Ceilings Knock

I sleep with the light on. I just couldn't do it anymore.

Trying to sleep in the dark each evening while seeing what lies therein again and writhes to get in, wriggles to sinful manifestations and fearful elations while watching me breathing at night as if waiting for their chance to get in as they try every night.

"Outta sight, outta mind"

(- or that's what they say)

That "they" I'm referring to here I mean people.

The wriggling, writhing "they" -that though,

- is evil.

Mom was mom until she wasn't none more, but nobody cares anymore except me, and I've talked 'bout this story so many times before that the world only sees me now as a man with a wound.

Ghost of ghouls don't understand and if they could - how would they then?

They can't hear the sound of my mother so proud.

"Believe me now?"

...

"Crazy."

When you're alone in your world and you hear from the walls like she said that she heard as she went and filled all the electrical sockets with gum.

Cries of a demon inside only lie all around and hide distant cries, familiarities, trying so hard just to fuck with your mind.

Was she insane? Why would she lie.

I still hear the echo from her time to time

singing...

"-because I am a blind fiddler,

and I'm a great long ways from home".

She sang like an Angel. She was. Hidden. Fallen.

She called me her Angel. Guardian.

That is, I mean, before she went mental.

Long before when

she said she wanted to "know what's out there"

then she meditated on it.

Well? Maybe she did.

After all.

Something came in.

"AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

- she said.

and then -she was gone.

Nobody knew where- how- why- or for even how long.

Did she meditate wrong.

You don't talk about who-now? Who the hell is Bruno? Shut up.

Even cartoons now are mocking demonically through song.

We don't talk about mom.

The walls do. I do too. I walled up as walls do. My brother did and I did.

My dad Wally too. He doesn't talk much. So.

What's it to all of you?

Oh, walls.

Yeah, so then, you hear them too?

We all searched for months everyday after school the three of us broken and looking for truth or a reason or answer a meaning or two as we would drive every street twice a day searching for good news.

We'd sit in the truck driving like detectives might get a clue telling why universe cursed us - like the very lives and hearts and minds we had were worthless and can't find the purpose as we walled-up as men do.

I remember the time of my life like I still haven't moved.

Nothing new.

I think ... I was 7. I tried to forget for so long. Brother maybe 5. Three of us crying silent eating dinner at night at the same table where mom used to be sitting beside us eating dinner with pride, her pride, Lioness of our nest, beautiful, brilliant, lovingness her and my dad, Wally, never fought ever all they'd do was have sex making love.

They were deeply in love.

The walls stood with us then as they silently sung.

Then that one fateful night, the phone rung.

It was the police department.

She was found, San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, delirious,

trying to jump.

"..wh.......What!?...."

That was three-thousand miles across the Pacific in a city she'd never been in.

Our mom as we knew her we never saw again.

I sat with her next to the air conditioner on her bed.

Blushing. Red.

Scared.

"Why are you crying?" - I asked her again.

"Because you don't believe me. You're just like THEM!" -she motioned

to the two on the other end of the wall.

My dad Wally and my brother Keith paid no attention to a thing she said at all. Not anymore.

I remember that moment although she was wrong. I did believe her. She was different but I listened to everything she said. She was my mom.

I thought. I cried. I believed her every time, still. I didn't understand.

She told me stories of demons in reflections and mirrors and she'd cover them all up while projecting it clearer.

I only learned the terms because back then I searched for her in every written books there were from Freud to Jung to Edgar Casey, Greek Mythology to Lao Tzu to Tao te Ching to Genesis to Revelations to unexplained mysteries and phenomenon and historical events.

Now I hate fiction. I tunnel visioned. I wished I listened way back then. Now I sleep with the lights on every night but time and time again, sometimes, these days, I try

and pretend I haven't had a life full of experience fighting demons and all their hoards of hive-mind antichrist consciousness or as Carl Jung had referred to in his mention of "the shadow", while way too many are but slave to them many more don't even see the battle.

My dad Wally was strong and stood up tall and strong through it all. But he doesn't talk much, but more than other walls after all.

Ghost of ghouls don't understand, they merely think they know as they knock again, I remember I sat on the bed next to mom just when we both heard it then -

(*BANG!-thud-thud...BANG!*)

Right above us up through ceiling in the attic, something or someone was up there. Nobody ever went up there. There was no way anyone or anything even COULD get up there.

And it was right above us.

My mother was right.

They can't hear the sound of my mother so proud.

"Believe me now?"

...she asked me sarcastically.

"....."

"Yeah"

~ to be continued ~