The Prototype: The Beginning

“Remember, Dr. Gallagher, these people are not scientists. They are possible donors, so try not to bore them with the facts.” The thin-framed, 26-year-old woman was straightening the tall, 53-year-old man’s collar.
“Right, thank you, Anita.” Dr. Gallagher tried to smile, but he was much too nervous even to do that simple thing. Instead, he quickly grabbed the handkerchief out of his chest pocket and shakily mopped the sweat off his glistening forehead. Anita frowned at the look of Dr. Gallagher’s disheveled gray hair. She tried to smooth it down, but thought better of it when she found her hand to be quite damp. The corners of her mouth turned down, and she tried to wipe the sweat off her hand with a paper towel nearby.
“Ok, turn this way.” Dr. Gallagher did as she asked. Anita took a step back to inspect her handiwork. Hmm, could be worse, she thought to herself. Many times, Anita had thoughts of perhaps getting a different job, but she was constantly reminded of how much Dr. Gallagher needed her as his secretary. The man was a complete mess. Brilliant, but a complete mess. Besides, they worked well together. The two tolerated each other very cordially. Dr. Gallagher had almost become a sort of father figure to Anita, and she did well to keep him socially in check. He was very grateful for her help.
Anita smiled reassuringly. “Well, do you feel ready?”
Dr. Gallagher took a deep breath. “Yes, I think so.”
“Alright, then go get ‘em, boss!” With a slight nudge from Anita towards the stairs, Dr. Gallagher straightened up and boldly walked passed the curtain onto the stage. As soon as Anita saw that Dr. Gallagher had made it to the front of the stage without injuring himself, she sat down on a small armchair backstage and crossed her legs.
Anita almost jumped in shock when the cell phone buzzed on the small table on her right. The phone vibrated loudly against the glass. Anita quickly picked it up and answered to keep it quiet. “Hello, this is Anita, secretary to geneticist Dr. Erwin Gallagher.”
A frantic male voice replied. “Hello, Anita. This is Dr. Shepherd. I’m afraid there is some serious trouble back at the lab.”
Anita became very worried. “What kind of trouble?” She bent over to see the stage. Dr. Gallagher was dabbing his forehead with his handkerchief.
“Something of extreme value and importance was stolen.” Dr. Shepherd sound reluctant, hesitant at best, to say what needed to be said.
“Please, sir, just come out with it! What has been stolen?”
“The Prototype.”
Anita’s eyes grew wide in a mixture of shock and horror. Dr. Gallagher had been working on that project for years, mostly in preparation for the creation of the prototype. Even his thesis in college was about experimental genetic mutation for the betterment of the human race. He had spent over half his life in preparation for that prototype and five years on the actual prototype. Now it was gone. She knew she would have to tell Dr. Gallagher immediately, but she dreaded it.
“Uh, Anita, there is more.”
“More? What more?” Anita was frantic.
“When the Prototype was stolen during the night, it seems as if it was…activated.”
“What?! Please tell me now that this is all one very cruel joke!” She tried to keep her voice hushed, but it was difficult.
“I’m afraid not, Anita. Of course, there is a possibility that I could be wrong, but all evidence points to that conclusion. The Prototype is missing, and it is alive. I’m very sorry, Anita.”
Anita’s tone was grave. “Ok, thank you, Dr. Shepherd.” She closed the phone, ending the call. Anita sat for a long moment in stunned silence. All that could be heard was Dr. Gallagher’s far-off voice on the stage. When Anita’s stupor was broken by the clapping and applause from the audience, she realized that Dr. Gallagher was finished and stood up with the cell phone still in her hand. Dr. Gallagher exited the stage with a smile on his face. It appeared as if he had done well, actually. He froze once he saw the grave expression on Anita’s face. His smile vanished.
“What’s wrong, Anita?”

Dead People Don't Hug Well

See me
Look into my eyes
And read my soul

See me
Fly into my lungs
And breathe my air

What do you see?

What do you feel?

I am not this mask you know
Take off the mask and all you've got
Is a wounded soul crying out to be heard
A little boy screaming for his daddy

Where is my daddy?
Has he left me
To this simple-minded crowd
Of pompous well-wishers?

