Meeting the Storyteller

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I have 17 spirits left since Brain left and won't come back we hope. He's diseased; very disturbed but he is no more evil than I am. Meet the storyteller.

Before I came to John there was a little fellow that didn't want to be him anymore. We saved him and he's in our new body already waiting to start a new life on earth. He's a pretty good guy but stubborn; man is he stubborn to come all that way and stay in tact. He calls himself Me and we call him Me.

I started out telling stories at a young age. I'm the one that told I AM a story about Black Bart. It went okay until we had a showdown. I was quicker and killed Bart. I cried. Some tried to tell me it wasn't real but I realized it was. I saw him go down and everything. Bart was a spirit and that was my first realization that people die.

I had a dream while camping out in a friend's backyard. I got to thinking in the dream that my mom and dad would die some day too. I broke out bawling and got my stuff and went home without telling anyone what was going on. I have never been the same but when it happened a lot of years later I was ready for it with both of them.

I wasn't much older when me and some acquaintances we using our pocket knives to see how close we could come to stabbing frogs from waist high like some boys did back in the day. The frog was injured and in misery and we kept tormenting the thing. Then a devil came out of the frog and I ran off to cry knowing the frog was in hell and the devil had come to keep me from stopping what we were doing to the poor thing for I was ready to put him out of his misery or take a stand on his behalf. That was the first time I ever saw a devil. I thought the devil was protecting the frog and trying to scare us all away but he just wanted me out of the way so it could continue. A kid took his knife and stuck it right in the frog's stomach and they all stood around and watched saying, “Cool!” and that “That was really neat!” and things like that. But I love all animals, big and tiny. I hate to see anything suffer especially for no reason. I don't even like to kill mosquitoes which is impractical in Minnesota.

I like to help others. Now I even carry little beetles and stuff out of the house to where they are safer outside. I always try to do right by other people.

My dad would tell stories too. But they always wound up making someone look like a real bad guy which was suppose to make him look really good by comparison. We all knew it wasn't true all or most of the way along and we knew he was just trying to build his own image up sometimes at the expense of someone no one would believe would do what he said they had done or he would bring us to a place that made life seem unfair or not worth living and it got tiresome after a while but at least he wasn't abusing anyone while the story was going on and it was mostly fun and interesting until he got to the end. He was depressed my dad.

We had an old tom cat once. It was my favorite. It got down to nearly thirty below one night and he was out tom-catting. Well we had a fuel oil stove and sometimes the carburetor would stick and overflow and flood the living room. Well I came downstairs to go to the bathroom and found the living room floor covered with diesel fuel and got everybody up to deal with the mess. But since it was so late by the time my dad got the carburetor fixed we just took up throw rugs and sopped up the spilled fuel oil and put them out on the front stoop to help lessen the smell and the cat crawled in under them. It was either that or freeze to death.

Well, the diesel fuel burned his hide and he got great big scabs all over. When he healed not all the scabs healed and he was bald in large patches. But one night I was sitting on a friend's front stoop waiting for him when who should come but old George, that's what we called the cat, and it was nearly five miles from home.

I called the cat to me and said, “So you think the whole town is your territory! How many pussycats do you need to satisfy your urges anyway?”

I pet him and talked to him when my friend's mother said, “What a horrible looking thing! Whose cat is he?”

“It's his cat!” my friend said as he came through the doorway, “What's he doing way over here?”

“What happened to the poor thing,” his mother said, “You should put him out of his misery!” The last thing I would ever do to him.

Then as we left I tried to get George to come with us but he would have no part of it. Two days later he came wandering in with rope burns on his neck like someone had tried to tie him up or something. Everybody was both scared of him and had a lot of compassion for him at the same time. It must have taken him a while to break loose. He had been gone over a week this time. Even us, we treated him special for he had a favorite chair by the heater and it was understood it was his chair and if anyone came near to sit down he yowled at them and made such a fuss they quickly changed their mind and one of us got up to give our chair to the one who had thought George's chair the last chair in the room and had decided to take it. He had might in the clan. Pathetic carries a lot of power in some places. Evil sometimes leaves you pathetic but that just increases your might like it does the Great God right now. Brain took on El Eloi who always uses evil against evil to do or protect good. Brain lost. He has no reason to be and no purpose in being anymore unlike George who was never so loved until that awful morning after that evil weather and his survival. There was no other way.