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BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 27

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 27

SEVEN SALLIE

THEN JESUS SAID, “FATHER FORGIVE THEM FOR THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY DO.” (Luke 23:34)

            “Jared, hi,” Lindsey said cheerfully and jumped up to greet a gentleman who had just arrived.

            “That was quite a story,” I told Mick Wadena. I had been a silent observer as my wife questioned him and his wife Lindsey about her dog playing match maker with the couple. Zella would later tease me about calling myself a silent observer. In my defense, TALK show hosts tend to talk, even when they are not on the air.

            “The miracle of Jitts bringing Lindsey and me together actually isn’t the most remarkable part of our story,” Mick told me, pointing to his wife and the guy she was now hugging.

            Lindsey and Mick had just finished telling us about their second meeting after Mick’s band finished their show in Madison, Wisconsin. That’s when a lone man made his way onto the deck that over looked C. S. Lewis’s back yard on a remote acreage, only a few miles from Lake Superior.

            The guy appeared to be about fifty, give or take, as with most of us on the deck. He had a shaved head, a sun weathered face, sunglasses, and a goatee with a light sprinkling of salt. He also was missing half of his left arm, and his left leg was a prosthetic.

            “Do you see that guy Lindsey is hugging?” Mick asked.

            Zella and I glanced at Lindsey embracing the lone man I had just described. “Yeah.”

            “That’s the guy that raped her sister.”

            “What?” Zella and I both replied, stunned. I recalled that because of her sister’s ordeal, Lana had ended up taking her own life. As a result, Lindsey developed a subtle vendetta against men. She also developed a not so subtle hatred of the man that violated her sister! So what happened that a rapist not only avoided the plagues, but was in an embrace with his victim’s sister? I asked as much to Mick.

            “Yeah, their friendship surprised me too,” Mick admitted. “Kind of ironic that he showed up when we were getting to his part of Lindsey’s and my story.”

            “Did he play a role with your, um, romance?” Zella asked with a frown.

            “Actually he turned out to be a major obstacle,” Mick explained. “I perceived early on as Lindsey and I got know each other that her hostility toward him was slowly eating her alive. After a few months of virtual dating, she…”
            “What do you mean by virtual dating?” Zella interrupted.

            “I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it,” Mick replied. “What I mean is, that after Lindsey and I initially met, I was in the middle of a nationwide tour for our second album. So most of our time spent together over the first few months was over the phone.”

            “Okay, I see,” Zella said. “How far apart did you two actually live from each other?”

            I shook my head a little at my wife. I wanted to hear about Lindsey forgiving her sister’s rapist, not geography. Later for sure, but not now. But Zella only frowned at me and continued, “I mean when you weren’t on tour, where did you call home? She mentioned being from Duluth.”

            “Milwaukee,” Mick said. “Three hundred plus miles, but it could have been worse.”

            “Why is that?” Zella asked and I shook my head some more.

            “Actually what was worse than the long distance relationship in the beginning, was our sports rivalry. Mainly she was a Vikings fan while I was for the Packers. Baseball wasn’t so bad since her team, the Twins is in the American League and mine, the Brewers, is in the National League.”

            “I notice you say was,” Zella said, and I just sighed and then chuckled to myself. I needed to exercise the patience of the saints.

            “Yeah, well, we still liked our teams, but the closer we got to Christ the less sports mattered. It turned out we actually enjoyed our teams more when we didn’t take it so seriously.”

            “Amen!” Zella smiled.

            “Now we’re on the verge,” I began, and Zella shook her head. Her wide brown eyes mocking me playfully. “We are on the verge of Christ’s return and sports seem to be a thing of the past. A shadow of our time on earth.”

            “True enough,” Mick agreed.

            “Games people more often than not took too seriously,” Zella added. “When I used to see fans in the stand with their hands earnestly clasped over a close game, I used to think ‘if they only sought the Lord with that sense of urgency.’”

            Lindsey returned, making our threesome a foursome. Mick inquired, “Where’d Jared go?”

            “He just stopped by to see how we were all doing,” Lindsey replied. “He’s on his way to check on a guy that’s from his disabled veterans group.”

            “Mick was just telling us about your long distance relationship,” Zella said.

            “And he was just about to tell us about you and Jared,” I interrupted.

            Zella smirked at me. I knew she wanted to know just as badly as I did. But she knew I struggled more with patience than she did.

            “Yeah, me and Jared,” Lindsey sighed and then looked fondly at her husband. “The subject of Jared almost ended Mick and me before we really got started.”

            “But not for the usual reason another man causes a hiccup with a couple falling in love,” Mick interjected.

            “Yeah,” Lindsey chuckled. “I guess it’s not typical for a boyfriend to tell his girlfriend to seek out another guy.”

            “Here’s the thing,” Mick said. “I tried to convince her that she didn’t have to see him in person. Just call him or even simply write him a letter. I emphatically told her that just because you forgive someone, it does not mean you have to have a relationship with them, or associate with them afterward in anyway. Forgiveness is actually more for yourself.”

            “I was so torn,” Lindsey said solemnly. “I was angry with Mick for making me feel guilty over my sister’s rapist of all people. But what saved our new relationship was he didn’t push it. He gave me time to think on it. But for two or three months, it impeded our progress in becoming close. I had heard that Jared was a wounded war veteran. But I didn’t know the extent. Do you remember me mentioning my girlfriend, Tina Janis?”