If you really cared
Would you still see me this way?
Would you still glance in my direction
And promptly turn away?

Or would you step right next to me
Wrap your arms around my shoulders
Sit long with me in silence
As I weep until my eyes are dry?

As long as it takes

Would you do that?

Tired

Tired
We are
Running
Like Olympians on a track
Except we don’t know where we’re from
Or where we’re going because it doesn’t
end.
Domesticated rodents on a wheel,
We are frantically trying to get to the
end.
Now the end becomes the beginning again
And our circles spin faster and faster around us
The world blurs past us
Scandalously streaking by
And we miss is as it passes

What have I done to make myself
So tired?
My thoughts exhaust me
Swirling around in the atmosphere of my consciousness
Never condensing into something tangible
I grasp at the vapors
And clench the nothingness. It makes me
Tired.
To sleep, to find peace
Why does the quiet seem so loud?
Silence
We try to find silent solitude but this static follows us
As a shadow more defined even as the light grows brighter

Where is rest?
Is it a place? Can we go there?
Is it a state? Can we find it within ourselves?
Should we wait for it? Or try to catch up to it?
We can’t handle our troubled spirits
For very much longer
Slumber doesn’t seem to satisfy

Close us up like flowers at night
There is no morning glory until you do
This spinning wheel, this turning world
Too fast for too long
Take us to the motionless center
To the eye of the hurricane
To the middle where it stops
To where you are

If You

If you want to know what I am thinking
Open your hands a little wider
Because my miming methods are mimicked
By my ability to unfold.

If you want me to come closer
Close your eyes and count to 100;
Don’t hold your breath

Try to talk louder with your ears
And softer with your hands;
Gently rope me in without pulling.

Your ceaseless groping eyes
Poke and prod my desire to hide
All this refined aural sugar
Causes my teeth to ache
As my mind chews on the flattery
And then rots away.

If you want me to stay with you
As you tread at the surface
Dive in with me all the way down to the bottom
And then release;
I swear I will be buoyant.

We both need oxygen eventually;
I, like the fish, am jealous of our feathered friends
So stop being so cliché
And proverbially let me go.

Sensory Poems

Beauty

Beauty is clear
It sounds like a flute in an empty dome
It looks like a diamond in a dung heap
It tastes like a sugar cube in a can of spam
It feels like a swan fighting to be free of its rusty cage
Beauty is a broken window



Poetry

Poetry is elegant ebony
It sounds like a beautiful melody made of weepings and groanings
It looks like a masterpiece painted in blood
It tastes like a gourmet plate of sorrows
It feels like the rhythmic beating of a broken heart

Poetry is the beautiful embodiment of a wounded soul

Christina

It’s all so troubling. It’s such a strange sensation to listen to a news report talking about someone you knew and loved with such cold, objective terms. “A woman was found dead in her apartment.” People are troubled and the neighbors are uneasy, and this is bothersome to us because we don’t want them to be uncomfortable; we want them to care. “Don’t you see? We knew her. She was someone with whom we grew up and experienced things, and with whom we laughed and lived and tasted and smelled and saw, and with whom we felt our mutual realities with our nerves as well as our deeper sensing parts. Can’t you understand that?” We want their insides to get a little torn up. We want to tell everyone we know what has happened because we want them to feel it too- this scraping, scratching, gnawing feeling. Even more so, we want to feel it ourselves.

Things can seem so bad on a large scale and then something tragic happens to drive it home. You realize you’ve been ignoring other people’s news reports. Tragedy grabs you by the shirt collar, gets in your face and shrieks, “I am real!” So you’ve got this evil villain right here, so close you smell its reeking, panting breath, but what are you supposed to do? Sometimes there are no words to articulate these thoughts that you haven’t quite formulated and these racing, sharp emotions that scuff and nick at you but won’t cut you deep enough for you to feel satisfied with your grief. And maybe you wail or cry uncontrollably, but sometimes I just sit and try to squeeze out even one tear but it just won’t come. It won’t come out. It’s too much, this happens too much, too many times. Oh, God, we just try to walk through life but there’s all this molten lava around our feet and we’re getting assailed from all sides and even the air is toxic to breathe. So our lungs hurt and our eyes are stinging and our fingers have gotten burned so many times that we can’t even feel things anymore. We can’t feel things and we can’t see our fingerprints. We barely know who we are and so much of this precious, limited time is spent on simply trying to survive. And on top of all this, we are so tired. And people have terminal diseases and girls are anorexic and the holocaust really happened and governments are corrupt and friends malign each other and we’re all so selfish and people who love each other hurt each other the most and beauty is perverted and raped and consumed and we hate ourselves and everything is backwards and inside-out of the way it should be.

