Post by LDS Guru Girl on Feb 28, 2005 7:57:43 GMT -5
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As a youth I worked for a company which sold and hired out forklift trucks and other equipment. Since I have never been a punctual person, I enjoyed the fact that the plant was only about 20 minutes swift walk away from my home. In those days I had a big black dog, a Labrador cross-breed of great intelligence; he was capable of jumping over a 9 ft wall from a standing start and as protective as he was powerful. Some nights I would take him for a long walk around the factories and workshops that were so close to my home.
It was not always a welcoming place after dark; we regularly encountered vandals and thieves at work and more than once a lowlife hopped up on drugs or booze tried to rob me. As you might expect, I took the view that anybody crazy enough to attempt violent robbery against somebody accompanied by a large and fanatically defensive dog deserved no pity if he got torn to pieces for his stupidity.
One night I saw a group of teenagers not much younger than myself trying to breakdance in an empty factory carpark whilst they were out of their minds on glue. The reek of ‘Bostik’ industrial adhesive was plain yards away from the spectacle and it was hard not to laugh at the sight of half a dozen jerks continually falling flat on their backsides and faces, amidst a collection of big budget-sized glue tins, whilst attempting to keep pace with a frantic jungle rhythm from a badly-tuned ghetto blaster.
On another occasion, a punk decided that he was going to hide behind a wall and jump out with his knife as I passed by...I sent the dog to flush him out and he screamed like a little girl when this coal black beast with huge teeth came round the corner instead of me!
It was a cold evening in November when I saw Dot for the last time. The dog and I were just passing the plant where I worked when I saw her, way in the distance, walking down the long straight road towards us.
Dot was a 40-something, wrinkled, prematurely aged woman who used to work as a cleaner at the plant; she had red hair - that’s to say that she had hair that was literally the colour of a fire engine...somehow or other, the dye she used always turned out that way. All the time I knew her, her unnaturally RED hair was like a beacon that made it possible to identify her many yards away. I knew something of her history - she had a husband who drank and beat her. She’d often come to work with a black eye or a collection of bruises. Her main task was to clean the portable buildings that the firm hired out as a sideline. Since they had no running water when they were sitting around in the yard, this meant that she had to carry buckets of hot water to and fro. In the Winter the water would get cold very quickly and her hands would suffer. Whenever I was working the pressure washer used to clean the firm’s trucks and equipment, I’d try to make sure that her bucket was regularly refilled with piping hot water straight from the machine.
Dot gave up her job and I didn’t see her for over six months. I was in a local shop, waiting to pay for a newspaper, when she came in and I asked her how she was doing. It turned out that she’d been forced to quit her job by a family crisis that took priority over everything else. I will draw a veil over the exact nature of that crisis because it has nothing to do with the supernatural elements of this tale. I’ll never forget how Dot told me that she’d always be grateful for the small acts of kindness that I had shown her.
So, there I was - walking my dog on that cold November night; I was wearing a thick coat and the breath of both youth and dog hung in the air like steam. Walking past the plant and looking up that long, straight road which ran like an arrow for over half a mile, I saw Dot coming in the opposite direction. It was impossible not to recognise her, that stooped figure and bright, fire engine-red hair were unmistakable. The dog saw her too and moved closer to me; he was always wary of strangers and he made it a point to get between me and other people in that sort of situation.
Dot walked right up to us. I spoke to her; but she didn’t answer. Her eyes were wide open in a blank, unblinking stare; she looked straight ahead and gave every appearance of not even knowing that I was there. Even more worryingly, she was dressed in a thin cardigan and light-weight dress, her sleeves were actually rolled up, her arms were crossed over her chest and her coin purse was tucked under her left armpit. I could feel the bitter cold right through my heavy coat and it struck me that she would be freezing in those inadequate clothes. I concluded that she had been to a bar and had too much to drink - who could blame her for drowning her sorrows? She had a rotten life, a brutal husband and enough family troubles to make anybody hit the bottle. She was walking quite swiftly, oddly enough without any trace of a stagger and I knew that she was heading in the right direction for her own home (which wasn’t too far away from the plant either), so I let her go on without interfering. I looked behind me several times as I went on my own way to make sure that she was still on course; the dog had watched her walk by and he too looked back every now and then. At the time I put the dog’s interest down to the fact that he was not exactly enthusiastic about drunks and maybe nervous about what she was up to.
The next day I was working in the yard and Gerry, a fellow-employee who’d known Dot well for years, came to borrow a tool from me. I said to him “By the way, I saw Dot last night”. “Oh no you didn’t” he responded very quickly. “Oh yes I did” I replied equally smartly...to this he shook his head with a knowing air. “OK” I asked, unable to resist smiling at his attitude “what makes you so certain that I didn’t see Dot last night?”. Gerry coughed a little awkwardly and answered: “Because she has been dead for over six weeks”. The smile died on my face - I was stunned, Dot had always been a kind and patient person - it was hard not to like her. “When?, How?” I asked.
Gerry said: “Well, do you remember that day last month when the sun shone really hot and we got a fluke warm day out of season, in the middle of Winter?” (I nodded). “Dot lived next door to the corner shop on her street and she wanted to get a few groceries; so she just picked up her purse...didn’t even bother to put on a coat, just went out in her cardigan, with her purse tucked under her arm - you know how women do that?...she was in line at the checkout and she had a brain haemorrhage right where she was standing, she died instantly".
I can offer no certain explanations for what I saw that chilly November night - but I know that I saw Dot; I looked her in the face from within touching distance and it was her without any doubt. I know that I did not imagine the whole thing because the dog saw her too and I could not have conveniently imagined her in the same clothes as she was wearing on the day she died so suddenly.
