COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE

fiction

Papa Justify speaks:

I am a hoodoo priest of sorts. If you want to summon the spirits, I can help. In fact, I’m probably the only one you’ll ever meet who can actually deliver the goods. Everyone else who claims to be a hoodoo priest is usually simply an unemployed alcoholic, and they are legion.

Predicting the future is simply a matter of seeing correctly, and most people are capable of doing so with the proper instruction and encouragement. Many are afraid to go down that path, because they’d rather avoid the responsibility of knowing. They’d rather pretend to be helpless in the face of coming events.

The fact remains that we all know what’s coming, but are frightened or lazy enough to pretend we don’t. It comes as a feeling, a taste, a smell, a vision, sometimes as a sound. We are not alone. We are surrounded by spirits who are doing their best to contact us and guide us if we consent to be guided.

Those of us who wish to go it alone are free to do so. The Spirits are not jealous regarding their domain. Think of them as real estate agents. If you can sell your house at a good price on your own, by all means do so. If you can’t, give them a call.

There are many more spirits than most practioners will acknowledge. I am personally acquainted with forty-one, and suspect there are ten times than number who are yet beyond my ken. Each spirit has an area of expertise. In this way they are like craftsmen. A good plumber can recommend you to a good electrician.

My closest relationship with a spirit involves TongoBongo, a Fijian headhunter and cannibal who died in 1921. I don’t know why we hit it off, but we did. I’ve never really seen him, just heard his voice in my head, but I imagine he’s heavily tattooed, painted and wears a bone in his nose. Sometimes we talk for quite a while, usually while I’m falling asleep.

“Nothing you people value as important really is. It’s all nonsense. Fads. Marketing. You can prove it to yourself. You can never get enough of what you don’t need.”

“But what do we need?” I ask.

“Community. Extended family. Nothing else matters in the long run.”

He’s probably right.

The spirits told me that I’m special, that I’m an advanced life-form who is obligated by karmic debt to devote myself to a life of service to others. I had no problem accepting this. In fact, I’m surprised it took them so long to get around to it. I’ve know it, at some level, for most of my life.

But exactly how am I to do this? What guidance will I receive, who will grease the wheels to help me succeed in such altruism? I wait for answers, but so far none arrive.

No problem. I have all the time in the world.

Nobody I’ve ever spoken to can imagine his or her own death. Secretely, we believe we’re the exception. Jesus will return and personally escort us to our heavenly reward, or else science will finally discover the cure for all disease. We know it doesn’t make sense, but deep down be believe it to be the case.

As a hoodoo anointed practioner, I have access to priviledge information. I might be able to predict your future, including the date of your demise, but rarely do I exercise my precognitive powers in this way. How would it help?

We must learn to relax and enjoy the bliss of the present moment. Now already contains everything we need in order to be content and even happy. Many of us lie to ourselves in order to believe the opposite, and this gives us an excuse to run away from what we have in search of what we don’t. As if this were some form of progress.

True progress rarely results from running away from or toward anything. Calm introspection advances our cause more often than frenetic action.

But you already know this, otherwise why would you have read this far? I am not only preaching to the choir, I am being serenaded by my fellow choir members. We are all in this together. Don’t pretend you’re not a dues-paying member of this club.

Admit to yourself at least that you can kill another simply by cursing that person. Hoodoo gives you that power. You may have forgotten the exact nature of the ritual, but it will come back to you if you simply try. That’s how it worked for me and countless others.

GET THEE BEHIND ME!

When the devil makes you do it, it really hurts. In the short term, not so much, but in the long term, the grief in interminable. It gets worse over time.

That’s why I’ve taken to exposing Satan and all his minions whenever I can, which is most of the time seeing as I’m unemployed and on disability.

I’m so sick of grief! Are you? Maybe some people haven’t yet suffered enough, but I sure have. My dues have been paid and then some. So I am now under no obligation to languish in remorse or bathe in sorrow. I have been washed in the blood of the Lamb!

One cannot simply eliminate temptation from one’s life. Wrestling with the devil will get you nowhere but sweaty and smelling like brimstone. You can’t win that wrestling match and he can’t defeat you, because you have God on your side, even though you don’t act like it most of the time. Victory is ours! Why don’t we feel good about that?

Because we are led astray by sin. We are trapped by multiple snares. It will only be when this life is over that we can see clearly, for now we see as if we had some kind of goop in our eyes.

If Satan won’t get behind us, how are we supposed to advance? With him blocking our field of vision, all we can see are the snares of sin. Unless you look at it closely, a trap usually doesn’t look like one. It looks like something normal and common, or like nothing at all.