And I’m sitting here wringing my tear ducts, trying to cry, but all I want to do is punch something and scream “damn it!” but then I realize that even this exclamation is fruitless because it already is. This whole thing is already damned, it seems.

And I guess it’s proverbially “darkest before dawn,” but all this talk of dawn and hope and “working together for good” seems to minimize and render banal the heaviness we’re all experiencing right now. All of us. The whole bloody planet.

So God, would you help me to feel it? Would You come in here with us and help us to know that You’re in the midst of it too? And would You tell us what to do next? Because maybe You’re already reaching in and maybe You’re already trying to help, but we’re just humans. We’re just these frightened animals. You’re just so big, and all we can see is what’s directly in front of us. Maybe You’re helping but all we feel sometimes is pain so it’s scary and overwhelming. So come closer and come smaller and simpler because we’re feeble and weak and fatigued and broken and at a loss. Come gently and softly and tenderly, but please do come. Please come quickly.

αγάπη της ζωής

I am full of awe
At this one thought
This thought so amazing
So perfect, so lovely

The beautiful love story
The greatest romance ever written
Then, now, forevermore

It lies behind me
In front of me
Everywhere beside
Inside

The purest love there ever was
You came
You proclaimed
You served
You died

You loved

Let me reciprocate

Your love in me is so great
When a cup is filled
More
More
More than full
It can't help but pour out

Let it be the same
Your love in me
Fill me
More
More
Never stop pouring out

It comes
It flows
It fills
It sows
I reap a harvest of the greatest gift
The one thing that has remained since
...forever

Love

The one thing worth living for

φως της ζωής

Dead

This place is dead
Walking, waking death
Existing, not living
In the real, not the ideal
Counterfeit, not genuine
Complacency the culprit
The killer be contentedness
Death in the daylight
The night brings the end

