VISIONS - IN MY MINDS EYE by ARTHUR HOWE (story read aloud txt) 📖

before they took place?” she asked incredulously.

“I can prove it Mom, I’ll show you my drawings” I said rather loudly, suddenly remembering the contents of my desk drawer.

I ran up the stairs in record time, eagerly leafing through the pages of my sketchpad as I ran down the steep flight of stairs.

Which is when I slipped.

I’d been so engrossed in the sketchpad, trying to find the sketches of my Visions, that my left foot just slid right off the next stair, throwing my whole body backwards, and my head sharply against the metal trim that held the stair-carpet runnerin place.

From thereon, I remember nothing except waking up on the couch in the lounge with a headache second to none, and an icy wet feeling at the back of my head.

My Mom was sitting on the floor next to the couch and had dozed off in her attempt to be attentive.

As I sat up, my head throbbed, and my moaning woke Mom rather suddenly.

“My God, my boy, you gave me something of a scare you did, you little blighter” she said smiling. “ You’re not bleeding or anything, but I put an Ice pack at the back of your neck, just in case there was any swelling.”

Resting in her lap, was my sketchpad, opened to the page where I’d made my sketches that night, many weeks ago.

“I found these and have asked your Uncle Ronny to come over and have a look at them” she said, no longer doubting my visions and my mad ranting of earlier on.

Uncle Ronny, my Mom’s brother, was a Detective Sergeant in the local Police force and although Mom had thought it important enough to call him, I couldn’t quite see the connection at that stage.

Mom went off into the kitchen and came back with some sugar water, “To make you feel better” she insisted.

About fifteen minutes later, I heard Uncle Ronny’s Ford Sierra pull into our driveway.

I could hear them in the hallway, whispering and laughing at the same time, continuing into the lounge.

“It’s alright Lad, I’m not going to arrest your Mom for pushing you down the stairs” he said seriously.

“I came to give her a hand to do it right this time.” He burst into his inimitable laughter, stopped briefly to make sure I’d got the joke, and then guffawed to himself again.

I liked Ronny because in spite of being a Copper, he was always joking and fooling around, bringing a nice feeling into the room, even if his jokes were somewhat stale and slack.

He explained to me that Mom had gone through everything with him and, even though a lot of people would laugh at the idea, he truly thought that the images I’d drawn were too coincidental to be ignored. He was friendly with the Detective Inspector who was handling the case and asked if it was O.K. for him to show him the sketches.

I agreed, not putting too much significance on anything. A couple of more minutes of idle chatter and Ronny said his goodbyes and left.

The rest of the night was a bit of a blank and I slept very well with my slight concussion and two “strong” headache tablets from Mom, helping me nod off very quickly.

Mom woke me the next morning by shaking me rather than nudging me.

“Come down and watch the T.V.” she said. “Your Uncle Ronny says that they’re showing your sketches of the man. Come quickly, come downstairs” she tailed off as she walked briskly out of my bedroom.

When I got downstairs, Dad was sitting there, glued to the T.V.

“I’m not sure what you’re up to my Boy, but someone’s very excited down at the Police Station” he smiled, not taking his eyes from the set.

The News was showing on I.T.V. and every time an article ended, Mom and Dad both started “shhhh-ing” and “Wait,wait,wait-ing.”

“ Police in Barrydale believe they have made a breakthrough in the case of missing schoolgirl, Annie McLachlin who disappeared from her parents home in Barrydale last Thursday evening.” The announcer said, most seriously.

“Detective Inspector Gary Philips declined an interview or to release any further information at this stage, but asked the Media to assist in trying to track down this Man, possibly wanted for questioning in connection with the disappearance”. The announcer droned on as My Sketch came up on the T.V. screen.

“ Police declined to disclose the source of the informant, but ask that anyone who knows of anyone matching the picture, to contact their local Police with information”.

The rest of the day went very quickly and at about five, I arrived back from school to see Uncle Ronny’s car in our driveway.

He wasn’t smiling when I entered the lounge, but gave me a quick “Hiya” and returned his attention to the T.V. around which Mom and Dad were both glued.

I only caught the tail end of the broadcast, but the announcer was going on about the response to My picture and the arrest of “one Michael James Porter” at his smallholding just outside Barrydale.

It seems that, acting on a tip from a neighbour, the police had arrived to interview the Man resembling my sketch, to be greeted by a hostile Porter, brandishing a shotgun. The stand-off had lasted an hour or so before he was overpowered by two Policemen who had gained entry from the side window.

The search had revealed the body of young Annie McLachlin who, by first report seemed to have been asphyxiated.

Police were searching the cordoned off premises and said that Porter had been questioned previously regarding the disappearance of three other teenagers over a four year period.

A couple of days later, they announced that four other decomposed bodies had been found in shallow graves around the smallholding and that they didn’t discount the possibility of finding more.

I’m 37 now and all that is a vague memory.

Over the years, my visions have come to haunt me more than any one man deserves in a lifetime.

