“Look, there’s Spike,” Jimmy pointed out to us.

“What is that girl doing? Is she on rollerblades? Oh my God,” Susie snickered in disbelief.

We were on our way to the Silver Cloud for afternoon drinks, and there she was heading up Lombard Street. It was the first time I’d seen her, platinum blond hair nearly to her waist, skin pasty white as glue, decked out in spandex shorts and a dinky sports bra.

She strode east from Octavia, arms swinging, legs gliding, carefree but with direction. She stopped before the next block, swinging her hips around to the iron gate of an apartment building, and disappeared inside.

“We just saw your girlfriend, Sammy,” Susie teased to the little Vietnamese man behind the bar at Silver Cloud.

“What you mean?” Sammy asked, pouring beer into a glass.

“Spike, your little honey.”

“No. No. She not my girlfriend. I only go out with her a few times,” Sammy laughed. “She too expensive.”

“Ugh, you better watch it Sammy,” said Susie, turning serious. “I know that really, you like that girl, but you better be careful. Who knows what diseases she has. I hope you’re using protection.”

Sammy looked embarrassed. “No, she nice girl.” And that was all we talked of Spike before turning our attention to our beers and speculating on that evening’s business.

It was about a month later I got to see Spike close up when I moved into her building. Kitty, a Vietnamese friend of Sammy’s was the apartment manager and had told me one night about a vacant studio upstairs from his unit. It was the break I needed to get away from Jimmy, Susie’s brother and the guy I shared an apartment with near Haight-Ashbury. I had started to get nervous with all his cocaine-snorting buddies around.

I was caught off guard by my first exchange with Spike. I was going up the steps; she was coming down, singing very loudly some song I didn’t recognize.

“Hi. Are you Spike?” I asked, immediately regretting I’d called her that. Maybe it wasn’t her real name. I never bothered to ask.

“Oh yes. It is I, the one-and-only Spike,” she said dramatically, flicking her fingers to toss her hair off her shoulders.

“Hi. I’m Jackie. Jimmy and Susie’s friend. Sammy just hired me down at the Silver Cloud.”

“Jimmy and Susie? You’ve got to be kidding, right? Oh, I bet they’re loads of fun,” she said, not even hiding the sarcasm.

“Um, they’re O.K.,” I said, shrinking beneath her scowl.

“Yeah … well, see you around,” she brushed me off, starting back down the steps and picking up the singing again. I went to my apartment and spent a half an hour wondering about her. Who was she? And where was she going with all that makeup on and long gypsy skirt?

I soon learned that Jimmy and Susie weren’t making up what Spike did as a profession. Her unit was adjacent to mine, one floor lower. From my kitchen I could see her bathroom window, and one day, when I was being nosy, I spied down to her place to see if I could see anything. Much to my surprise, her bathroom was aglow with red light. And I witnessed the light on numerous times thereafter when I looked down to see what she was up to.

I really didn’t care what the girl was into. Rather, I laughed to myself inside at the oddity of the experience of living next to a prostitute, if she should be called that. Maybe working girl is a better term.

I found myself feeling sorry for her. She was so young – she couldn’t have been more than 25, yet she was so pale and worn looking. And how could she be so bold? Did she know she was ridiculed by the Silver Cloud circle?

I decided I’d try to befriend her. I just walked downstairs and knocked on her door one day.

“Yes?” she answered, flinging the door open. Again, I became fixated on her over-the-top regalia: long, painted-on ribbed knit dress, red, with slits to the hips and layer upon layers of makeup.

“I was just heading to work,” I said, intimidated, partly disappointed that she’d even opened the door.

She asked me in. “I was wondering if you knew about the karaoke contest tonight. It’s one-hundred dollars for the winner. You should come and try,” I told her.

“No, I don’t think so,” she grimaced. I offered myself a seat on the corner of her bed. There was no other seating. It was weird seeing her studio, which was just like mine, but reversed. Hers faced Lombard Street, mine the back garage.

“I’ll be out tonight spreading around some naughtiness,” she went on.

Oh God, I thought, not asking her to elaborate. I prayed she wouldn’t start talking about the business. My mind raced, looking around the room, trying to find a focus, something to say.

