1 They were long days and longer nights. Sometimes he'd bang his head on the wall to make the pain in his guts go someplace else.
2 The pain in his abdomen and lower back became sharper, unbearable and he lost his appetite but he ignored it all and now even after surgery and chemo it’s too late.
3 Stoic until the end he muttered that he needed morphine for the pain indicating with his eyes that he had had quite enough and it was time for him to go.
Phasmophobia Fear of Ghosts
1 A hospital is always alive pulsating with activity even at night: nurses, aids, orderlies, phlebotomists . . . although at night ghosts also roam the dim corridors quiet and unassuming but there, watchful and waiting, always waiting.
2 The day I visited an old buddy of my Dad’s he looked up from the engine he was working on stared wide-eyed at me like he’d seen a ghost. “You look so much like your Dad” he muttered then hung his head the whole while we talked.
3 Ghosts trailed along behind us as we walked through Grandpa's neighborhood. I could hear them back there breathing, feet scuffling kept turning to look but could only see their gray hands moving silently in the shadows.
4 Watching Ghost Hunters on TV, Jason and Grant, simple plumbers during the day, investigators of elusive otherworldly entities and restless surreptitious spirits at night. Reminds me of me, a simple marketing manager during the day, restless, surreptitious Byronian spirit at night.
Kakoneirophobia Fear of Nightmares
1 Like in a horror movie he’s breathless outside himself watching himself running from the hairy black faceless one chasing him through the rambling old house in Nanuet with its attics, crawlspaces, cubbies and inky closets.
2 Our little dog breaks through the electric fence runs away down the road. Damn! Find him before one of the big wild dogs gets him! Too Late! A big dog with our dead cat in its mouth is scrambling up the hill across the street being chased by our little dog.
3 Suddenly fire bursts out in the far corner of the back basement the flames leaping and clawing at the air but there is no smoke only flames as I quickly close the switch all the way but the fire rages on waking me in a cold sweat.
4 In a subway tunnel the walls made of blue tiles. Snakes are everywhere their tongues flicking the air some crawling through holes in the tiles. My father appears walking towards me to save me but he can’t avoid stepping on the snakes.
5 I’m standing at the foot of my father’s grave when suddenly the dirt at the head in front of the monument begins to crumble and dissolve into the darkness below inviting me in.
Bio: Michael Estabrook: Michael Estabrook is retired now theoretically with time for everything including helping his wife around the house, writing more poems, and working more outside. He just noticed 2 Cooper’s hawks staked out in the yard or rather above it which explains the disappearing chipmunks, mice. and moles.