For a more immersive experience, I recommend you wear headphones for this podcast. Episode 11: Looking Back Hey listeners. It's me. It's June. Its cicada buzz and warm wet asphalt and the kinda humidity that makes my hair poof out trying to give the illusion I'm a foot taller Than I am. It's bright colors and its cheer and its chests out marching and being proud and living loudly and safety in numbers and love. and its rage. and its grief. of things lost. stolen. experiences we never got to have. its scraped knees and hearts and its get up anyway, and stand in the sun. So that's what I'm doing. I'm sitting in the sun today. I hung up some of that privacy window cling stuff, and the sun is throwing itself through the refractive cover, filling every corner of my room with splashes of rainbow. I'm on the floor, its warm, a square of blinding white light, colored light on my bare legs. I won't go this year. I've never gone. I wouldn't dare go now, too small, too lost, no hand to hold me through it. I don't think I belong there yet. but I belong here. in the frame of sun heating my skin. I can see the blue veins in my hands, and I finger the faded fabric I was given a few years ago. I didn't totally understand it even though he explained what it meant. I don't know if I understand it now. And I wonder if these are my colors. if i have to have colors. Is it ok to still be a little lost? I don't look in the mirror and see anyone yet. But it's becoming clearer. like a Polaroid brightening up with a picture underneath the haze that you have NO idea what you'll find when it's developed. I'm holding my breath. One day maybe I'll see myself clearly and I'll shine the way the others do. The way he did. Not today. but someday. I inhale and I get up, bare feet on the floor. I step outside my door and i feel the burn of the concrete. the sharp edge of the asphalt on the soles of my feet. I close my eyes and all i see is blinding orange and red. the slight breeze the ruffles the tiny invisible hairs on my arms and gives me a tingly sensation all over. I think maybe one day I want a motorcycle, and the thought swoops my heart into my throat like the swell of music making your soul sing at the height of its power. I think it's the closest i'd ever get to flying. It makes me feel alive. I pull Sunny's door open with a loud creak and i flop into the velvety red set. I know it's crazy, but I love the way a car feels when it's been sitting in the sun and you slip instead the warm oven of the driver's seat. When everything is almost a bit too hot to touch. I'm wearing an oversized shirt that touches the hem of my shorts, bare feet and i shut the door and pull on the seat belt and feel the weird sensation of the pedals on the pads of my feet. It makes me feel connected. Sunny and I are One. I don't think it's legal to drive like this, or safe, dear Listener so I implore you to just live your bad choices through me. I pull out of the drive and I push the old mix tape into the slot with a slide and a click, listen to the mechanisms flip it to side B and crack it up as I speed shift into a higher gear, foot on the accelerator as the guitar riff starts rattling through the old speakers. T tops are down and the wind is blowing through me and I can smell Rainier on the breeze and the music sends me soaring down the old highway, pounding through me in rhythm with my very existence. and yes. I am ALIVE, dear listener. So very alive. and for a little while, rushes of green blurred beside me, I feel like my skin is on fire and it's in a good way. The loneliness is somewhere in my rear view mirror, too sluggish and slow to catch up. And I'm free. I get back, swinging maybe a little TOO fast into the drive, and park in front of my little house, and practically fall out of the door, my face hurts from grinning and my eyes burn from the wind and Sam is looking at me from the slab of concrete that pretends to be a sidewalk in front of the GasCo, arms crossed with a disapproving frown, but I can tell by his dancing brows he's amused. He's changing out the cling advertisements that cover the windows, peeling them off in a satisfying strip and hanging new ones up, carefully pushing out the bubbles between them and the glass with an ice scraper and its making the most horrible noise, and i notice he'd added one of those little rainbow flags in the corner of the door where the credit card symbols are that says 'everyone is welcome here' and we've never talked about it but I feel my heart swell up a little. We make a brief eye contact and a moment of awkward creeps in and in his Sam way he breaks it. 'No shoes, no service.' he says and I laugh. 'What's in the box?' he wonders, gesturing to the pink box in my arms. I look down at it. 'Cake.' I say. He blinks. Cake? Is it someone's birthday, and I smile and nod. 