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Through the eyes of the dead

(A Minnesota Story)

Opening: “I’ve withheld this story a bit, put it in limbo for the most part, because most people don’t know of my experiences on the trail of Second Sight, or indeed of the phenomenon itself. Not even in Europe. nor does such a belief prevail in America (although they believe in a God they cannot see, and miracles of long ago, and the devil made me do it axiom), I will not try to convince the reader one way or another, let him rest under science fiction, if it is better received. However, I will place it under fiction, for my own journals. I will try to write it in a poetic prose form, thus allowing the reader to feel the depth of the story.” dlsiluk

the history

Closing my eyes I could never again see something on which the eyes of my soul had rested, and they were open, it was death.

It was really weird. Everything seemed to be composed of dark patches of mist like glass. In and among the trees I rested, the mysterious inexplicable darkness moving ceaselessly out of my shell, within the gloomy winter branches of a tree (it was December 1963). I could not see, but rather feel and feel, even faintly hear, the river water below me, the wind above, and the current below the ice, invariably moving in its course. Everything was clear, as if he was looking through a bubble. Every sound was ugly and naked; however, awareness sank deep into my mind.

Everything seemed to be a dual consciousness.

What I was before the accident was not clear or real. Yet not for a moment did I lose my identity: I knew I was where I was.

My car had crashed on the thin but solid ice of the Mississippi River, over rocks, down a thirty foot embankment, between trees, now resting on the river below a cliff. And my dead body lay halfway out of the crashed vehicle on the driver’s side.

There was some divine guiding element that had taken over the event; Guided from the moment of impact, I think.

I carefully examined all things: the bright lights passing by, on the narrow path, to the far left of me, the very path that had brought me to this point in fate, or providence, or call it luck, even though that path was it felt bad, and if it was, if the devil himself had planted that patch of ice that the car slid on, and it slid forward over the cliff into the river, I say again, it was fate, holy fate, that it took over, it was a perfect result, that is, for a deadly disaster.

The position of the moon, stark as it was with its light, compared to an oil lamp, with its thick smoking wick, darkened the night.

From there I moved to the front, that is, halfway to the rickety 1953 Desoto. At this point, my body was lying halfway across the front seat of the car on the ice and halfway into the car. To my extreme right lay Ralph, my comrade, asleep, rather unconscious. He looked pale and pale. My heart grew dreamy seeing his body crushed between iron, steel and cloth. The old Desoto was half the size it was originally. But breath was coming out of his mouth and nose; fixed resolutions. Knowing him as I knew him, I cried silently: “You are alive”, burned in my lungs and heart. I didn’t need to guess.

His side of the door was closed. The inside door hinge or latch was stuck. The key didn’t open it. I would have stayed, but the cracked ice and bitter cold and drifting snow forced me to find a lever in the trunk of the car, forcing the door open. Which is why I took it out. He was of medium build, with a slight wound on his forehead.

A thick mist hung over the treetops, looking down, falling several feet above the ice, all around; the vast cold air and the increasing depths of cold water below me were freezing the upper and lower parts of my body, I had also lost a shoe.

As far as the mind can think, in such situations, the possibilities are open.

The river floor still below me, my automobile with wheels of iron and steel, my Desoto heavily on the ice, the ice cracking, forming patterns like a giant spider web, all of it marked a bleak outlook, perhaps an unwelcoming end.

Then when I got Ralph out of the car, he woke up.

In the distance there were several lights-headlights of cars. A few miles away, the lights of the houses were illuminated, like dots, in the windows. We slowly pulled ourselves off the ice, a tide of relief, for surely the car would sink sooner rather than later. But what drew my eyes, once on the road as a magnet draws iron, was the clumsy movement, the zigzagging of the smoke from the chimneys. Outwardly, only a few hundred meters away.

#845 (12/29/2011)