The Weirdness Within

I'm Carrie.  I live an ordinary life.  I like it that way, I prefer it that way.   I'm a bit antisocial, but not because I don't like people.  People just flow around me.  When I go to school, the two seats next to me are always empty.  When I'm headed to the cafeteria, guess what, there is a crowd headed the other direction.  Girls are talking about their hair; their clothes and all the things that make them beautiful.  I am the quiet one who listens but doesn't understand.  I see it like this, you're either pretty and don't know it, or you're ugly and you're in denial.  Either way, stuff doesn't change how you look.  Me?  I'm just lazy so I don't bother with most of it.  I stick to doing what makes me happy.  I go to school every day, study hard because I love it, not because I have to, and go home to cuddle up and read books with my big orange fur ball.  My life has always been, for the most part, predictable.

Weirdness, though.  It has a way of finding you when you're comfortable and when you least look for it.  It found me right after my grandpa died.  He and I weren't best buddies or anything, but he had a solid way of being.  You know what I mean?  Some people are all over the place and it's hard to figure out what they stand for, or who they are, even if you're around them all the time.  Grandpa wasn't like that.  He didn't ever change.  A few times of seeing him and you'd know him.  What's worse, he would know you.  He was weird.  He knew things.  He knew things nobody else knew and we just assumed he was smarter than the rest of us. 

He had this bird.  A pigeon.  It sat on his shoulder and combed his "feathers."  Sometimes during conversation or television time, that bird would lean in and tickle his ear and he'd start laughing.  I used to smile and think to myself that it looked like it was telling him a secret.  A joke.  He would talk to that bird like it was a real person.  It pooped everywhere and grandma would turn beet red and say, "why do we even have a bird cage? Harry, this is disgusting.  Control your beast."

Beast.  I never understood why she called it that.  Maybe just a figure of speech. 

I digress.  My grandpa knew things.  One year grandma was hell bent on getting a knew flat screen.  She didn't want to pay much for it though, so she decided to try getting on the cheap.  Black Friday.  Grandpa didn't like spending money either and he was on board.  I remember he was in on the plan one hundred percent.  Well, the big day arrived and the car wouldn't start.  Grandpa fussed under the hood but he couldn't figure out the problem.  We stayed home.  The next day grandpa said he got it fixed, but grandma didn't want to go anymore.  There was a piece on the news.  Someone else wanted a television bad enough to gun down seven people.  Grandma was in tears.  She said, "That's the store I was going to."  Grandpa just laughed it off.  "Lucky we had a dead battery."

Things like that happened a lot.  In hindsight, it seems rather obvious that there was something different about him, but in the moment, no one suspected.  He was disarming.  He never came across like a brooding or mysterious type.  He just got lucky sometimes.

Most of my memories of his lucky breaks weren't as dramatic as the department store shooting episode.  He'd get a wild hair to go hunting and come back with a twelve point buck.  He'd find things for grandma that he couldn't possibly know anything about.  Shortly after they moved from the old restaurant into the suburbs, grandma lost the keys that went to the old house.  This is bad because she needed to give these keys to the new owners.  Well, she had herself worked up into a frenzy over it, and grandpa came home.  Apparently work hadn't been great.  "Harry, I can't find the keys!"  He didn't say a word.  He just walked into the second bedroom where all the moving boxes were stacked, opened a box of Christmas decorations, dug around and retrieved the keys.  She gaped.  "I don't know what you'd do without me."  He stated flatly and walked out. 

I moved away a few years later, got married, started college and settled into a three bedroom apartment on the first floor.  Life proceeded on, casually.  Then I heard he was sick.  I went to visit and spent a good two weeks with at home.  It was wonderful.  He was on oxygen, but he could still get around all right.  We didn't talk about the future.  Even when I hugged him goodbye, we didn't say anything about what it meant.  I looked him right in the eye and I fought to keep a neutral face because I knew I was saying goodbye.  It felt weird.  He was so casual about it.

