The Descent XI

We moved into the house the same day we signed the papers. Everything had already been packed and loaded onto a truck, waiting. I had done it all myself. A friend drove the truck, a couple of guys helped unload the heavy things, and by the time it was over and the truck was returned, it was just me and the kids standing in a place that was finally ours. Nothing had been unpacked yet. The house was just full of boxes and furniture.

Except for one thing.

On the kitchen counter, sitting by itself, was my father’s watch.

I hadn’t seen it in a long time. It had gone missing before his last visit and I had completely forgotten about it. No one mentioned finding it. No one said they had found it or placed it there. I called the people who helped us move, asked if anyone had come across a watch and set it on the counter.

No one had.

It was just there.

I didn’t question it too much. I took it as a sign. Like he was still around, like he had seen what I had done with the money he left me, like he was somehow still part of this.

The kids loved the house. It felt different. For the first time, we weren’t temporary. We could do what we wanted, paint the walls, change things, live without that constant underlying tension that comes with renting. I wanted to make it perfect for them.

When Christmas came, I went all in.

I bought everything I thought would make them happy. Gifts everywhere, more than they had ever had before. I wanted to see it, that moment where it all landed, where they felt it, where everything we had gone through finally turned into something good.

The whole thing lasted maybe two hours.

We had dinner, opened the presents, and I watched them closely, waiting for something to happen. Some kind of spark, something that would justify all of it. When it was over, I asked if they were happy. They said yes, but it felt flat. Like they were just saying it for me.

It was all just more stuff. Most of it, I realized later they never even used, not once.

For all the money I had spent, all the effort, I felt strangely empty, almost cheated. Like I could have done far less and ended up in the exact same place.

That’s when the pressure started building again.

I doubled down. If it wasn’t enough, I would do more. I worked nights at the casino, took care of everything during the day, drove my son to the gym constantly, sometimes sleeping in the back seat of the car just to keep up. I ran every day, longer and longer distances, pushing myself harder like there was something I needed to break through. I kept reading, searching, trying to figure out what I was missing. I knew there was something. The books told me that, but what? What could it be? I had no idea, none.

And then one night, everything shifted.

I had just gotten home from a day I thought would never end. The errands were endless, and I was utterly spent after also running nine miles earlier that day, one of my longest runs ever. Every time I could have stopped, my body said one more mile, just to see if I could do it. I had only had four hours sleep the night before but the run was energizing me instead of wearing me out. But now it was night, about nine o'clock. I was so tired I could barely move or think and maybe that's what did it. I was sitting on the couch. One might think I'd be resting then but I wasn't, I was reading something I had read many times before from a book I had read many times by then. What the fuck did it mean? The question never left me alone. Two of my kids were across the room talking to me. I heard them, but I didn’t look up right away.

When I did, they were there.

But not the same.

It was immediate. Clear. Not something I had to figure out.

What I had been seeing as “them” wasn’t what I thought it was.

Their personalities, their identities, everything that made them who they were had separated from their bodies. Physically, it looked like a luminous energy mass, with lit up strands, trillions upon trillions of tiny lit up pathways that intersected with each other in another trillion ways.

And I knew exactly what it was.

Not intellectually.

I knew. It was like both the miracle and mystery of life had appeared openly in front of me, and it was all a fabrication, a fantasy.

This wasn’t real.

Not the way I thought it was.

It was so obvious it didn’t need explanation, and at the same time it was completely destabilizing. I didn’t know how to move in a world that suddenly wasn’t what it had been minutes before.

Right after that, a day later, I went to work.

And something else happened.

There was this overwhelming sense of love, but not directed at anyone. It wasn’t emotional in the usual way. It was like there was no separation between me and anyone else. Like whatever I was, they were too. Everyone. The players, the people walking by, the ones complaining, the ones winning. It was all the same thing, just appearing differently.

A player came up to my table and said, “If you give me four of a kind, I’ll split it with you.”

Next hand, four of a kind.

He stared at the cards, then at me, then back at the cards. He paid me the five hundred dollars, reluctantly, like he didn’t want to but couldn’t deny what had just happened.

It didn’t stop there.

My tips would land on exact numbers. Not close. Exact. Five hundred. Four forty-four. Eleven eleven. Over and over again. Five hundred and fifty five. Seven hundred and seventy-seven. Enough that I noticed. Enough that it didn’t feel random.

It felt like something was working underneath everything.

Like there was a pattern.

Like there was a response.

And then—

it was gone.

Not all at once, but it slipped. The clarity faded. The feeling dropped. People were people again. Life resumed its shape. Bills, stress, responsibility, all of it pressing back in. Some players turned hostile the minute I walked up. It felt like I was the alien. All I wanted was kindness, and there was none to be found. I was horrified. How could so many people even act this way? They didn't even know me. Everywhere I went I overheard complaining. People were drunk and belligerent. I was back in the nightmare. What I had always known.

And the fear came with it.

Harder than before.

Because now I had seen something else, but I couldn't control it. I had no idea what would happen. Never.

Things started going wrong. Not one thing, but everything. My new car got keyed at work a week after I drove it off the lot, and not just a little scratch but the whole side. I told myself, "Oh, well then, it's just a stupid car." My son got injured and had to have surgery on his ACL, not once but twice. The first one required a years worth of physical therapy three times a week, and when they declared him healed, two weeks later, he tore the other one and the whole process started again. My daughter struggled. My youngest needed glasses he should have had years earlier. Then my daughter needed some too. Money tightened again. I was exhausted, stretched thin, running on nothing.

And I blamed myself.

It was me. I had done something wrong. I had seen something I wasn’t supposed to see, or misunderstood it, or failed to hold it, failed again the way I always had.

No matter what I did, it didn’t stay.

Even if it was a dream…

it felt real as hell.

And my mind said:

Dream my ass.