Society Earth and Beyond Its Rebirth

(November 12^th, 2024)

WITH a superficial knife wound to his waist the young man ran along the Manhattan sidewalk, calling out for assistance while panting heavily as he passed one closed shop after another. It was just minutes past midnight, and onlookers walking both sides of the street did nothing at all to help; instead, they gawked at his serious predicament, desperately seeking sanctuary via an open and lively business.

He turned his upper body to his right as he continued his flight (though gradually slowing to a jog) to see how far behind him his pursuer was, all the while aware of the cut to his side but unaware of its severity. He did know, however, that the shadowy figure maintaining a distance of no more than 40 metres behind him was the same scumbag who cut him. And such inhumanity for naught but his small amount of money and cheap wristwatch (twenty bucks), a grand total of forty-five bucks.

The young man would’ve willingly handed over everything, but the thug wasn’t used to such willingness, at least not without adding one or two more slashes with his seven-inch switchblade.

“You can have everything I got!” the young man tried shouting as he panted, becoming even shorter of breath than before. “What the hell do you want, for Christ sakes?!”

He then spotted sanctuary. A bright neon-light sign, which blared “OPEN,” just above the door of one of a half-dozen or so nightclubs in that small region of Manhattan. “Oh … thank God!” he gasped, then worked on catching his breath after arriving at the Plexiglas protected entrance-fee-collection booth.

The nightclub’s Plexiglas fortified entrance door was entirely covered from the inside by an opaque, red, felt curtain, with everything else external being the red brick sidewall right next to where he stood. He could hear the soothing sanctuary-safe sound of boisterous, open-for-business activity from within getting out through the one entrance.

He grabbed onto the door handle and pulled with all of his strength and weight behind his effort. Only his blunt grunt was the result, as the door refused to budge an iota.

This isn’t happening! he mentally shrieked.

Out came another such grunt when he again futilely yanked at the solidly locked door.

But the light’s on! his panicked thoughts continued reverberating, as he yanked even harder at the door, twice more. Why the fuck is it shut?!

“Uh … Thirty bucks, mister.”

“What … ? Where the …?” he muttered, looking around desperately for the disembodied request for the nightclub entrance fee.

“I said, thirty bucks cover-charge … if you want to get in.”

He looked at the booth beside him and the twenty-ish booth attendant within, staring back out at him apathetically.

“What? Thirty dollars?” he said, letting out a breath and behaving as though he never experienced a nightclub’s pay-booth before.

He anxiously fumbled about while pulling out a twenty from his right pocket and a five from his left; then he reached into his back pockets but found only lint.

“All I have is twenty-five — really,” he began to beg, turning his head to see how close behind the scumbag was.

There, no more than fifteen meters away, he could see the menacing thug, though only a shadow figure within the entranceway of a closed-for-the-night classy-appearance hat store.

“Hey, mister, do you have thirty bucks or not? … Look, I have to go use the john.”

The booth attendant stood up and walked through a rear door within the booth, and completely out of view. The booth light then went dim, although the nightclub’s innards remained quite active, and the neon light was still on, bright. However, he was still locked out tightly, to failingly fend for himself, his very life, simply because he was five dollars short.

His sole surviving family member, a young-adult little sister sunk deep in heartache and frustration, had those exact words engraved on her big brother’s gravestone: “His brief life cut short simply because he was five dollars short. Brandon Gridner, February 29, 2002 – November 12, 2017.”

‘How Many More Must Greatly Suffer or Die for Others’ Gratuitous Monetary Gain & Simultaneous Societal Mayhem?’

(June 7^th, 2042)

With significant social-activism momentum building on local, regional, national and international scales for just a few months short of a full quarter century — ever since the tragically gratuitous, brutal killing of Brandon Gridner, for almost no monetary gain. It was an atypical cause for such a mass movement that was triggered within the New York City region; nevertheless, his story, his totally meaningless murder due to being but five dollars short of accessing asylum from a killer, soundly resonated with the people of America, followed closely by Canada, and beyond, from that day onwards.

There followed a great weight massive move forwards with such a historically unprecedented, revolutionary concept to gradually (over a ten year period) eliminate the entire globe’s monetary and precious-metals exchange systems, along with all stock/bond trading methodologies — i.e. making money off of others’ gains and losses.

The progressive movement indeed was almost entirely potently propelled by an enormous and inexcusably immoral gap between the superfluously wealthy top one percent of the planetary population and the struggling or outright impoverished bottom ninety-nine percent, the latter which lacked sufficient means by which to maintain an average quality of life and/or lifestyle (an ‘average’ based on a new, relative Earthly scale).

Of greatest concern, however, was the most critical juncture in Earth’s existence involving the inhabitability of the planet in regards to its air, land and water. Either the planet’s populace made a figurative ninety-degree turn towards one likely outcome or perpendicularly towards the other likely outcome.

One choice of course change would eventually result in a world of genuinely pristine eco-systems, thus safely breathable air and truly clean drinking water, etcetera. Accompanying this true progress in cleaning up Earth’s life-sustaining environment, was a complete cessation of all hunger, incessant though needless serious illness and great suffering, etcetera.

A course change towards the other direction, however, would be regressive, imminently leading humanity (not to mention its fellow Earthly creatures) back towards nightmarish, global scale, coal-dust-dark-gray, industrial-revolution-like existence. Eventually, it would result in a catastrophic planetary environmental consequence — one that would pollute Earth to a hopelessly prolific, profound degree.

Maintaining the same course straight ahead was also a path with a very bleak outcome for Earth’s various life forms, just of a different lot of negative occurrences taking a little longer to reach fruition (of course, periods of time relative to Earth’s great age).

Contrary to Big Capitalism and Industrialists’ cynical critiques against any slowing, let alone the ceasing of their unrelenting mass extraction of Earthly minerals and other natural resources, the diverse peoples, ideologies and cultures all over the planet wisely chose the correct, truly progressive course change that spared ‘spaceship’ Earth and its life so much agony and loss.

In less than five and a half decades, every nation of the world quite successfully initiated, managed and maintained an environment purification project involving every aspect of Earth’s air, land and waters. In fact, efforts proceeded so successfully that many cases of severe ecological toxification were actually halted then reversed back to a global environmental status of pristine eco-system sustainability, something not witnessed for three to four centuries in some major European nations.

“It all turned into like some version of Earth society from those very old Star Trek movies and television series I used to watch as a young boy,” a 103-year-old Canadian man of amazingly sound memory was quoted by TIME magazine’s April 10, 2138 issue.

‘We Made the Right Choice for Progressive Change & We Live Quite Well By It!’

(June 7^th, 2142)

To the day, exactly one hundred years had passed since that one spring morning, Earth’s populace began accumulating in every capital and major city across the planet just a few hours after a New York City gathering became the launching point for the most profound cause to date in human history. Planet-wide, the peaceful yet cohesive demonstrators all made the utmost insightful choice of their lives and their future as a ‘collective humanity.’ The people, about 10.23 billion in number, redirected their destiny towards an absolute elimination of all pollutants, mostly in the form of insidious bio-toxic substances, followed by a 180-degree reversal of the global pollution crises that had reigned for much too long and for too much of the wrong reasons.

All the while, truly effective population control also became and remained a reality, soon eliminating such past ordeals as the mass famines of Africa, particularly during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. On the other front, to stop mass famine suffering, the elimination of all forms of planetary pollutants such as ozone-depleting greenhouse gases over decades of environmental progress virtually totally resolved previously precarious irregular global weather systems that caused massive-scale crop-destroying devastating floods, permafrost and drought. But human ingenuity received the most credit for the exponential increase in agricultural efficiency bio-technology and eco-friendly fertilization of crops.

Perhaps most profound, wars, be they ‘civil’ or transnational, and genocide naturally became without-exception unacceptable concepts, let alone options for any reason at all. Simultaneously, respect for life extended to all animals, translating into vegetarianism becoming the culinary-art-form-to-perfect for the twenty-second century and well beyond.

Also, the refreshing fact that no nation any longer utilized the innately abused monetary system imminently ensured that stockpiles of gold bullion would no longer almost entirely represent gratuitous wealth and monetary value but rather would be melted down for progressive use as constructive elements for clean, green technologies, etcetera.

In this new era, every person on the planet could be employed according to his or her talents, mostly acquired through universally accessible higher learning institutions, therefore contributing towards positive societal or global functions to varying degrees of skills progression, in the manner which he or she genuinely desires. Hence, all citizens could acquire the skills and professions of their own choice, to their own fulfillment, while experiencing a real sense of accomplishment and thus satisfaction—without having to suffer any anxieties whatsoever over potential or actual financial obstacles (i.e. late home mortgage payments followed by bank foreclosure).

Every person began thinking for their self: How exactly does a person truly, justly ‘earn’ $100 billion — in both a moral sense as well as that of a universally accessible contribution to society?

One would conclude that to earn so many billions of dollars, the lucky person would be performing some super humanitarian feat for the planet’s populace or spaceship Earth itself through that person’s pristine upkeep of the planet’s eco-systems. Or the multi-billionaire would have eliminated starvation or alleviated at least a large chunk of the mass suffering occurring 24/7 around so much of the world — for example, through his mass distribution of much needed medicines.

It simply cannot be done — not from a moral perspective, it was agreed upon by all.

Salaries and wages were no longer allocated within the same marginalizing framework that in the past resulted in large, unjust gaps between the personal wealth and therefore quality of life of one extremely small portion of the populace compared to that of the vast majority of Earth citizens. Instead, all were accorded secured computerized “credits” with the ‘payout’ based on the time and effort that ‘employees’ put into their profession, the quality and quantity of their education/training as well as the “human and environment responsibility” involved in their profession.

All said, there would not be lingering desires for superfluous mass credit accumulation — a concept of ‘savings’ that was decidedly left behind in the socially dysfunctional past — because no one would be left to want of any necessity of life or moderation of lifestyle comfort.

There was to no longer be any enduring temptation or compulsion to hoard anything, let alone monetary wealth.^■

[Frank G Sterle Jr]

Not What It Was Supposed To Be [originally titled That Other Place]

WHEN Randall’s Ford pick-up truck ran head-on into the concrete meridian at a hundred and seventy-six kilometers per hour—a direct result of the thirteen beers he’d recklessly finished consuming less than a half-hour prior—he was dashed into eternity so instantaneously he didn’t realize he’d been killed. Or at least he didn’t immediately realize the fact. It took him a tiny amount of physical-universe time (or contrarily actually centuries, he considered), in the sense that time passage is noticeable only in corporeal reality. For, in the extra-dimensional hereafter, time does not exist, thus nor does the anxiousness often caused by the perceivedly slow passage of time. To him, the dead Randall, one second might as well be one day, one year, one millennium—or a million millenniums, for that matter; he didn’t notice the passage of physical time at all. Thus, perhaps the phrase ‘for an eternity’ would be much more accurately and plausibly referenced to if replaced with plain ‘timelessness,’ he figured, albeit timelessness is also a state of existence to which physical and psychological humankind cannot truly relate.

“This place isn’t at all what I’d expected,” he emphatically proclaimed.

Not only was it not fire-hot there, but it was actually quite comfortable temperature-wise. However, it then occurred to him that there seemed to be an indescribable absence of temperature—no warmth, no coolness, no nothing—a sort of meteorological neutrality. And not only was this place not a cavernous pit of molten lava with condemned souls screaming in agony, but everything seemed to be elevated, almost like being at the peak of a mountain. Although it appeared to be surrounded by an overcast sky, this peak had a rather flat surface (about two square kilometers) covered with dry, light-brown dirt and sharp-edged pebbles. Looking up, it seemed to Randall that there wasn’t a sky; rather, it was like a bright-gray translucent dome.

Randall often experienced urges to go to the edge of this post-death place and look down. However, an instinctive cognizance that he should not dare go look overwhelmed him each and every time, and he was filled with anxiety such as he’d never experienced, and never thought possible, when he was alive. Immediately following this punishing rush of intense anxiety—an anxiety that left behind a burning sensation—Randall would decide to never again entertain the notion of looking down off of the edge. Yet, without failure, he would again and again allow the thought to lead him to consider what he obviously wasn’t supposed to consider—the proverbial forbidden fruit into which he was not to bite.

