The Lady in Red

I was woken up by a red light in my bedroom. In later years, such lights would prove to be sirens. But not this time.

I felt a sudden, and intensifying heat on my back. My eyes rumbled partially open. As I took in the flickering red reflection off my bedroom wall, instinct kicked in and I flipped over, completely alert. I was expecting to see the flames, my mother was a smoker. Nevertheless, only the innocent inexperience of childhood can protect one from shocks so severe.

A woman, not my mother, was standing in my doorway. And she was very angry. Glowering at me in my bed, not my bed, not my bedroom. But it was now. The flames came from her. She was in flames, but not on fire; she wasn't burning, despite being engulfed. I was horror-stricken.

Amusingly, I responded the way seemingly any child does. I fixated on the light-switch. I found the manic courageous-foolishness necessary to spring from my bed. I rushed my adversary, as a kamikaze. Her head rotated as she tracked my flight across the bedroom floor. The heat from her made sweat spring from my pores. Strafing at the last moment, I managed to flick the switch. I held to the wall over the switch plate with both hands, as if an executioner at Old Sparky. The light jumped on. The flaming phantasm faded away like heat waves in the desert.

Sparing no time to catch my breath, I stormed my mother's room. I barely roused her as I crawled into her bed and her embrace. But I could never tell her what happened. After all, how could I tell her what she had opened the gateway to?