Follow This

“WHAT ARE YOU? I must know!” The subject smiled. “Have you forgotten so easily?” The subject asked. “We are you. We are the madness that lurks within you all, begging to be free at every moment in your deepest animal mind.”

I was returning home with my boys after a late night baseball game, when a huge storm quickly formed and thunder and lightning began. The rain was brutal, reducing my visibility even with the wipers on full. I drove at a slower speed than usual to make sure the precious cargo safely tucked away in their car seats would arrive home safe.  The flashes of lightning lit up the sky around me several times, and the sound of thunder keep me wide awake.

I came to the 4 way stop in town by the gas station, thinking how I was almost home and would be glad to get inside. Suddenly, a bloodcurdling, hair-raising lightning stuck, lighting up everything in front of me, turning night into day. To my left, my eyes caught something that shocked and horrified me. Not far from the road was a row of small trees, hanging from one of the trees I saw a man’s body swinging in the air. But worse than anything, I could his eyes were open as if he was staring at me begging for help. His hands were near his neck, and it looked like he was trying to pull at the rope that was slowly cutting off his air supply.

I wanted to make a U-turn right there in the middle of the road but thought better of it, since both of my boys sat in the backseat. My mind went through all the possibilities of it being a dummy that someone had hung there as a practical joke. I wonder how long it had been there, but my minds eyes repeatedly showed me movements he had made as the lightening flashed in the sky around him. Had others saw the same thing, or was I the only one that was in the right place at the right moment when the flash of lighting stuck and lit up his body enough that I and I alone would be only one to see his death that night. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention. Not even a glance up at the curious dark wet bundle loosely hanging from a branch no more than 8 feet off the ground.

I drove as quickly as I could to the house and called the police to report that I had saw a man hanging in the tree. I describe the area the best I could, but the woman on the phone seemed to take it the same way I had I taken it in… was it real? Did that just happen?

Was he a local man? Was he a stranger? Was what I saw even real?

I became nausea the more I thought about the rope tightening around his neck until he couldn’t breathe, his eyes bulging from lack of air, him pulling at the rope at the last minute to say no I changed my mind. Would his mouth be open, tongue turn thick and ugly blue grey color?

Two weeks later, 2 boys in the neighborhood were walking by and found his body lying on the ground. He was a local guy who had been my son’s baseball coach at one time.  His wife was divorcing him, and he couldn’t take life any more.

Now years later, I can’t drive past where it happened without having horrifying thoughts and visions of that night. I don’t know why it suddenly won’t let me go.  

So, here I am once again standing on that fucking bridge ready to jump because ‘they’ decided I needed to be medicated! They believe it is better for me to be medicated with their drugs than for me to medicate myself. For days my mind has been racing towards thoughts of wanting to go on a violent killing spree, or running razor sharp objects across my body. I must do something to correct this shift in my brain chemistry…It’s stupid, but I know what I have to do. It’s either that, or at the end of the day there will be a bunch of bodies going to the morgue.