A Simple Conversation

Submitted into Contest #162 in response to: Start your story with someone looking at a restaurant menu.... view prompt

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Contemporary Fiction Speculative

This story contains sensitive content

(TW: Mentions substance abuse, references to suicidal depression, references the best mac and cheese you’ll ever have, and potentially offensive to Christians)

Holy crap, this place sells lobster bisque for five dollars? …Is that good or bad? …Hope they like the tea I ordered

            …Hey! Have a seat! How are you; how’s the move?! Great! Awesome…Do you like tea? You do!? That’s nice, I’m glad I got that right. Thanks for comin’, by the way. Sorry I called you at the last minute and everything, but…I wasn’t ready yet…to…to talk about that thing I said while drunk. I mean, shit, I shouldn’t have had those beers but, hey, I guess that’s what happens when you go cold turkey. God, I’m such a lightweight these days. Anyway, lemme know when you’re ready. …Oh, I’m ordering the Mac and cheese bites. What are you getting? …The Taco Panini…? O-okay. Yeah, no, that’s cool. 

            Yeah, I thought so. You practically raved about this café last week. Oh, you don’t remember? Makes sense, you were drunk. People always say and do the strangest things drunk. I certainly have. …Y-you’re gonna grab your…? …Okay, I’ll wait…here…yep.

            …You’re ready? Cool…cool…Well, honestly, I don’t really know where to start. I mean, how does one contextualize: “I can control the weather”? And: “I can tell what people are doing even when they’re states away?” 

            It doesn’t make sense and I recognize, as I explain what I meant, this conversation may be our last. I’ve grappled with it and I’d rather not lie about it either since, well, you seemed interested that night. I know!

            …It began about three years ago, give or take. I mean, I always had a strange relationship with nature, with God…whatever you’d like to call it. It’s been a part of my life as far back as I can remember, but it was never so bold as it became that day three years ago. Before then, I attributed all of it to God. After all, how could something as insignificant as me get exactly what I want or need when I wanted or needed it? 

            …Don’t be scared. Worse case scenario, I’m a highly functional psychotic with a knack for poetry. Besides, I don’t exactly see the difference between what I’m about to further explain versus what typical religious types say. Hold up, I’m gonna grab my food. 

Aww, look, they’re like little dinosaurs. That’s so cute. 

Anyway, 2.5 billion or so people genuinely believe an executed man rose from the dead because he was God incarnate. That’s pretty weird, isn’t it? 2.5 billion. That’s a lot of delusional people, wouldn’t you say? 

            That doesn’t even take into account Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, or worse, Unitarian Universalists. Those guys are terrifying. …Because they are! C’mon, follow the program here. Damn, this Mac and cheese is good. 

The only major difference between myself and them is that they attribute the unexplainable to God while I attribute the unexplainable to myself and God—at the same time. We’re symbiotic. 

            You know the story of Harriet Tubman? Of how she had this brilliant sense of direction? Nikola Tesla had it too; however, he wanted to keep his gift to himself. Here’s something they both have in common. Harriet suffered a brain injury and Tesla almost died as a child. There are a lot of people, including myself, who were injured or faced death and earned this sixth sense from the experience. No, no, I’m not trying to compare myself to either of them; I’m only trying to say there’s documented evidence. Of course, you don’t have to believe me. No. All it takes are a few google searches and perhaps one interview on YouTube. …Can I trade this sweet potato fry for just a little bit of your…? Thanks. 

            …Everyone can gain this gift. You don’t have to be injured to get it, but injury ignites it. I don’t know why, but it does. In fact, this was common practice with Ancient civilizations. Either you’d injure yourself, your child, or an animal, and you’d get the gift in return. I mean, why else do you think ancient civilizations sacrificed people on the altar to stop the rain? At least, that’s my theory. That seems to be the main link.

`           I don’t think it was suppose to be easy either…even during the height of Ancient civilizations. That’s why they had schools—kind of like Hogwarts. Man, you don’t get what I’m saying at all, do you? …Yeah, I can tell. Also, I’ve learned I’m definitely not a panini type of gal. No offense. 

            The gift is…hard to explain. …Because it’s more than just prayer…it’s all of it, all wrapped in a pretty package. It’s what Catholic Churches call demonic, even related to antichrists. 

            It kind of makes sense why the church would hate it. There’s a great danger in anyone being able to use it at whim, but…you know, there’s an equal, if not more terrifying danger in the powerful doing the same to hurt or oppress. And the latter is a stronger possibility of current reality than the former. I mean, there’s a reason why the Capitol building was built beside a lake. Why it’s necessary for its reflection to be seen in those waters. That’s not an accident, it never was. Someone designed that purposely. 