[/glow]
As a youth I worked for a company which sold and hired out forklift trucks and other equipment. Since I have never been a punctual person, I enjoyed the fact that the plant was only about 20 minutes swift walk away from my home. In those days I had a big black dog, a Labrador cross-breed of great intelligence; he was capable of jumping over a 9 ft wall from a standing start and as protective as he was powerful. Some nights I would take him for a long walk around the factories and workshops that were so close to my home.
It was not always a welcoming place after dark; we regularly encountered vandals and thieves at work and more than once a lowlife hopped up on drugs or booze tried to rob me. As you might expect, I took the view that anybody crazy enough to attempt violent robbery against somebody accompanied by a large and fanatically defensive dog deserved no pity if he got torn to pieces for his stupidity.
One night I saw a group of teenagers not much younger than myself trying to breakdance in an empty factory carpark whilst they were out of their minds on glue. The reek of ‘Bostik’ industrial adhesive was plain yards away from the spectacle and it was hard not to laugh at the sight of half a dozen jerks continually falling flat on their backsides and faces, amidst a collection of big budget-sized glue tins, whilst attempting to keep pace with a frantic jungle rhythm from a badly-tuned ghetto blaster.
On another occasion, a punk decided that he was going to hide behind a wall and jump out with his knife as I passed by...I sent the dog to flush him out and he screamed like a little girl when this coal black beast with huge teeth came round the corner instead of me!
It was a cold evening in November when I saw Dot for the last time. The dog and I were just passing the plant where I worked when I saw her, way in the distance, walking down the long straight road towards us.
Dot was a 40-something, wrinkled, prematurely aged woman who used to work as a cleaner at the plant; she had red hair - that’s to say that she had hair that was literally the colour of a fire engine...somehow or other, the dye she used always turned out that way. All the time I knew her, her unnaturally RED hair was like a beacon that made it possible to identify her many yards away. I knew something of her history - she had a husband who drank and beat her. She’d often come to work with a black eye or a collection of bruises. Her main task was to clean the portable buildings that the firm hired out as a sideline. Since they had no running water when they were sitting around in the yard, this meant that she had to carry buckets of hot water to and fro. In the Winter the water would get cold very quickly and her hands would suffer. Whenever I was working the pressure washer used to clean the firm’s trucks and equipment, I’d try to make sure that her bucket was regularly refilled with piping hot water straight from the machine.
Dot gave up her job and I didn’t see her for over six months. I was in a local shop, waiting to pay for a newspaper, when she came in and I asked her how she was doing. It turned out that she’d been forced to quit her job by a family crisis that took priority over everything else. I will draw a veil over the exact nature of that crisis because it has nothing to do with the supernatural elements of this tale. I’ll never forget how Dot told me that she’d always be grateful for the small acts of kindness that I had shown her.
So, there I was - walking my dog on that cold November night; I was wearing a thick coat and the breath of both youth and dog hung in the air like steam. Walking past the plant and looking up that long, straight road which ran like an arrow for over half a mile, I saw Dot coming in the opposite direction. It was impossible not to recognise her, that stooped figure and bright, fire engine-red hair were unmistakable. The dog saw her too and moved closer to me; he was always wary of strangers and he made it a point to get between me and other people in that sort of situation.
Dot walked right up to us. I spoke to her; but she didn’t answer. Her eyes were wide open in a blank, unblinking stare; she looked straight ahead and gave every appearance of not even knowing that I was there. Even more worryingly, she was dressed in a thin cardigan and light-weight dress, her sleeves were actually rolled up, her arms were crossed over her chest and her coin purse was tucked under her left armpit. I could feel the bitter cold right through my heavy coat and it struck me that she would be freezing in those inadequate clothes. I concluded that she had been to a bar and had too much to drink - who could blame her for drowning her sorrows? She had a rotten life, a brutal husband and enough family troubles to make anybody hit the bottle. She was walking quite swiftly, oddly enough without any trace of a stagger and I knew that she was heading in the right direction for her own home (which wasn’t too far away from the plant either), so I let her go on without interfering. I looked behind me several times as I went on my own way to make sure that she was still on course; the dog had watched her walk by and he too looked back every now and then. At the time I put the dog’s interest down to the fact that he was not exactly enthusiastic about drunks and maybe nervous about what she was up to.
The next day I was working in the yard and Gerry, a fellow-employee who’d known Dot well for years, came to borrow a tool from me. I said to him “By the way, I saw Dot last night”. “Oh no you didn’t” he responded very quickly. “Oh yes I did” I replied equally smartly...to this he shook his head with a knowing air. “OK” I asked, unable to resist smiling at his attitude “what makes you so certain that I didn’t see Dot last night?”. Gerry coughed a little awkwardly and answered: “Because she has been dead for over six weeks”. The smile died on my face - I was stunned, Dot had always been a kind and patient person - it was hard not to like her. “When?, How?” I asked.
Gerry said: “Well, do you remember that day last month when the sun shone really hot and we got a fluke warm day out of season, in the middle of Winter?” (I nodded). “Dot lived next door to the corner shop on her street and she wanted to get a few groceries; so she just picked up her purse...didn’t even bother to put on a coat, just went out in her cardigan, with her purse tucked under her arm - you know how women do that?...she was in line at the checkout and she had a brain haemorrhage right where she was standing, she died instantly".
I can offer no certain explanations for what I saw that chilly November night - but I know that I saw Dot; I looked her in the face from within touching distance and it was her without any doubt. I know that I did not imagine the whole thing because the dog saw her too and I could not have conveniently imagined her in the same clothes as she was wearing on the day she died so suddenly.
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