get weird here, so I need you to listen to me.” I remembered he was never afraid to curse in front of us, much to the consternation of his sister, my mom. “Can you do that?”

“Uncle Dave, you’re…. you’re dead.”

“Amy, I need you to focus. Okay? Yes, I’m dead. So are you. That’s why I need you to listen to me. Can you do that?”

I nodded. I heard cackling laughter down the hallway – I knew that laughter. It was my grandmother. She died when I was young…

“Amy,” he snapped his fingers rapidly in front of my face, “Earth to Amy. Heh,” he chuckled, “I guess that’s kinda funny. Okay, Ames, look, you’re dead. I’m dead. We’re all dead here.”

“Is this… heaven?”

“Uh…” he held out his hand palm down and tipped it one way and then the other, “yes and no. It’s complicated. Look, we don’t have time to go into it now, but we’ve got to talk. You were in an accident. Do you remember that?”

“Accident?” I said still a little dazed. The memory of my body flooded into me and sucked my breath out. “Oh god. Oh god! Jeff! Where’s Jeff?”

“Honey… Jeff didn’t make it.”

“No, no, no!” I started to cry. I clutched at uncle Dave’s jacket. I was dimly aware that the talking and laughter down the hallway had stopped. “Oh god, no!”

Uncle Dave folded me into his big arms and I remembered his Old Spice and leather smell from when I was a little girl – it calmed me a little.

“You said I’m dead, too?” I squeaked.

“Eh,” he started, “That’s not so cut and dry.”

“Dave? Honey, did you find Amy?” I heard a voice float down the hall. I knew that voice. It was my aunt Gale.

“Yeah, I’ve got her. We’re talking. I’ll be back in a few.”

“And Amy?” the voice asked.

Uncle Dave looked down at me, patted my hair and called back, “I don’t know yet.”

“Can I see him? If we’re both dead, can I see him?”

“Honey, that’s the thing. He died instantly. He’s here…”

“Here?!” I cut him off excitedly.

“Here… sort of. Not exactly here-here. But on this side. You’re… what do you remember?”

“We were going to the movies… Tabitha was with the sitter… Oh god, Uncle Dave, how’s Tabitha?!”

“She’s fine, Ames, she’s fine. Keep going…”

“I was in an operating room. My body… flatlining…” I looked up at him, “I was dying”.

He nodded sympathetically. “Yeah. The important part there is the ‘dying’ part – active. You’re… in between.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, that’s up to you. You have to decide. Down that hallway,” he nodded past the macramé owl hanging, “is Gale, your Nana, everyone.”

“Jeff?!” I asked quickly. He nodded and I tried to jerk away to run down the hallway, but he held me firmly.

“Whoa, Ames, hold on there!”

I wriggled to get free but he held on.

“Amy!” he said stridently and I stopped. “Listen to me! You go down that hallway and you’re here. Do you understand? You’re here for good. No more living, no more Tabitha.”

That got my attention. The tears started down my cheeks before I was aware I was even crying. “I have to choose?!” I sobbed.

“Ames,” he said petting my hair again, “I know it fucking sucks, girl…”

“I have to choose?” I cried.

“Yeah,” he said sadly. “And what’s worse, Ames, is you have to do it quickly. I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules….”

I pushed back from him enough to look up into his eyes. “Tabitha,” I said. “I have to be with Tabitha.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

Laughter rolled down the hallway… this time it was Jeff’s. I knew that laugh so well…

“Will you tell him…” I broke down sobbing.

“I got ya, Ames. I know,” uncle Dave held me again. I let myself be enveloped and I closed my eyes.

The voices from the hallway ceased. I looked up and uncle Dave was with me standing in the trauma center.

“Clear!” I heard the doctor yell, then watched my body jerk under the shock from the defibrillator. And the flatline evaporated into the “beep! Beep!” of a heartbeat.

“I’m alive?” I said.

Dave held out his hand and made that so-so gesture again and nodded towards a figure I hadn’t noticed before. She stood behind the doctors and stared on. I almost jumped.

“That’s me!”

“Technically, that’s your ghost.”

“Who meets their own ghost?!” I yelled back.