            Were you even aware that God, as depicted in ancient societies, had a wife? That she was often seen with snakes wrapped around her body? And that, if you’ve ever been to a hospital or in an ambulance, you’ve probably seen her? That was also on purpose. Yet we forgot she ever existed. That doesn’t even include the Statue of Liberty. Yeah, her name was Libertas. It was Inanna and Ishtar too. 

            Ancient gods and goddesses surround us and we don’t even think about it because we’re too busy focusing on the Abrahamic one. Hell, blowing out birthday candles is an ancient practice related to the gift. It’s even in our languages. All it takes is belief, any belief in any god or of yourself, faith that it works, and then…the results. With possible injury thrown into the mix, but ancient societies did well to establish that, indeed, you didn’t need to do at all. Here. You can have my last Dino. 

            Were you aware that the Abrahamic God was a god of many? That he addressed a council, likely gods themselves, and each had their own role? Then, at some point, those gods were demonized and the Abrahamic God’s depicted idols were thus removed? He transformed into a singular omnipresent, unexplainable, unimaginable thing,. Yeah, I mean, you weren’t suppose to know.  

            I wasn’t suppose to either, but I’m too curious for my own good. The funny part is…this same story repeated through every religion. A council of deities, giants, a flood story, a Tower of Babel, a deified son, and resurrection. All told by dozens of religions that never interacted with each other. I came to believe there was a truth to them all. These stories were over exaggerated with time, but I do wonder how much left of it was actually true. 

            Have you heard of generational transference? It’s like that. Our bodies hold the fears, the memories, the trauma, and potentially the beliefs of our ancestors. We gravitate to those stories because maybe, on some level, we know bits of them to be true. Possibly. 

            How much do I know? Girl, I read at least half of the Keys of Solomon. I’ve dabbled in just about everything in my search for the truth. I even tripped on acid five times in the span of three months. …Yeah, I know, terrible idea. 

            But I just had to. I attempted suicide three months before and, in doing so, I had disconnected my spirit from my body. I craved for her return like a child craves the arms of its mother and, desperate, I swallowed an entire tab of LSD. And I did it again—four more times. It was easy for me to do such a dangerous thing because, turns out, I couldn’t visually hallucinate. All I could feel was the ecstasy, the warmth, and the endless giggles escaping my lungs. I could feel her return with each drug-induced revelation; her resurrection in my heart and mind. She’s stronger than she’s ever been and slayed my beastly thoughts with fantastic fervor. She showed me impossible things too, things I never believed to be true, and proved, without a doubt, how unbelievably real she is. 

            She showed me the collective consciousness too.

For one shining moment, I dove into a reality within our reality and experienced family, friends, and strangers repeating every thought I had. I don’t know how else to describe it. Think of anything and now imagine if that stranger over there turned to you suddenly and repeated what you just thought. These people had no idea what they were doing, but they were doing it nonetheless. 

There were flickering lights too. Everywhere I went, lights flickered above me. You remember that, yeah? You remember how I asked you if you saw the lights and you were all nonchalant about it? This is why I asked. I asked anyone, regardless of who they were, if they saw it too. They all said yes. All of them unconcerned and only slightly perturbed by my question. 

            No, I wasn’t high when I asked. I had stopped LSD weeks before and I was, for all intents and purposes, sober when these events began. There was a TEDtalk I saw afterwards that explained how there were tribesmen for the exact purpose of guiding people through these types of experiences. That it’s accepted in some places to endure an absurd mixture of psychosis with spiritual awakening; especially if you didn’t mean to go too far. Looking back, I wish I had had that person, but all I had was my spirit and she was a little difficult to communicate with. She etched images into my mind and these images were as three dimensional as 3D can get. Like looking at your own hand. That’s how detailed and clear they were.

            I would be in my room, doing whatever hobby I enjoyed, when the images would appear. It began with volcanoes. I saw people run for their lives, then I saw solar flares burst from the sun and lick Earth’s atmosphere; burning flesh with intense UV light. Finally, I saw people going about their day and suddenly collapse. These people were young too. With each intrusive thought, reality didn’t feel real to me anymore. No matter where I went, this absurdity followed me. Nowhere was safe. It infected social media, my family, my friends, my home…all of it.

            I’m getting seconds. Those Mac n’ cheese dino-bites are too good to not get seconds. Gimme a minute, hold on. …Anyway! 

            …Each attempt to explain it was met with fear and disagreement; however, if I asked a spiritual question, I would be met with interesting answers. Like how any god could give any believer faith that their prayer would work. The god was a placeholder for the person; the person being the real conduit to obtain whatever they desired. 

I learned about the Ankh and compared it to the Christian cross. To me, the Cross looks beheaded. Again, I saw the link between injury and spiritual awakening. They literally worship a martyr who was tortured in order to have a spiritual connection with the Abrahamic God then they claim it’s to save us lowly sinners from eternal punishment. He was the burnt effigy, the lamb on the altar, the child in Baal’s sacrificial bowl. The easy way out. Same pattern, different story. …Oh, hey, I’m getting my seconds real quick. I’m back…! 

