Our Demon Helpers

Demon's Guardianship - intro

Once upon a time there was a Demon. He had a simple and happy life because his person had kept him in such high esteem since childhood! He deftly ran his person's life with the greatest of ease protecting him from all sorts of dangerous people and events. If Demon couldn't fill his person's fear spaces, he would use triggers to keep his person safe and well taken care of.

As a child, his person had been physically abused by the mother. The father had left him when he was three and the stepfather was too busy working to notice the bruises. Demon's person had learned to stay quiet and out of the way so as not to upset the mother. Demon had shown up one day when his person was just four and locked in a closet. "When she puts us in the closet, she isn't hurting us." was Demon's first words to his person.

They grew up together learning many things about how to stay safe and keep out of the way of most abusive situations. Once, when his person was twelve, a teacher almost reported the abuse but Demon was able to get his person to be extra clumsy that day so the teacher decided that he clearly had caused his own bruises.

On the whole, it was a safe life until one day, when his person was thirty-two, someone new came to live in the same apartment building in which his person lived. Demon didn't know why but he immediately didn't like this person. There was something off about her. It didn't help that Demon's person was fascinated by her. She was upbeat, friendly and smart, all the things Demon taught his person not to be so he could keep his person safe.

Against Demon's best efforts, his person spent more and more time with this other person and Demon's hold started to loosen. Through this new friend, his person learned that one of the truths Demon had taught him was actually a lie and his person began trying to change, what he considered were "bad habits".

It's not like his person hadn't tried to change his habits before, he had, but this time was different. This time he had a friend that taught him that it was up to him to choose his actions instead of just doing things safely, the way Demon had taught him his entire life. His person first decided to change his bad habit of drinking too much. "This is an easy one." thought Demon. "His friends will bring him back to reality and I will continue to encourage him to do what is right and familiar as I have so many times before."

But his person moved to a different city with his new friend. "No worries." thought demon. "I'll just get him to make new friends that think the same way as his last set. That won't be hard because his desires are the same as before." But his new friend introduced Demon's person to her friends and through them he made other friends who thought more like her. Many of these new friends were also trying to change the habit of drinking too much. Demon's person was learning to feel safe without drinking.

"Alright, this calls for extra help!" thought Demon and he called on some of his person's other Demons to create havoc so his person would be too stressed out to continue down this new and clearly unsafe path he was on. His person became depressed from all the stress he was feeling and his mind was once again darkening. "Good, now we can finally get back to our safe place and live the way we should." thought Demon.

But his person's new friends threw him a surprise birthday party. "They didn't even get the date right." explained Demon to his person, but his person didn't seem to care that the birthday celebration was three and a half months off his actual birthday. It was nothing like anything he had experienced before and it boosted his confidence seven fold filling him with light from his friends. That was the first time Demon felt serious concern that he was losing his control over his person.

"We have to stay dark! It isn't safe to be lit up! You know this!!" Demon admonished his person. "I've been keeping him safe his whole life! Doesn't he know I'm keeping him safe?" cried Demon. "I am the one who kept him in the dark and filled his lonely nights with thoughts! I am the one who kept him safe all these years! Who does she think she is, telling him he is the only one responsible for his life?"

It wasn't too long before Demon's worst nightmares came true. "I knew I didn't like this new person!" Demon thought as he realized his person was seeing him for the first time. As his person began noticing him more and more, Demon started hiding among all the past abuses and traumas his person had experienced as a child.

As light filled his person's dark mind holes, Demon began having less and less power. He didn't completely disappear but Demon knew life would never be as simple as it had been in the beginning. Alyssia Rhys

When You Make Life Hard 2

    It was a simple stop. My mother had died a few weeks before and my stepfather, Rudy, and I had finished packing up his possessions from his eighty-three years of life, fitting them all into a fifteen foot U-Haul truck. He also had a 2000 Saturn, which maybe the last one in existence since they are no longer manufactured. It was on a car dolly behind the truck. This made the whole thing about eight feet longer than the truck alone. 

    Rudy got a text that said he could have his wife's death certificate mailed, which could take months, or pick it up that same day. We had already driven as far as the town in which the court house was located so we decided to quickly pick it up.

    I drove past the front entrance of the court house building and noticed a very nice half circle drive way. Could it be that easy? I thought to myself. No, it will take him too long to pick up the certificate. I won't be able to stay there the whole time. I had better park somewhere else. I let my stepfather out and I turned the corner and drove into a parking lot full of cars. I got around the first line, and then the second. I can do this. Why was I worried? Then I came to the third, and last turn. Not going to happen! 