            Zella and I acknowledged that we did.

            “So her sister Taylor was a nurse in Minneapolis. All of my girlfriends knew I had a vendetta against Jared. So Taylor calls me and asks me to keep something between us because she didn’t want to get in trouble for violating any privacy policies. I couldn’t fathom what kind of conspiracy she was going to reveal. Part of me wanted to tell her ‘no thanks.’

            “Tina had been my best friend at one time, but her younger sister Taylor was a pest and a busybody. But my nosy side won out, and I told her I would keep whatever it was to myself. That’s when she told me Jared had been admitted the previous night over a suicide attempt. Her tone as she told me was one that expected me to be delighted. But I felt sick to my stomach.

            “I think I remained neutral in my response, and I did thank her,” Lindsey had a tear float from her eye, and she swiped it. “I remembered something Mick had told me about our human condition…”

            Mick gave her a few seconds to make sure she wanted him to speak. Then he said, “I told her we humans are vessels that are either controlled by Satan or God at every moment. I had quoted C. S. Lewis where he said… By the way, I mean Clive Staples Lewis, the author, not Charles Scott Lewis, our friend that lives here.

            “Anyway to quote the author, ‘There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.’”

            “And that was forefront on my mind when Taylor told me about Jared,” Lindsey said, having composed herself for the moment. “That and his suicide attempt. I actually felt bad for him. For the first time. When I heard he had been badly wounded about a year before, back then I thought good he deserved it. But after meeting Mick, I began to read the Bible again.

            “After my sister’s demise, which I did blame Jared for, I often thought about the mental, spiritual state of victims of their own hand. I have been at some pretty dark places in my life. I’ve had countless bouts of depression. But I never got so low that I considered ending my life. So this gave me perspective. What must that immense darkness be like? I didn’t want to know. But that reality gave me empathy for even, dare I say it, for Jared.”

            Lindsey stared off into the distance. Her breathing became rapid and a couple tears leaked from her eyes. She turned to Mick. “Honey, you know the story almost as well as I do. Will you finish telling the Sallie’s? I’m getting a headache.”

            “You bet,” he replied, as Lindsey stood and walked quickly toward the house. After watching her go, he said, “Knowing it almost as well as she does is a stretch. But you have to understand. Her testimony about forgiveness is powerful. But more often than not, it zaps her emotionally. What with seeing Jared just now, it doesn’t surprise me that she wasn’t in a good place to share how her change of attitude came about.”

            “It’s understandable,” Zella said. “I noticed she watched him as he limped away.”

            Mick nodded. “So, she went to see him in the hospital. She wasn’t sure if she could muster the compassion she needed to forgive him. As she made her way through the hospital, she prayed and quoted scripture to herself. Still she had a supreme battle with self and the hostility she felt. Then she saw him.

            “He wasn’t the handsome all-American teenager she remembered. Although on the later side of his mid-twenties, he looked war weary and twenty years older than his actual age. He wasn’t long out of high school when 9/11 happened. He joined the Marines and served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Three tours of duty in all, and on the last one he had a devastating encounter with a road side bomb.

            “He was drugged and a bit delirious when she saw him. When he saw Lindsey, he called her Lana and began crying and apologizing. He said he loved her and thought she loved him. She let him blubber for quite a while, then he fell asleep. She left him a note saying she was Lindsey and that she forgave him.

            “She left the hospital feeling both lighter for having gone through with it, yet sick at how broken such a young human being was. She hoped that was the end of it. But she didn’t realize during the stress of the meeting that she had written her phone number on the note she gave him.

            “He called her a few weeks later. They met for coffee and spent a long time talking. Lindsey saw how remorseful he was about Lana’s fragility and the role he played in her demise. He said he felt like a pervert due to his sin. He wanted to do something noble by joining the Marines. This aspect played as big of a role as patriotism had in his motivation to join.

            “Something else occurred to her that she had always purposely overlooked. Although no means no, no matter what! The young, immature couple had been participating in foreplay for a lengthy period of time. Then on the verge of consummation, Lana wanted to stop. As wrong as his actions were, it didn’t seem the same as if he had drugged her or was some guy that yanked her off the street and into some bushes.

            “The thing is, Jared didn’t truly feel forgiven by just reading the note Lindsey left in the hospital. Lindsey’s nurse friend told her that when Jared woke up in the hospital and discovered he was still alive, he was out of control angry. That’s why he was sedated when Lindsey visited him.

            “Lindsey found out later that when Jared called her, he had a phone in one hand and a gun in the other. Like Lana, he had been sort of considering others when he had taken an overdose of pills, only to have his stomach pumped. Also like Lana, he was gonna make sure with round two, regardless of the gory mess. He had made up his mind on a direction. If Lindsey agreed to get together, he would postpone his death so he could apologize in person. If she  wouldn’t see him in person, he was prepared to say a permanent goodnight to the world.”

            “So what changed Lindsey’s attitude that actually made her and Jared friends?” I asked. “I mean it seems one of the main things you said to convince her to forgive, was that forgiveness didn’t mean a relationship.”

            “When I noticed she was having regular contact with Jared, I asked her why. She said Jared asked about her faith, because he was surprised at the love she was showing him. He ended up giving his life to Christ, rather than ending it. She said she saw that he was a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17). He wasn’t the same person that date raped her sister. Behold, all things were new. ”

            “Amazing grace!” Zella said.

