Tag: short-story

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – PART 2 – CHAPTER 15

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

PART 2

CHAPTER 15

DREW ALDO

  SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND ALL THESE THINGS SHALL BE ADDED TO YOU. (Matthew 6:33)

            I felt my toes curl when Sevenia Sallie told my brother Jerry that his girlfriend Brenda was her cousin. Brenda was Jerry’s ex, or something like that. If a six week relationship is long enough to merit the term ‘ex.’

            Sevenia had made this declaration happily. For she had yet to discover that Jerry and Brenda were no longer an item. To make matters worse, I could tell that Jerry had been smitten with Sevenia. This surprised me. Jerry’s typical lady of the moment was usually a blonde with dark roots, a tastefully placed tattoo or four, and a few piercings beyond just the ears.

            Sevenia, like Nancy, was a plain Jane. However, for my tastes this usually spelled natural beauty. But I guess I don’t think like most guys. Take your average male. If one of Jerry’s typical dates was walking down one side of the street and Sevenia on the other, at least four out of five are watching Jerry’s typical date.

            When I first met Sevenia a couple years ago, I myself was smitten with her. But because she had a boyfriend at the time, we became friends on a brother and sister level. She sort of reminded me of Nancy due to their similar builds, as well smooth alabaster skin, short hair and simple dress. But that’s where their similarities ended.

            Sevenia’s auburn hair was short and spiked at the time, whereas Nancy’s hair was strawberry blonde and stylishly mussed. But I don’t believe the stylish aspect was intentional. Nancy just washed, tossed and went.

            Their personalities were opposite as well. Sevenia was bubbly and outgoing. Nancy was an introvert who was often moody and sullen. While I was in between. I never got too high and never got too low. I suppose I still am.

            Although the revelation that Jerry and Sevenia’s cousin had just broken up was awkward at first, she seemed to shrug it off. Over the next three weeks, the thirteen prophecy presentations went off without a hitch. Nancy was baptized on the last night, and Jerry recommitted to his childhood faith.

            The next day I wasn’t surprised to get a text from Sevenia, but I was a little surprised at the time, 12:51 am. She requested that I call her. When I did she requested to meet me alone. We decided on lunch at the Bluebird café. At 12:48 pm Sevenia came walking into the cafe wearing a light blue summer dress with white sneakers.

            After quick greetings, I had to ask, “So why this urgent clandestine meeting?”

            She smiled but frowned. “Is that what you think this is?”

            “You texted me at 12:51 in the morning.”

            She crinkled her cute little nose, and her large emerald eyes looked a little mischievous. “Sorry about that, I was a little discombobulated.”

            “Over what?”

            “Your brother.”

            “My brother?”

            “Yeah, we were at the church talking for several hours last night. I guess you could say we really have hit it off, and then he asked me to dinner tonight. I told him yes, but I instantly regretted it. So when we parted ways, without thinking, I just rattled off that text to you. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

            “No, I didn’t see it till the morning. Well wait, I guess it was morning when you sent it. So you and Jerry talked until one?”

            “No, it wasn’t one yet.”

            “Oh, sorry,” I teased. “So you and Jerry talked until nine minutes to one.”

            “No, more like a quarter to one.”

            “My bad,” I replied, and then we looked at each other for a long moment. “So why do you regret it? It sounds like it’s just a friendly dinner.”

            “Well,” she winced. “I find Jerry rather appealing.”

            “And that’s a bad thing?”

            “Yes, for a couple reasons.”

            “I’m listening,” I said, reminding myself of Frasier Crane.

            “I sort of swore off the possibility of romance to focus on serving God,” she said. She sighed and looked out the window. A waitress had brought us waters and menus, and she twisted the wrapper from a straw in her fingers. “I don’t mean a promise, just kind of an intention.”

            “You said a couple reasons?”

            “Well, maybe this is unfair, even judgmental. I may have just gotten to know your brother, but I knew of him.”

            “Let me guess, you think he was a womanizer.”

            “Drew, I don’t think there’s any guessing about it.”

            “Oh boy,” I said and pinched the bridge of my nose. Then I looked at her solemnly. “He would probably kill me if he knew what I’m about to tell you, so please keep it to yourself.”

            “I’m listening.”

            So I shared with Sevenia what Jerry had shared with me a couple days before Sevenia’s prophecy seminar got underway. About how due to his religious upbringing he never actually had sex with any of the girls he dated. How although he only halfheartedly followed the fundamental beliefs of our church, he believes one should be committed before intimate relations. Now that he has repented, and turned from his backslidden ways, I’m sure he believes a couple should even be married.

            I was concerned when Sevenia stared at me with a blank expression. Then she quietly said, “I think I’m in love.”

            I reached across the table and took hold of her hand. “I’m flattered, Sevenia, but I’m with Nancy.”

            She laughed. “I meant Jerry, not you… I mean I love you as a dear friend, but…”

            “I know. I love you too as a dear friend.”

            “Just so you know,” Sevenia said, looking a little shy and nervous. This was strange to see because she is such a confident, dynamic speaker. “When you and I first met, I found you very desirable. But I had a boyfriend at the time, and you were heartbroken over Nancy putting the kibosh on your friendship. As a matter of fact, one of the things I found appealing about Jerry was his similarities to you.”

            “But with muscles on the order of Brock Storm,” I said with a grin. When Sevenia and I first became friends, she confessed guilt that she had had a bit of a crush on Brock, who is built like an NFL linebacker and married to Destiny Knight-Storm. He’s also her dad’s cousin.

            “I suppose,” she grinned back, but then grew serious. “I think the main thing is he is recommitting to God. Not being unequally yoked is very important to me.”

            Now I squirmed and looked a little nervous. In the course of our friendship, she had given me honest council that Nancy being out of my life was for the best if she refused to follow God. That had been the reason she had broken up with her own boyfriend. She had hoped he would convert, but he ultimately chose not to.

            “It’s important to me as well,” I declared. “It was troubling to be so attracted to someone who didn’t share my spiritual values.”

            “It seems there are no worries now,” she said happily.

            “Well, our spiritual beliefs are now in harmony. But I’m not certain she will ever want to be in a relationship. She has always been afraid of intimacy.”

            “Well, I’ve got some good and bad news for you,” Sevenia reported with a coy smile.

            I frowned. “Regarding Nancy?”

            “Yes. There’s actually a dual reason for our, what did you call it? Our clandestine meeting?”

            “If it wasn’t, it is now. So what is it you have to say about Nancy?”

          “When she discovered that you and I had become pretty good friends over the last couple years, she confided a couple things to me last night before you guys left.”

          “And something was good, and something was bad?”

          Sevenia nodded.

          “Tell me the bad first.”

          She frowned. “I kind of need to tell you the good first, because the bad coincides with it.”

          “Okay, spit it out.”

          “She was lamenting that you haven’t discussed marriage with her.”

          “I was just giving her time to get adjusted spiritually.”

          “Well, just so you know, she’s had enough time.”

          “So what’s the bad? Is she worried she’ll be afraid of intimacy?”

          “Because of the abuse she endured as a child, she’s been told by doctors she likely could not have children.”

          “That’s not important to me. When and if the time comes, we can adopt.”

          Sevenia smiled sweetly at me, took my hand, and said, “Go to her.”

          Two hours after having lunch with Sevenia, Nancy and I found ourselves at Cotton Creek. The rippling stream was about a football field’s length behind our church. I’d like to tell you I did something like have a skywriter spell out a proposal. But after she sat on a bench, I simply went to one knee and asked her to marry me.

          Instead of saying yes, she said, “Did you talk to Sevenia?”

          “I did.”

          “Did she tell you about me being barren?”

          “Yes, and it doesn’t matter. All that matters is I want to spend the rest of my life loving you.”

          She started to cry as she said, “I’m sorry I asked her to do it for me. I just couldn’t face you with it. Especially so soon after you found out what happened to me as a kid.”

          “Hey, it’s alright,” I soothed, caressing her cheek with my thumb. “But please answer my question.”

          “What question?” she asked. Then she gasped and went to her knees in front of me. Then before kissing me passionately she said, “Yes, oh yes!”

          After a couple minutes of hugging and kissing, she became dead serious. “By the way, the boy that rescued me from my situation all those years ago wants to meet with me.”

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – PART 2 – CHAPTER 13

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

PART 2

CHAPTER 13

NANCY

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)

            The Lord works in mysterious ways. I had a hard time believing Drew when he told me that God saw me as a virgin. I had a hard time believing God accepted me, as the song declares, ‘Just As I Am.’ Then just when I began to fully believe, I was taken to the lowest depths of doubt and despair.

            First, the most intimidating woman I had ever known had caught me trotting virtually naked through her house. Then Drew’s mother kicked me out of her house. The third strike came when she barged into the room I had briefly stayed in. I was already fighting off a panic attack as I was dressing and gathering up my things. For a second time in not even twenty minutes, I locked eyes with the most intimidating woman I have ever known, while in a state of undress.

            I was wearing only panties when I saw Dr. Aldo’s eyes go to my rib cage, where two dozen thin scars resided. I had resorted to cutting myself in my darkest hours of loneliness and despair. I had never felt such deep shame in my life as the most intimidating woman I had ever known discovered this secret. I pressed my legs together so she wouldn’t see a dozen more on the insides of my thighs.

            I was puzzled when Drew’s mom tried to make a joke about seeing me in a state of undress again. Was she being sarcastic? Even though I perceived she was actually trying to be friendly, my breathing came hard and fast as I failed to hold off the surging panic attack.

            Then right on the brink of an emotional breakdown, it was as if a spiritual switch was flipped. The light of God’s love chased away the demons, and it came through the most intimidating woman I have ever known. She knelt in front of me clutching one of my hands in two of hers. With head bowed she petitioned, “Nancy, would you please forgive me?”

            Although her humble, contrite actions caused my anxiety to change directions, I was dumbfounded and confused as I meekly replied, “For what?”

            “For my whole attitude toward you all a long.”

            I knelt in front of her, and she lifted her bowed head, looking at me with tear rimmed eyes. As we faced each other on our knees, I tried to make sense of what was happening. Why was the most intimidating woman I had ever known being nice to me? Surely Drew had told her that I was dirty and defiled. To top it off, I saw her eyes go to the scars on my rib cage. They were all neatly arranged like a planted row of trees. It was an obvious case of self-abuse rather than an accident. I simply replied, “I don’t understand.”

            “I think you do,” she responded quickly. But her brisk reply was not haughty. She couldn’t hide the fact that she had never liked me. I don’t think she even tried to hide the fact that she didn’t like me. So why now? That’s what I didn’t understand.

            “Did Drew tell you about, you know, what happened before I came to Iowa?”

            Her lips pursed tightly, and her eyes welled with tears as she nodded. But I just gazed at her flatly, numbly. “So you know how dirty and defiled I am.”

            “No, not at all. I see how you were terribly wronged.”

            “You know I’m in love with Drew,” I said mechanically, as if my emotions were all tied up.

            “Yes, I’ve always known that,” she said with what seemed like a warm smile. Did she mean she now didn’t seem to mind? After she now knew how scarred I was, both physically and mentally? I frowned as my tied up emotions began to loosen ever so slightly. I had never, ever had a warm smile aimed at me by the most intimidating woman I had ever known.

            “But I never thought you were right for him,” she admitted. “That was one of the reasons I’ve always treated you kind of coolly.”

            “Try frigid,” I blurted and instantly regretted it. “I’m sorry! Dr Aldo, I didn’t mean to say that. I’m just so discombobulated. Between what happened last night, and now this morning.”

            She laughed, shook her head, and touched my cheek. “No, you’re right, Honey, I was indeed frigid. But I hope to call that a thing of the past going forward.”

            It occurred to me that I was still naked except for my panties. I gasped and covered my breasts with both hands. Rising hastily I said, “I need to get dressed.”

            “I’m sorry for barging in on you, Nancy. I’ll leave, but please tell me you forgive me.”

            “Oh, yes, of course I do,” I replied as I threw on jeans and a t-shirt. “But please don’t go. I want to ask you something.”

            She stopped her retreat and looked at me with arched eyebrows. “Sure, ask me anything.”

            I chewed my lower lip for a few seconds. “Drew told me that in God’s eyes, I’m a virgin. What’s your opinion?”

            “I agree with my son one hundred percent.”

            “How can that be?” I puzzled as I sat on the bed.

            Dr. Aldo sat next to me. “Because what happened to you wasn’t your choice.”

