Case 8: Shelley It happened one night when I was emptying out some trash. Echoing down the hall I heard an angry rattling, like some sort of wild dogs running through a bunch of tine cans. I walked down the hallway carefully, waving a flashlight in front of me. That’s when I saw it moving its way out of the trash room in the dormitory. It looked like an ordinary box fan. But…it was dancing.
I couldn’t turn away. The dancing was drawing me in, teaching me, preaching what it could to make me understand the ultimate power behind the dance. I watched it for a good 20 minutes before I was finally able to look away. The college had a policy on taking things from the trash room, but the fan was beckoning me to take it, and I had to comply. Besides, I thought, it wasn’t in the trash room anymore, it had come out to me… and I had to take it. I took a step toward the fan and it unplugged itself, just begging for me to take it.
I grabbed the fan and holding it tight in my hands I ran up to my dorm room. I didn’t see why anyone would throw this treasure away. I didn’t stop running until I got into my room and had locked the door. I was supposed to continue to pack, as I was going home tomorrow, but I had to marvel at my new treasure. I set the fan down and stood back to look.
The fan was white and gray mostly, but the front grill was fastened not with the screws of most fans, but instead only on the top with a couple of pieces of Duct Tape. The front grill was moving up and down slightly, almost seeming like it was talking to me. I looked further into the beauty of the fan and I noticed that one of the blades was missing. I was wondering what made it that way. What had happened to this beautiful piece of machinery?I spent the rest of that night with the fan standing by my bedside. I needed to look at it whenever I woke up. I needed to see it just in case I woke up. I had only been with the fan for a short period of time and already it was in my brain.
I woke up the next morning and the fan gave me a piece that I had never known before. I knew at that moment that the fan would be coming with me when I moved into my new apartment today. I took it to the apartment in my first load. It sat in the front seat and I put it by the glass sliding door so that it could look out of the apartment until I returned to the apartment. My mother, who was helping me move that day, moved the fan so that she could move in a chair and I cringed.
“Sweetie, do you want me to throw this old fan away?”
“Nah, that’s okay Mom. I kinda like it.”
“But, Shelley, it’s broken down and it’s duct taped together.” She looked closely, “And it’s missing a blade.”
“It’s okay, Mom, it still works and I really like it.”
“Don’t you want nice things in your new apartment?”
“I do, Mom.” I looked at her. “Tell you what, I’ll keep it for a bit and throw it away later.”
That seems to appease my mother and I left the fan away from the window until she had left for the night.
My apartment was still a mess, but luckily my mother had put away most of the kitchen and made my bed for me. I had told her that I was going to be cleaning my apartment all night, but I suppose that was a lie. I knew from the moment I said it that I was lying to my mom. I didn’t like that feeling, but I had to get to know the fan better.
I pulled out my favorite blanket and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream that my mom had gotten me, my favorite flavor, Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch, and sat down in front of the fan. I stared and stared and ate ice cream. About the time that I finished the ice cream I started to get a little woozy and sleepy. I decided to lie down right then and there. I was almost asleep when the fan started to speak to me.
“Shelley, thank you for rescuing me from the evils of the garbage bins. I was afraid for a bit that a wonderful soul like you would find me. You see, I am the goddess Shiva. I have a variety of items around the world that I like to possess. This fan is one of them. I didn’t want to lose this piece of real estate.”
“Shiva? But, aren’t you the dancing god of destruction?”
“I suppose that’s one of my many names. I am known by many things. Shiva has many forms, which are visible in my Panchavaktra form with 5 heads, a combination of all my energies : Aghora, Ishana, Tat Purusha, Varna Deva and Saddyojat or Braddha Rudra. I am a god of destruction, but also death, birth, and rebirth. It is crazy to know me only as one thing. I am one of three gods that create, what you might call, a trinity.”
“Okay. I think I understand.”
“If you understand and wish to help me, you can. All I ask is that when I want to dance you let me. I ask that you turn this fan on high and allow me to do what I must, even if that means destroying something. Parts of the world must be destroyed before they can begin to be reborn. Remember this…”
I shut my eyes and thought about what Shiva had just said to me. When I opened my eyes the fan was still sitting there, but I was lying down. I picked up my head, and looked at the fan, eyeing it suspiciously. I stood up and slowly walked back to my room. Was is all a dream? I couldn’t be sure. It seemed real enough. I crawled into my bed and was fast on my way to sleep when I had a horrifying thought. Should I have unplugged the fan? What he going to create my destruction that night?
I tossed and turned all night, just wishing to fall asleep and not think about everything on my mind. I had to speak to someone, I thought, in the morning. I needed to know if what happened was even possible.