'Today's special. He's 18. So I wanted to get a real cake. I thought I could share it, you know,' and I pause... 'just to celebrate the summer.' and I smile and he nods and I know he knows what I'm saying. This is a Summer Days cake. I don't offer that I've been buying a cupcake every year for my whole life. He does not ask for the 'he' I'm talking about. Hell, he probably has some idea if he kept up on the news a few years back. He sends a text to everyone who isn't working today, and in we go. And I breathe a sigh of relief, because today, I am not alone. Sunny days and birthday cakes aside, there's one thing I know for sure, despite happy afternoons. The lonely nights at the counter will creep back in eventually. I wonder if the others have ever noticed that no matter how beautiful and bright a rare cloudless day might be around here, the dense woods across the old highway from the turn out of the GasCo never brighten. They remain dark, deep greens and jewel toned shimmering shadows. Beautiful maybe in that pacific northwest way that makes passer by and out of towners stop and take photos. Ominous to me. That's not to say all the woods in the PNW are ominous, of course not. There's much beauty and peaceful serenity to be found at the foothills of Rainier. It's just here. I never step foot in these woods. I wouldn't be caught alive in there. There's a picnic table there in the turnout across the road. It's usually empty, run down and decrepit. Overgrown weeds and moss covered planks. chunks of broken asphalt. Sometimes I see a man sitting there. It's far enough away I can never tell where he's looking. There's no car, I'm not sure what direction he's come from or where he's going. Its very very rare that I see him. But sometimes, I can tell he's looking at the Gasco. His sockets are deep, shadowed and empty looking. That's all I can remember. And I wonder what he sees. Or if he sees anything at all. Anyway, it was just after my 'birthday party' that I saw him again. leaning sideways like a scarecrow, black hollow eyes staring at nothing. The sun was still out, and it reminded me of when I was a little kid and I would see people in places they didn't seem to belong. Slightly before the nightmares started. I head home and i unlock my door and push it open, cool air hitting me in the face, the smell of Jeb's tea, tobacco and my shampoo mixing in my nose as i shut the door behind me and i pull the blackout curtains. It's bedtime before my shift. I push the thoughts of the man out of my head as I climb between slightly chilly sheets and lay back in the pitch blackness. I shift in my bed, its hard to get comfortable when you're a little bit busty on top. Laying on my side doesn't work. On my back makes me feel like i'm suffocating. My boobs are trying to kill me I guess. The eternal struggle. I find myself wishing for the 40 thousandth time that I was flat chested so I could lay on my stomach or be able to roll over without having to adjust them. It takes a while. It always does. but I finally fall asleep. forests. trees. rising toward the deep purple sky like bars of a prison. My palms and knees are scraped. my feet are bare, bloody. My dress is torn. I'm wearing an oversized tee over it, it's worn through with holes, was once black, now a soft deep grey, faded and comfortable. you always knew i hated the dresses. The angry sky is churning like an ocean. There's noise all around, deafening, like 100 000 helicopters but there's not another soul in sight. I'm lost again. I sigh. this happens a lot. It's actually kind of frustrating. it's a dream I can't win at, and that I can't escape. If I wake up, I'll fall asleep and be right back here in the apocalyptic woods. I can see the movement behind the trees. The wolves are here. I should run. but i'm used to it by now, so i sit on a rock and cover my knees with my dress and wait. running brings me right back where I started, and to be perfectly frank, listener, I'm tired of running. I know what happens next. I count down under my breath. 3 2 1 a phone rings. I jump. Why is it that sounds that happen where they aren't supposed to be are always the most startling, even when I expect it? you're not supposed to hear a phone ringing in the middle of a dark wood during a supernatural dream storm. I get up and walk. branches snap under my feet. I can't feel it. I emerge in a clearing, tall black trees all around an illuminated phone booth. it rings again. i don't want to answer it. I know what will happen when I do. what happens every time I do. it keeps ringing. hail is falling slamming into the ground around me while miraculously avoiding my tiny frame. thunder is flashing. The trees are cracking and tearing apart and I'm not answering. it goes on. and on. my subconscious is filled with everlasting patience, while I unfortunately