            “But I did what the man who impregnated my mother told me to do.”

            The most intimidating woman I had ever known looked lovingly at me as she put a gentle hand on my knee. “Honey, you were only a child. There’s a reason there are laws. There’s a reason a person isn’t considered an adult until a certain age. And my Dear, you were a long, long way from that certain age.”

            We were silent for a long moment as I gathered my thoughts. Then the most intimidating woman I had ever known spoke with the meekest voice I had ever heard from her. “Sweety, can I ask you something?”

            Honey, Dear, and now Sweety from the most intimidating woman I had ever known. I frowned and said, “Sure.”

            “Do you still cut yourself?”

            I felt my face flush as I shook my head. “No.”

            “Good,” was all she said as she patted my knee.

            Even though she didn’t inquire further, I wanted her to know something. “The only times I ever cut, was when Drew wasn’t a part of my life.”

            “So why did you push away from your friendship with him early on in high school?”

            I noticed she said friendship, so I began to test the waters a little bit. “Because I was deeply in love with him, and I knew I didn’t deserve him. I also was scared. What I went through as child made me fearful of physical intimacy. I didn’t want to be unfair to him.”

            She looked at me with a pained expression. I wondered whether it was because I declared to be in love with her precious son, or whether out of concern for how damaged and broken I had been. Her next words surprised me. “Drew’s deeply in love with you as well.”

            I looked at her with a stunned expression, and the most intimidating woman I had ever known giggled. I didn’t know that Dr. Penelope Aldo was even capable of giggling. “Does my acknowledgement surprise you?”

            “Yes, it does!”

            “Listen, I’m a realist. Until today, I never really liked you, but I’ve always known you held Drew’s affections.”

            “I don’t understand your sudden change about me. Is it pity?”

            “It’s self-realization.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean that after talking with Drew, it hit me like a spiritual slap in the face that I was being judgmental. I always thought you were snotty and opinionated. Actually not unlike my own inclinations. But after Drew’s explanation, what I perceived as arrogance in you turned out to be brokenness.”

            “I see.”

            “Please don’t take what I’m gonna tell you next the wrong way.”

            “Okay,” I replied cautiously.

            “As a vet, I’ve tended to hundreds of abused animals. So as soon as I found out how horribly abused you had been, it didn’t take long for shame and then repentance to take effect.”

            “I’m glad you care for us damaged animals,” I replied with a lighthearted smile.

            “You’re a precious child of God. I do apologize for behaving self-righteously and judgmentally all these years.”

            “Regardless of what made me who I am, or was, or whatever, I was frequently a snot. Forgive me for giving you a reason to not like me with my frequent bad attitude.”

            “So I guess we forgive each other?”

            “Yes, lets.”

            “Can I ask you one more question, and once again I mean no offense?”

            “Let me guess, you’re wondering if my interest to get baptized is genuine, or a ploy to please Drew.”

            “You know what else is sudden? You and me being on the same page. Yes, that is what I’m wondering.”

            “I believe it is genuine, but it is all so new to me. I guess I had been ignoring the Holy Spirit. But then last night, witnessing Drew’s faith with a gun pointed at his head… I mean, I have always wanted that peace and faith Drew has. But then witnessing Drew’s faith and calm under such duress, I went from wanting it to needing it. Talking with him this morning, he convinced me I could have it.”

            “I’m glad. You know, the angels in heaven rejoice over one sinner that repents.”

            “They do?”

            “Yes, look up Luke 15:7 and 10.”

            “I will,” I replied, and we smiled awkwardly at each other, but in good way. “Oh my! Where does it all go from here?”

            “that remains to be seen, Honey,” she said, patting my knee and standing. “But I think it will be good. But promise me one thing. Don’t ever run out of Drew’s life again, even if you decide to just be friends.”

            “I won’t,” I replied as I also stood. “I promise.”

            Then the most intimidating woman I had ever known hugged me warmly and kissed my cheek. I discovered that day how amazing the working of the Holy Spirit is. For I once I was lost, but now I was found!

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – PART 2 – CHAPTER 8

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

PART 2

CHAPTER 8

NANCY

COME NOW, AND LET US REASON TOGETHER SAYS THE LORD (Isaiah 1:18)

            As Nancy looked at herself in the mirror, she felt a panic attack coming on. Was this dinner date with Drew an actual date? Why had she put on a dress? Had Drew ever seen her in a dress? How would he be dressed? In jeans and t-shirt? Or like she’d seen him when he was off to church, in Docker pants with a button up collar?

            Why did she feel so nervous? It was just Drew. The boy she grew up with. The boy who by times felt like a sibling. The boy she solved mysteries with. The boy who had often coaxed her out of her shell, convincing her to play hide and seek, and dodge ball with other kids. The boy who was always so kind and gentle. The boy she saw wipe a tear from his eye when he failed to save a wounded bird.

            But the boy was now a man, and she a woman. Her feelings for him had changed, and she didn’t understand them. They both intrigued and frightened her. The things that happened to her before she and her mother moved from California to Iowa had made her asexual. The things that happened to her made her skin crawl at the thought of physical intimacy.

            However, during her fifteenth year of life, Drew began to draw her out of her shell once again, but in a different way. Only this time he was unwittingly pulling her into feelings of romance. Strangely, it was peppermint gum that brought her to a fork in the road four years earlier.

            She had felt frisky with desire that day as they walked on the nature trail outside of town. Was this what normal girls felt she wondered? She both loved and loathed these feelings in the core of her being.

            Drew had been chewing a piece of peppermint Trident. She had been chewing a piece of grape Hubba Bubba. Her move had been calculated, for she had noticed that he had popped his last piece into his mouth. She said, “I don’t like this grape gum, give me a piece of yours.”

            “This was my last piece,” he replied.

            She noticed the look in his eyes. Even with something as simple as not being able to provide a piece of gum for her disappointed him. Oh how she loved him! But she also despised him for making her feel this way. She wanted to scream ‘kiss me you fool!’ Instead she substituted this desire in a very teenage manner. “Let’s just swap what we’re chewing.”

            “Huh?” he had responded confused. But then a little smile played at his lips when Nancy plucked the gum from her mouth and held it a foot’s length from his face. He mimicked her action, and they stood showing each other their ABC gum.

            “Open wide,” she instructed. She giggled as he obeyed, his action reminding her of a baby bird.

            They both stood chewing their new gum, enthralled that they were doing the equivalent of French kissing without actually touching. Yet, being teenagers, they both acted like it was no big deal. Nancy liked the fact that they were doing something kind of intimate without actually touching. One of her biggest fears was being touched by a boy in an intimate manner. Despite countless hours of psychological therapy, the idea always made her shudder. Until Drew.

            Nancy wiped off the little bit off makeup she had put on. Then she peeled the dress off and put on gray sweats. She also put on a Cedar Rapids Kernels baseball hat backwards. If she didn’t feel like herself, her nerves would never subside. And if they didn’t subside, she wouldn’t have the courage to reveal her secret to Drew.

            Was she really going to? What would he think of her? What had he always thought of her? She knew that he knew that she was odd, but how much did he ponder why? Her hand shook as she retrieved utensils for making dinner. She replaced them in the drawer and decided to order Chinese takeout instead.

            Nancy’s heart raced when she heard Drew knock on her apartment door. Then she relaxed some when she saw his easy, familiar smile. He was dressed in jeans and a light blue Carhardt t-shirt. Was the light blue to set her at ease? Did he remember light blue was her favorite color?

            Their attire signified old friends rather than a first date. This both pleased her and disappointed her. But her main goal wasn’t necessarily romantic, it was to heal. The question was, would she have the courage to confide her deep, dark secret? The only people in Iowa that knew it were her mother, and a few doctors.

            “Come in, Drew. I hope you don’t mind, time got away from me, so I ordered Chinese for dinner.”

            “No, no, I love Chinese.”

            And I love you, she thought. So much so it hurts. So much so it drove her crazy, so she had to drive you away. Now what was I doing these four years later, she wondered. Trying to reel you in once and for all, or driving you away permanently after I reveal how disgusting I am.

            They exchanged small talk throughout the meal. Nancy acknowledged that she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life. She wavered on whether she wanted to go back to college for her sophomore year. Drew talked of his plan to work for his Uncle’s construction company as he “waited on the Lord,” to see if he was being called to full time ministry in some capacity.

            This was the perfect segway to take her in the direction of confession. She told him. “I’ve been reading the Bible quite a bit.”

            “Really!” He replied enthusiastically.

            She realized that for someone like Drew, this could be leading him on. She knew their opposing world views was an obstacle for him. She also knew he hoped to convert her. She shrugged and grinned. “I guess I’m looking for loopholes.”

            He frowned. “What do you mean by loopholes?”

            “Some of us are beyond redemption.”

            “Nobody is beyond redemption.”

            She snorted. “That’s easy for you to say.”

            “Yes it is,” he replied, surprising her with his quick agreement. “Because I’ve read the Word of God.”

            Nancy’s heart pounded as her secret was already upon her lips. She thought it would take a while to work up to it. With a quiver in her voice she began. “I see. Does this Word of God have anything to say about a little girl that… that…”

            Choking back a sob, she pushed away from her kitchen table and walked into the living room, fighting back tears. She wasn’t going to be able to tell him. He came up behind her and put gentle hands on her upper arms. She shuddered and barked, “Don’t touch me!”

            “Sorry,” he said quickly as he took a step back.

            She was breathing as though she had just finished a sprint. She had come to learn something about true believers. Not the majority of professed Christians, who wanted their worldly cake and to eat it too, but the people who you could see Jesus through. Drew’s character had been his witness, and not a set of dogmas.

            She turned, unashamed of her tear steaked face. She gasped when she noticed Drew’s calm face had two trails of tears down his cheeks. She was further surprised when she heard herself say, “I think I’m becoming a believer in Jesus.”

            “Nancy, that’s wonderful!”

            She stepped toward him and dragged her thumb over his tear streaks. “You’ve always claimed that the goodness I’ve seen in you is, how do you say it? Christ in you the hope of glory.”

            “That’s right! Colossians 1:27.”

            For some reason, Nancy now felt the courage to reveal her deep dark secret. But she also suspected that it would be the wedge keeping them from any possibility of romance. Not only because of her own hang ups, but because Drew deserved somebody that wasn’t damaged, even shattered goods. She took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s try this again.”

            “Nancy, you don’t have to do this.”

            “Yes I do,” she said quietly, and forced a smile. “You see… When I…”

            She began to tremble, then shake uncontrollably. Drew felt like someone had electrified his nerves. What had happened to Nancy that the memory of it rattled her this much? She was the strongest, feistiest female he had ever known. With maybe the exception of his own mother.

            She looked him right in the eyes. She smiled when she saw the sympathy and pure love there. “Drew, will you hold me?”

            “Of course,” he replied, and she stepped into his embrace.

            She shook as though they were standing in below zero weather without coats. He offered up a silent prayer. ‘Lord, please comfort this broken girl, and please give me wisdom on how to deal with her, what to say and what to do.’

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – PART 2 – CHAPTER 5

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

PART 2

CHAPTER 5

DREW

HE HEALS THE BROKENHEARTED AND BINDS UP THEIR WOUNDS (Psalm 147:3)

            My heart raced when my shovel scrapped a green tarpaulin. Nancy and I looked at each other wide eyed. I removed more dirt, and we had little doubt that it was a body wrapped and tied within the tarp. I reached down to pull it out of the makeshift grave, but Nancy stopped me.

            “Drew, don’t touch it! Let’s notify the police.”

            An hour later the quiet, so called haunted woods were surrounded with flashing lights with a multitude of voices, a helicopter, and news crews. Nancy did most of the talking when we were questioned by the authorities. Ben Weaver was brought in for questioning, subsequently arrested, and has been incarcerated ever since.

            It was evening by the time we left the police station. Nancy and I had driven there in my pickup truck, so I had to drive her back to Baylor’s Woods to retrieve her car. The whole night had been a blur. But as we pulled up next to Nancy’s car, the events that led to finding the body came back full force.

            She had kissed me. She had thrown her promise ring over her shoulder into the graveyard. We had kissed each other again. Then we had looked for her discarded ring. Then we had discovered Channel Northrup’s body. Then chaos ensued. Now we looked at each other with discombobulated minds.

            Where did we go from here? She didn’t get out of my truck. Was I supposed to kiss her good night right after we solved a murder? Of course kissing was what we were doing moments before our gruesome discovery. But she wasn’t even looking at me. She was staring out the windshield like a zombie. So I said, “What a day, huh?”

