Silhouette

What is there to say for one who dies before he lives? Does it grant insight the likes unknown to those whose births complete without such interruption? What then if you were to take that same person and relocate them to a house chock full of the restless and unresolved? Will it explain why I was never without friends? Why my sleep as an infant was constantly disrupted, with my crib upturned? How did the scent of lilacs fill the house, in winter? What grabbed the ankle of my live-in? Would those regular birthed born to track housing understand or comprehend that there were people who died in that house where I had lived for 21 years of my life and that made for a much different experience? Doubtful.

The house was built in the early 1920's. In laying and preparing the foundation, there was a man who was crushed by the cement truck. One could surmise that much of his blood stayed within the concrete and that it was neither practical nor economically feasible to replace it. This was the first man to not only die at my old house, but also during the process of its construction. How silly of that Mohawk witch to think she could just expel him from the premises when he was so deeply embedded in it. I had a live-in caretaker to watch me while my father worked. There was a time she had sent me up the stairs distraught. I remember her not being very nice to me that day. Soon after, she ran up the stairs and exclaimed that something grabbed her leg. My father thought she was on drugs. I knew exactly what had happened and it wasn't too late thereafter that she had resigned. In my teen years, I had a pool table. It was perfectly level because that is how my father wanted it. Sometimes, the balls would move on their own. When I reassigned my room to the basement, I gave myself the thrill of running up the stairs with the light off. They seemed to go on forever and I always felt those hands reaching for my ankles. But we knew it was all in good fun.

The first man to own the house died in it along with his wife of old age. What then would explain his aggression? Perhaps he was impotent. There was no record of them ever having children. Her favorite fragrance was lilac and it plumed heavily in my parent's bedroom. My father would ask my mother, when they were together, why she wore so much perfume. But she did not wear any that contained the scent of lilac. Over time, this phenomena had come to pass. Except for the antics of that man in the basement. He remained.

The day of my father's death, we had argued. My final words to him were "apologize" while his response was a resounding "no". He left for a walk, only to be struck 6 hours later. I was made known through the reflection in a mirror to be prepared that day. When it was time to break the news to me, the look of astonishment on the face of my messenger was akin to that of seeing a ghost. Perhaps it was. I felt nothing but calm, as if it wasn't really the last time I would see my father. She was too much of a superficial fool to know any better. They all were. That is not to say that I did not have my physical reactions to the loneliness that ensued thereafter. It was that one day, in the dining room, that I fell from mental exhaustion. My head did hit the floor and it was then that his voice was once again heard. It seems that only at being ever so closer to unconscious was I able to hear from him again, guiding the notion that the closer to death one becomes, the more of that other side one will be able to see. In a concerned tone, he asked me, "Are you ok?". My eyes opened to the silhouette of a man standing over me. My response was simply, "Yeah". It was then that I realized,

"As truly only darkness pervades the plane upon which we operate, for we must be provided a supplemental sun. The most purest of light lies outside of the veil, where only the passed can see and bask in it's splendor. Invoked, they shall peer through the ethereal tear and it will only be their silhouette that is made evident."