Episode #0003 The Fire

“He loathed me, and also was ironically compelled to comfort me and talk me out of completely hating myself. He was happy to do that for me. In retrospect, he isolated me from my friends and family. I can see that now.”

Written by: D. Paul Fonseca

When I was little, I felt like I knew the world was watching me. I think most kids have that feeling, like they’re being watched for one reason or another. Some kids think God is watching them, or Santa, maybe even elves, or the angels. Parents share a lot of fears with children almost from birth. “Jesus sees everything you do” can terrify a kid who does something that someone tells him or her is wrong. 

When I got to the age of ten or so, I felt different. I had bullies by then, a lot of them. So, if Jesus was real and watching me, and saw everything that happened in my life, I learned I couldn’t count on him to help me. I turned my thoughts inward. 

Later, life got harder for me. When I was fifteen years old, I had a lot of trouble with depression. In retrospect, it was no wonder my experiences became different from those of other people I knew. At that age, most people lose their childhood coping tools and grow into adults. They lose their imaginary world where everything is better. They lose their imaginary friends. But not me. I found one. 

Ken will tell you how it happened, because he always got a kick out of it, the way it happened. He lived about fifteen miles away, and it was the weekend, so he had come over for a sleepover so we could stay up late and watch movies. The internet was still in its infancy, and cellular phones were just a prop we’d see in movies. So, that’s what teenagers did back then.  I mean, sure, we’d try and get some booze, just to try it, but the only thing palatable at that age was the sweet stuff, like Rumple Minze and root beer Schnapps. 

Ken left late in the afternoon, and I was in an odd mood. I’m sure he was worried because I’d become quiet, introspective, and I had started taking a lot of photos of the make-shift collage on my wall. I looked like I was preparing to make some huge changes. Before he left, he asked if I was alright, and I said I was. Then he was gone. 

It was almost dark outside, and my thoughts drifted as I looked out the window from my bed. The wall at the foot of my bed in this light was a dark, shadowy grey. Many things that hung on it were distorted or lost form. On a nail on the wall opposite me hung a white paper painter’s cap. In shadowy silence, it moved and grew, changing its form. In a few moments, a face stared back at me. The face was white, like the painter’s cap. It was a bald head, and as it moved its mouth to speak, I noticed two tusks pointing up at the corners of its mouth. “What ever is the matter with you?” It spoke to me quietly, matter-of-factly. The deep voice lacked care or compassion. The directness of its query surprised me. 

“Who are you?” I asked it. Somehow, I was not surprised that this hat spoke to me like that. 

“Don’t talk to me, insolent idiot.” It snapped back at me. “There’s nothing you are good at.  Nobody likes you.”

“Ken…” I started. 

“Ken pities you,” said the hat. “He tolerates you because he is so remote and lacks a social group where he lives. But really, he doesn’t like you either.” 

“Fuck you.” 

“Oh, you would like me to go away?” 

I didn’t know what to say. I said nothing, and it didn’t say anything either. Eventually, I fell asleep, and when I woke the next day, the hat was just a hat. 

On Monday, I told Ken about the hat and its insults. He laughed. I could not get over how much joy it brought him. I told him what it said, and he never once denied the accusations that he didn’t like me. Or maybe he did, and I forgot in this remembrance of it. I don't know. 

I came to know the hat entity as Jahl. He loathed me, and he was compelled to comfort me and talk me out of completely hating myself. He was happy to do that for me. In retrospect, he isolated me from my friends and family. I can see that now.

I only saw Jahl on my wall a few times. Then he appeared in my dreams. Sometimes he was his normal self.  He was huge, at least eight feet tall, and muscular. His skin was hairless and had a purple tint to it. When we just hung out in my dreams, we’d do stuff like just sit and talk, often on the side of a hill, overlooking a grassy valley. He liked to wear overalls. But sometimes, he was different, looked like someone else, and pretended to be someone else. But I know it was him because of his eyes. They were bright gold, and if I looked closely, they looked like swirling masses of flickering gold smoke.