Likely nor were the others supposed to look down over the edge, he figured. The others with Randall at that place were a countless multitude; but he could not understand how the universal laws of time and space familiar to him in his lifetime were fantastically defied in this place. For all of the entities surrounding him actually fit onto the relatively small surface, which was that place called Hell. He was quite sure that so many fitting into so little had to do with their, what he thought of as, ‘variable realities’. (Randall impressed himself with his utilization of such advanced notions, his lifetime experience including but a Grade 12 education and some years of Star Trek watching.) Each of these souls, he observed, seemed to exist in its own reality or dimension, since every soul appeared to be slightly more or less visibly clear than the other souls. Although every one of them was to some degree translucent and hazy, each (including himself) had its own, what Randall called, ‘phase of existence’; and every soul, though aware of its fellow souls (he noticed how each noticed all of the others), was thus consciously confined to its own reality or universe. Randall found these two observations to be rather paradoxical, because how, he questioned, could each soul be aware of all the other entities when each was in its own reality? Nonetheless, he found his inability to communicate with his fellow spirits to be quite unbearable at times, particularly since the semi-transparent specters numbered so very many yet were all completely unreachable.

____________________

Randall had spent his pre-adult life trying to believe as well as accommodate his parents’ instructions to him—but in particular their unified view of the afterlife and all of its Judeo-Christian theological attachments. Foremost, that Hell was essentially going to be a conscious fiery existence of unrelenting physical and mental misery; the Devil’s domain, consisting of lost souls weeping, wailing and gnashing their teeth—all to pay for their corporeal realm crimes, big and small; that is, unless they weren’t late in genuinely repenting along with essentially forcing themselves to believe specific beliefs.

As a young college student, however, he’d found he couldn’t help but wonder:

Maybe we view our creator and accompanying spirituality according to our own natures and beliefs? They can be the most compassionate, forgiving, peace-loving and always-turn-thy-other-cheek sort, as was Jesus Christ; or they can be of the disposition that’s full of fire-and-brimstone fury, vengeance-is-mine and an uncompromising eye-for-an-eye.

The latter kind had always frightened and depressed Randall. He’d reluctantly risk pissing off his own omniscient Maker by contemplating, How could a God requiring the shed blood of His own innocent incarnated son—in place of the blood of anything-but-innocent Man—as atonement for His own contempt for human sin, be fully trusted to not eventually become so angry that He’d dismiss even His most fundamentalist followers as being the insincere better-be-safe-than-sorry type and condemn them along with all of the other unsaved common sinners? Furthermore, could it be that our individual physically instinctive need for retribution or ‘justice’—regardless of great spiritual leaders as well as Christ having emphasized unconditional forgiveness—is intrinsically linked to the same unfortunate morally-flawed aspect of humankind that enables the most horrible acts of violent cruelty to readily occur on this planet?

Additionally, the notion that God required worshipping had always given Randall the creeps, a reaction perhaps in large part due to his own inability to accept any praise without mentally cringing then verbally countering the commendation. Moreover, he believed that the Creator would want “houses of worship” to be there for people’s non-physical health needs; in other words, churches, mosques, synagogues, etcetera, should be for the human spirit what hospitals are for the body.

On occasion Randal enjoyed musing over a radio broadcast of a prerecorded sermon he’d listened to some years earlier entitled “A Bird’s Eye View of Hell”, which was well-orated by a renowned though long-deceased preacher. It was based upon a hypothetical alternative version of Hell, one he henceforth found delightfully unconventional as a theological concept outside of the traditional literalism of fundamentalist Dead Sea Scrolls interpretation. He couldn’t recall that any form of classical comeuppance punishment, let alone actual fire, had a part in that forty-five-minute sermon’s alternate version of Hell.

This idea would lead to Randall’s memory of reading about another notable theological alternative to the traditional fire-and-brimstone Hell, one held by many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—that hellfire in actually is self-applied in the form of burning guilt. He realized it may be penance far more vicious than the average earthly person can appreciate. If one perhaps believes that upon our physical death, we all—including the very worst of history’s tyrants and genocidal maniacs—are relieved of literally one hundred percent of the anger, bitterness and hate with which we were burdened in life, this could force all of us souls to uninterruptedly contemplate every bit of earthly suffering we had needlessly caused by our blindingly contemptable corporeal acts.

Also, he felt that Jesus didn’t die for humans as payment for their sins, the greatest being mostly the result of often-unchecked testosterone rushes; rather, Christ was brutally murdered because of humans’ seriously flawed sinful nature. He was viciously killed because he did not in the least behave in accordance to corrupted human conduct—and in particular because he was nowhere near to being the blood-thirsty vengeful behemoth so many wanted or needed their saviour to be and therefore believed he’d have to be. Christ died in large part, Randall supposed, because Man wanted God to be a reflection of Man, although the latter probably didn’t realize it. God, however, became incarnate to prove to Man that there really was hope for the many seeing hopelessness in such an angry creator requiring literal pain-filled penance for Man’s immoral nature thus corrupted behavior; He came to show humankind what Messiah ought to be.

And Randall also occasionally wondered about the common theological perception of the Almighty as being gender specific, i.e. God the Father. Why would the omnipotent Creator of everything have any need for genitalia, let alone male-specific gonads, unless ‘He’ procreated and/or excreted in typical human fashion, which is quite difficult to imagine?

____________________

Then came the powerful disembodied voice. Judging from the others’ sudden reaction, it had to have been audible (or via telepathy) to every soul there. The voice told every occupant in Hell they were to take part in a profound “field trip”—all inhabitants there were to “visit Heaven”.

My God, Randall thought excitedly, we’re actually going to experience Heaven?!

“Furthermore,” continued the voice, “those of you who choose to do so may remain in Heaven for eternity.”

Randall could not believe what he’d heard. We can actually stay there—forever?!

“But understand this,” the voice resumed, “those of you who wish to come back to Hell must be ready to do so by the designated returning time, or else you will have to remain in Heaven. For eternity.”

Is he joking? Randall thought. We’ll “have to remain in Heaven”? Who in the hell in his right mind would not want to permanently stay in Heaven!? “You drive a hard bargain,” Randall called out, quite sarcastically. He chuckled to himself at his clever retort.

A rumble of considerable anger just then reverberated throughout Hell. However, Hollywood cliché it all seemed, he’d obviously pissed off someone big there with his ridicule. Not intimidated, though, Randall again mocked the source of the voice with, “Whenever you’re ready.”

As the rumbling ceased, Randall, along with all of the other souls, experienced a great change in their Hell-bound status. They had indeed left for another reality—a heavenly one. And not surprising, because in the afterlife time and space are non-existent, the ‘trip’ from Hell to Heaven was literally instantaneous (as indeed it should be, Randall felt), even though he’d been led to believe in Sunday school that Hell and Heaven were an infinite distance apart. This theological concept always came to mind whenever he’d hear of Einstein’s special relativity, and vice versa, specifically the postulate maintaining that an infinite amount of energy is required to achieve the infinite speed of light; yet those light-barrier physics, however fascinating, never did make sense to Randall, as he perceived it to be contradictory, at least in a terminological sense. What did make sense to him was that the speed of light actually wasn’t ‘infinite’—on the contrary, to him, it was an infinity from being infinite; rather, it was only too limited when he considered it took over four light years just to reach our closest, neighboring star (while also keeping in mind there are about two hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe, and within that, many astrophysicists believe, there’s an atom of matter for every eighty-eight gallons of space). Therefore, Randall figured, to travel an infinite distance requiring an infinite speed, thus literally doing so instantaneously, would truly require an infinite amount of energy—contrary to the finite amount of energy required, one might’ve logically concluded, to achieve the relatively sluggish and obviously quite finite speed of light (186,282 miles per second). But then, again, he decided to himself, what do I know?

As for Randall’s infinite trip, it had been made. There, he felt that the change that had occurred was nothing short of uniquely incredible: the difference in the entire environment and a soul’s new condition—or more accurate, the suddenly unbearably more-noticeable condition. For though the ‘trip’ from the Dwelling of the Damned to the House of God was basically unnoticeable, Randall and the others who’d come with him unexpectedly found themselves at the point of an extreme discomfort. There they were, surrounded by a countless quantity of ‘Blessed’ souls, who had all arrived in Paradise at the moment of their corporeal death, all of whom existed in a state of, for lack of more accurate terms of reference, the very purest of gold. It was a gold that was far beyond the purest gold found in the physical universe—a gold almost radiant white. Indeed, this gold did not tolerate even the tiniest hint of the foul dirt or impurity of sin; thus was the state of being in and of Heaven, the Kingdom of God. So pure was this place of gold, this place of eternal euphoria, that the visiting unfortunate souls—in their mud-covered, sinful condition, from that other place called Hell—stood out like pitch-black sheep amongst those of the purest of white.

Randall and his dirty ilk each felt about as comfortable in Heaven as would a drop of ice-cold water released into scorching-hot oil in the corporeal realm. And they did not want anything more than to leave the House of God, and immediately so. “I want to get the hell out of here!” Randall asserted, with all of the other dirty souls in total agreement.

“And I want to go right now—back to that other place!”

“Whenever you’re ready,” the voice responded, mockingly repeating Randall’s earlier arrogantly invitational line.

Just as before, the ‘trip’ was instantaneous—they were back in Hell and feeling quite at home, like a well-fitting leather glove on a very familiar hand. However, he then noticed what was up to that point unnoticeable, at least to him—not a single, tiny spot on his spiritual self was free of this sin-induced filth of Evermore. He also noticed that his dirty state of being, in fact, actually blended-in quite well with the filthy, sin-smeared environment of Hell. One might say that Randall’s situation resembled that of a chameleon damned to one eternal, ugly color.

Yes, had Randall been of a different nature in corporeal life and was destined for Heaven—though in a purest, sinless state of his being—he would’ve quite willingly went; for, while very briefly in Heaven, he had sensed that for those who truly belonged, there was a far better state of existence in Paradise than there is in Hell. But having arrived back in Hell, I would not have believed it had I not gone there for myself, he thought, contentedly realizing he was to spend the rest of a timelessness eternity in Hell. He was convinced that, because of his sin-stained soul, there was a worse place than Hell for him. Randall, forever stained with non-forgiven sin (though ‘forever’ did not really mean anything there), actually literally preferred to spend an eternity in Hell, had corporeal-realm linear-time applied, than a moment in Heaven.^■

[Frank G Sterle Jr]

FGSJR Stories, Essay & Poetry

Stories, Essay & PoetryDownload

Permanently Crossing Out His Personality Disorder, Borderline and All

“Borderline: (adjective) only just acceptable in quality or as belonging to a category … (noun) a boundary separating two countries or areas.” —The New Oxford Dictionary of English

“I know you don’t mean to be that way, Gustavo, but you tend to have the kind of … of a very different personality that can cause others to dislike you, to reject you, or even get very angry at you; and I fear that someone might at some point in the future even physically assault you—perhaps going as far as killing you. I really don’t mean to upset you by saying all of that, but sometimes I really worry for you.”

On more than a few occasions Gustavo’s mother, with his father (and once even his sister) sitting nearby intently listening with equal concern, cautioned the boy of such potential social problems in his future. When she would talk to him about this reality it was never out of any argument induced frustration or insult since she felt only love and genuine concern for the seven-year-old. Although it might bring them but minimal comfort, if any at all actually, his parents frequently reminded themselves that he wasn’t in the least intentionally behaving in an antisocial manner. As an otherwise nice young boy, why would he willfully choose such a socially ostracized existence? they’d often rhetorically ask themselves. And one particularly so as a child with a Hispanic heritage that’s greatly outnumbered by the other cultures around him?

When at age ten he lost his father in a motor vehicle collision, Gustavo, perhaps to compensate for the enormous loss, became all the more emotionally bound to his mother and six-year-old sister. But that extra bond would cause him to suffer extra anguish upon bearing the additional devastating loss of his sister. Precisely on his seventeenth birthday as she and he were joking and eating pizza, he and his mother on very short notice discovered in stunned silence that the girl had in fact been mortally stricken with Stage 4 malignant cancer. Without any foretelling symptoms she collapsed unconscious on his bedroom floor, then fell into a coma upon arrival at the hospital. He and his mother were further utterly shocked to hear an hour later that, even as rare as were such cases as hers in which indicators of the illness go unnoticed until death is imminent, MRI scans had revealed that too many of her abdominal organs were already shutting down or very close to doing so as the final result of the rampantly metastasizing disease. In addition to their already great loss, Gustavo and his mother were devastated again by also being denied even just a conscious moment with her to say a brief goodbye. Nevertheless, they remained by her bedside as she lay comatose while on life support until she succumbed, one day short of eleven weeks after initially collapsing at home.

