Shattered Glass
One of my first memories is of shattered glass and blood, panic, terror, and that eventual dizziness that comes from blood loss.
And the odd thought of how beautiful my blood looked on the broken glass and the walls.
The shattered mirror and the multiple reflections of a pale bloodied boy I didn't even recognize as myself.
My leg still hurts from that night when the humidity changes.
All that sparkling sharp edged glass, all over the floor.
The sweet adrenaline rush of blood loss.
But most of all....looking at those dozen or so blood soaked, pale, sunken eyed messes that were me.
That was the most traumatizing part of it.
Even then I was able to stand with glass dug to the bone of my knee.
I was transfixed, locked in the hollow gazes of my reflections. Rationale shattered like the mirror....
After that....I wasn't scared anymore. At the age of two slowly bleeding to death, and I wasn't afraid.
I was quite the rest of the time waiting for the paramedics...but that's a story for another time.
Cockroaches...
This one still comes back to me in nightmares.
Three things I remember from that night at that horrid babysitters down in Los Angeles
It was hard to breathe, and i was sleeping on the floor.
I remember a shadowy figure in the room, a figment of a child's imagination? Or something more sinister?
And Third. I remember the light coming on, and seeing an ocean, waves and all of shiny black and brown carapace.
The entire floor was covered in them.
I was covered in them...
Cockroaches.
I remember my mother's scream.
And I remember being paralyzed, not with fear but perhaps fascination, or disgust, or just pure shock.
A glistening sea of tiny undulating hard carapace all panicking to find the darkness.
And I realized then that I to would have preferred the light to have stayed off...