            “Amen, Sister Wife!” I added, and Mick arched an eyebrow.

            “Sister Wife, I like that,” he grinned. Then he added with a look of awe on his countenance. “She also shared another C. S. Lewis quote that moved him like nothing else. Especially coming from Lana’s sister. ‘You can’t go back and change the beginning. But you can start where you are and change the ending.’”

            “I love that,” Zella said.

            “It just goes to show you the ripple effect of good and evil,” Mick continued. “Because of how Lindsey forgave and then ministered to this one soul, he in turn has ministered to countless other fellow veterans.”

            “And all that hung in the balance with that one call,” I said. “A phone in one hand and a gun in the other. We often don’t realize how often life is only a matter of inches.”

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 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 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.”

BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 15

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 15

ZELLA LaSTELLA-SALLIE

BUT YOU, DANIEL, SHUT UP THE WORDS, AND SEAL THE BOOK UNTIL THE TIME OF THE END; MANY SHALL RUN TOO AND FRO, AND KNOWLEDGE SHALL INCREASE. (Daniel 12:4)

            There were about a dozen of us watching Seven’s program in stunned silence. It was a live podcast feed from the congressional hearing featuring my husband and Congressman Redburn. Brock Storm was operating the camera from his seat twenty feet away. Whether or not he was recording in secret I didn’t know—God knows.

            The stunned silence in the Storm’s home wasn’t because of the dialogue between Seven and the Congressman. Our eyes were riveted to the TV screen due to the chaos in the courtroom. What was causing the pandemonium was apparently the beginning of the seven last plagues.

            As Brock operated the video camera, he had been rotating back and forth between which of the two men on display were speaking. He had just zeroed in on Mr. Redburn when the Congressman’s face began to discolor. He truly seemed to be living up to his last name.

            His complexion suddenly transformed from a pale alabaster to something like a bad sunburn. Then in a matter of seconds his skin transformed again when his face seemingly broke out into a case of severe acne. That’s when we noticed murmuring and shrieks. Brock rotated the camera around the courtroom and virtually everyone in the room had the same thing happening to them.

            Then the video screen took in both Congressman Redburn and Seven. The appearance of pimples on the Congressman had now turned into boil like sores, oozing puss. Yet my husband was not affected! His light complexion was as smooth as could be. That is for a man over forty with a five o’clock shadow. He seemed to be staring at the camera with a stunned expression. But it was actually Brock he gazed at as he nodded an acknowledgement of some type of communication between the two.

            Next the camera swirled and jiggled as Brock, my husband, and my cousin, Louis Lewis, quickly exited the courtroom.  We caught glimpses of people screaming and clutching their faces. Then the camera bobbed up and down as the trio ran out into the street. The picture on the large TV screen gyrated so much it started to give me motion sickness.

            Yet I couldn’t take my eyes from the scene on the screen. Then the picture stopped vibrating and stilled. Out on the street Brock had stopped and allowed the viewers to take in the commotion outside even the courtroom. Scores of people were clawing the loathsome sores on their faces. Thankfully there were some unaffected as they looked around, amazed at the turmoil.

            For about two seconds my cousin’s face appeared on the screen as he made his way past Brock. Thankfully his ebony complexion was unaffected by the plague. But his brown eyes were super wide and intense as he said, “Come on, Brock!”

            Then Brock whirled and captured the sight of my slightly overweight cousin scrambling down the sidewalk. Between Louie’s wide eyes and the sight of a middle aged man in dress shoes high step running as fast as he could, it caused several of us to snicker, despite the gravity of the situation.

            That view only lasted a few seconds as well before we heard a grunt and the picture on the screen briefly giggled. The camera spun around and captured my husband, the venerable Seven Sallie, sitting on the sidewalk with his arms behind him propping himself up. His gray-green eyes were as wide as Louie’s. “Why’d you stop, Brock?”

            “I was taking in the scene around us, just like you apparently were, as you weren’t watching where you were going.”

            With surprising agility for a middle aged man, Seven leapt up and sprinted away as he said, “Come on, let’s get outta here.”

            The picture began to giggle again as Brock pursued his two companions. My husband, an avid runner, passed my chunky cousin. It reminded me of John chapter twenty when John out ran Peter to Christ’s tomb. But leave it to my husband, he flung open the back door of a dark blue Chevy Malibu and dove in.

            Three cars away, Louie opened the door of his dark blue Crown Vic, but he then froze as he gazed toward the car Seven dove into. “Seven, over here.”

            “I’ll get him,” Brock’s voice said as the camera caught his muscular forearm opening the door to the Chevy Malibu. “Seven, you’re in the wrong car.”

            “Shoot!” he said as he scrambled out. Suddenly my husband’s eyes filled the entire screen for a couple seconds as he said, “Is that camera on?”

            “Yeah, this is a historical moment.”

            “What, by sticking it in my face as I get out of the wrong car?”

            “I’m just trying to help you out.”

            “Well turn that camera off or we’ll have to call this ‘The Three Stooges Escape the Plagues.’”

            Next we see Louis Lewis fumbling with his keys, starting his car, and then a view out of the windshield as they shot out of a parking lot. They had to make their way cautiously down the city streets. Cars were pulled over left and right, and people were running around in a panic.