But a different light is here

Brilliant
Vibrant
Unquenchable
Radical

Alive

It carries us to life and beyond

Moth

I had purchased a newspaper and had seated myself at a table at the airport café in an effort to kill the next couple hours before my boarding time. It was a table next to the window, and I could clearly see the storm outside and the travelers coming and going. The torrent that was attempting to break through the panes of window glass next to me gave an anxious tone to the roaring music created by the muffled burning of jet fuel. The sound of the rain on the window was a steady rhythm: tapping, tapping, like nervous fingers on a tabletop in harmony with the attitude of the nervous travelers wheeling luggage across the bare, glossy floors outside the café. Glancing undecidedly between screens telling of flight plans and departure times and the miniature ticking screens on their wrists, people narrow-mindedly collected themselves and prepared to defy gravity.
So many people doing what they do in airports- leaving those they love, watching those they love leave- it all creates a characteristic atmosphere that is unique to this place of arrival and departures. It’s an atmosphere that is breathed in and out, and we all become a part of it.
A few tables away from me, directly ahead was seated an intriguing creature of a woman. It was almost as if her whole self was wrapped around her coffee cup drawing warmth into her body through her cold, weathered hands. The cardboard sleeve was set aside the way a person sets aside the one they were manipulating and using in order to get to the one with whom they’ve truly found themselves infatuated. There on the napkin next to the used wooden stir-stick was lying, the unwanted barrier between her and her life-giving heat. It was taking in the shameful mockery of the cardboard cup which contained the true object of her affections.
“Would you like to come sit down?” she said.
I flinched and looked around to see if there was someone behind me or beside me who she was addressing. No one. She must be talking to me, but why? I knew my habit of staring was going to get me into trouble one day.
“Yes, you!” she said with a chuckle. “Come keep an old woman company. I’m nervous to go up into this storm and you look like a frequent flyer.”
I could feel my face get hot and I knew it was turning red as it always does when I feel uncomfortable. “Sorry ma’am. I…” She continued to invite me over to her table with an inward wave of the hand. I did not feel the need to say more. I decided I had nothing to lose, so I gathered my things and plopped down across from her at the table by the window.
“Thanks,” I said, smiling awkwardly. She gave me a nod. Her hair was all wrapped up in a scarf printed in earth tones. A doubtful light was cast upon her comment regarding her age as I noticed a certain vitality about her. Despite the creases on her face and the salt and pepper strands peeking out from under the scarf, she couldn’t have been older than half a century. A plain black dress was draped over a spindly body and boney, knobby knuckles stuck out from under its loose sleeves to bring the cup of coffee to her lips again. She looked a little bit eccentric with the same look I remember noticing about an art teacher I used to have. Mrs. Mitchell-Meyers- a strange woman she was; the name sends a shiver down my spine to this day. She was abnormally superstitious and had an exaggerated interest in the metaphysical world. She was always working on some artistic piece inspired by a “transcendent experience” she’d had, which my friends and I would snicker about under our breath. The only “A” I got in her class was on my desperate attempt to complete a painting on time by literally throwing paint at the canvas the night before. She said it had “existential value”; I just thought her head wasn’t screwed on straight and took the good grade.
Anyway, this woman, this woman nestled next to the window had that same detached look about her, yet not in a repellent way. She didn’t seem to quite blend in although the way she carried herself said seemed to indicate that she knew a secret and the rest of us were still in the dark. “Storms like these make me nervous enough, let alone when I’m about to be up inside of them! Where’r you headed?” she asked.
Good question, I thought to myself. “I dunno, I’m just going…”
She had a puzzled look on her face and cocked her head. “What do you mean? Are you leaving or coming?”
“Leaving, I guess. I just bought a ticket to New York to see a friend.”
“Oh really? How long will you be there?”
I shrugged, “You know, I don’t really know. I guess I’m just waiting to see what happens.”
She just looked at me, right in the eyes. There was such beauty there; but not beauty one would notice right away. Those eyes, unadorned except for their frame of crow’s feet in the corners, were deep and searching- a grayish, bluish, greenish shade that seemed to look so intensely through me I didn’t have time to decide what color they were.
“Ah, I see. You’re running away,” she said matter-of-factly.
I immediately jumped on the defense. “Running away? No, I uh, I just wanted to go, I’m still…well, here’s the thing, I’m taking a break from school to sort of figure things out, you know? Things at home, my family, have been…and I have this friend. Not really friend though, and he…well, I just needed to get away for a while.”
She raised one eyebrow. “And you think that while you’re away things are just going to solve themselves?”
I was caught off guard by her frankness. I felt disarmed; my mouth was left empty-handed as any possible response escaped me.
She sat and she sipped. The way she nursed that steaming cup of blackness made it seem as if it was the cup that was suspending her and not the other way around. A fluttering movement drew her gaze to a moth that was flicking itself against the window beside her. We both began to watch its silent and fruitless pursuit of freedom, undaunted by the clear barricade that stood in the way of that outside world. It knew it did not belong in this place, not in this building, this place of waiting, this enclosure for anticipators of synthetic flight. This winged insect was relentless in its attempts to break through. It was jealous of the winged, metal creatures outside. They circled in the air above them, pondering whether it was safe to stretch out their feet and hit the tarmac running. This moth clearly wanted to join them. We both watched it, lost in thought.