The figure turned and regarded me with black eyes. I felt a chill run through me.

“Uncle Dave…. What the hell?” I asked, but Uncle Dave was gone. Ghost Me started across the operating room towards me. I’m not ashamed to tell you I freaked out a little bit. I moved quickly to put the knot of doctors and nurses – and my body – between me and Ghost me. She circled as I did, staring at me with those empty eyes. I first thought it was ridiculous running away from my own ghost. But as she fixed on me with those empty, black eyes, I knew in my core this wasn’t good. I don’t know how long we circled like that, but it seemed like forever. Eventually the doctors stabilized my body and they moved me to a gurney. Ghost me stopped as we both regarded me – our? – body, following the nurses pushing our body through the corridors.

At some point I lost track of Ghost Me or she dematerialized… I don’t know. I stayed with my body and saw my family and Tabitha visit and the sun come up outside my window. Ghost me came back once or twice and hovered around, but never approached or even regarded me. After a few days – they didn’t seem like days, time just… flowed – the ghost didn’t return. I started to get tired and I closed my eyes for just a moment…

And I woke up with my family around me. Mom, Dad, Tabitha… but not Jeff.

It’s been months now and I just got home. It’s going to be a long road back, but my baby girl is with me. That was my choice. I still don’t know what the ghost wanted with me in the operating room. I think she wanted to… merge? Does that make sense? But I’d made my decision to live and no ghost was going to take that from me again. I haven’t seen her since I came out of the coma and I don’t think I will, but when I catch my shadow on a wall, sometimes I swear it twitches on its own…