And then, just when I was getting used to him, he stopped coming around. No dreams. No hat chat. Nothing. A few weeks later, I had a dream about being someone else. I dreamed I was somewhere else, in another world altogether. And, I knew a girl, Alison. When I woke up from the dream, I felt a sense of sadness. I thought I’d never see her again. We had been so close. The dream felt so completely real. It was unlike any real relationship I’d ever had. All day I felt crushed. I went to school and went to all of my classes feeling emotionally sick and torn. I got home and moped. Finally, I went to bed and fell asleep. 

I woke up in the same dream, a continuation from the night before, and Alison stood in the room, cooking something on the stove as I lay on a bed in a comfortable studio apartment. The amount of astonishment I felt could never be duplicated. We ate and then left to meet friends. Then, she and I went back to the same home, her home. Eventually, I’d fall asleep and wake up here again. This very long dream kept up for two weeks. Once, I remember being at that other place with Alison, Kim, and Aimee. We searched for a book in an underground library that was dark and cold, covered with cobwebs. Then I heard a knocking come from what looked like cellar doors from the inside. I went up the stairs, pushed open the door, and light shone through into the cellar. My father was in my room, here on Earth. He woke me up at around midnight to tell me that he and his friends were going out to get takeout. He asked if I wanted anything, and I asked for a burger. (Come on, I was still a fifteen-year-old boy!) My father left and closed the door. I lay back down, closed my eyes, and went back down the stairs into the dark library. The dream waited there for me. My friends were like, “Who was that?” I told them what happened, and we continued looking for the book we needed. 

At the end of the two weeks, in the last dream I had, Alison was distraught. Something happened that she did not want to tell me about. She cried a lot, and at one point, when she looked at me, she told me she was afraid she wouldn’t see me again. The last time I saw her, we held hands, sitting on the edge of the bed. Tears ravaged our eyes. I told her I would see her again soon. She sniffled, kissed my cheek, and nodded. When I looked into her eyes, I knew she loved me. I held her so tightly, I thought I might break her. When I last looked at her, for one brief moment, I saw gold flecks in her eyes, and then the dream was gone, and I woke up. 

It was weeks before I dreamt of that place again. Weeks! It was a lifetime to me. It was not the same. I walked through the old neighborhoods towards her building, knowing the way, having taken the walk so many times before. When I reached the building, I found a horrific scene. The building was gone. In its place was debris, black ash, and boards lay scattered throughout the area. It was gone. She was gone, and somehow, I knew she was dead. I woke from that dream in the middle of the night with a lump in my throat and sobbed for so long that I couldn’t remember ever falling back to sleep. 

It would be years before I could fully process that time. I wrote stories about what I felt, about love and loss. I knew it was only a dream, or a series of dreams. The mind does things like that sometimes to process what is happening in real life.  Throughout those times, my parents were separated and getting a divorce. It was messy and ugly. I understood that my dreams, waking or sleeping, were a product of my subconscious processing my emotions. 

That all happened in 1985. Decades later, I went through a bitter divorce of my own. My ex-wife and I had a daughter together, who was nine years old.  I was then thirty-six years old and was already in my second marriage. My incredible new wife and I also had a daughter together, and she was three. We lived in a modest apartment in the same town where I grew up, San Diego. My children were the light of our family. Things had finally become unbelievably wonderful for me. 

One morning, I awoke early from sleep to hear the sound of talking. I knew it was our youngest daughter. I got out of bed and quietly walked into the doorway of our girls’ room. I wanted to hear what she said. Her soft voice answered questions, “Yes. Sometimes.” She laughed. I walked in to see if she was talking to her sister. But her sister was sound asleep. As I entered, I saw her sitting straight up, giving all her attention to the foot of her bed. I knelt and smiled at her. 

“Good morning,” I said. Who are you talking to?” 

“My friend,” she said. 

“Oh, what friend? Do they have a name?” I asked, still smiling, beaming at her beautiful face.   

“Her name is Alison,” she said. She frowned. “She died in the fire.”