“I like your light,” I blurted out, pointing to a lava lamp on the bedside table.

“Creates a nice mood, doesn’t it?” she said and just kept going about her business picking clothes up off the floor and folding them, not even really looking at me.

“Yeah. Well, I better get going to work now,” I said and hurried out of there.

I was so relieved walking to work. I decided I was scared of Spike. I wanted so badly to know her story, but I was too much of a coward to even talk to the girl.

A few days later I was heading upstairs to my place and saw the Indian clerk from the corner market trotting down the steps. I knew him well enough from my frequent visits to the store and was surprised to see him there. He was whistling, tucking in his shirt, and his face glistened with sweat. I was repulsed.

I don’t know what ever became of Spike. I can’t even remember if she lived in the building when I moved out. She came into the Silver Cloud a couple of times to see Sammy since the day I went to her studio. When she did, she always had to suffer the wrath of Jimmy and Susie – spewing insulting comments under their breath, ignoring her presence, and even one time I remember, Susie screaming in Spike’s face about her tired skin. The poor girl always took it, too. She never even flinched.

The post Spike – The Girl Next Door appeared first on Headliners Mission Group.

My grandpa always says how he fell in love with my grandmother’s big brown eyes.

He says I have her big brown eyes.

Although, I wish people would look past my big brown eyes.

I wish people would look at the way I sympathize.

Look at the way I’m paralyzed by my fear and my worries.

Every night I have this recurring dream.

I wake up in a sea on a thin sheet of wood.

This sea slowly changes from calm to raging.

My brain starts disengaging.

I lose track of the things in my life.

These big brown eyes don’t just smile.

They cry rivers of tears

Flooding my senses

and Making me senseless.

These big brown eyes need to be wiped.

They need to be cared for.

They need to be prepared for the hardships to come.

These big brown eyes need someone to step closer and realize they aren’t just brown

But green, and a little yellow when the sun hits them just right.

The only emotion they have isn’t sadness

But a mix of confusion and pride.

These big brown eyes need someone to guide them home.

The post POEM: Big Brown Eyes appeared first on Headliners Mission Group.

Driving past the expansive property, one might dismiss the establishment as just another honky-tonk, its history buried within its dilapidated walls, dismissed or forgotten by previous generations, so that those who currently frequent it have no clue of the events that transpired in its glory days.

Joan, a widow in her fifties and determined to make a fresh start in life, operates the propriety, which consists of a full-scale bar and restaurant that serves everything from chicken wings to Saturday-night prime rib.

Joan’s daughters, Jo and Ann, both divorcees, help with the operations, and Jo, the younger of the two, resides in the living quarters in the east wing of the building with her son Jack.

Jack struggles with embarrassment over where he lives and does his best to keep it a secret at his high school, which is the one in town where the kids from affluent families attend. It just so happens that the inn sits on the school district’s borderline.

Jack is lucky enough one day to get a ride home from school from a fellow sophomore, Danny, which he’s reluctant to accept but does anyway simply for the pleasure of not having to ride the bus.

“You can just drop me off at my mom’s work,” Jack tells Danny, pointing to the inn on the horizon.

“Ugh, what the hell is this place? Your mom works here?” Danny asks, disgusted and in disbelief as he pulls his Toyota Celica into the gravel parking lot.

“It’s not that bad,” argues Jack. “She works in the restaurant. I get free food, anything I want, whenever I want.”

“Yeah, but look at the place,” Danny laughs. “Are there even bathrooms in there?”

“Very funny,” Jack says as he climbs out of the car, sick to his stomach at the thought of Danny knowing the truth – that he actually lives there. He feels ashamed that his mom works inside and will never have the means to help him get a car like so many of his classmates have.

He walks in the door to the bar, dark, smoky, and sour smelling even at this mid-afternoon hour. Jo sits on a stool on the corner of the bar, cigarette in hand and engrossed in conversation with a hunkered-over old man named Paul, a regular.

