I’m convinced Winter has won full-custody of Spring and we only get visitations every other weekend. I wanna see my Sun!

Though mentally drained and physically exhausted, I did not sleep well for the next few nights. I kept my gun close at hand as I tossed and turned between a few minutes of dozing and jumping awake.

Charley-dog, on the other hand, slept peacefully at the foot of my bed. I tried desperately to copy his good-natured attitude.

Looking back, it probably didn’t help that I immediately spent several hours researching clowns and rakes, trying to find a connection. By the time I powered down my computer and fell into bed, I had come to the conclusion that while clowns were real – rakes were not.

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had encountered something…what should I call it? Other worldly is about the best I can do.

Slowly, my life returned to normal. Then my work shift changed and I began having night-terrors in the middle of the day when I had to sleep.

For nearly two-years as a security guard, I’d worked day shift, getting up as the sun rose and going to bed long after it set. Now, I had been assigned three construction sites to patrol five overnights a week and it set me on edge.

“I can’t help but feel like I’m being watched all the time,” I told my relief one morning. He believed it was a case of PTSD from having killed a man in the doorway of my own home.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I replied as I attempted to shrug it off.

---

About a week later…

As a nighttime security officer, I had taught myself not to follow a set routine. I detoured from place to place, changing patterns at will, never knowing from shift to shift where I might start or end as I moved from one site to the next.

However, I did have one habit, lunch, which I took from two till three each morning. It was a habit that was established by the company that employed me and not of my own doing.

Finishing up my ham sandwich, I placed the empty wrapper back in the brown paper bag and tucked it into my backpack. Retrieving the metal thermos, I began to pour myself a cup of coffee, when I caught movement out of the corner of my left eye.

I snapped my head around – nothing there.

“Must be a black dog,” I muttered, recalling the term we used, when I was an active member of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, to describe a perceived movement from the corner of the eye.

Satisfied, I returned to pouring my coffee when it happened again. Slowly, I turned my head to the left and saw the briefest flash of a translucent figure standing by my vehicle.

It disappeared immediately as I tried to focus on it. With a half-poured cup of coffee in one hand, I fumbled with the keys, which were in the ignition, fired up the truck and drove from where I’d parked.

The remainder of the morning was filled with tension for me. I refused to get out of the truck to wander from place to place and key-in, opting to remain sequestered in the safety of the vehicle’s locked cab.

The following night, I brought Charley-dog to work with me. He made me feel safe – or at least safer.

There was a possibility that I could get in trouble, even fired, for having my pet with me at work. No one said a thing.

Three night after I began bringing Charley, who had grown used to the new routine, he growled. I had jus’ looked at him sleeping in the passenger seat when he sat straight up and stared off to my left – the same area in which I thought I’d seen my ‘black dog.’

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I felt my body shutter with an involuntary shiver as I knew he could see what I could not. As calm as my shaking hand could, I turned the ignition over and slowly pulled away from where I was parks.

As I glanced at the rear-view mirror on the door, I saw the same translucent figure dart into the ink of the early morning. It was then that I knew I was being stocked – predator and prey – and I didn’t enjoy the idea of being whatever it was’ prey.

---

Finally, it was the weekend and I felt I could relax a little. I had long since set-up a security system around my home consisting of several cameras and lights that would instantly come on when something came close enough to activate one of them.

Long forgotten was the old saw, “Jus’ because you feel safe, doesn’t mean you are safe.” I would be reminded of it in short order.

So my guard was down as I got up to take Charley-dog for his mid-morning walk. It was something new for both of us, since I insisted on bring him to work with me anymore and he seemed to really enjoy the exercise.

We were less than two-minutes into our walk when I saw a woman approaching from the opposite direction. She looked to be in her early-50s, a little over weight, but pleasant to look at.

While I thought nothing of it as she crossed the street mid-block, Charley took note. The fur on his back stood up and he refused to take his eye’s off her as she suddenly turned down another street.

I felt on edge as I looked back and caught her, stopped, watching me.

Back home after our half-hour walk, I concluded that whatever these other-worldly things were, they were everywhere and my only defense against them was the early warning of a dog and a gun.

Laying down for my daytime nap, I plotted, trying to develop a plan to deal with these beings once and for all. Unfortunately, I could come up with nothing that could or world eradicate them from my life, but I did begin to wonder if they were somehow implanting themselves in other peoples lives.

God has a sense of humor. While He closed a window and opened a door for me, He forgot to tell me that I’d have to built my own steps.

It was Monday, August 8, 2005 when 64-year-old Nita Mayo traveled over Sonora Pass. Last seen at the Strawberry General Store near Pinecrest, California, the nurse didn’t return to her job at Mt. Grant General Hospital, in Hawthorne, Nevada, the following day.

Alarmed, her co-workers contacted the Mineral County, Nevada, Sheriff’s Office and reported her uncharacteristic absence. Both Tuolumne and Mono County, California, Sheriff’s Offices were also notified.

Nita’s car would be seen by a Caltrans employee at Donnell Vista that Monday night and again Tuesday morning. But he didn’t think much about the car, as backpackers also use the point for overnight parking.

On Wednesday evening a Tuolumne County sheriff’s sergeant realized Nita’s 1997 Mercury Sable station wagon was still at the vista. Inside her locked car were souvenirs from the store, her purse, wallet, glasses and car keys. Only her camera and prescription sunglasses were missing.

Search dogs were brought in, but no scent of Nita was picked up. Further searches of the area also failed to locate any evidence of her.

