SHORT STORY: SOMETHING ANCIENT

FROM THE AUTHOR: This is a true story, one of my own haunting experience. Practicing my creative writing skills. I have been writing for almost as long as I have been alive, and since I first learned to write a proper paragraph in elementary school. This I create today, comes from my reality but an alternate reality for some. Thank you for reading!

“Come, put on your nightgown. You should never be naked when you sleep.” Mammy whispered while she dressed me and tucked me under my favorite blanket. I never slept without my favorite blanket or pillow. Without my shield and dagger, which those items represented to me as such, I could not fight of the visitors.

“God don’t like nudity,” My mother whispered again, “It should be shame that is felt when you gaze upon your own body, stay covered.” She gently tucked me under the blanket and patted my tummy. “Let us say the lord’s prayer and then Psalm 23.” We both recited the lord’s prayer, chanting it in unison, my voice a pitch higher than her own. While we chanted to the Christian God, I was also saying another prayer in my mind to that same God. Please God, don’t make me be touched and talked to by anything while the night rose. Please keep me safe from harm. I squeezed my eyes tight until tears welled up in the corners of my little child’s eyes, but mammy had not seen the tears. I hid all my horrors, all by myself without anyone to help me, but God.

“Alright, when two or more are gathered, God hears our prayer.” Mammy believed that whole heartedly. I tried to believe it too, my childlike understanding still wished for good and fairytale like adventures, but the night rose to some things that were more…sinister. My mother got up from my bedside, approached my room door. Opened and closed the door behind her and I focused as much as I could on her footsteps leaving me behind, walkine down the hall to her own bedroom. I sighed, very loudly. Not because I was relieved or secure, but because I had to fight again.

Sleep came to creep up on me before I can brace myself for anything else. My mind was set on the task that will surely come, but my body was tired from all the games and playing I did all day. The night was different. Why must I be afraid of the night. What I have learned of night has made me afaid of it. Terrified, really. The window brought light in my room, a steady illumination. It should have been comforting, unfortunately, it was not. As sleep took me and I dreamt away, A lowly black mass began to collect itself near the wall beside my bed. Slowly accumulating, and as it did so the sound that came from this mass was of flesh tearing. Pushing itself forward from whereever it emerged, It began to form a head of the carcus of a bull and it wore the dark sludge that was it’s body as though it was a dress. The darkness of its sludge was darker than the darkest corner in the room, where light could not reach. This entity bore no human attributes, nothing about the thing was of this earth or reality. Mammy would call it a Jumbie. In caribbean culture a Jumbie is a monster or mischieveous spirit. It did not come from a dead person like ghosts. It is believed that jumbies can harm you.

While the Jumbie came to visit for a while, I slept undisturbed. After this horn adorned mass completed its materialization in this plane, it watched me as I slept. Though it had no eyes in that bull skull, it concentrated with intensity, on my small body under my shield, my blanket. To my horror, it was still there when I finally opened my eyes at the dead of night to look upon it. I was startled by this being, but have come accustomed to strange entities visiting me during the night. At first, I could not take my eyes off of it…this bull skull, which with its dark mass below it, seemed like it was floating on its own. In my life, at that time, I have never seen anything that I could describe was like it. I was so shaken with bewilderment, I threw my blanket over my head hoping that it would deter this thing from coming towards me. Perhaps it would leave, because my blanket shield would keep it at bay and it would vanish back to wherever it came. Out aloud, I chanted my secret prayer, over and over again. God would come protect me, that was the idea. How much more protection would I need to be free from this curse!

It still haunts me today. I am still here to tell the story.

Nightmare: Viscious And Woke

Most of my life, I have been plagued with nightmares. Sometimes daily. This “nightmare” I just woke from an hour ago, but I still feel as though it is not done with me. The fear is so real that even now as I write these bothersome things to the internet, just to rid my mind. So come bare the load for me. I need to take it out of my consciousness and provide someone, at this point anyone that may care, the dark and dreaded corner of my subsciousness that haunts me in wake and sleep.