31 Ghosts 2018: October 1 – Things That Go Bump In The Night

Photo by Greg Panagiotoglou on Unsplash

In 1981 my parents lost the house they had owned and we moved into a new house in a new (to me) town. It wasn’t too far – I didn’t change schools or anything like that (well, immediately anyway). But when you’re young and you’ve only known one house your whole life, even moving one town over seems like a major upheaval. And while I was too young to understand concepts like mortgage defaults or foreclosure, the sense around every aspect of the move felt like defeat. So, you can imagine my surprise – and delight – when the house we moved into was a hulking mission-style 1920’s place on top of a hill with a view of the Santa Clara valley; it hardly seemed like a downgrade!
As an adult I look back on the time in that place – let’s call it the Oakridge house – with an adult perspective recognizing things like how we had to convert the formal (enormous) dining room into a make-shift apartment so we could take a boarder and make rent, or how when my dad was a kid he and his family stayed in a place not far away in Los Altos Hills and that, in some ways, renting this majestic, decaying place was a way of keeping his pride intact even after he felt he’d utterly let his family down. Those are Adult Details. But seven-year-old Jordy saw an incredible adventure palace! And if I try I can suspend my Adultness and see the place through his eyes. More often I see our time there with the mystery and adventure braided in with adult hindsight; one doesn’t diminish the other, but rather each perspective highlights and contrasts different aspects.
My sister Jill and I had to share a room, but I didn’t care. We got along great and we had our own balcony! And there was so much to explore! You want to defy danger? We had that in spades – we’d sneak down the steep hill to make forts in the bushes bordering the country club golf course. Or the annual rattlesnake infestation that came with the heat of summer.  One of our neighbors was an elderly woman and her husband – Peggy and Paul, if I recall correctly. I remember they seemed ancient, but I realize now she must have been in her late sixties early seventies (funny how that doesn’t seem so ancient anymore). Jill and I would visit her with my mom for long talks – Peggy gave Jill and I rolls of lifesavers. One summer she told us she had been tending the fruit trees in a clearing on the property when an eight foot rattlesnake slithered by. Part of me remembers she killed it herself with a hoe, but part of me remembers that she didn’t – live and let live. I’m sure my family will correct me, but for now I’m okay remembering both outcomes. Every evening her husband Paul would take a walk along the road that bordered the golf course. I drove those roads not long ago when I was back that way, and that was a not insignificant walk, let me tell you! And then one night he didn’t make it home on time. He was found, but I remember hearing the word “Alzheimer’s” for the first time. I know Paul was around for some time, but in the way that childhood time speeds up in the mind’s eye I see him fading into a ghost himself before disappearing entirely.
I learned to ride a bicycle on the wide circular driveway there. Just when I felt like I had a hang of it I’d lose my balance and crash into the same damn Cyprus tree (that winter, a particularly windy storm toppled that tree. I like to take some of the credit). We raised a small garden in a bed adjacent to the house – I ate my first home-grown tomatoes at the Oakridge house. I remember we had chickens for a short while – that was less a deliberate act and more a begrudging accepting of the chicks that hatched under the incubator at Jill’s kindergarten class.
The house was also haunted.
Let me pause for a moment and get a little meta. First, welcome! It’s October 1, and that means it’s the first day of 31 Ghosts 2018!! Looking back on the stories last year, particularly the true ones, I noticed stories about the Oakridge house were absent. There’s a reason that nicely illustrates one of the difficulties inherent in this theme: for the most part, ghost stories can be, well, boring. Okay, not exactly boring, but unless you’re living on the corner of Hell and Damnation, real paranormal activity has its own pace and it rarely makes for a compelling tale. From a writer’s perspective, stringing the rare, spooky beads onto a narrative thread in a way that’s engaging can be quite the challenge. Taken another way, we go to horror movies and read scary stories because we inherently know life isn’t that spooky. And that’s good. Reality is scary enough as it is (the way real life facts and episodes are spun into grotesque horror stories intended to keep us afraid is whole different story in itself).
But let’s go back to the Oakridge house when I was small and the cracked whitewashed stucco walls towered above me to the master bedroom turret. The house even had a basement – a feature all but unheard of in California! The washer and dryer were down there in that perpetually dim space. I didn’t go down there much — a fact that surprises me because I should have loved it! Maybe it spooked me more than I care to remember, but I only have vague memories of the chill dampness. There was a stairway down from the outside, but we mostly used the narrow steep stairway that led down there from inside the house. With at least three of us kids and my dad, my mom hefted some serious laundry baskets down those rickety stairs. Years later she admitted that on numerous occasions lugging baskets down there she would lose her balance and feel herself start to pitch forward only to physically feel something take hold of her and steady her until she got her balance under control. Maybe it was the repeated benevolence of the act that kept her from talking about the events until years later. More likely, she took it as it was, felt grateful for the assist and kept going – there was always laundry to do, kids to feed, etc, etc. No time to worry about ghosts…
On a number of occasions, we heard unexplained footsteps. I remember waking one night to a sound downstairs. The wan glow of the AM radio alarm clock let me know it was the middle of the night, and with Jill and my door open I could her my dad snoring down the hallway and up the short stairs to their turret bedroom. But there was that sound: one of our kitchen chairs pulled out from the table to accommodate someone taking a seat. I waited in the darkness, breathing shallowly, quietly, lest I miss a sound. I listened hard. Nothing but my own heart and my dad’s snores. Then the sound again! The chair moved! And then footsteps started slow and deliberate on the creaky wood floor of the kitchen. Step by step, and I hoped for a moment it was Dave who lived in the apartment downstairs and he’d just go into his room and it’d be quiet again… but these were boots. Dave didn’t wear boots. And the slow footfalls moved from the kitchen into the tiled entry way and didn’t stop at the door to Dave’s room. No, I heard the first booted foot start up the stairs. I was breathing fast, trying to control my fear now. The footsteps climbed the curving stairway, step by step by step. I could hear my heart beating in my ears as the boots came up onto the landing. My bed was in direct line of sight of the top of the stairs. Whoever – or whatever – was at the top of the stairs could no doubt see my outline under my beadspread, pulled tight now over my head. I didn’t dare peak. I heard the steps come closer to my open doorway and then pause. I heard a doorknob turn and quietly I heard the door to my brother Jay’s room open…pause… and then gently close. But it wasn’t Jay. No, the steps moved the few feet to our open doorway before they paused again. Whatever it was, it was in the freaking doorway and it was staring at my bed and Jill’s bed. I didn’t move. I lay as still as I have ever done in my life before and after. I held my breath. And then the steps moved down the hallway… only to take the few steps up to the landing leading to my mom and dad’s room. There, too, I heard the door open… pause… and then close again. The steps came back down the stairs. I started breathing again, shallow, fast, and quiet, oh god, so quiet, as the footsteps started down the curving staircase. I listened to every receding footfall grateful with each stair that I might live to see the next morning. When the steps reached the bottom of the stairs, the heavy boots again crossed the tiled foyer. And then… they faded out. I waited. I listened. I listened more. Nothing. When I was certain there wasn’t another step, when I knew it had been long enough, I bolted from my bed down the hallway, up the short stairs to my parent’s room and leapt into bed with them. I don’t remember what I said or what they said, but I do remember laying there between them, safe, and drifting off to sleep.
For the record, Jill? I’m sorry I left you in the bedroom that night after that, though I’m pretty sure the ghost was done for that night.
There were other occasions where I heard – and Jill and I together heard – the footsteps. They always terrified us. I remember one time eventually screwing up the courage to peek my head out from under the covers when the steps reached the landing, when whatever it was would be in plain sight of me – and it would see me. And I remember seeing… nothing. Seeing nothing, I leapt out of bead and into the empty hallway. Nothing. I took a few tentative steps down the stairs to look the length of the curved stairway down to the foyer. Nothing. Don’t get me wrong, that didn’t make it any less terrifying, but it sparked a lifelong curiosity about what it was exactly that went bump in those long nights in the Oakridge house.