am not. 500 hundred years later, the dinosaurs have come and gone, I've loved and grown old and died and found myself here again, civilization has ended and restarted thrice and finally, I pick up the receiver. its warm, like someones just been using it. I don't raise it to my ear. I hear the teeny voice telling me someone called me collect. I slam my fingers down on the hanger, ending the call. all the sounds around me stop abruptly, like a live concert where the entire stadium suddenly goes quiet. hushed. The silence holds its breath and I do something I've never done before. I dial a number my fingers have memorized. and I hold the receiver up to my cheek. my heart is fluttering against my chest like its been pinned alive to a board. the other end rings. and rings again. one more time and there's a click, an answer cutting the final ring in half. my heart stops. I can't breathe, I feel like someones sitting on me. The tiniest intake of breath on the other end, the start of the question, but its barely an eighth of the sound of an h and I'm awake. lying in my own sweat. flat on my back and suffocated by my own chest and before I can formulate a thought, my alarm goes off. cuz ain't that just the way? I don't have time to cry, its 10:25 at night, so i take a shower, stuff my absurd chest into two sports bras to try and wrangle it, throw on my uniform and shake my hair out while blinking my contacts in, lace up my shoes, and trot across the parking lot to the GasCo. and on the way... listener i kid you not. there's a payphone sitting on the edge of the lot that I've never seen before. And I think...surely I'm just a non observant teenager and that thing has always been there. Surely I haven't lost my mind. I pinch myself, cuz what else am I supposed to do? I told you already that dream just resumes whenever I wake up and try and go back to sleep. But I don't think i'm asleep. This story isn't THAT cliche. I want to walk over to it, to put my hand on it, to see if its real or not, but it's like my feet know better than my mind does and i keep walking, jerking my head eyes to the front and marching right into the GasCo. Don't look back. Never look back. Definitely not looking. The hours tick by and I am doing everything in my power to stare straight ahead of me, and not out the front pane windows covered in squares of the backs of posters advertising cola and a two for one hot dog deal. Who thought it was a good idea to make gas stations half out of glass? at the same time I'm keeping it in the corner of my eye, the dim pale yellow illumination from the inside of the paneled box, taller than it is wide, is hard not to notice on the edge of the lot. Why does that type of light, the middle of the night light, always look filmy or dirty? like if you step into the space you'll find yourself covered in a layer of oily dust that smells like musty tobacco? It tugs at my brain in an uncomfortable way. but I refuse to turn my head. If there's one thing I am, it's that I'm very stubborn. I hid in the back office for a while, but I can still feel it. pulling at me, begging me to peek out the door, cross the parking lot, the stand in front of it, rusted metal and spiderwebbed glass and I think I'm going to go crazy. I lay my head on the desk, cool wood against my damp forehead and I clasp my hands behind the back of my head, knocking my hat off. and I lay like that, eyes squeezed shut for about five minutes and then I find myself getting angry, because why am I letting an inanimate object get this far beneath my skin?? i push out from the desk and walk back into the main lobby of the Gasco and almost jump out of my skin. There's a man standing in the window. and I can't help but turn my head to stare at him, outline wavering like a badly filmed movie, artifacting in the air around him, flickers and static and overlapping colors I can't name. His face is weathered, deep cavernous lines pulling down his features, white stubble pricking out beneath bent nose and lips. age spots blotting up his papery textured skin. His eyes are deep set, unseeing, vacantly staring past me, cataracts or caustic scars. maybe just the way ghosts look. I can focus on him in the moment, but if you asked me i couldn't tell you his age or what he's wearing. i couldn't tell you his race or if he's tall or short or round or thin. I can't focus on that. it's like all I can see is the weatheredness of him. like a plastic toy left in the woods long ago, faded color and cracked surface. ancient. and I can see the sickly illumination of the phone booth standing somewhere behind him like an obelisk, its eerie light contained within its walls. flickering like a firefly. I've never seen a firefly but my friend used to pull up videos on the library computer and show me slow loading videos of lazy pops of illumination