After a year of psychiatric hospitalization and every form of treatment available to her, including electro-convulsive therapy, Gustavo’s chronically depressed mother took her own life. He then himself briefly followed in her severely distraught path for the following six months, during which not only did he fare well by his regimen of antidepressant medication but he was also diagnosed as having Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

The very day he was discharged from hospital, the painful memory of his sister and her death came to mind, though it was immediately followed by the words received by Harry Potter from his school headmaster Albus Dumbledore, at the end of the long story when both meet as spirits within some pure-white realm. “Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.”

This quote made Gustavo consider something even further along the existential lines, before he began talking to his well-medicated roommate lying in the next bed over. “ … Anyways, I told my doctor that, yes, I believed her assurances that I should’ve died at least four dozen times over. But what still sincerely bothers me is that I genuinely don’t know whether to credit all of those very-low-odds survivals to the divine or the devil.” A moment of silence passed before he could hear his roommate begin slowly snoring, perhaps a ‘response’ close enough to what one of his apathetic high school peers would’ve offered, as though such nearly successful however inadvertent overdoses nowadays were common enough to rank them as not meriting much more concern than getting very ill from too much alcohol after some big party.

After permanently leaving the psychiatric ward, Gustavo, with his newly-discovered lifelong BPD condition in mind, reconsidered his recollectable past through the lens of someone with a recognized personality disorder. Gustavo’s retrospective analysis clearly revealed that beginning as early as age six, he never understood why so many of his school peers had avoided his company while some even openly expressed to Gustavo’s face their dislike for him. Such matters only worsened when he entered junior high school, which exacerbated his already hatched agitative tendencies to a point of unpredictable inappropriate anger, though particularly so on those rare occasions when he’d be left licking his wounds after a physical assault.

Not to be mistaken, Gustavo did have a lighter side, indeed one that craved to joke around, although virtually nobody in his auditory proximity would laugh at his unconventional humour; some people were even left embarrassed judging by their deafening silence—all of which resulted in a self-perpetuating non-sociable effect upon Gustavo, in fact making him even more withdrawn. Sometimes he’d even make abnormally awkward comments or similarly vocalize sarcastic and cynical remarks; however, he didn’t realize his lacking social skills until it was too late to perform adequate ‘damage control’ between himself and his peers. If Gustavo dared to socialize by way of talking and/or joking at some gathering, it would often turn out that others felt he should’ve kept quiet; but when he did keep to himself, that was no good either, for he’d be deemed ‘a bore’. It truly was a bitter no-win scenario for him.

As the following few years passed, it became painfully clear to Gustavo that as a young adult with a personality disorder (“Borderline” or not) his problematic dealings with potentially regular clients had pretty much eliminated any chance he ever had of, as planned, becoming a professional portrait painter, maybe even with his own studio. However, as matters stood he couldn’t even manage to sufficiently socially function with potential buyers in order to steadily sell his own oil painting creations, works that others in the portrait painter community assured him should in any event be regularly sellable fine fruits of his labour. Indeed it was due to his personality’s friction-prone nature with potential employers as well as people at social functions, Gustavo found himself without any practical option other than to seek whatever freelance work he could manage to acquire (usually by saying as little as possible to whomever he should avoid inadvertently offending). Of course typical freelance work wouldn’t pay him as well as would most consistent weekly-hours jobs, which usually also offered medical and other benefits, if he only had it within him to be a work-environment ‘team-player’ and thus capable of maintaining a functional-employee status.

Gustavo, still being in his early adult years, also curiously delved into metaphysical theory and teachings. There, he eventually found himself believing that his personality disorder’s negative, angry condition and therefore the resultant thoughts themselves were essentially polluting to some degree the socially functional positive thoughts and emotions of many people around him. He enthusiastically searched the Internet for metaphysical literature containing relevant experiment findings that demonstrated how a very sensitive meter could measure fluctuations in even the weakest electromagnetic field (EMF) emanating from any kind of life form. But far more significant, however, was the revelation that when a test-subject was in some manner and extent distressed, his or her EMF was also disrupted and thereby proportionally disturbed the EMFs of test-subject non-human life forms (both animal and plant, etcetera) within his or her vicinity. Not long afterwards it was also ‘revealed’ via metaphysical research that all life forms—though above all, human beings—are interlinked by way of their EMFs of varying intensities. Henceforth he found himself considerably concerned over what he truly believed amounted to “the EMF poison transmitted by my disordered personality”.

Only a few months later Gustavo yet again notably bucked the social norm by finding he could no longer take praise, not at face value, not at all; instead he’d greatly downplay if not outright negate any complimented achievement of his. The many people offering him the praise that he would basically reject were left feeling insulted, attributing such strange responsive behaviour to inconsideration if not downright rudeness on his part. In fact, the people complimenting him felt that by rejecting their praise he was by extension questioning their judgment of what constituted a job well done; either that or, worse, doubting their sincerity.

For example, when told how much weight he appeared to have recently lost, he was left frustrated by his conviction that, notwithstanding some loss of facial mass, it was only a fallacy created by a two-dimensional-like concealment of his true undesirable shape coupled with a somewhat diversionary effect caused by just the right clothing style, contour and colour. Indeed he felt so abnormally strong about it that he’d sometimes quote author Mark Twain’s insightful humor: “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” Gustavo always kept that small piece of humour in mind, as he felt like a half-naked fraud whenever looking into his mirror wearing only his briefs, but the joke hit too painfully close to home for him to ever appreciatively chuckle. He knew that whenever he dressed just so in quantity and quality, aspects of his physique he found embarrassing from the testimony of his bathroom’s large looking-glass were deceptively concealed.

Also in retrospect Gustavo realized that over the years there were numerous misunderstandings over statements he’d made as well as his demeanor which resulted in some other people’s frustration and even agitation towards him. Thus with time those many misunderstandings became others’ unflattering misconceptions about him, all of which caused him a sizable dose of haunting shame. He considered the permanent social damage to be, as he phrased it with feelings of regret rather than any humour, “All bridge under the water”.

It was only a few months later that while using the library’s computer room he clashed with a man who had an obvious personality disorder which didn’t mix well at all with Gustavo’s own formidable aggressive tendencies—in fact it was an incident he’d decided at that time to not share with his psychiatrist. But before the conflict would occur that afternoon his pharmacist with whom he was quite familiar queried him for the first time, with a concerned curiosity, “Why are you always so angry, Gustavo? Really—why so angry?” Uncertain as to how to respond to such an unusual question put to him, Gustavo simply forced out a small grin and shrugged.

About a month after the library altercation that came so close to actual blows, it became clear to Gustavo that he had to have his Borderline Personality Disorder curse in its entirety—the problematic negativity and fluctuating aggressiveness—forced out of his mind and life to the maximum possible extent, if not somehow in totality. However, he’d soon learn that to achieve such a feat there would have to be a determined permanence on his part and one that would be his great act in the best interests of those functional thinkers around him (as well, of course, as his own peace of mind).

During his next appointment with his psychiatrist she suggested to Gustavo that what he likely had in mind was an invasive procedure called a post-hypnotic suggestion (PHS), which she generally supported though with the stipulation that he undergo the standard eight-month pre-hypnosis preparation.

During the actual procedure itself, which for him would be drug induced since he was clearly too tense to be mesmerized solely through verbal means, he’d receive a PHS that would command his subconscious mind to essentially void his otherwise entrenched disordered personality traits. Her warning to Gustavo, however, included the possible risks involved, most notable being that the greater access to the subconscious mind during hypnosis occasionally enables often-traumatic repressed emotions or memories to be brought to the fore. Yet all he could think about at that point was being truly free of the great flaws resultant from his disordered personality, especially those responsible for his seemingly irrepressible negative thoughts and anger fluctuations.

It was immediately then that the Star Trek: The Next Generation character (Mr.) Lt. Commander Data came to Gustavo’s mind—Mr. Data being a no emotions thus facially expressionless artificial intelligence android who’s programmed to perform a very large number of constructive functions while protecting all human life. But the A.I. Mr. Data does take on the rare though no less embarrassingly contradictory emotion when it suits an episode storyline’s required elements. Upon second thought, however, Gustavo considered whether he might even more so prefer coming out of his hypnotic state as a mind-at-total-peace Buddhist monk. But then Gustavo recalled how the Buddha had lately made his ‘questionable ethics list’ upon recently learning that the Buddha, the very symbol for the super-vegan faith, allowed followers of Buddhism to eat meat albeit with the specification that they not do the actual slaughtering.

Or maybe even better yet, he excitedly thought, I might come out like Mr. Spock. Mr. Spock being renowned for his Vulcan confidence though especially his calmly logical state of mind, Gustavo could picture himself advising his typically emotional human peers: “Really, guys, you must learn to govern your emotions. They will be your undoing.”

“I don’t care,” he told his psychiatrist, “I just want to do it.” He had already irreversibly resolved to have all of his BPD negativity and aggressiveness totally removed from his mind without any even mildly cynical thought-exception, so as he’d not ever again end up distressing any part of the lives of decent people who were probably already dealing or struggling with their own turmoil. “I believe that I’m a small portion of a significant flaw in humankind’s messed-up nature,” he continued. “That’s why I’m going to do my very best to cease and desist that terrible aspect of my personality (short of any self-destructive means, of course).”

Gustavo wasn’t even deterred by his psychiatrist’s forewarning assertion that although the PHS would all but with one hundred percent certainty neutralize the burdensome antisocial mentality aspects of his character, “Your mind, unfortunately, will just as likely not automatically replace that mental disarray with positive, happy notions and good feelings—which is what I believe you’re expecting by means of flawed deduction reasoning as the primary side effect of the post-hypnotic suggestion. In fact, the relatively few functional and positive thoughts and emotions that you currently do experience will gradually dissipate—they will go away—though I cannot say with any useful accuracy when and at what rate that dissipation will take place.”

After eight months of psychiatric preparation consisting mostly of in-depth counselling sessions Gustavo was deemed ready for his post-hypnotic suggestion, which was scheduled for just over two weeks hence. He was again forewarned that if all went accordingly the PHS would leave him in a psychological state comparable to that of potent relaxant sedation.         “Furthermore, I must again emphasize that the suggestion placed into your mind will leave you, in a manner of speaking, self-disallowed from further hostile thoughts, emotions and aggressive physical intentions on your part, even if you’re being brazenly provoked by another’s man’s assault on you; it will be quite the figurative declawing of the cat, which is why it’s of the utmost concern for us amongst a few other lesser concerns.”

Gustavo was nevertheless adamant: “I want to go ahead with it anyway. I truly feel that the benefits can only outweigh any negatives.” He was then handed a pen to sign the consent form written up in legalese specifically for his unconventional hypnosis treatment, relinquishing all rights to any potential future civil legal action should anything go seriously wrong.

Yet, it was exactly a week before the PHS was to take place that Gustavo—already in a bad mood over learning of a large rent increase that he could ill afford—lost his temper with his psychiatrist when she had once again made reference to his personality disorder as being Borderline, the official diagnosis designation she’d thought he had already fully accepted since receiving the formal Borderline Personality Disorder some four years prior. When he had sufficiently calmed himself to fully absorb all of her words, she explained in finer detail than ever before the purpose of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) including the term Borderline to describe his form of personality disorder, with which he appeared mostly contented. Basically, the BPD sufferer lives with his or her symptoms “more under the radar” thus just barely concealed from the majority-functional people around them.

Both doctor and patient went silent momentarily before Gustavo stated that he still felt the DSM’s Borderline aspect of his personality disorder remained somewhat misleading. He then deeply inhaled before exhaling with a sigh as he sarcastically note the incident in which he had dysfunctionally conflicted with another man of a difficult demeanor—“perhaps even another recipient of the ‘Borderline’ personality disorder—at a most  public location. “It was a borderline physical altercation, I guess one might call it, though it really seemed like matters just barely missed seriously spiraling out of physical control—something I’ve not had to deal with since high school. To me, that’s quite unnerving!”

Then in an incredulous tone of voice, Gustavo strongly implied that he, upon second thought, still required another, broader response. “That quarrel by itself is a very good reason why I have trouble buying the DSM line that I have some borderline personality disorder. After all, it’s actually a noticeable disorder of my personality, or at least that’s what I’ve been both implicitly and explicitly told throughout my life; apparently it’s one that has openly crossed over the borderline and into the realm of a real personality disorder. Why not have just told me something along the lines of, ‘It’s not quite yet a serious anti-social character dysfunction that’s potentially criminal in nature, therefore we’ll cross that bridge when your personality gets there.

