Except for the light from the slivered moon the road was black. My foot hit the pedal and I sped up faster and faster towards the tracks. Mangled is what I wanted. But I wouldn’t have the nerve to stop, to wait for a train. There would have to be another way. Perhaps a motel off the interstate, perhaps some pills and a forever sleep. I shook away the thought and breathed a prayer. “Please, help me.”
The ache of the past had become my own Siamese twin. So much so, I didn’t know where my pain stopped and my true self began. I was pain. I was the past. We shared the same blood. Everything and anyone could conjure up bitter memories, especially certain sounds and smells. Everyday was yet another rerun of all the misery I’d viewed before. The scenery and characters might change, but the plot and outcome never altered. I knew all the psychological jargon, the self-talk, the imaging, meditation, and so on; and they served as my air so to speak, the invisible space which kept me temporarily afloat as I waved back and forth in a stormy sea clinging to an inflatable raft filled with holes…
The rest of this story is in the book Everyday Aspergers
The glowing green rabbit is named Alba. She is an albino rabbit that was inserted with the gene that causes jellyfish to glow. She has no skin pigment. She is white with pink eyes but glows when illuminated with the correct blue light. Even though there are no side effects, and Alba is healthy and gentle, I wouldn’t want to be injected with jellyfish-glow.
2. The Other White Meat
I don’t want to be raised as an elite expensive meat or considered a low cholesterol, lean protein that tastes like chicken. I’d live to be about ten weeks old and then killed by a sharp blow to the head behind the ears, while being dangled upside down by the feet.
3. Little Rabbit Foo Foo
Known as a bully, Little Rabbit Foo Foo is the main character in a popular, light-natured children’s song. Nice to be famous, but the idea of repeatedly scooping up field mice and bopping them in the head sounds tedious and exhausting. Not my idea of fun. And since I don’t always behave, I’d surely be turned into a goon.
4. Bunnicula
The character in a grade three level fictional book, Bunnicula is thought to be a vampire bunny. She sucks the juice from vegetables. The harmless bunny has fangs and strange eating habits. I don’t want to be a rabbit in a story that begins on a dark and stormy night. And I don’t want to suck vegetables.
5. An Isle of Portland Underground Mutton
On the Isle of Portland in Dorset England the word rabbit is a taboo. Rabbit represents bad luck on this isle. In the earlier times, during the quarry industry, quarry men would see rabbits emerging from burrows right before a rock would fall. Rocks killed and injured workers. To avoid bad luck some substitute rabbit with words such as long ears and underground mutton.
6. Energizer Bunny
This marketing mascot for Energizer batteries confronts film villains like the Wicked Witch of the West, King Kong, Wile E. Coyote, and Darth Vader. He’s been on the go nonstop since 1989. He likes hot air ballooning. The thought of continually operating indefinitely, being donned head to toe in pink, with uncomfortable sandals while banging a drum nonstop, isn’t appealing. Despite the fame and cool sunglasses, I don’t want to be a big balloon in a parade or a vernacular term for something that continues endlessly. That sounds like pure hell.
7. AKiller Bunny
The mutated cavernous rabbits in the 1972 Horror Film, Night of the Lepus, attack a small town in Arizona. I don’t want to eat people. I don’t want to be a murderous icon of the 70’s horror cinema era where a herd of killer something was always on the approach. Nor do I wish to be jeered and mocked by night-time dwellers on the Internet cursing one of the most ridiculous horror movies ever made.
8. Hare
No matter how you tell the story, in Aesop’s classic tale, The Tortoise and the Hare, the hare is the disgraced, self-righteous, prideful, and arrogant loser that falls asleep during a race.
9. Mr. Bun
Mr. Bun is a stuffed rabbit that belongs to Susie Derkins in the infamous Calvin and Hobbes Comic Strips. Calvin does not like to play with Mr. Bun. The stuffed toy is frequently forced to partake in tea parties with Susie. He is considered only a stuffed rabbit and comatose. Mr. Bun is feasibly Susie’s only friend.
10. Genetically Furless Rabbit
I don’t want to be naked, genetically mutated, and locked indoors to avoid sunburn. Nor told by researchers that I’m more comfortable without my fur than other rabbits with fur because of the Southern Texas climate. I’ll keep my fur and dignity, thank you very much.
11. A Chocolate Bunny
I don’t care if you eat me head first or feet first, either way you are munching on my body parts and devouring me. Leftovers are melted down for fondue or found by sniffing dogs.
