More things in Heaven and Earth

Flu season. I hate flu. Mother always coddles me, like I am still a baby. I am not. She says that I get sick so often because my mind is weak. It is not. I just have asthma. I am just a normal teenager. I just happen to believe in magic.

I lie in bed, a cup of tea on my bedstand. As is usual for me, a book lies open on my lap.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' No one has ever accused Shakespeare of being weak minded. Hamlet, maybe, though he was right all along. But never Shakespeare. He wrote magic into the world and has been hailed a genius for it. I keep my eyes open, see this magic, and am ostracized because I speak of it.

They claim it was a concussion, all those specialists my mother took me to see. Except one, he used large words to claim that I was trying to avoid growing up, trying to get extra attention. The sunlight shone off of his bald head like a beacon as he spoke. "Here be analytical bullshit" it proclaimed. Condescending asshole.

Everyone has different views of growing up. I see it as the time when you learn to balance truth with the preconceived notions you have been fed since you were born, in order to function within society. To function in a world where there are multitudes of unknowns, but where we aren't supposed to acknowledge them.

I prefer to look outside those notions, to widen my world view and to see what is really out there.

When I was four I saw a man turn into a rat.

At the time... no, no... later that day, after the screaming died down, it didn't seem so extraordinary. When we are little no one has told us that people can't turn into rats. So when it happens we see it, we do not have a veil drawn over our eyes yet. Adults call it common sense. I call it selective perception. If it doesn't fit into their orderly paradigm of the world, it can't exist.

But I saw it. And something in me has resisted the veil of 'adulthood.' I watch people closely. You see odd things sometimes. And sometimes they are beyond odd.

When I was four I was going to work with my mother. The sitter canceled last minute, so I had to go to work with her. I was going to sit in the waiting room until my father could come to pick me up. My mother and I were almost there when we heard screaming. People always seem to scream in the city. I don't know why. But these voices sounded different. Even as a child I knew this was more than two people yelling over a dented fender. I slid my had out of my mother's. I dashed over, hung on the very edge of the curb, trying to see what was happening. Who was yelling, why.

Two men stood in the middle of the street. One was tallish, bigger than my father, and a little younger than him. The other was pale, barely my mother's height. Sweat made his nose shimmer, like someone had sprinkled glitter on him. He was the one yelling. The other man laughed and laughed. I head a woman say he was probably ill. Her voice sounded funny. Tight.

My mother found me in the gathering crowd and yanked my arm, trying to pull me away. My shoulder made a strange, wet popping noise, like snapping a tiny bubble blown from gum. I watched the two men, trying to ignore how much she hurt me. I watched them and hugged my teddy close.

Before she could yell at me there was a huge explosion. It sounded like fireworks, but wasn't pretty. Everything was dirty and dusty. It tickled the back of my throat and powdered my face brown.

In the smoke I saw everything. The funny little man shrunk, like an ice sculpture melting really fast. He became a white rat, common looking--like the ones you see sold in pet stores to feed snakes.

He ran into a grate and vanished.

The stunned silence ended seconds after it began. Noises pierced through the heavy air. There was confusion and sirens. Yelling and screaming. Crying. People hurt. People dead. I had never seen anyone dead before. My mother yelled and yelled at me. I kept on asking why the people weren't moving. Why the men in dresses were taking the taller man away. She just kept yelling. A trickle of blood dripped down her dirty forehead. She didn't notice.

Since then I have taken to watching people. All my life. Just paying attention. Especially to the odd things. Stores that nobody notices, people who walk into walls and vanish. I saw them at the train station when my mother sent me to the country for my 'nerves'. I saw them disappear.

I was not hurt that day so long ago. I just remember. Remember what really happened. That man they showed last night on television, he didn't do anything. I know he didn't. But no one believes me. Because I believe in magic, even though I have stopped speaking of it. I've seen it.