BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 25

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 25

ZELLA LaSTELLA-SALLIE

THE END OF A THING IS BETTER THAN ITS BEGINNING. THE PATIENT IN SPIRIT IS BETTER THAN THE PROUD IN SPIRIT. (Ecclesiastes 7:8)

            As several of us sat on the deck, Lindsey Wadena had just shown me a picture on her phone of the very meeting between her and her husband. She had said a dog had played match maker between them. I had witnessed something similar myself with Willa Waconia and Billy Bob Booker. The parallel between Lindsey and Mick’s romantic account and the one I witnessed several years ago had my curiosity at a peek.

            A friend of Lindsey’s had taken the photo when she witnessed her asexual gal pal chatting it up with a bare chested young stud. Standing beside her, gazing fondly up at Mick was a German Shepard mix. His name was Jitterbug.

            “He was such a scared little boy when I first got him,” Lindsey explained. “He was only about six months old and would just start trembling for no apparent reason. A friend of mine rescued him from a horrible situation. He was undernourished and had been abused. My friend already had five dogs, so I took him in.

            “He was called Nacho when I first got him. But as I spoke softly to him and nurtured him, I would say ‘aren’t you just a little jitterbug.’ I didn’t really care for the name Nacho; it just didn’t seem to fit him. Then a girlfriend suggested I call him Jitterbug, and then I started calling him Jitts for short.

            “It didn’t take too long for his trembling to go away. But I began to notice a pattern with him. Every time a guy came around he would hide and start trembling again. This didn’t happen very often. I didn’t have a boyfriend and I seldom dated. So it was usually my dad or my brother.”

            As a woman of around fifty, Lindsey was certainly nice looking. But the photo she showed me in her mid-twenties revealed an absolute knock out. She also looked like she stepped out of a fitness magazine in her spandex shorts and sports bra. So I had to ask, “So, you just weren’t interested in romance?”

            “Yes and no,” she replied. Then her large almond shaped eyes looked sad. “I had my own tragedy when I was a teenager. Maybe that’s why Jitts and I bonded so well.”

            “Were you abused?” I asked softly, cautiously.

            She shook her head and I noticed her jaw tighten. “When I was thirteen and my sister Lana was sixteen, she was date raped.”

            “Oh no!” I couldn’t help blurting.

            She bowed her head and nodded. “It was horrible. What made it worse was I had such a major crush on her boyfriend.”

            There was an awkward silence for a long moment. Selfishly I felt disappointed. For I was desiring a heartwarming story similar to the one I experienced with my dog Free, not an ugly recount of an innocent girl defiled by unbridled lust.

            “Three months after the ordeal,” Lindsey continued. “Lana swallowed all of her antidepressant medications and some sleeping pills. Her stomach was pumped and she spent a few weeks in a psychiatric unit of a hospital. The very day she was released, she slit her wrists in the bath tub. This time she didn’t survive.”

            “I’m so, so sorry,” I told her. She nodded and as she wiped at a tear. It struck me that even after all these years, the pain of her sister’s torment and death lurked just beneath the surface of her soul. How many such people have we encountered, unaware of the pain they keep hidden. It was a lesson for me about being kind to everyone we meet, despite any sour dispositions they may have.

            “I’m sorry as well, for that depressing little antidote,” Lindsey said, forcing a smile. “But I guess I needed to tell the back story of Jitts and me, and how he ended up unwittingly setting me up with Mick.”

            Lindsey showed me another picture. This one was of a teenage girl and a dog that looked similar to Jitts. The teenage girl also looked similar to Lindsey. But she wasn’t the striking beauty Lindsey was in the first photo she showed me of her, Mick and Jitts. Lana looked wholesome in a long dress with her hair pulled back, grinning from ear to ear with a crooked tooth smile.

            “I love her big grin in this pic,” Lindsey said with a sentimental smile. “Lana was bi-polar. She was also painfully shy and timid, yet sometimes she could be volatile and angry. But Yoda brought her out of her shell like no one else could.”

            “Yoda?” I asked with an arched eyebrow.

            “Our brother was a huge Star Wars fan,” she laughed. “When he suggested Yoda, Lana thought it was a good fit. You can see there was another reason I fell in love with Jitts.”

            “Yeah, they look like they came from the same litter,” I commented.

            “Anyway, I was leery of guys, I guess because of what happened to Lana. Jitts didn’t like guys and was afraid of them. So I developed a personal rule. If Jitts didn’t like a guy and hid, I wouldn’t continue to go out with him. This rule proved to be somewhat unreasonable. I didn’t realize Jitts would cower from virtually every guy he came across. The only guy that won him over was my brother, and he is not the macho type at all.

            “So when I met Mick, I was twenty-two. I’d had Jitts for about four years and had zero love life. Come to think of it, maybe Jitts wanted me all to himself,” she laughed. “Until he invited Mick into my life that is.”

            Mick must have been overhearing our conversation because he interjected. “I don’t know about that. Every time we sat next to each other, he nosed in between us.”

            “Yeah, but then what happened a few months in?” Lindsey replied with a disapproving, yet light hearted gaze.

            “Whatever do you mean?” Mick responded innocently.

            She chuckled and looked at me. “I mean that a few months in, Jitts turned his primary affections onto Mick. He followed him wherever he went. He stopped nosing between us and just crawled onto Mick’s lap.”

            “The big lug,” Mick laughed. “Seventy five pounds isn’t exactly a lap dog.”

            “So how did Jitts play match maker?” I asked eagerly.

            “A friend of mine had this cousin that was a pretty famous Christian rock rapper. His stage name is H. R. Puffin.”

            “I’ve heard of him,” I interjected.

            “So she, me and two other girlfriends were going to his show in Madison, Wisconsin. Mick’s band turned out to be Puffin’s special guest on the tour. My friends and I all lived in Duluth at the time. I wasn’t into the concert at all. I didn’t know or necessarily like Puffin’s music or big crowds. But we were gonna camp at Devil’s Head the day before, and rock climb and hike. Nature was what I was really into! Plus I had an aunt that lived near Madison, and she was willing to watch Jitts while we went to the show. So I agreed to go on the trip.

            “So we were at Devil’s Head the day before the show. One of my girlfriends and I went for a run and Jitts came with us. We had just run some hills and was walking to catch our breath.  Then Jitts just up and runs off like a flash.

            “There was a shirtless guy kneeling in front of a log. His elbows were on top of the log and doubled fists were on his forehead. It seemed he was praying. It also seemed that Jitts was charging toward him. Jitts never approached anyone, male or female. But like I said, especially male. That’s why I was comfortable not having him on a leash.

            “I felt a surge of panic! This was so out of character for Jitts. I chased after him and called. But he kept going. I thought for sure he was gonna lunge with bared teeth. I called and called. The man, who turned out to be Mick, raised his head and looked with surprise at my charging dog.

            “But then Jitts slowed and I could not believe what I saw. His tail was wagging as hard as I had ever seen it. Then Jitts surprised me even further. He prostrated himself at Mick’s feet. Well, actually his knees.

            “So I come running up ready to pull my suddenly vicious dog off of the man. But Jitts was squirming and whining excitedly, his tail thumping on the ground. Mick was grinning and petting him and telling him what a good boy he was. I must have stared for the longest time, unable to comprehend what I was witnessing.”

            “It wasn’t even a minute,” Mick interjected with a chuckle. “But it turned out to be an answer to prayer, I just didn’t know it at the time.”

            “He had been praying for me,” Lindsey said happily.

            “But you didn’t even know her, right?” I asked with a frown.

            “I didn’t, and even after our encounter that day, I didn’t know who I was praying for.”

            “You’re losing me,” I replied with a questioning smile.

            Mick chuckled. “Let me back up. There were four of us in the band called Cornerstone. We all grew up together, went to Christian school together. We were all the real deal. By that I mean devout and serious about our faith. The four of us were tight and made a pact of celibacy until married. So two of us married high school sweethearts the year after we graduated.

            “The week before I met Lindsey, our guitar player, Matt, got married. We were all only in our early twenties, yet I was now the only unmarried one in the band. I wasn’t jealous, yet I really wanted to find a mate more than ever. Being in the position I was, especially as lead singer, I had scores of female admirers. But just like Lindsey had her reasons for being leery of guys, I was leery of gals that were smitten because I was in a popular band.

            “I mean, we weren’t a household name by any stretch. But on the Christian rock scene, we were becoming a pretty big deal. And as our fame spread, it seemed it was going to be harder and harder to meet that special someone, as strange as that may sound. It was ironic since I met countless attractive females at every show. But yet I had it in my head that a woman I met at a Cornerstone show was only interested in Mick the singer, not the person.”

            “But then Mick and I met a second time at his show the next night,” Lindsey laughed. “So he ended up marrying a woman he met at one of his shows after all.”

            “Not fair, we met in the woods, and Jitts introduced us.”

            “True enough, but we did go our separate ways in a matter of minutes, figuring we’d never see each other again.”

            “So out in the woods where you met, how long was your dialogue and what did you say to each other?” I asked.

            “First I said I was sorry about Jitts charging up to him,” Lindsey laughed.

            “Then she asked me if I had been praying and I acknowledged that I had.”

            “Then we just stared at each other for a long time.”

            “It was probably only twenty or thirty seconds,” Mick laughed.

            “It’s hard to tell because it sure felt like several minutes.”

            “But we were both dumbfounded. Me because I had just been praying that God would help me find a soulmate. And she because Jitts rarely took to guys.”

            “Try never,” Lindsey corrected.

            “What about your brother?”

            “He had to win him over after a few encounters. Until you, he never took to a guy right off the bat. Anyway, we started talking about spiritual things. I felt compelled to tell him about my struggles with faith, my rebellion toward God.

            “I remember he shared the verse ‘he that has begun a good work in you will complete it’ (Philippians 1:6). I had such a strange tug of war going on inside of me. I had never been so drawn to a guy in my life! Yet I had so conditioned myself toward asexuality, that this other part of my brain was screaming, get away from him!”

            “And you did,” Mick laughed.

            Lindsey looked at Mick and then back at me. “My girlfriend, God bless her, was trying to assist Jitts in setting me up with Mick. After he and I had been talking for five or ten minutes, she sidled up next to me and said she was going back to our camper and that I should take my time. But I used her interruption as both a sign and an excuse to get away from the hot guy.”

            “She meant temperature by hot,” Mick said. “It was about ninety degrees and humid.”

            “I wasn’t talking temperature at all,” she responded with a coy smile. “He looked good with no shirt. But on the other hand, I was a little put off that he didn’t put his shirt on as we talked.”

            “But I didn’t have one with me,” Mick defended. “It was back at my campsite.”

            “I may have gotten away from him as fast as I could,” Lindsey continued. “But I could not get him out of my mind. Who was he? I didn’t even get his name. Where did he live? What was it about him that drew Jitts to him? How could that even be?

            “As I took a shower back at the camper, I almost fell down kicking myself in the behind. What was I thinking blowing off the closest thing to a perfect man I ever had encountered! I dried off and went looking for him, got super sweaty in the process, which negated the shower I had taken. But it was to no avail, I didn’t see him. I was so disappointed.”

            “I too was disappointed,” Mick added. “I had literally just prayed that God would put the woman of HIS choice into my life. Then this happy dog nudges me out of my reverence. I says to the dog, ‘well hi fella, but you’re not what I had in mind when I was praying.’ Then I look up and see Lindsey running toward us, calling Jitts. Then I said to him, ‘but she just might be!’

            “But then after several minutes talking with her, she bolted like she was just called to put out a fire. I kept an eye out for her the rest of the day, but to no avail. I was so disappointed to be teased like that. I tried not to have a complaining attitude, but I prayed again, simply asking, ‘Lord why put that intriguing woman in front of me, only to have her walk away?’

            “After praying I grabbed my Bible. I like to randomly open it and see what my eyes hit on first that I had previously underlined. That night my eyes landed on Psalm 27:14. ‘Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord!’

BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 24

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 24

SEVEN SALLIE

GOD IS OUR REFUGE AND STRENGTH, A VERY PRESENT HELP IN TROUBLE. THEREFORE WE WILL NOT FEAR THOUGH THE EARTH BE REMOVED. (Psalm 46:1, 2)

            The sunset was bizarrely beautiful. I’d never seen anything like it. It was both breath taking, yet ominous. Who would have thought a sunset could pose such a contradiction in our minds. It was like a living object lesson of Psalm 85:10. ‘Mercy and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have met together.’

            Brilliant reds, greens, yellows, pinks, blues, and violets swirled together. Have you ever noticed how fast a colorful sunset can change into darkness? Well this sunset changed and morphed colors five times faster than usual. Yet darkness came five times slower than usual. And the color schemes just kept changing and moving.

             The fourth plague fell the previous day. Unrepentant humanity was scorched with great heat (Revelation 16:8, 9). Yet those of us who had the seal of God were protected. It was as if we were encased in an unseen bubble. The cells of God’s people scattered throughout the world experienced the same protection. Our friends and family back in Eastern Iowa were experiencing a similar shield that we were. I was so grateful to hear my daughter’s voice as she related this information to me.