“You’d think it would learn after the first several collisions. It’s kind of stupid, but I always feel bad for them when they do that.” I said, attempting to change the subject. I didn’t really feel like divulging any more of my personal information to this woman; I didn’t want any more unsolicited advice.
“Me too,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder if that’s how God feels.”
Suddenly a loud banging sound and a bellowing voice and snapped our attention away from the window and pulled our attention to a tumultuous scene that was unfolding at the counter.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard!”
An older man who was clearly unsettled had slammed his fist down on the counter, causing the unsuspecting blonde barista to cower in fear. His brow was crinkled and his bushman eyebrows were slanted downward behind giant yellowing lenses that came from another era.
“ ‘Thank you, have a nice day,’” he said imitating the girl, contorting his voice into a shrill, nasally counterfeit of how she really sounded. “What have I done that made you wish me such good fortune? Honestly, you people astound me.”
The girl stood frozen. The room was filled with an air of tension.
“Give me one good reason why you give a rip whether or not I trip walking out the door and a grand piano falls on my head from twenty stories up?”
The girl had been subconsciously backing up during the course of this outburst. The look on her face was that of disorientation, like she’d just been hit from behind. Her head was tilted slightly downward as she hid beneath her green uniform hat. “Sir, I…”
He cut her off as soon as her words had escaped. “Perhaps they would draw one of those white chalk lines where my dead body was, or is that only if it’s a murder? Who knows, maybe it was a murder. Maybe someone had it out for me.” His elevated tone was dripping with sarcasm and his exaggerated gestures made him quite the spectacle. “Or, maybe it was a freak accident. All things considered, I’ve given you no cause for any further consideration than giving me the correct change. Don’t give me your false courtesy, ‘Have a nice day.’ Garbage!”
“I…you, uh…I just th…” she stammered.
“Shut up. Don’t say anything else to me. I know what you were trying to do, but maybe next time you should think before you feed your fake corporate rubbish, your less-than-genuine fluff to another person whose day could not matter any less to you.”
He stormed out the door, leaving the steam of rage and hot coffee trailing behind him. The employee looked down and sheepishly smoothed her apron. She then turned to the co-worker at the bar and began a tirade of cutting mutterings with a distinct defensive tone. The place was silent for a good few seconds, and I could hear the gentle flicking of the moth against the window. Surely enough, though, just as the gawkers finally speed up again after seeing an accident on the side of the highway, the people in the café slowly began to resume what they had been doing.
I looked at my new acquaintance in shock. “Wow.”
She shook her head, clearly disenchanted by the scene. “You see, that’s what happens when you don’t fix things. You deny them, you push them away, and they fester, just like they did with that man.”
“What do you mean? You don’t just think he was nuts?”
“Nuts? No. Something like that comes from somewhere deep. He let it get that way; that’s what happens. And then it’s too late to do much about it. You keep wrapping yourself up in that cocoon long enough, thick enough, and soon you won’t be able to get out.”
Once again, she turned those searching eyes back to meet mine. She held me there in her gaze for what seemed like an eternity until it was too intense for me to take it anymore. I looked back out the window. I looked back after a few seconds to see if she was still looking at me, but she had flicked out her wrist to look at her timepiece. “Well, I had better be off, my flight leaves soon. You know how security is these days.” She stood and grabbed a small rolling suitcase that had been sitting beside her, adjusted her dress, and picked up her coffee cup.
“It was nice talking with you,” she said.
“Same here,” and then with a grin I added “Have a nice day,” hoping she would catch my reference to the commotion we’d just witnessed.
“You do the same,” she replied with a smile and a wink, “And be careful about that cocoon.”
With that, she vanished from the airport café, and left my presence, yet many of the words we had exchanged continued to resonate in my mind. She had walked out the exit that opened to the rest of the terminal, but there was also another exit leading outdoors right next to where I was sitting. The orange exit sign kept invading my mind, taunting me. I sat for a while. I sat and wallowed in the thoughts of all that had transpired. I thought about how much I wanted to go, and I watched other people get ready to go. I watched families saying their last goodbyes over a cup of coffee. I watched a mother with tears in her eyes as she was holding the hand of a husband in military attire. I watched lonely businessmen with their leash-like neckties tapping their fingers on keyboards of laptops. I watched and I thought.
I looked out the window again and noticed that the rain was diminishing. I watched the line of people getting into cars and exchanging embraces and greetings. I saw the angry man from earlier wave down a yellow taxi. No one had come for him. As I continued to gaze through the window, my eyes focused on movement closer to me and I realized that the little winged friend the woman and I had witnessed earlier was continuing its struggle. It was gradually moving closer to the door. A rough-looking earphone-clad teenage boy had just purchased something cold and sugary with whipped cream exploding out of a dome lid and was headed for the exit. As he opened the door, the moth fluttered through the opening and released himself into the outside world.
After a moment’s contemplation I stood up and started moving toward the exit too. I tore my plane ticket in half, and dropped it into the garbage can. I then took a deep breath and walked out the door, fluttering into the outside world where patches of sunlight were beginning to seep through the storm clouds.