            “And night,” she said quietly without looking at me.

            After a long moment of silence, I groped for something to say. “We never did find your ring.”

            “I’ll come look tomorrow,” she replied, still not looking at me.

            “I’ll help you.”

            “You don’t have to.”

            “I don’t mind.”

            “Suit yourself.”

            Well, the question of a goodnight kiss was answered. No way! I was suddenly bone tired. I wished she would just go.

            “I better go,” she suddenly said. And she began to exit my truck.

            “Okay, well, it was good seeing you again. I wish it was under better circumstances.”

            She stopped and gave me a tired smile. “Yeah, it started out so well and then turned into a horror movie.”

            I nodded as I thought, yeah just like our relationship. We were great friends as children, and then as we grew into teenagers, it turned into a nightmare. I said, “You accomplished your purpose though.”

            She smiled sentimentally. “Yes, with your help.”

            I shrugged. “I wouldn’t have stumbled onto to the suspicious grave if you hadn’t thrown your ring.”

            “Yeah, my ring. I hope I find it.”

            I noticed the “I” rather than “we.” So I said, “I hope you find your ring.”

            “Thanks,” she said, her smile was forced, and she patted my knee. “Goodnight.”

            As I watched her get into her own car and start it, I thought of something my brother had said after he and a girlfriend had broken up. ‘Women, you can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them.’

            I wasn’t as handsome as my brother or as well built. I also had a more difficult time with puberty. So whereas he always had numerous females desiring him, and giving him attention, my only experience with the opposite sex was my friendship with Nancy.

            I didn’t see Nancy again until almost a week later. It was at Channel Northrup’s funeral. She was dressed in black slacks and a black turtleneck. Her left ring finger was still unadorned. But her left eye was wearing a dark shade of purple. I sat next to her in the back pew of the church.

            “What happened to your eye?”

            “Diego and I had an argument.”

            “Looks like more than an argument.”

            She shrugged. “I had him charged with assault.”

            “Good for you. So, you didn’t find the ring then.”

            “I didn’t have to. The police called me in the morning. It turned up in their evidence. But Diego didn’t like it when I gave it back to him.”

            “I see,” I replied, hooking my thumbs into my gray Dockers.

            She answered the question in my gaze. “Look, Drew, I guess we discovered a mutual attraction the other day. But I need time. What with my breakup, and, you know, what happened before we found Channel. It was… It was…”

            “Amazing?”

            “Bizarrely so… But also a bad omen.”

            “A bad omen?”

            “I’ve always been torn about you, Drew. He loves me, he loves me not. He’s right for me, he’s wrong for me. I can’t believe I’m kissing Drew. I can’t believe we found a dead body.”

            “I think it’s quite a story to tell.”

            “It doesn’t bother you that two minutes after we kissed for the first time, we found a murder victim?”

            “I’m not superstitious. But technically, we didn’t discover the body until an hour later after we went and got shovels.”

            The service started. At the end, the pastor petitioned us to stand and sing a hymn. As the singing began, Nancy scooted past me and exited the building. A minute later, I glanced out of the window and saw her blue Spark ease onto the road from the church’s parking lot.

            I was a little surprised to learn that Channel came from a conservative Christian home. During questioning at police headquarters, we had come to discover that Channel was a bit of a wild child.  Actually, seeing a few pictures of her before her demise, I should probably take the ‘bit’ away from the ‘wild.’

            I had to keep my jaw from dropping when a young lady who looked exactly like Channel from the pictures I saw approach me. Only instead of a short skirt, low cut top, bleach blonde hair, multiple piercings and stripper like makeup, this version of Channel looked Amish. She had a long, plain black dress, hair somewhere between light brown and sandy blonde, and no makeup. Instead of multiple piercings, her hair was pulled into a bun with multiple bobby pins. Even her large round eyes were gray.

            You might say I had a different taste in females than the average young man. Whereas I could see plenty of guys going gaga over Channel. This young lady, who had to be her sister, extended her hand with her eyes red rimmed. Yet as she forced a smile, displaying a crooked eye tooth that I found endearing, I realized I was holding my breath.

            “Hi, my name is Callie,” she greeted.

            “I’m Drew.”

            “Are you the guy that found Channel?” she asked with a soft voice.

            “Well, me and another person found her.”

            She extended her hand to shake. As I took hold of her hand, it was moist, clammy, and limp. This also appealed to me for some strange reason. It made me want to protect her somehow. She said, “Was it that guy you were sitting with?”

            “Guy? You mean the person in all black with the short strawberry blond hair?”

            “Yes.”

            “That was a gal. And yes it was she and I that, you know…”

            “Oh, sorry, I didn’t get a good look. I had been crying when my other sister pointed you two out. I just wanted to say, thank you, though.”

            “You’re welcome, but more importantly, I’m very sorry for your loss. Psalm 34:18 says the Lord is near those who have a broken heart.”

            “Are you a believer?” she looked at me hopefully.

            “Yes I am.”

            “It was a depressing service, wasn’t it?” She declared and I agreed. But I didn’t want to respond. I waited and she continued, “But Channel did go to a Christless grave, and everybody knew it.”

            I suspected her religion was the fire and brimstone type. And although the minister didn’t directly put Channel in hell, he also hadn’t been optimistic about her salvation.

            Callie began to whimper. “It makes me sick thinking she’s is hell.”

            “Do you believe the Bible?” I asked.

            “Of course I do.”

            “Then I can promise you she’s not in hell.”

            “What do you mean? Jesus himself declares that the ungodly go to everlasting punishment.”

            “Punishment, not punishing. Meaning their fate is permanent, not the torment. Do you believe the Bible teaches that the wicked have eternal life?”

            “Of course not,” she said, and then frowned. Then she looked astonished. “The wages of sin is death.”

            “Right,” I said giving her a reassuring smile, then gave her the fastest Bible study I have ever given in my short life. “The ungodly suffer doom, or destruction, Job 21:30. They will perish, Psalm 37:20. They will burn up, Malachi 4:1. They will be destroyed, Psalm 37:38. They will vanish away, Psalm 37:20. They will be cut off, Psalm 37: 9. And will be slain Psalm 62:3. God will destroy them 145:20. The fire will devour them, Psalm 21:9. Notice that. Devour, not burn eternally.”

            (For a more in-depth study on the topic of hellfire, contact Amazing Facts and ask for the free study guide #11, ‘Is the devil in charge of hell?’)

            “Are you some type of pastor?” she asked with a look of awe. “You seem too young.”

            “No, I just graduated from high school.”

            “Are you going to be?”

            I shrugged. “I’m gonna work construction for my uncle this summer and pray about what God would have me do with my life.”

            “Well, I think you should be, you brought me a ton of comfort just now.”

            “Praise God.”

            “I don’t understand why my church is so adamant about hell. It’s like they want to scare people. I try to focus on Jesus, trusting that I’m saved, and that one day in the great beyond, when God wipes away all tears, that we will be made to understand. For now it just plain hurts.”

            I wanted to ask her what she was doing with her life, but I didn’t know if it would be appropriate in this setting. I also didn’t think the atmosphere right to ask her to get together. Then a couple older ladies came up and hugged her. They began talking, so I quietly slipped away.

            As appealing as I found Callie, and as unsuperstitious as I was, meeting at her sister’s funeral did seem like a strange vibe. Other than praying for her, I put any notion of getting to know her out of my mind. But she called me three days later.

            “Hey, Drew, this is Callie, Channel’s sister,” she began. “I called the police to ask for your number. I told them I wanted to thank you. So I’ll say it again. Thank you.”

            “You’re welcome. And once again, I’m sorry for your loss.”

            “So to be up front and not beat around the bush, I talked to my pastor about the things you told me about hell. I didn’t like his explanation. You quoted nine or ten Bible verses in under a minute. He quoted two in fifteen minutes, and they weren’t nearly as convincing.”

            She paused long enough that I figured she wanted some reply. “Well, thank you, I guess I study quite a bit.”

            “So he told me he knew of you, and thought you went to some seventh day Sabbath church.”

            “I do,” I replied, frowning and wondering how her pastor would know of me.

            “He told me to keep my distance, that you were a legalistic bunch that denies being saved by grace.”

            “False and false,” I replied. “Jesus said if you love me keep my commandments. That’s found in John 14:15. Since I love the Lord, I keep His commandments, including the seventh day Sabbath.”

            “I was wondering if we could get together. I want to run by some of the things he said and see what you have to say for yourself.”

            “Sure, I’d be glad to. Look, it’s almost lunchtime, how about we meet at the Bluebird Café. I’ll buy.”

            There was a pause. “I’m actually kind of seeing someone.”

            “Me too,” I told her, thinking of Nancy and I kissing. “But to truthful, right now she needs a little space.”

            “I just wanted to be clear. My intentions are spiritual, not romantic. We met at my sister’s funeral after all.”

            “Right.”

            Half an hour later, Callie and I met outside of the café. She had her hair pulled back on both sides with clips, and her dishwater blonde hair flowed over her shoulders. She wore a white t-shirt with a green button up sweater. Her long denim skirt went a few inches past her knees, with white Vans on her feet. With what I could see of her legs, I thought they were even more pale than her arms and face. Then I realized she was wearing white tights.

            To the rest of the world, she looked like a plain Jane. Maybe even peculiar. But to me she was a vision of loveliness, even Godliness. A hostess seated us in a booth. I had just begun to ask Callie what she did, but before I could, she took hold of my hand and with a of fondness on her countenance. “I just want thank you for our little talk at my sister’s funeral. I can’t even describe what a comfort it was to me.”

            I was about to reply with something like ‘aw shucks,’ when I noticed a waitress step up to our table in my peripheral vision. I heard her gasp before I saw her face. I said, “Nancy!”

            “Drew!”

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – PART 2 – CHAPTER 4

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

PART 2

CHAPTER 4

DREW

DELIVER THOSE WHO ARE DRAWN TOWARD DEATH, AND HOLD BACK THOSE STUMBLING TO THE SLAUGHTER (Proverbs 24:11)

            “How do you know Ben was the last to see this girl?” I asked Nancy.

            “Multiple people told the police when they briefly looked into it,” she explained.  “Even her best friend said the last time she saw her was when she was leaving a frat party with Ben.”

            “Her who, what’s this girl’s name?”

            “Channel Northrup, nineteen years old.”

            “If you really think she’s out here, we should get a dog.”

            “That’s a good idea! Does your mom still have dogs?”

            “A couple rug rats. They’re not exactly blood hounds, more like pampered lap dogs.”

            “Let’s look around. We’ll worry about getting a dog out here later.”

            I liked that she said we. Just like old times, Nancy and Drew sleuthing together. Only this time it wasn’t stolen lunch money, and we weren’t exactly kids any more. So we began a sweep of the spooky half of the woods. As we walked ten feet apart, we talked and got caught up on each other’s lives.

            For me there wasn’t much to tell. So I started off with asking the most curious thing about my old, young friend. “Is that an engagement ring on your left hand?”

            She held it out and looked at it briefly before replying, “Promise ring.”

            “Who’s the lucky guy?”

            “What makes you think it’s from a guy?” she asked, glancing at me with a challenging smirk.

            I had tried to explain back when she began to pull away from our friendship, that just because I lived my life by Biblical standards didn’t mean I looked down on people that didn’t. Only God knows the heart, I tried to reiterate that over and over, but to no avail. Only God is the judge, and only He has the ability to know who is following the light that they have.

            I shrugged. “Okay, who’s the lucky girl?”

            “It is from a guy,” she said, looking at it again as if it puzzled her.

            “You must be pretty serious then?”

            Now she made a face as if she bit into something sour. “I don’t know. We were just friends for most of the school year. I’m mostly asexual, so I wanted us to just stay friends. But a few weeks ago we both had been drinking at a party and ended up kissing. Rather passionately, actually. But I still had enough wits about myself to refrain from getting too touchy feely.”

            The irony about Nancy’s and my friendship dissolving was the older we got, the more I fancied her. I had hoped she felt the same, but then she began to pull away. It must have been the asexual thing. Plus we both seemed to want to convert each other to our opposing world views.

            I tried not to feel jealous thinking about her kissing a guy passionately, especially the not getting TOO touchy feely part. Just how much was the TOO? And what did MOSTLY asexual mean anyway? When she continued, it only intensified my battle with the green eyed monster.