            We had all had a restless night as the judgements of God continued to fall. Not that we feared for ourselves, for we loved Jesus (John 14:15) and had kept the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus (Revelation 14:12). We were concerned for the unprotected. We mourned for friends and loved ones that sided with the commandments of men rather than the commandments of God.

            We took courage that the plagues indicated that the second coming of Jesus Christ was very, very soon.  The most stunning sunset our eyes had ever seen made us think of our Lord coming in the clouds of heaven. Not in some secret rapture.  

            John the Revelator tells us in the very first chapter, verse seven, that every eye will see Him. Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 that the Lord Himself will descend with a shout, with the voice of an arch angel, and with the trumpet of God. In Acts chapter one, when Jesus arose to heaven, verse eleven tells us that He would come in like manner.

            1 Thessalonians 4:18 tells us we should comfort one another regarding the second coming of Christ. Revelation 21:4 assures us that God would wipe away every tear and that there would be no more death, sorrow, or crying. There would be no more pain, for the former things will have passed away.

            Inga, C.S., who was formerly known as Jackson, Zella and I were sitting on C. S.‘s deck. We were comforting each other about the second coming of Christ as we watched the unique sunset. We were all excited, yet troubled by the falling of the plagues. So we were exercising the Bible instruction to exhort one another daily (Hebrews 3:13).

            It must have worked. C.S. got a boyish grin on his face as he took hold of Inga’s hand. “Come see, a quarter mile through the woods is a large pond. It wasn’t affected by the third plague. Sunsets are amazing there. This one will be absolutely phenomenal.”

            But Inga resisted and frowned. “This is the most interesting sunset I’ve ever seen; but I don’t like what it represents.”

            C. S. frowned back. “What do you mean?”

            “The reason the sunset is so unique is because the fourth plague has fallen. That means  fallen humanity has been scorched with great heat.”

            “Don’t think about that,” he petitioned. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. God is a righteous judge. Think of it as Christ’s imminent return being incredibly soon.”

            “C. S. is right, Inga,” I added. “The loud cry of the three angels messages was sufficiently broadcast. Everyone had their chance to accept or reject the God of Creation.”

            Inga pondered this for a minute. A girlish grin grew onto her face as she did so, and then they were off, walking hand in hand toward the woods. Zella smiled sentimentally as she watched them while I watched her. Her beautiful ebony skin glowed in the fast changing but slowly fading sunlight. “I think love has been rekindled.”

            “Were they in love the first time?” I asked.

            “There must have been something.”

            “Yeah, but Inga despised him for almost a decade. What we’re witnessing is new, fresh.”

            “No, I say there was something. Circumstances all those years ago just caused Inga to take a step back on her feelings.”

            “More like a leap.”

            “Life’s a strange trip,” she said with a shrug.

            I put arm around her and kissed her mouth. Aunt Holly and Benny were at the neighbors, so we were alone. I kissed her again and she giggled. “No wonder you talked Inga into going with C. S.”

            “I don’t know that I talked her into it,” I grinned. “But I was hoping for some alone time with the most beautiful woman on the planet.”

            “Aw, you’re sweet,” she said aiming a big eyed smile my way. I arose and moved to sit on her lap. She stopped me by placing both hands on my back side. “I don’t think so!”

            “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

            “Sit back down,” she ordered. Then she arose and moved to sit on my lap. Unlike her, I allowed it. To my immense pleasure, she kissed me and I mean deeply. I wrapped my arms around her and planned on much more of the same. But it wasn’t to be.

            Inga and C. S. had entered the woods that surrounded the acreage via a trail to the southwest. From the northeast side of the woods we heard the crunch of leaves, the snap of a twig and the murmur of voices. Half a dozen people began to emerge from the woods and Zella sprang from my lap as though it were on fire… Drat!

            The little band was led by Benny and his two friends, a boy and a girl. Holly was with the children’s parents. The couple appeared to be close to Zella and myself in age. They made their way to the deck and Holly introduced us to Mick and Lindsey Wadena.

            Mick was medium height, burly and had thinning blonde hair. Lindsey had short strawberry blond hair. She reminded me of Mary Poppins, but it was probably the old fashioned dress she was wearing.

             “Wow, you’re Seven Sallie,” Mick declared.

            I opened my mouth to reply, but Zella beat me to it. With an exaggeratedly deep voice she said, “Yes indeed, it is he, the venerable Seven Sallie.”

            They all laughed and I looked at my wife. She giggled. “You always look like Daffy Duck when you’re exasperated.”

            They all laughed again, and I couldn’t help chuckling along with them. Then something happened that I didn’t know how to take. Mick was commenting on the strange sunset, but I was  overhearing Lindsey discreetly whisper to Holly, “I thought you said he looks like George Clooney.”

            “I just meant sort of,” Holly whispered back.

            Was this a compliment or a dis? Oh well, I wasn’t even meant to hear it.

            “So you know Arlo Aldo?” I asked Mick.

            “I do indeed,” he replied. “Eli Alderson also.”

            Eli was Arlo’s bandmate. They were both in a Satanic band for many years, and then after their conversion they started a Christian band. Mick rehashed what C. S. had already told me about Arlo vacationing up here and teaching them about the Biblical Sabbath. Then he went on to explain about him and C. S. sharing their information with others in their neck of the woods.

            “As a matter of fact,” Mick was saying. “I think it would be a great comfort if you talked to some friends of ours, Jack and Jill Hill. They…”

            “Jack and Jill Hill?” I asked. “Hill is really their last name? As in Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pale of water?”

            “Yeah, it really is,” he laughed. “Sorry, I guess I’m just used to it after all these years. They have an interesting love story. They became close friends as kids, preteens actually. Jack went by Johnny back then. But then when he and Jill started hanging out, his friends and siblings started calling him Jack to go with her Jill. His dad was John Senior, but went by Jack, so I guess it was a bit of a combination.

            “Anyway, Jill moved away, and they didn’t see each other again for several years. Then Jill showed up at one of his shows a thousand miles from where they first got to know each other. I actually witnessed their reunion. Our bands were touring together at the time. It was a pretty special, memorable moment.”

            “Your own coming together with Lindsey was pretty special too,” Aunt Holly said.

            “Yeah, I suppose it was,” Mick replied, looking fondly at his wife.

            Lindsey seemed like a pretty serious, no nonsense type of person. But she grinned and told us. “Would you believe a dog played cupid?”

            It took me a couple seconds to absorb a dog playing match maker in a romance. However, it wasn’t something I was foreign to. Zella had a rescue dog, a chocolate Labrador named Free. She had been horribly abused. She was blind in one eye and walked with a limp, among other things.

            Free disliked and was afraid of male human beings. The bigger and more macho, the more her disdain. Then one day a big, tall, muscular man with a deep voice came into Zella’s herb and health food shop. Free was in the store that day because Zella’s living quarters upstairs was being painted.

            Although she had warned Billy Bob Booker to keep his distance from Free, the gentle bear of a man couldn’t resist the wounded animal. To Zella’s utter shock, Free couldn’t resist him either. After she witnessed her dog offer up her belly to be scratched by the big man, she had to tell her best friend Willa what happened. In turn, Willa couldn’t resist wanting to get to know Billy Bob herself.

            I looked at my wife. Her stunned expression turned to one of curiosity. “You two were match made by a dog?”

            “Yeah,” they both said at the same time, and  then chuckled.

            “Please tell us about it,” Zella petitioned eagerly. She sat back in her chair, crossed her arms, and anticipated their story.

BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 23

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 23

INGA LIKAS (AKA INGA COGNITO)

IF ANYONE IS IN CHRIST, THEY ARE A NEW CREATION. OLD THINGS HAVE PASSED AWAY. BEHOLD, ALL THINGS HAVE BECOME NEW. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

            It was too wonderful to take in! I moved about in a daze. If ever reality felt like a dream, it was now. How do I even describe meeting my son, a beautiful nine year old boy that I thought had died in infancy?

            How about reuniting with a man I despised, having believed for all these years that he was responsible for our son’s death? Then I find out that the dark, nihilistic boy that impregnated me, turned out to become a serious minded Bible believing Christian. But was it possible for me to like, or even trust a guy I had subconsciously trained my brain to loathe for almost a decade?

            Jackson and his Aunt Holly invited us to spend the night in their home. The afternoon turned into evening as I got to know my son and also became reacquainted with Jackson. But I use the word reacquainted loosely. For Jackson and I were not the same people that knew each other all those years ago. Plus, our relationship had been closer to two ships passing in the night rather than anything with real substance.

            However, over the next forty-eight hours Jackson and I got to know each other better than our year together a decade earlier. Our association as teenagers was filled with insecurities and secrecy. The glue that kept us together was lust. This proved to be a rather flimsy adhesive.

The bond that pulled us together all these years later was Christ and mutual love for our son.

            As we caught up with each other, I didn’t have a whole lot to share, or even want to, until I came to the part when I met Seven Sallie at a courthouse. My life up until then had been like that of a vagabond gypsy. I never stayed in one place long. Jackson’s existence was quite different.

            As I learned his story, my feelings for him changed like from night to day. I went from loathing the man I thought he was, to loving the man he actually is. Although our relationship was brief and long ago, it was a hard adjustment referring to him by his changed name. He said he changed his name more out of distancing himself from a dysfunctional family rather than concern about being found. But my mouth hung open in a grin when he told me what he changed it to.

            “C. S. Lewis,” he had said. Then he smirked when he saw my response and said, “What?”

            “You changed your name to that of the famed Christian author, Clive Staples Lewis?”

            “I beg to differ,” he said, raising a finger. “I changed it to that of my mother’s and Aunt Holly’s father, Charles Scott Lewis. But in all honesty, the English writer was also a motive. He is my favorite author, and Benny’s too. He loved the Narnia series.”

            At the mention of this small aspect of my son’s life, my heart ached at how much I had missed. His first steps, his first words. Might they have been ‘Mama’ had I been there?

            “Back home a dear friend of mine’s name is Lewis,” I said, and then pondered one of my words. Home.

            Until I met the Sallie’s, I never really had a home. For home is where love is, and I felt loved by everyone. And I loved everyone in return. The Sallie’s, the Storms, Seven’s daughter Sevenia, Louis Lewis. Sure, my sister, brother and I loved each other. But it was more of a looking out for each other, since our mother only loved herself, and we lived in something like dorms.

            “This Lewis you speak of, what’s her first name?”

            “Oh, it’s he, not she.”

            What was that look that came over Jackson’s face? Jealousy? I’m sorry, although our relationship had been brief, I always knew and thought of C. S. Lewis as Jackson. But out of respect for the main reason he changed his name, I made myself begin to think of him as C. S.

            “I see, okay, what’s his name then?”

            “Louis.”

            “I meant his first name.”

            “It’s Louis.”

            “Okay, I thought you meant his last name was Louis.”

            “It is.”

            A baffled look came over his face. He scratched his head, opened his mouth, and closed it. I started laughing, I was messing with him a little bit. As I giggled, I subconsciously reached out and took hold of his hand. We were sitting across from each other on his deck in a couple of deck chairs.

            His eyes went to our joined hands. Then they turned up to my eyes. What was that look, tenderness? I didn’t know what to make of it and gently pulled my hand away. “Both his first and last names are Louis (Lewis).”

            I spelled the two for him and he burst out laughing. “You’re kidding?”

            “I am not. He’s actually Zella’s cousin,” I said, pointing to her. She and Seven were talking with Holly at the kitchen table where they were having a Bible study with his aunt. Benny was playing with two neighboring kids in the large yard. “He’s a few months younger than Zella. His parents thought it was cute how her first name rhymed with her last, LaStella. So his parents called him Louis.”

            “Interesting,” he replied.

            “Another interesting thing. He was a police Lieutenant, so we all called him Triple Lou. But then he got fired, so we all dropped the triple.”

            “Why’d he get fired?”

            “He was in charge of Sunday law enforcement when Sunday laws first came into effect. But then, mostly through Seven’s influence, he began studying the Sabbath in the Bible and became convicted of the issues at stake. Namely, the Sabbath God instituted at Creation on the seventh day vs. the sabbath of man’s creation, the Venerable Day of the Sun, Sunday.”

            “So he lost his job over it?”

            “Not at first. He had himself removed from his position. But then as Sunday laws became stricter and stricter, he actually got arrested over mandatory worship.”

            He nodded and a smile eased onto his face. Then his hand came toward mine and he took hold of it, squeezing gently. “I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you again, Inga.”

            Looking at him was surreal. Obviously he seemed older, yet he was so familiar. I had suspected he died his hair black all those years ago, but I genuinely thought the blue eyes looking at me now were dark brown back then, not colored contacts. I relished his hand in mine. I even longed to kiss him. But those feelings also opened the door for him to seduce me all those years ago. I eased my hand out of his.

            He smiled sadly. “I want you to know something. You’re the only female I have ever been with, you know, intimately been with.”

            Seven Sallie and I were two of a kind. Before I could stop my mouth, I asked, “Are you gay?”

            “No,” he replied with a smirk. “What with raising Benny, I didn’t date much. How about you?”

            I snorted. “I never stayed in one place long enough to establish a bond.”

            “But there were guys?”

            “Not really. I have never been on birth control, so you’re also the only one I ever, you know,” I explained. But not wanting to delve any deeper than that, I quickly changed the subject. “So how did you become a Christian?”

