For LysMandala....getting to know Joe......

Joe was considered peculiar when he was a small child. Instead of wanting to play outside with the other small children, he enjoyed sitting amongst some of the older family members and listening in on their conversations. What makes him so peculiar? Joe enjoyed sitting around them, so that he could try to figure out who was lying and who was the honest of the group. You see Joe had a very keen sense of intuition and he would often place a bet with himself as to who would be the dishonest one and who was willing to pour their heart out honestly. Most of the time, he was right. As Joe got older, he could also sense other things...Sometimes he could feel more than one presence in the room.. the kind you couldn’t see. But the most disturbing thing is, sometimes, those beings would visit him in his dreams. Joe thought he had a pretty good life. He spent a lot of time down his aunt’s house, because both his parents worked a lot, but for the most part, his life seemed a simple one. He had 2 brother’s and 3 sisters. They loved him, but he was just a little too strange for them. Joe often played by himself, talking to whomever he could imagine was there with him and his siblings found that creepy. But Joe didn’t like his aunts house...it held a dark cloud over it, and he often wondered if it was the reason why his older cousins were so anxious to move out as soon as they graduated from high school. Being’s that Joe often stayed at his aunts house, she made a room for him in one of the rooms of her unfinished basement. Joe felt uncomfortable down there. He always felt a dark presence in the basement, but nothing he could pinpoint...Its not that it was really dark down there, most times during the day, the light from the windows illuminated the rooms, and at night the lights in some of the empty rooms were left on. Oh but sometimes his visitors would enter his dreams. He often had terrible nightmares about them. They never showed their faces, but their bodies were scaly and hairless. They would often appear out of the darkest corners of his dreams, slithering towards him and would try to corner him, so that they could do who knows what to him. Sometimes, they placed him on a stone tablet and tied his hands and feet to each corner of the tablet. Other times, they chased him until they caught him and fought over who be the one to sink their daggers into his small body. But the one thing that Joe always did in these dreams, when he was at his most highest point of dread and despair, is cry out to his Maker. You see from a young age, Joe was made to understand the story of creation...that he had a Maker and that, that Maker was responsible for everything that went on in life. His family pretended to be very religious, but they didn’t always live according to the rules of the Good Book. Joe was made to go to church every Sunday morning and he knew a lot of the scriptures by heart, but the one which stuck to his mind the most was Psalm 23.. Whenever he dreamt of the strange beings trying to attack him, he would recite that scripture over and over again...and sometimes, the beings laughed at him, but he wouldn’t stop reciting it. Ever so often, he could hear someone whispering to him to say it louder and with meaning, as if to let him know that the more he meant it, the faster he would receive help. And it always worked. He didn’t know who his helpers were, but they usually flew in out of nowhere. Glowing iridescent white beings that had long and wide wings....they never allowed him to see their faces, at least not until he got older....but that is another story, for another time. They were much taller than him, and with their presence they bought a beautiful white light that instantly immersed you in goodness and a feeling of being totally protected... Once they came, Joe would cry out with such gratefulness, because he knew that they would save him....And they always did, chasing away the dark, monstrous beings, and enveloping him with their powerful appendages....until he woke up, sometimes soaking wet with sweat, sometimes soaking wet with tears.....

To be continued....