Exceptional Recalling a strange occurance Shooting Marbles on the Astral Plane by Henry King True Story Contest contest entry

Not long after my tenth birthday, in 1946, my firefighter father was on duty at the station. In those days firefighters worked twenty-four hours and were off twenty-four hours. The shift change was at noon. We lived in a three-bedroom apartment. My parents had the large bedroom. I slept in the small one across the hall. My three sisters, the eldest seven and the youngest three, were down the hall across from the bathroom. A hall to the kitchen separated the bathroom from my room. That evening my mom made home-fried potatoes with onions and heated a pot of pork-n-beans. I can still hear the grease popping and smell the pungent aroma of the onions. After dinner, my oldest sister and I cleaned ourselves up for school the next day. Shortly after, we went to bed. A little after midnight my youngest sister, feeling ill, sought our mother. Mom wasn't in her bedroom. My sister found mom, on the bathroom floor, laying in her own vomit. My mom upon being awakened, realized something very bad happened, called the doctor. I was in a strange hall that had no interior doors. One end of the hall was dark and the other end brightly lit. Bare footed, in my underwear, I was shooting marbles. I needed to practice with my new steely, a ball bearing about three-eighths of an inch in diameter. The steely weighed about twice as much as my favorite shooter an agate. We called them aggies. A commotion with indistinct but loud voices, taking place beyond the dark end of the hallway, got my attention. Instinctively, I didn't want to go there. Not in a hurry, I slowly made my way to the bright end of the hall following my marble shots. On my knees, more than halfway down the hall, my dad called me. Something was wrong because he used my given name. His voice was sharp, anxious, it was urgent. Suddenly, I awoke in my dad's arms. He was holding me tight, rocking me and kissing my brow. I wondered, what was he doing at home so early in the morning? A man dressed in medical whites said, "Doc, the lab called. It's ptomaine. It was most likely the beans." My mother, my sisters and I were ill. No one ever told me, I was critically ill and near death. Author Notes This is a companion piece to my, "A Lion in the Hallway." I want to thank Book Lotto for their beautiful Destiny Revealed.

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