Eloquent Silence (47 page)

When I look in the mirror I see a dumpy little roly-poly of a woman who is not me, was never me as I was tall and slender, a glib-tongued little mortal with a half-smirk who has almost black eyes set in those dark hollows I described before. No resemblance to me as I am at all. I am tall and graceful, not dumpy, with a willowy figure, serenely elegant with a dark, sweet voice that is unique to myself. I sail majestically through life, not plod flat-footed around like the creature in the mirror. Mystifying how mirrors can get the facts so wrong.

After having been a boarder at that exclusive girls’ school where religion was drummed into us morning, noon and night, I have forever remained committed to the cause of worshiping enthusiastically. So I go to church as many Sunday mornings as I can, whenever I can be let out by the beings who see where I go and who comes in and who goes out of my house. I like to go and worship because the Holy Spirit comes to me and fills me up, full to overflowing and that is my emotional lifeline to this planet Earth where I am tied hand and foot. This despite my sometimes desire to join the entities on the Mothership and go to another world that may be preferable to this one. 

Going to church feels wonderful and I come away refreshed, feeling that I am validated. And clear-headed for a time. A new version of me emerges, quite unlike the one many people know. They look at me with their blank, bewildered expressions and say,  ‘Hi Reba,’ and ‘How are you, Reba,’ and all the time I know they are feeling I am a danger to them in some way. I do have a good left hook, I’ll admit.

Unfortunately when I have a sense of peace after church it seldom lasts long until they start slogging it out again. They wear away at me until I feel I am an old woman awash in free-floating fears and I wish for a solitude that I cannot find here on this planet. There are days when I feel I am a walking, talking battleground as I try to sort out their spellbinding conversations, looking to left and right for relief and validation.

At other times the silence is eloquent as I wait for the pattern to begin again, the old repetition of murmuring and echoing that I had hoped would go away once and for all. Once I have gone into shutdown mode I feel a little safer as I huddle in the darkness waiting for Jesus to appear outside the window.

Can’t go to church at the moment, though, as much as I would like to. Too busy at home with my assignment, feeling utterly drained. I hope this is not a foretaste of how I will be tested for the balance of my days. The thought simply wears me out. Exhausting and confusing. But I’m having an absorbing and dramatic life, so I shouldn’t complain.

Oh, more times than I can possibly tell you, the Holy Spirit has filled me with His divine light and has given me a mission to fulfill because I have a special talent to do it. I possess the special ability it takes to carry out this project I’ve been given as He passes me a degree of revelation at the time. A mystic, I consider myself to be, in the divine sense. Mystic mystery woman who has tasted of the divine fruit. That’s me. That is I, Reba the Realist. When the beings finally take over this planet I will hopefully be Reba the Ruler of some important area on the face of the Earth.

But I must be humble about it, though I’m not really in the least humble if anyone could see inside me. Nothing has ever been said to me to alter my self-esteem which is a Godsend.

Although sometimes when I am at peace I feel that I am suffering from diminished capabilities and this concerns me. I don’t want to have diminished anything. Self-esteem is central to my soul and I know that in the fullness of time when I have achieved my plan I will be rid of this insufferable need to cloister myself.

But please don’t ask me to explain my mission to you as nobody else is supposed to know it’s even been put on the table for examination. Mind you, it’s not an easy mission but I’ve been blessed with all the special qualities it takes. I have special knowledge, special talent, special ways that have been shown to me so I can persevere and complete this work for the sake of humanity as a whole. Secret, secret stuff, don’t you know.

I’ll just stay within my home until the obligation is complete. I have to be obstinate about that when people come and try to get me out of the place. Then, when this is accomplished, they, (the owners of the voices I am referring to, that is), may allow me to go out again, maybe, one day. Hopefully. I long to go out for more than cigarettes and a few groceries. Sometimes I get out and by the time I have driven around for a while, all the entities have been blown out of the car. Then it’s just the cat and me, driving along at a million miles an hour, fast as a space ship even, the wind in our hair and whipping the eyes out of our heads.