…You know what’s insane to me? All of that stuff doesn’t even include the fact that it was Jesus who alluded to the Abrahamic God’s council of deities in John 10:36. It was technically a reference to Psalms 82:6, but I digress. There’s been much research about these two scriptures and claims that Jesus was referring to judges…except that there’s no prior evidence to that connection. There is, however, more evidence to suggest it was in reference to this council of Yahweh, Yahweh’s wife, Baal, and other denounced deities…from what I researched anyway. 

…Alan Watts once viewed this scripture as confirmation of the gift. He claimed that when Jesus called himself the Son of God, he had actually said: “son of god”, not “the son of god” in earlier the Greek translation of the Bible. I couldn’t confirm that, but the research did bring me to the council and suggestions of metaphors. I could, however, find Jesus telling his followers that they could do what he does (John 14:12). There’s another reference as well to us being sons and daughters of God (2 Corinthians 6:18). In fact, Jesus referred to himself as Son of Man rather than the Son of God more often. It was his followers who called him the Son of God while Jesus continued to ask for faith in himself from his followers. 

That’s all without bringing the book of Enoch into the picture; which throws a majority of scripture for a loop. Essentially, Jesus said that, through faith in him, they could do what he does and more. It wasn’t so much that he asked to be worshipped, but rather, he wanted skeptics to have faith in him in order to do it themselves. The gift, again, being the symbiotic relationship between us and God. In doing so, Jesus was demanded to be crucified for straying from the traditional method of sacrificial injury. Also, blasphemy. That’s pretty important too. 

Allow me to present a more recent situation that brings a similar truth to what I’m referring to. There was a scientist, who’s name I forget, who fashioned a box and covered its walls in foil. He claimed that this box could heal anyone from any ailment they suffered. Tesla had a similar device as well that Mark Twain used to heal himself. Anyway, many people believed in the power of the box and, when inside it, truly became healed. 

Here’s the best part. The box was just a box. It was the belief in the box that healed people. The United States government then removed and denounced the box later on because there’s no money to be made when people heal themselves. Don’t believe me? That’s okay. Allow me to reference another. 

There was a case study done on the bodily effects of Dissociative Identity Disorder and, in this study, there was a woman who had an alter that believed it was diabetic. The woman herself wasn’t diabetic but, strangely enough, whenever she switched to this alter, her blood sugar levels would raise and match that of a diabetic’s. I couldn’t find the exact article, but I found another. Published by PubMed.gov, it was a case of a thirty seven year old German woman with D.I.D. She had some alters that were blind and some that weren’t. Thus, whenever she switched, she would lose and regain her sight. I believe it was…Hans Strasburger…Psych J, December 2015. “And I say to you, you are all gods”! 

If people actually knew they could genuinely heal themselves through belief then pharmaceutical companies would be out of business. Of course, I’m not saying you should entirely shirk medicine or science either, but I am saying that’s a route we ought to give more credence to. 

I achieved the ability to heal myself through my gift, to be able to connect to another through the collective consciousness, and I’ve been able to remote view the environment of at least two places with intriguing accuracy. The gift is there for you too whether you choose to believe me or not, but you are surely doing yourself a great disservice in denying yourself its exploration. There are others, like me, who’ve made themselves powerful with abuse of their gift. Would you so willingly allow yourself to be oppressed by their system by denying yourself the same power? All because it sounds crazy and certainly not as edgy as nihilism? Would you allow yourself the chance to believe what I say, for at least a moment, in order to free yourself from society’s mental shackles? To give yourself good luck and fortune? To be presented with health and connections like you’d never had before? 

Isn’t that much better than allowing yourself to be victimized? I’ve done my best to be as truthful as I can be and, again, I expect that, if you don’t believe me, this will be our last conversation. I’ve done so with all the hope that if you choose to believe me, you’ll be able to thrive and live successfully. You’ll move, as you’ve planned to, and no one will be able to abuse their gift to achieve power over you. You’ll be safe, protected, and fortunate. That’s all I desire for you. 

So, yeah, when I said: “I can control the weather”, what I meant was I used my gift to stop the rain in order to drive safely home. All I did was speak, with great faith, and reality listened. I did so with all the knowledge and study I gained through my spiritual breakthrough. 

Now I know what all that was and I’ve thrived since. I’ve been drug-free since aside from the occasional beer and I no longer feel compelled by addictions; although I still have a long way to go to cease all of my terrible habits. Still, I became much better since. 

I hope you meet God too and you are given the same gift I and many others were. …Now, are you gonna finish that? No? You want my dino-bites instead?

September 05, 2022 00:00

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