Week 21: Banshee side stories

I’ve mentioned the Banshee story that I’ve completed an alpha draft of, but I haven’t actually put anything up here. Shortly after Fern and I first got together, I tried to explain the synopsis of the story to her and then I figured in the spirit of “Show don’t tell” I wrote these two stories of the same incident just to explore the dynamics between Linda and Taylor years before the events of my main story take place.

 

It’s funny, sometimes you can look back and say definitively, “That’s when that happened.” Not often, mind you, but sometimes. Often times it’s something loud and spectacular like a car accident or, well, a burly wizard assassin gets thrown through a window – usually it’s something notable that makes those major life-changing moments notable. But… sometimes it’s subtler, like the change of the seasons in California…
So, it was that I can point to the moment I decided to commit to Linda. We’d been seeing each other for a few months and it’s safe to say we’d both fallen for each other. I’d first seen Linda at the coffee shop I went to – it’s just down the street from the fire station and I fell for her instantly. Long black hair, those piercing blue eyes, and that smile… But I wasn’t going to be one of Those Guys who hits on the barista, so I’d crack a joke and smile a little bit bigger when ordering and leave a big tip, but that was it. Until she was gone one day! I asked about her – in a casual manner, you know – and found out she’d taken an office job. I realized I fucked up and that my chance to get to know this woman had passed.
But by chance, I went in and she was there on her lunch visiting her old coworkers. I wasn’t going to let this chance go by, so I said hi and she remembered me. And I screwed up all my courage and I asked her out. She said yes. We immediately hit it off and, like I said, we’d been seeing each other for a few months. I had tickets to a concert at the Warfield and the show was great – the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah back when practically no one had heard of them. The show was fantastic and afterwards we just sort of meandered around, not really wanting to say goodnight. She’d stayed the night at my place, but we both had to work in the morning, so spending the night wasn’t in the cards, but still we didn’t want to part.
I know that at night especially that can be a pretty shitty part of town, but I grew up in San Francisco, and I was a firefighter – I’ve never encountered anything more than an overly aggressive panhandler or a super-drunk tech worker. Until that night. We cut through an alley to get to this great late-night falafel place that’s no longer there and this homeless guy asks for some change. We ignore him and keep going but stop when he pulls out a gun. “Give me your money,” he demanded. The guy was a head shorter than me, a bit squat in the limited light, his hair greasy. He held his .38 in a shaking hand as he demanded our money again.
My first thought was to try to keep Linda safe. Let’s just get out of this alive. And the shaking hand made me think we had a good chance – a pro would have a steady hand, right? “Whoa, buddy,” I started with my palms open to him, “Let’s talk about this, okay?”
“There’s nothing to talk about! Give your fucking money or I’m going to fucking kill you and take it!” he was talking fast. I was starting to think I mistook his palsy for withdrawl shakes. Shit, we needed to get out of this and now. And then things got worse.
“I’d do what he says,” came a voice out of the shadows. A tall, wiry guy stepped into the weak light of the alley. He didn’t look built, but you could tell by the way he walked – and the way he held his knife – that he knew how to cause pain and he enjoyed it. At that moment you could see his smile growing from our fear. “I’d do what he says. He’s fucking crazy.” His voice was calm and ice-cool. The knife in his hand didn’t shake at all. And where the guy with the gun was dressed in a threadbare hoodie and filthy jeans, the knifeman had a fitted windbreaker on over a t-shirt and slacks. He could have stepped out of an upscale bar – albeit without the knife in his hand, though the incongruity of his appearance and the knife made him seem more dangerous.
It seemed like even the gunman felt this aura and threw a glance over his shoulder nervously and said, “shut up, man!” Then, back to us, “Come on! I will kill you! Give me your money! Now! Now!” I spared a glance behind me and the alley was clear the way we came. If I gave this guy my wallet it might be enough distraction for us to get back out the way we came – the gunman stood between us and the tall man with the knife, and even though a gun should be more terrifying than a knife, it was the tall man I was really afraid of.
“Okay, okay, I’m reaching for my wallet now,” and I slowly started reaching for my back pocket when something completely unexpected happened. This entire time I’d positioned myself in front of Linda. It’s not that I felt any particular sort of chauvinism, but walking down the street I’d always make sure the woman I was with walked on the inside, I’d open doors, it’s just a sort-of ingrained chivalry. So when a guy starts pointing a gun at us, you bet I’m going to step in front of this woman who I’ve fallen for and protect her at all costs. And, to be fair, most of the women I’d been with over the years were perfectly fine letting the big fireman stand up for them – hell, I figured half of them were only dating me because of the machismo fireman stereotype.
