NFL Concussion Protocol

The Funeral Home:

"It used to be a funeral home..."

"Whoa, it is... gothic... and that burgundy color... looks a bit like an old church. It's definitely big enough for all three of the kids," says Susan, who's stirring nervously in her seat and repeatedly sweeping back a wayward strand of wavy golden hair behind her right ear.

Jim, her husband, seemingly pays little attention, and mumbles "kids" sarcastically. Sitting behind the wheel of his black Porsche SUV, his eyes are empty as open graves. He snarls and turns the steering wheel, nosing the vehicle smoothly into the property's long, straight, almost endless driveway that reminds Susan of a tarmac.

"How long will the project last?" she inquires. Her voice slightly raises. Anger and annoyance are coursing through her.

Jim relapses into silence, then shrugs his shoulders, parks the car. Susan sighs and shakes her head.

"Typical Jim," she thinks, "malignant in his reserve and stoic in his void."

The two exit the vehicle. Susan's high heels clicking rhythmically on the black pavement of the driveway as they walk towards the verandah, step up the curiously steep stairs and approach the high, pitched, thick black metal gothic double doors. The entranceway is cut from granite stone and has ornate carvings of Biblical themes and 3-foot statues of Peter, Paul, Jesus and Mary built into the lower left and right sides of the archway.

The door opens inwardly, as if by itself. The pair are met by a real estate agent, a frumpy woman who materializes, like an apparition. The schmoozy woman smiles with her whole face and ushers the couple inside.

Susan thinks the agent just looks like an agent, just looks like someone from a real estate sign. Like she's more of a photograph than a person.

The agent moves fast for a woman of her size, and makes cloying conversation, attempting to ingratiate herself, and as she speaks, she laughs mechanically in a way that reminds Susan of the sounds of sitcoms she'd watched as a kid, like Married With Children and Friends. Those 90s sitcoms with laugh tracks that'd go off in bursts at snappy one-liners.

Susan wonders if the real estate agent is a human at all, or if she's a bot, a cyborg, or AI hologram.

Then Susan starts to notice the agent's perfume, how musky it is, how it lingers in the air as the agent whisks them through the furnished house. No robot would be programmed to smell like that, Susan thinks.

They move fast through the first floor, their heads on a swivel. The agent's hands glide, gracefully, as if in tai chi movements, and she speaks of amenities, distances, and dimensions.

Inspecting the antique furniture, the drapes of crushed velvet, the house strikes Susan as a time warp. Or perhaps a bizarre, grotesque museum. Everything seems dusty, like a museum, and although every room has large windows, little light enters the house. There's such a grimness to the place. A stuffy feeling. An ugliness to everything.

Even the hardwood floors. They look freshly polished; however, their shine is almost unnaturally sparkly, Susan posits. She scratches her nose and notices a strong antiseptic smell wafting in the air.

When they step onto the wide staircase, they find themselves instantly on the second floor, unnervingly so, as if they didn't climb the stairs at all, or as if Susan experienced a splice in time, or a spell of amnesia.

Then they are checking each bedroom. They move with precision, at an almost military speed. The hallways slant and bend curiously, disturbing Susan's equilibrium.

The bedrooms are horrendous, each room painted a different unsightly color- lime green, 70s neon orange, banana yellow. Yikes. Whoever designed the place must have been color blind. Or insane. Susan ponders redecoration schemes...

Susan is suddenly spooked by the rooms' dim, unnatural light that repeats in various wall mirrors and gilded picture-frames. It's a sepia tone that's harsh, hideous.

Gazing at one of the picture-frames, she's creeped out to notice that all the picture-frames hanging about the house are empty. Every single one of them. They are devoid of photos, paintings, anything, and Susan feels it renders the house indescribably creepy and bleak...

Besides barren, the house just seems... chaotic, uneven and off-balance. It's as if the house was an experiment, a strange arrangement of angles, geometric spaces and patterns only a mathematician could understand. Every room seems like a wrong turn, a dead end in a maze. Every room she sees is confusing and ultimately unsettling.

In addition to her aesthetic repulsion and discombobulation, viewing the house just feels joyless. It's a mechanical, cold task. It's automatic. It's forced. There's no happiness here. The place feels suffocating. Susan loses her breath and wheezes once or twice, like she's at a high altitude.

After inspecting the fully furnished bedrooms, which, to Susan, are all morbid, they're at once in the basement; and again, Susan only recalls beginning down the stairs from the second floor, right as she was thinking of how the stairs remind her of an Escher print...

The basement is a tall, windowless space. It is bright white. White everything. Shiny white linoleum floor, white paneling, white walls with Grecian cornices, but in the background, the basement's space is vast and dark, and Susan sees stars, moons, and planets, cosmic debris and what looks to be an asteroid, the space rock barreling forth, in their direction, like a wrecking ball.

Susan presses her eyes shut, grinds her teeth, braces herself for impact, feeling as if she's aboard a passenger plane, about to crash.

