The Demons/Fall of 1990

In the summer of 1990 I went to go live with daddy in Fowler. I left my momma’s apartment because I made the mistake of telling her about Russell. Russell was a Dr. in the Political Science department. He wasn’t anyone significant in my life I just didn’t want my momma to bully me anymore.

I went to live with daddy who had no hot water in his rented house. Brouwer was in Europe. I was writing to him every day in my journal, without sending the letters. There was no contact between Brouwer and myself the entire summer. I was writing to Ariel all summer. Like Avery, I made up Ariel to write to. That is why I began flirting with Mardon, a Political Science professor in the first place and got kicked out of the apartment for doing so.

It was the bare bones with daddy, there was no hot water. Daddy had very little money, every morning he would go and try to collect money from people he had done work for. He was taking pictures at the time. Every morning I nagged daddy to buy me a fountain soda, a diet Pepsi. That is how pathetic the two of us were.

This was the time that demons began to bother me. One night I went to sleep, and I will try to describe what happened.

The first time demons bothered me, I recognized them as demons, something heavy was on top of my chest pressing down, covering my mouth so I couldn’t speak, something paralyzed me, something horrific, the presence that bound me was the ugliest thing I had ever experienced, it traumatized my flesh it felt as if it were being bitten and scratched, I was terrified. I knew it was evil. I knew they were demons or a demon. I was so far from the Lord. My soul was deteriorating into the existentialist philosophy I was studying. The writings of Sartre and Camus I had picked up from the university. The bible I had slept with and marked up was in a drawer somewhere. The cutting and scratching continued behind closed doors. Sometimes I cut just to cut, the desire to just feel pain. I feigned some kind of happiness. But the anger, which verged on rage, held me hostage.

At night, I began to suffer from what seemed like tactile hallucinations. Sometimes I would hear loud chimes, other times a loud train seemed to be in the room. Once, I heard what sounded like enormous wings flapping. I was always sober, never given to alcoholic beverages, but my flesh began to be impinged, even assaulted by what was not there. Immediately, I knew they were demons. The demons would enter my dreams and turn them into nightmares. They would possess dolls, and people. They haunted me for several years. Even when I told Pastor Capo years later, he said I had a chemical imbalance and needed medication.

I have heard what I have experienced called “night terrors”. But they are demonic visitations brought on by unholy activity. Mine was brought on by cutting myself. There were times during the assaults which were always horrific “they” or “it” would try to go inside my mind, they would exert great pressure as if to possess me. With urgency I cried out to Jesus. “Jesus!” “Jesus!” “Jesus!” The power of His name caused the evil presence or presences to abandon me immediately. I was always drenched in sweat, disturbed and too terrified to go back to sleep. It was the cutting that drew them to me.

But the cutting was getting more severe, and there was a time I began to store my blood in vials which I recognized then to be evil. My writing was so dark, I felt all but abandoned by Jesus. Although, he was the One I cried out to during these violent attacks. It was always Jesus through my horribly distorted voice I couldn’t even recognize as my own voice anymore. Immediately the evil presences were gone.

“If I could find my Lord today without having to look inside if He could reason with the stitches that have opened themselves up again, if He could take His hands and close the gashes with a touch hold my wrists with the holes in His Spirit from spilling build a fortress around my besieged body keep the demons from entering like You did before when their angelic claws suffocated when essences of evil conspired to rape my will castrating my senses distorting the voice that identified me as they battled to stay and I knew their demon hoofs on my flesh and the violation of their presences I fell into a seizure trying to get out of myself, to get out from under a gargantuan wingspan to escape the ancient dominions and oppression bound tongues of deceit and the wicked embattlements bombarded mere skin as they slipped chains on my throat as I battled for speech but grunted and moaned for the gift of the words once mine. Do again what you did then when you forced the principalities when you ejected the usurpers from me when they attempted to establish their throne in me and You established yours instead, do now what You did then.”

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“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

(Ephesians 6: 12)

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