her face

was melted and there were tendons pulling from the left side of her face.
you could see the outline of her cheekbone
and her jaw

but on the right
was the face of a goddess.

i asked her why she was here?
why had she been committed to the hospital?
all she did was tap her fingers and I felt my eyes lingering on a number that was visible
like a polished tattoo
on the inside of her wrist.

she whispered every time she spoke.
"because i think my mother's with me" she replied.
i walked around to the other side of her bed feeling frightened by the grotesque state of her face.
it was the kind of horror that made you want to cry.
not only because you felt bad
but because it was so hideous.

and that's when she started gasping.
weezing even, violently as if starved for breathable air.
her concave chest rose and fell haphazardly and her thin fingers gripped wildly at the sides of the bed sheet as she flailed
screaming, eyes rolling up towards the back of her skull
as if almost in pain
moaning "i'm here! i'm here!"
before abrubptly quieting down again, as the whispering voice of the goddess returned. "we woke her" she whispered.
"we woke her".

an empty silence followed, as the girl closed her eyes, and fell asleep.
but it wasn't a silence in which you could sit and be calm.
it was a silence filled with the continuous echos of fear
and shrieks.
it was a terrible cry.
a cry of a desperate woman, longing to be believed.

but nobody wanted to believe her.
I didn't want to believe her.Because if I did, I would have to admit that something so distrurbing could exist outside of a movie theater.

she should leave her poor daughter alone.
she should leave her alone, get out of her body, and stop scaring all whose eyes happen upon her.

but she wouldn't. and as a result, the poor girl was the portal for the dead who didn't want death.
she was the portal for the dead
who couldn't accept it.

trembling a little, and trying to recover from what i'd just witnessed, i stepped backwards a few steps, and plasma colored clouds began to rise among her body.

soon my grandfather's figure was huddled over on the floor in front of the bed
and my own mother's voice came shouting from the other room asking "are we a male ghost this time?"
sarcastically, as if she already knew.

the voice that replied was impatient, as always
"help me to the goddamn bathroom jackie"
it demanded
and my mother's voice came back
sounding a little disgruntled in reply, yelling
"i'll help you to the bathroom in a minute dad"


and it came to me in a dream.