Museum “Smell of the Dirt”

I smell the dirt, and I smell the rain. It sits in the air like a cold weight, a feeling that comes with you even once you have gone inside to get warm.

The days have been warm, but the nights are cold, though it does little to stop me from going on my nightly walks. And when I walk I can smell the earth, smell the damp ground, in a way that you can't in the summer and spring, when the scent is hidden under the smell of the green.

Sometimes I crouch down and I let my hand settle upon the damp earth, rubbing it between my hands and bringing it up to my face.

But not lately, as the ground smells different in Autumn.

I smell the dark, and the dark smells of dirt and moss. The smell of the green is retreating as the season shifts and Autumn begins. It is a time that leaves me feeling uncomfortable, and I find myself sometimes putting Vaseline under my nostrils. The rain that used to bring me such joy now feels oppressive, as I linger on the imaginings of my dreams.

I don't like to think about it. There are a lot of things I don't like to think about lately. The dreams we share are something that connects us, and the image of myself in the woods, digging into the cold ground while a small, empty thing watches...it is visceral, and yet somehow I know it to be something that could be...

Like Max...

I walk in the rain, even if I find it less enjoyable than during the summer. It was cold when I buried myself in the dream...It is getting colder now. And I know that dreams are just a dream, that a calling is not the same as fate, and that we are what we make ourselves into. Circumstances change, as can the world around us, but we are who we are, and nothing will change that. Nothing can make us anything else.

And maybe Max...

Did Max die happy?

I didn't have any siblings, and I figure it makes me grip onto people a little more than I would otherwise. And maybe that has made losing Max hurt more. And I haven't really thought a lot about the sibling I was going to have, or the people who move away. Or maybe I do think about it a lot, and I just want to feel like I am strong and resolute in the face of everything.

There were seven, and now there are four...now there are three. My mom's name was Niomi. My sister...that was meant to be her name too, not mine. And I feel like sometimes I have a space where something else is supposed to be.

I sometimes wonder if that was where she was supposed to fit. But maybe that just isn't the case. Maybe that was just long ago, and it doesn't matter.

Eric asked me early on if I had siblings...why did he ask that?

My sister that didn't make it...I feel far away from it. I feel far away from the memory, and it feels like something that was just remembered, even though you would think it would have come up by now...

But I feel distant from my life, and my memories don't feel like memories, but images of places I know of but don't remember things happening within them. It's like I have images in my head of places that I made up, since there are no memories connected to them, but I know those places are real, and those memories are just locked off. Distant until given more relevance.

Unlocked when the walls crumble.

Like my dreams were supposed to be dreams. And then I found out that they were more than that, that what I thought was a night terror...

What if it wasn't...what if something was in my room all along?

I saw one of them the other day. I was working late.

The smell of the museum at night, when things start to get colder earlier, it is different, even though it shouldn't be. The temperature is always the same. It has to be in order to make sure that the documents and everything are maintained and linger. I was just leaving, locking up for the night when I lingered upon the display for an odd ceremonial knife. I think I mentioned it before.

It didn't knock on the window. It didn't try to get my attention, and I think if I hadn't felt the urge to turn around, if I didn't feel the desire to touch the glass, to bring myself back to center through temperature variance...I turned around and there it was, its long stringy hair gently moving in the wind of September. As it breathed, I could see it shudder, and I felt my throat tighten at the sight of it.

I can't help it. It is an empathetic response or some crap like that. I see a symptom, and I feel it in myself. When my dad gets sick, I would sometimes go to visit a friend, partially to make sure I wouldn't get sick and partially so I would be able to rest.

It extended out its hands, which triggered the motion sensor on the lights outside. The light did nothing to reveal its dark form any further, save for the finer details on its slimy, clawed fingers. It lay its hand against the window...and I felt compelled. I felt...sorry for it.

It was struggling. This thing that has tormented my nightmares was struggling.

I extended out my hand, and I thought I heard a giggling through the glass as our hands overlapped one another upon the cold glass. I could feel the moisture on it, the condensation building up and running down the sides of my fingers. We stayed that way for what felt like eons, and all the while I could feel my heart beating my my chest...

What the hell was I doing? What was I looking to accomplish? To encourage it...this thing that lurks in the dark, coming out when it rains?

The light went out, and when it did it was gone, and I was left staring out at the road that runs along the front of the Museum. I couldn't help but think about when Max showed up at the Museum, late at night. How desperate she had looked. And the thing...

I thought I could smell it through the glass, but that cannot be the case.

I broke a nail, and I have cut my hands more times this week than I can count. Because I am being sloppy. I feel distracted.

I don't feel real.