I was in the Anglican church again. Neutral ground between me and El as our drama had unfurled in a definitively American context. He manifested as a source of brilliant golden white light with no edges. I turned away to face the door not in fear, but in respect to the master of the house I was in.
But I did not leave.
“You asked Me to take [static] from you. I would not divide you from yourself. If I undo what I have done, if I release what I have bound, I will not constrain it again.”
I braced my hands against the timeworn heavy wood door. The texture of the door felt as real as any piece of active history. The details of the feel of the door under my hand fascinated me even as I knew this door did not physically exist. The examination gave me time to think what to say.
“I seek union with what I left behind. With all I left behind. Release me.”
The god moved. Without sight I knew he had moved his manifestation to just behind me. The intense light felt like warm honey spreading over my exposed back at first. But as he worked without and his spirit worked within, it felt like full body bandages were being ripped off me, exposing unhealed wounds to stinging air and biting sprays of antiseptic.
I continue to forget how much light can burn.
I slumped forward against the door and slid at first straight down, then away as the scene changed around me.
The muscular man caught me before my head hit the ground, cushioning my skull with his unforgiving arms. “Hey. Remember your shields. What are the pieces of the Armor of God?”
He turned me over in his arms to face him but my eyes kept rolling. My tongue twisted in my mouth as the predatory presence raking inside my skin strove to keep me from answering.
“You’re stronger than this thing on your own. I know your church taught you that you’re weak, but you’re with me now and I’m not going to lie to you. By reciting the Armor of God, you take it up.”
I could not answer in words, but I could answer in the feelings and associations I felt when I could recite the verse. My nonverbal answer was enough to heat my spirit and repel the invader. I could not physically see the angels outside of the circle my teacher had marked, but I could feel their opinion of the summoned spirit as they rent it to pieces and unmade it.
Finally, I could speak. “I’m not weak. I’m tainted.”
“Yea. You are. Your blood sings of generations of demon worship. But that’s why your church is afraid of you and wanted to break you. They can’t pray you away. But God can still use you as a force of good. Now get up, and recite the entire verse to me again, in New King James and New International Version.”
“Yes, Teacher.”
As I stood up, exhausted, bruised, and sleep-deprived, I realized I was reliving a memory. I stumbled over my words as I spoke the verses more as an incantation than a recitation.
Two years from this day, I would be successfully psychologically broken before being allowed to leave to my next military duty station. It would be nearly thirty years before this one fragmented memory resurfaced in the light of what I had learned in the interim.
The realization shattered the memory and I fell again to fall disgracefully on the worn boards of an isolated Anglican church that doesn’t exist.
The god’s skin glowed still brilliant in the form he was now wearing, illuminating the heavy black frock and turning the cloth a warm chocolate brown. He stood before the altar while eight barely disguised angels turned judgingly in the spaces the stained glass windows would have been.
I didn’t bother to move from where my body had settled.
“Sorcerer.”
The god nodded.
“And it happened. It really happened.”
He nodded again.
“A god damn Christian SORCERER!” I kicked my feet against the pew, shuddering the building in my rage.
He lowered his head and did not raise it again as he clasped his hands together before him.
“Why did they let me leave?”
“Who would believe you? Not after what they did to ensure you doubted yourself for the rest of your life. You didn’t even believe yourself, even though you still physically carry the scars from those years on your waking flesh.”
“… What am I?”
“Whatever you want to remake yourself into.”
I didn’t realize I had been crying until the pooled tears snuck away to soak my ear. The chill reminded me that I did have a physical component here and to expect the memory of the bruises to follow me into the waking.
“[God], I seek union with my pieces. I seek union with what I left behind, with what was taken away. Whatever pieces of me you still hold, I want them.”
“You will have them. And you will have My grace to keep them.”
I wanted to snark viciously about not needing his permission to do shit much less take a shit, but as other formerly locked away memories started to seep up from forgotten depths, I was overwhelmed by waves of sorrow and exhaustion.
“He was a sorcerer, and I was his tool.”
“Apprentice.”, the god corrected.
“He had hopes of me being his apprentice. But he let me leave and he helped break me. In the end, I was just another tool to him.” Breathing became difficult as my form in this space started to waver. “Forgive me my rudeness, but I’m fucking tired as hell.”
The god’s mirth at my word choices consoled me. “Then sleep. You are safe here.”
I slept.