The Flyer

Shadows on the pavement
Just one lamp to bring light
No one here, but for me
No moon to shine tonight

Soft footsteps on the street
My own bring fright to me
Thoughts echoing through time
More real than what I see

There beneath the lamplight
Just a blur in my eye?
No, I know what stands there
To myself, I can't lie

My mind full of flashbacks
Bleak visions of my past
The torment! Oh the hurt!
How long must this road last?

A breeze blows on my face
An autumn leaf dances
Much too late to turn back
Enough second chances

Closer to the lamppost
I'm stepping silently
And here inside my chest
My heart beats violently

Someone give me the strength
This path is a hard one
My only hope is this
Tonight I will be done

Finally I reach it
The evasive lamppost
And there beneath the light
A man much like a ghost

I look upon his face
Shocked by what I'm faced with
With skin like a shadow
Surreal but far from myth

A recognized semblance
I see upon his face
So long I ran from him
Tonight is not the case

I looked into his eyes
And this is what I said
"You've held me back too long
From this day forth, you're dead."

The shadow disappeared
My wings sprang forth, I flew
Extraordinary
Is my life birthed anew

The Weeping Stars and Stripes

What is happening?
The once glowing beacon
The shining city on the hill
Is growing dim

We used to be great
But what have we become?
We let compromise be our king
Our death sentence

How can this happen?
The things we once upheld
Were truth, but now opinion
Our dirty lense

The slow fade begins
When ethics mean nothing
When morals become subjective
Truth is said false

Founded on the rock
The most firm foundation
We were once a theocracy
We have fallen

We once saw beauty
We once sought true justice
Soon we will see how far we fell
One day too late

Writing

The more I write, the more I notice all the things around me. Dr. Cotton says it makes us more mindful, more aware, more "present"- that ever-repeated word of his that has so grown in value to me.
He also says it helps in processing the darker side of life. There are some questions that can't be answered- there are some feelings and emotions that are troublesome to articulate. Some things go so deep that even to speak of them is embarrassing. People just don't talk like that. It's too intense, too raw, too much. Treading at the surface is so much more comfortable; it has become so normal. No one wants to hear it. No one wants to see someone run around naked in public, much less do it themselves. Indecent exposure is, in fact, illegal.
So we write. Really, there are few people who don't. We don't have anyone to talk to anymore, no one besides these blank pages.
Here we process all this; here our own thoughts condnese into verbiage that is coherent and proceeds to rain on those who would take the time to think in these tender areas of the mind and feel along with one another those same things we all feel but are too proud to speak of.
And if questions can't be answered, if circumstances can't be explained, and when life doesn't fit into these formulas we've invented, I want to write about it. I want to go there.
So let's go there. Let's write about it.

Beyond the Bridge

Beyond the Bridge

My heart was beating in time with the quick, muffled footsteps across the lush plain. Was it the sheer stillness of the night that caused my heart to pound so furiously? Or perhaps the exhaustion from running for as long as my four comrades and I had been running? No, I would have guessed that my heart was beating quickly in expectation of what I knew was soon to come. I knew that it would be the most trying moment of my life. The ones that ran with me I had met on the journey. Two of them had the same purpose in mind when I met them, but the other two were taking a different route, an easier route. Fortunately, they came to realize that this was the only way that would last. I knew it would not be easy, but I knew that it was worth it. Although, there were things I did not know. I did not know the exact nature of the entity that I would be faced with in the end. I did not how I would react when I met with it. Mostly, I did not know if I was yet prepared enough. I thought back to the moment that set me off on this fateful adventure.