            “After I told him I wasn’t comfortable having sex without a commitment, I thought that would get him to back off. Instead he gave me this ring. So I thought, okay, he’s really sweet, really into me, decent enough looking, why not give him what he wants, so I accepted it.”

            I almost threw up in my mouth. The odd thing is I already assumed that she was no longer chaste. For a tomboy, Nancy was rather feminine in tough sort of way, if that makes sense. Plus she was kind of cute, and I liked that she was a jeans and t-shirt type of girl with no frills or gaudy makeup, with her short red gold hair often looking windblown.

            “So, we kind of had an unspoken agreement that this would be the weekend,” she continued, with a strangely pained looking expression on her face, and twirling the ring nervously round and round her finger. She whispered, even though we were very much alone, “That we would, you know, have sex.”

            She opened the door for me to extract some information discreetly. “So you had planned on losing your virginity this weekend, but this missing girl thing came up instead?”

            “Exactly!” She beamed.

            I felt like I had just given the green eyed monster a solid right hook that staggered him. The only girl I ever had a major crush on thus far in my life was still chaste! For the time being anyway. The fantasy was still alive! Yet at the bottom of my heart, I knew I didn’t want to be yoked with someone that wasn’t of faith like mine. Yet there was no young lady in my church that tripped my trigger. So I had been mentally preparing for what the Apostle Paul advised in in 1 Corinthians 7:7-9.

            She stopped walking, so did I. She faced me from ten feet apart, so I faced her. She said, “I thought looking into this mystery was a convenient excuse to postpone, you know, consummating with Diego.”

            A few birds began squabbling in the dank woods about twenty feet away, causing us to look. It was as if the green eyed monster leapt up and charged at me again. She was only postponing sex with her would be Latin lover. But the old green eyed fellow didn’t see a left hook coming.

            “But running into you here,” she said as she stepped toward me with a look of awe in her  emerald eyes. “It seems like a sign.”

            “What kind of sign?” I asked, both hopeful and hesitant.

            Her look of awe turned into consternation. She did a one eighty, walked briskly to fallen log and sat. She continued to turn the ring as if trying to unscrew it from her finger. But apparently in wouldn’t come off. Would that monster not stay down? I slowly walked over and sat a few feet away from her on the log.

            I tried again. “What did you mean by a sign?”

            “You’re the only guy I ever truly desired,” she said quietly.

            “What’d you say?” I asked, not quite sure I heard her right. I thought it might have finally been a knockout blow for the monster. Until she barked, “You heard me!”

            “Well, you’re the only girl I have ever desired,” I told her.

            “Could have fooled me,” she quipped as she stood and walked several paces, then abruptly crossing her arms.

            I walked to her, and wondered what I should do. Rub her back? Hug her? Instead I jammed my hands into my jean pockets, looked at her out of the corners of my eyes, and asked cautiously. “What do you mean by could have fooled you?”

            She smiled sadly at me. Then she gently said, with fondness in her voice, “Remember the last few months we hung out? I wanted you kiss me so badly, but you just wouldn’t take the hint.”

            I frowned. What hint? “The last few months we hung out, you seemed to frequently try to engage us in arguments. I felt like you were pulling away, which you were. So what kind of hint wasn’t I getting?”

            She put a hand on her forehead, covering her eyes as if embarrassed. “Do you not remember swapping gum?”

            “Of course I do, it was the biggest thrill I ever had in our time together!”

            It happened about a half a dozen times, seven to be exact. Nancy would try a new flavor of gum, not like it, and ask me to trade with her. Not out of the pack mind you, but the gum we were currently chewing. Her excuse was not being wasteful.

            Now I was strictly a peppermint Trident man when it came to chew. But I didn’t hesitate to take on a foreign flavor if it meant trading spit with the girl of my dreams.

            She removed her hand from her eyes. “Really! It was?”

            “You bet! As a matter of fact, you’re the only girl I have ever kissed.”

            She giggled. “We never actually kissed. We just swapped gum. Kissing entails contact.”

            “Well, to me it was like kissing.”

            “So how come you never tried for the real thing then?”

            “I wanted to,” I confessed. “Oh did I ever want to. But something always told me to keep my distance… So that gum thing was a hint?”

            “Ya think? Asking to swap with me once would be one thing, Twice a coincidence. But a half dozen times with ABC gum was a major hint. I mean would you swap ABC gum with Jerry even once?”

            She was referring to my brother. “No way!”

            “See, and I asked you a half dozen times!”

            “Actually it was seven to be exact,” I told her with a coy smile.

            She smiled warmly. “Yes, seven. Grape, banana, strawberry, tropical, wintergreen, bubble gum that tasted like cardboard, and spearmint.”

            “I did think it a little odd that you didn’t just buy peppermint Trident since you seemed to like mine. But I enjoyed your sampling of different flavors, and was glad you didn’t.”

            We looked at each other for a long moment. She licked her lips. Did she want me to kiss her now? I remained frozen, not knowing what to do. With wide eyes she asked, “Why did you feel like keeping your distance from me?”

            As a kid you often avoid difficult, emotional stuff. Which I did. But as an adult, for I was a month from eighteen, healthy communication is good for a relationship. Even if it is only as friends. “I always detected something very broken in you, so I treaded carefully.”

            Her eyes welled, and she nodded. “You’re wise beyond your years, and I was a fool. I did have something very traumatic in my life before mom and I moved here.”

            I remember Nancy showing up around the third grade. My first impressions of her were quiet, pensive, sullen, but cute. “Do you want to talk about it?”

            She shook her head emphatically. “No.”

            “Okay,” I smiled.

            She now began to twist that ring so vigorously that I was concerned it would draw blood. “It’s so odd. That last year we hung out. I so badly wanted you to hug me by times, hold my hand, kiss me. Yet just as often I wanted you to keep your distance, hands off. Talk about a walking contradiction. Then I treated you like my psychological hang ups were your fault, or your God’s fault. I’m surprised you put up with me. You should have been the one to tell me to pound sand, not the other way around.”

            She looked hard at me. I couldn’t say anything until she prodded it out of me. “Why?”

            “Because I love you.”

            “You mean loved, as in past tense?”

            “No, love, as in always.”

            “You mean as friends?” she asked and then bit her thumb, gazing at me with anguished eyes.

            “What else?” I shrugged. Then I smiled. “After all, swapping gum isn’t a real kiss.”

            She took several quick steps toward me, placed both hands on the sides of my cheeks and pressed her mouth hard against mine. After five to ten seconds she pulled away and looked puzzled. “You didn’t kiss me back.”

            I took hold of her left hand and lifted it up as if to kiss the back of it. “You’re promised to someone else.”

            After all that twisting, she yanked it off in a second and tossed it behind her shoulder. Our searching of the woods had brought us by the old cemetery. The ring made a tink as it ricocheted off a tombstone. This time I kissed her back.

            After a few minutes, it was getting pretty steamy, so I gently eased away. But Nancy kept her arms hooked around my neck and whispered. “Let’s make love. I want you to be my first.”

            Her first? “I want you to be my only. But only after marriage.”

            She smiled and gave me a soft kiss. “Drew, it’s the twenty first century.”

            “Biblical morality is timeless. Besides, what happened to you being asexual? You want me to be the first of how many?”

            Her arms dropped to her sides, and she shook her head. “First is a figure of speech, and I said mostly asexual. As in you’re an exception.”

            “An exception, or the exception?”

            “Obviously I planned on sleeping with Diego. So how can I say you’re the only exception? But it’s only you two.”

            Those who wrote songs about love hurting sure got it right. Especially when you fall for someone with a different value system. She looked toward the area where she threw her ring. “I better find that ring. I’ll need to give it back to Diego.”

            Oh the yins and yangs of life! First I’m fighting off jealousy over Diego. Then I started panicking over her breaking up with him, seemingly to be with me. Sure I found her attractive, but ultimately I needed to be with someone of like beliefs. Can two walk together, unless they are agreed? (Amos 3:3).

            I helped her scan the cemetery for her ring. We were moving sticks and branches out of the way with our feet, when I noticed something out of the ordinary. At a spot in between two tombstones, the earth beneath the leaf and stick debris was different. It wasn’t quite as hard packed as the rest of the graveyard. And it had been double digit decades since someone had been buried out here. Or had it?

            “Nancy?” I said a little breathlessly.

            “Drew?”

            “Check this out.”

            She observed my observation. Then we both looked at each other, and at the same time said, “Let’s get shovels.”

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – CHAPTER 15

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 15

ELI

FOR WHO KNOWS WHAT IS GOOD FOR MAN IN LIFE, ALL THE DAYS OF HIS VAIN LIFE WHICH HE PASSES LIKE A SHADOW? WHO CAN TELL A MAN WHAT WILL HAPPEN AFTER HIM UNDER THE SUN? (Ecclesiastes 6:12)

            There was a brisk knock on my door at Mrs. Mendelbright’s bed and breakfast, which had turned into a boarding house for Arlo and me. I was pleasantly surprised to see Ariel when I pulled open the door. But my pleasure was soon turned to tension.

            She pushed past me as she stormed into my room, spun on her heel, and placed hands firmly on hips. With clenched teeth, she growled, “I’m so mad at you!”

            “What’d I do?” I asked innocently. I truly was surprised. Our relationship had turned intimate a couple months ago, and we both seemed to be on cloud nine. So what had upset the apple cart?

            She changed gears as her pinched face softened, and her clenched teeth turned into a menacing smile. She sauntered slowly over to me. “What did you do, you ask?”

            She gently looped her arms around my neck and her face positioned just two inches from mine. But hers was a creepy calm, not seductive. I knew no kiss was forthcoming, so I braced for her words, still baffled at what could be the reason for her anger.

            “Well, it’s like this, Mr. Alderson. I have just come from my doctor, and it seems that I’m pregnant. Would you care to explain how that happened?”

            Although I was stunned, I tried at a little levity. “Well, you see, when a man and woman come together like we have…”

            “Knock it off, Eli!” she barked as she shoved me. She then stomped to my sofa, plopped onto it, abruptly crossed her arms and one leg over the other. Then a finger shot up to an eye to wipe a tear away.

            I sat next to her and gently rubbed her knee. She was wearing her typical black leggings, with orange New Balance running shoes. She testily pushed my hand off. I put it back. She pushed it off. I put it back. She half laughed and half cried. “I’m forty years old; I don’t want any more babies. I’m even a grandmother!”

            “I don’t get it. I thought your tubes were tied,” I tried. “You had told me that before you and Doug got married, that you had gotten your tubes tied.”

            “No, I said I was going to, but Doug informed me that he was infertile. And you had told me that you had a vasectomy when you were twenty.”

            “I did, but I thought I told you I had it reversed a couple years ago… That’s why I was so excited to find out about Ethan. As I got older, I began to desire a heritage.”

            “Well, no, I think I would recall you telling me it was reversed, especially a couple months ago when we, you know.”

            “Well, if you recall a couple months ago, when we consummated our relationship, I told you I didn’t have a condom. Then you asked if I had any STD’s. After I said no, you said it was okay to proceed without one.”

            “Right, because I assumed you had been snipped.”

            “I had been, but like I said, it was reversed. When you told me it was okay to proceed, I thought it meant that you wouldn’t be getting pregnant.”

            “And when I said to proceed it was because I trusted that you wouldn’t be giving me an STD. You just gave me a baby instead.”

            “Wow, what a misunderstanding.”

            “So, it seems I’m pregnant due to lack of communication.”

            “I don’t know about lack of communication, just poor quality.”

            “Whatever!” she spewed, crossed her arms again and snorted. Her foot bobbed so intensely, I thought her shoe might fly off.

            “Well, which would you rather I had given you, herpes or a baby?”

            “Herpes,” she spit without hesitation.

            “Ya know, Ariel, I’m actually pretty excited,” I said with gentle smile.

            “Are ya!” she replied with a sarcastically ghoulish expression. “Ya know, I suppose I might feel better about it if you were gonna have a human being growing inside your stomach.”

            I frowned. “Don’t you mean womb?”

            “Oh, shut up!” she barked.

            “Look, Ariel, I’m truly sorry,” I said, and then we sat in silence for a long minute.

            I knelt in front of her and took both of her hands in mine. She didn’t jerk them away, which I was actually expecting. “Listen Ariel, I wasn’t here for you the first time, but I will be this time around. I have plenty of money, so you won’t have to work at the supermarket anymore. I’ll even hire a nanny. I’ll even marry you, with no prenup. You’ll be an instant millionaire after you say I do. You’ll get half if you decide to divorce me.”