At that point it can be reconsidered and relabeled as an actual personality disorder’? Why not just say something more meaningful like that?” he continued to vent. “Maybe the mental health profession should just collectively flat-out say to diagnosed BPDs like me, ‘As unflattering as it may sound, you do have a problem with your personality; you can even refer to it as a personality disorder, if you so desire, though some people may even go as far as saying yours is a lousy personality. Okay now, Gustavo, having dealt with that semantical unpleasantry, let’s talk treatment for your personality, which is border-lining along the disordered sort’.”

Clearly, the way he plainly saw it, if it’s notably burdensome to its bearer, it’s worthy of a diagnosis title that straightly refers to an actual clinical mental condition—not something that by its name says that the threshold or borderline separating the actual disorder from the bordering-disorder has not yet been at all crossed.

Having reached his zenith in accumulated frustration, Gustavo, in finality, blurted out that, “adding ‘Borderline’ to the ‘Personality Disorder’ is perhaps patronizingly comforting to some sufferers; otherwise sufferers such as myself will simply disregard the DSM and refer to themselves as having a personality disorder, plain and simple! …

And since we’re on the subject of platitudinous semantics, doctor, do you have any idea as to what the attempt at a cleverly alliterated prize title Courage to Come Back Award is exactly supposed to mean—or, maybe in this case, not mean? Is it perhaps inadvertently inferring to the rest of us mentally ill folk who don’t have quite enough courage yet to accomplish this great feat? Or could it have been titled that way, without sufficient consideration of other consumers, for the sake of catchy alliteration?!”

Following the hypnosis session Gustavo spent hours walking around town each and every day, sometimes even frequenting the same streets a dozen times during the same day, with many of the streets being completely unfamiliar to him, all as though he was exceptionally restless. He was asked by his psychiatrist as to the general nature of his thoughts and emotions since his PHS-session implantation, and, with his face for the first time totally void of any expression whatsoever,  he replied: “I guess typical unimportant things, like did my telephone bill payment pass through okay, as it’s always done. Stuff pretty routine like that. But what I’ve got now that I didn’t have before is an absence of bad ideas and feelings—really, an amazing freedom from anger, even with the false sense of a little drugged stupor that goes with it.”

But as Gustavo would’ve said pre-PHS, “Nothing good ever lasts.”

It was not even two months later that he was mortally assaulted by three young men awaiting a ride at the Metro bus exchange who he had recognized as old friends from high school, although they didn’t in turn recognize him at all. Due to their chemically induced incapacitated mental state Gustavo’s expressionless gaze at them, they’d later testify on their own behalf in criminal court, “threw us for a loop because at first he didn’t even say anything to us.” As anticipated by his psychiatrist, with the PHS having completely pacified him he wasn’t only free of angry thoughts and emotions, he had also gradually lost the ability to experience pleasant feelings and impressions. The result by extension of the said PHS side-effect was essentially a deadening of his pre-hypnosis normal facial muscle activity that would have accompanied such positive feelings, hence his automaton-like non-expressive look.

When the story broke the next day that Gustavo, the peaceable ‘newcomer’ to town, had been beaten to death, the bitter irony was not at all lost on those few people who knew him well. What made the matter all the more difficult to accept was that the vicious crime had tragically been committed against him by a trio of his former high school peers and good friends. On the courtroom stand each of the three distraught young men had emphasized that upon their initial confusion over his blank expression, they had taken great offense by it after having misinterpreted it as an expression of disrespect, if not plain contempt, towards them.

The three assailants’ public defender later claimed in court that her clients’ deadly aggression against Gustavo “should be considered in proper context, your Honour. As tragic as the victim’s death may be, the fact nonetheless remains that the victim had responded to the three defendants’ presence with nothing but an abnormal blank stare (supposedly due to the aftereffect of therapeutic hypnosis that the victim had undergone about a month prior), which, intended or not, suggested his insolence towards the defendants’ very presence.”

The Crown attorney, however, strongly objected to the defense attorney’s claims, emphasizing instead that such an “argument is hardly plausible considering that, according to bystanders’ testimony under oath here in court, the victim had almost immediately began doubting the accuracy of his recognition of the three defendants and therefore, audibly to all witnesses present at the crime scene, stated to the defendants that, quote, ‘I’m sorry—my mistake’.”

As it were, two days after their convictions for aggravated manslaughter the three assailants individually revealed that soon after sobering up in lockup the morning after the deadly assault, each finally could recall with reasonable clarity that the deceased Gustavo had in fact been a former high school chum with whom they’d not conversed nor could they recollect even seeing since graduation. They further could recall of him that no matter how hard he tried to blend in with his peers he seemed to almost always end up saying the wrong thing—unfortunately, in his case, he’d eventually say something to which some people would take considerable offense and for which they might even brutally assault him.^■ 

Can You Picture It?

THE Hale-Bopp comet had been of closest proximity to Earth on March 22, 1997, and consisted of a variety of elements: ice, rock, carbonatious crondites, methane, as well as organic chemicals such as ethanol, carbon and silicates. However, Hale-Bopp’s run passed Earth apparently had been of greater substance than that perceived by hundreds of millions of Earth folk. Indeed, at its closest point to Earth while passing our way, our planet was engulfed by the contents of the comet’s three, potent tails—one of which consisted of ions, the second of dust and the third of a thin tail of sodium atoms.

Due to the relatively close passing by this comet and its tails (not due to come back our way for about another 2,370 years), an extremely small quantity of Earth’s populace comprised of psychically orientated people had their varying abilities (some even greatly) enhanced and for some non-psychic-majority folk to witness.

Very few psychics could actually manipulate universal temporal reality and thus foresee future events—both of a good nature or bad, the latter being perhaps an approaching natural disaster—while some psychically talented people could sense the presence of spirits, be they residual or sentient, or see in their mind’s eye the exact location of a missing person—dead or alive.

As such occurred, it was recalled by some folk that about three centuries prior to the near passing of Hale-Bopp, one prominent and credible German psychic stated that her “spirit guide”—a proclamation that had gotten her hung by the neck—communicated “a knowledge” to her that on this precise date such a significant comet would pass, more specifically the zenith of its proximity to Earth, during which its three tails’ variety of unique non-Earthly elements would engulf the planet, thus settling onto Earth’s surface, though for no more than 60 seconds. This would enhance the psychic abilities held by an extremely small number of people who’d just by chance come into direct contact with the tails’ elements during that brief 60-second period.

When asked by her fellow villagers why only these few psychics will be affected by the comet’s three tails’ elements, the renowned psychic replied that her “spirit guide” revealed to her that those few psychics had endured severe mental illness and then died an untimely, unnatural death in their previous life as a result of the mental illness. Unfortunately, they’d once again be afflicted with severe mental illness during their current incarnation.

__________________________________

“CLOSE your eyes, breathe slowly and relax. Now, tell me what you see. Please try to concentrate, focus, while loosening all of your muscles. It’s the key to be able to see.”

Michael Kolinski found that this request of him by the police psychologist, Insp. Terry Ross, created an intense tingling sensation in, or near, the center of his brain, followed by a rapid surge of images: global bodies of water, large and small; cities, large and small; coastlines, mountainsides, forests, rivers, towns, neighborhoods, various streets and people.

Gradually, the images subsided in number and speed but intensified exponentially in content. The sharp increase in image intensity soon narrowed down into a crystal-clear image in his mind’s eye of a relatively small body of water. “I see a lake; actually, it looks like Lake Tahoe.”

“That’s in this state, only two dozen miles away,” said Insp. Ross. “Now, try to remain focused and relaxed.”

“I see the side of a hill covered with fir trees.”

The image then advanced more specifically into some trees, then just a half dozen trees surrounded by some brush. (Due to expected, brief bouts of lightheadedness, Michael momentarily ceased to inform Insp. Ross of the visions.)

The image then focused on a pair of lower legs, laying still, those of a small or very young person, wearing light-red corduroy pants and worn, dark-green sneakers.

“I think I can see it—exactly what you’re looking for!” Michael exclaimed. “It looks like a pair of small legs, I think, like the legs of a child, wearing light-red pants pulled down to the knees.”

“Now, it’s crucial that you see a face. You’ve seen a detailed photograph of the girl’s facial features. Please go forward and see her face. Focus your entire mind upon seeing her face.”

The fact was, the inspector had at his convenient disposal a man with an incredible talent—one who could actually visualize the locations of human beings, dead or alive, amongst extremely vast landscapes throughout the country and sometimes even continents. Without doubt, he was a gifted man for whom numerous police and investigative agencies would give anything or any amount of money.

“I’m getting quite close; I’m almost there.”

As the image in his mind’s eye became more “malleable” (Michael’s term), he was considerably enabled to move in even much closer to see the child’s identity, most notably specific, identifying facial features.

“Now I can see her head and her face, quite clear!”

This time, however, besides the usual visuals-only revelations that he’d typically experience, Michael inexplicably could also feel the essence, or status, of the victim’s life-force—or in this case a disturbing complete absence of it. He was left baffled by the unmistakable sensation, indeed knowledge, that the missing victim was in fact deceased.

“It’s her. I can see her face. It’s the girl you’re looking for; it’s definitely her. But I should also note that I really don’t feel good about this one, inspector. I feel that …”

“Thank you very much, Michael. Okay, men—your attention!” the inspector abruptly radioed his team. “At present, we still treat this as a rescue and not as a recovery. She’ll certainly be in need of immediate medical attention.”

He looked back to Michael, who decided to not finish what he’d just began to add to his victim-identification before being interrupted, to lastly request of him.

“If you’ll just confirm her location again, for my servicemen. But we’ll still need you to come along, just in case.”

“Of course.”

In detail, Michael explained to the servicemen exactly where the girl lay then sat down with his own thoughts, within his own atypically expansive mind.

It took a minute before he began recollecting his first ESP visions. He’d close his eyes while relating to his family and friends the various images and their great velocity through his mind. In fact, the images passed at such high speed that he’d “miss” most of them and mentally, fully “capture” but relatively very few. Even then, he couldn’t be sure if they were indeed legit visions of reality or were naught but the hallucinations of a very young, schizophrenic man, who at that point in his life had yet to be officially diagnosed and receive medication. After a few years of experiencing his ESP visions, the images became more vivid, and he noticed the gradually passing at a slower rate, one at which very many could be captured and validated (or, as in a few cases, debunked).

Driving home that evening, Michael realized that he felt more about that day’s accomplishment than just some satisfaction; he also felt rather guilty. Sure, he likely contributed much towards solving a formidable mystery and thus helping law enforcers a great deal. However, the vivid image of her laying on that hillside sadly indicates that a very young girl was quite likely murdered.

What can I do about that? he futilely tried consoling his conscience.

He then stopped his car, shut off the engine and stepped out for some fresh air, which was likely plentiful with all of the trees around. He looked up into the dark, starry night sky, before turning his eyes to his left.

Wow. That must be Hale-Bopp’s tail.

_________

The thirty-two year old Michael initially traveled to and resided (for almost thirty-nine months) within the devoutly Buddhist, albeit illegally Chinese-occupied, nation of Tibet in an attempt to learn how to suppress his ESP ability, for he found it extremely burdensome. More importantly, however, he intensely desired escape from his tormenting schizophrenia, the symptoms of which failed to subside regardless of the psychotropic medication cocktail he consumed twice daily. Even so, he eventually did attain peace of mind amongst the friendly Aborigines of southern Australia, joining them in their culturally convergent manner of living and celebrating. But seventeen months later, he died from the bite of a particularly insidious, poisonous snake.^■

[Frank G Sterle Jr]

Now That’s the Spirit, Sir!

THE Hale-Bopp comet had been of closest proximity to Earth on March 22, 1997, and consisted of a variety of elements: ice, rock, carbonatious crondites, methane, as well as organic chemicals such as ethanol, carbon and silicates. However, Hale-Bopp’s run passed Earth apparently had been of greater substance than that perceived by hundreds of millions of Earth folk. Indeed, at its closest point to Earth while passing our way, our planet was engulfed by the contents of the comet’s three, potent tails—one of which consisted of ions, the second of dust and the third of a thin tail of sodium atoms.

Due to the relatively close passing by this comet and its tails (not due to come back our way for about another 2,370 years), an extremely small quantity of Earth’s populace comprised of psychically orientated people had their varying abilities (some even greatly) enhanced and for some non-psychic-majority folk to witness.