“Hi Mom. Hi Paul.” There are a few others scattered down the long bar, all clasping beer bottles with their attention focused on the T.V. in an overhead corner. There are no women at this hour, only sad and thirsty, blue-collar workers, or so it seems to Jack.

“Can I have a Nestle Crunch and Mountain Dew, Mom?”

“Yes, but then you need to get over home and get the house cleaned up,” Jo instructs. “I’ll be home late.”

Jack cuts through the inn’s kitchen to a door that opens to a long hallway leading to the apartment where they live. Another door beyond that opens to a screened porch, an addition built on to the inn, and is accessible from the front of the property.

Above the door inside the apartment the name Gant is inlaid in glass. No one knows about Gant, a slave from the Civil-War era, who had been freed and moved to Ohio to set up his homestead here in this very spot.

No one knows that the rusted old chandelier in the apartment’s living room, missing many of its crystals and not even in working order, once gleamed with brilliance, lighting the prosperous landowner’s great room.

Jack races through his chores, grabs a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon out of the fridge, and heads out the door and around to the back of the property to its basement, where he’s certain he’ll find his uncle, Tony, Joan’s son, tinkering on some project in a forgotten room.

Aside from the inn’s location in a depressed part of town, its natural surroundings provide some solace for Jack. Oak trees surround the sides of the inn, and a few hundred yards from the back of the property lays a broad, wooded area full of creeks. Beyond that, the interstate. Jack and Tony spend lots of time in those woods talking about bands, World War III, and flipping over rocks looking for crawdads.

Immediately inside the basement door are stale beer smells from a room on the left where the bar’s cans and bottles sit in trash bags waiting for Tony to take them to the Dumpster. Jack sometimes helps and when he does, Joan usually gives him five dollars.

Jack finds Tony right where he expects, in the second room on the right, buried in his Guitar magazine with a Pepsi and Marlboro in his hands. What neither of them know is the basement where they hang out, eleven rooms in all, used to hide slaves running for their lives – for their freedom.

Together, Jack and Todd explore many areas of the basement with its dirt-stone floor and walls so old and fibrous that one could punch a hole through them.

They only share a passing wonder of the peculiarities the basement contains: a sunken room with a fireplace, a deep pit in a centralized spot from which many of the rooms surround. The purpose of the pit is unknown to them; now it holds the bar’s kegs.

Once, in one of the rooms in the back right, Jack and Tony found a small niche, not quite large enough to hold a body, not that they even thought of it, but they found a dusty, decaying baby shoe.

Both the basement and the woods are refuges for Jack and Tony, and they congregate in both spots daily. They each share unspoken dreams of finding glory in their adult lives, of doing something great, being productive, rich, and maybe famous even. They both are filled with hope in what their futures will hold, and it’s for this reason they get along so well.

“Wanna go to the woods?” Jack asks Tony.

“Yeah. Let me grab my cigs here,” Tony replies, tucking them into the pocket of his Oxford shirt, sleeves rolled up to his biceps. He brings along the Pepsi, too.

“I’m thinking I might move to L.A.,” Tony says as he bolts the basement door. “They’ve got this guitar school out there called MI. You know Nancy Wilson of Heart? I guess she went there. I figure if I keep working and save some money, I could just drive out there once school’s done.”

“Oh, man, that would be so cool Tony. And I could come out to visit you.”

They climb a small hill at the inn’s borders and find the path leading to the creek. They aren’t yet in the thick of the woods; before the creek’s edge is a dusty field with only a few scraggly shrubs and meandering paths.

Their favorite spot is where the creek waters collect into a huge pool, deep enough to swim in if they wanted to, though they never do. They have to climb down an embankment to get to it, dodging poison oak and bush limbs.

Today they sit near the creek’s edge on a soft mound of pebbles, the kind perfect for skimming across the water. They hang out until dusk talking about what it would be like to live in L.A. Jack’s enthusiasm only fuels Tony’s ambition to take the leap and actually go there.

“Just go,” Jack urges. “I’m sure you’ll find a job when you get there. I mean, it’s L.A. There’s gotta be all kinds of jobs in a place like that.” Tony nods and looks thoughtful thinking of the truth in Jack’s words.

