ANOTHER DAY,
ANOTHER
DIMENSION
some sort of far-away brain fog. The next thing I knew, my eyes were no longer focusing on the road ahead of me, instead I found myself watching a woman navigate my car from a perch up by the roof, just above her shoulder. That’s when the car’s engine began to grind and strain as I sensed the woman pressing hard on the pedal, as if the leaden air ahead was slowing her down. But in a minute or two the heavy atmosphere dissipated and the noise faded away. My eyes remained fixed on the woman at the wheel, and I continued to feel lifeless and impassive.
The sight of the 5:50 a.m. bus driving away was enough to pull me out of my haze. I parked and resignedly walked toward the shelter to wait for the 6:00 a.m., first on-line. Other commuters began to arrive. As I turned to greet a familiar face or two, I was surprised to see that everyone was a stranger except for the young black woman in the old-fashioned white nurse’s uniform and clunky white, lace-up shoes who had appeared a few days earlier. It wasn’t just her clothing that was off. I’d never seen a complexion like that before. Her skin wasn’t a pretty chocolate brown; it was jet black, like coal. Her eyes roved apprehensively. She looked confused, like she had the other day, as if this were the first time she’d stood in line, and she wasn't sure what to do next.
Normally, the route was manned by a crew of regular drivers, but that day there was a new face behind the wheel, a late middle-aged man with a shock of thick, stark white hair. As I handed the driver my ticket, I recall thinking, "it's
rare to see someone with white hair in the work force these days," then I plunked myself into the first seat on the right, with a clear view through the front window. The streetlamps twinkled one-by-one in the pre-dawn darkness reflecting against the asphalt, illuminating houses, lawns and cars. I bowed my head and started to fiddle with my phone. The bus rolled away, and the usual landmarks popped into peripheral view: the restaurant, the dry cleaner. Two men hopped on board at the first stop, situated beneath a long row of high-tension wires. In an instant my subconscious registered a startled alarm, alarm, alarm, my head jolted upright, and I looked outside. Everything had vanished, everything: houses, roofs, windows, doors, lawns, cars, gone.
There were no curbs, no fire hydrants, no street signs, no sidewalks, no light poles, no mailboxes, no trees, and no bushes. Outside the window lay a curtain of long orange-gray fibers, about six feet from the side of the bus. That’s all that there was to the world: a curtain of fiber, backlit every few feet from somewhere above and beyond. My eyes darted toward the driver’s snowy white head. He maneuvered on calmly, seemingly unconcerned that the road ahead was gone and the bus’s headlights were blindingly glaring against some orangey-gray, fibrous cloud. “How can he see where he’s going?” I thought.
I turned to my side of the bus and looked up at the backlighting. I forced my eyes shut, then open, then shut, then open. Was I seeing what I was seeing? “Did the streetlights go out?” I wondered. “Maybe it was a blackout. Every bedroom light was gone, but so were their houses. If it’s a blackout,” I mused, “why aren’t I seeing headlights coming toward us from a distance?"
Then snap, as soon as quickly as the light had disappeared the world flashed back in a flood of
unseasonably bright morning sunlight. “Whoaa!” The bus slowed in front of the final stop before the highway. “What happened to the five stops in between?” I puzzled.
With that a deep voice with Indian accent called out from the driver’s seat, “Nohhh seeeets, stahhhnn-deeeng rooooooom ohhhleee.” “The bus is full?” I thought. “When did everyone get on, and why is the driver using an Indian accent?” My head ricocheted toward the driver, and my jaw dropped. The white-haired driver was gone. In his place sat a burly Indian with a mop of jet-black hair. “What happened to the other guy?” I wondered. “Did he get off?” I must have been staring because the new driver swiveled around and stared back with an expression that said, “What’s your problem lady?” I turned to see if the other passengers were in as much shock as I was. No. People were calmly playing with their phones, reading, sleeping, and gazing into the sunlight. I slumped into my seat, wide-eyed and slack jawed.
I didn’t bother checking the time as we pulled into Port Authority, but after three long walks and two subway rides, I got to the office at 8:00 a.m., as expected. The date on the office calendar was the same one that I noticed as I left home that morning. My co-workers looked the same as they did the day before, and the things that were scheduled to happen that day began to happen.
I’m telling you; this thing, whatever it was, was not my imagination. It was real. It happened, and it was strange.
© Medium Gail, MediumGail.com
ON SOME NIGHTS,
GETTYSBURG
RESTS IN PEACE
booked so Nancy headed for her studio on Fairfield Road to sleep on the sofa.
She turned in, set the alarm, and fell asleep. The next thing she knew she was being jolted awake by the sound of groaning and crying men, dozens and dozens of them, moaning and screaming right outside the wall where she lay. Nancy looked at the clock. The digits registered 3:00 a.m.
Every resident of Gettysburg knows that sooner or later it will be their turn to witness what remains of the bloody trauma buried deep within their soil, so there wasn't much for Nancy to do but hold fast until sunup. That's about the time that the screaming began to fade away.
It seems that the land on which Nancy's studio was built was the triage area for the Confederate field hospital during the Battle of Gettysburg. For three days in July 1863, hundreds of men lay wounded and suffering on that very ground before being piled onto wagons
and hauled down Fairfield Road, dead or alive.
One hot August evening Nancy and I walked the area from which the bloody screams had come. Except for the crunch of our shoes scuffling over the hard-packed summer dirt, everything was silent.
It seemed that for the time being, Gettysburg's living could rest in peace.
© Medium Gail, MediumGail.com
GOODBYE
NEIGHBORS
barn-like office building, built to replace a nineteenth-century house that, I remember, had a long porch running along the front.
One afternoon in the early 1960's, when I was about eight years old, I gazed out the window of Mom's Rambler station wagon as she puffed on a Salem cigarette and leisurely maneuvered up the avenue. As we approached the red
light at Lane Avenue Mom deaccelerated to slo-mo, and I caught sight of two people standing on the porch, as solid as you and I.
The woman looked to be in her mid-forties, short and delicately boned. She was wearing a gray, turn-of-the-last century skirt that flared at the bottom, a wide belt, and a high-necked shirtwaist blouse, her brown hair pulled up and twisted into a knot. From her perch on the top step, her eyes focused on someone or something across Bloomfield Avenue. Behind her a young man poked his torso out of the front door, bending sideways for a better
view. He was about 19 or 20 years old, and wore a brown suit, a stiff-collared white shirt, and a brown bowler hat, his eyes wide with surprise. I could feel their nervousness and apprehension. As the light changed to green, Mom pulled away, and the old house and its Edwardian-era occupants got smaller and smaller in the distance until they disappeared from view.
A week later, Mom and I drove by the same spot. The house and its occupants were gone, demolished to make way for a new era.
© Medium Gail, MediumGail.com