The Slip

Late alone in the night I finished watching a horror movie called The Slip, and emerging from the couch, I examined the stairs with trepidation.

It was an era of etheric entities and rumors of… thanks to my older brother Eugene who introduced me to the expanse of his passionate paranormal understanding and consequently a variety of existential ideas leading him to contemplate film school. And it helped nothing that our father himself, as he was watching television one evening in the dining room, claimed to have seen a frail woman in a white nightgown standing still in the kitchen, wispily silent, refusing to answer. Unbeknownst to us these narratives took hold over and paralyzed our environs.

Ready for bed, spooked and jittered, I shot up the stairs and reached the top—only to slip on our family Ouija board. Back I went, in an Exorcist-tumble, to the main floor.

I was discovered at the bottom of the stairs not until morning, without a pulse. My head was twisted around entirely backwards. Eugene rushed me to the local witch doctor in hopes that she could get the crick out of my neck and reconnect my spirit with my body.