Added by popular demand! The Killer Rabbit from The Holy Grail (Although that looks fun!)
by Samantha Craft, April 6, 2012 (Based on True Events)
I was an only child. But I wasn’t a lonely child. I always had some type of friend; whether a cousin, a daughter of mother’s friend, a neighborhood kid, or an imaginary spirit friend, I always found company. Making friends was never an issue, before I hit puberty. I had a natural cheeriness and good nature, and downright quirky humor that kept people about. I was clever, too, creating skits and recitals on a whim, and performing for whomever would listen. I still appreciate the young couple, our landlords, we had for one year, when I was about nine, who painstakingly listened to me sing You Light Up My Life, whenever I saw them. I couldn’t hit the high notes of the lyrics without a terrible screech—still can’t for that matter.
Though I had friends, I was often alone in the afternoons after my three-mile hike home from middle school. I remember there was a pointy-teethed German Shepard that lived at the top of First Street. He growled at me whenever I walked by, and then darted out clanging his lengthy metal rope with him. It took a lot of courage for me to walk home. Not because of the ferocious barking dog but because of home itself.
Things had a way of following me from house-to-house, and I do me things, as I never did figure out what else to call them. These things kept happening to me.
The things came to the upstairs duplex I occupied in Palo Alto. There was an afternoon when my babysitter and I were sitting on the living room couch and heard a circular sawing sound directly above our heads. Only when we ran outside onto the balcony to see what the noise was, nothing was there. Confused, we walked back inside, but as soon as we sat back down the sawing sound began again. We spent the next several minutes playing a game of running outside to find the noise and then running back inside to hear the noise. No explanation was ever found. Soon, we lost interest, and as children do, turned our attention to afterschool television specials.
That same house is where I discovered my imaginary spirit friend whom I named Buddy One. To this day, I’m not sure if he existed or not. I do recall one time reaching up for a bottle of wine vinegar and losing my grip. The bottle came rushing toward my head, and then, somehow, the bottle moved in the shape of an L and landed gently on the kitchen counter. I remember televisions and phones going wacky and all fuzzy on occasion; and I remember how the faucet in my bathroom would turn on when no one was about. There were knocks at the front door at night with no one behind the door. After a couple of years of living on the property, between the occurrences and my continual nightmares and premonitions of our pets dying, Mother was spooked enough to have a priest visit with holy water in hand.
Later, in my teenage years, when I belonged to a local Catholic youth group, I’d attend meetings in an old yellow Victorian building that used to be a nunnery. That house always spooked me. I couldn’t use the bathroom there. And twice, when I entered the empty kitchen, the faucets turned on.
One of the creepiest happenings took place at my father’s in the Central Valley in California, when I was in college. Dad worked nights, so I was typically home alone. One late night, after I’d watched the Silence of The Lambs at a local movie theater, I entered the house spooked by the whole movie. I flicked on the television for comfort, and right after I turned the television on the stations started flicking from channel to channel, one after the other, nonstop. I couldn’t get the television to stop, even when I used the remote.
But of all the places I lived, the duplex at the bottom of First Street on the Monterey Peninsula was the scariest. The house had a way of calling things to it. It was during this time, during my middle school years, I had horrible nightmares of being speared with a stick and roasted over an open flame by demons. This was the time I’d wake in the middle of the night feeling as if something was pulling me down the bed. A time when I didn’t change my clothes at night because I was afraid of the darkness that came when I lifted my shirt over my head. A time I slept with the light on, the television on, and my nana’s rosary around my neck.
One day at the duplex, I remember a tall stranger came whom had claimed to be a painter. My friend Renny and I were sitting on the back deck, when he sauntered through the yard with a wide and even gait. I can still hear the gate squeaking, the iceplant crunching beneath his boots and his deep voice clearing.
Stopping at the bottom step of the deck, the stranger had glanced across at us two girls with a cool smile and said, “Hello.” It was a simple calling, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. As if the backyard belonged to him. It was Renny who moved first, sitting upright and giggling, blushing like the word Hello had been a compliment.
Inside of me, I felt a need to run, to escape.
“I was asked by the owner to paint the house,” he said.
Wanting to leave and go inside, I had tried to catch Renny’s eye, but she was too busy looking at the blonde stranger.
The man tapped his boot on the step and shifted his weight. He was silent for the brief time he took to scratch his head and sink his hands into his overall pockets. Then he looked out with a rather empty stare. “You two ladies go to church?”