They’re fairly strict, these beings, and may not often approve of my leaving the house. I see my course clearly, though, and I must obey or be mastered. I have a natural inclination towards dignity and problem solving, so I will suffer the condescending tone of people who think I am nutty.

‘Fruitcake lady,’ the neighborhood children call me, gawking over the fence at me if I go outdoors, throwing the odd stone or two at the roller door of my garage or the cat if it goes outside.

If I speak to other people, at times they, (my voices), reproachfully accuse me of being disloyal to them as they want me for myself, want to possess me fully. Only they can see my course clearly and make me pursue it, which I must do. It’s no use trying to evade them as they are everywhere, ubiquitous, and I must have such utter faith in them that I don’t question their motives.

But when the Holy Spirit enters into me, eventually the evil forces come as well, sure as I’m born, which is a really strange phenomenon as it can be a discordant time for me. They invade my house and chase the Holy Spirit out and they won’t let me outside except to get cigarettes for myself and food for my beloved cat, which I’ve told you I can only do at the present time. The cat, Whoppie, is my companion for whom I have to fight the evil forces because if they can’t get at the woman then they get at the animal.

These beings can take my last atom of strength out of me as they pervade my inner sanctum of my soul. But they have chosen me to be their instrument so who am I to wonder why?

My little cat’s been through hell, poor little mite, so I protect her as best I can by keeping her with me all the time. When we go out I let her sit on my lap as I drive. She likes to feel the wind through the window. She’s really the only thing that keeps me going. All I live for.

I have family and friends but they can’t understand what I’m on about, only one or two of them, even though they pretend to see the problem and say I need help—medication, counseling. Some tell me I’m not Christian because I won’t respond to them and that fact continues to worry and aggravate them. I think that’s their problem, not mine.

I am on permanently bad terms with some of them. They think I’m a little on the loony side, obviously, in agreement with the neighbors. I simply can’t remember when anyone cared enough to put their cheek next to mine in greeting or farewell. Maybe they’re afraid of me, that the beings will rub off on them or jump from my eardrum into theirs. Weirdos.

There’s a prissy little blue-rinsed lady up the street with a permanent wave. Sometimes she leaves lemon poppy seed cake in a tin outside the door for me. I don’t want her charity so I heave it over the neighbor’s fence to feed their bull mastiff, Horatio. He wolfs it up like you wouldn’t believe. I’m not on anybody’s charity list.

These friends or relatives come to my door and I won’t let them in, mostly, as it’s not safe to do so.  We have a bleak and awkward conversation as I hang my head out the door and they look me up and down as if I haven’t changed my clothes for a week or something. They poke and pry and wait but I don’t have to explain myself to them. When I tell them I’m not allowed to go out they ask me who won’t let me and I find it impossible to explain the dark and obscure forces in here with me.

After a while they lose interest and don’t come back, which is good because I need all my time alone to deal with the forces and to study religious tracts and books and writings. They say I’m simply being snooty for not wanting their company. Or they think I’m the village idiot. A very bad error of judgment, that one. Perhaps I have reason enough to be snooty. After all, I am the chosen one. 

My family and friends are annoyed because I won’t answer my phone, as well. Sometimes I simply leave it off the hook if I have had enough of the aliens coming through it into my head.  Or I unplug it at the wall. Whichever way it goes, I’m pretty unreachable then. When I have two or three phones lined up as well as my mobile and none of them are plugged in or switched on, then the forces can’t get in that way. They have to go back to the mother ship without having a piece of me. That’s a win for me.

But then they find a way to get to me without using the telephone and needless to say that unnerves me for the time being. Finally,  we settle into the day together like the old friends we really are.

I feel like a conqueror when I see those phones unplugged and I know they can’t get at me through the phones for one thing. Via that form of telecommunication. That gives me a hidden insight into dealing with the quandaries others thrust on me through their concern. I experience a wave of triumph at being in charge of my own destiny when I don’t have to answer telephones.

They—the owners of the voices— wouldn’t let me go to my family or friends for Christmas so I sat in the house and had bread and butter. Didn’t have any jam, unfortunately. As I said, they still won’t let me go anywhere again at the moment. That’s fine, as I’ve retired from work so I can simply concentrate on this mission I’m on. If I told you what it was you’d think I was crazy. God forbid that I should blow your mind!