            “Can you believe what we are witnessing?” Seven said.

            “That’s why I’m filming,” Brock replied, as he turned the camera back on Seven as my husband leaned on the front seats from the back. Seven’s eyes as well as his nose filled the screen this time.

            His eyebrows too as he frowned. “Will you stop sticking that thing in my face?”

            The camera rotated to Louie. My cousin glanced at it, then did a double take. “Well, don’t be pointing it at my ugly mug.”

            As we watched the trio escaping the city via the live feed, Destiny turned her pretty face toward me. She was chewing nervously on her lip but then chuckled. “I’m kind of glad they’re reluctantly playing ‘The Three Stooges.’ It’s sort of relieving how freaked out I feel.”

            “Me too,” I said as we both gave each other’s hand a reassuring squeeze.

            A knock at the door made us jump. Destiny clutched my hand tighter, so together we cautiously made our way to her front door. She peeked through a window and sighed with relief. Glancing at me, she said, “It’s Anna Clayton and her daughter, Brianna. They have no sores, but they both look terrified.”

            Dee opened the door and with her typical warm smile, in spite the turmoil. “Anna, Brianna, please come in.”

            Anna Clayton had learned about the true Sabbath during the loud cry. The loud cry came on the heels of the national Sunday law, in conjunction with the out pouring of the Holy Spirit, which was the Latter Rain.

            I knew the Sabbath issue had become a divisive sticking point between Anna and her husband. After fellowshipping with us a couple of times, she and her eight year old daughter Brianna stopped coming. Her reason was for the sake of her marriage. Her husband was in adamant favor of the Sunday laws.

            However, a few weeks earlier, when Sunday worship became mandatory, she showed up at our fellowship with a tear steaked face. She informed us that when the rubber met the road, she couldn’t deny her convictions. She clearly saw the Seventh Day Sabbath as the seal of God, and the mandatory worship on Sunday as the mark of the beast. It now had seemed to have driven a wedge between her and her husband. Her husband refused to let their daughter come with her.

            We didn’t know much about Anna those few weeks ago when she took her ultimate stand of faith. She was a plain Jane, meek and kind of timid. Her shoulder length hair was somewhere between dirty blond and light brown. In the limited time I had been around her, it had always been corralled in either a ponytail or hair clip. She wore glasses, but no makeup, and no jewelry other than a wedding band. Her gray eyes were close set, her nose small and her lips thin. Her smile, although rare, was lovely and made endearing by slightly crooked canine teeth.

            “I didn’t know what to do other than to come back to your church,” she had told Destiny and me after we led her into the pastor’s study for some privacy. “Brad refused to let Briana come with me.”

            “First of all, lets pray,” Destiny said, and then led us in a heartfelt prayer petitioning God’s help with Anna’s family situation as she courageously took a stand for her convictions.

            “There’s something else I should share,” Anna added. “Our two sons take their dad’s side in this controversy.”

            “Oh?” Destiny replied with raised eyebrows, looking as surprised as I felt. “I assumed Brianna was an only child.”

            Anna shook her head vigorously. “Brad and I have a twenty nine year old son and a twenty seven year old son.”

            I frowned. “I see, but I thought you had told us before that you were married the summer before Brianna was born?”

            She shook her head again. “We renewed our vows the summer before Brianna was born. We actually got married two weeks after we graduated from high school. Bradely Junior was born late the following spring.”

            “Oh, so you two have been married thirty years then?” I asked.

            She nodded. Then she bit her lower lip nervously. “I feel I should share something else with you as well. It’s actually making my situation with Brad much more complicated than just our differing views on the Sabbath.”

            She paused and looked at her lap. She wore a blue and white house dress, and she twisted her fingers nervously in the folds between her legs. The church she had belonged to was very conservative and the women always wore skirts or dresses.

            She looked up at us and a tear leaked from her eye. “I feel like I’m betraying Brad with what I’m about to share.”

            She paused for a very long time, but Destiny and I sat quietly and gave her space. Anna surprised us by suddenly snorting a laugh. “Well, you two sure aren’t the nosy, gossipy type. So at least I can trust you to keep it to yourself.”

            She paused and looked at her lap again. Especially given the little compliment she had given Destiny and me, I had to stop myself from saying, ‘Keep what to ourselves?’

            “Brad isn’t Briana’s father,” she finally and quietly admitted.

BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 12

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 12

LOUIS LEWIS

GOD HAS DEALT TO EACH ONE A MEASURE OF FAITH (Romans 12:3)

            “You’ve heard the saying you clean up well?” Inga Likas, AKA Inga Cognito asked me.

            “Yes, I have,” I replied grudgingly. Years on the police force had given me keen detecting skills and I knew what was coming next.

            “Well, YOU dirty down well,” Inga told me gleefully.

            Inga had insisted she wanted to be bait in an attempt to capture her sister’s killer. With her old friend from the alien cult having been found strangled to death more than a thousand miles away, I argued the endeavor was futile.

            However, we received some information from a mole inside the cult. Two more of Bryson Bronx’s henchmen had been deployed to the Midwest. The mole was good. He somehow tracked the flight plan for Bronx’s private jet. Low and behold, it landed at the Eastern Iowa airport just long enough to drop off a couple passengers, refuel, and return to California.