Devious intent emits no obvious warning signs. No odor, no sound, no visual hint that someone who hopes to benefit from your downfall has targeted you. You can’t even look down and see the glow of a laser sighting device dancing over your clothes. It would be convenient and easy to assume that evil does not exist, that everyone in your ken has your best interests at heart. But that’s simply not the case. Not by a long shot.

But why have I been targeted while my more devious and sinful peers have not? Did their mothers pray for their offspring with more fervor than did mine? More novenas, implorations to the Blessed Mother for intervention?

Maybe I should be proud that the Father of Lies has noticed me at all, much less chosen to recruit me in his cause. Did I come to his attention because of my essential goodness or its opposite? Have I displayed a talent for malevolence or is it something that is merely latent in me, but noticeable to those proficient in the Dark Arts?

I’ve always wanted to excel at something, but evil has never been on the list. I once had a roommate in college who was very strange and might have made a better candidate for “Handmaid of Satan” than I. She enjoyed being alone to an asburd degree. Most people if left alone for a day would find something to do with the time. Not her. This was before cellphones, but if you took a young woman of today and locked her in a room, she would immediately take out her phone and start scrolling or texting and taking selfies. This lady preferred to do nothing at all. We had an old clock that ticked away in a solemn way one doesn’t hear often nowadays. The ticks echoed through the still room. She sat absolutely still, often with her eyes closed, not moving, barely breathing, and seemed quite content. I figured she was either mentally ill or posessed by evil spirits. I never found out which was true because at the end of the semester she moved away and I never saw her again.

It occurred to me later that maybe she wasn’t even enrolled as a student. She could have been a trans-dimensional being who just need a place to hang out for a while.

Or maybe she was just a strange and possibly mentally ill college girl a long time ago, and I’m still making too big a deal about all of it. After all, I was no Boy Scout at the time. I was doing my best to ape the hippies I read about, Timothy Leary, etc. My use of psychedelics was routine. I’m just lucky I emerged relatively unscathed. In every college town I lived in, you would come across one guy walking barefoot in the winter, his long hair matted, fingernails black, accompanied by a dog he had adopted, and either rummaging through trash or asking for spare change. Someone would always tell me “that’s Crazy Bob. He used to be an English major, but then he took too much acid.”

There but for the grace of God go I.

Brains Don’t Help

Brains don’t help in most situations. In fact, they’re often a liability. People don’t like smart guys, they like sincere, hard-working normal Joes. So if you happen to be extremely intelligent, don’t wear your smarts on your sleeve. Keep them secret and use them in situations where a favorable outcome will make you seem simply lucky.

All the best film actors know this trick. Play stupid and you’ll make the audience feel smart. Let them see you strain to make sense of your character’s predicament. Allow them to see the wheels turning in his or her tiny brain.

Sympathy begins to have a chance when you stop threatening people. Stupid people know this deep-down, and use it to their advantage whenever their intelligence fails them. They affect a puppy-dog look complete with big, watery, sad eyes.

NO ONE SPECIAL

Just ordinary people came, the kind you see all the time. Not especially smart or good looking, they came in droves and stood waiting for something to happen. Only nothing happened. No one told them what to do and eventually they drifted away, going back where they came from.

There was nothing you could say about them that would paint a clear picture. Some were fat, some thin, some young, some old. I got the impression they didn’t think they were “special” in any way. They just wanted to show up in case somebody was giving away something for free, or there was a party of some kind going on. Some fun to be had.

Garden-variety people, the kind who don’t make enormous waves as they wade through the waters of life, are still good for something. They form an audience, if not actors. They’re the customer base for business, voters for politicians, what the Germans called the “lumpenproletariat.” Despise them at your own risk.

I am one of them. In fact, I have hopes of being elected their leader, not because of any special qualities I might posses, but rather because I am so hopelessly ordinary. My subjects are made of the same stuff as is their King.

And as a King, I will not have to wait long for a Queen to appear. Ambitious women abound. One will soon sit at my right hand and if, for some reason, I should falter, fail or sicken, she will be the power behind the throne. This is the way it has always been done, and this method has stood the test of time.

But please, don’t tell anyone. Don’t spill the beans. For my plan to be effective, it must remain a secret.

I promise to rule wisely, and fairness will be by motto. Fairness and enlightened self-interest. You will always know why I do what I do, because my motives will be transparent. I’m in it for me. Simple. Obvious. No deception needed.

I was correct, it didn’t take long for my Queen to appear. Her name was Tiffany, and she was enrolled in pre-dental hygiene at our local community college. Her sister Brandi was already a practicing hygienist and encourage her younger sister to take the leap. Their family was as common as families around here get to be. Mom was a licensed practical nurse, and Dad sold used cars. They lived in a new-ish double wide trailer and kept two dogs that barked a lot.

