Roast Beef

 I have known for a while now that I have a soul, and that while our bodies sleep, our souls never do. Instead, we wander in and out of consciousness. Sometimes, when we do this, instead of re-living our memories (like we do in our normal dreaming state), we travel to different ‘worlds’ to complete different tasks or jobs. Sometimes we travel to the other side, or the other world that exists in conjunction with our own. This is the story of when I learned the truth about dreams, and the first demonic possession that I have been aware of....that has happened to me.



 That day, I had gone to see my friend’s mother, who is a medium and a devoted spiritist, to learn more. Through her, I had already discovered the meaning of our lives (or my life in particular) and what happens after we die. So naturally I was curious about souls in general, and particularly dreaming. She had already explained to me that demonic possession occurs when we are at our weakest physically. If you’ve ever felt tired or sad or mad for no explanation, then a demon has probably possessed you. But then she began to speak about dreams, and she said that if I pray to God, I can be safe when traveling between dream-state and consciousness. The reason why I had to pray was sometimes our souls traveled to ‘the other side’, where demons and lost spirits (who had not come to terms with their own death) resided.



 At the time I had a huge crush on my friend, who always sat by my side when his mother explained something spiritual to me. We made lemonade after the dream-talk and we were cleaning up when I initiated a sponge fight with him. Nothing too serious, but I wanted him to kiss me when we were laughing and throwing soap at each other. We took the fight outside while I jokingly punched at him. After a few minutes, he accidentally hit me on my leg with his hand.



 Something flared inside me.



 I continued to ‘fight’, but I was pissed off. How dare he hit me! It wasn’t fair! He was laughing, which pissed me off even further.



 Then he hit me again.



 At that moment all of the romantic feelings I had for him vanished. Immediately, without thinking, I brought him close and kicked him in the balls. I watched him stop breathing from the pain as he sunk down into the ground. “Why did you do that?!” He gasped.



 “I don’t know.” I said blankly, watching him in anger. “You hit me.” My blood boiled at the sight of him. I wanted to kill him, I was so angry.



<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> “What the hell is your problem, Caroline?!” He rolled over, wincing in agony.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> “I’m leaving.” I said. I stormed into the house and grabbed my bag. I slammed the door behind me. I didn’t say goodbye to his mother, who was watching me from the living room window as I started my car.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> The entire trip back to my house was eerie. I could not believe that he would hit me, that son of a bitch. He would get it when I saw him at school tomorrow.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> That night I went to sleep, still feeling that same anger.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> But when I dreamed, it turned to terror.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> You see, I was in a town. Kind of run-down, with the buildings torn up from the outside and holes in the windows. For miles around there were these houses, too. The air was a greenish gray, although I could still see colors like red and purple perfectly.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> But there were no adults. The entire time I was there I only saw children from the ages of 6-12. They were clamored around me from the very beginning, scared out of their minds. I remember reading a news article with them, the headline saying ‘Killings Increase as Vanishings Occur’.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> The children kept saying that they had to catch the killer before anyone else was murdered, and that they already knew who it was - the mayor. We went to house to house, but found nothing there that would help us prosecute the mayor. Finally, we came to a house where the inside was perfectly intact. Everything from a kitchen to a living room was perfectly dusted and clean. Only two children went in with me to search for some sort of evidence. I think they were brother and sister, since they both had blonde hair and the same build. The boy had glasses, while the girl had braids with red ribbons looped around her head. We wandered around the house, which seemed to be abandoned, although every room we came across seemed to be spotless. We came to a study, where the girl and I immediately started to go through the files hidden inside the polished brown desk.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> For some reason, the study was a complete mess. There were papers and furniture turned over and scattered everywhere. It took a while but I remember finding records before the boy called us from the dining room. I told the girl to stay in the study while I went to find the boy. When I got there, he was pointing at a strange object sitting at the edge of the long, dark table that was sitting in the middle of the large room. A crystal chandelier was poised just above it, but the room itself had a blue aura surrounding it.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> He said to me ‘Let’s play it!’. I realized then it was a wind-up music player that lit up and showed different shapes as it played the song. I felt like he shouldn’t, that something extremely bad would happen should he turn the crank, but before I could say anything, he was already doing it.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> All of a sudden, the girl was standing in the door, and the boy was sitting in one of the chairs at the table. A eerie song began to play, while the lights reflected off of the chandelier as the crank began to turn on its own. They were both frozen, as was I, as we listened to the music-box-like tune drift through our ears.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> And then she appeared.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> A thin woman with glittering eyes as black as the night and smooth skin as white as chalk suddenly was sitting in the chair opposite of the boy. She wore a tight, white lace dress with long sleeves. Her hair was done up in a neat bun at the back of her head. She opened her mouth. Her black, black mouth. Bottomless. A paralyzing yet scary sound began to join in with the music. It took me a minute before I realized she was singing along with the song. Her jaw unhinged as the room suddenly began to spin. Faster. and faster. and faster. The woman began to distort and twist as the music grew louder. and louder. and louder.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> Then it stopped.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> No longer paralyzed, I looked to where the boy was sitting. The woman was now there, chewing viciously at his neck. His dead eyes stared off into space as his glasses were knocked off of his face and into his bloody lap. The woman tore off a piece of his skin and began to smack it between her teeth, moaning in pleasure from the taste.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> The girl screamed from the doorway and ran away. She screamed at me ‘Come on!” I was mesmerized by the horror of what I was seeing, but I obeyed her. I began to follow her but as I was running out I stopped again.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> That woman smiled at me. With bits and pieces of the innocent boy staining her teeth and her lips, she smiled at me. “Time for some roast beef.” She said in a luminous and beautiful voice. Her eyes glittered with malice and triumph as I awoke in my bed, sweating. The clock read 2:30 am.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> I could not get back to sleep, nor could I focus at school the next day. I was too freaked out. I didn’t know if what I saw really happened or not. Who was that woman? Was that a real world I had gone too? With the guilt weighing down my body, I apologized to my friend and asked if I could come by later to speak to his mother.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> When I got there, she gave me a big hug and she said to not be afraid. She had known that something was wrong when I had left the other day in the mood that I was in. With pity in her kind eyes, she said that I had been possessed by the woman that had appeared in my dreams, but that the world I was in was created by her to scare me and to bring me down to my lowest point. I had been possessed by her from the moment I had actually kicked my friend in the balls.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> Shocked, I asked what I had done to make her mad at me. She shrugged and said “Caroline, sometimes demons will be jealous of what you have and they will try to take it away from you. All you can do now is pray to God to have this spirit taken away from you so you won’t be plagued by your dreams. If you cannot sleep at night, this woman will take full possession of you. So go pray.”

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> I have been praying every night before I go to sleep now for the past two months, and not once have I had a bad dream. Just the usual stuff, you know. Flying and everything. Nor do I feel angry or tired or any of that nonsense.

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<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;"> But I do feel hungry. Maybe I’ll get some tuna or roast beef for lunch today.