I was sitting on the shore of my favorite little pond. I could always feel peaceful and by myself when I went there, because it was surrounded on all sides by tall, stony cliffs. However, that particular time I was not at peace. I had fled to the pond because of a tense inward struggle between what was true and what was a lie.
I cried out, “Somebody give me an answer!” My cry reverberated off the surfaces of the tall cliffs circling the pond. I knew no one would respond. I exclaimed it more for myself than for anyone to actually hear. I was truly surprised when, immediately after my exclamation, the water began to stir. A small, bright orb floated up through the surface of the pond. It shone brightly as it slowly floated toward me. Oddly, I was not afraid. I was actually quite intrigued by the floating, luminescent ball.
A voice came forth from the orb. “You know the way, child.”
I was confused by what it said. “What?”
“You already know the way you need to go.”
“I do?”
“Yes, but you have been avoiding it.”
I thought a little about that. It was true. There was one path that I knew was the right one. It was just too hard.
The orb spoke, “Even though it is hard, that path is the one you must take.”
“But everyone else is taking the other path.”
“Not everyone. Most are, sadly, but there are a few who are already following the true path. This should not matter though. It would still be the true path if you were alone in it.”
“But what if I trip? Will I have the strength to stand?”
“I always provide a way to stand up. I will give you the strength that you need, if you will trust me.”
I liked what the orb was saying very much. For some reason, I knew that it was sincere. It seemed as if I had known about this orb forever, but I never thought of it in that form. “I trust you.”
“Are you sure? There will be times when it may seem as if I had left. You must trust that I remain.”
“I am sure of it. I trust you. Will you guide me?”
“Yes, I will be your light when all else is dark. I will show the way.” With that, the strange orb floated farther toward me until it entered into my chest, into my heart. Ever since that moment, I followed the guiding light of the orb.

I was pulled back out of my thoughts by one of my comrades next to me saying, “I believe we are drawing near. What if it is stronger than us?”
I did not answer. The orb appeared again in front of me. I asked, “Are we prepared enough? I’m worried.”
The orb bobbed in front following the same direction we were. “Yes, you are prepared. Why do you doubt?”
“I’m just afraid that if it comes to a battle, we are not strong enough.”
“It will come to a battle, but not one that you would consider normal. I have called you to be above the normal. Therefore, the battles you fight for me will be more than normal. You cannot win fighting like this world fights. You can only win by faith. Do you trust me?”
“Yes, I trust you.”
“Now is the time to show just how much.” The orb disappeared back inside my chest.
One of my comrades shouted, “There it is!” Before us lay a bridge spanning the length of a great rushing river. Beyond the river, there was a brilliant forest of gold, crimson, and alabaster filled with marvelous beings of light in joyful chorus. Their song seemed to beckon us across the bridge.
Once we were a stone’s throw from the bridge, an enormous dark being rose up before us. It seemed to be made of pure shadow, but so dense that it was almost tangible. Its eyes glowed a vicious blood-red.
It spoke in a deep menacing voice. “Turn back. It is all a lie.” The sound seemed to echo on forever.
I shouted firmly to the menace, “We will pass this bridge.”
It laughed evilly. “Can you not see? All that is beyond this bridge is not what you think it is. These wondrous sights you see have been fabricated within your mind by a lie. You have been deceived. Turn back while you still can.”
I paused for a moment, only a moment. “I trust in the one that does not lie. You are made of deceit. We will pass!”
“Everyone else is going the other way. Be wise and follow them.”
“We were called to go beyond the ordinary. We trust in the one that is true. You are nothing! We will pass!”
“Bow to me, and I will show you the truth.”
“You are a lie! WE WILL PASS!”
I charged, followed by my friends. Someone had to take the first step. I knew that I was called to take it. With the momentum we gained from our strong faith and passion, the five of us rushed straight through the menace and over the bridge. The moment our feet touched the other bank, the bridge and everything behind it vanished, and the wondrous sight of the golden forest stretched out beyond the horizon on every side. It was paradise forever.
All because we chose to go beyond that which was ordinary.