Esper / Pariah
ESPER
Just last week, I tagged along with my friend, Sorenson, to a nearby town that I will refrain from mentioning by name (this will be made apparent to the reader as to why shortly). His room shares the wall in which I house my giant mirror and the forgotten library in my building. Currently, he appears to be deep in the doldrums of reaquiring all of his childhood possessions, having been to every resale shop in the area and living in the underbelly of eBay for weeks now. We are en route to the vintage merchant’s. It is twilight . . .
We arrive at our destination and I feel something sinister about our surroundings straight off the bat. Just as I happened to be recounting my trip to Yellowstone, right as we step out of the car and onto the embankment two children walk past with a golden retriever. The young boy is wearing a hat that reads ‘YELLOWSTONE’. I hear a blood curdling scream from behind and see nothing. It felt as if we had stumbled into a ghost town. I tell Sorenson that I am foregoing the store and start walking down Main Street.
laputalashline: Town Of Screams (2024)
Above an abandoned storefront, I see a mural of a Chimera, the mythical beast with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. The Chimera is a creature composite of terrors, I realize, when suddenly I hear the same shriek as before — compounded — coming from where Sorenson had left his car. The only other vestige of life I see is an empty bar and a post office. The rest of the buildings were blank brick, and nameless.
I head back and discover that the blue house across the street from the merchant had two children inside that had been responsible for the howling all along. They had been hanging their bodies out of the house and crawling in and out of the window as if they were spiders. I presumed that they must have yelled at every passerby, probably.
Now this is where things really start to get interesting: the very next day, as I am relaying these events to a co-worker, the mere mention of [redacted] is enough to illicit an intense reaction from her. She goes on to tell me that the blue house that I saw just so happened to be the location of where a friend of hers had used to live and was where he had committed suicide. As a matter of fact, just the other day she had spoken to a medium in order to channel his spirit. Of course, you did, I say.
Apparently, this man had killed his wife in their home, and later that day was visited by the wife’s brother. Unable to cover up the murder, he tried killing the brother also but the brother ended up getting away. So, the killer ended up committing suicide before the arrival of the police. The channeler had told her that his spirit was unable to crossover as he was unable to accept his actions before his death. I believe that this is what I had sensed — a residual cursed energy emanating from the blue house. Those children, as I imagine with any haunting, live amongst such a frequency, daily.
The reason I even make a mention of something so grisly, is that this was an instance where my spiritual antennae (ESP) had been so forthcoming in detecting such affairs. And although such a spirit had made its unpleasantness known to me, I do NOT consider myself an oracle, etc., in the slightest, as I believe that these discernments are present in every human mind, should one choose to calibrate themselves accordingly. I also would like to note that this particular event had made my soul literally sick for several days directly after, which is why I had taken so long to write this piece to begin with . . .
PARIAH
Inversely, my father just so happened to prevent a suicide attempt later that same weekend. His old friend from college had called him over the phone saying that he had a revolver in his hand and wanted to talk to one last person before he pulled the trigger. He called bullshit, to which his friend responded by jingling the bullets in the chamber. My father left in a whirlwind, leaving me to entertain both my mother and sister for the afternoon. Once he returned later that evening, he had relayed to us that he believes that his visitation had saved his friend’s life. He didn't go into much detail other than revealing he had pilfered the revolver under his belt on the way out.
Later on, his cellular rings and it is my yiayia — his mother — on the other end of the line. He puts his index on his mouth making a gesture of silence, asking me to pretend that I wasn’t there, saving himself the trouble in explaining why he hadn’t come to visit her as well. This instance had perfectly exemplified my own minimization, and felt very symbiotic of the constant restraint I felt of leaving much of my own imprint in this life. Oftentimes, it was easy for me to feel unseen and unheard. Largely, this was my own doing: it was I who encouraged my own disappearance. I had so many thoughts that had went unspoken, but never once did I ever let an idea die; I should have started kicking and screaming, walloping onto the table, leaping for the revolver and begin firing bullets into the sky. Perhaps, I am the pariah . . .
My ethnic heritage had always been kept in a chokehold and at an arms length, as it was my father who had stood between two countries that was left wringing out the rag that straddled both. He himself was estranged from his family in an entirely separate way that only a child of immigrants could understand. He needed to Americanize himself for survival in a way that his parents, in an incredibly straightforward way, simply opted out of. There was never a choice in his slate wiping. I remember as a child being threatened to be sent to work at my family’s lemon grove on the Greek Islands when I had misbehaved. Today, I know that if I ever did visit the old country, that I would never cross that ocean again.
This charade that I continued perpetuating was the same old cat and mouse routine all over again. In my mind, this was a can that I kicked around the block many times over. My biggest regret as a youth was that I was constantly being misunderstood; I’m sure that most everyone can agree on this fact. Still, I had felt so indecisive growing up that I never had the audacity to put behind my inner strength, my full power, into who I was as a person. Eventually, I came to terms with not only the world — but more importantly — myself. I have embraced my estrangement from all angles, and not only has it left me showered with fortune and fame (which I am still waiting for), it has allowed me an alcove of understanding with all who surround me: I see the poetry in all things.