            I was delighted to see hope and longing in her eyes. Now she smiled sweetly, no trace of sarcasm or bitterness. She asked, “Was that a proposal?”

            I shrugged and grinned, “Sure.”

            “How romantic,” she joked.

            “That’s what I’m known for.”

            “You’re known to be a womanizing rock star; that’s why my concern was STD’s over pregnancy.”

            With a serious expression, I said, “That’s not gonna be the case with the next chapter of my life… I love you, Ariel. I always have.”

            She put a hand to my cheek. “To be perfectly honest, I loved you, I hated you, and now I love you again.”

            “Okay, well, I could have done without the one in between.”

            “It’s the current one that counts.”

            “Does that mean you’ll marry me?”

            She sighed, stood, and began to pace. “I don’t know, Eli. Everything is happening so fast. What are people gonna think? My husband has only been gone for six months.”

            “It depends on your perspective. I think a lot can happen in half a year. Besides, it’s not like you met some random guy. I was your first boyfriend, and we made a child together. I also kept my distance after Doug passed away.”

            “Kept your distance? Maybe if you returned to California.”

            I stepped up to her. Her arms were crossed defiantly across her chest. I reached behind her head, took off her hair clip, and her long brown hair with a sprinkling of salt cascaded over her shoulders. Since she didn’t resist, I grabbed both of her wrists and placed them onto my shoulders. “Quit being a snot.”

            She gazed at me with hooded eyes and tried not to smile. This caused her to pout, and man did she ever look adorable. I brushed a strand of her hair off of her cheek and kissed her. After a minute she put both hands on my chest and shoved away, did a one eighty and walked toward the window. “Why are you so hard to resist?”

            I followed behind and spooned her. I kissed her cheek and said softly, “Why would you want to resist me?”

            “Because you tend to get me pregnant when I don’t,” she said bitterly.

            “I guarantee that you’re not gonna get anymore pregnant than you already are.”

            She spun around and put her hands on my throat as if to strangle me. She actually began to squeeze harder and harder. I laughed as I grabbed her wrists, and fortunately she laughed too.  We no sooner began kissing again, when a knock at my door made us both jump.

            It was our son and his wife. In the eight months I had been at Mrs. Mendelbright’s, he had only come over to my room a few times. We usually saw each other at band practice. He was grinning, so I grinned back. “Ethan, Amy, come in, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

            “Well, we…” He stopped short when he saw his mother, and his face registered surprise. “Mom, what are you doing here?”

            “Um,” was all she could manage. She looked like a deer in the headlights as she clasped her hands together, making her look even more guilty.

            Ethan smirked. “Is there something going with you two?”

            “Um,” Ariel and I uttered at the same time as we both looked at each other.

            Ethan started laughing and slapped his thigh. Looking at his wife he declared. “I told you they were item.”

            “Honey, we’ve just kind of been hanging out,” Ariel tried. Then she bit her thumb with an  anguished expression. “Well, to be honest, it’s a little more than hanging out. Actually a lot more now, I mean, ooooh, this so confusing.”

            “Mom, I think it’s wonderful!”

            “Really?”

            “Really.”

            “By the way, where’s Crissy?” Ariel asked. Was she purposely trying to change the subject?

            “Aunt Penny and Uncle Arlo are taking her for a pony ride.”

            I liked hearing him refer to my dear friend as Uncle Arlo. But Ariel had a slight edge in her voice when she corrected. “He’s not Uncle Arlo yet.”

            “A few days from now he will be,” Ethan shrugged. Then he looked at me and winked. “We stopped by your place first, Mom. Now I see why you weren’t home.”

            “Okay, Sonny Boy,” Ariel said as she put her hands on her hips. “What are you making the rounds about?”

            “Well, we have an announcement for you, and two for Dad here. The one for Dad alone is… Amy and I are gonna get baptized with Penny and Arlo this Sabbath. We were hoping you’d join us.”

          “Oh, Son, I don’t know, I’ve got some issues,” I told him, and then looked at my main issue. I wanted to continue fornicating with Ariel. If she would marry me, maybe I would get baptized with them. I know that’s a terrible excuse, but that’s where my mind was at back then.

          “Behold, now’s the day of salvation, Dad,” Ethan declared, quoting 2 Corinthians 6:2.

          “You mean I’m not invited?” Ariel asked, and I think she genuinely felt left out.

          “Well, I know you don’t like Bible truth, Mom, so why bother asking?”

          “That’s not true,” she defended. “I’m just more about grace, faith and love than you all.”

          “Faith without works is dead,” Ethan said. (See James 2:14-26)

          “We’ve been down this road before,” Ariel said putting a hand up. “What’s your announcement for both of us?”

          “Well,” Ethan began, then glanced affectionately at his blond haired wife who beamed happily back at him. “We just came from the doctor. Crissy is going to have a baby brother or sister.”

          “Wonderful!” I enthused. “You’re not gonna believe this. Ariel just… Ow!”

          I felt a sharp pain on my ankle and looked down just in time to see Ariel’s foot retracting away from my leg.

          “Mom, why did you just kick Dad! What were you about to say, Dad?”

          “Oh, nothing, never mind,” I replied as I rubbed my ankle.

          “What’s going on you two?” Ethan begged. “Mom, you’re not sick are you?”

          “Oh, no Honey, it’s nothing like that,” she replied. Then she looked at me as if for an answer. I had none. Especially after that kick! “Well, it’s like this. I was just at the doctor myself, and, well, Crissy’s not the only one that’s gonna have a baby brother or sister… You are too.”

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – CHAPTER 13

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 13

ELI

THEREFORE, LAYING ASIDE ALL MALICE, ALL DECEIT, HYPOCRISY, ENVY, AND ALL EVIL SPEAKING… INDEED YOU HAVE TASTED THAT THE LORD IS GRACIOUS (1 Peter 2:1, 3)

            “Hi Eli,” Ariel said a little breathlessly as she entered the church basement. She unzipped her puffy, shiny white winter coat revealing a low cut top that my eyes lingered on a second too long before they met hers. There seemed to be a twinkle of satisfaction in her windows to the soul before becoming serious.

            “You’ve got to talk Arlo out of it,” Ariel insisted, her large brown eyes pleading. It was about a half an hour before our band was to practice. She pulled her long brown hair back into a ponytail, her movements causing her chest to stick out even further. But her words caused me to tense rather than lust.

            For some reason I thought she was talking about suicide. But that couldn’t be. I had breakfast with him earlier in the day, and he had apologized profusely for shutting himself away in his room for a few days. He seemed mellow, even happy, yet I could tell he had been preoccupied. He also seemed on the verge of telling me something, but Mrs. Mendelbright kept lingering around the table.

            “Talk him out of what, quitting the band?” I asked, not knowing what else it could be.

            “He’s quitting the band?”

            “No, I mean I don’t know. I was just throwing up a guess since I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            “Oh,” she replied, her lovely eyes getting even larger. “So he didn’t tell you then?”

            “Tell me what?”

            “Oh, never mind. I thought you knew.”

            “Knew what?”

            “Tick a lock,” she said, and then made a locking motion at her lips. “It’s not for me to tell, like I said, I thought you knew. I’m gonna run a quick errand.”

            She turned and began to walk briskly away. We were in her family’s church, and our band’s equipment was in the basement where we practiced. It had been two weeks since our reverse hug in the parking lot, which was also when we saw Penny and Arlo share a quick kiss followed by an embrace. In the days after, things between Ariel and me had become both more relaxed, yet strangely awkward because of sexual tension not acted upon.

            I grabbed her around the waist, and we fell onto a sofa that was situated in a corner of the basement. It was our first physical contact since the parking lot incident. “Oh no, you’re not.”

            She giggled and squirmed. Our heads knocked together, but it didn’t hurt much. Then as we wrestled in a sitting position, our cheeks ended up pressed together. I think we both somehow did this on purpose. Then we looked at each other and I kissed her. Then she kissed me. Then we kissed each other as we heard a door open. I abruptly stood and she tumbled onto the floor. I helped her up and said, “Sorry.”

            Ethan, Amy and Crystal came down the stairs. When Crystal spotted us, she ran to Ariel and shouted, “Gammy!”

            I sat back on the couch and asked our granddaughter, “Does Poppop get a hug?”

            She shyly shook her head, making her blonde curls jiggle. I sniffed, made fists and rubbed my eyes as if I was crying. Then she said, “okay,” and flew into my arms.

            “What were you two doing?” Ethan asked.

            Ariel and I glanced guiltily at each other as if we were a couple teenagers and our son was one of our parents. Ariel and I spoke at the same time. She said, “talking,” and I said “nothing.”

            “I thought I saw you helping Mom up off of the floor,” Ethan said.

            I didn’t know what to say. Ariel and I looked at each other. Neither of us wanted to lie, but how could we say why? Thankfully he shrugged and said, “Oh well, nevermind.”

            Sometimes playing dumb really does work.

            As our band practiced, I kept eyeing Arlo all evening. He seemed normal, maybe even a little more lighthearted than usual. So what could be so bad that Ariel wanted me to talk him out of? He and I were the last to leave band practice, and as I contemplated how or what to ask him, he solved the dilemma for me.

            “I asked Penny to marry me,” Arlo said with a sly grin as my mouth dropped open.

            Although I was in fact stunned, I calmly joked. “Well that must have been some kind of hug you two had the other week.”

            “Oh, if you only knew.”

            “So when’s the big day?”

            “She hasn’t said yes yet.”

            “But you think she will?”

            “I do.”

            “That’s what you’re hoping she’ll say one day soon.”

            He eyed me cautiously, and I soon understood why. “Penny’s pregnant.”

            Because of his religious zeal over the last couple years, it didn’t occur to me that Arlo might be the father. I knew that Penny had had a series of flings throughout her thirty eight years, but no serious relationships. I also knew that the recent funk that Arlo had been in had something to do with a child. However, I thought it had something to do with his ex-wife.

            So in the spur of the moment, I put one, plus two, plus three together. But instead of coming up with six, it turned out to be another equation. One, Arlo had been upset over a pregnancy or child. Two, Penny was pregnant, and Arlo was in love with her, and debating whether or not to raise another man’s child. Three, he asked Penny to marry him, therefore deciding to raise a child that wasn’t spawned by him.

            “That’s a very honorable thing to want to do, Arlo,” I told him. “I know if Ariel and I had reacquainted before she married her last husband, I would have gladly raised her daughters as their stepdad.”

            Arlo frowned and responded simply with, “Huh?”

            He was puzzled on a couple of fronts. Turns out I divulged too much information about my feelings for Ariel. Secondly, I discovered that Arlo was in fact the one that impregnated Penny. But how?

            Don’t misunderstand, I know the birds and the bees. I meant with the religious devotion he had been trying to witness to me over the last couple of years, how did he come to impregnate Penny out of wedlock? To him, this was sin. It became a bit of a stumbling block to me as I tried to become a follower of Jesus, rather than just an admirer. I was making the mistake of watching Arlo, and my son for an example, rather than Jesus. I was even looking to Ariel, the woman I found myself lusting after. But if you look to any person other than Christ as an example, you’re bound to be disappointed.

            “Oh,” Arlo gazed at me with regretful eyes. “You see… what happened… um.”

            Realization dawned on me. “So, Penny has a bun in the oven, but you are the one, shall we say, that provided the yeast?”

            He winced, nodded, took off his baseball cap that he was wearing backward, ran his hands through his long blonde hair, and then winced some more. “Are you disappointed?”

            “Yeah I’m disappointed,” I replied evenly. “You come across like the Apostle Paul, often making me feel like a degenerate because I don’t have your passion, zeal, and devotion. Then you not only fornicate but are fathering an illegitimate child.”

            A look flashed onto Arlo’s face that I hadn’t seen since we were on stage together in ‘The Sons of Molech.’ It was a glimpse of the sneer and growl he used to display at our audience, only without the gothic makeup. “Yeah, well I guess you’d know something about fathering illegitimate children.”

            I shrugged, “Yes, I would.”

            He shook his head in disgust, then put his face in his hands, sat in a metal folding chair and began to weep. “I’m sorry, Eli, I truly am. I sinned with Penny. I even wanted to last night. I already loved her, but making a child together… I feel a bond with her I never felt with anyone before. Yes I sinned. But just like 1 John 2:1 tells us. If anyone sins we have an Advocate in Jesus.”

            I crouched by him and patted his knee. “It’s cool, Arlo.”

            He looked at me with bleary eyes. “If you drop the soap, you don’t stop taking a shower.”

