Waco's Ghost - Chapter Two

The ghost said, "I am you".

After that night, my family acted strange. They didn't tease me about it. I wish they had. I couldn't get over the intensity of the experience. It was real. I had blinked too many time not to have corrected some optical illusion created by the mesmorizing rhythm of headlights in motion against my bedroom walls.

I went to school the next day and the nuns were marketing a new edition of he Catholic Missile, which I figured might be an effective talisman. I had to get permission, of course, but my dad quickly agreed and my first transaction with God was complete. I slept on that missile for a year. I got used to a hard spot under the pillow and to this day I require a stiff support under my neck. I never saw that ghost again. Ever. What I didn't realize was that I also never got rid of it. It had entered me, maybe.

I used to imagine some evil black liquid lived in my sinuses. And I only had to wait until it gathered near my mucuous membranes to blow it all out into kleenex, but I never quite believed it. But if my luck were any indication, then I should have realized the truth about that ghost.

Within a few months my life was ruined forever, at 10 years old. Here's what happened: My whole family, all five brothers and sisters, and both parents, went for some reason to the airforce base hospital. We were soon all in a room standing in a thick group in front of a seated airforce doctor. I was bored, behind everyone, and didn't care thatI couldn't see the doctor. But then something made me push my way to the front to see what this voice looked like. Within seconds, he noticed me and made an instant diagnosis: that he could perform plastic surgery on my ears and correct their unnatural, bing crosby, dumbo appearance. Incredibly, my parents both immediately concurred and within a minute, the appointment was set and I was on an inexorable tract to a surgical nightmare that haunts me like a ghost to this day.

I tried to object. I tried to explain that this was all a big mistake, and that I had real bad feelings about the impending operation, but each time I said anything, my parents dug in deeper and proclaimed sternly, "You'll do as the doctor says." There was no escape. The weeks passed and then I was being wheeled into surgery, still awake, and I looked at the team of about five in their gowns and masks, huddled around strange chrome instraments on a cart. One noticed I was still awake and more anesthesia covered my face. I awoke. I was ruined. My life was over. The doctor had botched the surgery and my ears were a grotesque mess. This doctor had never performed this operation before. He must have read an article about it, or maybe that ghost made him do it. I was under anesthesia, so the ghost may have transferred from me to the doctor and couldn't resist playing the dirty trick on me while he had such a amazing opportunity. Who knows.

The first indication of how much humiliation I was in for came immediately after the bandages came off, at my mother's luncheon bridge party with the officer's wives club in our home off the base. About ten women were seated around our living room having coffee and talking when I happened by. My mother stopped me and loudly and crudely informed the women that I was the son who had recently had his ear's pinned back with a surgical procedure, and would they all mind taking a look. "Show them, son".

I stopped, and drew nearer to the main body of women, and turned my head and tilted it slightly to give them the best possible angle. They gasped. Suddenly they were silent, and unable to disguise their feelings from their faces. I looked at their faces. I had never seen faces like that. That's all I needed to know. I was finished forever. The ghost had won.

Stay tuned for chapter three of "Waco's Ghost".