            We all agreed someone needed to stay close to the courageous pistol of a young lady. The best prospect, Brock Storm, was too physically fit and imposing to pass as a vagabond, so he was out. Brent, Inga’s brother was out because he would likely be recognized, having lived on the compound for several years. Benito Bonnao was called away by his company. Seven was out because he was a public figure. Plus, forgive me Seven, Inga was more likely to protect him.

            He would later tell me God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore he will most gladly boast in his infirmities (2 Corinthians 12:9). In Seven’s defense, he wasn’t a wimp. Well, not necessarily a wimp. It was hard to tell when he hangs around the likes of his cousin Brock Storm, who clearly looks like he could have been a former NFL linebacker.

            So it seemed I was the best option to work with Inga. Especially since I was currently unemployed. I had stopped shaving and dug out an old coat from my Army days. I found some boots that should have been thrown out, and a pair of jeans that used to be too tight. Thanks to stress and anxiety due to personal upheaval, I easily got them buttoned.

            “Have you lost some weight, Double Lou?” Inga asked.

            For all of the six years I was a police lieutenant, I was known by many as Triple Lou. I neither liked nor disliked that moniker. But now that I was only Double Lou, I didn’t like it one bit.

            “Yes I have, thank you very much,” I replied, liking what seemed to be a compliment. Leave it to Inga to take it the other way in a matter of seconds.

            “That’s good, cause you look like you’ve aged ten years in the last few weeks,” she added happily.

            “You’re so kind, my Dear,” I replied with a bit of sarcasm in my tone.

            Her arctic blue eyes were wide, but not innocent. “I was just trying to be honest.”

            “Okay, young one, let’s get something straight. You know the ins and outs of the homeless community. But I know public safety and police work. So although you will be the guide through the, ah, um, homeless circuit, if I demand you jump, you ask how high.”

            These instructions came back to bite me a few hours later. There were five of us in radio communication. Zella and Destiny were keeping surveillance in a vehicle. Brock was, well, somewhere. That man is good! He was keeping tabs on us, but I had no clue where he was. And I was a trained professional. His chameleon abilities, despite his size, made me wonder why he couldn’t be hanging out with little Miss Smart Mouth instead of me.

            But I did gain a whole new respect for Inga. Not only for her resilience in persevering through the life she had led, but her faith despite many trying circumstances. My time with her proved a blessing given my own trying circumstances. But we did have hiccups, like this story that I will continue to share.

            We had received some pertinent information from Brock’s reconnaissance. He was certain that he had spotted Inga’s stalkers. So we needed to get her out of the public eye and into deeper seclusion to see if they would tail her. All the while keeping her safe. I had an idea.

            “Listen, Glow Eyes,” I said. “Let’s make it look like I’m dealing drugs. Let’s make it look like I’m supplying you in exchange for sex.”

            “Yuck!”

            “I said make it LOOK like we are going off for a rendezvous.”

            “No way!”

            “Remember, when I say jump, you ask how high.”

            “I think I’ll take a dive instead.”

            The others were able to listen in on our conversation, so Brock gave his two cents worth.

            “Lou has a good plan, Inga. What’s your problem? You two will just make it look like you’re going somewhere private for, um, intimacy? Obviously you’re not gonna do anything.”

            “I have my dignity.”

            “What do you care what a couple of scum bags think?” Brock wanted to know.

            “It’s not them I’m concerned about. I have some friends in the community. What if they see?”

            “I may not be Denzel Washington, but…”

            “More like Fat Albert,” she said, cutting me off.

            “Are you actually Seven Sallie’s daughter?”

            “No, but I’ll take that as a compliment.”

            “Compliment? As much grief as you two give each other?”

            “It’s friendly fire,” she shrugged. “I love the Sallie’s, they’re good people.”

            “Well, calling me Fat Albert doesn’t seem like friendly fire.”

            “True enough,” she admitted and then briefly chewed her lip. “I’m sorry. I guess you need to know who you’re teasing. Now that I know that you’re rather sensitive, I’ll be careful.”

            I opened my mouth to protest but was interrupted by our group radio communication.

            “Inga, do you have a better plan than Lou’s?” Brock asked. “Do you want to catch those responsible for your sister’s death, as well as Pricilla’s?”

            “These aren’t the guys that did it.”

            “Maybe not,” I said. “But when they become prime suspects, odds are they will turn on the actual culprits, as well as Bronx himself.”

            “Okay, I’ll do it,” she said stoically. Then with a smirk curling her lips, she asked, “So what do we do, Cupcake?”

            “Cupcake?” I frowned. “Fat Albert to Cupcake?”

            She shrugged. “Isn’t that friendly enough fire? Plus, you want it to look legit, right? I guess I’m hot or cold. If I’m in, I’m in.”

            “Alright then, Sweety Pie, we’ll…”

            “Okay, let’s stop with the nicknames,” she said with a wince like she bit into something sour.

            In public view, Inga and I stayed close by at first, but separate. When we both got word that she was being watched by the possible bad guys, we met at our rendezvous point. It was a large oak tree by some railroad tracks. We made it look like I gave her a sample of something. She made it look like she wanted more. I rubbed knuckles gently on her cheek. She subtly recoiled and shook her head. I shrugged and began to slowly amble away. Another prop I had was a cane.