            “Well, having Benny was a start. Having this little creature to protect, that was half from me, shifted me away from a nihilistic life view. Then another shift came living with Aunt Holly, who is not only Christian in name, but devout.”

            “Can I ask what you’ve done for a living?”

            “I had a trust fund that I was able to access after I turned eighteen. As you know, I was eighteen when Benny was born. I withdrew my trust fund the very morning of our… I’m sorry, my escape with Benny.”

            “How much?”

            He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “A million dollars.”

            I gasped. “So you never had to work? You were a millionaire and I was homeless?”

            “You knew my dad was mega wealthy. One million isn’t even one percent of his financial worth. You must not believe me when I say it was completely my intention for us to flee together.”

            “I’m sorry. I do believe you.”

            “So, I bought this acreage here, and a tourist boat.”

            “A tourist boat?”

            “I love Lake Superior,” he shrugged. “I grew up by the Pacific ocean, so I love the water.”

            Another irony between now and then. Then Jackson always had pale skin, despite living near the ocean in southern California. Now he was tan while living in northern Minnesota. Go figure.

            He shrugged. “I didn’t say I was a surfer. But up here I am a boater. Captain of my own little ship if you please. And it paved a way to have an income and enjoy the water at the same time.”

            “You must not be happy with the last two plagues, what with the waters turning to blood.”

            “Yeah, it’s not good for business. But it’s not like the Bible didn’t warn us and prepare us.”

            “Very true.”

            “So I piloted the boat and a guy named Mick Wadena, who’s my neighbor across the woods, guided the tour up and down the shore. He was natural at talking to people. He used to be the lead singer of a Christian rock band. As a matter of fact, those are his kids playing with Benny. Another bonus having him as a partner is he’s more than twenty years older than me, so it added maturity to our little crew. I was barely twenty when I bought the boat.”

            “You say he was in a Christian band. Did he avoid the first plague?”

            “He did. But when we met, we both observed Sunday. Mick was also instrumental in my Christian growth, besides my Aunt Holly. So about five or six years ago, an old friend of his from his band days came up and stayed with him for a few weeks. He started teaching us about prophecy and the Sabbath.

            “Mick’s friend and I also bonded over shared experiences with the occult. He helped me through some ramifications I still had dealt with. You see, before he was a Christian, he was in a Satanic band. For him it was more like a gimmick. For me I grew up around it. But we still suffered something like PSTD when we separated from the demonic. I guess you could say it was something like guilt by association.”

            “Was his name Arlo Aldo?”

            C. S. Raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Yeah, are you a fan of his music or something?”

            I suppose I was, but that wasn’t the point. “I know him.”

            “You know Arlo Aldo?” He frowned.

            “I should say I do. His son is married to a good friend of mine. She’s also the daughter and stepdaughter of Seven and Zella,” I told him as I point at the couple sitting with his aunt again.

BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 22

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 22

ZELLA LaSTELLA-SALLIE

THE ANGEL OF THE LORD ENCAMPS ALL AROUND THOSE WHO FEAR HIM AND DELIVERS THEM. OH TASTE AND SEE THAT THE LORD IS GOOD. BLESSED IS THE PERSON WHO TRUSTS IN HIM. (Psalm 34:7, 8)

            It was right up there with the most emotional encounters I had ever witnessed. Inga stared absolutely dumfounded at her nine year old son. A son she hadn’t known existed. Her arctic blue eyes, a unique pair of windows to the soul I thought could never be duplicated, gazed into an identical pair of the boy.

            He had asked Inga if she was his mother. But Inga was so stunned, she was speechless. The silence as the two took each other in with awe made me feel compelled to break the quiet. I wanted to shout, ‘yes, Inga is your mother!’ But it wasn’t my place to do something. It was Inga’s right and privilege alone. Maybe the boy’s father. We hadn’t really known his story yet. Only his brief relationship with Inga many years ago.

            Thankfully my brain responded quickly. If I felt a compulsion to speak, what about my husband! A man known to speak before his brain gave him permission. I clasped a hand over Seven’s mouth just in time. Whatever he was about to say came out as a muffled “Wumph.”

            Finally Inga’s paralysis broke. With a desperate croak, she asked the boy, “Are you Benjamin?”

            “Yeah,” he replied quietly.

            “Yes, I believe I am your mother,” she croaked, then looked at Jackson as if for conformation.

            Jackson put a hand on Benjamin’s head, gently rubbing his dark brown, wavy hair that was another trait of Inga. Then he said, “She’s most definitely your mother, Son.”

            “Papa,” Benjamin began to tell Inga. “I mean my dad said that it wasn’t your fault that you have been… Absent. I’ve always wished I could meet you.”

            Benjamin took a tentative step forward. “Can I give you a hug?”

            Inga coughed out a sob but laughed as tears poured out of her eyes. “Yes, oh yes!”

            Inga’s usual attire was jeans, either a t-shirt or flannel shirt, and converse sneakers. But today she was wearing a black and white gingham dress with black and brown saddle shoes. Inga wasn’t all that used to dresses. As she knelt down to receive an embrace from her long lost son, her knees tangled in the garment, and she began to topple over.

            Seven, who was usually quickest with his tongue, proved he had fast reflexes elsewhere. Quick as a lick he grabbed Inga around the shoulders and steadied her just as the boy fell into his mother’s arms. As Inga applied several kisses to the boy’s head, a dam finally broke in my own eyes as a torrent of tears ran down my cheeks.

            Seven wiped at his eyes as well as I glanced at him. I knew what he was going to say before he said, “I’m not ashamed. Jesus Himself wept.”

            Despite a reputation for being brazen, Seven was a somewhat sensitive man. Although I loved this about him, and although he meant it when he declared Jesus wept, it still made him uncomfortable to shed tears even in front me, his beloved wife.

            I looked at Jackson. His head was bowed, but his eyes were raised as he took in the reunion of mother and son. One arm was crossed over his chest, and a hand was placed over his mouth. Tears were streaming down his cheeks as well.

            Who was this guy? Inga had described him as dark and brooding when she knew him years ago. She had even believed him to be a satanist who sacrificed his own baby to the devil. Yet that baby was now nine years old and ensconced in his birth mother’s arms, and he seemed to be relishing it as mother and son reunited.

            “I can’t believe this!” Inga said as she and her son separated from their embrace. Her hands gently clasped the young boys cheeks. “I’m sorry, I just want to look at you forever!”

            “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “I want to look at you too.”

            I could tell he was an exceptional young man. Despite the dark mystery behind Jackson Bronx, this boy was raised well. He was polite, bright and loving. Eventually we got to the elephant in the yard.

            “So, Jackson,” Inga said evenly. “I don’t know whether to knee you in the family jewels or hug you.”

            “How about the later?” he replied with a tentative smile.

            To my surprise Inga and Jackson hugged. Yet it didn’t hold anywhere near the warmth of her long embrace with Benjamin. It lasted two seconds tops. As they separated, Inga said, “Well, I guess you and I have some catching up to do.”

            “Yeah, I guess so,” he replied, looking at Inga with a similar amazement that mother and son had just exhibited toward each other.

            But a tense silence ensued as the parents of Benjamin stared at each other. Then Inga defiantly crossed her arms. “I guess we could start by you explaining why you had me knocked out, stole my baby and had me dumped into the woods.”

            “I didn’t Inga, I swear!” Jackson replied, holding both hands up.

            “Well, I’m pretty sure I didn’t dream the most horrifying moment of my life. That being you taking our baby out of my arms, AND SAYING, he was to be a sacrifice to the master.”

            “It was a ruse.”

            “A ruse? Well, that was some kind of ruse, seeing how I woke up laying in dirt with ants crawling all over me.”

            “I’m so, so sorry, Inga! My plan back fired.”

            “I’d say!” Inga retorted. She was working up a lather, and I felt Seven’s hand go into mine. My husband was signaling us to silently pray.

            Inga bowed her head and pinched her nose. With forced calm she said, “Okay, what happened, happened. Why don’t you tell me about this so called ruse? Maybe you could also tell me who exactly the woman known as Jezzy is.”

            “Jezzy was my dad’s girlfriend. She and my dad were hard core satanists.”

            “So I assume you renounced satanism, seeing how you avoided the first plague?”

            “I grew up with the occult, Inga, I did. But I guess you could say my heart was never really into it. This may make you laugh, or as you mentioned before, knee me in the privates. But you and Benny transformed me.”

            Inga studied Jackson thoughtfully. There was a lump on her cheek, and she was literally biting her tongue as she absorbed his words.

            “Full disclosure,” he said boldly. “Do you remember when I came to stay at Uncle Bryson’s with my brother Barret?”

            “Of course I do.”

            “Well, one of us was supposed to, how do I put this? Steal you away.”

            “You mean kidnap!”

            “Not exactly. We were supposed to win your affections and convince you to come away with us.”

            “We?”

            “Which ever one of us you took to.”

            “That’s weird, because full disclosure, I liked your brother better, even though I thought you were cuter.”

            “I know, that’s why I got to you first.”

            “And why’s that, did the winner get a big reward?”

            “Not at all, it’s because I liked you and Barret didn’t. He thought you were a scrawny, nerdy, brat. But he was still interested just because he wanted the accolades. Then I screwed up by letting you seduce me.”

            “Me seduce you!” Inga barked with hands on hips.

            “Yeah, just by being your sweet and spicey self,” he said with a coy grin.

            Inga heatedly crossed her arms across her chest again. “What do mean by screwed up?”

            “You were supposed to be a virgin sacrifice.”

            “Why me?”

            “Your eyes. Both my dad and my uncle thought they were magical. My dad wanted to offer you as a sacrifice, but Uncle Bryson wanted to marry you. Even from the start I was trying to figure out a way to get you away from both of them.”

            “So, is your Uncle Bryson a Satanist?” she asked.

            “I’d say so, but he privately thought of himself as a Luciferian.”

            “What’s the difference?”

            “Well, not much. Satan was known as Lucifer before he was banished from heaven. The name means Light Bearer and Morning Star. That’s why my uncle was obsessed with ufology. The main difference between him and my dad is their approach. My dad is more blatant, more into the carnal, hedonistic side. Uncle Bryson is more into power and influence.”

            “I don’t understand you though,” she said. “You were so dark and creepy, even scary. But then when I got to know you, I thought you were really sweet, albeit mysterious.”

            “I guess the simplest analogy would be this,” he explained. “Think of a kid who went to a Christian parochial school but secretly rebelled against the family religion when not at home. He wore the uniform and played the part, even though he was secretly partying or looking at porn.”

            “So you dressed like a demonologist but wasn’t into, for lack of a better word, the theology.”

            “Yeah, that would be a good way to put it, I guess” he shrugged. “Look, I’ve discovered most Christians don’t even understand their own belief system and history, so how can somebody conjuring devils really understand theirs? Most Christians can’t even explain what the protestant reformation was all about.”

            “Wow, so if you were faking being an occultist back then, you deserved an Oscar.”

            “I’m not gonna lie. As a youth I thought the imagery was pretty cool. That’s probably one of the reasons Halloween is so popular. But I thought my dad’s rituals and beliefs and so forth were ridiculous.”

            “You say your dad and not your parents. Where was your mom?”

            “He divorced my mom when I was very young. I don’t even remember meeting her until I was a teenager. Long story short, he got her addicted to drugs and then in the divorce had her condemned as an unfit mother. Aunt Holly here is my mother’s aunt. In other words my grandmother’s sister. It was she who helped me escape here to Minnesota with Benny.”

            “Help you escape with Benny,” Inga repeated quietly, yet with a hint of anger.

            Jackson perceived the underlying hostility beneath Inga’s words and explained. “The guy that knocked you out and put you in the woods, Brandon, was a buddy of mine. It was me that got him in with my dad as a bodyguard. Anyway, Jezzy wanted you dead. She thought he killed you and disposed of your body. But like I said, Brandon was a buddy, and he owed me.

            “He knocked you out with a little chloroform and then gave you a mild tranquilizer. The plan was for me to sneak out a back door at a certain point in their ritual, ceremony, whatever you want to call it. I had a car waiting for me, another friend of mine driving. He had Benny and was waiting on the other side of the woods.

            “God as my witness, I intended to carry you the quarter mile through the woods and have you escape with me. The plan was for us to start a new life right here in northern Minnesota. Far away from where my dad’s cult or my uncle’s cult could find us. I couldn’t reveal the plan to you because you were watched like a hawk. There were cameras and listening devises everywhere.”

            Inga was hugging herself. I could tell by her countenance that she was overwhelmed. But the grace of God combined with years of being homeless had made her mentally tough. She stoically told Jackson, “Your uncle almost found me.”

            He looked astonished. “When? Where?”

            “Many months ago in Cedar Rapids. I was unwise and told a friend in the homeless community my story. I figured after all those years and distance it didn’t matter. But she betrayed me and told Bryson where I was for a payoff. He sent a couple goons. But an old friend from the cult and a federal agent who was undercover in the cult got us word in return. Thankfully I had met the Sallie’s here, and Seven’s cousin along with a retired police officer friend helped us capture them. If it wasn’t for meeting the Sallie’s, I’m sure they would have got me.”

