About this time, my friend Sara was growing up safely about 2000 miles away, in Salt Lake City, Utah. We had started things off together and had been separated. She would now go on to be raised in the LDS church, with morality and good Christian virtues. Her life was nearly as bad as mine. She would learn to cut herself to release a bit of her pain, she would learn where her father kept his handgun, and she would eventually begin to cut on her wrist to get her parents' attention. Her brother Glenn was not far behind.
As far as me and my own sister went, things were good at the time but that would never last. For the moment I just enjoyed the little babe's company. I love kids, and that began with my sister Amanda.
I didn't realize it at the time, but all four of us were connected.
I had a very strange feeling or sense about my sister, but I didn't know what it was. It made me a bit afraid (I didn't know why), a bit uneasy, and mostly..it was just weird. I don't know how else to explain it. It was like an unsettling feeling, if that makes sense.
I began to have dreams about a very beautiful woman with blonde hair who would come to see me. In most of the dreams, I was also an adult, though sometimes we were both kids. We were always in a classroom, and a blonde-haired man was teaching us things. All the classes were about the end of the world, and not all of my classes were with this beautiful girl. The lights were low, and because of this, most of the people in the world couldn't attend. Something very evil was coming and because I had inside knowledge, I was being taught to help. In other dreams, I was looking for a glowing orb like from one of my games, and the beautiful girl was trying to help me find it. This was something I'd had a long time ago but lost, and was determined to get back.
..........
One night, I had a dream not like any of these. At the time it was very strange and incredibly sad.
It started with a cave, like a tunnel dug into the earth. I had been wandering those tunnels by my self for a long, long time. It's dark, but somehow there is just enough light to see by. As I keep going, the tunnel ends and comes to meet three other tunnels at what used to be the courtyard of a castle. There are four entries to the courtyard, one for each direction.
I felt myself riding on a horse, and I was a fully-grown adult. I was a very strong and very powerful man. I was also a very tired one. I have cuts and bruises all over my body, and I'm sweaty and grimy. I feel battered, and beaten. I know that I have been riding for a very long time.
A nine-year-old dreaming in bed, I suddenly felt incredibly sad.
Riding alone on this horse, I had no home, no loved ones, nothing but my self-appointed quest. I was going to die and I knew it, but I didn't care..it wasn't even a thought in my mind..all I wanted was to finish what I had started. To kill the ones who had done this. I felt like no one knew me, no one ever called out for me, no one remembered me. No one even knew what I was. Everything had changed, gone either north or south, and I was the only one who had stayed. I was just something forgotten. A little piece of a past that no one ever thought about or remembered. And that's all I was.
Without thinking or saying anything, I ride up to the center of the courtyard, where there is a fountain. The entire courtyard is crumbling and covered in dust. The courtyard is much, much older than the cave surrounding it. This was something that had been hidden in the ground, which you had to go into the earth to find. And I stood in front of it. Despite the fact that the fountain itself was old and battered, the fountain still bubbled absolutely pure water, just like it always had, just like it always would.
I remember that I very strongly did not want to be at that fountain.
"Are you there?!" I called out.
The air seemed to answer me, all at once. It was like some kind of brass-sounding instrument in the dream, like a trumpet almost. It was as if every bit of air answered, and all at the same time. Each note reverberated within itself, like lighting echoeing in, and then slipped out. It came from the air about 10 to 15 feet in front of me, and maybe 5 or 6 feet above me. It wasn't there at first, not until I called to it. I want to say I felt something like a cloud, but I'm not sure so I can't say.
I remembered thinking it was God, and that He answered that He was *always* there. I said something like, "there's only so many ways this can end, aren't there?" I don't remember what the answer was. I then said something like, "one of those ways is with You, isn't it?" I remember dreaming that He said yes, and that the decision was mine. I believe I told Him that all I really wanted to do was to destroy "them". He answered, saying that it was going to be done, but He wasn't going to make any effort to see that I had anything to do with it.
In that moment I didn't hate God, but I felt apart from Him with no desire to go back. I just wanted to finish my mission and die.
In the dream, I felt so strong, not just physically, but mentally and spiritually as well. I was some kind of old grizzled war veteran, and I had been fighting the enemy for a countless number of years. Dreaming, it made me very sad and..just somber. The experience itself had a sense of agelessness to it. I had been traveling for so many years, and despite the fact that I tried so hard, I simply *could not* succeed at what I was trying to accomplish. I didn't have anyone with me. It was as if my entire family had passed away..as everyone else were just distant relatives, and that this distance only made it so much worse. My old life had passed away. All the things I'd wanted when I was so young had passed away. My home and everyone I loved was gone, long gone and completely forgotten. I was horribly alone, and I felt like no one even understood what I was about anymore. I was on this self-appointed "mission", and it was only because I had no contact with others that I could even have set out on something like this. But after so many years, I found that I just couldn't win, despite my strength and experience.
Finally, I made my decision. The decision was completely on my own part, almost selfish, and was for the sole reason that I wanted to defeat my adversary. I remember whispering out loud; "this is the only way I'll ever be able to do this." I reached into myself, and pulled out some kind of container. Inside was my blood. I hadn't wanted to make this decision for a while yet, but because of what had happened, I knew I couldn't hold out any longer. This sacrifice was absolutely necessary if I ever wanted to succeed. I opened the container and poured my blood out into the fountain.
This blood was incredibly old. It was without question ancient. There was an undisguised sense of nobility about it, and part of me wanted to break out in misery over the loss. Not even for myself..it was as if some priceless artifact were being destroyed forever. It was like I was pouring out the entire history of an entire noble line, erasing it from all the history books and killing off all the living descendants so that the family was completely gone, and forgotten forever.
After I finished pouring my blood into the fountain, the water turned a sickly light-red color. I felt horrible, because I thought for a moment that I had ruined the fountain. This fountain was different. It was one of those things that simply defied explanation, one of the wonders of God. And I had ruined it. After a second more though, the water cleared, bubbled again, and flowed, absolutely pure again. I filled my container with this water, and moved on.
...