The next morning after unplugging the fan and moving it away from any sockets. I ran to the local fortune teller to see if what was happening could be explained. Of course, everyone in town thought that she was a joke, but I couldn’t think of anyone else who I could turn to that wouldn’t think I was a joke as well. She was the only one. I looked up at the sign blowing in the breeze: “Madam Serina’s Shop”.
When I opened the door a small bell rang over my head. I froze. Did I really want to be here? I should probably go. This is a joke, I was probably just tired. I turned to go when I heard a small voice.
“Hello?”
“Hello.” I said in an equally small voice.
“Come in, find a seat.”
I moved without thinking. Pushing back the corner of a dark purple sheet that hung from the ceiling I entered into a room that was black and purple with gold specks everywhere. I couldn’t see the person who belonged to the small voice until she spoke again.
“Hello, my dear. I see that you have come looking for advice. Please have a seat.”
She was sitting in the corner of the room, wearing black, purple and gold. This allowed the woman, who I assumed was Madam Serina, to blend in perfectly with her surroundings. I sat down at the table she was sitting behind and looked at the strange woman sitting before me. I had only heard her name; I had never seen her though, in person. Her long black hair fell in tight ringlets down her back and a few strands were wild and were going every which way. She smiled at me and revealed perfect white teeth, which with highlighted nicely against her dark tan skin. I don’t know what exactly I expected, but I thought that Madam Serina would be a lot uglier than the woman sitting before me.
“What seems to be troubling you, my dear?”
“Well, I really didn’t know who else to come and see, but I need your help.”
“Give me all the details and I will do as I can…”
I described to Madam Serina all that had happened to me, from seeing the fan in the garbage room all the way to my “dream” and how I was afraid of leaving the fan plugged in now. She smiled at me as I spoke, nodding slightly. I only hoped that she would be able to help me in some way.
“My dear," she said. " It is true that gods and other souls can inhabit or possess certain items. It is wise to be careful though. Some souls have very powerful personalities and can, unlike benign ghosts, cause terrible destruction. You must be wise and carefully monitor the fan. You see, while you shouldn’t let Shiva do what he wants, you also don’t want to anger him, or his next dance of destruction could be for you.”
“What makes you such an expert on this?” I asked standing up with force, but then with a sudden remorse added, “I mean, have you seen this before? I’m sorry, but I’m new to this. I never thought I would be here.”
“My dear, you are here, because you are supposed to be here, but yes, I have seen this before, possibly even this fan. Let me tell you a story.”
I sat back down and listened.
“Back a few years ago a tall young man came to see me with a fan. He told me that every fan that he bought kept breaking blades off of itself and that it was really starting to freak him out. I told him that he had to listen to the fans, they were probably trying to tell him something. He wouldn’t listen to me and his fans kept breaking. Finally, he stopped buying fans all together and to this day, as far as I know, he still hasn’t. He left one of the fans here though and I could tell that it was done by a great being. The young man wouldn’t listen to me, I believe that the fan that you spoke of might be the last fan that he bought. He told me that while he wasn’t going to listen to the fan that he had given it to his friend.
The fan that he left here has spoken to me as well, it told me that the boys over at the college didn’t respect it and had been playing games with it forcing it flip itself over to avoid them. He said that he would get back at them for treating the fan that way. I believe that the fan was serious. If the fan you have is in fact, the fan that the boys played with, I caution you to watch it. It probably plans on creating havoc in it’s own way.”
“I’m more scared now than I was before.”
“Don’t be, my dear, but do come back and see me if you have anymore questions. I hope you are doing well the next time I see you.”
I slowly walked back to the apartment so that I could think. Was she crazy? What was going on? I knew that I would only allow that fan to be on when it absolutely needed to be. I was scared that the dance of destruction would hurt me too.
When I arrived home late that night I climbed the stairs to my apartment and turned the key in the lock. What would I see when I entered the room? Opening the door I saw the fan sitting exactly where I left it, not plugged in. It seemed to be calling to me though and I knew that I had to plug it in.I walked over and picked it up carrying it to the closest outlet. I plugged it in and turned it to low. It started to rock back and force crying for me to make it go higher. I turned it to medium and it began to move slightly, edging toward me begging for me to turn it to high. I switched it over with a shaking hand as it began to dance about the room with its grate flying up and down. I ducked and hid my head in my hands. Finally the noise stopped and the fan was lying on its back exhausted from its latest foray in destruction. I moved the fan back to the center of the room and sat in my room as far from the fan as possible.
That night was one of the most horrible nights of sleep that I had ever had. That fan danced through my dreams causing firestorms and death and destruction. I’ve never been more scared in my lifetime. Before I awoke the fan spoke to me.
