True Clausterphobia

All I can hear is the HOOT-HOOT-HOOT-ing of the owl in the barn.

No, there are also crickets. Actually, the longer I lay here, the more sounds come into focus: the light whistle of wind outside the drafty, wooden structure, the movement of some sort of wild animal striding through the tall grass in the distance, the tiny insect crawling its way up my earlobe and into my ear canal.

I want to panic, but my body isn't responding.

I want to get up, but I can't even begin to conceptualize movement from within me. It's as if I will always be stationary in this one spot, feeling the prickling of the hay and weeds beneath my back in the middle of this old barn, forever. I have never felt hopelessness like this before. Forced to wait as the wiggly, microscopic creatures climbing in and among my eyelashes start to consume whatever they feel.

I can't see anything, but it's not because it's pitch black, although the veil of night in the middle of a large shack in an open field on the outskirts of the nearest town wouldn't have much to view. It's just because I can't open my eyes. I can't feel even the minute impulse of movement in the muscles.

I should be breathing heavily, flicking the insect out of my ear, and clawing into it as if I were trying to rip it off entirely. I should be shivering, if not from the adrenaline, than from the brutal cold and lack of clothing. My hands should be sweating, I should be crying, no, screaming, desperate to reach anyone who could hear me. I should be running and trying to find someone to tell them what happened to me, to make them believe, and my heart should be beating so hard it feels like I might pass out, or have a heart attack, or something. My heart should feel like...like...

My heart should feel like it's beating. My heart should be beating.

It was earlier tonight when he picked me up in his car. Tonight was like any other night with him, going out to my father's property to have dinner, and help fix up some things around the house, talking about Momma and her resting soul, and all the things she would have loved about this winter. Daddy never liked being alone much, so when Momma passed three years ago, I started to visit more often, just to keep the house from feeling so empty, and help him feel less alone.

I guess in hindsight, Daddy had been acting strange the last few months, but I never really noticed, because even now I can't quite put my finger on what had changed. Maybe it was that he was less talkative, or that when he was, he started talking about some strange things. But he never lingered on them too long, and I suppose I just chalked it up to Daddy getting up there in age, needing more and more help around the property as time went on. Maybe he needed more help than I thought.

But tonight when I came over, something felt off. Daddy seemed more aloof, more distant than normal, and he kept getting stuck in thought. When we were standing in the kitchen, Daddy and I were talking about the coming crops next spring, when he suddenly stopped mid-sentance and just started to stare past me. I was standing in front of the doorway, which had a direct eye view of an empty corner in the living room. I asked Daddy what it was, and he didn't respond. I turned to look back and there was absolutely nothing in the corner.

I turned back to Daddy, and told him that he was scaring me, and that it wasn't funny, but his face looked frozen in fear now. “Daddy?” I said, and immediately he started screaming, an ungodly noise. In my whole life, I had never heard a sound like that come out of the man who raised me.

Nothing else happened for a moment. There was no movement, no temperature change, no flickering of lights. Nothing to indicate a ghost, at least from what I've read. No. Whatever this was, was coming from Daddy.

I cried his name again, and with a look of absolute terror, he turned back to me, and grabbed my shoulders. Confused and scared, I initially didn't react when he pushed me through the doorway into that corner, but after a few moments, I tried to fight back. He began slamming his fists into me as if they were hammers, as I tried to block his blows with my arms and hands. He slammed, clawed and ripped at my clothes like some sort of wild animal. I tried to push him off, tried to counteract his old and blistered hands, but somehow, this man of seventy-one years old and eighty-one pounds of mass, completely overpowered me.

I fought back until suddenly and all at once, none of me would move anymore. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get my limbs to move anymore. But this isn't what I thought paralysis was supposed to be. I could still feel the impact of his fists crashing into my skull.

And eventually, Daddy stopped. I don't know what he looked light, as my eyes had closed sometime in the crisis, and I couldn't get them open anymore. But I felt as Daddy pulled away slowly, heard him get silent, until I heard him say my name, at first a question, but then over and over again, more and more frantic. I felt him touching parts of me, seemingly trying to fix my hair and clothes. But half of them were missing now, and I couldn't help him lift me to put them back on.

I felt him lift my head and pat at the warm fluid soaking my hair.

And then I felt as he struggled to lift my shoulders, something that only moments ago was as easy as lifting a sack of sugar, and listened as he quietly sobbed, dragging me over the rough dirt road leading to the barn. I wanted to cry out for help as I was haphazardly pushed and shoved into the old wheelbarrow, and lay helplessly as I was shaken by the rolling of the rock underneath.

After some time, Daddy made it to the barn, still sobbing, and dumped me out of the wheelbarrow, as softly as he could, into the stack of hay that we pulled apart earlier that evening.

And then almost as suddenly as he snapped into it, there was no movement. Daddy had stopped making a sound, had stood up, and I don't know how I know, but I knew he stood there, for a very long time. I don't know how long. But I could feel him, too.

And I felt when he crept away. I'll never forget that sound. And it hasn't left the perimeter of the building since.

The only other thing left to focus on is the HOOT-HOOT-HOOT-ing of the owl in the barn.