At first it was a struggle to sleep, since my mind was busy with failure and heartache. I wanted to sleep my worries away, sometimes my dreams can be a more than pleasant reasoning away for the “wake” reality that I step into, sometimes endless. Instead, I chanted a meditation spell and envisioned painting a sun with acrylic paint colors of orange, red, white and yellow. Strangely, I must have finally drifted…because I found myself abruptly waken to darkness. Delivered to the darkness of the room, I groggily sat up in bed and made motions to get out of the bed. The darkness was still there, but it was a dark, dark blue darkness staring back at me. It had no eyes, but it stared right through me as a sat at the edge of my bed. I sat frozen, paralyzed in fear when I realized I wasn’t actually in my room. It was another room, one from my childhood, but the bed I slept in was still the twin sized bed I sleep in every night. And that is when I realized…I’m dreaming…or nightmaring? The dark, dark blue darkness with no eyes, hands or feet, was at the bedroom door, perpendicular to where I now stood in the opposite end of the room. I was terrified. I was so mortified that I held my own throat with both hands, because I couldn’t scream as the dark, dark blue darkness came hurtling at me. Instinctively, I still gripped my throat. “What’s the matter voice, have I lost you.” I heard. It wasn’t from the thing that rushed me, it was from around me. Someone wanted to shut me up. No time for thoughts, because this time, the dark, dark blue was up in my face inspecting me with no eyes and this time I could see it for what it was up close. A monster.

Then, I woke up again. Startled by the nightmare I just had, I jolted awake. My god, that was terrifying and I thought I couldn’t, wouldn’t get out. So, I shook it off, but before I got to sit up in the bed of my dark room, in the dim light of my computer screen was a white egg the size of the Walmart variety egg in the dairy section. The egg was right where my tummy was as I laid on the left side of my body. I only lifted my head from my pillow to look at it in the dimly lit room. I looked around and I was still in my room where I slept. Curious, I propped myself up, still lying on my side to look at this thing that I was sure was not there when I fell asleep. I wouldn’t have an egg in the bed with me. It could break…I reached for the egg to feel it, gingerly. The egg was very white, even in the dark glow of the computer in the room. This is when the realization came that I was in a dream again. Waking from one nightmare into another illusion of my mind. While I held the egg, unconsciously I used the force of my fingers to crush the egg in that one hand and my hand was cut by all the pieces of the eggs shell…though the egg was hard boiled!

Another jolt, sitting up in the bed this time, with my heart racing and my eyes moving to all corners of the room. Still the dark glow of the computer screen. The computer screen had a picture of my sisters and myself, all staring back at me. Stories in their eyes. I caught my breath, comforting myself, which was self taught. I wondered about the dream, what was that about? I got up to go use the bathroom. Looking in the mirror only for a second before I plopped down on the toilet to pee. The relief of the streaming of these life fluids soothed me further. Once complete, wiping myself to then turn to the sink to wash my hands. No soap. Damn. I looked up to see myself in the mirror. To my surprise, there was nothing. No image at all. Just water running from the sink, hot and steaming the bottom portion of the mirror. At first I was so stunned I just stood there… I could feel my eyes widening but couldn’t see them for proof that they were probably bulging in disbelief! My consciousness began to fabricate reasoning at this point, as I panicked. No image in the mirror, oh shit! Outside of my head, at this point, I began palming the mirror, then scraping the mirror with my nails and fingers. Trying to tear through the irrationality that I was not there…I was not there at all. Then, in my panic and horror I started to beat upon the mirror. Pounding on it, but it had not broken, just bending like mirror and plexiglass hybrid. Then, something emerged. Something crawled from the corner of the mirror before me. It was something…something I have never seen in my life, but it was the cross of a slug larvae and spider so massive as though it was almost half my body. Black purple skin and the larvae parts had something withering under its skin. I screamed and sat down on the floor by the sink, out of the view of the mirror. I was shaking and frightened hoping it had not seen that I saw it was coming…oh god. For moments it seemed, I just sat and waited, sat and waited for an eternity. At this point, nothing rushed me or attacked. I got on my knees in front of the sink and peered up at the mirror. The creature was halfway through the mirror…it seemed to be coming from another dimension, a frightening scene as it slowly pushed its way through to my side of the world. It’s spider’s appendages, the pedipalps, were eagerly reaching for me and I fell back on my bottom, then quickly leapt to my feet. My body was up against the bathroom door and as soon as I had an opportunity, I grabed for the door knob, flung the door open and ran, but not before I felt a deep, sharp and painful slice across my back!