“Little dear, I’m so glad that you are still with me and haven’t been stupid like everyone else that has met up with me. Thank you for allowing me to do what I needed to do with that fan. You are an angel. However, I need you to do something for me. I need you help spread of the word of the dancing fan. Please, I need you to do whatever you can to spread my word.”When my eyes opened I realized that I had fallen out of my bed during the night and my head of hurting. I must have hit my head when I fell down.
Without thinking, I walked over to the computer and sit down, opening up my image editor and create a poster giving heed to the fan. The fan asked me to spread the word of Shiva and the fan so that all would know and fear the power as I do know.
I decided to start with a picture of Shiva in the middle right next to a picture of a box fan, almost like the one sitting in my living room. On the top I wrote, “Beware the Ultimate Power of Shiva” and on the bottom I decided to add a blurb about what Shiva can do. I wrote: Shiva is the god of destruction, death, birth, and rebirth. He has the ability to possess objects that seem harmless, but when they start to dance, they can do anything that Shiva wishes. If your harmless object tries to tell you something, listen, or you may be destroyed.
After printing out 50 copies of the poster, I went to the kitchen for some breakfast and to read my paper. Upon opening the morning paper I was surprised to see, on the on page 3, a picture of a horrendous 2 car accident. The accident involved three men all about my age or a couple of years older. My jaw dropped to the floor. I bet those guys were the previous owners of the fan. I had made up my mind that instant to do whatever the fan told me. I didn’t want to end up like those guys. I was scared, more scared than I had ever been. I read the article, and it all made sense. The accident happened, according to the article about the time that Shiva had possessed my fan and asked me to dance. They weren’t wearing their seatbelts according to the article and the paper said that alcohol had been involved. Although, it didn’t matter anyway, because even if the boys were sober the accident would have happened, because Shiva had made it so. 2 dead, one in critical; Shiva meant business.
I hung up my posters that day in an attempt to stay away from the apartment for as long as I possibly could. I didn’t want to be there with the fan all alone. I was afraid of it, I was afraid of what it could do. It was clearly evil and couldn’t be trusted.
While I was hanging up a poster in front of the library at my old college I ran into one of my good friends, Ron.“Hey Shelly, what’cha got there?”
“Oh, Ron, Hey! It’s nothing important.” I hope Shiva didn’t hear that.
Ron took one of the posters from my hand read what it said and started to laugh. “What are you putting this junk up for?”
I laughed uncomfortably, “Oh, you know… just a joke.” Please, Shiva, don’t kill me.
“It’s an interesting joke, anyway.” Ron looked at me for a few moments. “Shelly, are you doing okay? You’re looking a little sick.”
“I’m fine… just not sleeping to well.”
“Well, you need to be worn out before bed. How about I take you out for a movie?”
I thought about the fan at home. “Sounds great!” I told Ron.
We made plans for Ron to meet me at my house around 7:30 to pick me up. We were planning on watching the new Harry Potter movie, because he knew that I was a fan of the books. Ron and I had been good friends all through college, it was nice to see him.
I had almost completely forgotten about the fan, until I got home after putting up the posters. It was staring at me as I walked in, but it wasn’t awake. I felt an ounce of relieve for the first time in the last couple of days.
Ron showed up, as he said, at 7:30. He came in and I gave him the grand tour as he was the first friend to come and visit me, of course, I hadn’t really invited anyone over yet, and my friends weren’t the type that would just stop by without being invited. He seemed impressed with the place, and I was glad. I was proud of the place.
“This is a sweet apartment, Shelley. How much is it costing you?”
“Oh, about $800 a month. I’m barely making it by on my small salary. It’s so nice to have a place to myself.”
“$800? For a place like this? Not bad, not bad at all.”
“You should look into it. I know the place next door is open, you should move in and we could see each other more often.”
“Yeah, that would be cool.”
As we continued to talk, Ron continued to look around the apartment until his eyes fell upon the fan.
“Why do you have this busted up fan, Shelley?”
“It’s complicated, Ron. Let’s just say that I can’t get rid of it.”
Ron looked at me confused, but he seemed to let it drop and we left to go to the movie. When we got to the car, Ron told me that he had to go into the apartment for a second because he forgot his coat. I threw him my keys and told him to lock it back up when he got out. He was only gone for a minute or two before he came back out and threw me my keys.
“What took you so long?” I asked.
“It wasn’t that long.”
We drove off to the movie and spent the night enjoying ourselves. I missed my friends from college already. Spending the evening with Ron was great. We were lucky because we ran into a couple other friends of our at the movies and we had a blast. Ron dropped me off around 11:00 pm at my house.
“Good night Ron, that was a lot of fun. We should do that again soon.”
“Definitely, see you soon!”
I watched him drive off and then walked to my door and unlocked the door. I heard a light humming as I entered and when I looked up I noticed the fan moving side to side watching me as I entered.
I started to feel a little faint at the sight and decided to go to sleep. I went into the bedroom after pulling the plug on the fan. I didn’t understand why it was on. I was feeling ill about it.