So when I heard her say, “No. That’s not how this is going to play out,” from next to me, I was stunned. She took a step forward so now she was closer to the gunman than I was. His eyes were wide – probably as wide as mine were at this turn of events – and he looked like he didn’t even know what to say.
“No?” the man with the knife said coolly, his smile getting impossibly wider.
“No,” she said with an implacable calm that seemed completely alien from the woman I thought I knew.
“I’m going to shoot you, bitch! I’m going to kill you both,” the man with the gun said almost hysterically.
“With what?” she said in that same even voice. I looked at the gunman and the gun was gone. Gone. He held his hand still like he was holding the weapon, but it just wasn’t there. A split second later he realized it and closed his hand over empty space with a little shriek. “I recommend you both turn around and walk out of here right now,” she said. Her calm voice made me want to turn and run, and the empty-handed gunman did just that, turning and bolting away from us.
Without taking his steady eyes off Linda, the tall man caught the man by hood of his jacket and arrested his flight. “Or what?” he asked.
“Or neither of you will be able to walk out of here at all.”
“Oh honey,” he said in a tone that chilled my blood, “I’ve got a knife. What do you have? I don’t know what you think you can do, but I’m going to cut up you and your boyfriend.” And I knew he would do it. Not I knew he could do it, but the way he stepped towards her, the way his grin split into a tooth-showing smile, the even way he said those words that he would do it and enjoy it.
“Look, here’s my wallet,” I took out my wallet with my left hand in a last ditch effort to distract this crazy man. I dropped my right hand to the folding knife I carry clipped inside my pocket. I’d never used it to do anything more than open a letter or cut an apple, but I knew some self-defense and if the was going to be a knife fight, damnit, at least I had a knife. “Take my money,” I said as my fingers started to draw the folder out of my pocket.
“No,” the man drew out the word as he never took his eyes off of Linda. “The time for that has passed. I’m going to enjoy this. And I’m going to start with you,” he said to Linda. He was the predator and she was his prey and there would be no distraction – which I thought might be something in my favor. If he moved for her and I could get my knife open fast enough without him noticing, maybe we might still get out of this…
Then time slowed down. The man stepped in and slashed at Linda. My heart sank, and before I could even move she dodged it fluidly. He slashed again and again and she dodged and pivoted and bobbed like she already knew the steps to this dance. But his attack was relentless and a blur and after a number of attacks, he caught her shoulder – it didn’t look deep, but it was enough to cut her and disrupt the attack-and-dodge dance.
“Did I cut you?” he said in a patronizing voice. “I’m going to cut you a lot more,” he said and stepped in to slash again. But Linda – or the woman Linda had become – clearly was expecting it, and parried the strike, swept his legs out from under him with a smooth kick, and followed through by slamming his head into the pavement. From the crack of the impact of his skull and the alley, I knew he would either be facing severe brain injury or – more likely – he would be dead in moments.
Before I had time to finish processing the man’s injury, a wild, ragged roar cut the silence – the former gunman raced out of the darkness wielding some kind of metal bar. I didn’t even have time to register the threat before Linda intercepted him, let him swing and miss, kneed him and then delivered a wicked kick to the head that spun him around before he collapsed to the ground. Linda crouched looking for any other threats, completely oblivious to me.
I gingerly reached out a hand and touched her shoulder. She flinched. “Linda?” I asked. She turned to me and the cold fighter I just witnessed melted as she stammered, “What have I done?”
I tried to think of something comforting to say, while the paramedic in me wanted to immediately treat the two men down. Before I could do either, she said, “We have to go…now.”
And we did. Against my training, my better judgment, I fled the scene with her. We hurried all the way to the BART station where I put my coat around her shoulders to hide her wound. We didn’t say anything as the train roared through the tunnel until it slowed for the 24th street station.
“My stop.”
“It is.”
She stepped out of the car and turned around. “Taylor…” she started but couldn’t form words. Finally she just said, “Call me…please?”
“I will,” I said.
That moment I was referring to at the beginning? When you know things have changed? It wasn’t the attack. It wasn’t leaving the scene of the incident (I found out from the responding paramedics later that the tall man was killed. The gunman suffered a severe concussion and was released a few days later). No, the moment was when I picked up the phone and called Linda. When I said to her that I would, I’d already made up my mind.
I became a firefighter because of all the altruistic reasons we tell ourselves we do, but there was also an element of being trained to do a job and bringing those skills to bear on an unknown situation. Falling for the blue-eyed barista was something known; the woman in the alley was something wholly unknown… but they were the same person. And although we made a pact not to talk about each other’s past, somehow I knew that I’d get to know the whole person eventually. And finding out how that fighter could be my sweet, beautiful Linda gave me impetus to pick up the phone and dial her number.

