Excerpt: Practically Paranormal

I looked back at the clock, ‘Three thirty, I should sleep,’ but I know I wasn’t going to. I continued to sit there, continued to let my mind race and to wonder. I had very little time to actually sit and think the thoughts I wanted to think, I was always so drugged up that my mind had stopped working almost entirely. And this, this was good. I like thinking what came naturally, what I was supposed to think.

And as I sat there, I realized that I could hear the water dripping from the faucet. I heard it clearer than I should have been able to. Drip, drip, drip. I could hear the water falling into the metal basin, and I could almost hear it fall into the pipe and then who knows where from there. But it was strange. To me, it didn’t register that it was actually water dripping into a faucet. It sounded more like a river. But not like any river I have ever seen, or even heard of. No, this river was the type that only those who had seen it, knew about it.

The river was neither calm, nor had big rapids, but just enough current to carry you away if you weren’t careful. Just enough current to take you under and never let you fill your lungs with sweet oxygen again.

This was the River of Eternity. And as the water rushed I could see figures looming on either shore, for I was in the middle of the current, but I could slip away, I stood my ground and held solid to the rocky bottom of the river. My arms were held in such a fashion that I could have been directing traffic, which, in a sense, I was.

From one side of the river I saw a lone figure rise above the rest, a small lantern held tightly their hand. It began to glide closer, moving eerily across the water. Once to the other bank, the scene vanished. And I could tell, somehow, somewhere, someone had either died, or was going to die and soon. But the worst part wasn’t knowing that, it was the simple fact that I knew who that person was, and I had just guided their spirit across to the Other Side.

At last, I drew a breath and was back in my house again. I rushed to the kitchen and turned the water all the way off, ‘That,’ I told myself, ‘is never allowed to happen again.’ And with that finally thought I went back upstairs to my stifling room and fell, exhausted, onto my bed, letting sleeps comforting, yet terrifying embrace wash over me like it had been longing to do for hours.