            I couldn’t keep silent. I turned my gaze onto Jackson and said, “The main reason they were captured, is Inga bravely set herself up as a decoy.”

            “Believe it or not,” Inga added humbly.

            “Oh, I believe it,” Jackson said, gazing fondly at Inga. “That’s one of the reasons I fell in love with her. Like I said, sweet and spicey.”

            Inga’s return gaze was neutral. “So did you try to find me when you discovered that I wasn’t in the woods where you thought I should be? I hitch hiked for about an hour you know.”

            “We did. But to be honest we didn’t have much time. We only had a small window before they discovered Benny and I were gone. I did hire private detectives to try to find you, but they came up with pretty much nothing.”

            Inga shrugged. “I disappeared into the homeless community. For a long time I never stayed in one place very long.”

            “At first I thought Brandon double crossed me,” Jackson said. “But then the private eyes I hired said the police described you as coming to them for help. I got the impression they thought you were an out of your mind addict.”

            “Did they seem to care when my story was corroborated?” Inga asked with a frown.

            “One of the gum shoes said a sergeant seemed troubled and concerned. But whether they followed up by questioning those at my father’s mansion, I don’t know. I was on the run and in their minds, betrayed them. So I had no way of knowing.”

            Inga looked at Benjamin, who was studying her carefully. Inga took his hand. “I’ve missed you. Or maybe I should say I’ve missed knowing you. But I thought…You were… Can I have another hug?”

            Benjamin nodded, smiled shyly, and fulfilled her wish. After another round of hugs and tears, Inga faced Jackson. “Well, it looks like you’ve done a fine job raising Benjamin.”

            “I did what I could, but I need to defer that compliment to my Aunt Holly,” he declared waving a hand toward the older woman. “I couldn’t have done it without her.”

            “Thank you, Ms. Holly,” Inga said. Then she hugged herself and bit her lip.

            “It’s been my pleasure,” Holly replied meekly.

            “I did everything I could to find you, Inga, please believe me,” Jackson said.

            She smiled tentatively. “Actually I do tend to believe you.”

            “I would like to know how you found me,” he said with a cautious smile. “I mean, I’ve changed my name, we live off the grid. How on earth did you ever find me out here?”

            Inga gave a matter of fact shrug and said, “An angel told me.”

BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 21

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 21

SEVEN SALLIE

OH, THE DEPTH OF THE RICHES BOTH OF THE WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE OF GOD! HOW UNSEARCHABLE ARE HIS JUDGEMENTS AND HIS WAYS PAST FINDING OUT! (Romans 11:33)

            “Seven watch where you’re going!” my wife bellowed just as I veered our Subaru Outback back onto the dirt road after putting the passenger side wheels a couple feet onto the grassy shoulders.

            Inga had just stunned us by informing Zella and me that she had become pregnant as a fifteen year old girl. The impregnator happened to be the guy we were looking for in northern Minnesota. In my surprise I had glanced over my right shoulder at Inga, who was sitting in the back seat.

            This inadvertently caused my hand on the steering wheel to move along with my head. Or as my cousin Brock once called it after I got us into some trouble as teenagers, that lump  attached to my neck. His assessment may have proven correct, because my words caused my wife’s lovely dark brown eyes to produce daggers and her lovely lips to purse as if biting a lemon.

            “Did you abort?” I had asked.

            “Seven, that was crass,” Zella scolded. Then her countenance turned compassionate as she aimed it at Inga. “You don’t have to answer that.”

            “No, it’s okay,” Inga replied quietly and looked out of her window for a few seconds before admitting. “I kept him but then lost him.”

            “You mean you miscarried?” Zella gently asked.

            “No,” her voice croaked. “Jackson sort of became my boyfriend. We supposedly tried to be careful when it came to, you know, intimacy. But, well, I still ended up with a bun in the oven. He took me to some relative of his, I think it was a relative anyway. I never did understand what she was to him, an aunt, a cousin, I don’t know.”

            Inga shook her head and gazed thoughtfully out of the window again.

            “You don’t have to recount your situation, Sweety,” my wife told her.

            Yes she does, I selfishly thought. I want to know what happened.

            “No, I want you guys to know what happened. I want you to know what Jackson was like, even though I don’t understand him myself. Let me say this though. If Jackson Bronx has avoided the plagues, that is the biggest surprise to me of anyone. By far! I believe he got me pregnant on purpose. He… He…”

            Inga put her face in her hands and began sobbing. She spoke into her hands and her words, though muffled, were clear enough. “I don’t want to see him. I don’t understand why we were sent here. What do I say to this man I despise, even if he did somehow repent. He must have. He had to have. How else…”

            Inga paused. “Repent from what?” I asked.

            My wife’s leg twitched and I perceived that she wanted to kick me. “Seven, give her space. Did you forget to take your Genius Juice this morning?”

            “No, I took it.”

            “Could have fooled me.”

            “Sorry, Inga,” I said.

            “It’s okay,” Inga replied meekly. My heart ached for her. I was used to seeing her bold and feisty. It hurt seeing her so broken. But then her feistiness came back with a punch as she angrily declared, “Jackson groomed our baby for a satanic sacrifice.”

            “What!” Zella and I said at the same time. Then I only added to my wife’s ire by adding, “And you let him?”

            “No, I did not let him!” she barked heatedly. Then her demeanor shifted to solemn and she spoke with a monotone voice. “Benjamin wasn’t even a month old. Jackson and that witchy woman came and took him out of my arms as I was nursing him. They had two goons with them. Jackson, just as cold as could be, said ‘it is time for us to make our offering to the master.’

            “I was dumbfounded and demanded to know what he was talking about. Just as pleased as punch, that witchy woman, everyone called her Jezzy, explained about the satanic ritual. I went historical, but the two goons grabbed me. One of them put something over my face. It was a rag with chloroform or something.

            “The next thing I knew, I woke up in some woods behind this big mansion type house where I had my baby. Why they didn’t kill me I don’t know. But I got outta there with only the clothes on my back and hitchhiked back to town. That was a nightmare in itself. I don’t want to go into that right now though.

            “But when I finally get to the cop shop, the police acted like I was just a crazy lunatic. I guess I can’t blame them. And I guess that’s why the goons didn’t kill me. They knew the police wouldn’t believe me. But the police did let me use their phone to call my sister. And that was the beginning of us becoming homeless vagabonds.”

            “Wow, no wonder you’re not looking forward to facing Jackson,” I said.

            “Ya think,” Inga snapped. “Sorry. It’s just that I don’t have a clue how I am supposed to behave. I mean, am I really supposed to forgive the man that killed my baby. He was even the father of the child. I can’t fathom how that depth of evil avoided the plagues thus far.”

            “I don’t know what to tell you, Honey,” Zella said. “The only thing I can say is Jesus asked for forgiveness for those who tortured and killed Him.” (Luke 23:34)

            “Yeah,” Inga said meekly as she folded her hands in her lap, chewed her lip and gazed out of her window.

            A couple minutes later, GPS announced we were there. We already knew that as all six of our eyes were trained on a log cabin type house. It looked like something from a century or two ago. It had a small eight by ten foot porch with two rocking chairs.

            “Seven, why don’t you go knock on the door?” Zella petitioned.

            Why me! My mind shouted, yet I forced my actions to nobility. “Okay.”

            I tried three times, but no one came and I heard nothing inside. The cabin was on a bit of a hill, and the back side was twice as big as the front. There was a large deck supported by ten foot tall four by fours. About fifteen stairs jutted to the side of the structure.

            I heard low voices coming from the deck. With heart pounding I placed my foot on the first step, then the second step, then from my voice box came a greeting, “Hello?”

            The talking stopped and a twenty something year old man appeared at the top of the stairs. Thankfully he returned my greeting, albeit cautiously. “Hello.”

            He had sandy blonde hair and blue eyes looked at me through wire rimmed glasses. My first thought was that this couldn’t be Jackson. Inga described him with black hair and dark eyes. There were four deck chairs. Three were empty, but one was occupied by an older woman who appeared to be in her seventies.

            The sandy haired man held a Bible in his hand. With a friendly, but careful tone he asked, “Can I help you?”

            “I’m looking for a fella by the name of Jackson Bronx,” I told him.

            He looked stunned and took a step back. “May I ask why and who you are?”

            I chuckled nervously. “Well, it’s complicated, and might sound farfetched.”

            “Try me,” he said almost as a challenge and with narrowed eyes.

            “My name is Seven Sallie, I…”

            “Thee Seven Sallie?” the older lady broke in with an air of excitement as she arose and stood by the sandy haired man. “The legendary broadcaster?”

            With a little bit of a bow and a hand on my chest, I replied, “Yes ma’am, it is I.”

            My mind’s ear heard my lovely wife say, ‘Give me break.’ It was definitive enough that I even turned to see if she was behind me. She wasn’t. I also wondered if I should explain to this nice lady that my little head bow and hand to the chest was spontaneous, and that my mock humility sprang from praise actually making me uncomfortable.

            This wasn’t always the case with me. When I was a secular broadcaster with a syndicated show on hundreds of radio stations, I was full of myself. But after my Christian conversion, I began mocking my old self. I occasionally joked that I was a legend in my own time. Then my wife would finish my statement by declaring that I was a legend in my own mind. This usually garnered a laugh from the company we kept.

            The converted me enjoyed the tranquility of not taking myself so seriously. The born again me (John 3:3-7), the new creation I became (2 Corinthians 5:17), enjoyed true peace giving God the glory rather than myself.

            “Okay,” the sandy haired man said matter of fact, clearly not as impressed with me as his older companion.  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Sallie. But why are you here then?”

            “I’m with a young woman named Inga Likas. She…”

            “Inga Likas!” he interrupted with wide eyes. He definitely was more interested in Inga rather than the venerable Seven Sallie.

            “Yes, also known as Inga…”

            “Cognito,” he interrupted again.

            “Right, so apparently you know her.”

            “Of course I do.”

            “Okay, great,” I replied, frowning as I wrapped my mind around this second guy. “So do you know where Jackson Bronx is?”

            “You’re looking at him.”

            I looked to my right and to my left. Inga described Jackson as having black hair and dark  eyes. This guy in front of me had sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Inga described you as having black hair and brown eyes.”

            “When I knew her, I dyed my hair and wore colored contacts,” he said quickly, then grabbed my forearm and asked excitedly, “Is she here?”

            I looked at his hand on my arm and he pulled it away. “Sorry.”

            “No problem,” I replied. “Yeah, she’s around front.”

            He went down the deck stairs two at a time and I followed. Inga and Zella were slowly roaming around the front yard. Their heads swiveling as they took in the woods that surrounded about an acre of lawn. Inga froze as Jackson approached her.

            “Inga!” he said with open arms as if to hug her.

            She took a couple quick steps back and ordered, “Stay away from me.”

            He put up his hands in a surrender gesture.

            The front door opened and an eight or nine year-old boy ran to Jackson. “Papa, Aunt Holly said Inga was here.”

            My eyes went from the boy to Inga. I never saw a more stunned face in my life. Her jaw hung open, as did my wife’s. Then my gaze returned to the boy, and I took in his wide, expressive arctic blue eyes, Inga’s eyes, as they trained on her. Then my jaw dropped when I heard him ask Inga, “Are you my mom?”

BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 20

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 20

INGA LIKAS (AKA INGA COGNITO)

SUBMIT TO GOD. RESIST THE DEVIL AND HE WILL FLEE FROM YOU. DRAW NEAR TO GOD AND HE WILL DRAW NEAR TO YOU. CLEANSE YOUR HANDS YOU SINNERS, AND PURIFY YOUR HEARTS YOU DOUBLE MINDED (James 4:7, 8)

            It was like being in a real live science fiction movie! The second and third plagues had fallen, and the seas and waters became blood. (Revelation 16:3, 4) Lake Superior was dark red and foamy on its banks. The smell of it along with the dead fish was gagging me. The thought of paying a visit to Jackson Bronx was making me nauseous with anxiety. I’m surprised I didn’t throw up.

            But I kept remembering Bible verses about confidence in God. Like there is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. (1 John 4:18) Be still and know that I am God. (Psalm 46:10) God will keep you in perfect peace when it stays on Him. (Isaiah 26:3) For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)

            I was with Seven and Zella LaStella-Sallie.  We were riding in their dark green Subaru Outback. I was in the back seat with Seven driving and Zella riding shotgun. My two close friends were also a comfort provided by God.

            Our trip up to the north shore of Minnesota was another element like out of a science fiction movie. For one thing, it was as if we were teleported. It seemed like we were barely on the road, and we were driving through Duluth. It should have taken us about five hours to get there, but it seemed like only minutes. The city was desolate. Like the COVID lock down times ten. The few people we did encounter eyed us skeptically.

            But just as the angel assured us, we would be protected from any angry people or mobs that blamed Sabbath keepers for the plagues. The angel also had programmed Jackson Bronx’s address into the GPS. It turned out to be a cabin several miles off of highway 61. Very remote.

            I should have felt creeped out as we got closer. Jackson Bronx was a strange, sinister boy who was almost two years older than me. He was seventeen the last time I saw him. After I tell you what happened the last time I saw him, you’ll understand why I felt anxious as his cabin came into view. But the Word of God gave me courage to go forward.