But she opens her eyes to find herself in a forward motion, from the living room toward the kitchen, and Susan has a sensation that their feet aren't moving, that the floor is moving, instead of them, like the floor is an electronic machine, a people mover, like in the airport. She feels a hard stop and gets slightly dizzy crossing into the kitchen.

She shudders, gulps instinctively, then pans her gaze around the spacious, fully equipped kitchen, with its silver refrigerator, and modern appliances. It's a stark contrast to the rest of the house. It's so... modern... It's light and there's not a single antique... It could be in one of those "Modern Homes" magazines she sees at the supermarket.

Surprised by the commodious kitchen's immense size, she also thinks the house appears far larger, almost infinite inside; the house far bigger than it seemed from the outside.

Jim, as usual, doesn't speak much to the agent or Susan, just grunts and snorts, here and there, but he stops to take a business call, rages at his phone, drowning out the tinny voice in his headset. Hoarsely, he bellows out something unpleasant regarding a projected target date.

Susan does most of the talking with the agent, asking the usual, perfunctory house-related questions, inquiring about the neighborhood too.

However, in truth, she's confused and scared. She already hates the house, its design. Its effect on her. The psychic visions and unnatural movements. How she's losing her grip. It's as if the place was meant to be intimidating, disorienting, and ugly.

It could have been nice, warm, a real home, perhaps, Susan thinks to herself, pensively. It has huge panoramic windows in the living room, a wide staircase in the anteroom, and its chestnut brown hardwood flooring is an inviting color. There's plush antique furniture everywhere, 19th century moldings, and recently added marble flooring and brass fixtures in the bathrooms.

And the kitchen, even by Susan's standards, is immaculate. It's sparkling, and state of the art, having just been remodeled, and has a fancy, see-through fridge, and smart controls for the appliances.

It could have been a nice home, Susan thinks. It really could have, if not for...

Behind the house sits a sizable spit of land, a behemoth of a backyard. Tragically, though, it is an eyesore. The square patch of land is filled with only shabby wildflowers and bushes and is bisected by a small unkempt lawn.

The backyard is curiously empty, giving it a strange, eerily vacant and lonely feeling. She'd never seen a backyard that big be so empty. Not a patio set or a wooden table or grill or playground or pebble path or bird bath or anything. Susan thinks it probably should have a pool, given its tremendous size, but considering the house's history, she understands why no pool was installed.

The house's history, yes, it flits through her mind, once again. The history is probably what makes it appear uglier than it is.

Almost telepathically, the agent's smug robotic face shifts, darkens, and becomes downcast, as she lowers her double chin toward the floor, the basement.

"So, you know, this property was a business, providing services for those who'd passed on," the agent's cheery voice deadens and sounds apologetic.

"Services for those who'd passed?" scoffs Jim. The sarcastic tone of his voice clearly mocks the agent's euphemism, and he cocks his big head to the side, his hazel eyes narrowing. He stares dead on at the agent and sneers at her, menacingly, his pearly white teeth peeking out from underneath his curled, thin upper lip, his bleached choppers gleaming in the bright sunlight slanting in from the kitchen's floor to ceiling windows.

"It was a funeral home, yes. But this was disclosed in the literature. And it's why the place is renting for a fraction of the price of the others in this neighborhood," the agent goes on, matter-of-factly. Her tone returning to saccharine, her eyes brightening, she continues, "This place is a steal. A property this size..."

"The price is hardly a steal if it's really haunted! Your literature didn't mention anything about that," Susan shoots back, her venomous candor taking the agent off guard.

"There was... was an unfortunate..." the agent bumbles, turning her cheek to avert the couple's scrutinizing gaze.

Susan's sigh interrupts the agent's feeble attempt at an explanation. "Unfortunate?" Susan blurts out, her face twisting into a harsh scowl.

Susan sniggers, clucks at the agent's callousness, and goes on, "The kid killed his siblings, his parents, then went to his school and shot 25 people. He claimed he'd been possessed by demonic spirits and had a paranormal expert testify on his behalf in court. Please, we heard about it on the news, and we read about the case online just this morning," Susan's arms are akimbo as she speaks; her eyes are bulging, electric in anger.

The agent rolls her eyes, flutters her long fake lashes and draws in a deep breath. She shakes her head and brushes back the curly black bangs hanging astray from her chignon.

Then the agent stiffens up. Perhaps expecting another fusillade of questions or complaints to spring from the couple's lips, the agent decides to play hardball, and her tone suddenly shifts to one of robotic rage and forced politeness.

"Okay, okay, you folks know the history of the place. It was all over the news. But remember, the kid eventually pled guilty, and no such evidence of 'paranormal' anything was found." The agent flicks her fingers in air quotes around the word "paranormal," and continues, "The show on TLC came up with only white noise. Because, frankly, that sort of ghost stuff doesn't exist."

The agent pauses and her cyborg smile shifts back on, as if her software has set her veneer back to sugary.

