“Landor, I’ve been thinking an idea of taking you to the county hospital to have a check-up,” mama said, “you seem to be out of shape.”
Since the beginning of this phenomenon in my life, my mother started to get worry on me and for that, she always locked me in my bedroom because of my insistent doings of the chores.
It was 1873, the time when I began the habit of probing some of the remote caves within our county – this could be the worse effect of an insomnia plague. This event of mine quite managed to took off the anxiety that tormented me almost half of my stay here on the pavement; and very soon, it shifted its priorities to my insomnia that seemed to be hard to wear off, but the sooner I’ve thought it was too late for my case, I was wrong. The moment I arrived to my fifth cave of the day, I’d felt a sudden burst of frailty that caused me to get weary from head to toe. It was followed by series of hiccups that before I notice it, my eyes began to emit tears – the reason behind was still unknown to me – I fell on the sandy ground. A dream flooded my subconscious: it felt like I’m on a cruise ship, gasping some fresh air of the night. The cruise ship where I’m embarked was hastily transformed to an – according to what I had seen – a sunken ship filled with treasure chests spilled exurbanite gold nickels that made me blew my preserved breath and caused me to drown a few seconds – then I woke up, gasping stale air from the misty cave.
I gathered myself up – like a person who suddenly woke up in the middle of a Trojan feud – and oriented my eyes on the scenery. My eyes began to blur with dark light which ended up for my feet and hands to act like a blind, rummaging in their own rooms. I slid my hand in my right-inner pocket when I remembered that I brought a lighter with me. I drew it out and tried to ignite the pieces of paper I’d put on a bamboo-like torch. The time I’d spent on this activity made me accommodate another anxious ailments. But the moment I’d felt its ray of agony, I soon knew that it already spared me – like an arbiter to a pauper. The light soon revealed millions of dusty orbs, wandering around like the rabble whose in pursuit of a potential individual. As I was able to convince my feet to run, the chain watch in my pocket bursts an out loud ring that made the hidden bats grew berserk and flew towards me like I was the subject of envy. The fire on my torch abruptly created an outburst of smoldering fire that caused the bats to withdraw their frenzies and retreated from me. I, whose quite shocked on what I’d seen, pivoted on the other way and collected my feet to run. Through the labyrinth-like paths, I’d made quick choices on all of them, and as I’ve peeked to the end of the road, a quick glance of the holes that I’d passed gave me an uncanny feeling and a pinch of nostalgic discomfort. A memory of my mama perceived my thoughts of somebody and managed to enter my impenetrable mind.
“You shouldn’t be here honey,” mama said. The word she had just evoked made a resonance and lingered in my thoughts the whole time of my sprint.
The moment that I was about to reach the end of what I’d thought was a sanctuary, I stumble to some pieces of bones of different parts: came rolling towards my collarbone was a single skull which I’d noticed with its oblique shape and an indefinable structure of its features. It had a narrow bottom, the jaw part; a large back part that seemed to be too vast for a human head; and the unthinkable shallowness of its eye sockets that made me startle.
I snagged it and became bewildered on the next scenarios that came towards me. I perceived that it was the exit of what seemed to be an endless tube-cave.
I arrived at home exactly lunch time because the time I departed from our abode was three in the morning sharp.
“Landor, where have you been?” Papa said, “we’re looking for you all over the place for the past half a century.”
Mama rushed beside me, for she noticed that I was starting to weep without any basis of torment. She asked me if I’m hungry, I shook my head, and my reflexes moved to the bathroom. I didn’t know what was happening to me. It all seemed to be an irrevocable event that was better left in the pages of history. Mama knocked on the door, caused me to agitate real absurd that I attempted to jump off the window with my subconscious still feeling bewildered. The moment that I was about to jump, Papa galloped towards me to spread his robust arms that caused my body to stir a little, then pinch by pinch, I began to eliminate what seemed to be an aura that possessed my lucidity out of me for a few hours.