The really, nasty thing about this ability of mine, is the fact that there is no timeline, no perspective and no indication of when or where these visions will happen.

An example of this is a vision I had in the late nineties, I think 1998, when, once again, I was dozing off, lying next to my Wife in bed at night.

The scene was most vivid.

A darkened house. No, not a house, a dwelling. No windows, no doors that I could see, no furniture, nothing familiar about the scene. A couple of wooden crates serving as furniture perhaps were scattered around the dwelling. A thin cheap candle was burning on one of these crates.

A Man, oriental in his facial features, was sipping out of a clay(?) cup and talking, to a smaller, shrivelled, oriental lady sitting cross legged on the dirt floor, just to his left. Two children, clearly a boy and a girl, maybe ten or twelve, were eating what looked like wallpaper paste out of small plastic bowls.

The next thing, the dwelling starts shaking, and the two adults in the dwelling, suddenly stand up, looking confused and agitated.

What happened next, happened so quickly. I’ll try to replay it in slow-motion to give you the total picture.

The wall of the dwelling suddenly started to bulge. The faces of the adults changed shape, not for any other reason than out of total shock at what was happening. The wall bursts inwards and a wall of what appeared to be rock, mud, and water, poured into the dwelling. The adults didn’t even have time to move as the wall of debris quickly filled the dwelling, totally covering the occupants.

Then there was a total blackout. Nothing more.

This one vision only played out in reality in 2002.

I was watching Sky TV News when the article came on describing how an entire village of what they referred to as, “Squatter shacks,” had been buried in a mudslide during severe rainstorms, just outside of Kowloon in China.

The camera played out scenes with villagers running around, digging with their bare hands, crying, screaming, trying to find someone left alive in the quagmire that remained.

A translator was interpreting a young Chinese man, who was describing how he had been looking for work in the city, heard the news, and raced home to find his village obliterated. He was hoping that his Family had not been at home at the time, and held up for the Camera, a crumpled photograph from his wallet, of his Father, Grandmother, and his younger Sister and Brother.

The translator was asking that anyone who had seen these people must tell them to meet at the local community centre.

I had seen these people.

Four years previously.

In my Visions.

I started screaming. Sobbing and screaming.

My Wife consoled me after a while, but Doctors later said that I’d had a nervous breakdown and needed medication on a long term basis to pacify my “Ravings” as they called them.

I’ve been here in this Hospital since that night, obediently taking my medication and acting out a calm exterior for those that come to visit me from time to time.

It hasn’t stopped my Visions. It hasn't stopped my screaming and sobbing.

Over the years, since that very first Vision, I’ve seen it all.

Murders, rapes, suicides, car smashes, plane crashes, drownings, muggings, shootings, knifings, burglaries, overdoses, people jumping off buildings, bridges, mountains.

People dying in just about every way you could ever think possible.

I’ve seen planes crashing into buildings, buses, and trains blown to smithereens, kids with guns shooting other kids. People burning, people freezing, people disintegrating right before my very eyes.

My visions have never been wrong. Just the timing differs. Sometimes the events take place days after my vision, other times, weeks, even months. Sometimes, like now, I wait anxiously for confirmation of yet another tragedy.

People have called me “gifted.” They’ve described my visions as “wondrous.” They’ve even likened me to a “Modern day Nostradamus.”

The torment is huge. The pain enormous. The frustration, more than I can handle.

Why am I telling you all this, you may wonder?

Because I’ve seen the end.

The end of Man and of Life as we know it.

How does it come about? Let me tell you of my Vision or should I say, Visions.

Sometimes, I get just one vision and that’s that. Other times, I get small snippets, which patch together to make up a bigger picture.

I must say here, that this is my summary of a series of visions. Each of the scenes, I describe, I have seen in real, live colour, playing out right before my eyes.

I closed my eyes to see nothing except a blur, a streak, like a paintbrush stroke, slightly rounded at one end. First one man, then many men and women, all with telescopes sitting on tripods, are lined up next to a stone wall. The sun seems to be setting and they focus their scopes on this blur. I realise that this is a comet and judging by the animated talk, the sketches changing hands and the smiles all round, this is a new phenomena. This is a one-off, unexpected phenomena. The newsprint splashes it across the headlines, “ Previously Unknown Comet Paints the Western Skies.”

The next scene that plays out is a high speed, fast forward collage of scenes, a particularly resistant virus designed as a tactical weapon, is accidentally released by the creators of the virus, causing panic among the Population, leading to the Military lockdown of millions. International travel ensures that the virus reaches all corners of the earth and no one is spared by  wealth or social status. Cities and Nations come to a halt. Cities become Ghost Towns. Countries become Ghost Countries. Stock Markets crash wiping trillions off the economies.

Famines, droughts, social upheavals around the World, cities desolated and evacuated by those seeking the safety of the unknown.

Civil strife, rioting, political turmoil as Governments collapse under the burden of a financial collapse and a demolished infrastructure.

The flashing of torn and shredded Stars and Stripes litters my visions. America is decimated, the nation is flattened from end to end. The scenes are of conflict, despair, and