            Inga crossed her arms in disgust and watched me go. A minute later she pursued me, walking at a normal pace. When she caught up to me, I stopped, we talked briefly, and then I proceeded to amble on with her slowly marching by my side. I looked around, pulled a flask from my jacket and handed it to her. She looked around, took a drink of herbal tea, and then winced as though the supposed alcohol had a bite.

            Earlier I had made a makeshift tent in a secluded area out of tarps and that was the destination we headed to. Once inside, we waited. I felt restless, fidgety. It had been years since I had been undercover. Yet feisty little Inga seemed calm as she pulled out a pocket size New Testament. I watched her lips move silently as she read.

            I sighed before speaking softly. “Lord, now would be a good time for the rapture.”

            Inga’s eyes darted from her little Bible to me. “Rapture? Don’t tell me you believe in a secret rapture?”

            Although I had many years of attending church under my belt, I was a spiritual child. During my entire adult life, my spiritual growth had come from an hour in church once a week. Sometimes only once a month when I was over worked. So I lamely replied to the girl young enough to be my daughter, “Of course, most Evangelical Christians believe in the rapture.”

            I should have heard from my own mouth my mistake. “You mean just like most Christians think the Biblical Sabbath was legitimately changed to Sunday? Rapture isn’t even found in the Bible. It’s a theory based of a few vague texts like one shall be taken and the other left. (Matthew 24:40) The theory didn’t even exist until around the 1830’s and was popularized back then primarily by the British preacher John Nelson Darby.”

            “Seems like a pretty good theory to me. What else could one taken and the other left mean but the rapture?”

            “If you read a couple verses down, Jesus explains that his second advent will simply be unexpected. Nobody knows the day or hour. But diligent students of the Bible know when it is close. Read 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 which tells of Christ’s second coming. It’s with a shout and the voice of an arch angel. That doesn’t sound secret. Revelation 1:7 says every eye will see Him, even those who killed Him.. In Acts 1:11, angels declared as Jesus ascended into heaven that He would return in like manner.”

            I thought Inga and I had come to the Sabbath truth at roughly the same time. Why did she seem much more advanced in her knowledge? Although she told me these things in a serious manner, putting away her sharp tongue, my spiritual pride was wounded. And spiritual coupled with pride isn’t a good thing. Was it a case of not being able to teach an old dog new tricks?

            No, that should never be the case. If we’re humble and teachable, we can learn new truths at any stage of life. Inga simply had a deeper spiritual hunger than me at that time. But then she did something that had me question her spiritual maturity. She did something that crossed the line of appropriate. It happened right after Brock gave us an update.

            “They followed at a distance and are watching your makeshift tent,” his voice told us through the radio waves. “But I think they are suspicious of a trap. It looks like they are getting ready to retreat.”

            Inga had an intense look in her eyes as she chewed nervously on her lower lip. She barked an order. “Turn around, Lou.”

            This puzzled me, but I did as instructed. But then curiosity killed the cop. I turned back around as she began to take her top off. She stopped lifting her shirt at her rib cage. She demanded, “I said turn around.”

            I obeyed but as I did I put forth my own demand. “What on earth are you doing?”

            “This little mission will only take a couple minutes but face the west until I tell you I’m finished.”

            “Are you undressing?”

            “Yes. We are trying to make them think we are doing something untoward, but apparently they are not convinced.”

            “Well, I’m not getting undressed and going out in broad daylight!”

            “Oh yuck! Why would you think I wanted you to join me?”

            “You know, you’re not doing any favors to my self-esteem. And you shouldn’t be going out there without any clothes on, somebody might see you.”

            “That’s the point, we need to make them genuinely think we are… You know.”

            “Inga, we are on public property!”

            “Yeah, a good half mile from anything. It took you a half hour to walk out here.”

            “I needed to make them think I’m physically challenged.”

            “You mean you’re not?”

            “You know you…”

            “Be quiet and hand me that flask of tea.”

            I pulled it out of my jacket, turned and handed it to her.

            “Dang it, Lou! I told you to hand it, not turn around.”

            “Sorry, it was, a, a, reflex.”

            “How embarrassing! You pervert! You wanted to look!”

            “I didn’t do it on purpose and I’m no pervert. If you don’t care about those creeps as well as Brock seeing you in your birthday suit, what’s the big deal with me?”

            “You’re like three feet away, all they will be able to tell is that I’m naked from a distance.”

            I heard, not watched Inga take a whole mouthful of water and exit the tent. Then she made a vomit sound and then wretched for minute. Suddenly the tarp flew open, and she quickly came back in. “Lou! What part of stay turned around did you not understand?”

            “I’m sorry, cops are curious. Maybe you should have explained the plan instead of just winging it.”

            “Former cop.”

            “Oh, so I suddenly lost years of police behavior, is that what you think?”

            “I guess as a professional order giver, you don’t have the ability to take them. How embarrassing! How am I supposed to face you going forward?”

            “Listen, I’ve seen hundreds, thousands of crime scene photos.”

            “Oh wow, thanks. You didn’t do my ego any favors comparing me to a crime scene.”

            “I’m just saying I’ve seen it all.”

            “You got that right, you were staring right at me.”

            I groaned. “I meant that my seconds long glimpse. Unintentional, mind you, is very small potatoes compared to everything I’ve seen as a police officer.”