 

Linda

Taylor and I hadn’t been going out very long – I think it was our fifth or sixth date. It was early enough that I was still mentally calculating the number of dates. And, too, it was early enough that I was still terrified.

I was mostly over living on my own in San Francisco. Hell, after dying the “big city” didn’t really hold too many terrors in and of itself. But the fear of being found out – of running into someone I knew from the coven… that literally kept me up at night. And for the early part of our relationship, I was terrified Taylor would learn about my magic and my past and… well, run the other direction. Fast. And who could blame him? By all rights I was a murdering witch. I was scared of me, or what I was…

We had just gone to see a show at the Warfield. A stalwart venue, one of the bigger in the City, but located precipitously between a bad neighborhood and an awful neighborhood and at night – when shows inevitably let out – the distinction between the neighborhoods evaporates and you walk to your car or to BART with swift determination. Don’t make eye contact, don’t slow down.

But we didn’t. I don’t know if it was the show – the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah before they blew up – or the still butterfly-inducing energy of our young relationship, but we managed to do just about everything wrong. We meandered. We looked for someplace to get a bite to eat in the area that was still open. Okay, we didn’t make eye contact, but we were in our own little young-love cocoon and it wasn’t so much that we deliberately didn’t make eye contact so much as for us no one else existed.

I blame the no-one-else-existed feeling for why we decided to take a shortcut down the proverbial dark alley late at night in a bad neighborhood.

“Spare some change?” the wiry man asked.

