The more I wake, the more I remember. The more I remember, the less I want to be either awake or remembering.
I don’t want to adult right now.
There are so many words caught in my throat. Words that I know if I am going to heal will need to be said. But text will not allow the spirit of those words to flow and I feel as I did that day (that glorious day) when Jehovah’s words caught in my throat like a ball of fire and I had to make the choice (the cognitive choice) to speak or be burned alive from within.
For the embarrassment that followed, that was a Good Day™.
Malphas holds my left arm. Ink forcibly seeps from under his grip into and through my skin. It is cold as it invades my blood. He holds my head up, holds my vision to the column of descending angels, holds me fast and prevents me from fleeing into the darkness under us.
Sometimes you have to hold hands with the Devil to see God.
They know I am terrified to see them, to know they are there, to know that they are a hair’s thickness away from me. They know all the traumatic memories their mere presence is evoking in me. They are sorrowful about it. It was never supposed to be this way. I was never supposed to be this way. The crimes of their brethren fills me with fear of them and all they can do is repeat the words I am unable to comprehend but must accept if they are to continue.
“Be not afraid.”
I am terrified.
Once upon a time I had a dream. After three days, the dream would not leave me so I spoke to one of the few people in the church who knew not only of my “demonic” past but of my current visions about it. (For one thing, she had a role in the vision.) She asked me to trust her, and before I knew it, I was repeating the vision to a Person of Importance.
He challenged me.
He interrogated me.
He called me a demon and dared me to prove otherwise.
I couldn’t. I could only repeat what I had seen. I told him I wanted to be wrong. I wanted this to be only “vain dreaming”. I knew what the implications were and that things were not going to end well for the body of people in the vision if no one did anything, and that there was no guarantee of a good outcome even if those who could do something, did something.
After staring me down for what felt like hours, he turned to her and said my vision was true, to take it seriously, and follow whatever steps was possible to prevent the outcome it was warning against. The night before my friend called him, he had received a vision himself. He would be told of a thing and he was to ask specific questions and receive specific answers to verify the thing was legit. I fulfilled his vision, therefore my vision was to be received as the warning it was.
The greater outcome was not prevented. How do you convince a hundred people to not do what they had been taught to do? How do you talk people out of a lie they desperately want to believe?
I was blamed for what came to pass. Blamed for how the initial fracture was struck. Blamed for everything that other people did because everything was okay until I arrived.
The affair had been going on for at least a year before I even walked up the steps. But it was my fault for exposing it. Even her husband hated me for my innocent question that led to unraveling the whole thing.
He was in the vision.
I told him what he did there.
I never saw a man crumple into tissue before. He never did explain what his actions in the vision meant. He begged my forgiveness for his hatred instead.
Of course I forgave him. I wonder if he ever forgave himself.
The bruises appeared without anyone touching me. Or so I was told. I wasn’t cognitive at the time.
They said I was under demonic attack again.
Demons don’t outshine the sun.
I always wondered why the angels didn’t just kill me. They have done damn near everything else at this point. Why was I tolerated in this body of holy and sanctified people? If I was possessed by evil, then why did my words help and encourage? Why were my visions uplifting? Aren’t we supposed to uphold one another?
Why was the pastor so angry with me? Why did he command me to never speak of my visions again? Why was he furious when he found out I was studying the Bible on my own? That I had my own copy of Strong’s Concordance and that I was chasing the original meanings of the words and not just accepting the translations he was preaching? Is it not written to study the words of the prophets? Wasn’t the whole point of breaking away from the Catholic Church the revelation that the Word of God could be transmitted directly into the heart of the seeking soul? That we are each sanctified without the intervention of an earthly office?
I asked the angels why they kept trying to tear me to pieces.
I wasn’t being obedient, they said.
I said I was being obedient to God.
They laughed. It is a terrible sound. It sounds like the gurgling of a cut throat. It sounds like the splatter of a hung body being eviscerated.
Their god wants me to be silent, they said. Their god wants me to die, they said. The pastor is the chosen representative of their god, and I will submit, or perish, they said.
It would be over a decade before I learned which god they were speaking of, before I learned why they could not tear me to pieces after all.
The invocation is not going to plan. Instead of the spirit revealing itself to the seer through images in the shewstone, it has possessed her instead.
Shit.
Too late the magician saw the seer’s physical sign of distress, the way her eyes suddenly jolted to her left and remained there as if locked. The spirit reassured the magician that the seer would not be harmed.
“Let the dead remain dead… for a while anyway… let those who need rest, rest. Your questions will still be answered. Just not in a way you were expecting.”
“She’s not dead.”
The spirit laughed through the seer’s mouth. The tone descended below her usual vocal range. “She has been dead for a long, long time. She just refuses to stay dead, that’s all. So… your question, oh great and powerful one?”
The magician rolls with the change of plan and asks their questions. The spirit answers them, some straight forward, some with obvious craftiness.
“Her body tires. If I release her here, she will fall. Allow me to lay her down upon the floor.”
The magician grants permission for the spirit to leave the chair and lay down on the floor beside the chair.
“Why do you care?”
“Because I do. Now release me so she will not be harmed by my exit. If I have to fight my way out, she will suffer for it, and I will hold her pain against you.”
The magician released the spirit with a license to depart. The seer sighed in sudden exhaustion and fell asleep where she lay.
I woke in sorrow, soaked with tears and sweat, damning my memory that will not let go, and swallowing all the other words I have not written here.