Damn Little Girl

The man sat at his kitchen table opening mail. Most of it was of the more ordinary hysterical type of creditors demanding money, applications for credit cards and bills he knew he had little chance of paying at the moment.

He set the bills aside and looked out the window.

There is a time in most peoples lives when a moment comes when they feel that life has been treating them rather badly and a moment of introspection arrives. Most people when this moment comes, while not being exactly overjoyed with the way their life is going, can at least make the claim that they are doing the best that they can. Others look at their lives and see that it really isn't as bad as they have thought.

Being somewhat of a narcissist, the man was very happy with his life, but he was very disappointed with how life has been treating him.

He thought back to all of the bad stuff that had happened to him, all of his problems which led him to spend quite a bit of time in hospital, the tragic demise of his beloved dogs, and that damned little girl that kept popping up in his life!

That little Russian girl, damn her! She had been the bane of his life for the better part of four years now. It had all begun in the airplane when he found himself trapped in the bathroom by a stuck door latch.

"Just giggle it." He heard in his mind, the accented girls voice grated on his nerves. Then again when the seat belt got stuck.

"Just giggle it."
"Just giggle it."
"Just giggle it."
Over and over he heard it in his mind. Then he remembered, it hit him like a sudden punch to

the stomach. He had seen that damn little girl before the airplane! He had seen her before, but he had thought it was just some drug induced hallucination. Four years ago, at about the time his life had begun it slide, he had seen her, in the hospital where he had been recovering from a head injury.

He remembered now. As he lay in the hospital bed, that little girl, the damn little girl with her damn accent, had come into his room as the nurse had been talking to him, explaining his injuries.

The damn little girl ran up to the side of the bed looked up at his, smiled a cute little smile and made the most hurtful comment. He shuddered when he remembered it.

"You look funny."

Her mother, the nurse who had been talking to him, excused her daughter, picked her up and walked out of the room. The damn little girl was looking over her mothers shoulder back at him beaming a bright smile at him. He hated that bright little smile, he hated that cute little damn girl!

His mind began to think more about where he had seen her. His mind had been to wander when a memory hit him, hard.

There have been times in everyone's life when some memories are suppressed. The reasons for this are usually because dealing with them will cause an undue amount of stress. And the human brain has this capacity to selectively hide certain memories if it feels they could cause harm. No one is sure how this happens, or where these memories are put. They are clearly not removed all together, as the man is soon to find out. They must be put into the deepest darkest recesses of the memory and ignored. But the can and occasionally do escape and wreak havoc.

The mans eyes shot open, he had seen the damn little girl in a hospital another time! The memory of this hit him not like a fist to the stomach, but like a hard swung sledge hammer to the stomach!

Faint memories collected of his break down after the disastrous break with his last girlfriend.

He saw broken glass and quite a bit of blood, and finally a trip in an ambulance. Then he saw the face of the damn little girl.

He lay in the hospital bed, with a warm feeling of the sedatives passing over him. Then he saw her, she was standing in the door way. At first his brain didn't register who it was, but the moment that he did realize, it was quite startling.

His eyes shot open, and although they were badly blood shot and no matter how hard he tried his vision was blurred and jumpy.

He tried to sit up straight as his right hand shot out to point at the little girl. He utterly failed in the attempt to sit up, but his hand did point, for a moment.

“You’ll be all right now.”

The little girl that had caused all this turmoil, just stood there with a quizzical look on her face.

The man was teetering on the brink of a break down. More and more flashes of memories flared painfully. Over and over the memories came at him and it felt as if his brain was going to explode.

“Just giggle it.”

The little girl just stood there.

The man collapsed into a heap, but his eyes never left the little girl, he seemed transfixed. His head lolled off to the left and his shoulders slumped.

Finally he managed to speak.

“Who are you?” He tried to say this in a stronger tone, but it came out in a broken and strangled tone.

The little girl just stood there for a moment, but then she began to smile. The smile gave the man the creeping horrors.