The Instagram Nightmare.
Required information: My face makes me uncomfortable because Childhood Abuse. I am not a Christian. I hate being sandbagged by fear so I will challenge it directly.
Waking world information: I have an Instagram account that currently shows my face clearly as well as the rosary. For some brainfart reason, I tagged the rosary and it has attracted some attention.
The Nightmare: The rosary is featured on a popular Catholic web-channel, and I get an avalanche of comments about it. Most of them are the expected varieties. Praise for Mary, a few prayer snippets, some chatting about the rosary beads and how they are strung. This is very amusing, but also is making me nervous. Because folks like to see what else is on a person’s public account.
Those same folks that were very positive about the rosary find the image of my face. They are not as positive about that. Slurs. Racebaiting. Assumptions about my ethnicity and why you don’t see angels of color. Sadly, I expected this from the general public. So in the dream, I go to take down the pictures and change the name of the account to have my quasi-privacy back so I can continue to challenge my discomfort.
The screen shifts back to the image of the rosary. A hand reaches out of the screen with a flaming sword (dream logic) and prevents me from using the keyboard. The mouse is disabled. I realize I’m looking at the hand of an angel. I get pissed. I try again. The angel repels me. “You have no power here, and no right to have a rosary. You will be punished for your arrogance. You will be exposed and destroyed.” Ah… No. Fuck you. I keep trying, but I keep being repelled.
Finally, I realize that I’m having a nightmare. A good old fashioned nightmare. I haven’t had a nightmare since I had to destroy the Convos and as frightened and afraid as I am, I am being entertained by the experience and the emotions. After I finish laughing, I try to shut down the computer. The flaming angel’s hand prevents me.
“Here. Allow me.” Another angel is standing behind me. He leans forward and his robe and wings cover me like a shelter. Socheniel. The flaming angel hand waves the sword menacingly at Socheniel. He purses his lips and furrows his eyebrows in annoyed anger. He taps the flaming hand with his blight stained own and rebukes the angel. “Be gone! This is not your place!” At the touch, the blight extinguishes the flame, decays the sword, and withers the hand emerging from the screen. The withered hand shudders then quickly retreats. My mouse is enabled, and I start to remove the images and change the account.
Socheniel lays his hand on my shoulder to pause my action. “Don’t be so quick to run. Leave it up for a few more days if you can. The more you run, the harder it will be to stand. The rosary is yours, and the love it represents is yours. No human, nor angel, will ever be able to separate you from that.” If I heard that from any other angel (with maybe the exception of K), there would be much stinkeye and no small amount of expletives and distrust. But I know what Socheniel has been through to become what he is now. I accept his words without disbelief. I am surprised that I am capable of that, and that I trust him that much.
“Okay. I’ll try.”
The Blightwielder touches my exposed face with his infected hands. The tendrils of the blight tickle my cheek as they pass over. I feel like a child, safe and protected. He tells me I should go to bed in the dream as I am still very tired after the day’s unexpected events. He doesn’t wait for me to agree, but picks me up out of the chair and deposits me in my bed. I roll my eyes and say snarky rejoinders that make us both chuckle. He stays between me and my computer until deep sleep seizes me and pulls me under.