floating above the grass. I realize I haven't blinked in over a minute, eyes wide and dry as sandpaper. I wrench them back to the man and I have a fleeting moment of awareness that he is the same man I see on the bench on occasion across the highway. I'm standing frozen, my feet unable to wrench free from the tile holding me in place and that's when his sightless eyes find mine. and that's when he starts banging on the glass. and i've never felt a fear like this before, listener. a dread bubbling up inside me, a live snake coiling my stomach and spreading through my veins screaming at me to run, to hide in the office, to fly from the back door into the dark and into my car and onto the highway and never ever look back but I can't move. Even the night I almost drown, even the hundred bugs on the windows, even being trapped inside my car and feeling like i would never see daylight again, ive never felt this type of fear before. that's not true, something in the back of my mind, a tiny voice beneath the buzzing whispers. you've been here before even if it was a different kind of fear. the sharp smell of metal in your nose, the stain on your nightgown that never washed out. the intake of breath and the cut off sound of a single word hanging in the air, unfinished, lost. and while the world is on pause and i'm thinking about that night... the worst night of my life, worse than this, worse than when my parents kicked me out in a raging fury, thinking about it now in this moment, it jerks the ground out from under me and un-sticks my feet and I suddenly regain my body, and I run into the back office and slam the door, lock it and huddle under the desk. I can hear the banging on the glass continue and it goes on for what feels like hours. louder, rhythmic and i think i need to call sam. and i pull out my phone and i see there's no signal. I drop it and it skids across the floor and the glass splits and spiderwebs across the screen. My breath hitches and I reach out from under the desk and I grab the landline, cold in my hand, old enough to still have the coiled cord connecting the handset to the phone, and I pull it to my ear and there's nothing. no dial tone. nothing at all. someone cut the lines? the lights flick off. Every electronic in the room powers down with a gentle buzz until silence envelopes me besides the dull rhythmic thud of the man pounding his fists on the window. someone cut the power. and i'm starting to think the Ghost in the front of the store might not be my biggest problem. time stretches endlessly and then I hear a familiar sound. the unmistakable low groan of a slow moving engine, water clogged with mold and moss and Green Lake, tires that squeal a bit as the old chassey rounds the corner, and the sound of rattling idling. A living beast made of machine and metal, breathing carbon monoxide just on the other side of the wall. I can hear the crunch of gravel as it rounds the corner toward the front of the store and it sends shivers down my limbs. The knocking stops abruptly, I cover my ears with my hands and squeeze my eyes shut, crouched in a fetal position on my knees on the floor. no phone to call for help. a sliver of flickering light coming in beneath the door jam. I need to call sam. my mind returns to the payphone in the parking lot. and i almost throw up thinking about it. but the flickering lights beneath the door are rhythmic and somehow it comforts me, and I stand up, every muscle screaming in protest and its COLD. My breath comes out in icy puffs. The man is nowhere to be found, and I slip toward the door and unlock it and push it open. The dank greenish lights flicker in the front panes of the gas station, lighting it up. on. off. on. off. and I can hear the faint sound of music playing. The radio is on, its playing I wanna Dance with Somebody, and i freeze cuz I have a fleeting memory of having the WORST Prom of my life and running away from it all, and spending the rest of the night in the parking lot of the park with the datsuns doors open and the stereo cranked and playing this song while we danced barefoot and drank vodka and orange juice and laughed and i have NO idea if its coincidence or how the Volvo would know my Secret Things but it's given me what I need and I unlock the door, wrench it open and race across the parking lot Full Tilt, synth keyboard filling my ears and I'm short, but i'm fast and I slam into the Phone booth, its eerie dirty light still working and my fingers peel away layers of moss and gunk and i pull open the door and grab the receiver and there's dial tone and its the best sound I've ever heard. I have no coins, so i dial collect. And I huddle on the floor receiver to my chest heaving and letting my mind take me back to that night instead, feeling the asphalt on my feet, cigarette smoke hanging in the air, while