Jack feels envious about the prospect of Tony leaving, but thinks his own destiny holds something just as exciting, if not more.

It’s nearly dark when they get back to the inn, and Tony goes into the bar to see if Joan’s ready to call it a day. Jack’s relieved to see his mom hasn’t made it home yet. He quickly eats a mayonnaise sandwich before heading to his room, anxious to retreat there so hopefully he won’t have to talk to her.

Later, Jack’s jolted awake by the thud of Jo’s pocketbook and clang of keys hitting the kitchen counter. He lies still in anticipation of her entering his room. It’s almost midnight and he’s certain she started drinking after her shift.

Luckily, Jo just goes through her nightly bedtime process and goes straight to bed, much to Jack’s relief.

As he’s on the verge of sleep, he feels a soft blowing on his right cheek. He slowly opens his eyes to witness the foggy shape of a body beside his bed. There’s the shape of a head, but with no eyes, and he only sees the torso, with stubs as arms.

The figure doesn’t move. Jack’s chest seems to seize up and he can’t breathe. Just as he’s coming to grips in his mind about what he’s seeing, he blinks and the body is gone.

He quickly bolts out of bed and springs into the living room to the couch, where he sits frozen in the dark, looking around only with his eyes and trying to make sense of what he saw. Maybe it was a dream, he thinks. He stretches out and eventually his nervous, rigid body relaxes into sleep.

Jack dreams of the woods. He’s in the shallows of the creek, in the very center, barefoot, and desperately running upstream, splashing, legs heavy as lead, screaming in the black night, but no words coming out, from something chasing him, though he can’t see anything. But he knows something’s there, behind him, over him, descending its weight on his back and pushing him forward.

The presence is on him now, pounding, pounding from behind, but he feels nothing. His entire body twitches, as if electrified, and he realizes someone’s pounding on the front door. He lies still, but it continues, more aggressively now.

He runs to Jo’s room and stops dead in his tracks at her door. He sees on his mom’s cedar chest another foggy figure, this time an entire body, that of a man, who’s sitting on the top with his legs crossed, back bent over and head in hands. As quickly as Jack makes it out, the fogginess dissipates.

“Mom, wake up.” There’s no response. “Mom there’s someone at the door.” He only hears her heavy breathing. He clasps on to her shoulders and shakes her, but her body is floppy and unresponsive.

The knocks grow more urgent. Jack can’t stand the noise, so he angrily goes to the door.

“What do you want?” Jack yells, cheek and nose lightly pressed to the door to see what he can hear.

“I need to talk to your mother,” a man’s voice calmly, but sternly requests.

“She’s not here. Get out of here or I’m going to call the police.”

“You’re not going to do that. Open the door so I can talk to your mother.”

Jack looks out the window onto the screened porch to see if the door to the hallway is open. It is. The man must be giving up because he steps out onto the porch, and Jack, not expecting this, crouches onto the floor, quickly closing the curtain except for a small sliver to peek through.

Jack can’t see the man, only a black shape of a body, and it stops as if it senses movement. “Why can’t I see this guy?” Jack wonders. There are lampposts outside streaming light onto the porch, yet Jack can’t make out any detail of the man. He’s just a solid black form. There’s no color of hair, no facial profile, no texture of clothing.

The figure backs up into the hallway, but not with steps; it floats back in a swift, swoosh of movement and Jack sits paralyzed.

There are soft knocks at the door.

“Let me in,” says the voice. Jack just sits there.

“Let me in … or I’ll have to come in myself,” says the voice, this time oozing deep, metallic tones.

Jack’s heart is racing realizing the figure has no intention of leaving. Until now, he thought merely holding his ground would make the man give up and leave.

He tries a new strategy of mocking the evil voice, “I’ll come in myself … oh, I’m really scared now.”

Jack’s face is against the door, which suddenly vibrates from the force of the figure’s fists pounding against it. He steps back, looks, and finds the door has cracked. He shudders and steps back further when the pounding comes again, and again, until the wood starts splintering away.

Black smoky streams work their way through the cracks and Jack witnesses them form into arms that are now reaching for him. He tries to run, but the streams extend to his neck and clasp on to it, squeezing, choking, until he’s blinded with brilliant white light. Then he sees nothing.

