Always Running by Luis J. Rodríguez

Author:Luis J. Rodríguez [Rodríguez, Luis J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453259085
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

“There are choices you have to make not just once, but every time they come up.”

—Chente

IT STARTS WITH A dream. This dream creeps beyond others of sinuous ordeals, beyond demons throwing side-glances, beyond falling out of the bed and into an abyss of molten stone, beyond slipping in traffic and being unable to get up as headlights swim toward me. Then one night, a variation of the dream:

I’m in front of a house situated in a clearing among tall, moss-infested trees. The house is enormous, Gothic in style. I see myself walking toward it, leaves and branches lightly scraping the sides of my face.

I step up a creaky set of stairs with marble railings and emerge on a large empty porch. Through a walnut door, which opens without my assistance, I go through a dimly-lit hallway, the walls breathing. There are rooms on either side of me, but I venture on, ignoring them. I continue past a row of doors without doorknobs. Out of a smoky haze, another room comes into view. The door of this room opens, slowly, as I stand transfixed in front of it. The breathing walls now follow the cadence of a heartbeat.

I enter the room, a chill dampens the beads of sweat above my brow. In the center of the room is a baby’s bassinet, washed in orange-red and draped in lace with ruffles along the edge, like something out of a Sears catalogue. I move toward the bassinet, deliberate, as if rehearsed. Lying there among the lace is my long-dead sister Lisa in a white baptism dress, her face in tranquil sleep like the way she looks in a picture my mother keeps in an old album.

This is where the dream usually ends, with Lisa in a deathbed of bliss.

But this time, the dream advances. This time I keep looking at the child. This time Lisa opens her eyes, so suddenly I jerk back. Only blackness stares out of them. Then the baby’s mouth opens and a horrendous scream fills the room, distant yet distinct. The scream echoes through the walls, the hallway, the doors. I wake up with my hands to my ears. I enter consciousness. But the scream does not stop. It isn’t in my head. It comes from the next room, where my sister Gloria sleeps.

I get up from bed and stagger into Gloria’s room; she is screaming in spurts and talking nonsense. I wake up Mama, who’s in the living room asleep. Soon Dad is rushing about, looking for the car keys. Gloria is dangling in Mama’s arms, fading in and out of delirium. My brother Joe and sister Ana are also up, Ana in tears.

“What’s wrong with her?” she cries.

No one offers an answer.

My parents take Gloria to the hospital. I look out into the early morning dark as the car speeds off. A call later informs us Gloria had ruptured her appendix and the poison had begun to invade her body. The doctors say if she were brought in only minutes later, she’d be dead.

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