Sam stays on the line with me until the police arrive. It doesn't seem possible that the phone booth has always been there. Sam had done some work and hacked down the tree branches around it the day he was cleaning up the windows of the store. I really am an unobservant teenager. They found a man lying on the pavement in front of the store. He was not a ghost. He'd had a heart attack, possible from high stress. He was suspected of several arsons up and down the coast and had been living in the woods to evade capture. He'd been watching me for months from across the road. His tent was filled with cutout magazine pictures of me. I was probably really lucky my intuition told me to run and hide and not open the door. Which freaks me out but isn't that surprising. One of the problems with being a Seer is that I'm also Seen. Even by people who aren't dead. I'm starting to think it might be why I'd always been so popular. Certainly not of my own accord, and I don't know how to feel about that, but I'll think about it later. The Volvo was nowhere to be seen, but I found a beat up old cassette tape lying on the sidewalk. Whitney Houston. That weekend my door knocks while I lounge one morning. I've been crying, for no real reason I can tell you right now, listener, but I get up and open the door to find my older coworker Loraine standing there. Her wife stands a little bit behind her. They both smile at me, and its an odd smile, the kind you give a little frightened animal when you're trying to calm it down. Betty and I were going up to Seattle, Loraine tells me. I look past them and see their truck parked a little ways off, the windows have splashes of bright color painted across them. We thought maybe we'd see if you wanted to come. I blink at them for a moment. And I suddenly know what they are asking me. And I hesitate, looking between them. 'I'm...not...' My mouth is dry. This is not a conversation I've had at the GasCo. 'Out.' I finally say. Unconsciously I'm covering my chest with crossed arms. They look at each other. 'You don't want anyone to know about you?' Loraine asks and it's not accusing, it's gentle, asking, so they know to keep my secrets, and I shake my head. 'I just don't...think I belong there..i mean, yet.' and I force a smile and spread my hands. 'I mean I guess I'm some kind of out, like...obviously. But I don't know what that means or... I just...don't know who ...I am yet.' I laugh but it sounds more like a sob. Betty looks at me and says softly, reaches out and tugs at a lock of my fringe, 'You're Caro.' she says and I blink and stare at her and her smile is really soft. She is beautiful in a way you don't expect, long black hair tied back in a braid down her back, smooth plains of face chiseled from stone. She's wearing a tee shirt with the sleeves cut off with a farmers tan and combat boots with rainbow laces and I think about how we've never formally met but she sends me packaged dinners whenever she cooks for some reason, and i look at rail thin Lorraine beside her with her flowery dresses and fairy hair in ringlets, all smile lines, freckles and crows feet, Lorraine who ive never had more than a 14 word conversation with, who presses Tupperware into my hands or leaves them in the employee fridge and hearts and flowers drawn on them. And I think about how I'm not out, I've never said a word but they Know. They recognize me cuz maybe they are seeing their former selves when they look at me. 'I've never been...' I say. 'Even better to go with family then,' Loraine replies with a grin. and she reaches out a hand. I look at it for a beat. Wait a second, I say and I run inside, grab the faded scrap of fabric I'd pinned to my bulletin board. He'd brought it back the last time he went and given it to me in the safety of his attic bedroom. I stuff it in the pocket of the battle jacket that has a worn and faded rainbow stitched to the upper arm. And I take their waiting hands, sandwiched in love like a toddler, and step into the sun. and Together we head to Seattle to meet the rest of my family for the first time. Thanks for joining me for this episode of Mil-liminal. Be sure to follow social media, or subscribe for updates. Want to know more now? This podcast is actually based on a web comic, and you can read it right now for free on Tapas and Webtoon. Just search for Mil-liminal, a horror romance about me, Caro, my podcast, and my desperate attempt to win a grouchy barista's heart. Or look for Seemingly Dark, a long running Supernatural comic full of ghosts, mysteries, and of course I'm there too. Follow the creator, Raptorjules on Instagram or Blue Sky or follow seemingly dark or mil-liminal on Tumblr for art and stuff. Logo and music design is by snakepixel on Blue Sky. A special shout out and a thanks to my Patreons and hopefully I'll see you soon.