            “Well, that was interesting,” Brock’s voice came through my ear bud. “Definitely took me by surprise.”

            “Tell me about it.”

            “Tell you about what?” Inga asked irritably. Her ear buds weren’t back in yet. I heard her clothes rustling as she put them back on. I most definitely didn’t turn to look as I spoke. “It’s Brock. Your antics took him by surprise too.”

            “I wouldn’t have recommended that, but Inga’s ploy did work,” Brock said. “They’re on the move and coming at you. I can’t see what kind of weapons they have. Be ready, Lou, there are two of them and I’m right behind them.”

BLACK SABBATH – CHAPTER 11

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 11

ZELLA LaSTELLA SALLIE

BEHOLD, I SEND YOU OUT AS SHEEP IN THE MIDST OF WOLVES. THEREFORE BE WISE AS SERPENTS AND HARMLESS AS DOVES (Matthew 10:16)

            My whole body tensed when I opened the front door and saw my cousin standing on the stoop. Lieutenant Louis Lewis gazed at me with hound dog eyes, his hands jammed into his pockets. I froze because it had only been a day since my husband had been arrested for inciting civil disobedience on his podcast.

            But then as I took in the woebegone countenance of my one time childhood playmate, I recalled Seven telling me that Triple Lou had been not only fired but arrested himself for reiterating my husband’s call to obey God rather than men.

            “Lieutenant,” I greeted.

            “Former Lieutenant,” he corrected. Then he forced a smile. “You can call me Louie if you like.”

            I couldn’t help giggling. He hated being called Louie when we were kids. He often barked, “I’m Louis, with an s, not an e.”

            “How about Louis with an s,” I said with a warm smile.

            The curl at his lips didn’t seem forced this time. “Suit yourself, but I’m fine with Louie. I’m not a sensitive kid anymore that couldn’t wait to be a grown up. Now I’m a grown up that wishes he was a kid again.”

            “Seven told me what happened, I’m sorry.”

            He shrugged. “That might not be the worst of it. Karen and I got into a big argument today. It’s not good. Not good at all.”

            “Over what you told that TV reporter yesterday?”

            “Well, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. Actually, maybe I should say the boulder that broke the camel’s back. She has always been more churchy than me. When I studied out this Sabbath issue, I discussed my findings with her, and she didn’t like how I did an about face on the Sunday law situation. Her being quite religious, she was proud of the fact that I was in charge of Sunday ordinance enforcement in this area.”

            I felt like I should invite him in, but there were a couple areas of concern. For one thing this wasn’t my home. We were guests of Destiny and Brock Storm, who graciously took us in after our house was destroyed by fire. Destiny and I had been preparing dinner when the doorbell rang. With her hands covered in flour, she had asked me to answer the door.

            Another reason was the discussion at the kitchen table and its five occupants. Seven, Brock, Inga, Inga’s brother Brent, and Benito Bonanno were discussing a plan to capture Paloma’s killer. This plan entailed using Inga as bait; an agenda the former Lieutenant adamantly opposed.

            I looked over my shoulder and gave a start. Destiny was standing right behind me. She giggled. “Sorry, sweety, I didn’t mean to sneak up and have my ugly mug frighten you.”

            I laughed, but Louis Lewis spoke. “If you have an ugly mug, I’m an outright monster.”

            “He’s right, you’re anything but ugly,” I told her.

            Destiny was like a Barbie doll come to life. Only she dressed like a country girl in her usual attire of flannel shirt and jeans.

            “Ah shucks,” Destiny replied. Then she quickly dismissed the issue by asking, “Won’t you come in, Lieutenant?”

            “Former Lieutenant,” Louis Lewis corrected as he stepped through the threshold.

            “Oh, yes, sorry,” Destiny winced.

            “Hey Cous, you didn’t correct me when I said I looked like a monster,” Lou said as he walked into the Storm residence, eyeing me ruefully.

            I grinned and my heart soared. Not just at his lightheartedness, but because he called me cous after years of estrangement with my family. I reassured him, “You’re not a monster.”

            “Just ugly,” he said.

            “No, you’re not ugly either.”

            “Now, don’t be bearing false witness,” he said with a little smirk. But his eyes were contradictorily sad. “We come from some of the same gene pool, right?”

            “Of course, primarily Grandma Birdy and Grandpa Ike.”

            He nodded and asked, “So if you get to look like Halle Berry, why didn’t I get to look like Jamie Foxx?”

            I felt embarrassed at his offhand compliment and didn’t know what to say. Thankfully Inga sauntered up and put her left arm over my shoulders and her right around Destiny’s. “How do you think I feel hanging out with these two lovelies? I look like something the cat dragged in.”

            “Now, young lady,” Triple Lou said. “You’ve got a pair of the most striking eyes I’ve ever seen.”

            “Only because they’re so light blue they sometimes seem white. But my nose is pointy like a witch. My lips are thin, teeth are crooked, and my body looks like a scarecrow.”

            “You would look interesting with green skin,” Seven said as he joined us in the foyer. Then he bellowed after Inga kicked him in the shin. “Ouch!”

            “Opps, sorry,” Inga said with a mischievous smile. “I forgot I was wearing cowboy boots that Destiny gave me. They have kind of a hard point, don’t they?”

            “I can definitely verify that,” he groaned.