In September 2005 Tuolumne County Sheriff’s investigators named Jewel Rice of Colorado Springs, Colorado as person of interest in Nita’s disappearance. She’s believed to have been in the Strawberry and Donnell Vista areas around the same time, asking for help after her vehicle broke down.

Jewel left Sonora without her car on August 12 and current whereabouts remain unknown.

Nita’s not the only person to be reported missing from Donnell Vista on California’s State Route 108. Forty-six-year-old Patricia Tolhurst vanished from the vista in 2014.

On April 20, Patricia mailed a letter to friends letting them know that she would be hiking in the area of Donnell Vista. She also sent two audiotapes to a friend telling him her life story.

Two days later, her white Toyota 4-Runner, with its sun-roof still open would be found abandoned with her keys, purse and identification inside. Search and rescue teams found no nearby clues leading to the mother of two.

Then sometime before October 3, 2016, 68-year-old Breck Phelps vanished along with his fishing gear and cellphone, from Donnell Vista. His car, a red 2007 Nissan Versa, was found a quarter-mile away near a trail leading to the Stanislaus River.

After four-days of searching by teams that included the California Rescue Dog Association, Monterey Bay Search Dogs and the National Guard, no sign of Breck, a corrections officer at the  Sierra Conservation Center, near Jamestown, California, was found.

Finally, 20-year-old Humboldt State University student and future forest ranger, Michael Madden went missing from his campsite at Sand Bar Flat, 25-miles south-east of Donnell Vista around August 10, 1996 with his dog, Matilda. Four days later, Matilda would wobble into camp, worn-out and severely dehydrated.

Two days later, friends went looking for Michael only to find a freshly build fire and Joseph Tine using Michael’s registered campsite. He was carrying an automatic pistol and asked the friends if they were looking for “Mikey.”

Over the next six-hours Tine is said to have repeatedly cocked this pistol as the group waited for Michael to return. Tine was given a polygraph nine months after Michael vanished, however the results have never been released and he’s never been charged.

Investigators say that they believe Michael met with foul play. Included in this theory is a possible run-in with Cary Stayner, who was convicted in 2002 of murders of the Carole Sund, her teenage daughter Juli Sund, also from Humboldt County, California and their teenage traveling companion Silvina Pelosso as well as Yosemite Institute naturalist Joie Armstrong.

If you have any information you can can call the Tuolumne County, California, Sheriff’s Office at 209-533-5815 or the Mineral County, Nevada, Sheriff’s Office at 775-945-2434.

It breaks my heart to see an elderly person eating alone in a restaurant. Then I realized it was a mirror.

Wanted: Someone to feed me Cheetos so my fingers don’t turn orange. No weirdos.

you are cute as hell
but please stop stepping on my – ow
those are my frigging nuts!

It’s called, “The Loneliest Highway in America.” U.S. Highway 50 runs from from Sacramento, California to Ocean City, Maryland, bisecting the state of Nevada, north from south.

Early morning, perhaps one or there about, and I was finally leaving Baker, Nevada, where I’d been attending a cowboy poetry gathering. I’d thought about spending the night, was even offered a bunk at a nearby ranch house, but I wanted to get home to my wife, so declining, I drove west towards Carson City, the state’s capital.

After stopping in Ely to refuel my truck and get the largest coffee the gas station had to offer, I hopped back on the highway and quickly zipped passed the turn-off to the small hamlet of Ruth. It would be some 70 miles before I’d see another town.

Listening to whatever radio station I could find on the dial, kept me awake along with my windows being open and the cup of coffee as I tooled across the open expanse of desert with far off mountainscapes surrounding me. Unfortunately, I had to slow down for a small group of cattle that had managed to escape their pasture.

Driving has always been and remains an enjoyment and I’ve never minded driving in the dark. As I progressed, I only encountered one vehicle heading the other way and none as I continued to roll west.

Recalling the evening of poetry, songs and stories I relaxed into my drive. But then I saw something standing in the highway jus’ outside my headlights and I pushed on my brakes to slow down.

It was a man – or what I believed to be a man – with an unusually large and perfectly round-shaped head. Soon my speed was about 35 miles an hour and as I came closer, he stepped into the eastbound travel lane, so that I could pass him.

“What in the hell?” I heard myself blurt out as I drove by, disturbed by his bulbous hairless, earless white-head, yellow clown-style hat, solid blue irisless eyes, black pointed nose, gray suit, tie and dress shoes.

Quickly, I glanced in my rear view mirror, moved to the side of the road and retrieved my revolver, all the while planning to give this asshole a piece of my mind. But no sooner had I stepped from my truck and looked back, he was gone.

Jus’ as quickly, I got back in my truck, fired it up and took off. Call me coward, but I really didn’t want to confront or be confronted by whatever I’d seen.

The event became a footnote within hours after getting home and telling my wife about what I’d witnessed. We laughed and forgot about it.

Later that same day, she had the television on and as I walked into the living room a commercial appeared. The sight caused a cold-sweat to flood over my entire body.

I shouted, “Holy shit! That’s the thing I saw driving home!”

“Don’t be silly,” she scoffed, “That’s Jack from ‘Jack in the Box.’”

While it’s true that I cannot recall Mother ever singing or cooing me to sleep, nor do I remember ever seeing a spinning mobile above my crib, I can still hear the man in our upstairs attic and how he came down every once in a while to wander our night time hallways. His hands like ice and breath smelling of rusting iron.

One morning, he woke up feeling different. He suddenly had large breasts and his penis was missing, in its place a gaping hole.

Fucking extraterrestrials!