            Not quite a decade previous, he had crept into my room at midnight. I awoke to a hand over my mouth and a knife blade’s tip an inch from my eye. A full moon’s light shone in through the window and  his dark eyes glazed crazily into mine. Yet his bizarre actions supposedly came as a warning rather than a threat.

            “Uncle Bronx thinks you’re pretty bright blue eyes are magical,” he had whispered. “He intends to make you his wife…. Do you want me to gouge them out? Ouch! Why’d you bite my hand?”

            I wanted to say, ‘what do think you, idiot?’ But that wouldn’t be wise to ask that of an evil person while they held a knife to your face. So I said, “I have allergies. I can’t breathe through my nose.”

            My heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest as I prepared to be slashed. But he sat back on his haunches and spoke patiently as he lifted his hand toward the window and the moon’s light to check it over. “I can’t believe you bit me.”

            “I can’t believe you snuck into my room and threatened me!” I replied but then realized I shouldn’t have been surprised. There was a reason I kept my distance from him as much as possible.

            “I didn’t sneak into your room to threaten you. I came into your room to warn you. Maybe you should lock your door.”

            “There are no locks on the doors,” I told him. Then I almost called this place what it was, a cult. But I didn’t know just how close Jackson was to the cult leader, his Uncle Bryson. So I said, “At this compound.”

            “Put a chair under the doorknob,” he said, pointing at a chair under a desk.

            “It has wheels.”

            “Well, get creative then. Hang bells on the door or something.”

            “That still won’t keep creeps like you out,” I blurted, and instantly tensed. I guess diarrhea of the mouth began early for me. I wonder when it started for Seven?

            But he didn’t seem to mind. He shrugged and said, “But it would warn you when a creep like me comes in.”

            “Do you think you’re a creep?” I asked mildly. Then I tensed again. Why did my mouth tend to speak before the rational part of my brain gave it permission to?

            “No, but you apparently do.”

            “Can you blame me? You’re always wearing black with dark satanic imagery.”

            His eyes suddenly looked crazed in the moonlight, and he pointed his index fingers up from his forehead like devil horns. Then he gave a ghoulish grin. No, more like a silly grin. He waggled his tongue and went, “Aaaaah.”

            I don’t know why, but this made me want to laugh, but I held it in. So then it came out as a burst when I couldn’t hold it any more. It was along the lines of not supposed to laugh making something seem funnier.

            “I like you, Inga,” he said softly and ran a finger gently against my cheek.

            I was stunned. I’d never seen Jackson be anything but dark and brooding. It took me off guard, first by him acting silly and now acting sweet. The truth is, I always thought he was cute. But the evil persona he took on turned me off. So instead of saying I liked him too, I asked, “Why are you into devil stuff.”

            “I’m not,” he shrugged.

            “Yeah? Could have fooled me. Actually you’re not fooling me. You don’t just accidently wear inverted crosses and pentagrams, listen to death metal music, sneak into girls rooms at midnight, and put knives to their face.”

            “In my defense, you’re the only girl I’ve ever snuck in on and done that.”

            “Well, how special for me,” I mocked, tilting my head. Then I frowned. He had in fact just awakened me with a knife practically in my eye, yet I wasn’t afraid anymore. But never trust a devil, they will be charming one second and diabolical the next.

            “Like I said, I came to warn you, not harm you.”

            “So why the knife to the face?
            “I didn’t want you to freak out.”

            “Didn’t want me to freak out! You’ve got to be kidding!”

            He shook his head and waved his hands. “I wanted to make sure you kept silent. If I would have simply shaken you awake, you might have screamed.”

            “No might have about it,” I admitted.

            We gazed at each other in the moonlight for several long seconds. Then he said, “Well, you’ve been warned. I better go.”

            Strangely, I didn’t want him to go. He had been sitting on the side of my bed and arose. I had been sitting up in my bed at that point and grabbed his hand. “Let’s talk some more.”

            “Ouch,” he responded, pulling his hand away from mine. But then he sat back down on the side of my bed. “I still can’t believe you bit me.”

            “Sorry,” I said and then frowned. Why was I apologizing? He’s the one that snuck into my room, put a knife to my face and hand over my mouth. My reaction was just instinctive, self-protective.

            “I ought to bite you,” he said with a coy smile.

            He suddenly pulled me to himself and nibbled on my neck. It tickled, so I giggled, but I pushed away from him. Then he grabbed me by the shoulders, yanked me back toward him, and kissed me. The weird thing was, I kissed him back even as I halfheartedly tried to push away.

            It’s strange how the mind works. This duel nature in us humans. There’s part of the mind that draws us to wrong things, also known as sin. Then there’s this other part of the mind that tells us to do what is right, also known as the conscience. It is here, I believe, where we either cooperate or ignore the working of the Holy Spirit. Even back then, when I wasn’t a follower of Jesus, I felt this struggle within me.

            I think the Apostle Paul explains this struggle very well in Romans chapter seven. But that evening with Jackson kissing me in my bed at midnight, with me wearing nothing but a little nightgown, a garment that was really only a big t-shirt? For that I will boil Romans chapter seven down to verses 23-25.

            ‘I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh wretched person that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God. But with the flesh, the law of sin.’

            But I knew very little about Jesus or the Bible back then. So the law of the flesh was ruling over the law of my mind as Jackson kissed me. Something inside me said, no this isn’t right, get away. Where did that instinct come from? Yet another part of me said, this feels good, put your arm around his neck. So I did, and carnal passion smothered out good sense and reason.

            But there were a couple moments of conscience and reason fighting for air. After several minutes of kissing like they do in France, Jackson lifted my night gown. I yanked it back down. “No!”

            “I like your feistiness,” he said with a laugh, trying again with me rejecting again.

            Then this typically brooding, scowling young man, not only smiled, but laughed. This disarmed me even further. But then he began to arm me back up by saying. “Uncle Bryson wants you as a virgin bride as soon as you turn sixteen. We can eliminate half of the equation of virgin bride right now.”

            Fear erased the passion I was feeling, and I rolled away from him. “No! You better leave right now!”

            “Okay, suit yourself, Inga,” he said mildly. He actually got up and walked to the door as if to leave. But he stopped, turned, and said, “I must say, it hurts that you would rather have a guy almost old enough to be your grandfather rather than me. But, like I said, suit yourself.”

            “Like I have choice? If he finds I’m not a virgin, he will likely kill me.”

            “Not if I tell him you’re my girlfriend.”

            “Do that and he’ll kill you too.”

            Jackson snorted. “Oh, lovely Inga, you know so little. Uncle Bryson acts like he’s superman, but my brothers and me are his kryptonite.”

            He didn’t explain why he and his brothers were like kryptonite, that I found out later. But I was an infatuated teenage girl and foremost on my mind was, ‘he called me lovely!’ Me, a gangly girl making her way out of puberty. Did he also say girlfriend? That had a ring of permanence.

            But Jackson was dark, sinister and not to be trusted. However, that night he was sweet and charming. Can leopard a change his spots? No, but maybe I could change him. How many millions of women got into a mess thinking that?                                                                                      I hopped out of my bed and went to him. “You really want me to be your girlfriend?”

            “I do,” he said gently, caressing my cheek with his finger again. Like the foolish girl I was, I whimpered and we started kissing again.

            Back to the current situation. I heard Zella say, “You’re awfully quiet, Inga. Penny for your thoughts.”

            “Huh?” I replied, a little rattled. My little trip down memory lane was getting more bumpy by the mile, or I guess I should say minute.

            “You seemed to be deep in thought,” she added.

            “Yeah, I guess so,” I said and then paused, considering my very dear friends in the front seat. ‘Confess your trespasses to one to another’ came to mind. (James 5:16) “You know how I told you I ran away from that cult in California when I was sixteen.”

            “Sure I do.”

            “What I left out was that I was pregnant… By Jackson Bronx.”

BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 19

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 19

INGA LIKAS (AKA INGA COGNITO)

THEN I, JOHN, SAW THE HOLY CITY, NEW JERUSALEM, COMING DOWN OUT OF HEAVEN FROM GOD (Revelation 21:2)

            Sevenia Sallie and I were both pumped with positive adrenaline. Yet as we anticipated a supernatural encounter, possibly even meeting an angelic being, we had butterflies flittering in our midsections. The young woman I walked along beside voiced my own concern. “Inga, I feel unworthy for what we may encounter.”

            The positive adrenaline flipped to a negative panic attack. The flitter of happy butterflies turned to a flutter of angry bats. I stopped dead in my tracks. Sevenia Sallie, who as a teenager was known as the girl prophetess felt unworthy? How much more a woman who had thus far spent most of her adult life as a homeless vagabond feel? A woman who several months ago had been arrested for shoplifting.

            Sevenia took two more steps without me by her side. Then she turned and took a step back toward me. Her Emerald eyes were wide and expressive. “Inga, what’s wrong?”

            “If you feel unworthy, then I have no business proceeding to our destination. You better go without me.”

            “Inga, remember what Captain Kirk told us? If we follow the Holy Spirit’s lead, we will be blessed. If not, well?”

            “You know my background Sevenia. I was thief, a liar, a…”

            “Did you hear what you said?” she interrupted with a gentle smile. “You was. Hand me your Bible.”

            She put out an open palm. I pulled the small New Testament from the pocket of my blue flannel shirt. I meekly asked, “What for?”

            She opened it to first Corinthians chapter six and read some verses describing different manners of sin. Then her almond shaped green eyes looked into my round arctic blues as she read verse eleven. “Such WERE some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”

            This is why fellowship is so important. The Bible instructs us to exhort one another daily. (Hebrews 3:13) Sevenia’s encouragement chased away the devil’s discouragement. Like the song, I turned my eyes upon Jesus and looked full in His wonderful face. I felt the comfort of the Comforter ooze into me. The precious gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus also called the Helper in John chapter fourteen.

            “Thanks for that,” I told Sevenia.

            “Just doing what you’ve been doing for countless others,” she said with a grin. I had thought the song ‘Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,’ but now Sevenia began to sing it. I joined her and when our choir of two finished, we hugged. Then we proceeded to the two hundred year old oak tree behind the big, faded red barn.

            Brock Storm had tied a bench swing to a thick limb that jutted out horizontally from the large tree. The limb was about as large as a full grown tree itself. Sevenia and I watched the beautiful multicolored sunset as we sat side by side. As talented as many artists are, nothing can match the living art from God’s orderly Creation.

            This was a special sunset, set apart from the previous six that week. For this sunset signified the beginning of the Sabbath, representing the rest God Himself took after Creation. (Genesis 2:2, 3) Then He commanded us to do the same every week in Exodus 20:8-11 and  Deuteronomy 5:12-15.

            Sevenia led us in a prayer, thanking our Lord for the Sabbath as the big orange ball slipped beneath the horizon that Friday evening. For we believed the Biblical Sabbath was from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. (See Genesis 1:19, 23, 31)

            Many had called us legalists, especially those who were angriest as the seven last plagues fell. But were we who kept the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus legalists? (Revelation 14:12). I should say not! Were we saved because we kept the law? No, we kept the law BECAUSE we were saved. We didn’t keep the law TO be saved.  

            It’s called righteousness by faith. In other words, we are saved by grace through faith, it is a gift from God, and not by our works (Ephesians 2:8, 9). However, in Romans 6:1 the Apostle Paul asks if we continue to sin because we are saved by grace. In verse two he answers his own question. Certainly not!

            So why do we who are saved keep the commandments, the one part of the Bible God wrote Himself with His own finger? Jesus put it as simply as He possibly could in John 14:15. “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” And when you spend time with Jesus, examine and contemplate His life through study and prayer, you tend to fall in love with Him.

            The interesting thing is the only one of the ten commandments that mainstream Christianity seemed to have a problem with is the fourth. Maybe that’s why God allowed it to be the test of love and loyalty. He says in Jeremiah 17:10 that He searches the heart and tests the mind.

            The other interesting thing to consider is why exactly did Satan seek to change this aspect of the law of God. Quite simply because it was the one commandment that recognizes God as Creator. Isaiah chapter fourteen tells of the fall of Lucifer, who would become Satan. He declared in verse fourteen that he wanted to be like the Most High.

            So the seal of God or the mark of the beast came down to the Sabbath of the Bible verses the sabbath made popular by the Roman Empire, Sunday. Mankind, through religious and political leaders, would attempt to change the Bible Sabbath, that element of time, which is also part of the law (Daniel 7:25).

            Because of this, Sunday would become what most of the world would embrace as the sabbath, centuries after the Bible predicted that it would think to do this in the book of Daniel. But just because mankind declared it changed, does that make it so? God says of Himself that He does not change. (Malachi 3:6)

            If you followed the world, or the majority, you received the mark of the beast. The mark in one’s hand or forehead that allowed you to buy and sell. Was this referring to a computer chip? It played a part, but it wasn’t what the scriptures were actually warning of. The mark represents what we think, forehead, and what we do, hand.

            Thankfully Jesus called us out of the world (John 15:19). He wanted to give us the seal of God by doing so. But He doesn’t force us to follow Him. Satan does, simply by using our selfish human natures. But Christ stands at the door of the heart and knocks, politely asking for entrance. (Revelation 3:20).

