A God Wannabe
After Mary graduated, there appeared a rift in my heart that continued to widen as time progressed. I didn’t know it at the time, but the Law of God is written in everyone’s heart₍₁₎. I was no exception, even though I didn’t believe in the teachings of the Bible regarding sin and redemption. Lair told me that those teachings were lies, added to the Bible by the Catholic Church long after the original manuscripts were written. However, I knew in my heart that I was a sinner and that being an unbeliever is no excuse. For most people, what I did to Mary may seem like no big deal, but it was something I couldn’t let go.
Pride is an effective weapon to fight a guilty conscience, something Liar knew very well. As I started to become aware of my guilt, he told me that I was ready for a new revelation: that I wasn’t destined to be a mere prophet, but that I was to become a god. He said I was destined to become the Holy Spirit in the flesh. That was to occur during the Cataclysm itself, through merging of Liar's consciousness with my own. After that, my true identity as a god would be revealed to the survivors. He taught me a new spiritual gift to help me prepare for those times: seeing people's auras, which he said was a visual representation of a person’s soul. With this ability, I would be able to discern those who are spiritually enlightened from those who are ignorant. He told me that was how I could avoid ever being in a situation like the one with Mary again. Furthermore, the color, shape and strength of the aura would give me insights into a person’s personality and he taught me how to use that to manipulate others.
After I graduated high school, I enrolled at the University of California at Riverside. Liar told me to go to this school, despite the fact that I was also accepted at the University of Southern California, because he said that he had important work for me there. The first person I met there was Tom, who was someone who practiced occultic magic for many years, but had seen very few results. Tom was far more outgoing than I was, so most of the friends I met in the first few months at the university were acquaintances of his. Lair said he was a safe person I could talk to, so I told Tom about everything, including Liar, what I had done and what I could do. He was ecstatic and was eager to see this for himself. Tom wanted me to use these talents almost every second that I was with him, and Liar was all too happy for me to accommodate.
Tom invited me to a party hosted by some of his friends. During that party, out came a Ouija board. Like many people who are serious about occultic practices, I was very dismissive of Ouija boards. After all, it’s a mass-produced product made by a toy manufacturer. I thought it’d be more accurate to call it “Divination for Dummies.” Nevertheless, Tom wanted me to be one of the two people holding the indicator used to spell out messages during a séance. I’d never performed a séance before, but I was certain that we weren’t doing it correctly, since no one was in a trance-like state. I was also certain the other person touching the indicator was the one moving it around to spell out answers to the various questions people asked during the ceremony, since all of the questions and answers were what you’d expect if people were just fooling around with the thing.
However, that changed when a woman asked for her grandmother to respond. Suddenly, we started getting answers in gibberish. One of Tom's friends was writing it all down. When the indicator stopped moving, that friend showed what he’d written to the girl who asked the question. The girl looked at it and starting crying. She told us the response was in German. She also told us that her grandmother lived and died in Germany. Neither me nor the other person touching the indicator had met this woman before that night. We didn’t know German and we certainly didn’t know that her grandmother only spoke German. The only way we could have gotten that message from the Ouija board was through genuine supernatural activity. Because the other person touching the Ouija board’s indicator had never done anything remotely like this before, that’s was when Tom and his friends knew for sure that I wasn’t just someone dabbing in the occult.
After that night, I started to practice my gifts more openly, but still only with Tom and his friends. I didn’t want a repeat of what happened in middle school. One of Tom’s friends participated in ghost hunts, and he invited me and Tom to come along with one such hunt. This happened on a cold night in late fall. Tom was the one found the ghost, which manifested itself at first as an area of warmth in an unheated area just outside of a building. Tom called me over and with Liar’s instruction on how to do this, I guided the spirit to the other side. As I was doing so, everyone else there gasped and stepped back. When I asked why later on, they said I was glowing. (Note: I no longer believe that the spirit was a ghost. It was just another demon who manifested himself in a way that would mimic the way we thought a ghost would act.)
Most of Tom’s friends were getting uncomfortable with what I could do. Dabbling with tarot cards, palm reading and fooling around with Ouija boards were one thing, but they weren’t ready to handle more serious involvement with supernatural activity. After the incident with the ghost, they slowly stopped participating when I practiced my gifts in public. It wasn’t long before it was once again only me and Tom. That was fine with me. I was more comfortable practicing my gifts alone or with Tom than as a part of a larger group.