“No,” Renny answered.
I was inches away from the doorknob. “Sometimes,” I said.
The stranger leveled his eyes on Renny. “That’s interesting.”
“Not really.” Renny retorted.
“Don’t you think it’s time you made a decision to commit yourself to something other than yourself? Now you two, let me guess. It’s probably all about boys for you. Am I right? No time for God. But plenty of time to do things you ought not to be doing.”
Renny’s red ears were poking through her hair. She shrugged her shoulders at the man. I remained frozen.
The stranger continued: “God isn’t something to take lightly. Do you want to burn in hell?”
My toes felt numb. There was something terribly wrong with his tone, like he was trying to inch his way inside me with his words. Watching Renny begin to tremble, I remembered back to my friend Jane, when we’d been beaten with the board.
I shouted, “We’re leaving!” and grabbed Renny’s hand. Renny didn’t hesitate to follow. We were through the backdoor quicker than the man could utter one more word. And we left him there, good and lonely, not wanting a single thing to do with him. About an hour later, after Renny and I had escaped inside my bedroom, I gathered enough nerve to look out the kitchen window. The backyard was deserted.
Most days at the duplex, I got the sense I was being watched. It was a terrible frightening feeling. I can’t think of anything worse than the fear I had of entering that duplex. Nothing worse than fearing home: the one place that was supposed to be safe.
I spent most of my afternoons when school let out outside on the back deck, on our flat roof with the ocean view, or on the small front patio. There was easy access to the roof. I only had to climb through our upstairs bathroom window. Out on the patio, a space no larger than two pizza boxes set side-to-side, I’d watch television through the open front door or pull out our extra-long orange cord and talk on the phone.
One cloudy day I ventured inside the duplex to grab a snack. I immediately did what I always did—I opened all the draperies, the front and back door, and clicked on the television.
While I was in the kitchen, rushing about to find something in a hurry, I heard a strange and unfamiliar sound. At first I thought the sound was coming from the television. Some haunted house event on Sesame Street. But the sound didn’t stop. It was a loud throaty breathing, a very scary sound, I will never forget, and can still imitate with a chill-rising tone. The sound was comparable to Darth Vader’s breathing, only more pressing. I’ve only heard the breathing replicated once accurately, and that was when I was watching a ghost hunting show.
On hearing the breathing, I ran to the living room to turn of the television off. I couldn’t stand the noise. I wanted to jet out of the house. However, when the television was off, the noise remained.
I recall turning around frantically to find the source. Not believing the sound could still exist with the television off. It was then, as I began to panic, I heard the sound again. This time right before me. Suddenly, in front of my eyes, a gigantic wall of static formed from ceiling to floor. The static hissed something terrible.
Trapped and cornered, I clamped my eyes shut. When I opened them, the static was surrounding me. The deep throaty breath pulsating through my entire being
As I trembled, I heard words, words that sounded as if they were filtered through a thick mask and felt tube-fed into me: “Get out! Get out! Get OUT!”
As if on cue, at the same time as the words Get Out were voiced, outside the thunder rumbled and the rain poured down. Fearing for my life, I burst forward through the static and dodged around the corner, sprinting out the backdoor at full speed.
Terrified, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and ran and ran up the hill. Finding myself a block up from the house, on the top of an unfamiliar flight of stairs, I leaned against an apartment door and wept. Then without thought, I pounded on the door, still screaming. A young man opened the door and brought me inside.
Ten minutes later, Mother arrived. Taking me by the hand, she led me through the rain down the street and back inside the duplex. Mother listened to my story but blamed the event on my over-active imagination. As twilight approached, she wouldn’t give into my screaming demands.
“Just go to bed and stop letting your imagination get the best of you. If I let you sleep with me, what’s that going to teach you? I’m doing this for your own good.”
My black-beaded rosary, a gift from Nana, was swinging around my neck. I held firmly to Mother’s doorknob. “Please let me in. I’ll be quiet. I promise.”
“Let go of this door and go to bed!” she insisted.
“But the ghost, the ghost is in the house. Please!” I begged.
Mother pulled harder.
“Mother you don’t understand. It was real. I don’t want to be out here alone. Please let me in. Please help me!”
Mother shook her head and glared at me.
My hand slipped from the knob and Mother’s door slammed shut.
I ran downstairs, grabbed the phone, pulled on the cord, and ran outside to the small front patio.