The skull that I brought home with me was “exceptional” – the only word my father managed to utter. Together with Mama, they brought the skull to the nearest orthopedist of our town that seemed to be drunk almost every morning during his duty in the local hospital. Mr. Owenright’s eight years of stay on his pledged profession didn’t quite gave him enough nicks to support his vices, and a daughter who he brought to his mother when he and his other half decided to part ways through some conceived reasons. After these predicaments of him, he developed his faculties from naive to a more subtle characteristics that made him conspicuous by the town – ones neglected him in time of his agonizing poignant attack, for he was mistakenly perceived of an illness that struck him since his youth and resiliently attacked him whenever he was vulnerable – insanity.
“This thing’s weird,” said Mr. Owenright. “According to my encounters with different types of boneheads, it seems that this one stands at its best.”
The doctor came out of his office to have a quick smoke while I was approaching my way to his office.
“Are you the one who saw the odd skull, boy?” he asked me. “I’m afraid that it didn’t belong to our cycle of life.”
Confused on what I’ve heard, I didn’t bother to stop to persuade him on that matter, and as an elusive move, I’d approached the door of his office. There on the bench, I’d seen my parents, whispering on each other with a language that was quite peculiar to my knowledge. They asked me why I was there, and Mama took over the situation.
“Son, you shouldn’t be here, you’re not feeling well these latter days,” she said. “Let’s go home now, I’ll just leave your father for a –”
According to the story of the people who witnessed my possession, I touched Mama’s lips, and slap her that made my father to agitate, and run after me and knocked me down.
“Why did you do that to your Mama?” Papa clamored.
I got up quickly, thrust Papa against the wall and tried to knock him down. Mental agony once again took control of me that time and not to recognize everyone that I’d known. I was about to throw a vase to Papa’s head when I stopped, felt a sudden change of motives – I turned on my back to see an approaching pipe heading for my head.
I woke up and saw Mama weeping against my chest. She thought at the moment – through her bewildered mind – that I was consumed by my poignant condition. I threw a shameless smile at her and she knew I was back to my sanity.
“The doctor took the skull out of town,” Mama explained. “They’ll have it test for its DNA was presumed to be an alien component.”
Days had passed on my face, trying to peep out of the window of my locked-up bedroom – barred at all corners to ensure and keep the entrapment of me. Time elapsed hastily that made me grew anxious; I almost ripped myself through the unshackled nails pinned on a bar of wood, screeching it against my face and temple. I heard banging of doors and windows throughout the house, and see clear through the hole I’d made on the parquet floor.
“You, son-of-a bitch! I told you before not to expose those bags out of its ground.”
It seemed that Mama was in a feud. At first, I didn’t recognize who she was against with.
“Take the skull with you; bury it, or more effectively, crush it with the Francisca hammer.”
The Francisca hammer, our family-own, was considered to be the wealth of our generation of Peruso – came from the other generations of our roots as a heritage apt to be passed to the next one. Through that, I became certain that it was my Mama, saying some instructions to someone.
The next of the scenarios made me think that time was running out for me. As I cultivated my clairvoyant senses, there was the feeling of discomfort, buried my amiable behavior and completely sucked up the inner being that manipulated the whole of me. The power of anticipation ruled my very being; summoned some of the worse type of mental torment that knocked me off my feet. Series of banging and thumping could be heard throughout the house, accompanied by eerie gunshots that made Mama to scream her lungs out. When I peeked out through the window I saw Mr. Owenright bearing a brown envelope fastened to his armpit; knocking against our door with such ferocity while the policemen – which I was certain to be with him that night – fired their revolvers on the knob.
“I have with me the result of the DNA to that freakin’ skull!” Mr. Owenright exclaimed, “this is certain to belong to your womb, Mrs. Peruso.”
At that point of his last blurted words the feeling of agony, mental torment, and anxiety relinquished the abode of my lucid sanity.
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