Glitches and Ghosts

The Glitch in the Matrix

I will describe it to you as best I can so perhaps you can understand and even help me make sense of it all. I thought I was losing my mind. In fact, there was very little thought to it at all. I was, in fact, losing my mind. At least that's what it felt like, that or a minor stroke. I was much too young for that, though; I hoped anyway.

This was my first experience with this sort of phenomenon. It began simple enough after a long work day. I had a routine of sorts; we all do. Mine involved the usual daily grind of working a job I wasn't crazy about, fighting traffic to get home, and enjoying a few fleeting hours. The evenings without fail, began with a visit with my Chow Cato in the backyard for buddies' playtime, all very mundane.

Not this particular evening, however. The universe as I knew it had other plans in mind, or maybe it just plain out made a mistake.

I have a modest home, early nineteen seventies brick ranch style house. The backyard is fenced, accessible from a gate beside the garage or through the French doors in the kitchen. I always come in and put my "stuff" down before going out, so I always go out through the French doors onto a broad set of wooden steps where my anxious buddy is waiting.

Cato is fond of fetching his tennis balls; there are always a couple on the patio beneath the French doors. I grab one and start tossing it with him. It is the very end of summer, turning fall. It is getting darker much sooner than before. Nothing to worry about as the patio lights are motion activated. While we are playing, they remain lit.

Cato brings the ball back a few times before I have moved far enough away from the house in the direction of my neighbor's to be able to smell whatever wonderful meal he is cooking on his grill.

"Smells great, Kevin! Remember your friends!" I yell over the fence.

He waves back. I can see him clearly standing on his deck, smoke billowing from his grill. His property sits on higher ground than mine. We start to chat as I continue to throw the ball for the dog.

Chow's are a breed unlike any other. They are very hard-headed, stubborn dogs and have little desire to perform tricks or be trained at all. Nonetheless, they make great companions. Not knowing Cato, you would never know this, but he had his own way of doing things. When Cato was satisfied or bored with an outside activity, he would simply stop and return to the steps to wait to go in for the night. It was routine, very mundane.

This particular evening would prove to be different.

It happened so fast.

Reading from notes, I hastily scribbled immediately after the incident; the first thing I noticed was a lack of sound. Kevin and I were speaking back and forth over the fence. Cato had fetched the ball one last time and had dropped it at my feet. I knelt to pet his lion mane of hair and hugged him. Kevin was speaking, but as I knelt, his words stopped suddenly. There was no sound from the dog panting, his feet scratching off in the leaf and pine straw-covered ground, no sound from the ball hitting the ground several feet away as I tossed it one last time, nothing.What happened next I still get chills thinking about.

Cato ran some fifteen to twenty feet away and reluctantly got the tennis ball for the last time that night. He brought it right back to me while I was still kneeling. I could only see the top of Kevin's head from my kneeling position. Then sound suddenly came back. But the sound I heard sent chills up my spine. It was the sound of Cato's feet running up the steps to the French doors.I had heard that sound hundreds and hundreds of times. It was a familiar thumpity thump thump sound. There was no mistaking it. I stood and turned to my left, where the patio lights illuminated my golden Chow standing at the top of the stairs looking inside. I snapped my head back around, and there he was in front of me, sitting, black tongue hanging out, waiting for more loving pets before we retreated to the house for the night.

I looked back to the steps, and yes, no mistaking it. I only had one dog. It was Cato. Even backlit from the patio lights, I recognized his silhouette. Yet, turning back around, he was still there in front of me. Then his ears articulated, and he let out a sharp bark that jolted me. I closed my eyes for a second, and when I reopened them, the dog before me had disappeared. Sudden dizziness came over me, but I recovered quickly. My neighbor Kevin was the last thing I heard before returning to the house.

He said, "Wow did you feel that? That was weird, some sort of glitch in the matrix or something," then he laughed uncomfortably.

I waved to Kevin good night, walked up the steps where my dog waited, and we went inside. Instantly, I felt I had to write it down in as much detail as I could. I later asked Kevin what he meant by his strange statement. He told me he was unsure but that everything seemed to go silent. Then he said he could feel a wave of energy or something come over him but just as quickly leave.

I am not a man given to fancy, but my dog was in two places at once for a few fleeting seconds. There has been no way for me to reason it out or to explain it acceptably. It has been something I have had to learn to live with and accept. None of it was necessarily remarkable, nor terrifying, but strange nonetheless.