The Introduction: An Excerpt

Although it had been seven years since I left the House of Jezebel to set out on my own, I still wasn’t free and this particular night proved that Jezebel (or at least one of her followers) had found me and would soon make their presence known – right then and there.

In the wee hours of the night, I begin to wake up hoping that this was only temporary and that I would soon drift back to sleep. I hoped against hoped that I was not awakening to one of those nights. You know – those nights when sleep avails you and you lie in bed being tormented by the couldas, wouldas, and shouldas of your past. At first, I thought it was going to be one of those nights until I realized that my mind was waking up, but my body wasn’t. It felt as if someone (or something) was holding me down. I couldn’t move.

Instinctively, I tried with all my might to open my eyes, but it felt as if they were glued shut. In my “mind’s eye” though, I could still see around my bedroom. Not very clearly, but I still knew in my mind how my bedroom was laid out.

My bed was diagonally positioned in the far right corner of the room adjacent to the doorway. On the wall to the left of my bed was a nightstand that was smugly positioned beside the bed and against the wall. On the other side of it was a trash can, an electrical outlet with a nightlight, followed by a door to the bathroom. Between the bathroom door and the bedroom door was a closet and on the wall to the left of the bedroom door were two sets of dresser drawers.

Although I had no clue as to why I couldn’t move or see, I quickly begin to realize two things. One, my “vision” of my bedroom was more than just a recollection from my mind’s eye and two, I wasn’t alone. Although my “vision” wasn’t all that clear, I could “see” very little using the dim lighting from the nightlight. However, with this “new vision”, I tried repeatedly to “zoom in” on the room without success. It was during my last attempt that I noticed something moving near the doorway.

Since my body was still paralyzed, turning my head to “look” in that direction was out of the question. Someone (or something) had moved in a blink of any eye from the bedroom’s entrance to the side of my bed without making a sound - but who? What? How? Before I could use my “new vision” to scan the room, I noticed that someone (or something) was blocking the little ray of light from the nightlight. As a matter of fact, this someone (or something) was standing by the nightstand. No, wait! It was standing through the nightstand.

The figure before me was dark, like a shadow, but standing upright without any visible features, such as, eyes, nose, mouth, or hands. Although I couldn’t see them, it had all of those features. Before I could even react – although, I don’t know how I would have “reacted” in my situation; it leaned close to my face and then pressed a double barrel gun against my right temple. The gun was pressed against my head with such force that I thought that surely if I wasn’t kill right then and there, that I would have left quite an ugly scar for the rest of my life.

Then, with the gun still aimed at my temple, it said to me: “If you exposed us, we will kill you!” I remember thinking: “First of all, who the hell are you? How did you get in my bedroom? Expose you? Expose who?!? What are you talking about?” By this time, I am scared out of my wit. I desperately tried to turn off this new “vision” and this new “hearing.” But wait, it didn’t have a mouth nor hands. So, how could it hold a gun let alone speak to me without a mouth? At that moment, I didn’t want to see this “shadow man” standing over me. I didn’t want to “hear” anything it had to say. This was all some type of mistake.

I “closed my eyes” and tried to convince myself that this wasn’t happening to me that “they” had confused me with someone else. Unfortunately, once I was able to “close” these new eyes of mind, I could now “see” down the barrel of the gun that was still aimed at my temple. Then everything went black. I could no longer “see” into my bedroom, but I could still feel the imprint on of the gun, which felt like it lasted for hours, but was probably only a few minutes.

I don’t remember “hearing” Mr. Shadow Man leave, but once he left, my muscles slowly began to relax and I was finally able to move, but by then I didn’t have the energy. I laid there trying to replay what had just happened. Was it a dream? I knew it wasn’t. Soon thereafter, I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning I rushed to the bathroom to look in the mirror. I wanted to see if there was an imprint or any sign to prove that I wasn’t dreaming. There was no imprint, no sign, nothing. For days, weeks and even years later, I wondered how I was able to “see”, “hear” and “feel” what was happening to me. I asked God repeated, “What is going on?”