Toys in The Attic

Alone I sat on the couch in my small living room at night with all of the lights on, books were strewn about, searching for answers to seemingly unanswerable questions.

Devoid of the chatter that had once, both annoyed and comforted me in times of struggle. Sometimes they would return, nagging, in the ethers only to have me push them away once again. I was tired. Tired of being, tired of seeing, tired of knowing, tired of believing, tired of feeling. Tired like it had been eons since I'd rested. Since I'd known peace in my mind, since I'd been happy.

The mysterious beings in the ethers don't always understand the complexities, nor the struggles and limitations of the human realm. They have no reasonable sense of time, as they seemingly exist in a place beyond time as it is known here. They tried, but they didn't seem to understand. They tried to guide but I was tired of listening. I was perfectly at home with the endless walks of solitude in my neurotic combination of nostalgia, longing for a time and place far away from this present predicament, and bouts of madness which had manifested from having to function within a realm that seemed all to full of vile contradictions and undercurrent of the worst kind of deceit. A place filled with people donning many layered masks to hide the truly cold and calculated evil things they were plotting in their minds. Evil things they chose to carry out upon the lives of other human beings around them, every single waking moment of their lives. It was almost as if the world was switched with the "upside-down" world (like in the Netflix series Stranger Things) and an overlay of the real "good" (...or a better one at least) world was placed over it.

Perhaps I was mad. I didn't care. I had been accused of it plenty of times when I wasn't. I'd passed all of the ridiculous tests, with their gadgets, and wires, and pretty little pictures... with flying colors! So what if I was completely off my rocker!? It mattered not. What mattered was that I continue working within the illusion of civilized society, and maintaining the appearance of being 'normal' so as to play this 'game' everyone kept talking about and coming out on top. That is what I needed to focus on. There was no choice.

Still, I was alone.

Sometimes I thought, maybe I should not have pushed away from the only comfort I had known since the earliest days I had the ability to remember. Was I wrong? Should I have been more appreciative, and understanding of the fact that 'they' did not seem to know exactly what it was like to be living this existence? This "reality"?

Source

I looked at the clock... Tic Toc. It was late. Again...

"No sleep again tonight sister." I thought. Ugh, I had to be up in a few hours to get some things done before I was due at a gathering. Maybe I should skip it, I thought. I couldn't. It was an important gathering. They were expecting me. I would have to be there. Admittedly, I would enjoy being there around people and chatting it up about the most recent happenings, even if it was really all just part of the illusion. Some part of me would enjoy pretending, for a little while, a least.

Forcing myself to go to bed, if only for a few hours, I tossed and turned until I finally fell asleep in the silence.

The next day I got up and went about carrying out tasks that had to be done. I then went to the gathering at my friend's house.

The afternoon was filled with all of the usual pleasantries. There was a "dish to pass" from each attendee and choice of various beverages. Chit chat, catch up and other activities carried on into the evening. One of the nice activities which a friend had planned was a spiritual type of activity where she had used a geometric shape cut from a sheet of paper, and written different messages on the paper then cut them into separate pieces and put them into a cute little container. One for each person in attendance. (Spiritual affirmations of a sort.) When it was my turn to choose a piece of the folded paper out of the container, I looked at it and held the best poker face I could. The message read "You are Never Alone." I smiled and went along with it. The truth was, for a moment I felt like the friend who had written it had known something she should not have known. Then, snapping back to "reality", I realized that it was just the way the guidance came through her because I was not listening. I shut the door, and they went around to the back door.

Fighting off the creeping feeling of annoyance at the seemingly sneaky 'tactic' my ethereal friends had employed in an effort to break down my will to push them away out of frustration... I simply acknowledged it as a nice message and thanked my friend for the nice activity she had brought (with all of the best intentions), to our gathering.

Approximately two weeks later...

I had to make a trip to Georgia to pick up a pet in need of a "furrever home" for a family member.

On this much needed getaway I had experienced a series of extremely bizarre events. Not huge things, but constant oddities. To me they were not so unusual. It does, however, occur to me that some of them would not be considered so 'normal' to other people. I was noticing, and taking a lot of time to contemplate the things that were coming into my awareness. A change of perspective is good for such things.

While on the journey to Georgia, I had taken a few sightseeing detours. One of these detours was on a large boat along a shoreline, somewhere between Georgia, and the North Eastern State in which I was living at the time. The exact location shall remain a mystery for the purpose of sharing this story. I feel the reason shall become evident as you read on.

While sitting inside on the upper deck on the large seafaring vessel, I was talking with a family member that went along on the trip with me, when suddenly, I was very strongly prompted to get up and go to the outer deck area to take a picture with a small disposable camera I had grabbed in a gift shop earlier on the trip. So I grabbed the camera out of my beach bag stuffed with sandy beachwear, and towels, and abruptly went out to the deck to take this picture I was being 'told' (This was not at all like the well known voice to skull technology, it is a different sort of experience.) to take. I took a picture and went back to sit down, not thinking much more of it.

Arriving Home

The next day when we rolled back into town I dropped the camera off at a store to get the film developed before going home. I went back to the photo lab about an hour later, excited to retrieve my pictures. I wanted to see how the pictures of Savannah had come out. I had always wanted to see Savannah, as it seems so steeped in the energies of times long past!

When I was walking out of the store, the envelope full of photos in hand, I opened the envelope and started to flip through the images. I stopped in my tracks and stared in shock at the image I had flipped to. I looked up in disbelief at what I had taken a picture of, while on the boat! Immediately I began searching for the family member, that was also still in the store, and she was right in front of me walking in my direction. Realizing I had a stunned look on my face, she asked what was wrong. To which I replied, "Nothing is wrong, but you are not going to believe this one." shaking my head. I showed the photo to my travel partner and her response was... "Only You..." accompanied by a nervous laugh, and head shaking. The following IS that photo, with a few landmarks edited/cropped out along the shore line so as not to give away the location. Nothing else in the photo has been altered. I have added a watermark and logo. (Included at the end of this post is a copy of the image having been scannned by fotoforensics without the logo.)

I was not alone! Nor was I mad as a hatter!

Now, this event took place some 12+ years ago, so I would suggest as shocking as it may be to look at... If they were here to destroy the world, it would have been done by now. The message I get from the photo and the events connected to it is that if I was going to push my friendly ethereal guides away, out of frustration... due to having to deal with people who want to shut down those who are aware that the world is not how we are told it is, they were willing to go to great lengths to show me that I was not as isolated, in dealing with the evil behind the masks as I often felt I was. I would wager, none of us are, though everyone may have different 'sources' of guidance if you will.

This has been written for, and submitted as my entry in the Supernatural Writing Challenge sponsored by @jerrybanfield, @gmichelbkk and the @budgets account.