When Jo doesn’t find Jack in his room the next morning, she figures he’s snuck out of the house, something he’s been known to do. As midafternoon rolls around she begins to worry, and by dusk she’s calling friends and family to see if they’ve heard from him.

It’s Tony who goes into the woods to see if he can find Jack there. He heads to their favorite spot first, and that’s where he finds him, face down, swollen in the water, floating, brushing softly against the bank.

The post The Elmhurst Inn appeared first on Headliners Mission Group.

I remember going to see her in the hospital. Not knowing what to say to her, I said nothing as my mind was tormented with the look of fear on her face. “I didn’t think it would be this bad,” she said.

My grandmother went home from the hospital knowing she was dying. When I went to see her, I was shocked to see how sick she was already starting to look. We sat on the couch and watched T.V. I noticed her looking off into the distance. I tried to make conversation. “Are you reading any books Grandma?” I asked. Overcome with weariness, she had to retreat to her bedroom.

I hated myself for my weakness. Why couldn’t I think of something to say – anything – to make her feel better?

The horror of what was happening to her was just too scary to talk about. And even though she knew she wasn’t going to live through it, I couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge that truth to her directly. I didn’t want to see the fear in her face my words might have brought.

She was worse every time I went to see her. She decided her first round of chemotherapy would be her last because of how sick it made her, so Hospice came in and helped. Our family rallied together to work out a schedule where we could take turns as caregivers.

I spent one day and night in that role. My grandmother got sick and vomited three bowlfuls of black liquid. All I could do was hold the bowl for her, which she clutched, resting her cheek on the rim between episodes. I can’t imagine what she must have been thinking while she was vomiting so violently there, and about the fact that I, her granddaughter, was standing inches from it all.

I slept on the couch that night to be near her bedside. Sometime before morning, she woke me and asked me if it was time for her morphine. I gave it to her, petrified with the responsibility. I must have held the dropper in her mouth a second too long, because she took hold of my hand and pulled it out.

On my next visit, I brought along funeral dresses for her to look over. I didn’t want to, but had been asked from the family to do it because my husband worked in the funeral industry. One of my aunts sat in the kitchen drafting an obituary that my grandmother would be pleased with. “What do you think, Jackie?” she asked.

My grandmother was deteriorating badly by this time. I heard her calling out the name of a friend who had passed away a few years earlier. We just kept carrying on. “Yes, I really like the purple dress,” my aunt said.

We went in to sit with my grandmother, who was getting worked up, saying she could see someone sitting on the porch. Who? An angel? God? The grim reaper? No one was there. I thought she was dying then, and I was convinced whomever she said she saw on the porch was there to take her.

One morning my sister called and said that it seemed the time had definitely come and that I should come right over. My grandmother had slipped into a coma. I was one of the last to arrive. We sat around anxiously, not really sure what to expect. Some talked in the kitchen while my great-grandmother sat quietly, alone, on the couch. I tried to sit and talk, but looked on to my grandmother. “Go talk to her,” my great grandmother said. I obeyed, but only partly. I just stood by her bed. I touched her arm and told her I was there. That was all. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want my great-grandmother or anyone else to hear me spilling my heart in a last goodbye.

Everyone gathered around her bed knowing that the time had come. We told her not to be afraid to go. So she quietly went.

Even though I knew all along that I’d regret it, the reality set in that I hadn’t communicated my fears and sorrows to my grandmother. I never knew how to console her in her time of pain. I thought about how she had spent her entire sickness in silent terror as many of us held back in our own fear of opening up and telling her how much she meant to us. Didn’t she deserve to have someone hold and comfort her? Why couldn’t I?

We moved on. My two aunts hurriedly called the funeral home responsible for my grandmother’s arrangements, along the way picking up and throwing out amenities that were used for her care. Others were coordinating lunch for after her funeral service. Once alone in the room with my grandmother, I looked down at her and felt free to smooth her hair and caress her hand. I felt ashamed while I was doing this. Why couldn’t I comfort her like this when she really needed it?