            So the majority of the religious world had blamed us Sabbatarians for the seven last plagues. This was primarily due to false prophets and teachers doing miracles (Matthew 24:24). They sanctioned Sunday observance in the process. The biggest swing was when Satan himself appeared as an angel of light and deceived the vast multitudes (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). We needed to become like the noble Bereans who searched the scriptures daily (Acts 17:11).

            When Sevenia ended her prayer, we both said amen. She had a look of delightful expectancy on her face after we lifted our bowed heads. I wonder if I had the same, because when she turned her gaze upon me, the wattage of her lit up countenance only increased.

            In only a few minutes of prayer, the beauty of the setting sun had shifted colors and patterns. The sparse clouds went from an orangey lavender to a radiant hot pink. Sevenia emitted a happy sigh. “That beautiful sky sure is a welcome site.”

            “It sure is,” I replied with a strange mixture of calm excitement, wondering what we were welcoming.

            As twilight began to fade into darkness, it happened. It was as if the sun reversed itself. But it wasn’t the sun that lightened our eyesight. It was an angel, a messenger from God that took Sevenia and I off into vision. It was like the ultimate good dream. Yet we were fully awake. I think.

            Our heads tilted up, and our arms extended palms up. Our necks were powerless to move our heads down and our arms powerless to retract to our sides. But we cared not. We were completely enthralled by the vision before our minds.

            It was as if it was happening in the sky. I even wondered if our friends back at the house were seeing the same thing we were. Our guide was a bright light, the voice like a rippling stream, beautiful and melodic as it spoke. “This is a little preview of the city of God, the New Jerusalem. This is to strengthen your resolve.”

            This spectacular city, spoken of by John in the twenty-first chapter of Revelation, had been moving toward us. It had stopped as soon as our guide said, ‘little preview.’ Then our guide became a little like a realtor showing us a house. But this was the heavenly city that was described in Revelation. It was three hundred and seventy five miles on each side. Plus instead of studying every room of a house, we got quick glimpses of different aspects of the city structure, both from near and afar. Zooming in and out.

            The walls were over two hundred feet high and eighteen inches thick. They were made of solid jasper. There were twelve gates made of pearl. The main street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. The aforementioned foundation had twelve layers of precious stones: jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst. It was beautiful! How often is that said about a foundation?

            The music, oh the music bringing praise to our Savior! It was like nothing ever heard on earth! We could feel the love all around us, although the images of inhabitants were vague, maybe even veiled. Then as quickly as we were whisked away in vision, we were back on the swing on the oak behind the old barn. The last remnant of twilight was giving way to the stars. It seemed time had stood still while we made this little trip. If that’s what you call it.

            Our guide had been as it were a beam of light. But now in the coming night, he took on a shadowy human form.  We could make out no features, but his voice, before heavenly, unearthly, was now that of an older man. Not unlike our beloved Pastor, Captain Kirk.

            “I suppose you are wondering why you two were giving a glimpse of what is to soon come,” he said.

            Sevenia and I, both speechless at first with awe, simply nodded. Then she said, “You said something about strengthening our resolve.”

            “Yes, okay, I will fill you in. It is really quite simple,” he told us. “You both have proven faithful and highly favored. You both have proven to be a blessing to others, especially those who have come to the truth of late, during the loud cry.

            “But many are experiencing wavering courage since the falling of the first plague. Many do not understand how they avoided the first plague. They have very limited understanding in spiritual things. But when push came to shove with mandatory worship, they simply obeyed God rather than men. When you return to the house, you will discover the second plague had fallen. The seas have become as the blood of a dead man.”

            “Oh my,” Sevenia and I said at the same time.

            “Inga, you will need to leave the safety of this refuge for a while. Are you willing?”

            “Yes.”

            The angel laughed. “I figured as much. Your mission is relatively close, Sevenia. You will be needed here to keep believers encouraged, so you will remain close by.”

            I never felt so alive in my life. I would try to run through a wall if asked. Then his next words would humble me. But strength is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9).

            “You will be needed to pay a visit to one of Bryson Bronx’s nephews.”

            This was where I was humbled. At the name Bryson Bronx, the cult leader with whom I partially grew up under, I felt a wave of anxiety. I didn’t like any of Bronx’s family members, especially any of his four arrogant, entitled nephews. Was it even possible even one of them avoided the first plague? But who was I to judge? Only God knows the heart. With great apprehension I asked, “Which one?”

            I silently prayed that it wouldn’t be Jackson. It certainly couldn’t have been him. He was as dark and brooding as the other three combined, and they were all bad enough individually. But it wasn’t the Lord’s will.

            Almost apologetically he said, “Jackson Bronx.”

BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 18

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 18

INGA LIKAS (AKA INGA COGNITO)

IT SHALL COME TO PASS IN THE LAST DAYS, SAYS GOD, THAT I WILL POUR OUT MY SPIRIT UPON ALL FLESH; YOUR SONS AND YOUR DAUGHTERS SHALL PROPHECY, YOUR YOUNG MEN SHALL SEE VISIONS, YOUR OLD MEN SHALL DREAM DREAMS (Acts 2:17)

            I couldn’t believe I didn’t see this one coming. Sevenia Sallie, Seven’s daughter, asked  “Do you know why my Dad’s twin brother Six is afraid of him?”

            “He is?” I frowned, recalling the two sibling’s warm embrace after Six’s arrival put the head count at the Storm’s farmhouse up to seventy.

            She tucked a strand from her shoulder length auburn hair behind her ear. Her almond -shaped green eyes looked earnest as she said, “Yeah, it’s because Seven ate nine.”

            I still didn’t get that she was joking for a few seconds. My frowned deepened. Was she talking about cousins? Because I knew that Sebastion ‘Seven’ Sallie was the youngest of seven children, and that Six and Seven were their actual middle names.

            Sevenia started giggling. I secretly fancied myself as a sharp cookie. How could I have been so dull? I once heard Seven express something a bit similar. ‘The funny thing about humility is the second you think you have, you lost it.’ I had told him this must be a regular occurrence for you.

            I think the funniest jokes are the ones that baffle me at first. So I burst out laughing after I said. “Oh, ate, not eight.”

            As I wiped a happy tear from my eye and relished the good endorphins just released in my brain, Sevenia was smiling sweetly at me. There was nothing malicious in her joke. Sevenia was right up there with the kindest, most Godly people I had ever met. There was not a mean bone in her body.

            “Thanks for that,” I said. “Nothing like a good laugh.”

            “Thank you,” Sevenia replied as she patted me on the knee. “For all you have taught me.”

            I tilted my head inquisitively. All that I taught her? She and I were roughly the same age. But I looked to her as a mentor. Her knowledge of scripture was unequaled. And I mean with not only with someone like her father, but she was right up there with Pastor Kirk Samson. He was the patriarch of Cotton Creek Cove Fellowship. He was more widely known to his parishioners as Captain Kirk, due to his decade as an Army Chaplin.

            “Actually it’s the other way around,” I smiled, giving her hand that had come to rest on my knee an affectionate squeeze.

            She shook her head. “Nobody has calmed, encouraged and exhorted like you have since the first plague fell. You’re one of the main reasons the children are behaving, well, like contented children.”

            “It’s God, not me.”

            “Right, but He’s working through you. And your humble attitude is what makes it possible.”

            “You know what your dad says about humility?”

            “I do,” she giggled, then asked. “So do you think you are humble?”

            “That’s a loaded question if ever there was one,” I laughed.

            “Haven’t you noticed that Francine practically follows you around like your shadow?”

            I smiled at the thought of Franny. She was a very shy fifteen year old who opened up to me about being bullied. Adolescence had not been kind to her. She was gangly and had pretty severe acne. So I showed her pictures of me when I was fifteen. Puberty was hostile to me as well. She and I had something else in common, unique eyes. Whereas mine were very light blue to the point of almost glowing, her eyes were violet. A color rarely seen in windows to the soul.

            “I honestly don’t mind,” I told Sevenia. “Her meekness quells my potential for being obnoxious. Especially around your dad.”

            She laughed, then rolled her eyes. “He loves exchanging good natured barbs with you. I know he looks at you like a daughter.”

            Sentiment swelled in my heart. “I guess that makes you and me sisters.”

            “We already were,” she smiled, indicating our sisterhood in Christ. Our hands were still joined, and she gave mine an affectionate squeeze. I reciprocated, and then our eyes turned to the door as a knock emanated from the old oak wood.

            Like I said, we were now seventy strong at the Storm residence. Their renovated farmhouse was very large, sporting eight bedrooms. It also had makeshift sleeping quarters in the basement, attic and living room. All these people seeking refuge here made it seem rather small, yet somehow cozy.

            I shared a room with Sevenia, Nancy Aldo, and the aforementioned Francine, who we called Franny. Sevenia’s husband Jerry was rooming with his brother Drew, who was married to Nancy. They also had to put up with Sevenia’s dad, Seven Sallie. Of course I jest by saying ‘put up with’… Well, maybe. Seven’s twin brother Six made it a foursome like our own room.

            So we assumed the knock at the door was one of our roommates. If the door was shut, we knocked in case one of the married roommates was having some private time with their husband, if you know what I mean. But low and behold, we were surprised to see the knock had come from Pastor Samson, AKA Captain Kirk.

            “Pastor, come in,” Sevenia invited.

            “Thank you, my Dear,” Captain Kirk replied as he shuffled in. The man of God was now in his nineties, and although typically spry for his age, he did have moments of appearing frail. He admitted such by joking about the oldest person recorded in the Bible. “Today I feel like Methuselah.”

            We laughed and then Sevenia asked, “To what do we owe the pleasure, Pastor?”

            With Pastor Samson’s long white beard and his reputation for impeccable character, he always reminded me of the Prophet Moses. He ambled toward a desk chair, pointed at it, and with raised eyebrows asked, “May I?”

            “Of course, of course,” Sevenia enthused.

            Captain Kirk groaned a little as he sat. The wood floor squeaked as he did so and with a chuckled he asked, “Was that my bones creaking?”

            Sevenia and I laughed again, then he asked, “How are you ladies holding up?”

            Sevenia and I glanced at each other, then looked at the Pastor and replied at the same time with the same response. “Good.”

            “Good.”

            “How about you?” I asked.

            “Fair to middling,” he replied.

            With the first of the seven last plagues falling, world chaos had ensued. So both Sevenia and I assumed the Pastor was just making rounds to check on the welfare of his flock. But he surprised us.

            “I had a vivid dream about you two as I was taking an afternoon nap today.”

            “Do tell,” I blurted. Then I wondered if it came across as flippant. I opened my mouth to utter an apology, but the Pastor spoke first.

            “I absolutely love your childlike faith, my Dear,” he told me with a chuckle. Then he became serious. “But I do not mean you are childish. Jesus admonished us to become like little children with their simple faith and humility.” (Matthew 18:1-5)

            He looked away and scratched his head. “Sure has been a long time since I was a little child though. Anyway, I had a dream about you two, but I’m not sure how to explain it.”

            “A dream or a nightmare?” I blurted again. You would think I was the daughter of Seven Sallie. But Sevenia did call us sisters.

            Captain Kirk chuckled. “Well, a dream if you follow God’s lead, or a nightmare if you don’t. But I have a good feeling about you two. Plus, it happened this afternoon, so it wouldn’t have been a nightmare in the truest sense.”

            “So what happened Pastor?” Sevenia asked.

            “Well, it was more like an instructive situation rather than anything specific happening.”

            “What do you mean?” Sevenia asked.

            “Can you two keep a secret?”

            “Wasn’t it Ben Frankin who said three people can keep a secret if two are dead,” my mouth spurted yet again. I instantly regretted it, especially given the Pastor’s age and frailty.

            But he chuckled. “It’s not that crucial of a secret. Several people already know about it. It’s just the fewer that know the better. I don’t want people thinking I’m off my rocker.”

            I stopped myself from a foot in my mouth statement, if I hadn’t already placed it there and simply asked, “Know what?”

            “I think I know,” Sevenia said. “Did you have an angelic encounter?”

            “Yes, my Dear, I did.”

            “And you’ve experienced that before?” I asked.

            “It’s complicated,” Captain Kirk replied with a frown as he began stroking his long white beard. “On a few occasions over the last twenty years, I’ve been given a message or instructions from an angel of the Lord. Whether these are actual encounters, dreams, or visions, I don’t know. What happened in my dream this afternoon was very, very real. But also very short. But the message was clear.”

            Despite his age, Pastor Samson gazed at us with the intensity of an NFL linebacker eyeing a quarterback. At the same time, Sevenia and I both said, “What is it?”

            “I don’t know.”

            Sevenia and I gazed at him dumbfounded. Then she said, “But you said the message was clear.”

            He shook his head. “No, no, we got off the same page. Let me clarify. I don’t know what your message is. My message was clear. It was to tell you two that you will be receiving a message yourselves. The purpose of me as a go between was twofold. It was so you weren’t surprised by the encounter and so you have faith in its legitimacy.”

            I felt a spike of positive adrenaline. “Are you saying Sevenia and I are going to have an angelic encounter?”

            “Either that or you will be given a vision. You both have been considered highly favored.”

            “When?” my spiritual sister and I asked at the same time.

            “Go to the two hundred year old oak tree behind the big barn at sunset. Keep this to yourselves. And may God richly bless you.”

BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 17

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 17

LOUIS LEWIS

NO EVIL SHALL BEFALL YOU, NOR ANY PLAGUE COME NEAR YOUR DWELLING. FOR HE SHALL GIVE HIS ANGELS CHARGE OVER YOU, TO KEEP YOU IN ALL YOUR WAYS. (Psalm 91:10, 11)

            Destiny and Brock Storm’s remote acreage proved to be a refuge for many who were seeking shelter from the chaos of the plagues. They were showing up miraculously, claiming that they were brought by somebody in the know, that they did not know. More than once I witnessed them look around in bewilderment, exclaiming, ‘Where did they go?’

            The very first such person was Tim Grant. He was a distinguished looking man in his seventies. He had aged well and was in great shape for someone in the category of geriatric. I had taken a liking to him, notwithstanding thinking he might have a screw loose at first, due to his supernatural encounter. This only proved I still struggled with skepticism, despite miraculously escaping the first plague myself. But my faith was strengthening by the hour.

            Tim had a gentle manner with an easy smile, despite the bedlam happening in the world. He had been in search of Anna Clayton. When the first plague causing loathsome sores began to infect the majority of the population, he had become concerned about his onetime friend. I hadn’t known initially that they had been more than just friends. It turned out, he hadn’t known he had a daughter by her.

            And that’s why Anna’s husband had been irate when Tim had shown up on their doorstep an hour before standing on the Storm’s doorstep. That’s why after the affair he had moved away and had kept his distance for more than eight years. That’s why after the adulterous liaison he had sought repentance with tears.

            But after the plague fell, he needed to be sure Anna was okay. When Brad, his former neighbor opened the door, he hadn’t expected him to be glad to see him. What he hadn’t expected was to see the grotesque, puss oozing sores on Brad’s face. He had liked and respected Brad when they had lived next to each other. He had always thought of him as a Godly man, so he was sure that he would have been safe from the plagues. He wasn’t so sure about Anna.

            Despite Brad’s current attitude, he had graciously forgiven them both not quite a decade earlier after a guilty conscience had forced a confession from Anna. But then she had begun calling Tim again only a few months after their fling. Tim had patiently, kindly ordered her to stop trying to contact him. Yet a half dozen more times she had sent him texts pleading that she needed to see him.

            As painful as it was, he had ignored them. He didn’t know that she simply wanted to tell him the not so simple news that he was going to be a father. He didn’t know that Brad had actually insisted that Tim had a right to know. He didn’t know that Anna felt like it was news to be delivered in person. He didn’t know that Brad planned to accompany her in the possible meeting.

            As our numbers increased, the Storm’s large farm house began to feel like a bed and breakfast. Then it was like a college dormitory as we were doubled and tripled in our rooms. The children were sacking out on the living room floor. Despite uncertainty in the world, God blessed the kids for their simple faith and allowed them to treat our current living like a slumber party.

            I was sitting on my bed reading my Bible when Tim walked in. He and I had been paired up in my room. He had a look of awe and wonderment on his face. He and I had become fast friends, so he used a shortened version of my name as he addressed me. Sitting on his own bed he said, “I can hardly believe it, Lou. I have a daughter.”

            I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I said as much. “What do you mean?”

            “Anna, she just informed me that that little angel Brianna is the fruit of my loins.”

            I frowned. Maybe it was our age difference, for Tim had a good quarter century on me, but I found his term describing his parentage to Brianna odd. Yet I knew exactly what he meant, and I was stunned. Oh I knew Anna had confessed to infidelity, and that Brianna wasn’t her husband’s biological daughter. What caught me unexpectedly was it turning out to be this humble, pious man who was old enough to be Anna’s father as well as Brianna’s.

            “This is good news then?” I asked.

            He looked at me with a bewildered expression. “I don’t know. That one amazing night with Anna left me with years of guilt.”

            He began to whimper, then cry, then sob to the point his whole body shook. “How can such beauty come from ashes?”

            I suddenly knew why God had paired him and me together. I shared a common bond with him, a secret not even a half dozen people knew. A secret that left such a huge scar of shame on my soul I fought to keep the words inside that felt compelled to come out.

            Why, oh why did I feel this urge to confess to my brand new brother in Christ? This man I barely knew who was my complete opposite. He was soft spoken and gentle, compared to my history of gruff and abrupt. He was well to do, and I had mostly lived paycheck to paycheck. He drove a new Volvo, and I drove a car I bought at a police auction. Yet I felt a kinship with the man I couldn’t explain. Maybe we would even end up with our arms around each other singing ‘Ebony and Ivory.’

            “I know how you feel,” I heard myself say. “I too have a daughter out of wedlock.”

            His gaze was intense as we locked eyes. We didn’t know each well enough then for him to be surprised. But his countenance expressed, ‘You mean I’m not alone? Someone knows what it means to claim to follow God and fail big time?’

            As reluctant as I had been, it felt good to get this off my chest with someone. Someone who would not only understand but benefit as if we had our own little support group. But then he asked a question that caused my thinking to do a one-eighty. “Are you two close?”

            I looked away from his penetrating blue eyes. “No, she’s mostly wanted nothing to do with me.”

            “I see,” he said blankly.

            “But our situations are different, even though they’re similar,” I said, and then frowned at the contradictory statement. “It was a complicated time in my life. But when hasn’t there been a complicated time in my life.”

            “In the world we will have tribulation,” Tim said reassuringly.

            “But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,” I finished. (John 16:33)

            We aimed forced smiles at each other. Then we sat in awkward silence for minute. Then he told me about him and Anna. How he fell in love with her after the initial harsh grief of his wife’s passing. He told of the afternoon they had innocently talked for an hour or two over a bottle of wine and things spontaneously turned romantic.

            I gently rebuked him. “Tim, there’s nothing innocent in sharing a bottle of wine with a married woman, especially when mutual attraction is present.”

            “Fair enough,” he nodded. “But in my defense, I thought the attraction was one sided.”

            “Did you? When you broke open the bottle of wine, what was your motive?”

            He considered me for a moment, sighed. “I wanted to loosen us up to see if the chemistry I felt was one sided or not. But I truly thought we would have only a glass maybe two, not the whole bottle.”

            “The human heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” I said.

            “Who can know it,” he finished. (Jeremiah 17:9) Then he added with a forced chuckle, “Well, thanks for putting me in my place, Brother.”

            I chuckled myself and said, “How about I share my own wicked and deceitful heart?”

            “Please do,” he grinned.

            I sighed. “You infiltrated Anna’s marriage; I betrayed my own vows. You seduced with wine, I with power and rank.”

            “You mean like David with Bathsheba?” he interjected.

            “Well, David was a king, while I was merely a police sergeant at the time. But now that you mention it, there was one similarity. The department gave us officers memberships to a gym. The first time I saw Ronda, she was in a hot tub wearing next to mothing. I asked a buddy who she was, and he said she her name was Ronda Jameson, and she had recently been hired on after working as a part time deputy for the Sherriff’s Department.

            “As you know, David summoned Bathsheba to his palace. Obviously I didn’t do that. But a couple days after seeing Ronda, I was put in charge of a vice sting operation. I was asked to ask two female officers if they were interested in working undercover as prostitutes. Ronda was the first one I summoned. She was beyond excited at the opportunity and very grateful.

            “What I’ve told you so far makes it sound like I had nefarious intentions. But that wasn’t the case. I never, ever intended on an affair with Ronda. I never ever thought I would cheat on my wife. But back then I did live by the worldly philosophy, I’m married not buried. It’s okay to look but not touch. However, do you know what Jesus taught regarding this idea?”

            “I certainly do,” Tim replied. “If you look upon a woman with lust you have already committed adultery in your heart.” (Matthew 5:28)

            “Exactly! When I not only saw but studied Ronda in that hot tub, I began the process of adultery. My buddy even pointed out the fact that I was staring. But you know how guys can be. Without the shame I should have felt, I simply told him that I was honing my investigative skills.”

            Tim chuckled politely and asked, “So what was the straw that broke the camel’s back?”

            “It came about very complicated, yet simple if that makes sense.”

            “It doesn’t,” he laughed.

            “Ronda had an abrasive personality. She didn’t have many friends, and she didn’t care to make friends. But she took a liking to me. I think it was because I chose her for that special assignment when she was very much still a rookie.

            “Even though I found her attractive, I never, ever thought I would act on it. But figuring it was one sided, I didn’t think I had anything to worry about. Sure, I was one of the few people she allowed into her small circle of friends, but romance? She knew I was married, and although I was in good shape back then, I never won any beauty contests. And she was a knock out.

            “Plus there was another factor. Being one of the few people in her small circle of friends, I was also one of the few people that knew she was in a relationship with a woman. So add it all up and what do you get? A recipe that makes nothing, right?”

            “It would seem so,” Tim replied. Then he arched an eyebrow. “So what happened?”

            “Like you and Anna, we were having adult beverages together after work.”

            Tim shook his head. “Think of all the problems alcohol causes.”

            “Well Tim,” I said with a little smirk. “I can’t speak for you, but nobody was forcing it down my gullet. My brain kept instructing my hand to put the glass to my lips.”

            “Fair point.”

            “So we were at a favorite cop hang out,” I continued. “I normally never had more than one drink. But Ronda was picking my brain about my first years on the force. So I’m telling war stories and we’re downing beers. She’s leaning on her fist, listening intently, and smiling like I’m the most fascinating man on the planet.

            “We both lived twenty plus miles from the police station. It had also started snowing and there was a blizzard warning. In between the bar we were at and the police station, there was a Holiday Inn Express. All was within reasonable walking distance. Due to the weather and likely having to work overtime with the winter storm, I already had a room booked.”

            “Let me guess,” Tim interjected. “A winter storm led to a perfect storm for infidelity?”

            “You got it,” I replied and then sighed. “Between both of us having too much to drink and drive coupled with the storm, I invited her to my room. I suppose trying to come off as a gentleman, I told her there were two beds. But, yada, yada, yada, we ended up only using one.

            “But unlike you and Anna, ours wasn’t a one off after coming to our senses. We saw each other a half dozen more times over the next couple months. Then at one of our rendezvous’, instead of having sex, she very cooly informed me that she was pregnant and the affair was over. She threatened to make the affair public if I wanted to be part of the child’s life.

            “It was truly a nightmare and the most complicated predicament I had ever been in. Seemingly overnight she and I went from being lovers to enemies. I was worried for my job, worried for my marriage, and worried for my reputation. My wife was unable to have children so it also hurt to have a child I couldn’t acknowledge.

            “Ronda kept her word. I kept my distance, and she never divulged that I was the father. She stuck around until she had the baby, then when her maternity leave was over, she quit the force and worked for an insurance company or some such.

            “She was a complicated woman that I never did figure out. To this day I don’t know how genuine her feelings were for me. If she was acting during our fling, she deserves an Oscar. She just flipped a switch overnight and I became a leech in her eyes. I suspect she just used me as a sperm donor and once she was pregnant, my usefulness had expired.

            “Long story short, I confessed my infidelity to my wife. To my utter surprise she tearfully forgave me. But the tears were not due only to my betrayal. To my utter shock, she confessed of infidelity herself.”

            “Why did that shock you?”

            “My wife was and is very religious.”

            “I’ve come to realize that doesn’t mean much,” Tim said with a sigh. “I’ve always been quite religious myself.”

            I nodded solemnly and continued. “By the time our daughter was a preteen, Ronda and her partner had broken up. Our daughter was having behavior problems, and she finally wanted me to be part of her life. But talk about fire and ice. ‘Lou, meet your daughter. Now discipline her.’

            “So, my relationship with my daughter has been volatile and on again off again. And as I sit here with you today, I am sick inside wondering if Aliyah is covered in loathsome soars or not. She has had moments of being open spiritually. But even more moments of ‘don’t preach to me, Lou’. She never got around to calling me Dad.”

            “How old would she be now?” Tim asked.

            “She just turned nineteen.”

            Tim and I continued to chat when the greatest miracle of my life happened. There was a knock at our door. It was Inga. “Hey Double Lou, there’s a young lady here to see you. It’s yet another case of apparently being led here by an angel.”

            And there she was! Aliyah! And she had no soars!

            I was so relieved, so thankful that she was here and okay that I couldn’t stop the tears. Then I wept for joy after she ran to me with open arms and said, “Daddy!”

BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 16

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 16

ZELLA LaSTELLA-SALLIE

IF WE CONFESS OUR SINS, HE IS FAITHFUL AND JUST TO FORGIVE US OUR SINS AND TO CLEANSE US FROM ALL UNRIGHTEOUSNESS (1 John 1:9)

            The first of the seven last plagues was beginning to fall. I had butterflies in my stomach as my husband, my cousin, and Destiny’s husband were making their way back to the relatively safe haven of the Storm’s remote acreage. There had been a dozen of us in the Storm’s living room watching my husband, Seven Sallie, debate religious freedom with Congressman Redburn. It was during their dialogue that we began to notice sores rapidly develop on most of the faces in the courtroom.

            As our minds spun, and we offered up prayers, there had been a knock at the door. It was Anna Clayton and her eight year old daughter, Brianna. We invited them in, and our body count went from twelve to fourteen. Right behind Anna was her friend Debbie Smallmon and her eight year old daughter, Saddie. Fourteen now became sixteen.