    I tried to pull forward, back up a bit, pull forward, back up a bit, pull forward and then I just sat there with no idea how I was going to get out of the mess I had gotten myself into. Why didn't I just park in that half circle? I thought as I sat perplexed in the driver's seat. A man walked up to the driver's window who knew my name. "Are you Lisa?" My stepfather had passed him on his way into the court house. "Yes." I said sheepishly. I knew exactly who this person was, even though I didn't know him personally. He was a friend of a friend from the church I attended.

    Your stepfather told me you might need some help. "Um, yeah. Thank you. I have no idea what to do next to get out of this parking lot that I should not have driven into." That last part didn't even need to be said. It was pretty clear I was way out of my league.

    He tried to help me figure it out but I finally had to simply ask him do it. He got the truck and trailer a little farther than I and then...

    There was a car that was parked at the front edge of a parking space. Two feet farther into the parking space would have allowed us to barely get by but that was not happening. I took the license plate number and went into the front entrance of the court house to find the person and ask them to move their car. Yeah, like that is realistic. I was desperate! 

    One of the officers followed me out to the truck to assess the situation. Rudy came out a few minutes later and the four of us talked about the hopelessness of it all for about fifteen minutes. We determined that the only thing to do was to take the car off the dolly, move the truck and then reconnect the car and dolly after they were on the street. 

    Just as I started the long process of disconnecting all the car dolly parts, the owner of the vehicle that was blocking us came out. What are the odds? He was to be in court all day and only came out to get his water bottle he had left in his car. He moved his car and we didn't have to disconnect anything. The truck and trailer was driven out of the parking lot without any more problems and we were on our way. 

    Next time I'm using the driveway and only moving if they ask me to.

When You Make Life Hard

    I woke up smelling bacon that my stepfather's best friend and wife had prepared for he and I. I slowly realized I had just slept at least five hours straight in an actual bed. That's a new one. I usually sleep for only two hours at a time. 

    After thinking about it, it wasn't too surprising since my eighty-three-year-old stepfather, Rudy, and I had spent the last three days packing his and my mother's hoarding house. Rudy and I were ready to drive to Texas with our newly packed, fifteen foot, U-Haul truck. We would pick up my mother's death certificate on our way out of town. 

    My mother had passed away from cancer a few weeks prior on March 25th, 2022. My half sister and brother had already been there and had been able to say goodbye to her before she was gone. That was the best thing for them. Since I had already said my goodbyes to my mother three weeks prior, it worked out perfectly for me to show up the day after her passing and give them time together. 

    My husband and I drove up the next day where I found Rudy taking Mom's clothing off of their hangers and stuffing them into large black bags. "We'll take these to a donation center," I could tell he was quite ready to be done with all the hoarding! 

    Thank you! I thought. There was so much stuff. My sister had cleaned some of the living room area by the time my husband and I arrived so we could at least have somewhere to narrowly walk. Every other room of the house was quite literally knee deep in a lifetime’s accumulation of "stuff!" She thought it would make her happy. 

    My brother took my sister to the airport that afternoon, so I only got to see them for a couple of hours. That was enough time to begin the discussion of what had been done so far and what still needed to be done now that Mom was gone, like finding a realtor to sell the house. Neither my brother nor my sister had the space to re-home my stepfather, so it became my pleasure to bring him home with me, just not yet. We still had work to do. 

    Richard, my husband, and I proceeded to spend the next four days packing, organizing, and cleaning non-stop so we could sell the house. 

    There was evidence of rat infestations in every closet, under every shelf and cabinet, and in almost every corner. Most of the furniture’s fabric was chewed through and many sofas and chairs had been used as homes for the creatures. Many of the unending piles of magazines were also chewed up and used as bedding. The entire house smelled like a rodent toilet.

    I had to leave after four days because I had to get a grip on the depth to which my parents’ living situation had sunk. I used the excuse that I had to get back to work and so I left Rudy to fend for himself for a couple of weeks. In the meantime, he found a realtor, packed up the books he wanted to take (he had seven bookshelves of them), and generally tried to clean. 

    Almost two weeks later my husband and I had figured out our plan for bringing my stepfather home to live with us. I would fly out on Easter Sunday, pack up any remaining items, rent a fifteen foot U-Haul truck, and Rudy and I would drive to Texas from his North Carolina home. 