We ignored him and kept walking – Big City protocol: don’t engage (at least we still abided that).

As we started past him his hand flashed producing a gun. It was a snub-nosed revolver – probably one of those “38 Specials” you hear about that I don’t even know what it means. But he held it there, squat in his hand, malevolent in its potential terror. The cocoon of the night vanished. “Give me your money, your watches, your jewelry…. Give it to me!” he demanded.

My first emotion was fear. But that rapidly gave way to something deeper, something I had thought I’d left in South America and my old life. Suddenly, the fear I felt about this man with the gun was replaced by the fear of myself.

Taylor tried to take control of the situation. He moved slightly to stand in front of me. Hands open and out, he started, “whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, buddy, okay. Let’s talk about this…”

“I don’t want to talk about shit,” the man spit, “Give me your fucking money or I’m going to fucking kill you!”

“You’d better do it now,” a new voice chimed in. I turned slightly to see a different man – leaner, taller – come out of the shadows holding an open switchblade and moved to stand behind the gunman.  “This guy is fucking nuts. He’ll kill you without a second thought,” he said in a more measured, even tone that really did make the gunman’s staccato demands sound a bit unhinged.

My terror surged not because of the escalation of the situation, but because my deep instincts took in the new threat and ratcheted up into hyperdrive. I tried to suppress it, but I felt my new self losing out quickly.

“Shut up, man. Shut up!” the gunman said over his shoulder without taking his eyes off Taylor and me. “Your money! Now!”

“I suggest you do as he says,” the tall man added.

“Okay, okay. No problem,” Taylor said. “I’m just going to get my wallet out…”

And then I snapped. I took a step to the side, getting myself clear of Taylor. “No. That’s not how this is going to play out,” I said. The gunman’s eyes widened in surprise, but the tall man broke out into a wicked grin – which I found both terrifying and exhilarating at once.

“No?” the tall man asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Give me your fucking money! I will fucking kill you!” the gunman repeated, his agitated voice having gone up a register that would have been comical had his hand that held the snub-nosed gun not been shaking nervously.

“No, you’re not going to kill anyone. What are you going to kill us with?” I asked. There was no noise, no flash; one moment the gunman held the gun, his finger dangerously on the trigger and the next he held nothing. The action surprised me with the ease that it happened, but thinking back it probably shouldn’t have. I’d worked so hard to repress any of my magic that I practically brimmed with the stuff. When I reached out with my senses towards the gun I felt the rush of magic like carbonated water desperately seeking to fizz out. The spell was one that I’d learned in South America and functioned more like telepathy than spell-based magic I was used to, but it also took a tremendous amount of energy to affect – energy that, apparently, I had in abundance and desperately needed to use. Technically the gun didn’t disappear completely – that would be impossible. Instead it disappeared from the gunman’s hand and reappeared behind me somewhere (I wasn’t terribly particular about that part).

The now-gunless gunman let out a little shriek as his now-empty hand closed on itself.

“I recommend you both turn around and walk away right now.” My voice came out slow, quiet, and dangerous in a way I barely recognized.

The empty-handed man didn’t need any more encouragement and started to whip around to flee, but the tall man caught his dirty jacket in his free hand and kept him from darting away. Holding the switchblade up to the light he took a step towards me casually as he asked, “Or…  what?”

“Or,” I started, noticing Taylor’s wide eyed stare in the corner of my eye, “Or neither of you will be able to walk out of here at all.”

“Oh, honey,” the man said in a sickly sweet tone, his smile showing teeth, “I’ve got a knife and you? I don’t know if you think you know how to fight, but,” he looked me up and down, assessing me, “You don’t know a thing. You and your boyfriend are going to get cut up.”

“Look,” Taylor stammered           , “Here…” he took his wallet out of his pocket. “Here’s my money. Just take it!”

The tall man didn’t take his eyes off me as he drew out the word, “No”. “The time for that has passed. I’m going to enjoy this,” he said cruelly. “And I’m going to start with you,” he said directly to me, taking another step closer.