Her voice sweetens too, but she speaks, condescendingly, like a mother who just lashed out at a petulant child, "You see, this is what we refer to as a 'distressed property,' yes, but this is the only property for rent in this neighborhood. You said you wanted a house here for 6 months. You said you wanted to be near downtown. Well, this is it. If you aren't interested, I understand, and I can show you a similar property. Buuuuut," Susan winces at how the agent draws out that syllable, "it's an hour farther from the city and twice as expensive. And I already have three other clients interested in this property, soooo, please, take a few minutes, talk amongst yourselves, look around a bit more if you'd like. I'll be waiting outside."

The agent's smile grows so big and forced Susan worries it might explode the lady's cheekbones. The agent turns and clicks off, her heels talking to the floor at an incongruous clip as she plucks out her phone from her black Fendi handbag and saunters away staring and swiping at the device.

Susan believes the device might be controlling the agent somehow, a digital overlord...

Jim nods his head, "Susan," he says, speaking her name for the first time in what seems like years, not just calling her "you..."

"Susan, I can't live in an apartment again. Even a big condo. I hate having people living on the other side of the wall. I hate smelling people's food in the hallway. I can't do it again. I can't."

Jim pans his gaze, toward the spacious dining room, the place still furnished with the previous owner's belongings. The couple's relative who'd inherited the property, while attempting, unsuccessfully to sell it, had decided to rent it, and had kept it furnished with the belongings of the slain family.

"But, Jim, it is... so... so... creepy. I mean, what happened here. It was a funeral home, and then... Ick, it's... I mean, what if it really is haunted?"

Goosebumps run up Susan's arms and she feels a chill splash over her, like she's had a glass of ice water thrown at her.

"Do you believe in that crap? I don't. I want a house. I want my space. I don't want to drive four hours every day. It's only 20 minutes from here to the office. We're renting the place and moving in."

And with that, the matter is settled. Jim's big round eyes remind her of portholes on a sailing ship as he lumbers his massive frame out of the kitchen, through the house, to the verandah, on his way to speak with the agent and sign the lease.

Susan, her arms crossed over her chest, taps her foot impatiently, shakes her head and grimaces. She thinks back to when she was younger, working part-time as a cheerleader. That was when she met Jim, when he was a rookie in the NFL.

Like she often does, she thinks back to those days, but not nostalgically. Because sometimes, just sometimes, though increasingly often these days, she wishes she didn't get pregnant then...

She wishes she'd stayed in college. She liked reading and studying, campus life... And she wishes she had started the clothing business she'd dreamed about. She'd had an idea for something like Lululemon, athleisure wear. But she'd never pursued it. And that haunts her... The missed window of opportunity. It hurts her, watching the Lululemon company raking in billions. Seeing every housewife, every lady in her neighborhood in yoga pants. And now, here she is, having lost all her money. Money she didn't even earn. Money she'd married... Pathetic...

Worse yet, though it makes her ashamed, her mind sinks further into regret, and sometimes... sometimes she wishes she'd not gotten pregnant. At all.

She hates thinking she shouldn't have had that kid, that first one. But she can't help it. And there are times she regrets the others, too. She really can't help thinking about what she could have been. Her son, her daughter, even her youngest son, just their faces, remind her of that missed time, missed opportunities, her unrealized dreams. Just their faces can be such cruel, cruel reminders.

She loves her children and hates thinking like this. It makes her ugly, a hideous, terrible person, she knows, but the thoughts remain, appear in transit, like awful graffiti scrawled on a highway overpass...

All these thoughts flit through her mind as she stands there, defeated. Her youth gone. And now their fortune was nearly gone too. They had debts piling up after Jim's business ventures went sour. They had to sell their mansion, most of their possessions, most of their cars, their cute speedboat. Like so many other NFL players, Jim had found his earnings squandered and vanished.

She should have stepped in. She should have done more. But she was busy, with the kids, with the charities.

She was just as guilty, too, she figures, having taken those retail therapy shopping trips, those European vacations, booking those first-class plane tickets, even for short flights, and those ridiculously fancy lunches and dinners, those afternoons of facials, Dead Sea mud wraps, manicures and pedicures, foot massages at the spa.

She knows her harsh reality. That this is what it is. That Jim must take on this project. She knows they could, theoretically, get by without it, get by on his healthy NFL pension, but if this project takes off, if it is a hit, they'll be rich again. Really rich again, Jim says.

She wants to believe it. She wants more than anything to be rich again. To not have to worry about money. To not have to deal with jerks like that leasing agent, the patronizing robotic bitch. That's the best part of having fuck you money, she remembers, being able to say "fuck you." Not having to take shit from anyone.

"Dammit, ugh, I guess we've got no choice," she mutters to herself. She hangs her head low, draws in a deep breath. Then she exhales, suddenly finding herself sitting in the passenger seat of their car, the Porsche inching in reverse, rolling out of their new home's tarmac-like driveway.