    Upon arriving Easter Day, the house didn’t look much different from when I had left three weeks before. Upon closer examination I saw a few more details of how much my stepfather had actually done like sorting through his seven bookshelves, pulling out stuff from many kitchen cabinets and finding a few boxes of items he actually did want to keep for himself. 

    There was still too much to finish and drive away in two days time so we allowed for an extra day of sorting and packing before we had people come help move furniture into the moving truck. Once packed, having expended an enormous amount of energy, we had been invited to stay the night with Rudy's best friend and wife in their clean home. 

    I felt like a queen having a shower, eating a home cooked meal and sleeping in a real bed.

A New Start

      The excitement was palpable but so was the frustration as I stood there in jeans and a t-shirt noticing the open attic of my new home. It was not the typical attic all tucked away where no one could see it but more like one of those high ceiling ledges. It ran completely across the top of one wall of this much larger than normal living room. 

    It was a shade of green that I was going to change as soon as I cleared all the piles of stuff. It was so full of stuff, it almost reached the ceiling which was already extremely high. What on earth am I going to do with all that stuff?  I had just moved in and was excited to make this new home my own. Looking up from the lower part of the room, some of the stuff looked like it could be valuable. Why would anyone leave it behind?

    It looked like a mixture of valuables, memories, and trash. Even from the lower level I could see crumpled up pieces of paper, candy wrappers and what seemed to be photo albums sticking out of the piles. I also couldn’t understand why the previous tenant would pile it all in a place that was so clearly visible to anyone who came into the house. Why not pack it away in the garage or someplace less obvious? 

    I saw an unstable ladder that was painted white with smooth cylinder rungs. This rickety old ladder, on the left side, was the only way to reach the top of the wall. I decided, now is as good a time as any to start cleaning. I thought it best to first get up there and see what kind of cleaning supplies I might need. Tying a bandana over my long brown hair, I climbed the ladder one rung at a time going slow enough to judge how each held my weight.

    Every rung I stepped on was awkward and exhilarating at the same time. I felt revitalized as I thought about how cleaning this area was going to beautify my living space but also concerned about getting rid of someone else’s treasures. I contemplated about when it was finally clean, it would accent the room and enhance the experience of my new home. I got excited thinking of the results.

    Once I got to the top, many of the piles looked like trash. This is going to be easier than I thought. It all seemed to be thrown up here with no apparent rhyme or reason. The more I throw away, the less junk I will have to figure out what to do with. At first glance it seemed like a no brainer. But the more I examined the piles of piles, the more I saw valuables. 

    There was a tall metal lamp that might be useful next to my couch. There were lots of piles of bed sheets and linens. And a guitar that was only a little banged up. Melody might be able to use that. She has been wanting to learn guitar. I also saw photo albums strewn throughout and began pulling things out that were clearly trash items thinking that once the trash was out of the way, it would make clearing the useful items easier. I started focusing on the trash items. 

    I noticed a lot of food. There was an old half eaten hamburger from McDonald’s next to a box with a few fries left. There were Twixt wrappers everywhere and lots and lots of sugary food items. I found a large plastic trash bag and started stuffing it. This is about the time I started seeing the roaches. 

    There were so many of them but they were all so incredibly tiny. I began being concerned about moving things for fear of unearthing large quantities of larger ones but that didn’t seem to be happening. There seemed to be only a couple hundred baby ones. I was surprised there weren’t more.

    Then I saw one large one. I noticed him specifically because it felt creepy how he seemed to follow me as I cleaned. As I was separating between what was trash and what was not, he moved with me. He stopped when I stopped and moved when I moved. My first inclination was to kill him before he made any more babies but I got the sense that he was simply making sure I was ok. I have no understanding as to how I knew this, it just felt like he was watching out for me. 

    I decided I would try to ignore him as best I could and try not to get too squeamish about him. He stayed a fairly safe distance, at least safe for my comfort level and so I kept working, continuing to bag only the things that were obviously trash items. 

    Once getting that accomplished I started separating the items that were useful from items that I wanted to go through later with more purposeful intention. There were so many linens, I don’t need that many bed sheets but it will be helpful not to have to buy new ones for my new house. How convenient! I’ve never been afraid to reuse undamaged items. I will definitely have to put these through the washer before I use them.

    I found more lamps as well but the tall one was the only one that seemed useful so the rest would go to the Salvation Army. I also found a couple of old rotary telephones but despite the nostalgic significance attached to them, they were now outdated so, off they would go as well.

