Los Fantasmas Desaparecidos

[LMIV]

It was a long litany of facts I was told to recite and repeat exactly as they were communicated to me; some of these statements were meant to be laughed at whereas others were provided as downright serious possibilities.

After some time, one of my cycling cousins from the village (Paracuellos del Jarama, Madrid, Spain, Europe, Earth) offered to give me some of his old bikes which I gladly accepted.

They were located at an abandoned retail store/warehouse where all the workers were long gone and everything basically remained as in a state of “suspended animation.”

The first two bikes were alright and in good shape, almost ready to be ridden; as I went looking for the remaining bikes I noticed their frames were in bits and pieces scattered throughout the premises.

I had tried to initially locate some company staff members but to no avail: The place was totally deserted.

And that is when my brain began to diverge from this almost unbelievable reality to the “other” perhaps less believable type of reality. As I looked at a large, human-size cardboard cutout I was hoping to hear some sound of life, like steps being taken (sounds absurd, but that is how it went for me at that time) and even though I thought I heard them, when I turned around the flat figure there was zero life in it, just a semblance of someone it had been modeled after.

So, I went from semi-dark rooms to almost completely dark areas, again trying to visualize something familiar and alive, yet I could see no one or nothing of the sort (only more dislodged metal tubes for the gifted bikes, parts, etc.), hear an occasional sort of loud screeching noise, etc.

Overall, there was this constant “operating silence” that almost made me think twice about going on since the creepy and menacing feeling was pervasive. But I went up to the second level and there I saw even more of the same: Rows and rows of waist-high counters filled with every imaginable material object of human enterprise and all lying unused and gathering dust minute by minute.

My search for normal life specimens then suddenly was forced to turn into abnormal ones and this pursuit also proved fruitless and without consequence: To the extent I can here categorize the encountered situation there wasn’t even a living soul around to exchange any thoughts or ideas with. Simply put, I was the last living entity standing there!

And so I ended my dream, hoping for better times to come. To say that this short-lived mental experience was horrible, trying, and extraordinarily unsettling would be the understatement of the millennium. But then, again, we all need some unwanted wake up calls once in a while…don’t we? Filename: SeekingGhostsFeb2009