On the drive over I opened the YouTube app on my phone and played a snippet of TK Kirkland, a veteran in the stand-up comedy world being interviewed on VladTV. As I raced through the midmorning traffic on Highway 82 headed toward Santa Clara Square, I was excited to meet with Daniel and also quickly thought of the slew of meetings I had lined up for the afternoon.
I get there and glance at my my phone as I wait in line to get a table. It's 12:08 PM and slightly relieved that I hadn't held up my friend who showed up only 7 minutes after me.
We sit down, have an amazing lunch and even greater nostalgic conversation of our old college days, and how we survived the rut race of Cal Poly to finally becoming engineers, and sitting at that table enjoying a meal together as we pondered our next moves in life.
I high tail it out of there at 1:08 PM to catch a meeting on zoom for which I'm already late. At the office shortly after the meeting right before I leave, I stop to have a quick conversation with a co-worker as he recounts a wild weekend in which he blacked out from one too many shots of tequila and nursed his hangover the rest of Sunday afternoon. I teased him in soft banter over it before catching the elevator to head to the parking structure.
I get home and work the rest of the afternoon till 7:08 pm, when the wife and I decided to go do some grocery shopping. On the drive back home we have a spirited debate about religion and what justification each one of them has to blissful eternal life. We get home at about 9:15 PM. As we settle down to have a TV dinner, I had the sudden urge to pray. I ask my wife if she'd like to pray with me and she agrees. We then proceed to bow our heads and pray with great fervor. Proclaiming
God's promises over our future plans and endeavors, but also renouncing and breaking any bondages of a
sinful life that would open the door to demonic attack in our lives.
No sooner had we finished praying and said our final Amens, than I became cognizant of the fact that I had painted a target on my back for disrupting the goings on in the spiritual realm through the singular act of my prayer to God. At 11:25 PM we retire to bed and thus begun the torment of my first night's sleep in the month of March.
As I lay in bed, I kept getting woken up by sudden jolts of fear, that would spawn my body back into life like a patient coding on a hospital bed who just received a shock of electricity to resuscitate their heart. Seeing as this had happened in the past, I opt to sleep on my back with my fingers neatly interlaced over my torso like a corpse. My mind makes a quick association to death once I realize this is the only position that would calm my mind and body into sweet slumber, but I immediately chalk this up as irrational thought and drift peacefully into what I'd hoped would be sweet dreams.
Next thing I remember I was in a room dimly light by candle light and I had my hands bound firmly by nylon rope to a table post. The figure that initially loomed over me was none threatening, but as the night went on I would later come discover he would be my worst tormentor. He wore a white tank top, a pair of black slacks, a black belt and a pair of beach sandals, but for some reason unbeknownst to me I could not make out his face since it was blurred out. His demeanor was completely void of compassion and I quickly inferred his intentions for me were adversarial. I struggled and twitched in vain from my position on the ground as I begged and probed him to tell me why he had me tied up in such a manner.
He didn't utter a single word. It's as if he was sent there to cause me great harm so as to please whomever had sent him to oppose me. He took brisk steps to the door like an army drill Sergeant and proceeded to lock the door. At this point I try to scream as I know my end is near, but he turns and lunges toward me with a grisly back handed slap so powerful that it knocks me and the post clean off the table that I'm bound to and hurls me across the room. The table falls with a loud thud and I quickly ponder how I didn't feel an ounce of pain from being knocked across the room, however I was still awash in fear and terror from this occurrence. With my hands still bound behind my back I hurry to the door to see if I can pry it open. Just then he picks up the candle and proceeds to hold it over the curtain that draped the entrance to the door to set it on fire. However I am close enough to instinctively blow it out before the flame spreads. In anger the man spreads his palm across my chest and shoves me hard to the ground.
I land soo hard that the wind is knocked out of my lungs and I can no longer scream for help. He relights the curtain in more than one spot to ensure the flame spreads faster. It was in these last moments that two realizations dawned on me through this man's treacherous act of arson. First, if by some stroke of luck I survived this debacle, I would severely be burned beyond recognition. Secondly, this man was determined to end my life at all costs even if it meant laying down his own in an act of suicide.
As I resigned myself to this agonizing death, I woke up suddenly with my thighs muscles sore, tongue firmly gripped between my teeth and the rest of my body thoroughly drenched in sweat. In bewilderment I just lay there still assuming the posture of a corpse contemplating the fact that my life had almost been snuffed out, and realizing that it was only just a dream. I had survived an encounter with the darkness and lived to tell the tail. And in a moment of clarity, the words from the gospel of John's 8th verse and 32nd chapter echoed through my mind, "...Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
THAT IS VERY WAGGISH OF YOU TO TELL THE TAIL!
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