The Pleading Tin Can

I debated for weeks whether to write this or not. But being how it's raked on my soul for years I might as well tell the tell. As a child I was known by my mother who was extreamly religious as possessed by demons. The reason she believed this was due to my ability to see and hear spirits. Every house we ever lived in I was visited by it's previous deceased occupants. And believe me there were alot of them. Dont know why I was the way I was, but only recently have been able to control it. My sister who had psychic dreams was looked upon as a sort of prophet where as I was demon possessed. The reason I even mention this is because it gose with my story and I might go into more details about my curse some other day. Anyway, I grew up in a tiny Texas town where most my family still resides this day. My mom and dad were always fighting and almost every evening mom packed me and my sisters in the car theatening our dad that she was leaving him and going to California. We would never even get to the outskirts of town before Mom would steer the car to the river. And there we would park waiting for dad to go out searching for us which he never did. On this one particular hot summer day in 72, us kids (crammed into the car like sardines) started protesting about how hot it was, so mom allowed us to get out of the car but warned us to stay on the gravel bar and not step a toe in the river. Mom wasnt only very religius you see she was also insanely overprotective. So me and my sisters piled out of the car like caged wild animals set free and we scattered. Well, while I was sitting in the car I had noticed a tin can sticking upright out of the gravel bar about a hundred yards from the water and was drawn to it like a magnet once free. The moment I got to the can I heard a moan. I looked all around thinking at first it was one of my sisters, but then heard "Please help me" and realized it was coming from the tin can. I guess I was to stupid to be scared because I squatted down and peered into the cans open top and found that the can was hollow with no bottom that I could tell and looked like it went down in the gravel for miles. I could only see darkness and recall I picked up a piece of gravel to drop down in it to find out how far it went when I heard the moan again and "Please, I know your there. Why dont you say anything" So, I said something along the lines of "What do you want me to say?" And the female voice responded "Please, get me out of here." I still to this day remember how franic and frail her voice sounded and recall how terrified I suddenly felt. But, the next thing I felt was my moms hand across my face and my hair being jerked out as she drug me to the car. Guess one of my sisters disobeyed her and waded in the water and mom called us back to the car. Only I failed to hear her and she had to come and get me which added to the anger she was already feeling because of her fight with dad. I tryed to tell her about the talking can but that only made her madder. She started calling me possessed again and quoting scriptures at me all the way home. And once we got home I got punished even worse. That night I couldnt sleep and wroke my older sister who had the dreams and told her exactly what I heard. My sister who was much wiser than I was didnt say anything for a few seconds. Then she told me something I never forgot. "Don't say anything to anyone about what you heard ever again. I see and hear things just like you all the time, but I keep them to myself and thats what you need to do too" So, I never mentioned it again until today. Our next visit to the river the can was gone, but years later I wondered if what I thought was a can might have been instead a hollow tube that someone buried alive was talking and breathing through and it rakes at my soul.

I think about it often

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