Awaken again…this time no jolt, just clear pain. Pain in my heart like the beating of my heart was a ticking bomb. Awaken to pain. Pain in the chest. Before I could open my eyes, I felt my chest. I could not feel my breasts. They were numb…that scared me awake. My eyes fluttered open in deep protest of my body. My mind left me tired even from sleep. What could ease my mind from the horrors? The horrors in sleep and in this reality? This time it was realtime, where you and me are on opposite ends of this computer screen. Me writing, you reading. Hoping you can understand why I needed to share this with you.

Disclaimer: This nightmare crawled out my ear and onto this post by my own doing. All photography and original art for this post was created or captured by Hetheru Mer Djehuty.

This is an original and was written and copyrighted by Juana M. Gumbs. All rights are reserved by her.

DreamScape: Leave The Lights On

I met him in my dreams…

Suddenly, I was there, in the silence of night with giant trees looming and stretching as shadows on its walls. The house was still, but spoke to me through my subconscious awareness. Through my own eyes, I glided towards the back of the house to the double doors that I remembered from my childhood home, so long ago. Though it was night, only the full moon’s illumination was present to guide me, while the trees on the walls of the house continued to yawn and stretch as a monstrosity, stalking. The concrete rectangle that was a path before the red painted double doors, still had etchings from chalk that displayed a childhood game called *Maryl that we played with boxes drawn and golf balls. There was light in all the windows, protruding through all the louvers of every window in the back of this house. I stopped gliding towards the house abruptly. My limbs as if I was immersed in water, but I was not swimming though.

The lights were bright through the red painted double doors as well as the kitchen window and the window that represented my parents room, the master bedroom. All brightly light, it seems as though the lights were pulsating. In my current state of floating I watched as they made a display of call and response, one shining brighter than another, and they continued to do this for a few moments as I floated about the concrete floor outside. Waiting. Then all the lights ceased and there was one that burned the brightest, the dining room. There was a shadow that slowly materialized as I was finally allowed to float into the house. This family place I called home in what seemed like lifetimes ago. I visit on occasion, but only in dream as though when I occupied the space as a child, it was a dream then.

The dining room was the brightest I have ever seen it, in life and in dream. It seemed as the though the light emanated from the walls and roof of the room, and it burned my eyes at first, but then my eyes adjusted to the illumination as I entered. I was not alone in the room, they was another with me. It was him, my lover and friend, standing near the back wall of the room. He has never been here before, but this is the brightest I have ever seen this house. When he realized it was me, he reached up to take hold of me by my waist, tearing me from my floating state of being. His touch became real to us both, it seems. I wish he was sleeping next to me right now. Consciously, outside the realm of dream, I felt my hands grab hold of the sheets next to me, with fists curled tightly around them, I pull them near. We were both relieved to see each other. He was wearing the same clothes from earlier and I was wearing a chiffon night gown my subconscious dreamed up and we held each other forever…

The illumination, which I still was curious as to where it came from. Did it come from him? My mind eased, taking this scene as my current reality, I felt so elated to be with him, taking him now, where I go as I sleep. I can have him in both worlds and relish in our playful banter and whimsical adventures together, lost in timelessness…

*Maryl a game played in the Caribbean during my childhood. Square boxes would be drawn with chalk on concrete and players would take turns, rolling the golf balls and catch them in the drawn boxes.

