Your True
Tales
December 2003 –
Page 21
Missing Time
by Jan R.
It had been a long day into a warm August evening in Seattle, Washington, 1998... but my friend Dale and I were headed back to another friend's in the small town of Snoqualmie. Dale was already sawing logs in the passenger seat of the small truck I was driving, but I was plenty awake, and not under the influence, as I reflected on events of the day. It was a very dark night, I noticed, after we passed through the lights around Preston, along I-90, that bends its way up the mountains toward Snoqualmie Pass, East of Seattle. It was only a few more miles when we'd exit, but I just remember it got REALLY dark, as we flew along at 70 mph on the freeway. No strange lights or UFOs... just dark!
The next thing I am aware of is a sudden return of my field of vision to the same sensation of speeding along in the fast lane, although there was a vague awareness of it being much later than it was before. Dale was still snoozing soundly when I startled him semi-awake with something like Holy S***!... as I read the next exit sign!!... We had somehow arrived at the ski resort all the way to the top of the pass... at least a half hour's drive up a mountain highway with countless opportunities to careen off a cliff or plow into a big tree along the whole way! I still have no memory of that period.
So Dale laughed as he opened one eye, while I turned the vehicle around, feeling embarrassed about it for some reason. I was mostly dumbfounded and a little glossy eyed as I sped us back down the mountain to finally arrive at our friend's property around 2 a.m. We weren't going to wake up anyone, so I quietly slipped into the back of the truck that was covered with a shell, and cozily went to sleep while Dale was finally able to stretch across both seats of the cab that I locked him into just for the hell of it. Sometime later, I remember half waking to notice a bright light and a little commotion outside my cozy camper shell, but I figured other friends had arrived, and were just greeting Dale and so I quickly dove back to sleep.
The birds were chirping loudly when I woke up about 8 a.m. and crawled out to... discover both doors of the pickup wide open... but no Dale. Now Dale wears a baseball cap at ALL times, wherever he is, but sitting on the dusty road on our friend's property, upsidedown next to the truck, was Dale's prized cap (the real kind like the Pros wear). I could only shrug and wonder, but figured he was around somewhere nearby. Everybody was up and active and wondering where he had gone when someone on a morning stroll in the nearby fields found him still happily sawing logs, but face down in the tall grass many hundreds of yards away. Yes, tall grass that revealed that the ONLY tracks into where Dale lay, were the ones formed from the guy who discovered him, and he hadn't stepped in any existing tracks to get there! Dale had no memory of any of the previous night's trek... while I seriously tried to laugh off a truly puzzling affair.... feeling a little Heated Repression!!
But it was a fun August time to do Summer things, like picking juicy blackberries while tromping through sticker bushes! Then, less than a week later, I somehow developed, seemingly overnight, a situation in which any scratch or break in my skin integrity, became a raging painful puss-filled infection! And if you've ever waded through sticker bushes with shorts and short sleeves... well, needless to say, I had bad infections all over. My puzzled doctor could only put me on antibiotics while commenting that something had quickly and seriously compromised my immune system. My "feeling" was that I must've been poisoned by some toxic chemical or bug-spray even... and we even joked about the government testing something on us. But three weeks later I was about healed over when I happened to run into another person who had had the same affliction attack her, to the point of scarring some on her legs where the worst scratches and cuts were. We were in identical stages of healing indicating similar times of exposure, I would presume.
Soon thereafter, I was struck with the need to move away to another part of the state, and the few times I've been back to that area have felt sort of spooky in a helpless kind of way... whatever THAT might mean. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather find joy in the wonder and mystery... but never realize any insight that probing further might provide. Possibly denial and repression are at times, good things after all! Except for the public in general, which has been anchored in denial to our detriment for too long.
I believe Dale's only reaction to the whole thing was the drive to buy himself a new cap. By the way, he remained unaffected by the organisms running rampant in my wounds, as we were clearly the recipients of individualized experimentation... if that, in fact, ever occurred. But life must go on... so that other weird things can manifest, eh? And I have a hunch we're all in store for hefty doses of weirdness in the next few years to come.
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