            “Huh?” I inquired, feeling myself edge a little away from him.

            He continued, telling me how he went to a pastor in his distress, and was counseled through an analogy of taking a shower. If you drop the soap, it doesn’t mean the shower’s over. You pick it up and continue getting clean. Therefore, if you sin, you ask for forgiveness, repent, and continue to get spiritually clean.

            It did strike a chord with me. I was getting close to becoming a follower of Christ, rather than an admirer. I had bonded with my son, who was deeply spiritual. He was also being influenced by Arlo, and becoming a student of the whole Bible, as well as history. There was also a bond being formed with my son’s mother that was both different and similar to the one we had as teenagers.

            When we were young, I used to think of Ariel as pretty and prude. It was how wholesome and untouchable she seemed that made her all the more desirable. Now there was a similar, yet different atmosphere about her. When we were young, long conservative skirts seemed to be her uniform. Now it was form fitting leggings and tight tops. But that was then, and this was now. One style was decided by her mother, while the other was by herself.

            I’ve never met a woman I was more attracted to than Ariel. And I’ve met plenty. Maybe a large aspect was her seeming untouchable. As a rock star, I had a bevy of attractive women throwing themselves at me. Why do we humans so often want that which is forbidden? When we were young, it was her virginal wholesomeness that kept her from me for a long time. Now it was her recent widowhood, coupled with her skepticism of me when I first arrived.

            Out in the church parking lot, I watched Arlo’s taillights disappear as I put some things onto the passenger seat of my pickup truck. Right as I turned and shut the door, a body loomed with a voice that said, “You’re just now leaving?”

            Startled, maybe even frightened, I reeled back and slammed the side of my head into the door of my truck. As I winced and rubbed my noggin, the female voice gasped. “Sorry, I didn’t mean scare you, Eli.”

            “I wasn’t scared, little lady,” I replied with a mockingly macho voice. “I was just making sure my door was shut with my head.”

            She laughed but then looked a little uneasy. “I was doing some things in the church office when I noticed you and Arlo leaving… So did you?”

            “Find out about Penny being pregnant and the marriage proposal?”

            “Okay, good, so did you talk some sense into him?” She asked as she casually unzipped her puffy coat halfway down again. Why were we outside? She had to be purposely enticing me. It was painful, but I kept my eyes glued to hers.

            “I don’t think that’s my business, Ariel. Besides, she only said maybe, not yes.”

            “Maybe with Penny or me might as well be yes when it comes to guys.”

            “Why are you so against Penny marrying Arlo? He’s a good man, and well to do.”

            “Because Penny isn’t the relationship type, and they’ve only know each other for like two minutes.”

            “They’ve known each other long enough and well enough to make a baby.”

            “That’s because Arlo’s a hypocrite.”

            “Why is he a hypocrite?”

            “Getting so exacting and legalistic with the Bible, and then he goes and fornicates.”

            “What about Penny? It takes two to tango. You all come from a religious family. She’s been a professed Christian a lot longer than Arlo.”

            She shrugged nonchalantly. “I love my sister, but she’s a hypocrite too.”

            “What about you?” I asked as I leaned into kiss her.

            Before I connected, she giggled and shoved me away. “I’m only a borderline hypocrite.”

            She turned and began to walk briskly away, her female form swaying in the moonlight. She called over her shoulder, “Goodnight.”

            In few quick steps I caught up to her, grasped her hand, and spun her around. “Let’s cross the border.”

            A minute later I pulled my mouth from hers. Grinning I said, “Hypocrite.”

            Smiling back, she abruptly zipped her coat up, spun on her heels, walked briskly away again and said over her shoulder, “Close, but not quite.”

            “Yet,” I said.

            She stopped, turned to face me, and with a flirtatious smile said, “Maybe.”

            Then for a third time, she spun and walked briskly away, disappearing into the night.

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – CHAPTER 6

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 6

ELI

THEN GOD BLESSED THE SEVENTH DAY AND SANCTIFIED IT, BECAUSE IN IT HE RESTED FROM ALL HIS WORK WHICH GOD HAD CREATED AND MADE (Genesis 2:3)

            I was about to take a drag off of my cigarette, for I still smoked in 1999, when there was a menacing laugh and a sharp flick of a finger in front of my face. Instead of my lungs filling with toxic, nicotine laced smoke, I watched my Kool filter king sail off of the back porch I was sitting on. I was at a bed and breakfast where I was now residing after one night in a hotel. The cancer stick sailed into the leafy grass below.

            “Eli, you dog!” Arlo laughed. “You told me you quit smoking.”

            Laughing and rising from my lounge chair, I hugged the only person I considered family at that juncture of my life. But I was excited to share with him about the family I hoped I was gaining.

            “I did quit,” I squeaked, because he was hugging my so tight. “But then I always seem to restart.”

            Arlo looked better than ever, tan and fit. I hadn’t seen him in months. In our band, ‘The Sons Molech,’ Arlo played bass guitar, and his stage persona was similar to the Marvel comic book character Thor. With his long blonde hair, and a physique like a bodybuilder, he played the part well.

            “I thought your flight was coming in this evening,” I told him. “I was planning on picking you up.”

            “I took an earlier flight, and I rented a car,” he explained. “I don’t want to bother you or anyone else for a ride while I’m here.”

            “I’m hoping you’ll be here for a while,” I grinned. “We need a bass player.”

            He frowned but smiled. “Let me guess, your, um, reunion with your son is going well?”

            “I don’t know that it’s called a reunion when we only met a few days ago,” I explained. “But yes, your prayers were answered. Turns out Ethan, my… son, is a singer song writer, and his wife is a very good drummer.”

            “That’s fantastic!” Arlo grinned. “I can’t wait to meet them.”

            “Hey! How about tonight? They’re throwing a birthday party, but I told them I couldn’t stay long because I was picking you up at the airport.”

            “You’re cutting out on your own birthday party for me?” He smiled sheepishly and gave my upper arm a friendly punch.

            “No, it’s for my… granddaughter.”

            “Wow, that sounds weird! Your granddaughter. And she was born on your birthday?”

            “Yep. She was born the day I turned thirty five.”

            “Man, you Alderson’s start young.”

            “Yeah, so young we don’t even know we had kids.”

            “And I suppose nobody knows it’s your birthday as well?”

            “I’ll announce it at the end of the party. I wanted this to be Crystal’s day, and not overshadowed by me.”

            “Good idea,” Arlo said, then his eyes widened. “Fire!”

            He vaulted over the deck railing and began stumping on about a five foot wide circle of burning leaves in the lawn ignited by the cigarette he flicked from my lips. I put a hand on the railing, but thought better of vaulting, and trotted down the six steps into the yard. I also thought better of dancing in the flames and grabbed a nearby watering can. The pail of water extinguished the flames quicker than Arlo’s foot maneuvers.

            “Wow, I hope Mrs. Mendelbright didn’t see this,” I said, looking up at the large Victorian house.

            “Who’s Mrs. Mendelbright?”

            “The proprietor, or landlady if you prefer.”

            Arlo laughed. “That’s a good one.”

            “What is?” I frowned.

            “Mrs. Mendelbright.”

            “What’s so funny about that? She’s a sweet little lady. I don’t want her to think I’m riff raff.”

            “You mean you’re not joking?”

            “Joking about what? We just set her lawn on fire. Actually you did.”

            “So you don’t know who Mrs. Mendelbright is?”

            “Of course I do, she owns this place.”

            “No, I mean the Mrs. Mendelbright I’m talking about,” Arlo tried to explain. “You know ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ right?”

            “Of course, but I can’t say I ever watched much of it, though.”

            “You don’t know what you’re missing, it’s a classic,” Arlo said and then frowned. “So you don’t know who Mrs. Mendelbright is then?”

            “Of course I do, she owns this place.”

            Arlo laughed. “Truth is stranger than fiction. Andy Griffith was the sheriff of this quaint little town of Mayberry. He had this squirrely deputy named Barney Fife. In this one episode, Barney got kicked out of the room he rented from a, get this, Mrs. Mendelbright. He was kicked out of his room for cooking in it against the rules. He burned his food, and she smelled it.”

            “Quick, lets cover this black circle with leaves.” I instructed after hearing his story.

            “Just think if Mrs. Mendelbright discovers this burnt circle and finds out about the band you used to be in,” Arlo laughed.

            “That’s not funny,” I replied, even though I laughed. Then in all seriousness, I said, “I think she has a room available if you want to stay here.”

            “You know, I think I will. I get along well enough with my parents, but it’s just not the same as when I was a kid.”

            “So the old saying is true, you can’t go home once you’ve left.”

            He didn’t seem to like this idea and pointed back and forth between us. “Look, we’re home, ain’t we?”

            “I lived here a little more than a year, and couldn’t wait to leave, so this is hardly my home.”

            “Then what are you doing back with seemingly no timetable to leave?”

            I frowned. “I don’t know, maybe finding a home.”

            He chuckled. “Let’s go see Mrs. Mendelbright about a room.”

            “Nice,” Arlo said as he looked around his room. “It’s like staying at a grandma’s house instead of the hotels we’re used to.”

            “Mrs. Mendelbright makes a great breakfast if you get up in time.”

            “I take it you don’t get up in time?”

            “I’ve never fully gotten away from rock star hours, but she always seems to have a huge homemade muffin available for me… I really hope she doesn’t see the burnt spot in her yard.”

            “Don’t worry about it. I told her.”

            “You what!”

            “My conscience bothered me,” Arlo shrugged. “Like I said, don’t worry, she laughed about it. She even complimented you for not smoking your cigarettes in her room.”

            “Probably laughed it off because your biceps are bigger than my thighs.”

            “I wouldn’t hurt a woman.”

            “She doesn’t know that.”

            “Actually I’m hurt by your insinuation,” Arlo said, placing gentle fingers on his chest. “I won her over with kindness and charm, not intimidation.”

            “Kindness and charm?” I chuckled. “That’s probably how the serpent beguiled Eve.”

            Arlo grinned from ear to ear. “You’ve been reading the Bible I gave you.”

            “Yeah,” I shrugged. Then sensing a sermon was forthcoming, and not in the mood, I said, “Hey, let’s get to that birthday party. Help me load up her presents.”

            “What’s in this box?” Arlo asked as he and I retrieved it out of Mrs. Mendelbright’s garage.

            “A battery powered Jeep. It’s even pink. I also got her a rocking horse. Oh, and a guitar, how could I forget that?” I laughed.

            “Kind of overkill, don’t you think?”

            “Well, I got the rocking horse before I saw the little pink jeep.”

            “How about you let me have one of them?”

            “It’s not your birthday yet. Besides, you’re too big for all of them.”

            “I meant for me to give to your granddaughter. You shouldn’t be so overindulgent.”

            “Okay, how about the rocking horse?”

            “Perfect. A rocking horse from Uncle Arlo.”

            “Great Uncle Arlo.”

            “Awe, you think I’m great?”

            “Sure I do.”

            The party was at Penny’s veterinarian clinic after hours. When I saw the kids were getting pony rides, I selfishly thought it would overshadow my jeep. But I was wrong, she loved it! She was so excited, it also got her past her shyness around me. She actually hugged me and kissed my cheek. For the first time I felt overwhelmed by feelings of love.

            I couldn’t stop a tear from leaking. So this wonderful feeling turned into mortification as two dozen pairs of eyes watched the former macho rockstar Eli Endor weep over the affection of a little girl. But Ariel quickly approached me, wiping her own tear, hugged me, and whispered. “Don’t be embarrassed. That was one of the sweetest things I ever saw.”

            On a different note, I unwittingly witnessed the beginnings of what would turn out to be a complicated love triangle. I immediately noticed a chemistry between Penny and Arlo when they were… would it be introduced or reintroduced? I’ll go with reintroduced, because of the first words out of Arlo’s grinning mouth as they shook hands were, “Gone for a swim lately?”

            I noticed Penny’s lips purse, not in anger, but suppressing her own grin in reference to his throwing her into a lake more than two decades ago. Then she shot back with her own jab. “Taken any steroids lately?”

            “That’s below the belt, young lady, I’ve worked hard for these guns. I’ll admit that I’ve ingested some unhealthy chemicals in my time, but never for artificial muscle growth.”

            “His physique looks pretty natural to me, Pen,” One of Abby’s vet assistants piped up, and then blushed.