I didn’t move, but my mind took in everything, my body statue-still, but muscles tightened like coiled springs ready to move, my magic coursing through me preparing to quicken my reflexes. I knew subconsciously his arm length, and that with that last step he was well within slashing distance and that would be his first move. So when his arm whipped out, knife slashing wickedly towards me in a blur, I had already moved laterally to avoid the slash. He adjusted more quickly that I would have expected and slashed at me again, but I ducked back easily avoiding his knife. With both movements my instincts immediately sought to follow up with moves to strike the attacker, but I fought those instincts – I wasn’t a killer. Not anymore. No, I would find a way to disarm this man without hurting him. I just had to get the right chance.

But the man had experience knife fighting, and he continued his assault relentlessly. I ducked and side-stepped and dodged, and continually fought myself as I looked for a way to end this without ending him. Maybe it was this internal conflict that made one dodge just a bit too short. The knife, initially aimed at my chest, instead caught the edge of my arm, slicing through shirt and skin. I knew it wasn’t more than a surface cut, but it hurt and that pain scythed through my rational, non-violent arguments like they were made of velum.

The man paused his assault for a moment as I looked at my bleeding arm, rage building in me in slow, rolling boil.

“Oh, looks like I cut you,” he said in mock concern before sneering, “and now I’m going to cut you a lot more.”  He slashed out with the knife again, but this time I didn’t move.  The man’s knife arm blurred towards me and I sent a surge of magic out, catching the blade in mid-strike. The unexpected impact sent the knife tumbling from the man’s hand, which continued in its slashing trajectory harmlessly. I swept my leg towards his, knocking his legs out from under him. As he fell, I sprung out of the leg-sweep and caught his falling head in my left hand, hastening its descent towards the concrete. His head struck the ground with a sickening crack of impact. He didn’t move.

The gun-less gunman – who had dropped from my threat assessment when I disarmed him – suddenly rushed me with a warbling battle cry, a broken piece of rebar held above his head like a club. Unlike his friend, his movement was born out of panic and demonstrated no skill in the motion – he was scared and angry. The rational part of my mind tried to argue that for that reason I shouldn’t strike, but my body already moved to intercept. The man swung the rebar clumsily and I moved letting it swing past me, striking the pavement as I stepped in and delivered a knee to the man’s groin. He dropped the makeshift club with a yelp of pain, but I wasn’t done. He doubled over and still my rage made me step back and deliver a roundhouse kick to the side of his head. The power of the impact spun him around once before he fell limply to the ground.

I dropped into a fighting crouch on the balls of my feet, arms up ready to strike, breathing steady as I scanned the scene. Two down. Neither moving. I should finish them, came a dark thought from the rage and instinct.

“Linda?” Taylor’s voice split the fog of my rage. “Linda?” he asked again, hesitantly, nervously. His words snapped my rational brain back into control and I stared around me not tactically, but like any normal person would – blood ran down my arm, the tall man’s head lay in a spreading pool of his own blood, and the would-be gunman lay sprawled out, also unmoving.

“What have I done?” was all I managed to say. Taylor moved to me, putting his hand on my uninjured arm. I flinched unconsciously at his touch, but he didn’t pull away. “We… we have to go. We have to get out of here,” I said too quickly. He just nodded and we walked quickly away from the two fallen men.

We emerged from the alley and he took off his jacket and draped it around my shoulders – less because of the chill, and more to hide my bloodied arm. We hurried to the BART station and down the dingy steps without speaking. We rode in silence until the mechanical voice accompanied the slowing of the train and announced “24th. Street. Station.”

“My stop,” I said. He nodded. I looked into his blue eyes for the first time since the incident. He looked uncertain. “Call me?” I asked meekly. “Please?”

He nodded. “I will,” was all he said. “I will.”

The doors swished open and I stepped out onto the platform and turned around and just stared at Taylor as the doors closed and the train sped off into the tube and I watched it go.

And he did call several days later. We both talked around the incident and eventually we talked about future plans and the encounter in the alley became part of That Which We Didn’t Speak Of. In hindsight I know that wasn’t the smart thing to do, but I had trouble explaining the conflict I had in myself so I wasn’t ready to put it into words for someone else. The time to explain it would come, but not for a number of years.