I dialed my father. Before I had spoken more than a few sentences, Dad suggested I stay at Nana’s house.
“Did Nana teach you the Lord’s Prayer?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Use it,” Father said.
“Okay.”
Father cleared his throat. “You have to know something. Today I was staring at a photograph of you for over an hour. I don’t know how, and this has never happened before, but I had this sense some evil force was attacking you. Your nana’s mother used to have dreams and sometimes she saw spirits. Last week a psychic told me to destroy a painting I’d made. One with a gray house set up on a high hill. She said to paint candles all around it because she believed it was a portal to another world. Anyhow, I painted the candles, and threw the painting away. Right before you called. I can’t believe this. It’s very strange.”
Dad went on, for several minutes, explaining about how a spiritual group had recently tried to recruit him claiming they believed he had spiritual gifts. Dad, never one to talk on the phone for more than a few minutes, quickly ended the conversation with some more nervous laughter and some pleasantries. Then, after wishing me luck, he hung up.
I sat on the patio listening to the dial tone for a long while, still wiping my tears, and twisting the rosary in my hands. I thought back to all the times before—the nightmares, the stranger, the unexplainable happenings.
I ran into the house, quickly grabbed the old afghan off the couch, and ran out to the backyard wooden deck. I could sleep there, I thought, at least until the rain came.
I am fortunate to have married one of the most patient men on earth. I honestly do not think anyone else, besides my children and dog, whom all rely on me for food, could stand to live with me. I have a plethora of unique quirks and habits. Too many to list, and as many know, I’m a good lister. (Lister should be a word.)
Prepare for digression.
Today I almost wrote on death terror (always on my mind), then moved onto the funny things about aging, and then landed on exploring raw food diets. My heart palpitations started up with the thought of switching to a raw food diet. I’ve tried the diet before. Moving from vegetarian to vegan (no cheese, no eggs) lasted four days. Trying to go from vegetarian to raw-food-vegan lasted about the time I take to walk to the fridge, open the fridge, and devour a slice of veggie-combo pizza.
I sure would like to rid myself of aches and pains, have more energy, and look like I’m 50, when I’m 70, but I’m thinking the heart attack and situational depression from the removal of Italian food from my life and stomach, would certainly kill me. I’m all for people finding something that works for them, be it diet, exercise, love, or faith, as long as the solution doesn’t harm another. Me, going raw vegan, would harm all the people who loved me. The radical mood shifts alone would cause mass destruction.
Which leads me back to my marriage. I am a moody gal. And the fact that my husband sticks around is a miracle. I got over myself, and my ego, in relation to my place in our marriage, about ten years ago, when for the hundredth time, I heard, from yet another woman: “You are so lucky to have a man like Bob.”
Gag! No one ever once, not once, not anyone from school functions, the workplace, the family gatherings, friendly circles, not one person ever said: “Bob, you are so lucky to have a woman like Sam.” (Insert my real name there; for all you logical souls concluding: Well, of course not. Her name isn’t really Sam.)
Not a one! I’m not chopped liver. And my brain is keen. So it’s got to be that whole “high maintenance” attribute I’ve got going on.
Poor, poor Bob. If you believe in the Buddha’s way of a person coming back in a life position based on previous karmic dealings, then I certainly wonder about my husband. For him to end up being my breadwinner, dishwasher, back and neck massager, psychologist, best friend, and emotional punching bag, I figure he must have done me mighty wrong in a past life!
Which logically means I have an obligation to even out the karmic relationship, I suppose. Speaking of such, accordingly, I must have done a whole lot of people wrong in my previous incarnations. Although when I was much younger, I had that whole “pretty girl” thing going on. So I must have done something right eons ago.
I think the biggest karmic wrong doing I ever did in this life was the time I stole the yellow spelling book, with the illustrated cat on the cover, from a girl in pigtails named Alice. She was a straw-haired blonde girl in second grade that sat two seats up in front of me, and she always, I mean always, got the right answers. While I was in the back hooting and hollering to be called on, Alice glided up a smooth arm and remained calm. One day, I couldn’t stand Alice anymore, and I did a terrible, terrible thing. I took her spelling book when no one was about, and hid the book in the back of the room. When Alice’s turn came, she couldn’t answer, and I could. Only, the plan backfired, because we spent the next twenty-minutes calming Alice down and searching relentlessly for her book. Well, everyone but me. Worst part of the whole spelling book fiasco, is that I still feel guilty. I remember thinking right then and there, in the company of a bunch of eight year olds, that I’d never ever purposely do wrong by anyone ever again. And I’ve tried my best to uphold that rule. Though I still fear I’ll be coming back as Alice’s gerbil in another life.