The post Don’t Let Fear of Death Keep You From Last Goodbye appeared first on Headliners Mission Group.

Memories are so crazy. Sometimes they come in waves; sometimes they are just little blips in the day. Sometimes it’s hard to know what is a memory, what is made up by our minds, and what are the accounts of others. It seems young to be having memories from 2-1/2 years old, yet here we are.

“Sit here in your rocking chair while I mow the grass.”

The sound I heard then, what was that? The pain, what was that? It sounded like a gunshot. It felt like a bullet had hit my eye.

“Oh my god, oh my god, did a rock fly out of the lawn mower?”

The pain. The lights. The ambulance ride. Holding onto my dad’s finger. My mom’s tears. Surgery.

It’s fine. No pain now. Parents. Hugs. Ice cream. But why are they still crying?

“The rock was 1-1/2 inches from her brain. It didn’t hit the brain but we did have to take her eye. We are going to give her an artificial eye. We will teach you how to clean it and it will look as normal as we can make it.”

Different. There is going to be something different here. Different is not good.

Things are good at home. But then there is school … no one is there to protect at school. Different is not good here.

“Hey big eye.”

“Look, there’s big eye.”

Ugh. Why can’t they come up with something more original?

“Got big plans this weekend, big eye? Like anyone would invite you to their party. Ha ha. Going to go get drunk with your boyfriend tonight? Oh, wait, you don’t have a boyfriend. Ha ha.”

Just ignore them. Pretend they are not even there and they will go away. Just get your books from your locker. This place is so stupid. I don’t want to go to class. Ugh, this sucks.

Slide into the back of the room. Maybe no one will see me. Be invisible and they won’t notice you’re different. Ah, a seat in the back. Ah, the bell. I can rest.

“Boys, you need to quiet down over there. The bell rang and it’s time to get started.”

“Boys, I’m going to need to split you up. You, come here and sit in between these two. We need to break them up.”

What?! What?! NOOO!!!!! No, no, no. Don’t you realize what you’re doing teacher?

“Oh, cool, it’s big eye. What’s up? Can you take your eye out? What happened? Why is your eye fake? Why are you such an ugly dork?”

Why would the teacher put me right in the middle of hell? What am I doing wrong? Why does everyone hate me? Why am I so ugly? Why does my life suck?

“Who did they pick for homecoming court? Let’s nominate big eye. Ha ha.”

“You should try out for cheerleading, big eye.”

Oh, my gosh, that is the quarterback of the football team. He’s so nice to me. Maybe he’s serious?! I love to dance. Maybe I will. Maybe people would like me if I was a cheerleader. I’m really not that bad.

“Oh my gosh guys, I’m trying to get big eye to try out for the cheerleading squad. Wouldn’t that be hilarious.”

I hate myself so much. Why would I even think I could do something like that or that someone actually liked me.

The bell … Brrrrrriiiiinnnng.

Thank God.

I can’t wait to lie down. I’m so tired. I’m just so tired.

I break through the sanctuary of home, crashing to my bedroom floor.

I’m so tired of being here. What if I ended my life and I could watch all their faces in despair over what they made me do. I can’t bear this life one more day. There is no other way.

I wish there was another option.

I love my family and I hope to get out of this hell one day.

What if I try one more thing? What is the opposite of this dark hell? A heaven with light. Hell = the devil. Light = God. What if I look to the light?

I drop to my knees in prayer for the first time.

“God, please help me.”

My mind is being transformed. All the darkness is being replaced by light. Goodness. I am so lucky to be alive.

God stopped the rock from hitting my brain; instead he cushioned its blow.

It’s a small price to pay to have a big, artificial eye. I am so blessed. I have life.

God: “One day, you will speak in front of hundreds, and you will tell them of my grace and they will come to me. One day, all of your pain will be used to help others.”

I look out over the microphone in the gym where I went to school. It’s so surreal. I talk about the horror I went through in these halls. My redemption comes by helping others with my story – from darkness to light, and I had everything I needed inside me the whole time.

The post From Concrete Hell to Goodness of Light appeared first on Headliners Mission Group.