Wake Up Erica

By the time I was 17 my mom and I had moved from Los Molinos, CA to New Mexico. We moved for several reasons, the biggest being a local Los Molinos gang had its eyes on beating me up and my mom got attacked by one of its members. So we moved to a town called Truth or Consequences, a place that promised everything in its own name, in other words Truth or Consequences would be had.

As a teenager I was lazy and often slept all day in the summer. I was working at home on an Online GED program so I wouldn't have to go to school, so I got to sleep in through most of the day.

I would usually sleep until noon or well after because I was up nights watching Anime on hulu, a site to watch and stream shows and movies. Sometimes I would be up into the early morning hours watching movies and shows, so it was rare to see me before twelve unless I had something important to do.

On this one particular spring day I was waking up in my four poster brass bed (very goth looking) and thinking about how I really didn't want to get up at all. I could hear people talking in the living room. Not very clearly of course as the walls are thicker than my childhood homes.

There are windows that look out onto a covered porch at the back of our house. The closed porch was built onto the house sometime after its construction, clearly, because there are five windows on the back side of the trailer that have the view of another "room" so to speak. Usually I would have one of my windows on the back porch cracked and my front window cracked so a breeze would come through, that night I had closed my front window so only the porch window was open at the head of my bed.

My bed was up against the porch windows (there are two of them) and in the middle of my room. Actually it filled most of my room at the time. So I could only ever hear mumbling from the living room T.V. And anyone who might be speaking in that part of the house. So really all I knew was that my mom was most likely talking to someone or watching T.V.

I had my eyes closed trying to justify, in my mind, staying in bed longer. Suddenly I heard a voice say "Wake up" from what sounded like right in front of me, (I was laying on my stomach with my head facing the porch windows and a pillow over my head) only that couldn't have come from in my room right in front of me because my bed was pushed against the windows facing the porch.

The voice didn't scare me, just startled me into opening my eyes and looking around. I didn't see anyone in my room and I peeked through the window and saw no one on the porch either.

After I shrugged it off I figured the voice was right and I should get up. I wanted to check to make sure it hadn't been anyone in the house, and to see if I was the only one who had heard it. I came into the living room and saw my mom and her friend talking over coffee and asked if they had been on the porch, they said no they hadn't, so I asked if they had heard a lady's voice say "Wake up," they said no they hadn't heard anyone either.

I just shrugged and said "Guess it was the ghost then."

The voice I heard was female, approximately 30-40 years of age, calm and clear, with a kind affliction. The feeling I got when I heard it was not one of fear but of warmth and love, it didn't scare me at all. Even remembering it doesn't bring on fear.

Sadly she hasn't said a word since that day but I know she's still around watching over us.