            They too had escaped the first plague and exhibited no sores. However, one of Debbie’s eyes was swollen shut. Both women wore denim skirts, and there was a huge tear in Debbie’s black pantyhose, a large enough tear to reveal coagulated blood.

            I had only met Debbie and her daughter once. Anna had brought them to church at the beginning of the loud cry. But as with Anna’s husband, Debbie’s husband was adamant about Sunday reverence and the conjoining laws. So she was one and done with our fellowship. Until now.

            It was clear that Anna and Debbie were very close friends. I had known that Anna had led Debbie to Christ four years ago. Then over the last year, both had accepted the Sabbath truth together. Although best of friends, the two couldn’t have appeared to be more opposite. Yet they shared a common bond with the aftermath of sexual sin. We would come to find out that both of their husbands held this over them after they differed on Sunday verses Sabbath.

            Anna was forty-nine, tall and gangly, her light brown hair usually in a ponytail. Her gray eyes looked out of wire rim glasses, giving her a bookworm appearance. Debbie on the other hand was thirty years old. She was blond, blue eyed and had a slightly stocky, athletic build. I guessed she had been either a cheerleader or gymnast. It turned out she had been both.

            The two women and their daughters were barely in the door when I spotted my cousin’s dark blue Crown Vic come racing up the driveway. I stepped out on the porch and witnessed Seven come out of the back door before the vehicle stopped. He did an unintentional summer sault on the Storm’s lawn.

            Patience wasn’t one of my husband’s virtues. Yet he ultimately exhibited the patience of the saints in spiritual matters. (Revelation 14:12). One virtue he did have was being positive and light hearted in the midst of stress and trial. This would prove true, even during the chaos of the seven last plagues.  

            He quickly hopped up and pranced toward me with open arms. In a voice like a British monarch, he declared, “I have returned to you, my love, safe from the coming wrath.”

            He picked me up in an embrace and spun me around once, causing me to giggle. For a few seconds the world wasn’t in turmoil. Then Seven himself almost had person turmoil after he said, “Ooh, either you’ve put on a few pounds, or I’ve gotten weaker.”

            “I assure you it’s the latter,” I said shoving him away.

            “Seven, you are so blessed to have Zella for a wife,” Destiny said. “Most women would have given you the boot by now.”

            “Don’t I know it,” he said shaking his head. “Even at our wedding I had to pull my foot out of my mouth to say, ‘I do.’ And just for the record, it is the latter, I have gotten weaker, for my bride is more lovely now than the day I married her.”

            Everyone laughed, enjoying the small window of levity in the midst of world chaos. Then after a minute we sobered and entered a group prayer session. When our thanksgivings and petitions to God our Father were complete, we rose from our knees. Then Destiny and I retired to a guest room with the two women who had shown up at her doorstep. Billy Bob Booker and his wife, Willa, along with their two children, entertained the two eight year old girls.

            “Debbie,” Destiny said gently as she stepped toward the young woman with a bottle of peroxide in one hand and bandages in the other. “May I ask how you were injured?”

            With chin lifted, she stoically answered, “My husband hit me, and I stumbled over a kitchen chair. I dropped the glass I was holding in the process. It broke, and a shard cut my leg.”

            As Destiny played nurse maid on the wounded leg, Debbie shared part of her testimony. “I met Anna four years ago at a playground when our kids began playing together. I suspected by the way Anna was dressed that she was a born again Christian. She reminded me of a preachy aunt of mine. One of those people that act all high and mighty. So I recoiled at first when she struck up a conversation.”

            “She actually thought I was Brainna’s grandmother,” Anna said chuckling.

            “I did,” Debbie admitted with a giggle. “I actually asked her how old her granddaughter was. I was so embarrassed when she goes, um, she’s my daughter. But God arranged the meeting, and she blew me away with her openness to a complete stranger. I was at the lowest point of my life, longing to die, but knowing I had to hang in there for Saddie.”

            She gazed affectionately at Anna. Her eyes welled with tears. I assume from feeling emotional, but it also could have been the peroxide bubbling on the gash on her leg.

            “So I told her that, ‘no, Brianna’s my daughter,’” Anna explained. “She apologized profusely, and I reassured her by saying, ‘no big deal, it was defiantly a late in life pregnancy, and that I had twenty-five and twenty-three year old sons.’”

            “So I said, ‘wow talk about a surprise pregnancy,’” Debbie added.

            “For some reason I felt compelled to confess my transgression to Debbie,” Anna said. Destiny and I perked up as if antennas were on our heads. What is it with human nature and our tendency to be nosy? But we still didn’t know the details from when Anna let it slip that her husband wasn’t the father of Brianna.

            At the time she dismissed it by saying, ‘it’s a long story,’ and we didn’t pry. What made it so curious was Anna didn’t seem like the adulterous type at all. She was like a wholesome Amish mom morphed into a librarian. But only God knows the secrets of the heart. (Psalm 44:21)

            “I told her that my husband had a vasectomy after our second son was born,” Anna said and then laughed. “Can you imagine? A few minutes after meeting someone, I tell them my husband had a vasectomy. Then I admitted to giving into temptation and getting pregnant by a man who wasn’t my husband. So I told her I wasn’t surprised by the pregnancy. Horrified! But not surprised.”

            Debbie and Anna glanced at each other, and then Anna bowed her head as Debbie patted her leg. Destiny and I glanced at each other, and it was as if we could read each other’s mind. We both wanted to shout, ‘Who? Why? How?’

            Anna looked up and thankfully explained. “My husband and I became quite close with our neighbors, Jill and Tim. We lived next door to them for almost twenty years. My husband and Tim weren’t overly close, typical neighbors I guess. Visit by the fence, borrow tools, help move a couch, you know. But Jill and I became best friends. Their boys were about the same age as ours, and eventually she began attending our church as well.

            “She ended up getting breast cancer, fought it and won, and then got it again and lost. She was only forty-eight. I was devastated, and naturally Tim was too. Ironically, we bonded in our grief, and our mutual love for Jill. We began walking our dogs together every day. Helped each other with our gardens. Often I would fix him lunch. You see he was older than Jill, in his sixties and retired.

            “So the first year of Jill’s passing, as we bonded, I developed a crush on Tim. I tried to push it aside, but as we got to know each other I grew to love him. I had an empty nest at that point, both boys were in college. My marriage had grown cold. Brad spent more time at his country club than he did with me. Then not long after the first anniversary of Jill’s passing, Tim began dating a woman, a widow.

            “I was surprised by how jealous I felt. He started skipping out on dog walks. He rarely came over to help with the garden. He completely stopped having lunch with me in favor of dining with the widow. This all happened over four or five months. I slowly got over him, but on his birthday I made him a cherry pie. I knew from my long time friendship with Jill that this was one of his favorite treats.

            “He seemed pretty glum. I asked him if he had the birthday blues. That’s when he said he had ended things with Roxy. Her name gagged me in my throat. She looked like a Roxy. Piles of white, blonde hair, over size chest. Happily, an oversized midriff to go with it.

            “I asked why, and that’s when we entered the danger zone. He brought out cheese and a bottle of wine to go with the cherry pie as he told me that she just wasn’t in the category of Jill… Or me.

            “I wasn’t a prohibitionist, but I rarely drank. But his not so subtle admission of feelings for me had me rattled and I took a glass. Then another and another. He and I had never expressed feelings for each other beyond a chaste hug. But with the wine lubricating our minds like toxic oil we expressed fondness, longings and then desire. Our pie and cheese was hardly touched, but we drained every drop from that bottle of wine. The next thing I knew we were kissing, then we were in his bedroom… I guess I don’t need to give any more details. I’ll just conclude by saying Brianna was conceived.”

            Anna looked at Debbie with a pensive face despite a forced grin, “Next.”

            Debbie chuckled and asked, “Do I have to?”

            “Yes,” Destiny said, then smiled and put a hand on her knee. “I’m teasing, Sweety. You don’t have to say anything.”

            “No, you gals feel like friends already,” she replied, a little choked up. “I need to get some things off my chest. Like why don’t I have sores, but my husband does? Despite what happened, he’s been a better person than me.”

            “I guess we don’t know your husband,” Destiny said. “But we do know he hit you.”

            “He’s not like that though,” she pleaded. “It’s all this, this chaos making things nuts.”

            “Just tell them you testimony, Deb,” Anna suggested, patting her knee like Destiny had just done.

            “But it’s so shameful,” she whined.

            “It’s okay, Zella was a nude model, and Destiny was a porn star,” Anna explained, then frowned. “Sorry, girls.”

            Destiny chuckled. “It’s okay, it’s not a secret. As a matter of fact, I have a ministry that specializes in helping women get out of the sex industry.”

            This seemed to free Debbie of her inhibitions about sharing her past. “So toward the end of my junior year of college I got pregnant. My boyfriend was a senior about to graduate and go into the Air Force as an officer. The pregnancy was definitely not intended, but my boyfriend accused me of trying to trap him.

            “I admit that it had been my hope that he would ask me to marry him. I even would have postponed or even skipped entirely my last year of college. Instead he proved to be anything but an officer and a gentleman. He threw some cash at me to get an abortion and dumped me like yesterday’s trash. We had been together for almost all of my college career, so it wasn’t like a brief relationship.

            “As much as I hated to, I went down to Planned Parenthood to get an abortion. Believe it or not, the same aunt that Anna initially reminded me of was there with her church group picketing. So I turned tail and fled. I also felt it was a sign, and I ended up not getting an abortion, having Saddie. Thank God I did! She’s been my world despite the difficulties. I shutter when I think back to how I almost extinguished her before she had a chance to exist.

            “So with the college year at an end, I worked full time at the grocery store I had worked part time at and quickly became an assistant manager. It wasn’t long after having my baby girl that I realized being a single mother put a damper on one’s social life. I was also bitter, and not all that interested in a relationship.

            “I was angry, rebellious, yet lacking self-esteem. I was also longing for intimacy despite not wanting a relationship. A girl I worked with turned me onto a hook up site on the internet. I was hesitant at first, but I felt like it was a way to get back at my ex. What a ridiculous notion in hindsight, but I guess I needed an excuse to behave badly.

            “So, with my sister willing to baby sit while I supposedly had a girls night out, I hooked up with a guy I met on line for the first time. Forgive me, but the illicit encounter was thrilling. It became like a drug, and I began doing it on a regular basis.

            “Another excuse was it was hardly any time away from Saddie. I used a variety of baby sitters. My mom, my sister, friends. And it only took a couple hours, and I was back with my daughter, and the baby sitter was not overly burdened. Meet online, meet for a drink, go back to their place. Sometimes dinner if they were somewhat classy. Yeah right, classy guys hooking up with broken, lonely women.”

            She did a finger in her mouth to insinuate gagging.

            “But I can’t blame them, not one of them forced me to connect with them on line or go back to their place with them after we met. But I began a cycle of hook ups, self-loathing, stop for a while, get bored, start hooking up again.”

            She shook her head and continued. “So the day before I met Anna, my gynecologist informed me that I had herpes. Self-loathing hit a new low. I truly would have committed suicide if I didn’t have Saddie. The weird thing is, I know my former boyfriend was gonna end things after he graduated regardless of whether I was pregnant. So I still could have ended up in that cycle of promiscuity. But without Saddie, what would have stopped me from suicide? So in an odd way, I saved my own life by saving hers.”

            “I didn’t know what to do at this rock bottom point in my life. So I just started this mantra. ‘God, if you’re out there, please help me, I don’t know how to go on.’ I must have said that a hundred times over the next twenty-four hours. Then low and behold I meet Anna at the playground and we, I don’t know, just ended up clicking. God answered my half-conscious  prayers by putting Anna in my path.”

            She croaked out that last sentence and began to weep. Destiny and I both put a hand on her back, and Anna knelt in front of her and took both hands in hers. Debbie laughed through her tears. “Now that’s what I call the laying on of hands.”

            “So how did you meet your husband?” I asked.

            “I met Grant on a Christian dating site,” Debbie explained. “It was kind of strange after all of the internet hook ups. This time when I met a guy, the most we would do is share a chaste kiss rather than go to bed. Another strange element is it took a couple dozen dates before I met Grant. I was about to throw in the towel. Not a lot of guys want a woman with a kid, that has a history of promiscuity, a behavior that gave ultimately gave her a permanent STD.”

            There was a knock at the bedroom door. Destiny opened it and Seven came in.

            “Hey ladies,” he said, giving everyone of us a glance. “Quite a party ya got going on here. Say, there’s a guy that showed up down stairs. Brock’s been sort of interrogating him. He doesn’t have any sores and seems like a decent enough guy. But he claims to know Anna and he desperately wants to talk to her.”

            “Who is it?” Anna asked hesitantly.

            Seven frowned. “He said your husband threatened to kill him.”

            “Did you get his name?” Anna asked impatiently.

            “Not his last, just his first,” Seven replied. Then he put his hands on his hips. “What were you gals discussing?”

            “Seven!” I said incredulously. How is it some people can be so talented and brilliant, and yet occasionally come off as completely dense. “What’s his first name?”

            “Oh right. He said his name is Tim, and he’s concerned for you and your daughter’s safety.”