Sure, I’m a predator, but haven’t humans always been predators? Haven’t we always hunted, killed, and fed?
I push myself away from the window. These aren’t my thoughts. These ideas are coming from the talons somehow. They’re coming from my alien eyes. While I still have some control of my body, I have to do whatever I can to eliminate the idea that I might spread this curse to others.
Betrayal
(I'm afraid of not dying.)
I’m afraid of not dying.
Standing in the loft of the barn, I have a rope tied to the truss above. When I was a kid, my uncle wanted to replace the winch that was attached to this same truss. He stood up the ladder underneath and extended it all the way. It wasn’t tall enough to reach the beam that spanned the main aisle of the barn. That beam was so high that barn swallows would nest up there and they wouldn’t even stir while we moved below. They knew they were safe. While he was pondering how to get up there, I volunteered.
“I can use the step ladder to get to the beam from the loft and then shimmy across,” I said.
He screwed up his face as he consider this idea. He started shaking his head, looking like he had just bit down on a lemon.
“Your mother would kill me if she ever found out.”
“I won’t tell her,” I said. I don’t remember how old I was, but I was old enough to know that I wasn’t supposed to keep secrets from Mom. She always said that there were no such things as secrets between adults and kids. If any adult asked me to keep a secret, I should nod and then run directly to her. She was smart that way. She stressed that it didn’t matter who the adult was—friend, neighbor, principal, or relative. There were no such things as secrets between adults and kids.
But this secret was my idea. That meant that it didn’t count.
Uncle Walt was still pondering the idea while I went and got the stepladder and carried it up to the loft. He was still shaking his head when I climbed up and straddled the beam. At that point, it was only an eight foot fall. As I worked my way around the first leg of the truss and out over the main aisle, the dirt floor of the barn was so far down that it made my head spin to even look. I kept my eyes straight forward and tried to ignore it. By the time I was out at place where the winch attached, I was terrified. All I had to do was reach under and remove the iron ring from the hook, but I couldn’t do it.
When I finally admitted that to my uncle, he wasn’t frustrated at all.
“That’s okay,” he said. “Just come on back. We’ll figure another way. You know what? If I just pull the truck into the barn, maybe that will make the ladder tall enough.”
Even before he finished, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to shimmy back to safety.
I broke out into a sweat and lowered my chest down to the beam, so I could wrap my arms around it. Without asking what I was doing, Uncle Walt figured out that I was having a panic attack. He shuffled off to go get the truck while I shivered and clung to the beam. For a little while after that, I was terrified of the idea of heights. I don’t know if it’s like this for other people, but I wasn’t afraid of the idea of falling. I was afraid that I would lose control of my body. That’s what happened up there. I kept telling myself that it was no big deal. If that same beam had been two feet off the ground, I could have done a thousand cartwheels on it and never stumbled. It was wide enough that I could have ridden a skateboard down the length. My body didn’t listen to logic. As soon as I got out to the middle, everything shut down.
I couldn’t even look as Uncle Walt arranged the truck and fetched the ladder. The extension ladder was so unwieldy that he usually had to wrestle with it for fifteen minutes to get it into position. That day, he was strong and confident. The legs of the ladder landed gently on the beam next to me and he climbed it in an instant. I trusted him completely when he guided my hand to the rung and then grabbed my belt loop and pulled me into position.
We moved down the ladder together, one step at a time. At the bottom, he told me to hold still while he dismounted. I sat on the gate of the goat stall and watched as he went back up and did my job for me. He and I never talked about the beam again. The next summer, I had my nerve back and I was able to help with the roof. Even with that, he didn’t let me get too high on the roof before he called me back. He never mentioned the beam, but I suspect that it was in the back of his head. I was ashamed that I had failed him.
He would have been proud of me tonight.
Tonight, I jumped from the deck of the loft and grabbed the beam with my good hand. I was able to swing my legs up and then pull myself on top of the truss so I could walk calmly to the middle of the barn. I tied the rope a few feet away from where I had a panic attack when I was a kid. I’m fairly certain that I could have done a handstand on that spot and not wavered.
Once I got the rope into place, I walked back over to the edge and jumped