Very few psychics could actually manipulate universal temporal reality and thus foresee future events—both of a good nature or bad, the latter being perhaps an approaching natural disaster—while some psychically talented people could sense the presence of spirits, be they residual or sentient, or see in their mind’s eye the exact location of a missing person—dead or alive.

As such occurred, it was recalled by some folk that about three centuries prior to the near passing of Hale-Bopp, one prominent and credible German psychic stated that her “spirit guide”—a proclamation that had gotten her hung by the neck—communicated “a knowledge” to her that on this precise date such a significant comet would pass, more specifically the zenith of its proximity to Earth, during which its three tails’ variety of unique non-Earthly elements would engulf the planet, thus settling onto Earth’s surface, though for no more than 60 seconds. This would enhance the psychic abilities held by an extremely small number of people who’d just by chance come into direct contact with the tails’ elements during that brief 60-second period. When asked by her fellow villagers why only these few psychics will be affected by the comet’s three tails’ elements, the renowned psychic replied that her “spirit guide” revealed to her that those few psychics had endured severe mental illness and then died an untimely, unnatural death in their previous life as a result of the mental illness. Unfortunately, they’d once again be afflicted with severe mental illness during their current incarnation.

__________________________________

“IT seems that I’ll never really get used to it all,” said the renowned psychic, “to the spiritual infestations, and the hairs on my arms standing on end.”

Patric Walsh closed his eyes and slowly took in a very deep breath; in through the nose and releasing it between his lips, as though he was attempting to inhale the residence’s entire atmosphere, spirits and all. He was standing at the foot of the mansion’s oak wood staircase, carpeted in poppy red.

“It’s here,” he whispered. “They’re here; and they’re immense in energy—very strong energy. May I walk through all of the rooms and spaces within the entire mansion?”

“Yes; by all means,” eagerly replied mansion owner Stockwell Phylmyg (pronounced as fil-mij), also owner/operator of the local ten-acre silver mine.

A slight echo emanated from his wife of forty-seven years, Myra, who added, “You can go as you please, Mr. Walsh. Shall we … ?”

She was just beginning to lead him up the stairs but was cut off by her overly assertive, interruptive husband. Although she came across as one with an inferior demeanor towards her husband, she nonetheless was truly the bravest of the two (and Patric required no ESP to realize this fact), yet she suppressed the fact for the sake of her rather pompous husband’s ego, basically getting her own way without any confrontation.

“Dear,” she asked of her husband, “please allow me the privilege? … This way, sir,” she casually asserted, guiding the psychic slowly up the stairs to the first floor. “I’ve actually seen them float up and down these very stairs, and I’ve observed their details—they appeared to me very much like light-blue, translucent mist; I’ve also seen them, again, float up and down the staircase but at the east end.”

On its exterior the mansion was egg-shell white. It offered a crescent moon shaped introduction, consisting of a driveway entrance half circling into a driveway exit. Within this curvature was a piece of well-kept grass that surrounded two small pear trees, all taking up about fifty-five square meters. The only noteworthy aspect of the mansion itself are the two jade-green-marble angels stationed just up above the main doorway with their stature of apparent prayer, perhaps attempting to stir God’s will to rid the mansion of its non-corporeal inhabitants.

“Please, Myra,” Patric softly requested of her, raising his hand respectfully. “Please, do not tell me where or when you witnessed an apparition or any other ghostly phenomena. I need to not be, in a sense, contaminated by direct knowledge of a residence’s corporeal inhabitants’ experiences with the supernatural.”

She immediately fell silent, allowing him to climb the stairs up to the carpeted hardwood of the first floor, followed closely behind by Stockwell.

It was with his first step onto that floor that the forty-year-old Patric sensed something that he’d sensed on other such occasions, as both a spiritual and residual haunt psychic. There was something about the place, specifically the haunting, that was to do with him, personally and directly; something like deja vu, yet it wasn’t. He had been there before, though not in this lifetime but rather many decades before, maybe centuries (for it’s been around for ages, though no telling for certain the extent). More so, while he sensed both entity and residual haunt, he psychically knew that he was inter-dimensionally linked and even familiar with not only the mansion’s current haunted floors, walls and present spirits; in fact, he somehow knew of everyone who had lived there over its countless years.

Apparently, a part of everything and everyone that had a connection with the mansion was left behind.

Almost simultaneous with this revelation-like sensation was an impression of spiritual familiarity, of souls, all of whom he somehow recognized, along with an environmental familiarity.

Following the sudden overwhelming sensation, he took but five steps along the reaching hallway before feeling dizzy and nauseous. But he didn’t even have a chance to vomit onto the Phylmygs’ expensive carpeting, for he lost consciousness, falling forwards to the floor like a wet dishcloth.

The couple was left stunned and bewildered. Nevertheless, Stockwell, a field medic during the Korean War, did his duty, confirming that Patric’s pulse and breathing were still safely regular or at least sufficiently near being so.

“Did the prestigious psychic just faint on our very floor?” said Myra, sarcastically.

“Indeed, he did,” replied her husband. “Well, we certainly won’t be paying his bill.”

Myra chuckled, as did he.

About five minutes lapsed before Patric regained consciousness.

“What happened?” he asked, with the couple standing over him with expressions of curiosity.

“Are you alright?” Myra dutifully asked. “No broken bones or anything?”

“You fainted,” Stockwell informed the psychic before reaching down to give him a hand.

“Thank you, kindly. That very rarely occurs, but when it does, it just overwhelms me so.”

“If you can’t go on further, to continue, with your … ” Stockwell intentionally began giving the psychic a way out of his job there, but he’d have none of such quitting-on-the-spot.

“No; no—I’ll continue. It’s what I do for a living, after all.”

The couple stepped back a couple feet to give him some maneuvering space. He again took in a deep breath and closed his eyes.

“To the spirits present—please, speak to me,” he requested, with naught but a conspicuous silence to follow. “To the spirits present—please, speak to me.”

The couple held their breath each time Patric called out for the spirits—be they good, bad or a bit of both—to connect with him, or better yet with them all. Again he stated, “To the spirits present—please, speak to me … ”

The air surrounding all three chilled to the point of exhaling vapor.

“They’re with us; here, right now,” the psychic noted, slowing turning full-circle. “They’re all about us, here.”

“But what do they want of us?” Myra anxiously asked. “What should Stockwell and I do?”

“Shush!” her husband sternly rebuked his wife’s interruption of Patric’s apparent success. “Let him concentrate!”

His eyes still shut, he smiled then said, “They really don’t desire anything of you two as the current owners of this place, except for your acceptance of them. They only wish to remain here, peacefully.”

“But they should know that they don’t need permission from us to stay,” said Myra, somewhat bewildered. “We can’t keep them away, keep them from staying here, with us.”

“Ahhh, but to them you do need to give permission,” the psychic corrected her. “The spirits here—there are four of them—they’re actually quite passive. You see, they’re aware that they’re in spiritual form, and in their corporeal lifetime they also lived here, so they know how they would’ve felt had there been spirit forms here with them in life. Yet these four souls were but a very small portion of the full, actual quantity of souls that have had contact with this residence. These four, each one of them, simply chose to not leave, to not move on ‘into the light,’ the hereafter, or to another incarnation.”

Patric momentarily went silent, closed his eyes once again while taking in and releasing another deep breath. He then continued explaining that, “Yes, there are four of them; four souls—one of whom was a teenager when he died from a chicken pox outbreak, along with his little sister. The other two are older women, seniors, and wish to keep the cause(s) of their deaths private. But they suffer not, they all tell me, and will remain here for as …”

“Well, I’m not at all surprised!” Myra rudely cut in, with her husband lightly nudging her with his elbow. Nonetheless, she added, “I’ve seen them—I’ve seen them all!”

Having left the Phylmygs’ mansion, Patric stopped at Starbucks for a large latte. There, seated with his soothing hot beverage, he slid over a copy of the day’s newspaper; and turning open the front page, spotted a notable headline.

“Psychics Seeking Hauntings For Ghost Busting See Sudden Business Boom.” Just below the headline-adjoining story was another headline and story about how the Hale-Bopp comet’s three tails have left some unknown elements directly within Earth’s orbit and thus contacting the planet surface.

Driving home from the coffee shop, he mused over the fact that his experience at the Phylmygs’ residence was far more than just the clichéd notion of de ja vu. He had been at that mansion before—many, many years ago—as though it was a powerful magnet for souls that were of the immediate area. Spirits of a time from as far back as pre-industrial society, though of exactly which year, decade or century, nobody was certain.

______

Patric migrated to Columbia where he experienced fulfillment after becoming involved with that nation’s indigenous peoples, their cultures and religions, all of which worked wonders for his unrelenting chronic anxiety. Since he found peace of mind with the indigenous peoples there, he returned the favor by offering his psychic ability to extra-dimensionally connect the living with their deceased loved-ones and ancestors. He resides there to this day and enjoys a very healthy, happy way of life.^■

[Frank G Sterle Jr]

The Ride of Her Life

THE Hale-Bopp comet had been of closest proximity to Earth on March 22, 1997, and consisted of a variety of elements: ice, rock, carbonatious crondites, methane, as well as organic chemicals such as ethanol, carbon and silicates. However, Hale-Bopp’s run passed Earth apparently had been of greater substance than that perceived by hundreds of millions of Earth folk. Indeed, at its closest point to Earth while passing our way, our planet was engulfed by the contents of the comet’s three, potent tails—one of which consisted of ions, the second of dust and the third of a thin tail of sodium atoms.

Due to the relatively close passing by this comet and its tails (not due to come back our way for about another 2,370 years), an extremely small quantity of Earth’s populace comprised of psychically orientated people had their varying abilities (some even greatly) enhanced and for some non-psychic-majority folk to witness.

Very few psychics could actually manipulate universal temporal reality and thus foresee future events—both of a good nature or bad, the latter being perhaps an approaching natural disaster—while some psychically talented people could sense the presence of spirits, be they residual or sentient, or see in their mind’s eye the exact location of a missing person—dead or alive.

As such occurred, it was recalled by some folk that about three centuries prior to the near passing of Hale-Bopp, one prominent and credible German psychic stated that her “spirit guide”—a proclamation that had gotten her hung by the neck—communicated “a knowledge” to her that on this precise date such a significant comet would pass, more specifically the zenith of its proximity to Earth, during which its three tails’ variety of unique non-Earthly elements would engulf the planet, thus settling onto Earth’s surface, though for no more than 60 seconds. This would enhance the psychic abilities held by an extremely small number of people who’d just by chance come into direct contact with the tails’ elements during that brief 60-second period. When asked by her fellow villagers why only these few psychics will be affected by the comet’s three tails’ elements, the renowned psychic replied that her “spirit guide” revealed to her that those few psychics had endured severe mental illness and then died an untimely, unnatural death in their previous life as a result of the mental illness. Unfortunately, they’d once again be afflicted with severe mental illness during their current incarnation.

__________________________________

“WHOA, Chocolate! Whoa! Whoa, boy, whoa!”

The effort Wanda Smithers exerted to calm her horse, however, was for naught. The horse must’ve been spooked by something, she logically presumed; perhaps by some creepy crawler, like a snake. It was nevertheless irrelevant, for Chocolate was beneath her and racing wildly along the forest trail.

But soon she, as the horse owner and exclusive rider, noticed they were speeding toward a large structure.

Is that the old factory? she momentarily thought before confirming.

“Whoa, boy, whoa! Whoa!!”

Chocolate, though, simply wouldn’t slow down, let alone come to a stop. Instead, he even hastened his bolt towards the decrepit edifice. While rapidly approaching it, Wanda noticed that it was dark inside. Having reached the gaping doorway opening, she also noticed another sunlit opening on the opposite end (with Chocolate perhaps also aware of the situation ahead of them).

As they sped into the abandoned factory—with her wondering, Why are its doors open?—daylight soon turned into darkness, regardless of the sunlight visible at the open doorway at the structure’s opposite end. On either side of them as they raced through were aged, large, grounded machines and other related objects left behind by the former owner.

It then came upon her, like a strong tingling sensation in her head—a powerful feeling of gloom and extreme danger. It then quickly became an intense stomach-turning sensation, one that gave her an inexplicable yet unmistakable impression of imminent, oncoming, serious danger.

Though not knowing at all as to the sensation’s origin, she just knew that she must she must immediately lower her head—and thus did—far more than she already had it lowered, at least by a good thirteen inches. The intense warning-like sensation was enigmatic and perplexing, for she’d never even been near the building, let alone deep within it.