I can go on and make excuses about my home life at that time, but I’m not going there. I’m sorry, Alice, wherever you are! Please keep my cage clean!
Karma is a funny thing. What goes around comes around, so they say. But it seems to me the clueless people always get a better life, at least this time around, and the smart folks end up with all the misery. Which makes me wonder if I want to have brains in my next life.
This post was supposed to be about the high-tolerance level and total awesomeness of my husband. But somehow ended up being about gerbils. This is what Bob has to live with. If you are religious, you may want to stop and say a silent prayer for Bob.
click to see where image was found
Just to make sure I don’t have to be anyone’s gerbil, here is a list of I’m sorry:
I’m sorry to that lady on the phone, whom I said this to: “Well, as long as you are more accepting of children with special needs. The last music instructor had zero tolerance of my son and her classes were boring.” Turns out I accidentally dialed the instructor I was speaking about.
I’m sorry to T for lecturing you on my thoughts on God after I’d had one to many caffeinated beverages.
I’m sorry to Mom for having a blog where I discussed everything horrible I thought you ever did to me.
I’m sorry to my mother-in-law. You were right, when you stood up at the rehearsal dinner and announced loudly: “Are you sure you want to marry her?” But I think karmic wise we are more than even.
I’m sorry to the university professor that I wrote about more than once, and called a “dumbass” to the world. (I’m sorry for the ass part.)
I’m sorry to that Swan chick because I posted a big sign on my blog that directed readers to your website, because you were stealing my stories.
I’m sorry to all the people who signed up to follow my posts, because you honestly had no idea what you were getting yourself into.
I’m sorry to all the perfect-looking, skinny women at the gym that I stick my tongue out at, and for the teasing about your flat chests.
I’m sorry to the drivers I yell at when I say: “Come on! Can you go any slower?”
I’m sorry to my husband Bob for making you fetch me cleaner drinking glasses, for kicking you when you snore, for singing Daddy can’t rhyme, for saying, “You smell,” for asking, “What’s on your face. Can you die from that?”, for telling you more than once: It looks like your gaining weight, for making you move seats five times in the movie theater, for freaking out over the smell of taco meat, for screaming frantically over your driving, for calling you ten times in a row over the possibility of my heart exploding, for making you edit my writing and then critiquing your editing skills, for calling you various names based on the time of the month and the planetary positions, and for all the annoying things I do and say.
Okay. That just about covers me karmic wise until tomorrow.
Side note: More evidence that Bob is a saint. I couldn’t fall asleep last night, so I made up stupid jokes in my head. Then I got out of bed, went into the bathroom, where my husband was, and told Bob the jokes. He told me I really needed to get some sleep.
Jokes:
Why did the Blue Jay cross the road? Because he was a jay-walker.
What did Jesus say when he looked in the toilet? Holy crap.
What do you call a slutty alcoholic living on the streets? A wine-hoe
I apologize to any jay-walking, Jesus-loving, homeless people. No offense intended.
The accident had happened fast. No one had expected it. I hadn’t meant to let go.
I had fallen headfirst, a good four feet, onto the unforgiving concrete. Riding atop my babysitter’s shoulders, I hadn’t thought not to bend my head back and look down. I was only having fun. No one had ever told me not to bend over. And I’d only had the chance to view my backyard upside down for a minute or two, before I lost my balance and fell.
Smack!
After the fall, the sitter screamed and rushed me indoors to the dining area. Her teenage friend was there, too—her screams equally loud and bothersome. For some time everything echoed and twisted and turned in the chambers of my ears. Blood rushed out of my head in every direction, staining all the bathroom towels. I was on the dining room table, up high, as everyone scurried about in nervous circles. I glanced down and spotted my Labrador Sugar. Through my tears, I saw she was panting and pacing, and whining some. My small hand met the warm oozing blood at the back of my head. So much blood.
I awoke, wet and hot, to discover myself trapped beneath a heavy blanket in some unknown place. Nothing looked familiar. I turned quickly and tried to rise up, but some force pushed me down. I was inside a nightmare… (The rest of the story is in the book Everyday Aspergers)
Everyday Asperger's 