Disclaimer: this dreamscape was created by my subconscious mind and cannot be replicated. All photography and original art for this post was created or captured by Hetheru Mer Djehuty. Thank you so much for your support. Please feel free to like, comment, criticize, make suggestions or say “hi”.

This is an original work imagined, written and copyrighted by Juana M. Gumbs. All rights are reserved by her.

My Childhood Haunting

Palms dark

with blue aura

Holding me hostage in my bed

Haunting me

Cloak and covers my eyes

Hollow and cold

Bold with threat

Reminding me of my mortality

Though silent as it tend

Tending to my every fear

Feeling me endlessly

It has followed me for as long as I remember

Greeting and caressing me even as I sleep

It is a wonder why insanity hasn’t taken

My mind for which it holds

For it’s bold threat

Still threatening

Still tending to fear

Still haunting my inner thoughts

Still lingering until it finds

My soul and binds

Disclaimer: this poem was created from the universe within me. All photography and original art for this post was created or captured by Hetheru Mer Djehuty. Thank you so much for your support. Please feel free to like, comment, criticize, make suggestions or say “hi”.

This is an original poem imagined, written and copyrighted by Juana M. Gumbs. All rights are reserved by her.

Dreamscapes: Moriarty Madness

This was the weirdest dream yet, that I can recollect. Scratch that, my mind isn’t done with me yet…There are probably many more mystifyingly nightmarish dreams to haunt my memory. I had many dreams last night. After all, I slept for 14 hours and I am sure for every hour, my subconscious bared every bizarre, surreal, deviant and maybe even pleasant wish in all my lifetimes.

Well in this one dream that I was only able to recall after my deep deep slumber, was the setting of the late 1800’s perhaps. However, I can describe it as the period that people still wore long dresses and suits that I can only describe as being worn on the movie with Robert Downey, Jr. “Sherlock Holmes”. The characters in my dream had that variety of clothing from that time. Unfortunately, I was unable to see myself in the dream. I worked for the main character Dr. Lindell, a doctor that not only practiced medicine, practiced magic that was white and other. Also, Dr. Lindell was working on a spell or spells that duplicated multiple personalities, but also enabled those multiple personalities to manifest themselves in our reality to interact with people. And Interact they did.

These beings of multiplicity, so to speak, were everywhere. While I walk the streets in this 1800’s scene, I saw a man that looked just as my master, Dr. Lindell, looked in the face except, he wasn’t Dr. Lindell. This man’s eyes was the same gray blue color, but under darkened heavier brows. He did not blend in well with the background, being that his clothes were tattered and slashed. His hands were worn, sporting soot, dirt and a reddish maroon tint. The darkness of his brow also spread to his beard and his facial hair was unkempt and wild. However, the wilderness was also in his eyes as well. Studying the entirety of his body, I looked back up to his eyes again, and saw that he was looking disdainfully at me. Piercing stare, like cupid’s arrow with the effect on me of fear instead. I took a step back realizing this, relaxed a little and changed my direction to cross the street. As I crossed the street, I walked but my walk turned into a slight jog. When I reached the curb, there was another entity with Dr. Lindell’s face, except this man had a ponytail and glasses. He also stared right at me. I walked past him, pretending I had not noticed his menacing grin. Quickly, I walked a few more blocks towards the theatre and saw another entity with Dr. Lindell’s face, except this man’s face was younger, much younger than Dr. Lindell’s. HE was walking towards me and a creeping chill went from the base of my neck down to my lower back. I pivoted in a flash and crossed the street towards the theatre.