A sudden slight chilly breeze blew over the top of her head. The physical cause of the small blast of cold air indicating a very near miss, she believed, could’ve only been that of some heavy, metallic object passing very fast right over her head, by no more than an inch, as Chocolate bolted.

Imminently exiting the structure, they, under the horse’s will, came to a stop quite unexpectedly and without her saying a word. Becoming more composed, she found it within her to express, “Holy smoke! That felt way too close!”

Relieving Chocolate’s back of her weight, Wanda, a woman of thirty-nine years, stroked the horse’s head and neck, forgivingly. “What were you thinking?”

On a subconscious level, she avoided addressing (perhaps conveniently for herself) the anomalous ESP-like experience that day.

Before slowly riding Chocolate back to the stable, she went back to the abandoned factory to learn what exactly her head just barely missed.

It was still, as just fifteen minutes prior, dark inside thus leaving her to squint a fair bit while investigating. She looked upwards while slowly walking through, until she noticed the mid-section of a solid steel bar or pole, about two inches in diameter; attached at each end were chain links connecting the entire bar to a metallic walkway farther up above, which itself was linked to and hanging from the also considerably solid, metallic roof framing.

“It definitely would’ve bashed my brains in—totally crushed my skull,” she gasped.

Although in considerable denial regarding the fact, the abandoned-factory incident changed, weakened, the special connection between Chocolate and herself; she sadly felt that she could no longer place her unconditional trust in Chocolate as she had for so long—indeed, for over eight years.

Some of her friends referred to Chocolate as her equal—that “they’re joined at the hip”—for, so very special was he to her; nonetheless, though, he’d be relegated to the status of (while quite depressing for her) a very special pet cat or dog, as notably special as the latter two species of beloved pets very often can be.

When Chocolate was settled back in his stable stall, she lugged herself into her adjacent house to lay back into her large, extremely comfortable black-leather couch.

Almost right next to her was the morning newspaper sporting a headline.

“Anomalous Record High Reportings of ‘ESP Occurrences’ Across Entire U.S. Leave Academics Bewildered.”

It took a half-minute to finally dawn upon her, but she thought about her anomalous incident at the decrepit, abandoned factory. The fact that I’m still breathing proves that something earlier today didn’t go the way it was meant.

Flipping the newspaper to its International News section, she came across a story about the Hale-Bopp comet being the very closest to Earth that very day. Wow—three tails, she mused, with all consisting of so many elements of alien origin.

It was 9:34 when she went to bed that evening.

That night, Wanda endured an atypically persistent troubled dream about children, all appearing to be of east Asian ethnicity and incredibly destitute. They were seriously ill—in such distressful state of being. All were desperately reaching out to her, so very many thousands of them, begging for help though with nothing but cement rubble all about them.

Awaking from her nightmare, she was obviously relieved, though only to go back to sleep to continue the same nightmare. In fact, the entire disaster scene had but worsened, with the sickly children beginning to undergo rigor mortis yet still reaching out their tiny, filthy hands to her.

It was quite the fitful night; and the nightmare continued until she finally got out of bed a few minutes after five the next morning, then brew herself some gourmet South American coffee.

However, it was coffee that she’d recently began reconsidering buying and, especially, consuming; she’d heard more than once about the extensively impoverished lives endured by way too many coffee-bean growers—long days of severely busting their humps to scrape together meager sustenance, almost entirely in Central and South America.

Admittedly, there was the Fair Trade coffee organization, she reminded herself, the traders of which pay a good deal more to the exploited coffee-bean growers; yet she’d never seem inclined to seek and purchase it in certain ethically-orientated franchise outlets.

Well, that’s just not good enough. I’ve not done nearly enough! Wanda censured herself. All grocery stores should sell a full variety of Fair Trade coffee—especially the major, humongous store-chains; that’s the only way all Third World coffee farmers won’t be economically prostituted. Not anywhere near enough’s getting into the growers’ very shallow pockets.

It was at that precise point that she decided to actually do something proactively progressive for Earth’s most needy citizens. I have money to hire workers to maintain my house. I even can afford to buy, own and fully enjoy a high-maintenance horse. Why can’t I do a lot more for the poor?! I really should get back into the Peace Corp.

She genuinely contemplated such an unconventional concept at that point in her life(style), of her rejoining the Peace Corp. I could do it—wherever I’m needed the most.

That day she excitedly spent over eleven hours contacting former colleagues regarding current locations of Peace Corp. camps and which were in most need of her abilities. For six years she was an emergency ward medic at her university hospital, regardless of the wealth left behind by her deceased father.

While corresponding via telephone and e-mail that day with former colleagues, she learned that Japan just the night prior suffered an 9.3 earthquake, its epicenter almost directly beneath Hiroshima (and relatively shallow, to make matters far worse)—thus making it the most needy location of foreign aid ASAP.

Also learning that the Peace Corp. had already set up a base-camp in the devastated Japanese city, Wanda knew what was to be her imminent destination and purpose.

“Alright then, Paul; I’ll pack some stuff and meet you at the Hiroshima base-camp, there,” she insisted over the phone. “They came back to normality after being nuked in 1945—they’ll survive this one, too.”

“With outside assistance, and lots of it—yeah, they will,” he wearily affirmed.

Having closed the phone, she was so preoccupied over preparations for her trip to Japan that she’d completely forgotten her continuing nightmare the night before and its obvious significant relevance.

_______

Wanda Smithers immediately made her way to earthquake-ravaged Hiroshima, and she profoundly assisted in aiding very many victims, especially the orphaned children who were in the worst of health and greatest need. However, she developed severe dysentery during an outbreak of the illness due to exposed breaching sewage lines and tanks throughout the city. She died just fifty-six days after arriving in Hiroshima. At her memorial, Paul noted that she knew of the various hazards involved in Peace Corp. duties, yet she got deeply involved nonetheless. “While she’d deal with her severe depression on the job,” he eulogized, “I’d always prefer to think that her work with us alleviated at least some of her formidable emotional turmoil.”^■

[Frank G Sterle Jr]

George Blight’s Flight

THE Hale-Bopp comet had been of closest proximity to Earth on March 22, 1997, and consisted of a variety of elements: ice, rock, carbonatious crondites, methane, as well as organic chemicals such as ethanol, carbon and silicates. However, Hale-Bopp’s run passed Earth apparently had been of greater substance than that perceived by hundreds of millions of Earth folk. Indeed, at its closest point to Earth while passing our way, our planet was engulfed by the contents of the comet’s three, potent tails—one of which consisted of ions, the second of dust and the third of a thin tail of sodium atoms.

Due to the relatively close passing by this comet and its tails (not due to come back our way for about another 2,370 years), an extremely small quantity of Earth’s populace comprised of psychically orientated people had their varying abilities (some even greatly) enhanced and for some non-psychic-majority folk to witness.

Very few psychics could actually manipulate universal temporal reality and thus foresee future events—both of a good nature or bad, the latter being perhaps an approaching natural disaster—while some psychically talented people could sense the presence of spirits, be they residual or sentient, or see in their mind’s eye the exact location of a missing person—dead or alive.

As such occurred, it was recalled by some folk that about three centuries prior to the near passing of Hale-Bopp, one prominent and credible German psychic stated that her “spirit guide”—a proclamation that had gotten her hung by the neck—communicated “a knowledge” to her that on this precise date such a significant comet would pass, more specifically the zenith of its proximity to Earth, during which its three tails’ variety of unique non-Earthly elements would engulf the planet, thus settling onto Earth’s surface, though for no more than 60 seconds. This would enhance the psychic abilities held by an extremely small number of people who’d just by chance come into direct contact with the tails’ elements during that brief 60-second period.

When asked by her fellow villagers why only these few psychics will be affected by the comet’s three tails’ elements, the renowned psychic replied that her “spirit guide” revealed to her that those few psychics had endured severe mental illness and then died an untimely, unnatural death in their previous life as a result of the mental illness. Unfortunately, they’d once again be afflicted with severe mental illness during their current incarnation.

__________________________________

HOW could something like this happen to me?! he screamed into his mind’s ear. You hear and read about such things, but to have such a horrific thing actually happen to me! It’s the absolute epitome of a nightmarish ordeal! A viciously malicious ordeal!!

George Blight was told throughout most of his fifty-seven years of life that he had some sort of fortune-telling or potential for extra sensory perception—though exactly why he had it or the potential for it was never specified nor plausibly explained to him by all of those tarot card readers, etcetera, for whose ‘services’ he’d paid handsomely. However, what was happening to him at that moment was crystal-clearly real and horrific, though never, ever, foreseen in a premonition by him or by any other ‘fortune-teller.’

He was in fact experiencing the very worst of ‘the very worst’—stuck on a large DC-10 jetliner, caught in a very deep wind-shear, plummeting down towards the darkened eastern Atlantic Ocean, somewhere off the southwestern coast of France; with travel bags, pillows falling, sliding every which way, and hundreds of oxygen masks dangling from somewhere above.

Oh, God! … If only I’d taken the concord or … How in the hell could not one—just one—of those countless card-readers and storefront psychics warn me of this death trip, trap. Peter did want to meet with me just yesterday—he’d probably have known. But then again, he’s also a ‘fortuneteller,’ who’s also not nearly accurate enough times in his foretelling of future events, and especially so with such negative ones.

Oh, my God, I’m going to die!!

Peter might’ve foreseen this ordeal but decided he was likely wrong—as he is with such major matters, and especially likely so with airline disasters—and thus realized that since I told him that I really should make this trip, he didn’t want to scare me for nothing into canceling my reservation on this flight. He even assured me that I myself would almost certainly foresee such a disastrous event like this happen to me. He actually said, “I really believe you have it in you, Big George guy.”

But then it finally came. The sensation of the huge aircraft gradually leveling off, its nose and tail becoming parallel with the calm ocean below, all with the slow alleviation of the ear-piercing whine of the plummeting aircraft’s four, huge, extremely powerful bypass-turbofan-jet engines.

His life was spared. Every passenger’s life was spared; all 356 of them. The pilot then informed all that the aircraft did indeed fly into a formidable wind shear.

“But please remain seated with your safety belts on and secured. Thank you for your patience.”

George closed his eyes with praise, as two drops of oily sweat rolled down his forehead, onto his glasses then finally made their way onto his pale cheeks.

Thank you, God! Oh thank you, God! Thank you so very much!

When the plane finally landed, he, being traumatized, found himself fumbling his nervous fingers while trying to take the bi-polar-disorder medication that his psychiatrist prescribed him a month earlier. He was so shook up that he thought he might not be able to get his medication out of its bottle and into his mouth.

Though finally having washed down his medication with the funny-tasting, standard airplane drinking water, he hustled himself off of the plane, down to the baggage claim, then outside to catch the first taxi to the nearest hotel with vacancy just for the night. There was no sense in going for a nicer hotel deeper into the city, since he was catching an early flight to Cairo the next morning, anyway, and definitely wouldn’t have time to enjoy any of Paris’s posh hotels.

Rather than allow the taxi driver to see just how badly his hands were shaking, he simply dropped an adequate amount of francs onto the driver’s lap, bolted out of the vehicle and to the hotel entrance.

Regardless of his ordeal, he found himself hungry, and it was around breakfast time back home along the eastern U.S. However, he knew that there was a good chance that his unstable condition could embarrass him in the dining room, say, with a prawn shaking off of his fork and onto the table or, even worse, the floor.

Thus he’d splurge and order room service for dinner, along with a bottle of soothing, bubbly white wine.

Washing down his last mouthful of sirloin steak with the last half-glass of wine, George kicked off his shoes and threw himself backwards onto the bed. He thought about how even living with severe mental illness, life’s is not that bad after all, assuming that thought wasn’t just of survivor’s gratitude. For the previous thirteen years he’d been a successful chief advisor with a large, financial firm, the proud father of three healthy teenagers and the husband of a beautiful, successful lawyer. And I did just survive a jetliner’s plunge thousands of feet towards the icy Atlantic Ocean.

But still overwhelming the positive stuff on his list was the fact that he, for the last half-dozen years or so, has found life to be rather inexplicably unbearable—his good job, three healthy children with his beautiful lawyer wife (who were worried about his recent severely depressed outlook and short-notice trip to Egypt) had become, simply put, unfulfilling.

His negativity plus his recent ordeal in the air, all combined, were still not enough to keep him awake. Soon, he closed his eyes and slept …

“Hey, mister; what are you doing out there?” asked George, to the man standing outside on the hotel’s fourteenth floor ledge, which was but one and a half feet wide. “Get back in here before you catch your death; it’s a freezing wind out here.” He was the same bellhop who’d delivered George’s room service barely an hour before.

