Premonition

Have you ever felt a bit off, as if something were wrong and you just couldn't put your finger on it? A warning of sorts. A premonition. A portent of things to come. You know that something's going to happen, but you don't know what. You just know that it isn't going to be good.

One day, my friend and many times roommate Luke and I were immersed in our usual post-work decompression ritual of getting stoned. Neither one of us said a word, we just passed that big red bong of mine back and forth and to and fro. We were smoking in silence, melting into the couch, a simmering stoned. Generally, we tried to smoke ourselves into a near comatose state before we decided what to order for dinner.

I had been feeling a little strange that day; a bit off and the feeling had come on quite unexpectedly. It was a feeling of dread and impending doom, crushing me in it's embrace. It was a sense of foreboding, a sense of impending doom. Nothing seemed right, I couldn't put my finger on it, but I had the feeling that my world was about to be turned upside down.

The silence was suddenly shattered by the ringing of the telephone, a ringing which seemed to me so desperate and foreboding. Luke and I looked at each other and the look that he gave me was an odd one, as if he sensed it too. The sound was off, more likely, we were both just really stoned.

The phone was next to Luke and he reached for it.

"Don't answer the phone," I said forcefully and much louder than I had intended to. "Don't answer that phone."

The phone continued to ring.

"Why not?" Luke asked me.

And ring...

"I don't know why," I said, "But something's not right and whatever it is, it has something to do with that phone call, so don't answer it."

Luke looked at me as if I'd completely lost my mind.

And then I suddenly knew.

"Because my mother is on the phone and if you answer that phone, she's going to tell me that my father is dead and if you don't answer the phone, my father can't be dead yet, so don't answer the damn phone.

Ring, ring...

"You've completely lost your mind," he said. "No more pot for you, you're cut off. You can't possibly know that. Your mother isn't going to be on the phone and your father isn't dead. You're out of your mind and you're high."

Luke reached over and picked up the phone, "Hello?"

Luke's face froze.

"Hello, Mrs. M.," Luke managed to croak out and then I saw a strange look come over his face as he handed the phone to me. I pressed the phone to my ear and spoke into it.

"Mom?" I asked. My worry had found focus and was dialing in. "What's wrong?"

My mother explained that there had been an accident and that my father had passed away. Evidently, he had been in the hospital for a little while, but no one had thought it important enough to tell me. That made me feel so much better. My father had been heavily sedated and was fast asleep in his bed. Against hospital policy and doctor's orders, his nurse had left the sides of his bed down, left the room, closed the door and then gone to lunch.

My father had rolled over in his sleep and he fell out of his bed. His catheter was violently dislodged as this happened and he fell heavily to the cold, hard tile floor below.

He started to hemorrhage, bleeding out in those long eternal moments between seconds, frightened and alone. I'm sure it was a terrifying and lonely death.

My mother told me of the scene that she had found when she entered the room; the pool of blood that he was laying in, so much of it; a entire life's worth. She told me too, of the hand prints. The bloody hand prints that she had seen on the sheets and the bed, where my father had tried to pull himself up, fighting until the end, but he never had a chance; it was over too fast.

I asked my mother when it happened and the time frame that she gave me corresponded to the same time that I had started feeling strange. I began to wonder if I had known the moment that my father had passed away and I'm pretty sure that I did know, I just hadn't recognized it for what it was. Strangely enough, the last time that I had seen my father, I knew it would be the last, that I would never see my father again, not alive, anyway. I don't know how I knew, I just did, I was convinced of it then and I still am today. I was so convinced that I would never see him again, it was impossible to get me to believe otherwise and it turned out that I was right. I wish I hadn't been, but I was.

Have you ever experienced anything like that?

If you enjoyed this story, please give this one a chance:

In My Father's Footsteps

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