            She was a handsome redhead with pretty green eyes. Abby, like her boss Penny, appeared to be a tomboy. I initially wondered if she and Penny were more than coworkers. But I discovered that day by the way she looked at Arlo, that Abby was definitely into dudes. They also had something unique in common.

            “I noticed your cap says, ‘Amazing Facts’,” Abby said to Arlo, referring to the baseball cap he was wearing backwards that advertised his favorite Christian ministry. His blonde ponytail hung behind the bill. “Are you a Sabbatarian?”

            “Yes I am,” Arlo said happily.

            “Me too,” she responded with delight.

            They began a conversation, and I witnessed Penny giving them sideways glances. After their discussion ended, I asked Arlo what a Sabbatarian was.

            “It’s someone who keeps the Biblical Sabbath,” Arlo replied.

            “All Christians go to church on Sunday, so what’s the big deal?”

            “Most, not all. The Biblical Sabbath is actually the seventh day of the week, not the first.”

            “How do you know that?”

            “Cause the Bible tells me so. Starting with Creation in the book of Genesis. God blessed the seventh day and set it apart as a permanent memorial of Creation. It’s also part of the Ten Commandments, the one part of the Bible that God personally wrote.”

            “Well, why do most Christians keep Sunday?”

            “Sunday keeping really took off when Constantine made Christianity a legal religion in the fourth century. When he did, pagan beliefs became merged with Christian beliefs. This led to the dark ages. I’m sure you’ve heard that?”

            “I have, but I don’t know exactly what it is.”

            “It was a period of over more than a thousand years where Christians were persecuted if they didn’t follow the Papacy. The dark ages officially ended 1798 when Napolean’s General Berthier basically arrested the Pope.”

            “Are you really Arlo Aldo, bass player for ‘The Sons of Molech’?

            “Not anymore, old buddy. By the way…”

            “Guys, come get some birthday cake,” Ariel’s voice invited.

            “We’ll talk more later,” Arlo said.

            As I mingled, chatted, and took bites of cake, I heard playful banter between Penny and Arlo. But some of it being playful is questionable. This is the last bit I heard before a big splash.                               Penny asked Arlo, “How come you don’t have any tattoos, but your old bandmates were covered in them? Are you afraid of needles or something?”

            I wasn’t covered with tattoos, but my left arm was pretty much sleaved with various wild animals, skulls, and guitars. Izzy and Kyle on the other hand were almost entirely covered with ink. Izzy even had one on his face.

            “You don’t put bumper stickers on a Lamborghini,” Arlo said happily.

            “But what if it isn’t a real Lamborghini, but kit car?” Penny asked with wide, innocent eyes.

            “That’s it!” Arlo declared as he scooped up Penny in his arms and marched to a pond.

            She squealed and laughed, but as Arlo was about to toss her into the pond, Abby came up behind him and tickled his ribs. He jerked, convulsed, and dropped Penny. Then the two women working in tandem, shoved Arlo into the pond causing a big splash.

            He took it in good humor until I told him. “I don’t know how you’re getting back to the B and B. Because you’re not getting into my car looking like a swamp rat.”

            Penny gave him a ride home. It was warm for late October, and they sat on that back deck where Arlo tended to start fires. They talked for two and a half hours, and a different type of fire was started.

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – CHAPTER 5

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 5

PENNY

I SPEAK IN HUMAN TERMS BECAUSE OF THE WEAKNESS OF YOUR FLESH. FOR JUST AS YOU PRESENTED YOUR MEMBERS AS SLAVES OF UNCLEANNESS, AND OF LAWLESSNESS LEADING TO MORE LAWLESSNESS, SO NOW PRESENT YOUR MEMBERS AS SLAVES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS FOR HOLINESS (Romans 6:19 NKJV)

            I’m sure I was more nervous than both father and son as they met for the first time. It was forefront in my mind that I was the one responsible for this encounter. Whether it went well, or if it turned into a dumpster fire, it was my letter that I sent to Eli several weeks ago that ultimately caused this meeting. This weighed heavily on my mind.

            This period of my life found my walk with the Lord weak, and my faith feeble. Nonetheless, as I watched Ethan and Eli lock eyes for the first time in my sister’s living room, my lips silently pleaded. “Please, oh please, Dear Lord, let this go well.”

            Eli appeared to be cool as a cucumber. What an odd phrase. What’s so cool about a cucumber? Anyhow, he smiled that smooth smirk of his and extended his hand to his son. “Ethan, it’s very nice to meet you.”

            Ethan just stared at him as if in awe. I silently muttered, “Take his hand, Ethan, don’t blow him off. Please don’t blow him off.”

            Eli cleared his throat and slowly withdrew his hand. Then Ethan grabbed it and chuckled nervously. “Sorry… It’s just… I’ve wanted to meet you ever since I found out you were… You know.”

            “Yeah,” Eli replied a little breathless. “I came as soon as I realized the possibility.”

            “I wrote to you six years ago,” Ethan told him matter of fact.

            “I didn’t see it,” Eli replied quickly. “Or if I did, I figured it wasn’t legit.”

            “What made you think Aunt Penny’s letter was legit?”

            Eli looked at me and a wave of anxiety flowed through me that I felt through my whole body.

            “Well, this may be TMI,” Eli said with an uneasy smile. Then he proceeded to explain about getting a vasectomy when he was only twenty years old. He explained about numerous accusations of fatherhood over the years that he laughed off. But my phrase ‘A Penny for your thoughts’ had caught his eye. He saw the one possibility with my letter that he could in fact have fathered a child.

            “So,” Ethan said hesitantly. “You traveled all this way just to meet me?”

            “I did.”

            “The man who took your place wouldn’t walk across the street to see me,” Ethan said bitterly. This statement caused Ariel to take her eyes off her son and his biological father for the first time. She looked at her feet as if in shame. But she was between a rock and hard place. She already had two daughters with her first husband before he started treating Ethan like dirt.

            “I’m sorry about that.”

            “It’s not your fault,” Ethan shrugged. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Eli looked past him and asked, “Who are these lovely young ladies?”

            “Oh, this is my wife, Amy,” Ethan introduced. “And this sweet little girl hugging her leg is our daughter Crystal.”

            “Nice to meet you, Amy,” Eli said, shaking her hand.

            “Likewise,” Amy replied with a smile. “Crys, can you say ‘hi’ to Daddy’s… I… don’t know what I should, you know, refer to you as.”

            “Eli’s always worked just fine,” he told her with a warm smile. Then he went to one knee and offered his hand to Crystal. “Hi there, Crystal. You sure have a pretty name.”

            She ignored his hand and shyly buried her face into her mother’s thigh for a few seconds. Then she pointed at Eli and said, “He looks like Daddy… Only old.”

            Everyone laughed at this. Then Ethan crouched by Eli but spoke to his daughter. “You know Great Grandpa Frank, Sweety? Eli is his son.”

            Eli’s head turned so fast to face Ethan I was concerned he’d get whiplash. “You know my father?”

            “After I found out you were my bio dad, I looked him up. We sort of developed a relationship. I try to see him every couple weeks.”

            “Why wouldn’t he have told me I have a son?” Eli said with a frown.

            “He said he tried to contact you, but you never returned his calls.”

            “Has it been more than six years since I talked to him?” Eli said to himself.

            “Seven,” Ethan told him. “He’s told me that you two don’t get along very well, and that’s why you’ve never gotten back to him.”

            “I’ve traveled a lot,” Eli tried to explain. “Time sure can get away from a person.”

            “There’s something else you should probably know,” Ethan said. “Since I hit off with, well, my grandpa, your dad, I had my name legally changed from Smothers to Alderson when I turned eighteen. I hope that’s alright with you.”

            “Of course, of course,” Eli replied happily. Then seeming somewhat jealous, he asked, “So you and Frank get along pretty well, huh?”

            “Yeah,” Ethan nodded happily. “He cried when I asked him if I could change my name to Alderson… I mean happy tears, he was touched.”

            “He cried? I’ll be dogged. I didn’t know he had tear ducts. I should probably go see him.”

            “He’d like that.”

            “He would?”

            “I guarantee it.”

            “He was pretty angry and disappointed with my occupation. I even tried to win his approval by paying off his house. But he said he wouldn’t take a dime from a sick devil worshiper.”

            “Can I ask you question?” Amy asked Eli.

            “Sure, ask me anything you want.”

            She winced and asked quietly. “Are you a really Satanist?”

            “No,” Eli replied, adamantly shaking his head. “But the leader of the band I was in for a lot of years was. So for a time, I guess you could say I dabbled on the fringes by association.”

            “That’s a dangerous thing to dabble with,” Ariel pipped up.

            “Trust me, I know,” Eli admitted. “I’ve had night terrors to prove it. You really do have to be careful who your friends are.”

            “Can I ask you something?” Ethan said.

            “Absolutely.”

            “If you got a vasectomy when you were only twenty, you must have been pretty adamant about not wanting children. So why are you interested in me?”

            “I was dead set on being a musician, on traveling the world. I didn’t want the obligation of children, and I knew I wouldn’t be a good father… As for my interest in you, time has a way of changing people. A twenty year old doesn’t make the wisest life choices. I don’t know if my procedure was even legal. It was something I wanted done, and our band’s manager greased palms, so to speak.”

            “So if you had to do over?”

            “I’ve never been much of a rearview mirror guy The past is past, ain’t nothing you can do about it. I view life like a chalk board. You mess up, erase it and move on with a fresh start.”

            “In my belief system as a Christian,” Ethan said. “We call it repentance.”

            Then seeming to want to change the subject, Eli said, “I understand you play guitar.”

            “Yeah I do. I’m okay, I guess, not like you though.”

            “He’s fantastic singer,” Ethan’s wife Amy spoke up.

            “And he writes songs about God, love, and sacrificial living,” Ariel piped in.

            “Yeah, you write songs?” Eli asked enthusiastically.

            “Mostly about God, love, and sacrificial living,” his mother repeated.

            “I heard you the first time, Ariel,” Eli said patiently, although his jaw seemed to clench. “And I’m glad. I wouldn’t want anyone to follow the dark path I took.”

            “So you do regret it?” Ariel asked.

            “Like I said before, I’m not a rearview mirror guy.”

            “Why would you be?” I blurted. “You became rich selling Satanism.”

            His eyes winced when he glanced at me. But it was a look of pain rather than anger or defiance. Then he spread his hands in defeat. “I’d like to tell you I’d do things different, but I can’t time travel. Hindsight’s always clearer than foresight, right? There’s nothing I can do about it now.”

            “Yes there is,” Ariel practically barked. “You can publicly repent and accept Christ.”

            “I’m not beyond that Ariel,” Eli told her. “Just so you know, I asked Arlo to pray for me before I came to this meeting.”

            “Really?” my sister said meekly. Then she got demanding again. “Well, you could also help our son get his songs exposed.”

            “Mom! Aunt Penny!” Ethan ordered. “Give the man a break. I just met him fifteen minutes ago!”

            “It’s okay, Ethan,” Eli said gently. “I’d be glad to do whatever I can to help you. I’d really like to hear you sing and play, if you wouldn’t mind.”

            “I’ll get his guitar out of the car,” Amy said.

            A couple minutes later, Eli and Ethan sat across from each other. Eli looked eagerly at his son. But I could see a nervous tremor in Ethans hands, and I felt my toes curl. He handed the guitar over to Eli and look of surprise came onto the rock star’s face. “Would you play something first?”

            “What should I play?” Eli asked hesitantly.

            “Just don’t play something from your band days,” Ariel said.

            “Band Aid?” I inquired, wondering what the little strips for minor injuries had to do with this.

            “Band days,” Ariel said slowly. Big sister putting little sister in her place.

            Eli strummed the instrument, making sure it was in tune. Then he launched into a fast  Spanish flamingo style of play that made all of our jaws drop open.

            I recalled more than two decades earlier Eli was in the high school jazz band. At a school assembly, they performed, and Eli had a solo that was anything but jazz. He played, arguably, the most famous hard rock guitar solo of all time, Van Halen’s ‘Eruption.’

            He played it flawlessly. You would have thought Eddie Van Halen himself was there  playing it. The whole assembly of between three and four hundred students became silent. Not that you could hear much else with the riffs coming out of the amplifier. As the last notes reverberated through the auditorium, a collective roar of cheers drowned out the fading guitar, and Eli Alderson became a school legend.

            But he was also a polarizing figure in some ways. Mothers, including our own, didn’t want their daughters associating with this good looking, wild, long haired rocker. As for the guys, some thought he was the coolest thing ever and wanted to hang out with him. While others were jealous and wanted to beat him to a pulp.