“Stay the hell away!” the man warned. “Or I will jump! I really mean it!”

“C’mon, guy; things can’t be so bad if … ”

Apparently, the bellhop had indeed been dead serious in his unrelenting desire to leap, and that’s exactly what he did. Although George turned his eyes away to avoid the horrific sight, the French man leapt forward and down to the pavement below—obliterated into eternity. He thought that he could even hear the blunted crack of the man’s bones upon impacting the pavement.

“Oh! Crap!!”

Snapping out of his slumber, George found himself lying on the bed with only about a half-hour having passed, according to the radio’s digital clock, which read 10:56 p.m.

Outside his closed-curtain window, though far closer to the window of the next hotel room, there were lamplights placed there to illuminate the hotel’s name’s large letters painted rose red on the outside brick wall.

I guess that’s why this room was so atypically cheap.

He then sat himself up, wiping away with his hand the thin layer of sweat from his forehead.

“It seemed so real,” he mumbled, getting up to walk over to the room’s sole window.

Bothering him were the thoughtless words he’d offered the nightmare bellhop during his final moments of life. “C’mon guy; things can’t be so bad,” he replayed his own, exact words in his mind’s ear, cringing. What a stupid thing to say; what was I thinking? Well, it was just a dream, and stupid things are frequently said and done in dreams.

Seeking some cooler night air, he found the windowpane sticking to the frame since so few guests bothered opening it. After some strategically placed knocks with his hand, however, he eventually loosened it free. A light gust of early-autumn Parisian air blew into his face and room.

He looked straight out towards the well-lit airport runways no more than two miles away, before looking up and over to the city core, lit-up comparably bright to that of London or New York City.

Again the ordeal of the plummeting jetliner began playing in his mind when he was abruptly alerted by a sound like that of a squawking seal. He initially thought that the strange sound may be coming from just some birds outside on the ledge; however, when he went to look out the window, to the right, then the left, he found himself stunned numb at the sight of a man standing on the hotel’s outside ledge, with his back pressed against the brick wall, quivering from both fear and the notably cold night air.

The man was not well built, a fact evident by the small uniform into which he seemed to comfortably fit; plus he wore a small and also befitting strap-on cap. The man obviously had been crying.

“Hey, you’re the bellhop who served me my meal,” said George, his nervous voice noticeable. “Why the hell are you out there? You’ll fall and kill yourself.”

“You are very bright, you are,” replied the bellhop, in a strong French accent, sarcastically then rhetorically. “One cannot get anything past you, can one?”

The distraught bellhop’s sarcasm aside, George wondered how a man seemingly so determined to take his own life by jumping off of a towering building’s ledge felt so compelled to lean back against the brick siding, appearing to grasp onto anything out there available to grasp. Then again, he recalled hearing somewhere that when some people determined to kill themselves by jumping to their deaths flail wildly on their way down in a futile attempt to grasp at something—anything. It must be instinctual, I guess, he mused.

“You’re not going to jump, are you?” he queried, really trying to not sound so stupid. “Please—let’s talk.”

“There is nothing to talk about, mister. Now, please go away!”

“I can’t just walk away and leave you out there,” explained George. Being only five-foot-ten and 291 pounds, he didn’t particularly desire going out onto the ledge to join the bellhop.

“Please, mister, leave me alone,” the bellhop begged. “There is nothing to talk about.”

“Sure, there’s plenty to talk about. For example, the jet plane I was flying in just a few hours ago actually almost plunged into the ocean. I sweated for God to spare my life, and here you’re planning to snuff out yours. The ironies in life can really be bitter, don’t you think?”

Finding himself considering whether he could’ve come across as more thoughtful than he had, he noticed that the bellhop wasn’t clasping so intently onto the hotel’s siding as he was before; rather, the man was beginning to lean a bit forward.

“Whoa, guy—be careful out there! Believe me, life’s worth living,” he urged, again sounding foolish, futile and desperate. “I mean … I mean things will … ”

It all, though, did not matter in the end, since the bellhop decided against George’s reasoning and pleas, however well-intentioned. However, it wouldn’t have mattered what anyone would’ve said to the deeply troubled man; things were, at least from his perspective, simply that bad in his life.

Thus George again, just like in his nightmare, turned his eyes away just as the bellhop jumped out as far as he could and fell like a rock, down onto the recently-paved street below. Had it not been for the noisy vehicular traffic, he believed, he would have heard an audible thud of the man’s body hitting the cement street and shattering within.

He could not believe his eyes. He had in fact dreamt virtually the whole thing just minutes before. How could’ve I known? Was my dream just that, naught but a dream followed by an extreme coincidence? Or did I have a premonition—a very disturbing peek into the future?

He’d dismiss it all if it wasn’t so disturbingly accurate; so extremely accurate. But then again, why didn’t I foresee the airplane incident? Oh, but nobody died in that incident; the plane didn’t even crash.

In his dream, the bellhop was dressed the exact same way as the bellhop who’d just really killed himself. And most important, the subject of his ‘dream’ leapt to his death from the same ledge, just outside the window, as did the bellhop in reality.

What’s all of this about? How the hell did I know?!

Regardless, he realized that French city police would probably want to talk with him about the terrible incident. But he decided that he had nothing informative to offer; any chance he had to have talked the despondent man out of committing suicide, was long gone, forever.

“I should leave it all alone,” he mumbled assertively to himself. “Yeah, I’ll leave it all alone and be on my way.”

If police insisted on discussing the matter with him, he’d just reply, “I didn’t hear a thing. I must’ve slept through it all; jetlag, I guess.”

At seven the next morning (about nine the night prior for his body clock), George got himself out of bed at the insistence of his digital clock’s alarm. He dressed then went downstairs to see if there was any mention in any Parisian newspaper regarding the suicide the night before. He doubted it, though, for the city is huge, and there must’ve been other, far more newsworthy occurrences on which to report than one low-wage worker jumping to his death.

Scanning the publications at the newsstand, he found that many of them mentioned that there had been a record-setting high in the rate of suicides during the preceding twenty-four hours.

One prominent newspaper printed as its main headline, “High Number of Suicides in City an Anomaly, says Sociologist.” He looked through the copy’s pages, stopping only to read, “Astronomers Scan the Sky for Hale-Bopp’s Closest Come-by.” That was yesterday, he thought, looking at the copy’s date, which read “March 23, 1997.”

He then left the hotel lobby and flagged down a cab for the airport.

There’s a first at some point in everyone’s life, he reminded himself, and for some or even many people, a first for the paranormal or supernatural. Perhaps Hale-Bopp’s effect on our planet is such a first for all of humanity.

He could recall reading or hearing about Hale-Bopp passing by relatively near Earth and that it, or more accurately its tails’ element-rich debris, would be abnormally visible to the naked eye at night, though necessarily away from interference by bright city lights.

He probably would have noticed it the night before when he first opened the hotel window if it were not for the bright lights from the airport and the city illuminating any darkness necessary to observe space-bound objects.

But as of the day before, Hale-Bopp was just beginning its trek away from Earth (it was over a hundred million miles from Earth at that point).

His cab arrived at the airport a few minutes short of ten that morning, which left him about an hour and a half before the departure of his flight to Cairo International.

Having finished a chocolate éclair he’d purchased there, he went over to a far-more quiet corner of the airport so as to get in a hopefully undisturbed nap. He set his watch’s snooze alarm for half an hour, positioned himself in his chair as comfortable as possible and closed his eyes.

How can I sleep at all after almost crashing into the Atlantic Ocean aboard a nose-diving large jetliner? Plus witnessing a suicide in a nightmare and then have it reoccur just so but in reality? To sleep at all after experiencing that, would not one have to be callous or even cynical?

George briefly pondered over this concept for a few moments before dozing off into a refreshing slumber. When his watch’s snooze alarm went off, he felt somewhat refreshed and notably relieved that he wasn’t forced to endure another violent-dream-premonition as he had the night before.

Soon enough, it was time to board his plane, which he’d dreaded repeating following the wind-shear incident, the fright flight of his life. But to his delight, he was not at all a nervous wreck—not then and not even during the flight; it was as though the airplane ordeal he’d experienced just the day prior had not even occurred.

As it would be, the uneventful two hour flight to Cairo only justified his said contentment.

Even so, how can I be so calm? I still should be an emotional mess.

He didn’t know why; just that he wasn’t at all a mess.

Landing in Cairo, George felt unusually and inexplicably elated, about which he did know what. He finally was exactly where, geographically, he wanted to be in this world—just a few hours from the Great Pyramids of Egypt; and, most important, it would be precisely there, he truly believed, where he was going to find true peace of mind.

Literally every single other effort had failed, and especially so with the fortunetellers of New York City, too many of whom, if not all, were corrupt. Every one of them had miserably failed and basically outright swindled him; thus he became determined to find something solid and pure with which to cure himself—unlike all of the psychotropic medications that he strongly felt did far more harm to him than good.

When he took his first step out of the airport structure, he was barraged by old men, young boys and the many in between, all simultaneously begging him to hire them to do any hump-busting hard labor to earn what amounted to peanuts back in the U.S.

“You, sir; can you suggest a decent hotel?” he asked one cabbie, before looking at one of the boys, “and you, son; please put my luggage into the cab.”

“Yes, sir; right away, sir,” said both, in unison.

“My interest here, in your great nation, is to visit the true, pure mind and soul healers or healing structures indigenous only to Egypt.”

Particularly at that moment, George radiated a form of positive energy, and there was a notable excitement in his demeanor (he wasn’t even concerned with whether the two Egyptians could even understand him).

“Yes, sir; right away, sir,” both replied, again in unison.

Before he climbed into the cab, he immediately gave one boy what amounted to about a dollar in U.S. currency but what was a small fortune for the north African boy.

“The best hotel, sir—for your means, of course, sir; the best hotel is the Pyramid Palace,” suggested the eager cabbie, while pulling away from the curb diligently but forcefully, hoping to receive a generous tip. “There, they have slot machines and card games.”

“Actually,” he hastily replied, “I’m not at all interested—not one single bit—in games of chance.”

_______

George Blight did make his way to the Great Pyramids of Egypt, although just two weeks shy of a year prior to suffering a fatal brain aneurysm. However, according to a woman he befriended in Egypt, only ten minutes before the aneurysm occurred, he experienced a vivid vision during a brief nap in which he saw himself place his hand to his forehead before falling to the ground. He immediately awoke fearing the worst, which apparently caused his already-high blood pressure to rise even higher just prior to dropping dead.^■

[Frank G Sterle Jr]

Go Philosophically Phuck Yourself

“HI … I’m Jazz, Jazz Zimmerman. I like what they’re playing here now, but I’m more into jazz music. Actually, a mixture of jazz with R&B is my absolute preference. Although, many people I talk to are left totally bewildered by my really liking the mixture of the two. But I don’t care.”

He then smiled at the gorgeous brunette to whom he’d just spoke at the singles bar, before asking, “Do you like what they’re playing right now?”

The woman turned her head barely enough to glance at him, gave a half-effort smile, then looked back at her drink.

“It’s alright,” she finally spoke, “but I don’t think it’s anything special.”

Jazz then chanced one a little more personal: “What’s your name?”

“Cindy.”

“I haven’t noticed you here before now.”

“This is my first time,” she replied. “I just moved here, from Toronto.”

“I’m a philosophy professor, at SFU,” he offered, unsolicited, then queried her further. “What do you do?”

Slightly clearing her throat as a result of topic discomfort, she answered, “I’m a dancer … an exotic dancer.”

“Wow—that’s something.”

“Really,” she uttered, unimpressed by his patronage.

“Yeah, really,” he began. “As long as you’re left feeling that you’re successfully contributing to society in some manner—that you’re showing … you’re doing your share for society—then you’re in fact contributing. As a philosophy professor, I can accurately say that if …”

“Actually, I’m very much beginning to hate my profession,” Cindy blatantly cut off Jazz. “And I’m quitting soon … I begin law school this upcoming Fall semester.”

She then pulled out a menthol cigarette, lit it with a gold-plated lighter and took in a deep drag. Exhaling the smoke before her, Cindy again looked at Jazz and said, “Would I be ‘contributing to society’ through a law practice as much as I would baring my entire body on front of gawking, drunk perverts? Do0 you think so, with that philosophical mind of yours?”

“Well,” Jazz commenced, though less confident, “it’s really a matter of what makes you feel good about what you’re doing and, more important, good about yourself; not at all what makes some ‘gawking, drunk perverts’ feel good with themselves, sexually.”