Tiffany latched onto me and wouldn’t let go. When I told her my plans for us, she got “super excited” and started planning our elaborate coronation ceremony. I cautioned her that we had to pretend to be a bit like England, where the royalty part was merely window dressing to a typical democracy, but she didn’t let that slow her down.

Every time I came up with a manifesto or proclamation, she would protest that it was too complicated. We needed to appeal to a third-grade level and this was strictly junior high. We couldn’t expect to garner popular support by going highbrow. I decided to trust her instincts. She and her family had their finger on the pulse of the nation more than I.

The royalty part would make it easier for our subjects to think of us as the mother and father of the nation. From now on Father’s Day would be my birthday, and Mother’s Day, hers. In an ostentatious display of compassion, we would hand out Christmas presents to be poor, presents that were paid for by taxpayers of our nation. In this way, we were inspired by many of the actions of Juan and Eva Peron, of Argentina.

Eventually, a few academic consultants persuaded us to drop the royalty aspect. Prime Minister or President would have to suffice. Titles like “Father and Mother of the Nation” were acceptable, but nothing more royal than that. We were free, of course, to devise our own ceremonies, rituals, ranks and honors. These would ensure loyalty and give the common man and woman something to admire.

Sure enough, we began to feel the first pangs of royal intrigue when her family members wanted to be venerated by royal rank. So we bailed on the royal thing just in time. Instead, we appointed them cabinet members, advisers, ambassadors. Dad became the Minister of Transportation. Brandy, the Minister of Health. The list increased daily.

The nation had not yet confirmed their desire for us to rule, but we could feel it all around us. Oh, it was hard for us to wait for that wave of popular will that would soon propel us into the “Beige Bunker” as we called the cement fortress that had always housed our executive family. We were not impatient, just eager to be of service. We were overwhelmed with patriotic fervor.

There was, however, a dark side to all this. Even though they kept their sentiments secret, there were those who were not on our side. We had enemies. They manipulated the minds of the elite. Even though their writings could not be understood by the common man, they were surprisingly effective in painting a picture of us as ambitious dimwits. The rumors found their way into print and onto social media. They mocked us!

The arrests came like lightning. Suddenly, we were hauled before a court of people we had never seen before and found guilty of sedition. All I remember is the “may God have mercy on your souls” part.

Our country still used the guillotine, and one was assembled in the main square. As the patriarch of our movement, I was to be beheaded last. From my cell I heard the vast crowd roar several times before I was escorted, blinking from the gloom of the Beige Bunker and into the sunlight.

As I stood on the platform where I was read the official charges against me by a hooded man, I glanced down to see the box that would momentarily receive my severed head. There were the heads of my family members staring up at me in wide-eyed disbelief. Brandi’s mouth was open, as if she were trying to say something. Too late, I’m afraid.

I knelt, and accepted my fate with as much dignity as I could muster. For I was a common man surrounded by my peers who had already decided my fate for me. My garden-variety head would soon join the others in that box. I heard crows calling to one another, and in the distance, a lawn mower. Someone was enjoying this autumn morning. I held my breath.

Away We Go!

The comet Neowise that is currently swinging by the Earth has come to take me away to my rightful home. Do you remember all the people in that Heaven’s Gate California cult religion who took poison to fly away on the Hale-Bopp comet? They believed as I do that comets are important portents of change. But my belief system doesn’t involve wearing jogging pants and taking cyanide. I feel the forces that guide the comet know exactly who I am and what I’m capable of. Today I eagerly await further instruction.

They will tell me what I need to know when I need to know it, and not a moment before. As members of an advanced race, they might have a hard time imagining the full depths of our ignorance, so I won’t pester them with questions. My phone will ring when it rings. My hotmail address hasn’t changed in thirty years. I’m not hiding.

Sure, it’s been hard to know what to leave behind. I sold the big-ticket items, the car, the piano, the big-screen TV. The rest I gave away. Now my little house seems huge and empty. Why did I feel I needed so many things in my life? Will I need money where I’m going? Hard to tell. It’s in my bank account, but I made sure my neighbor Lois has an ATM card and knows the secret code to access my money. If all goes as planned, she’ll be pleasantly surprised by her windfall. If not, then I won’t be homeless.

I trust the comet. More than any other human being or institution, I trust that the comet has plans for me that I cannot even imagine. I feel about the comet the way Christians feel about Jesus. “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard…” In fact, Jesus may be on the comet even as I write this, gliding through space at warp speed, trailing comet dust and eagerly awaiting our rendezvous. Is he at the helm, or does a guardian angel acting as pilot? I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

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dan coffey writes about whatever interests him

Category: satanic