Little Bill

It’s 3:57 in the morning and I’m still awake. I’m also enjoying the peace and quiet. It allows me to reflect. It’s been nearly a month since the year began and I’m fortunate to have had the first month of 2007 be a good one, aside from the New Years disaster. I’ve had time to mull it over, I’ve even fictionalized the event for a short I’m working on, but I’ve been itching to tell the actual story. After all, I love stories. Especially good ones. And most especially good true ones, which this is.

So I have a girl visit me for New Years. And lets, for the sake of storytelling, call her Natalie. Natalie’s a nice God-fearing southern girl I’d met on a website. She flies out to visit me for New Years because neither of us have better options and it’s better to spend the holiday with someone than no one, right?

Wrong.

I want to preface this with the fact that Natalie and I had been romantic at one point though after more than a handful of ugly arguments it’s made very clear that that’s not the case this time around. Then Natalie says this to me:

Bill, the man I am going to marry is going to be a great man. He will be a great man who will teach many wonderful things to a great many people. And my husband will die at the hands of Satan. And our son will also battle Satan and die. And I will defeat Satan, but die in the process. And our daughters will go on to preach the word in our wake.

Moments later she looks up at my bookshelf in my bedroom and says (to my bookshelf):

I’m getting to that. Your guardian spirit has been trying to tell you that you are not to be my husband. That man is someone else. You are to be my protector. Maybe it’s because you’re not a believer (for the record, I’m agnostic. Not athiest.) but you haven’t been getting the message.

Oh, but there’s more. During all of this she keeps peering warily out my bedroom window, which looks out into the backyard. I ask her what is going on.

There’s something evil out there. Some kind of presence. It keeps coming closer.

I close the curtains but she tells me that it won’t stop it. I suppose some evil spirit’s in my backyard. A little while later in this conversation she basically curls up into a ball because of the screaming. You see, she’s an empath. No, really, there’s a red rash on the back of her neck at her hairline which says so. I know this because I asked what was wrong with her neck. “It’s the mark of the empath,” she says. Apparently she can read people’s emotions even if they’re not saying anything. I can do the same thing. It’s called body language.

You must think I’m crazy.

“No, I don’t think you’re crazy,” I say to her. Of course I’m actually thinking she’s a fucking whackjob. Even Christians would call her crazy. I didn’t want her to think for one second that maybe I might be in with the Devil and murdered in my sleep!

Suffice it to say, it cost way too much money to send her home sooner than her itinerary planned for and she was stuck with until January 4th. She said this to me on the 30th.

Anyway this is a true story. I may have mixed up some of her words but that’s the gist of it. I know this because I heard the story twice. Once when she told me and one morning when she snuck out into my living room to tell the story to some other boy she likes in California. Let’s call him Timothy. Except she told Timothy that a) he was to be her husband and she b) omitted the whole dying part.

Strangely, Timothy didn’t hang up on her. I might’ve.

I wouldn’t believe the story if it didn’t happen to me. In fact, I know one blogreader friend of mine, who also happens to belong to the same website where I met Natalie, didn’t believe me. That is, until she read Natalie say that the Devil is actually trying to stop her and Timothy from getting together.

Anyway, since then it’s been much, much nicer. She even blocked me from her AIM. My only disappointment was that I didn’t block her first.

Did I mention that she also once told me that she dated John Mayer? True story. Ha!