That night the fan spoke to me again.
“Thank you Shelley for posting those posters about me today. You can do better with it next time. It wasn’t quite perfect. You’ll get it next time though. I have another favor to ask of you though. I need to share my power with the rest of the world, through your fan. I need extension cords and lots of them. I want to dance in the street and I need your help to get them. I’ll need at least 8 yards of cord, at least.”
“I’m scared. Why do you want to hurt more people?”
“I told you, my dear, I need to destroy in order to rebuild. This city needs a lot of rebuilding… Therefore, I need to do a lot of destroying. Get on the extension cord request and quick. Get them after work tomorrow. I’m counting on you.”
When I awoke the next morning I was in a panic. Now the fan wanted extension cords. I went to work as soon as I could. The apartment was already starting to feel a lot more like the fan’s place than mine. I worked the entire day through on my feet, about ready to pass out from the lack of good sleep lately. I don’t understand, I though to myself, how come most college graduates start out working crap jobs, barely able to scrape a living… This sucks.
At lunch time I ran to Wal*Mart for a few dozen extension cords. They didn’t have any cheap ones or really any at all that didn’t cost me an arm and a leg, which I really couldn’t afford at the time, so I ended up leaving empty handed. I couldn’t think of any other cheap places in town, so I gave up and went back to the store I worked at. I knew they had some old extension cords in the back room for Christmas decorations. I hoped that they wouldn’t mind if I borrowed most of them for a few nights. I needed to do this for the fan. I was afraid that if I didn’t that the fan would dance for my destruction.
I stuck the extension cords, which were luckily hidden in a no camera zone into my backpack and left the store for the night. I walked home pretty fast so that I could present my offering to the fan. I knew that Shiva would be happy that I prepared all this. I ran the extension cords all the way from my living room to the road outside and I hooked up the fan. I brought my laptop and my dinner outside to wait for Shiva to possess the fan and be pleased.I didn’t think he was going to come. I ate my dinner and played some games on my laptop without any interruptions… Finally, I heard it. The fan was asking to be turned on again. I placed the fan in the middle of the road, switched it on to high and then ran toward the house and knelt on the ground covering most of my face with my hands. I heard a car coming and I was getting scared. I shut my eyes as tightly as I could and listened to what was happening. The car was getting closer and closer until finally I heard a terrifying squeal. The fan stopped making noise and there was no noise. Finally I peaked. The car was stopped in front of the fan that had fallen over and unplugged itself.
Ron got out of the car and walked over to the fan. He traced the path of the cord all the way up to me. He walked slowly while I watched him. I couldn’t believe that he was okay. Shiva didn’t take him from me. I was so happy, I couldn’t lose my best friend.
“Are you okay, Shelley?”
“Are you okay?”
“Of course, I’m okay. What are you doing here, like this, and why is the broken fan in the middle of the road?”
“It told me too. I’m not crazy, Ron. The fan has been talking to me. It’s evil. It’s Shiva! It killed those three boys in the cars a couple of days ago.”
Ron took me in his arms and held me. Whispering “Shhh,” into my ear.
“Only 2 of the boys died. I read this morning that the 3rd guy said that none of them had slept in over 24 hours and they were drunk. It wasn’t the fan. It was stupidity.”
“But, the fan… it danced just before it happened…”
“It’s going to be okay. Just watch.”
He let me go and walked toward his car. I watched him as he got in and started the car up. He drove over the fan. The fan made a sick cracking noise as some parts of it bent out of shape and some shattered upon impact. When he finished driving over it once, he put the car in reverse and backed over it again. When he finished crushing the fiend he pulled into my driveway and walked back over to me.
“The fan can’t hurt you anymore, okay?”
I could do nothing, but stare. Ron helped me stand up and walked me inside to the table. He sat me down and then sat down across from me.
“Hey, guess what?” he asked, clearly trying to lighten the mood. I got the apartment next door, I move in next week. We’ll be neighbors. Won’t that be great?”
I nodded, sheepishly. “Yeah, It will be nice to see you more often. Will you stop by sometimes? You know, unannounced.”
“Absolutely,” he said, smiling.
I grinned. “I’m glad.”
Ron and I spent the evening talking. Before he left he asked to see my phone book. I got it for him. He leafed through it for awhile and then left it open on the table. After he was gone, I walked over to the book and looked down. There was an advertisement for group therapy. Ron must have thought I needed it.
I thought back to the events of the past couple of days and decided to give a phone call to the people. Maybe I didn’t need it, but it couldn’t hurt. Right?
Group Therapy | Case 1 | Case 2 | Case 3 | Case 4 | Case 5
Case 6 | Case 7 | Case 8 | Case 9 | Case 10 | Therapy Session
