Nightmarish encounter leads to friendship, faith

By sharon martini

The Southwest Community Connection, Dec 1, 2009

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I would rather be caught running down the street naked between spa appointments!

This was the predominant thought in my mind the morning after a dead (yes, dead as in deceased) neighbor, had “popped over” uninvited, bearing messages he wished me to deliver to his, very much alive, wife.

He believed that I could calmly knock on her door, a woman with whom I had exchanged passing hellos, but was not a familiar, and boldly state: “Hello. How are you? Oh, by the way, Bob* says to tell you he’s fine.”

This catholic lady would surely run me off her front porch brandishing, if I were lucky, a broom, shrieking: “Witch! Devil’s disciple! Somebody stone her!” Or else, she would fall down in a dead faint. Dead being the operative word and I would be found guilty of murder in the first degree due to my meddling on the “other side.” Nope, I was not going there. Somebody help me with my zipper, please?

I will not go into great detail here, but suffice it to say, during Bob’s spectral social call, I alternated between cackling at his jokes and recoiling in panic, belligerently demanding to know what the bloody hell he wanted and why me. And I wondered, had I crossed over to the other side, or simply snoozed my way into insanity? Dreamless sleep eventually redirected me from the nightmare.

Waking the next morning, something told me that the night’s phantasm had not been merely a dream, and that I did, indeed, have a delivery to make. Which is how I came to be contemplating a naked dash through the west hills. I excavated “to-do” lists from clear back in the Neolithic age that day – anything to prevent me from complying.

My ego sang me a cacophonous canon, foretelling my fate should I dare to play spiritual carrier pigeon.

“You’ll be known as the town witch. A black witch!” it keened. “People will laugh at you. Think of your children. You’ll end up the anti-social, angry hag kids torment, a crumpled old lady who hungers for human contact, but lives instead with 37 feral cats and grows out her chin hair.”

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