In my working life I’ve lost an awful lot of jobs because of the evil forces interfering in my life. They are clutching and possessive and won’t let me progress in any situation I’ve ever had. Just when I start to work my way up the ladder they begin to interfere and next thing you know I’ve lost my job again. I wish sometimes I had the right to exist without their intervention. I have to slink off from yet another job, with the embarrassment almost strangling me. Shamed and humiliated by yet another faux pas, I know the Forces have lost me another position. It seems the more I like the job the quicker the Forces move to send me on my way.

At times it’s my manipulative and controlling ex-husband who is ultimately responsible for the sacking. He is a bloodless man with a hawk-like countenance and flashing eyes, and without any significant sort of passion, and I know for sure he was behind the latest job loss, ringing around until he made sure I was given the heave ho. Real trouble arises when he tries to get me out of a job. The stumbling block of my life—the old ex-husband. How many women can relate to that?

Sometimes it’s a satanic person in disguise at that particular workplace. The evil forces have planted these enemies everywhere as well as in people—in all computer devices and electronic gadgets. What a Pandora’s box opens then and I have to be in full flight from that particular place. The ex is usually at the epicenter of all my troubles even thought he says he has completely severed all ties with me, but they always say that, don’t they, these ex-husbands with malice in their minds?

Once when the evil forces were on the telephone line, my ex-husband caused me to lose my position in my home town. So I simply got in my car and drove from nearby Darwin to Perth in a couple of days flat out with barely a break in order to make a fresh start. Maybe three days. I don’t know. Night turned into day and day into night as I drove relentlessly, trying to escape.

But the forces came with me, talking constantly in my head as I drove, hotfooting it across deserts and plains, though the wilderness and back out into civilization. They prevented me from getting work so I turned right around and drove away from Perth with them yammering in my head all the way across the Nullabor Plain into Victoria.

Then we went up into New South Wales and Queensland and over to Darwin again, post haste. I thought that taking a different route might clear them out of the car but I was wrong. For a while I felt oddly desolate but I could just imagine my big old ex-husband rocking on his large, smelly, flat feet. It amused me so much that I just locked myself inside my house and tried to regain my equilibrium and found I couldn’t so I headed off again.

In my little hometown near Darwin I had found that they had gone on ahead and were there waiting for me, would you believe, in the Northern Territory telephone system, totally without conscience, not caring that they were invading my privacy after I had driven all the way around Australia, circumnavigating the country, you could almost say.

Totally without moderation, too, for that matter as they went at me harder than ever and fairly wore me out. I wouldn’t want a mobile, not for all the rice in China, carrying them around in my pocket as well as in my head.  I actually own one and I carry it but I never switch it on. Why on earth would I?

Oh, nobody knows how weird it is for me. To them it would be weird but to me it’s normal. I guess I’ve gotten used to them as one does to a weeping sore or the knowledge that a cancer is growing in your body. Acceptance is the key as I can’t fight them.

Pretty soon after that tour around the country I found I couldn’t cop the blocking of my airwaves and decided to go to Noumea where they couldn’t find me, as who would expect them to have found their way onto a little island like that? But wouldn’t you know it. They were already there when I arrived. Ubiquitous little assholes.

So I holed up in a flat and saw nothing of the island. Pretty near starved to death , come to think of it as I had no way of communicating so found it difficult to be able to get food. Lived on two minute noodles merely for the convenience of it. I’d stock up on a couple of dozen packets and stay in until I’d finished them. Boring!

After a while I came home again.

I don’t seem to have these sudden compulsions to take off any more. Just happy to stay in my place listening for the voices as they sometimes chatter uncontrollably or whisper orders to me. ‘Salute the cross.’ ‘Make way for the Prime Minister, the Right Honorable Winston Churchill.’ ‘Princess Diana wants chocolate cake with no almonds.’ Diana would have pure delight on her face when presented with that lovely, yummy cake made to my mother’s recipe.