Sometimes, I find myself wondering if some people truly are born from old souls. Of my earliest memories all I can remember is being overly concerned with loss or the fear of losing someone dear to me. My preoccupation with death wasn’t so much about my death but more about those loved ones around me. At the age of ten I had an extremely realistic dream of the nightmare capacity that crippled me (my ability to be happy or feel secure) for my entire tenth year summer. My family and I just moved to a new apartment in Glendale, Queens. My grandparents had just purchased a 6 family residence for investment purposes and we were to move there from Forest Hills, Queens, accordingly. Initially, there were two major issues regarding this move that had me unhappy. The first being I was moving from somewhere I loved and treasured because I had established friends. The second reason was the all year round olympic size swimming pool in the luxury apartment building where we resided that brought out my aquatic affinity exponentially that I was about to lose.
As the moving day approached, I found myself more and more ill at ease; I was a true creature of habit and a devote taurus at heart and this move to be revealed itself to me immediately to something foreboding in nature; the old soul which I was sensed problems on the horizon.
Never verbalizing these apprehensions or fears to my parents I hoped for the best and packed up my belongings reluctantly and kept my churning stomach discomfort to myself and moved forward. It was just about the hottest day ever the day we relocated and even the fires of Hades must have been cooler than the damn furnace of an apartment we ended up in…and for the record I’ll never be able to conjure up a good memory about that frigging apartment.
The building my grandparents purchased was old but in excellent repair but I swear to the gods, it was absolutely and definitely haunted especially the apartment we inhabited because the previous tenant had died there, to my horror! In fact, all belongings of the previous tenant were still there staring at us upon our arrival on moving day. These belongings were supposed to have been removed before we got there but something fell through with that maneuver so we truly and unfortunately inherited not only a ghost but his belongings as well. His name I’ll never forget because he continued to receive mail for the entirety of our stay there which was six years or so. His name was Mr. Greiner and I came to dread every single day of residence in that three story hotter than hot walk up yellow brick apartment building and if you ask me that building dreaded me as well.
I’m not sure what was worse Mr. Greiner’s belongings everywhere I looked or the nightmares inflicted upon me with the removal of his things as the summer, that damn summer, wore on but I’ll tell you this, everything he owned was dusty and grey from his wardrobe to his furniture including his visits to my surreal world that consisted of an infinite array of shades of grey too.
Bewitching was that apartment. Bewitching were my nightmares. Bewitching are all my memories in my cognitive map which make up the entire fabric of the summer of my tenth year…to be continued soon my readers.
theaflys 