The Last Escalator

I created this. I wrote this. Edited in Word with, edited in Movie Maker Pro. The video was recorded by a camera on my PC. I used Clip Champ for transfer of video to that app and to Moviemaker. Since I had issues with Clip Champ, came to my rescue. This is part of,

Step Into the Echoes Beyond the Veil with Pookie and Vicki

Prologue: Grandma on the edge of your bed, chasing out the unworthy

Chapter One: The at the dinner dream with coffee, truth, and creative reckoning

Chapter Two: The Valley crash and the mystery woman who saved you

Chapter Three: The scent, the silence, and the steady presence

Chapter Four: The Last Escalator, your parting dream

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[Intro Music – My original composition plays, 10–15 seconds]

Voiceover or Spoken Opening:

“The Last Escalator: Ten Years of Dreaming with Grandma Carrie Soleta”

This is a story I experienced. Between sleep and waking. Between memory and something that feels like the afterlife.

For ten years after my grandmother passed, she walked beside me—pulling me back when I drifted too far, speaking in dreams, and once… saving my life.

This is for her. For all the grandmothers who never truly leave.

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Prologue: The Sleeper Beside Me

The first time she came to me, I thought I was in love a man she couldn’t stand.

I heard her steps before I saw her, soft and insistent, like she had something to say and wasn’t going to wait for permission. She sat on the edge of my bed in the dream. Firm, focused, a silent wall between me and the man asleep beside me.

Every time I dreamed, she returned. She did not lecture. She just… was A presence so steady that eventually, I woke up for good. One morning, while he was at work, I gathered his clothes and flung them out the window. One sweatshirt landed in a puddle. I didn’t look back.

Somewhere in the stillness, I swear I heard her laugh.

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Chapter One: Coffee with the Dead

In dreams, she was always working a diner. A place stitched together from memory and imagination—smelling like bacon, cedar, and Sundays.

She’d pour two black coffees, slide mine across the counter, and say, “Now that that’s managed, let’s talk about what matters.”

We never talked about her being gone. Just about me being stuck.

About what I wouldn’t write.

About the music I swallowed out of fear.

About the fire I forgot I had.

"That man? That was a detour," she’d say. "You’ve always known the way."

And when I’d try to ask her where she was now, she’d just wink and top off my cup.

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Chapter Two: Valley of the Almost

Sometime in the '70s, I was driving the side streets of the San Fernando Valley. Near a 7-Eleven. Everything was foggy, until it wasn’t.

A car in front of me stopped cold. I didn’t. My body surged forward. I remember bracing for glass, for pain

and then, I was pulled back,

Not by physics, but by something else.

Dazed, I walked into the 7-Eleven to call the police. The clerk looked startled.

"That woman, she saved you!" he said.

I told him I was alone.

"No," he said. "She pulled you back. Strong jaw. Red-streaked hair. Looked like she'd tamed storms."

He described my grandmother to a tee’. She’d been gone since 1975 and still on duty.

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Chapter Three: Powder in the Air

The dreams grew softer after that. Less dialogue. More sensation.

Sometimes I’d catch her scent. That powder she always wore. It would show up out of nowhere when I was writing, when I was microwave cooking, when I was about to say yes to something I knew I shouldn’t.

It didn’t haunt me. It held me.

She was saying, “I’m still here.”

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Chapter Four: The Last Escalator

It was 1985. Maybe ‘86. I was in a department store, shopping for makeup. I looked up across the aisle, toward the escalators.

And there she was.

Short. Elegant. Serene.

My grandmother.

I said her name aloud. Started walking toward her.

She smiled. Raised one hand, gently stopping me.

Not cruel. Just final.

She mouthed, I love you.

I said it back.

She turned.

Stepped onto the escalator.

And rose into the light.

Not blinding. Just bright enough to feel like peace.

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Epilogue: Still With Me

I kept dreaming for a little while after that. But never of her.

Now, when I pass an escalator or catch a hint of her powder, I smile.

Her photograph sits above my bed, her and Grandpa Boss.

They’ve been watching longer than I’ve known.

And when I write, when I sing, when I say no to people who dim my light, I know it’s because she showed me how.

She stayed long enough to remind me who I was.

And I stayed long enough to finally believe her.

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[Your Music Returns — gentle closing fade]

Credits (on-screen or spoken):

Story written and performed by Vicki

With creative support from Copilot & Friends

In loving memory of Grandma Carrie Soleta, 1890–1975

To all our relations.

I WROTE THIS!

Vicki Lawana Trusselli

Trusselli Art

Copyright 2025