            Eli would once again become a polarizing figure in town these twenty some years later. Only this time it was centered in the church community as he worked on music with Ethan and what was known as the ‘Praise Team’ at my family’s church.

            Then fuel was added to the fire when Eli’s former bandmate, and former Cedar Rapids resident, Arlo Aldo showed up. He had a six foot, ridiculously muscled frame, capped off with long blonde hair and dreamy blue eyes. Although now a devout Christian, he brought added controversy. He also brought turmoil to my personal life.

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – CHAPTER 2

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 2

Eli

BE SOBER, BE VIGILANT, BECAUSE YOUR ADVERSARY THE DEVIL WALKS ABOUT LIKE A ROARING LION, SEEKING WHOM HE MAY DEVOUR (1 Peter 5:8)

            As I sat in one of Penny’s examination rooms, I felt like I should be putting on one of those gowns that leave you feeling cold and exposed as you patiently wait to get poked and prodded by medical staff. But this was a veterinarian clinic, and although many people thought of me as an animal, I was in fact human.

            My humanity also was becoming impatient when my instructions from Penny to ‘wait in here for a minute’ surpassed the twenty minute mark. When the wait hit twenty two minutes, I had entered into full impatience. I was beginning to rise when there was two raps on the door and Penny burst in. “Come on, we gotta go before Ariel gets back.”

            The white medical coat she had been wearing when I first arrived was gone. She was wearing a light blue flannel shirt, faded jeans, and cowboy boots. Her dark hair was cut into some type of pixie. About a month previously, I had cut my long black hair to something eerily similar to Penny’s. It was the first time since I was seventeen that I didn’t have hair well past my shoulders.

            Penny was as cute as I remembered, but now all grown up. Yet she still seemed every bit the Tomboy that she was as a teenager. Of course maybe that was due to finding her at work tending animals. But she wore no makeup and had no jewelry, and  her current wardrobe was more masculine than feminine.

            I followed her as she walked briskly through the clinic and out into the parking lot. She bit her thumb, looked around, and then declared, “Shoot!”

            “What?” I replied.

            “I don’t know what to do, or where to go,” she said, looking at me as if I might have an answer.

            “I don’t know what to tell you,” I said, showing her my palms. “All I know is you don’t want me to see Ariel just yet.”

            “Are you hungry?”

            “Sure.”

            “Follow me, there’s a great place just a few miles from here.”

            I got into my candy apple red 1969 Shelby Mustang convertible. She got into a gravel dust covered Toyota Tacoma. I think it was dark blue, maybe black. It didn’t occur to me to ask if we were taking a dirt road or something. Thankfully it was all highway as I followed her to a town called Shellsburg.

            We entered a cozy café that was very much country themed. Without waiting for a hostess, Penny led us to a booth. Not long after, a voluptuous blonde waitress, around fifty, and wearing a lot of makeup, put a menu in front of both of us. “Hi, Doc Penny.”

            Then she said to me, “And associate.”

            “Hey Roxy,” Penny greeted, and I smiled to myself. If ever a name fit a person’s look.

            She smirked at Penny, winked and walked away. Penny had a frozen expression for a few seconds, then groaned and put her face into her hands, saying, “What was I thinking?”

            “What’s wrong?”

            “Bringing you here.”

            “What’s wrong with me?” I asked. But I’ve traveled the world. I knew small towns. “I’m normal. I’m not decked out in leather, and wearing goth makeup.”

            “You’re anything but normal.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?”

            “Never mind,” she said, gazed at me for a few seconds, sighed. “I don’t have much of a social life. On the rare occasion I do go on something like a date, it’s usually in Cedar Rapids.”

            “Is this a date?” I asked with an arched eyebrow.

            Her eyes widened, and she actually blushed. “No, no, no! But, you know, well, it could look like it. I thought it would just look like we were having a business meal… But then Roxy had to go and wink at me. Maybe it was just because you’re so… Never mind.”

            “Because I’m what?”

            “Never mind.”

            “Some host you are, insinuating that I’m hideous.”

            She snorted a laugh. “You were definitely hideous when you were in that creepy band.”

            “But not now?”

            “Let’s just stay away from this, okay?”

            There was a moment of awkward silence. Then I made it even worse. “So are you divorced?”

            Her reaction reminded me of the fifteen year old Penny, making me smile despite the awkward tension. She sneered and said in snotty tone. “No, I’ve never married. But why would you assume I was divorced?”

            “Well, you just said you don’t have much of a social life, and you mentioned occasionally going on dates. That coupled with your last name being Baldwin now, rather than Grobstick.”

            “Baldwin is my mother’s maiden name. I took it not long after my dad left my mother for a girl not much older than Ariel. Plus, meaning no offense to extended family, I’ve never been crazy about the name Grobstick.”

            “Are you and your date ready to order, Pen?” Roxy asked as she seemed to suddenly reappear. She looked at me and winked.

            “This isn’t a date,” Penny corrected, trying to smile with innocent looking eyes.

            I found myself gazing at Penny. She was in fact beautiful. Her Tomboy appearance couldn’t hide her large doe like eyes and sensuous lips. What made her even more stunning was how natural it was without trying at all. A boy’s haircut, no makeup or jewelry, and a flannel shirt that was at least a size too big.

            Her large round brown eyes were intense as they gazed at Roxy. Her small nose crinkled a little with what I perceived was disgust.

            I tried to help her out by explaining. “We’re old friends from high school. I used to date her sister.”

            Penny glared at me with a tight smile, then back to Roxy as she pointed out the window. “I’m looking to buy his Mustang.”

            “But she probably can’t afford it.” I replied. “It’s not only a vintage Mustang, it’s a  Shelby.”

            Roxy shrugged as her smile faded. She was just trying to be playful, teasing Penny, but I think she perceived that she was causing trouble. “So what’ll you have?”

            “The usual,” Penny suggested.  It turned out to be a grilled cheese sandwich, tomato soup, and a baked potato. I got a burger and fries.

            “Let’s cut to the chase,” Penny said. “I was out of line writing you like I did.”

            She bit her thumb and wore a concerned look as she was apparently looking for something to add.

            “What are you getting at?” I asked. “You don’t want me to meet my son and granddaughter now?”

            “No, I mean, not necessarily.”

            “Well what then?”

            “I need to feel Ariel out on the situation, and I don’t think she’ll be very happy with me.”

            “Didn’t you say my son wrote to me a few years ago?”

            She sneered. “Stop calling him your son! You didn’t raise him! You were just a sperm donor.”

            I was quite taken aback by her outburst, and it must have shown.

            “I’m sorry,” she said, touching my arm. Then she rubbed her temples and winced. “It’s just that it was already a long, stressful day; and then you just show up out of the blue.”

            “Well, I’m sorry, Penny,” I told her mildly. “Do you want me to turn around and go back to California? Cause I will, I don’t want to cause trouble.”

            “Is that what you want?” she asked with a frown.

            “No, I’m asking if that’s what you want? I was under the impression that meeting my… Ariel’s son was likely a favorable thing to be doing.”

            She sighed and looked at the table. “You see, Ethan writing to you six years ago was something I had helped him do. Ariel wasn’t happy with me then, so I suspect she would be even more unhappy now.”

            “Were you the one that told him about me in the first place?”

            “No, that’s why I figured Ariel wouldn’t mind him getting in touch with you.”

            “If she doesn’t want me in his life, then why did she even tell him about me?”

            “Her first husband wasn’t very good to Ethan… At all. As a matter of fact, verbal abuse turned into physical abuse. That was the main reason they divorced. But since she had two kids with him, the family was stuck with him in their lives. His ill treatment hurt Ethan’s self-esteem to the point that Ariel told him he wasn’t his real father, so he wanted to know who, and that’s when she reluctantly told him that you were his father.”

            “I think you mean sperm donor,” I said flatly.

            She eyed me cooly, yet a smile played at her lips. “Anyway, she regretted the cat getting out of the bag.”

            “Why?”

            “Why?” She asked with wide eyes, as if it were a stupid question. And it was, I knew what was coming next, just not word for word. “Mr. Hail Satan. Need I say anymore?”

            I waved a dismissive hand. “I didn’t take that stuff seriously.”

            “Is that right?” She asked skeptically, folding her arms as if in challenge.

            I looked out the window. I didn’t mean it to be, but my statement was a lie. True, I told myself I wasn’t serious when we ‘sold our souls for rock and roll.’ Even when we achieved success shortly after that fateful night when Izzy led us in a strange ritual. I believed our success had to do with my guitar playing, and our spooky stage gimmicks. I never would have went along with a satanic ceremony without being influenced by the other guys.

            “So everybody thought that her husband was the boy’s father?”

            “Yes, and you can call him Ethan.”

            “Even you didn’t know that… Ethan was my… biological son.”

            “I suspected, but Ariel began seeing Dan not long after you left town.”

            “Wait a minute. Dan. As in Dan Smothers?”

            Penny nodded.

            “She married Dan Smothers! That big idiot that strutted around like he was Hulk Hogan.”

            “One and the same.”

            “And she had kids with him?”

            “Two daughters that he treats like gold. Two little angels that can’t do anything wrong. Yet Ethan couldn’t do anything right in his eyes. He treated him like garbage.”

            “So what is this about some altercation between Ethan and his two stepdads. So apparently Ariel remarried?”

            “She did. To a good man, a decent man who was good to all of her kids.”

            “So what happened in this altercation?”

            “Hannah, Ariel’s oldest daughter was drunk at a bar on her twenty first birthday. One bar tender called Ethan and Doug. Doug is Ariel’s second husband. And another bar tender called Dan.”

            “Let me guess, Dan was drunk.”

            “Yes, but still coordinated enough to be violent. Hannah slid off of her barstool and tried to run. Ethan grabbed her arm to stop her. Dan yelled for him to let go of her while at the same time sucker punching him in the side of the head. The blow not only knocked him out, his head bounced off of the floor. He ended up in a coma for three days. So Doug charged Dan even though he’s easily a hundred pounds lighter. Dan flung him like a rag doll, and the corner of the bar severed his spine. He’s paralyzed from the neck down.”

            “So what happened to Dan? Is he in jail?”

            “He’s free on bond until his trial on multiple assault charges.”

            “So what’s Dan’s attitude, is he remorseful?”

            Penny shrugged and snorted sarcastically. “Oh he’s sorry all right. But how much of his repentance is regretful over the injuries he caused, and how much is sorrow for being in trouble, only God knows.”

            “That’s right, only God knows,” I said as our eyes locked.

            We stared at each other for a long moment. Then as if reading my mind, she attempted to clarify. “It’ just a figure of speech.”

            “Is that all?”

            “Yes, that’s all.”

            “You don’t believe in God?”

            She snorted a sarcastic laugh again. I got the feeling she had done this a lot throughout her life. “Do you believe in the devil?”

            “Yes I do,” I replied, looking her right in the eyes.

            She returned my gaze with a look defiance. “You just told me a minute ago that you didn’t take your band’s satanic imagery seriously.”

            “I didn’t. Some of my bandmates did, though. In the end, I saw demon possession up close and personal. It’s real, and it’s nothing to mess with.”

            Her sarcastic frivolity was gone. She eyed me carefully before asking, “Do you believe in God?”

            “Yes, I do.”

            Her sarcastic attitude began to inch back with a little smirk that played at the corner of her mouth. “So is Eli Endor, lead guitarist for ‘The Sons of Molech’ a born again Christian?”

            I wanted a smoke in the worst way as I inhaled the smell of coffee and fried foods, and I sighed. “I can’t claim that at this point. But I want to be.”

            “So what’s holding you back?”

            “It’s complicated.”

            Penny actually looked sympathetic before she said, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

            “So you’re still a Christian then?”

            “I’m agnostic.”

            “But you grew up in a religious household.”

            “So did you.”

            “Hardly. My mother raised me. I just had to spend a little over a year with my hypocrite father until I graduated high school.”

            “What happened to your mom?”

            “She was into witchcraft and herbology. She got caught selling a plant known as marijuana. She did two years in prison, so I got sent to live with my dad. I almost dropped out of school to focus on music. But I was smart enough to realize that there were a lot of talented musicians that never made it past the club scene.”

            “A woman’s voice other than Penny’s said, “Elijah?”

            I looked into the lovely face of Ariel, formerly Grobstick, formerly Smothers. I didn’t know her current married name at that point.

            Ariel looked like she had just seen a ghost, and Penny looked like she just witnessed a bad accident.