Losing patience with Jazz’s fashionably-feel-good philosophy, Cindy requested of him, “And what do you know about what kind of job makes me ‘feel good’ about myself? Why in hell would I get satisfaction from my so-called contribution to society—from stripping all night, mostly for tips? It’s everything for which the term ‘demeaning’ stands—the epitome of disgrace—unless, of course, the stripper’s also an ardent exhibitionist.”

Jazz swallowed the last of his drink before letting Cindy know that, “You’re really being too hard on yourself; I personally think a lot of strippers—they’re very gutsy girls.”

Taking in another drag and immediately exhaling, Cindy emphasized that, “Perhaps what you actually meant was that you, Jazz, think a lot about strippers, just like those men (and a few women) ogling me all night. And besides being ‘gutsy,’ we can also be quite naive, especially when it comes to the guys with whom we tend to hook up.”

Finishing her drink, she turned to face Jazz as she informed him of the recent breakup of her common-law union.

“My so-called high school sweetheart, with whom I’ve been living for over two decades and to whom I gave my heart, dumped me flat for another, younger woman—a college junior. I’d supported him emotionally, sexually, financially, etcetera, etcetera, for so many years, and one day he just decides to leave, to simply dump me—just like that!”

Jazz could tell that the two double vodkas that she’d polished off were having quite the inebriating effect on her (especially the noticeable slur), so he decided to end the night’s brief yet still rather abrasive dialogue on a, to him, encouraging and enlightening note.

“Well, ’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Having absorbed his closing words, Cindy, giving Jazz a look that was thick with incredulity, pulled herself away from her seat a bit too expressively.

“You know, professor: First, you need to get yourself some new material—and more so, some new material that actually belongs to you.”

Then turning to leave the premises, she also let Professor Zimmerman know: “Lastly, you can go philosophically phuck yourself! And just for the record, that’s ‘phuck’ with a ‘ph,’ not an ‘f’!”^■

[Frank G Sterle Jr]

Citizen Lorne & His Stare Dare Challenge Rule

SIMPLY unable to resist a ‘stare dare’ challenge, or on occasion initiating one himself, Lorne always kept an eye out, while walking around town, for the rare guy with that particular appearance which screamed out the Hollywood cliché, machismo motto, “make my day.” Furthermore, Lorne did so regardless of knowing that practicing such a habitual, dangerous, foolhardy game would eventually, perhaps even imminently, get him or the other guy severely injured or killed, all for his dose of adrenalin rush to which he was accustomed to receiving from such stare dares. But there was no sure way of knowing in advance if the potential stare dare challenge walking towards him would be his last—only after the dare had been initiated and carried out to its conclusion, whatever it may include.

Lorne felt that reacting to a stare dare involved common sense and was straightforward enough using man’s naturally built-in ‘tough guy’ instincts. To avoid inadvertently initiating a stare dare also involved common sense yet there still was the one rule typically easily understood.

Although it all could still result in one guy nursing a bruised ego and/or eye if (even well intentioned) conduct is misconstrued, quite simply if two guys approaching each other, say, on a city sidewalk, are destined to imminently pass right by one another (with a typical couple of feet in between them), the guy who supposedly just intended to glance towards the other guy however catches the guy already staring at him, the latter is to be allowed to stare back until the other guy looks away.

But Lorne often didn’t play by the rule, and he wouldn’t feel any more compelled to do so had it been written in a large, hardbound book available to read at any bookstore and public library. In fact, he would often initiate a stare dare, then he’d audaciously maintain his glare at the other guy (who, by the rule, had the ‘right of way’ to stare back and maintain such until the initiator himself looked away). As the guy would briefly glance at Lorne, who was still staring at him, and felt intimidated into avoiding a verbal, perhaps followed by a physical, confrontation, the guy would then look away as the two passed each other—all occurring just before Lorne, as a finale, turned his head and continued eyeing the guy, just for good measure.

All of Lorne’s friends and worried family members could clearly see that he was really pushing his luck by recklessly stare dare challenging big guys through his blatant breaking of the rule—very dangerous behavior, especially given his extreme nearsightedness, which is crippling without his expensive glasses. For, someday, the other guy may simultaneously brazenly break the rule, or simply respond in kind to Lorne’s open contempt for his targets’ own sense of self-esteem. As luck would have it, Lorne came upon just such a match while spending an afternoon downtown.

CONCEIVABLY, one might consider such a potentially precarious situation as ‘the perfect storm,’ this case being that in which two anomalous yet equally intense conditions (i.e. two guys who are very angry over unjust treatment) collide together at a crossing in a very bad point in space-time.

To avoid confusion, for many years Lorne was aware that his hazardous anti-social behavior was the result of the Rubic’s Cube sized chip on his shoulder, with itself being directly linked to his compulsion to over-compensate—i.e. aggressiveness, plus interest—for the large quantity of bullying that he barely endured in his youth. Even worse, if Lorne happened to also be in a bad mood on the same day that he initiated a stare dare challenge, he allowed his bad mood to considerably exacerbate the confrontational situation—all regardless of knowing that such a dish as the stare dare challenge was one best served cold.

On this one ‘bad day,’ Lorne strongly felt that he was unjustly verbally assaulted by an unruly, female fellow bus passenger; even worse, one against whom he knew that he could not physically retaliate, for it was against his congenital nature to ‘hit a girl.’ Indeed, Lorne, especially as a boy, was always the kind to take fisticuffs from the girls, doing naught but his best to manoeuver around or deflect their swings.

Thus, that afternoon, Lorne was left with only burning bitterness and frustration.

The other, significant condition was the approaching guy who was slightly larger than Lorne in all three dimensions, though his size didn’t act as a ‘fear factor’ problem for Lorne, who simply psychologically compensated for the guy’s extra size by setting his ‘efforts meter mark’ a bit higher. Inside the fast approaching guy’s mind was an infestation of fury over a cheating common-law wife, who also took him for virtually everything he had, including every penny that he put towards their joint bank account.

Hence, he was stuck in an enraged state of mind and more than willing to teach a good lesson to the next guy who just looked at him sideways—or atypically of the societal norm of a quick glance before returning to looking straight ahead.

With only a few meters away from passing right by each other, Lorne—once again willing to break the stare dare rule thus pushing the envelope of his luck—initiated a stare dare challenge with the other guy, who quickly noticed Lorne’s unwarranted glare and in just turn connected his glare with Lorne’s.

Although the game rule dictated that the onus is on Lorne to look away, both he and the other guy instead turned their heads to maintain the glare lock for as long as possible.

The other guy stopped while still staring at Lorne, then rhetorically asked agitatedly, “Do you have a problem, pal?”

“Yeah, I do,” Lorne replied, also agitatedly, as he always responded in such scenarios. “You’re staring.”

“You stared first, pal, and kept on staring,” the guy explained before stating his ultimatum. “So, either you walk away with your tail between your legs, or I bust your head.”

With the irony of his naked aggression and the crucifix’s intended symbolism of Christ-like sacrifice, compassion and pacifism apparently lost on him, Lorne grinned as he lifted his silver necklace and crucifix trinket and dropped them down the inside of his T-shirt just before doing his own explaining.

“You see, I need my specs to see the location of your face if I’m to beat it in; so, if you break them, I’m going to take out your two, upper front teeth with my ‘knuckle buster’ in recompense. I refer to it as ‘the break-even effect’.” Lorne, meanwhile, twisted from side to side a large chunk of silver ring on his forefinger; it indeed could easily enough break teeth, assuming it landed straight-on and hard enough. “Again, just so you’re clearly informed, I will not knock out your two front teeth, since they can be reinserted by any competent dentist; rather I’ll break each of the two, leaving their crooked stubs unbearably sensitive, thus you in great pain until they can be expensively capped.”

“Hey, dittos on that, pal,” the other guy responded to Lorne’s bold threat with his own smirk and twists of his gold ring, albeit clearly not as large as Lorne’s.

“Just so you’re clear, first I’m going to bust your ‘specs,’ then your two front teeth, then lastly your head.”

The guy then stepped up so close to Lorne, their faces were but five inches apart.

“It’s your move,” the guy informed Lorne, who fired back even more forcefully, “I never play white and move first. In a psychological sense, I perform far better when I play black and react.”

Each stared hard into the other’s eyes for about fifteen seconds before Lorne’s opponent chanced “playing white.” Giving Lorne a firm shove to his chest, causing him to slightly stumble backwards, Lorne quickly regained his footing position and returned the initiating assault, plus some interest.

And that was it.

Throwing a lightning headlock onto Lorne, the guy knocked his glasses a half-dozen feet to where stood gawking bystanders, which consisted of both the bloodthirsty and the bewildered. Exacerbating Lorne’s fast-paced losing status were the guy’s four blows to Lorne’s face, one of which would leave Lorne with a day-after shiner.

But that was when the winning/losing status briefly changed as do so many such fights go, for Lorne ‘saw red’—not red as in blood (not quite yet, anyway), but red as in his own blind rage. He so very suddenly forced his own head out of the guy’s oppressive arm wrap, the guy barely blinked before finding his head held down firmly in a damaging position. With the guy’s head held tight by the hair within Lorne’s unrelenting grasp and having received a steady lightening succession of seven uppercuts, all was halted by a couple of large-guerrilla Good Samaritans. Indeed, their intervention spared Lorne’s brief nemesis from receiving—besides his bloodied nose, a split lip and facial lacerations (the latter mostly due to Lorne’s huge ring—a further hammering to his entire head, accompanied by the bouncing about within his skull of his brain.

“Mind your own business, you fucking assholes!” Lorne, breathing a bit heavy, blared at the self-anointed referees, before he again bellowed, “Are you only going to stick your big noses in the ring when I’m on top with the advantage?!”

“Hey—enough’s enough,” insisted one Samaritan, holding out to Lorne his glasses, intact. “You’ve bloodied him up. What more do you feel the need to prove?”

“Well, he moved first—he shoved me!” Lorne retorted. “The next move, and maybe even the last move, is therefore rightfully mine.”

The Samaritan then went silent for a few seconds while looking down at Lorne’s T-shirt, precisely where his crucifix-trinket necklace was hanging just minutes prior.

“I noticed you hiding your ‘Christianity’ under your shirt when … ”

“I’m not ‘hiding’ it,” Lorne interrupted. “I put it there so it wouldn’t get snapped off my neck. It’s too expensive for me to fix every time I get into … whatever.”

“But why do you even wear it? You’re obviously not a follower of Christ’s teachings, especially the true pacifism.”

“I wear it first and foremost as jewelry and, secondly, as a symbol of what I’d attempt to be, had I it in me what one needs to even bother trying.”

And that was definitely one of those times that Lorne was a million miles away from being Christ-like, a great state of real humane being that the silver trinkets typically signified.

Although he insidiously motioned via his body language that he was calming down, Lorne instead leapt at the already injured guy, who was busy wiping the drying blood from his face, and sucker punched him into his temple.

However, the guy himself then instantly saw more red than the small stain of dried blood on the back of his hand. He lunged into Lorne’s lower torso, forcing Lorne’s back hard into an adjacent cement-block wall.

Immediately, the guy, armed with his 10K gold ring, powerfully thrust his fist into Lorne’s mouth, which procured a notable crack, with the latter’s head thrown backwards into the cement-block wall.

Both having stopped to catch their breath, Lorne could be seen feeling with his tongue what was left of his left, (upper) front tooth.

“Ooww! Shit !” he pretty much squealed, just before again emphasizing the excruciating hit-a-nerve pain inside his mouth. “Ooww! Fuck me!”

Lorne then felt the stub of his half-tooth with his finger to confirm what he readily expected.

“My tooth’s broken,” he noted the obvious, prior to inadvertently sucking cool air into his mouth, thus again igniting a hit-a-nerve sensation within the broken tooth’s stub like a firecracker. “Oh, fucking Moses!!” he bellowed, placing his hand over his throbbing mouth.

“Fuck this!” declared Lorne, succumbing to his ‘victorious’ foe. “I’m outta here.”

From appearances, Lorne indeed did walk away with his figurative tail between his legs; he was the one whose tooth got knuckle busted.

But I’m gone just for now, he mentally noted. I’ll swallow my pride and not focus on my anger or need for vengeance.

Actually, as it turned out, Lorne henceforth went about making stare dare challenges—or not—strictly according to such dares’ just rule.^■

[Frank G Sterle Jr, April 2013]