The theatre was a place of refuge for me, maybe this nightmare would end there? Well, I ran to the box-office booth and purchased one ticket to see just about anything to get my mind off of the chilling revelation; that black magic may have conjured these strange multiples. I practically ran into the theatre, not looking back. Bursting through the movie door for which I purchased tickets, I moved swiftly to a seat somewhere in the middle of the room. The room was pitch dark, unfortunately, I had to feel may way around to find seating. I finally found a seat and sat immediately. That was close! I don’t even know that there is another person in this theatre, it was very quiet. As the minutes went on, movie goers filed in finding seats in various places in the room. Without the fear of the multiplicity gang, I sat down just reflecting on other things, such as what’s the next project to fulfill with Dr. Lindell. When am I getting paid?

The movie curtain lifted to a blank screen, then the pictures showed up on the screen in black and white of course. No captions or sound actually…yikes, but I did enjoy every minute of it, forgetting my woes. Suddenly the theatre lights come on and my eyes took some time to adjust from sitting without light all this time. Then I looked around the theatre, it was filled with people, but then I realized…that many of the movie goers wore Dr. Lindell’s face! I got up and made my way towards the exit, as fast as I could. Suddenly, it felt like I was at the bottom of the ocean, moving in that gravity flow. The faces I looked at from left to right looked back at me as I was in this helpless state. The multiples varied now. One watched me with red pupils and a mangled smile that was larger than the space of it’s face. Another man with the same face, left of me glared at me, and I looked back at him with I’m sure, horror in my face. He was bald-headed, wearing dark clothing from what I could tell. Walking closer to the exit, I looked to the right of me and there was one of the multiples closing in on me. He got up from his seat, making his way to me at a freakishly fast speed that made me yelp in fear. Noooooooo…Why me? I prayed I can reach to the exit before he got any closer…I got to the exit light and felt a hand on my shoulder. Gulp.

Dreamscape: Demons & Dragons

It was a dream about work or least, at first it seemed to be. The figures became more clear and distinct, and they were people that worked with me at my current job. I realized that I was in the middle of a department store floor while my co-workers were all running around with shopping carts, but as the big picture came into view I realized we were in a Walmart and strangers were all around us. They were shapeless strangers, coming in closer and closer. All the while my co-workers were in a full frenzy, their cart wheels clashing, carts banging into items and running over feet. As dreams do, the dream shifts gears and again I am in the first person view.

A thought was sent into my conscious mind while I am unconsciously dreaming that I will be moving into another scene as a being on the quest of very peculiar instances. A stark white woman, so pale her blue veins visible to the surface of her skin, dressed in a white pants suit with a satin blue tie. The woman was standing or floating outside my window. As if this scene was not scary enough, I drew closer to the window while I studied her movements from a brownstone apartment similar to those I have seen in Queens and Brooklyn, New York.

Suddenly I was whisked away from that scene and presented to another. This scene was a raid by soldiers on a home where demons dwelled. During this scene my subconscious gave me some background information, because it sensed my dread. The family was a family of demons. Yes, I was alarmed and terrified. Especially since the demon with a ghoulish grin, bearing smoke stained teeth, with bulging, waterfilled eyes came lashing out at me, spiting curses that became like fire. Unfortunately, his projected path from across his small living room was towards me. All of this was happening all at once. In that split second, I sensed from my subconsciousness as my mind projected to me, providing me the material to understand that I was in true danger, when in fact it was only…a dream. Unconscious to the facts, the fact being that this was just a dream, and at that very moment of the raid, an ancient sword materialized in my hand and with the power of the knowledge, I charged the ghoulish creature.

The woman that was outside my window, climbed upon a radiant albino dragon. The dragon stared at me with large red pupils and a long neck with scales delicately placed. The woman, she rode upon the albino dragon, with features mixed between the lure of Eurasian dragon beasts. It’s scales were iridescent like the shells of abalone. From white to soft pastel pinks, soft baby blues…as it rose to the sky, light…light…light.