            “If you think Inga would look interesting green, I have to say, you look interesting with a red face dear,” I told my husband.

            “With comments like that, you won’t get any loving from me,” Seven declared.

            “Is that supposed to be a threat?” I replied with a smoldering grin and an arched eyebrow.

            Seven’s eyes widened as he seemed to realize how ridiculous his warning challenge was. “No, of course not, dear. I miss spoke. You can have as much of me any time I want.”

            “It should be you can have as much of me any time YOU want,” I mistakenly corrected, as I realized he said that on purpose.

            “Oh, okay!” Seven said happily as everyone laughed. “Thank you, Dear.”

            “So Lieutenant,” Destiny said cheerfully. “What can we do for you?”

            Lou looked uncomfortable and embarrassed. “Um, it’s former Lieutenant.”

            “Yeah, Seven told us that you were, um…”

            “Prison mates,” Seven broke in.

            “I was gonna say let go,” Destiny said, giving Seven a playful shove.

            “Fired would be more accurate, “Lou clarified.

            We all looked at him, and he gave each one of us an uneasy glance. Then he turned toward the door and said, “I better go.”

            I grabbed his hand and called him something I hadn’t since we were barely teenagers. “Louie, how come you stopped by if it isn’t police business?”

            Although he faced us again, his uneasy expression intensified. Destiny sought to put him at ease. “Mr. Lewis, you’re very welcome here. I guess we just didn’t know whether it was police business or pleasure.”

            “Um, well,” Lou shifted his feet and then rocked on his heels. “Everything is happening so fast. I mean several weeks ago I was in charge of Sunday ordinances. One of my tasks was to monitor Seven’s podcast. To be honest, I thought of him as an enemy. But I felt a need to be fair, so I studied out the issue and discovered I was on the wrong side of the issue. Now my position cost me my job and likely my marriage.”

            “So you and your wife disagree on the Sabbath issue?” Destiny asked.

            “We do,” he nodded. “But we’ve had some history with marital problems. We’ve separated a couple times during our twenty two years. It’s not easy being married to a cop, let alone a cop in charge of other cops. Ironically, when I was put in charge of the Sunday thing, it pleased her. It brought us together like we hadn’t been together since newlywed days. But when I turned to the other side, it, it… How do I put this?”

            Inga broke in. “Is it sort of like if you were put in charge of vice and then started seeing a hooker?”

            Lou gazed at her for a few seconds with hooded eyes, then acknowledged, “That’s kind of a creepy analogy, but I suppose it does make the point.”

            “So if you’re not here because of the investigations…,” I said. Then I asked warm and inviting, “Are you here for fellowship then?”

            With hands deep in his pockets, he shrugged a shoulder, and then nodded. “I guess so. Or maybe I’m looking for confirmation that I did the right thing.”

            As often as my husband liked to clown around, he did have a serious side. He usually seemed to know how to balance the two and now was one of those times. He read from the book of Matthew, chapter 10, verses 36-39:

            “A man’s enemies will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.”

            “That’s easy for you to say,” Lou said solemnly. “You and Zellie came together seeking the truth.”

            “Not exactly,” I interjected. “Seven and I started seeing each other before we became converts. Seven went first, you might say, and I thought it was going to cause our brief relationship to end. But then I went to a prophecy seminar held by his then teenage daughter, Sevenia. It was during these that I experienced a transformation in my life and became converted.”

            “Fair enough,” Lou shrugged. “Guess I’m comparing apples to oranges. Everyone has their own trials.”

            A ding from the doorbell revealed FBI Agent Nora Medora. Destiny invited her in, and I noticed her eyes widen when she discovered Lou not only present but staring her down.

            “Oh, Lieutenant, hello,” she greeted my cousin.

            “Former Lieutenant,” he replied coolly.

            “I see,” she replied, then regained her composure, folded her arms and eyed him coolly. “I suppose you blame me.”

            “Well, you got the ball rolling,” he said and then sighed. “But no, I don’t blame you. I don’t like you, but I don’t blame you.”

            She snorted. “Tell me what you really think.”

            “I did,” he barked. “You do your job thoroughly, and by the book. But you’re also cold, and don’t care who you step on in the name of duty.”

            “I’m not gonna argue,” she said with a casual shrug. “You’re entitled to your opinion. But I don’t feel I step on people while fulfilling my duties. I had no desire or intention of you getting fired. I simply thought your superiors should understand your mind set and thereby get you back on track.”

            “Who’s to say I’m not on the right track?”

            “Look, I didn’t come here to argue. And I truly didn’t intend for you to get fired.”

            Lou put up his hands in a sign of truce. “And I truly don’t blame you for my firing. If I would have toed the line, I wouldn’t have lost my job. But I had to follow my convictions.”

            “Nora, why are you here?” Destiny inquired. “I don’t mean to sound unhospitable, but, you know, with all that’s been going on lately. Plus I doubt you came by hoping to find a Bible study to join.”

            “Right,” Agent Medora said, and then eyed Inga with true sympathy. I felt my toes curl with the look of compassion on the world hardened agent’s face. “I was just made aware that Pricilla Rosenwinkle was found dead in her apartment only a few hours after she arrived back in Las Vegas.”

            Inga gasped, but then cautiously asked, “From what, a drug overdose?”     

            Agent Medora drew in deep breath as she shook her head. “She was strangled.”