The Color of My Fears [COMPLETE]

Chapter 4 - More Visions [#15]

I found Ismael beside the creek, standing watchfully in front of a guava tree. The tree looked like a black sentinel guarding the cirujano's house tonight. Watching from a distance, I saw him looking intently at the branches of the tree, as if waiting for something or someone to appear. It seemed like he's standing there for some time, so fixed was he in staring at the guava tree, he didn't notice my approach.

I walked cautiously towards Ismael, with my rubber slippers (esmagol) stepping softly on the dry grasses of the zigzagged, narrow path that led to their house. I didn't want to cut his attention.

At a certain point in time, I thought I saw the tree grow tall and large, its leaves expanding in all directions, transforming into one giant shadow, made more visible by the light of the full moon. The shadow took first the shape of a human head, then in the form of one huge flapping wing. It flapped twice and on the third, it embraced Ismael, and then covered the house, and I saw it's coming for me as well. Run my feet, I shouted, or so I thought. Shouting in my mind, like in a dream. Images you have for every emotion there is but words are incapable of expressing them. You have to speak with your thoughts. For heaven's sake, run, but those two feet of mine were planted firmly on the ground. And then time stopped.

The scene unraveled before me. Shades of the goblin (kama-kama) twisting his ears! The giant wing slowly morphed into a huge bird, that bird again, feathers and beak and claws gradually took shape in a distinct pattern. When the transformation was complete, the bird had one fiery eye turned towards me, shrieking loudly, moistening the air with a heavy tang of guava. Then suddenly, a silver razor popped out into existence, cut the bird in two with one clean slicing movement. The blade shot upwards, came swooping down and finished the job by cutting the rest of the bird into tiny pieces. Quelling the panic that swelled within me, I helplessly let the grotesque vision run its inevitable end, like a horror movie shown for a lone audience.

Looking back and with the benefit of hindsight, what rules and principles of science can ever explain the event that happened that night? If it was beyond physics, hyperdimensional physics, then could it still be explained, by some supernatural means, by a process beyond our ken? Was it really supernatural? Was it deemed only supernatural because we have no scientific proofs or evidence to prove it?

What had I done thattime to deserve that unimaginablehorror, that a man couldn't be able to keep his sanity, much less a boy coweringin fear? The visions I had before of the razor, guavas, wing and bird allcombined into a tapestry of horrors, tinkering or playing with my fears. What'sthe meaning of all those? What's all themore incredible was that they encroached into my version of reality. The fear of the razor had grown out of proportion. It explodedinto something basic, primal even, that ran deep down into my very soul. My fearsencompassed all, including those I never knew until that fateful day. Fear ofthe unknown.

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