Hackles raised…

Something’s just not right. I can’t put my finger on it. I can’t figure out what is off but something is just not right.

I get these feelings occasionally right before something bad happens. I don’t think I’m psychic. I don’t think I could even remotely tell you what I think might be about to happen. I just don’t feel quite “right”. It’s a dark cloud lingering on the peripheral of my vision, a specter haunting my thoughts. (And no, I’m not depressed. It isn’t like that.)

It’s a foreboding feeling, a sense of unease, that thing that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. It’s the thing in the woods on a windy, moonless night. The echo of your steps in a dark alley that might not be just your steps, the empty parking structure after everyone else has gone home, and the dream that wakens you with a silent scream caught in your throat as you tug at blankets trying to escape it’s grasp.

It will hurt you. It will bring you pain. It will make you cry.

I hate this feeling because it’s never wrong. I had it before my Papaw died, before my brother died, before every car accident I’ve ever been in, and before I lost my baby. It lingers, leaving its taint on everything until you can look back and see when it started. I’m in the beginning. I can’t look back. My hackles are raised because it’s there waiting and I know it.

Soon enough there will be a story. For now, there’s the waiting…