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Dare The DevilChapter 15 – Richard“No time now for contrition, the time for that’s long past, the walls are thin as tissue, and if I talk I’ll crack the glass…” --Van Der Graff Generator, A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers It was going to be a great weekend. No homework, of course. No job, no chores, no responsibilities. I didn’t even have any lines to learn for the new school play, mainly because I didn’t even audition. Physical sickness had stolen my starring role from me the previous February, and a spiritual sickness of sorts prevented me from having any joy in this February’s production. You see, it was not a real play, not the way actors-of-the-year like yours truly demand. It was three one-act plays, and even though I would have (of course) played whatever single role I wanted, the one-act format was not a proper vehicle for an anointed artist such as myself. Plus, there was ping pong to play, and chess to play, and records to play, and I guess you could say I was just too busy playing to be in a play. Ha ha. The joke’s on me. I hope my epistle has not given the misimpression that all I did was talk to The Voice. No, not at all. I also kicked-back, watched TV, played chess, played ping pong….Yeah, I was a real testimony…Again, I will not place blame on anyone but myself, and I primarily blame myself for having bought into the entire end-of-the-world-6-years-to-live-why-bother theology that was packing people by the thousands into Calvary Chapel 3 times on Sundays and 4 times for midweek services. The agony and ecstasy of youth has been immortalized by the truth that it is wasted on the very young. And I certainly was a living example. I was wasted, both literally and figuratively. A simple waste of human space. Really special, yeah. Cool. Righteous, Dude! And besides, this weekend Richard was coming over, my best friend except for the demons, who drove me to the Jethro Tull concert a year ago. Yup, we hung together like brothers, except I thought I was nicer to Richard than I was my own brother, which I wasn’t, which you will shortly see. We had basically everything in common. We liked the same records, played chess at about the same level, and played ping pong. Please don’t be looking for anything deeper. You won’t find it. Lights. Cameras. Swell music. “Yes, Mr. Sam! This is YOUR LIFE: Records, chess, ping pong, and of course the weekly communion with The Voice that Richard doesn’t know anything about and that can hardly be called his fault and he certainly didn’t deserve this or do anything wrong….” He came over Saturday midday. We played ping pong and played chess while listening to records. Sure, we would talk, mainly about chess and ping pong and records. The only real place we had any disagreement on hardly anything was when it came to religion, which Richard thought was a whole bunch of hogwash, being really into science as he was. This, of course, kept him out of the end-of-the-world cult that was helping fuel my delinquency, and enabled him to stay highly motivated in his studies. He had ambitions, had filled out many college applications, was taking the SAT prep course that was pretty much guaranteed to increase your math and verbal scores by at least 50 points each. You know, he really was a great person. When I was sick no one was allowed to come over since I was considered so contagious, but he was the one person on the earth who called, just wanting to know how I was. When he wasn’t working hard at his academics he was a fun and humorous guy. He was kind, intelligent, and the classic embodiment of all it means to be a friend. His one problem, his one and only problem, he didn’t even know about. His one problem was that the sun was setting and the full moon was only an hour away and trust me I knew those things because being a Witch didn’t mean I was into demons just really, really close to Mother Nature and Her cycles, and I had already taken my 1500 milligrams of Darvon and 2 No-Doze and I had to get out to the field because I had to get high and Richard wouldn’t understand and this was really important because last week The Voice had promised me great things I mean Great Things about tonight and I had to Commune and Richard was in the way. Asking him to leave was out of the question. We were friends, best friends, really the only non-drug-infested, non-demon-infested, all round nice guy friend who could stand to be around me. I couldn’t ask him to leave. That would have been wrong. But the sun was dipping below the fence in the back yard and Richard was still showing no signs of leaving, and since I couldn’t ask him to leave because that would have been wrong, I…I… Oh, God, forgive me. I guess I didn’t even know if anything like that would work but….I….I…. It was so unfair, but since I didn’t even learn that word until a couple decades later it didn’t come into play, and besides, so what if he was a nice guy, he was worthless anyway. He didn’t even believe in God or Jesus, which was bad enough and barely tolerable, but he also didn’t smoke weed and knew nothing about The Voice or Powers or Mysteries Beyond the Pale and so he had to go, I was important and Communion could not be stopped for anyone and so I….I…. Prayer asks the Powers. Magic commands. “Hocus Pocus” comes from the Latin “Hoc Est Corpus Meus”, which is what the Catholic priests would say during Communion before Vatican II said it was ok to start having Church in the native language of the people, and at that exact moment the bread turned into the Body of Christ Himself. Commanded. Ordered. Hocus Pocus. And act….of magic. And I looked at Richard and….I….I….did something. Even if I could tell you exactly what I did I wouldn’t, (the truth being that at this time 25 years later I do not actually know if I know what I did, not wanting to “go there” in my review of this sordid past which I called a life, but I fear that if pushed to it I would be able to remember, and, really, really, best not go there…) but suffice it to say it was not a prayer, it was an order….A demand….An act of magic aimed at my best friend intended to injure him severely. Whatever exactly it was, since I had learned with Brother Bob at Blue Oyster Cult that I was capable of transmitting signals that I neither understood nor fully controlled, I do not know, and it does not matter, because I….I….. I watched my dear friend Richard, the only one outside my immediate family who even cared if I lived or died a year ago while I was on my death bed….I….I….. I watched Richard almost immediately fall to his knees, clutching his head. “Oh no. Oh no!!! Not now!!!!” He had a long history of debilitating migraine headaches, and he had a regular Tsunami coming on now. And what was he really bothered most about? “We were having so much fun!! Damn, I didn’t want it to stop. Damn!!!” Sorry, Richard, ole pal ole buddy o’ mine. You have to go. I would have my first migraine 5 years later. I was cleaning Lola Nassar’s toilet in her master bedroom, because she and her family of 7 were one of my largest housecleaning customers, that being my chosen profession at the time, when all of a sudden I looked down and realized I could not see anything out of my right eye. And the fuzziness had a sparkling golden glow to it, which got brighter as time went on. And as this glow expanded and slowly oozed its way up and right out of my field of vision this massive, SCREAMING headache like no pain I had even imagined came upon me like U.S. bombs on women and their babies in the Iraqi desert during George Bush’s War. I later learned the glow was what we call an aura, and the headache was a migraine, and a migraine was a different beast altogether, not at all just a “regular headache albeit a little strong” like I had thought before. Professional football players have a saying when they get seriously hurt: “I thought I was going to die, and afraid I wouldn’t.” I learned the meaning of that saying that day in Lola Nassar’s bathroom, and the pain reminded me of my friend….dear Richard…. Laying on my bedroom floor where he had asked me to please turn the record off turn it off now he couldn’t stand the noise, oh no, this is horrible, it hurts so much…. Sorry, Richard. Anything I can do? Yeah, you’re going to have to call my mom. There’s no way I can drive. No problem. The bitch lived just a couple miles down the road and would be here in 5 for her baby boy and I would still be in the field as the moon was rising. “You’ve never seen me during one of these,” he said. And you’ve never seen me during one of these I thought to myself, as the Darvon was making things goopy and the caffeine gave it a sharp edge, all in preparation for the Main Event which was going to be quite something I was certain because I had not eaten anything that day as per instructions, intensifying the combined effects of the pharmacy I was brewing in my system…. Baby’s Mommy came to get him. “Sorry, dude” he said. Yeah, right. “See you later.” Yeah, right. “Get well soon” I said with all of the actor-of-the-year honesty I could fake. They drove off. Fine. Dead wood gone. Time for the Main Event. I put my Sacrament into my pocket and headed out the door to Commune with my Lord and God. |
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