    As I continued to clean, I began finding some old toys strewn throughout the whole mess that brought back lots of memories. I recognized them as similar to ones I had owned when I was a kid. The amount of familiar items began to feel a bit odd. There was a small telephone that a child would drag along the floor with a string which would make the eyes move up and down. I found old wooden Tinkertoys and wooden Lincoln Logs and started building with them, for nostalgic purposes, of course. 

    A red package caught my eye and I recognized it as a package from a Sea Monkeys kit like the one I had tried, but failed to grow. There were ten or more packs of jacks with balls of varying sizes. Some of the balls were hard and cracking and would no longer bounce when I dropped them. 

    I separated out decks and decks of playing cards which began piling up and I lost count of how many there were. It brought back memories of when I would visit my grandparents and they would play bridge with their friends. I would watch my grandfather shuffle the decks by splitting the deck into two parts holding one part in each hand between his thumb and middle fingers. He would then place his middle fingers on the table close enough together so, as each thumb released a card at a time, they would cross in the middle between his hands. 

    He would then pick up the deck with his fingers, hold his thumbs to keep the cards from scattering and create an upward bridge that would force the cards together. I was fascinated watching him do this and determined to learn how to do it myself. My hands were too small at that time but I kept trying and eventually I learned.

    My new attic was only halfway clean when I started to notice many pictures scattered throughout every pile. I had seen the photo albums but not paid too close attention to them. I picked up one of the pictures and my heart skipped a beat. It was a picture of me as a baby. 

    I was about one year old, dressed for winter. Sitting in a box with the word AJAX across the front. The box was in the snow in the front yard of my Nana’s house in Nassau, NY. I frantically looked around for some of the other loose pictures and found one of my grandparents when they were first married. I found one of my mother as a baby, sitting on a porch with her mother, grandmother and their Great Dane dog. I even found one from when my current husband and I visited his Aunt before we were married. I was two months pregnant with my second daughter.

    I carelessly grabbed picture after picture finding all of them to be from MY life. My heart started racing and it even felt hard to breathe. I was confused. Why were these pictures here and why did this stranger have them? I wanted to understand but my head was reeling and I couldn’t think clearly. I sat down not even caring if I sat on a cockroach or not. 

    I don’t know how long I sat there before I could breathe again but it had to be more than twenty minutes. When I got my breath back I slowly climbed back down the ladder and sat down on my off green couch. I looked over at the side table and noticed a glass of water sitting there and drank it feeling grateful I had thought to put it there before. Wait, when did I do that?

    I actually dozed while I processed what I had seen. When I came to, I noticed the tall lamp was placed next to my couch and wondered when I had put it there because I didn't remember doing that either. I looked up at the messy attic and pursed my lips in determination to finish cleaning it no matter what I found. 

    When I climbed the ladder again I noticed that it didn’t seem as dilapidated as it had previously. I must not have looked at it closely enough before. Once at the top I began cleaning again but this time I made a pile of pictures and albums until I could find a box in which to keep them. I was still confused about the content of pictures but decided to clean the rest of the attic before tackling that dilemma.

    As I dug through the other random items, I began to notice that they were as familiar to me as the toys. I found a top and skirt that I had made as a teenager. It was my first sewing attempt and was the result of a class I took to learn how to use my mom’s old sewing machine. It would be the only sewing class I would ever take but the dress had fit perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, that it didn’t fit three months later as I was still a growing teenager at the time.

    I found a book about horses. It had been a gift from my parents for Christmas. I had snuck into my mom’s room to find the presents she had hidden in her closet and saw it on the floor. Instead of digging through them, I just took a quick peek and saw, “The Lobe of Horses” as the title. I spent the next couple of weeks wondering, What the heck is a lobe of horses exactly? On Christmas day I read it more clearly, “The Love of Horses” but the lettering was so fancy that as I glanced at it in her closet, the v had looked like a b. I never looked for hidden presents before Christmas again.

    I kept cleaning that attic for many hours, pondering the meaning of the pictures and other familiar items when I felt recognition hit me like a light bulb turned on after being in a completely black room. The light was too bright but there was no way to turn it down. If this recognition had been a literal switch, it would have broken simply by turning it on. I would no longer be able to turn it off. I had no choice but to allow myself to acclimate to the more intense light.

    This was my attic! This was my stuff. This was my life and I was the previous tenant who had thoughtlessly piled my trash, my memories, my treasures where everyone could see and judge. It was my mess and I was the only one who could straighten it up.

Then I woke up from my dream.