A few months went by.  One night I was dreaming and I saw him.  He was sitting on the back porch drinking a Pepsi.  Wearing his favorite worn out baseball cap.  He looked as I remembered him, before the oxygen tank and the labored breathing.  He was young or old.  I exclaimed, "Grandpa! You're looking amazing.  You look so much better!"  He just laughed and winked.  Life and death were all the same to him.  Grandma was there too.  We went inside the house together and I commented to grandma that it was really shameful of us to leave grandpa out there all alone.  She just laughed and said, "Oh, he's fine, he'll come inside when he's ready."

I woke on a pillow soaked through with tears and sweat.  I threw off the covers and looked at the clock.  It was two fifteen in the morning.  It took me a while to calm down but I finally got back to sleep.  When I woke up in the morning I felt exhausted and weird.  I didn't know why, but I knew something was wrong.  Then I got the phone call.  "Grandpa passed away around 2:15 this morning."

My husband, the sweetheart, took the rest of the day off work and came home.  He made hot chocolate, and held me while I cried.  I knew it was coming, but there are some things that time cannot prepare you for.  Never ready.  For about a month after he died, I didn't sleep well.  I had twisted, feverish dreams and felt foggy all day.  I made a doctor's appointment thinking I was dying.  Then almost suddenly, the fog lifted and clarity returned.  Inexplicable.

Fortunate.  I thought to myself.  Just in time for winter semester to start.  It wasn't until I started classes that I realized something about me had changed.  I noticed that people looked at me warily.  I'd been part of a study group, but now the members made excuses and met without me.  I felt sad about it at first, but then I remembered how distracting those people were and how little studying actually got done.  I didn't feel so bad after that, and my grades improved.  It was lonely though.  I still had my husband, and he didn't seem bothered by my new vibe.

I've got to hand it to him.  Most people don't do weird.  He rolls with it.  I was still having the dreams.  A mixture of regular, murky images and occasional blips of intense clarity.  After one particularly intense night I woke, had a coffee and went to school without eating any breakfast.  I normally don't go without, but I wasn't feeling it.  I'd had a grisly dream about some girl getting cooked by an exploding microwave.  I chalk it up to an overactive imagination and blame my subconscious.  I'm pretty sure that loser has nothing better to do.  Torturing me must be great fun.  Sadistic butt. 

I will not say whether or not I slept through most of the lecture.  After the professor dismissed us, the room exploded into cacophony and I woke then and realized we were leaving.  I went to a coffee shop in the common building and stood in line with about two dozen others.  A parfait.  I had my heart set on nothing, but maybe I'd get a bagel.  I should skip the coffee, I'd already had a cup and I'm trying to cut way back.  So sleepy.  I was deliberating as I stepped up to the counter and spoke to the pretty redhead.  A number of things happened in rapid succession.  First of all, I noticed the girl and thought that she must be very pretty because she had a hideous hat smashed over her hair and I still noticed her.  Maybe it was her eyes.  Big grey-blue and dark featured.  I also heard a nagging sound.  Beep. Beep.  Beep.  The lights flickered a little and I smelled something.  Eggs.  Something rotten.  Heard a hissing sound somewhere behind her on the floor.  A snake maybe.   Another woman in an ugly hat was turning to the big industrial stove.  She twisted the knob a couple of times and cussed under her breath.  She pulled a lighter out of her pocket. 

I don't know why I did what I did, but I did it.  I reached across the counter, grabbed the redheaded woman by the shirt and yanked her toward me.  A look of surprise crossed her face.  As she flew into open space and crashed to the floor beside me, just as a tremendous explosion happened in the kitchen behind the counter.  An alarm of astonishing intensity went off .  People were screaming and fleeing the building. The redhead said something to me but I couldn't hear it because I was partially deaf.  She grabbed me under the arms and half dragged me out into the newly falling rain.  We stood out there together waiting for the firetruck to arrive.  The building didn't burn.  Industrial materials and all.   The redhead hung around long enough to make sure I was alright and then hurried off to meet up with her boyfriend.  I just stood there.  Paramedics came and tended to the injured sitting outside on the grass.  The firemen cleared the building.  Paramedics went in next.  They came out a bit later with someone on a stretcher.  I couldn't see who it was because the person was covered in a white cloth. 

Oh god, what a day.  I couldn't deal anymore.  I went home and cried.