The Poems And Confessions Of A Mad Man Page 13
When I had arrived to the large cabin deep in the forest, no one was there. I broke in through the rear window, only to find a stage that looked like an alter, that had some remains of a sacrificed animal on it. The alter was in the center of a large pentagram on a stone floor. There were partially burned goats heads that were decaying in the nearby fire pit. I took the black rose out of my pocket and threw it onto the alter. I could sense what seemed like an evil presence within that place. I couldn’t stay there as my imagination began to run wild with the things that could have taken place in there. My broken heart from the death of Hope turned into a blinding rage and I burned the cabin to the ground that day. As I watched it burn, I could hear a singing in the forest all around me that seemed to be getting louder and closer. The hotter the fire grew, the louder the singing became until it finally stopped.
As time went on, I wondered if legends could become reality if you believe in them hard enough. I wondered if having faith in something so much, could give life to it and make it happen. Everything that happened made me wonder if that black rose had something to do with Hope’s death. I haven’t been back to that old town, nor do I ever intend on visiting it again.
The Last Straw
By: Andrew J. Green
Ever since I was 18 years old, I’ve tried to prove wrong, everything my father had said about me. While growing up, he would tell me I was going to go nowhere or that I was a dummy and wouldn’t amount to anything because I was too stupid. I hated him for that, but instead of blowing his or my head off with one of the many guns that were in our house, I used that hatred as fuel to become successful. I would prove him wrong, and I did for a long time.
I was the only child he had that didn’t graduate from college at the time, and he thought I didn’t deserve to have anything because of it. He said I never could own a house nor have good jobs or anything. Once when my children were old enough to understand, they watched how my father treated me compared to my brother and sisters. My children went up to my wife, with tears in their eyes and asked her this question. “Mommy, why does Grandpa hate Daddy so much?” My wife was in a temporary shock and didn’t know what to say. She knew there was a problem with my father’s attitude toward me, but she never thought it was so pronounced that the children could feel it. Her only response was, “Oh, he’s just an old meanie.”
He despised me so much, that one time on Fathers Day, he had a family gathering and didn’t tell us. My brother and sisters along with their spouses and children had all come from different parts of the East coast to attend it. My father never told us he was having this get together and I only lived 20 miles away. My sister called me and wondered where we were. I told her I wasn’t notified about it but was planning on coming down to give Dad his Fathers Day gift later. She said to come quick before the food gets cold. When we arrived, they were having steak and chicken and all of the things that go with a big barbeque. When we walked in to the backyard, my Dad looked at us and said, “There are hamburgers and hotdogs for you and the kids, but the chicken and steaks are for everybody else and their children.” I didn’t think anything about it but my wife said to him in her mind, “Screw you old man! Who do you think you’re talking to?” I didn’t feel offended because this is just how it was. My wife couldn’t believe he was this bad to me. I told her that this was nothing. She should have seen what he was like to me when I was little. We ate the hamburgers and hot dogs, visited, and then went home.
This is how it was all of the time. He didn’t think I deserved to have anything because I wasn’t good enough for him. Whenever I became upset with him and asked him what his problem was, he would just say in a loud voice, “Don’t get me started Andrew!” You’ll never know how many times I wished he would have had a heart attack right there, and die at my feet. I hated him because of how he treated me all of my life.
I’d proved him wrong about everything he said about me. I became a true Christian in the military, many years ago and whenever Dad would see me succeed it bothered him. My dad goes to church every week but doesn’t believe Jesus and what His teachings were, so whenever he asked me how I accomplished something, I told him it was because of Jesus. It drove him crazy whenever I said the name of Jesus without cursing. I would say Jesus this, and Jesus that, and praise Jesus for this, and thank Jesus for that. I loved it because he would get so mad at me, that sometimes he would kick me out of his house. It was great.
I had to be careful not to ever fail, because if I did, whether he found out or not, I would pay dearly. Even if he never found out, I would hear him in my mind saying I was a failure and that I was a loser. Sometimes I thought I heard him so loud that I would scream for him to shut up. I thought I was becoming schizophrenic or something. Whenever my wife heard me yell, she would tell me that no one said anything. She knew something was wrong but she would just put her hands on my head and pray for these demons to leave me. I believe it worked because a peace would come over me and my father’s voice would go away.
I swore one day I’d be a millionaire and throw that in my fathers face like no man knows. I had a good job as a delivery man for one of the biggest package delivery companies in the country and I also owned my own company on the side. When I wasn’t delivering packages, I was working my own business. I made a small fortune and saved a lot of money. After doing my calculations, I figured I would work for a long time before I could retire. I knew I had to invest my money in something that would make me a fortune, and then do it again.
In February of 1998, I was contacted by an old broker I used in the past to invest in Futures commodities. He said the oil market was going crazy because Saddam was at it again in Iraq. He said that the market could shoot up quite a few dollars if this tension escalates, and anyone in the market at the time, would become filthy rich. I knew he wasn’t lying because I missed the investment chance on the first Gulf War and wasn’t missing the second chance.
When you invest in Futures commodities, you’d better have nerves of steel. These are the investments that cause people to jump out of windows. Futures commodities aren’t like buying stock because when you buy stock, you own that stock. Futures trading works like this. For every Futures contract you purchase, you sort of rent the right to move about 50,000 barrels of oil. You never see or touch the oil, but on paper it’s yours for 3 months or so. If when it’s yours, it goes up 1 cent per barrel, you will make $50. per contract. You usually need to buy at least 3 or 4 contracts at around $1,500. per contract. It will usually cost you around $5,000. to get into the market. Understand that oil doesn’t go up or down a few pennies, it usually moves a few dollars and in a time of war, it can climb $10. dollars per barrel. Do the math and you could make hundreds of thousands of dollars in 3 months. You can also lose your balls overnight, if the market falls.
On February 23, 1998, I bought in and dumped all of our money into the market. My greed also caused me to drain a credit card for an extra $5,000. and put it into the Futures contracts. I figured having $5,000, in credit card payments won’t change my life, but making an extra hundred thousand dollars would. During those 3 months, the market never went up and Saddam didn’t cause any trouble as was expected. The market went down because the threat in the Middle East was gone and I lost every penny I’d put in.
A few weeks prior to losing everything, my wife had been pregnant for 6 weeks and miscarried the baby. She had a tubule pregnancy and she was bleeding to death. When I called my work and told them why I couldn’t come in, my boss said there wasn’t anyone else to deliver the route I was on, and if I didn’t come to work, then I was fired. He told me to call an ambulance and leave her there with a note on the door, telling the paramedics where she was. He also said to leave the door unlocked, so the paramedics could get to her. I told him I couldn’t do that and that he could do to me whatever he wanted, but that I was taking her to the hospital. I rushed my wife to the hospital and she was near death when the doctors started her surgery. The doctor said that if I h
ad called an ambulance, she would have bled to death by the time they went to where we lived and then drove to the hospital. Thank God she lived but the baby was gone.
That time of year is rather slow in the delivering of packages, so my boss conveniently cut the route I was on, and I was laid off. Everything was falling apart and I could hear my father’s voice telling me I was a loser and things like this. I imagined myself losing my house that he said I’d never have, and could see him in my mind, with a smile on his face. I didn’t know what to do. Everything was out of control. I felt like a fighter pilot who’d been hit by a rocket and I was going down in flames.
To top it all off, our Newfoundland dog named Samson, was real sick from a tape worm. He had also got off of his leash and was running after deer on our land. I said I’d never tolerate a dog that ran deer into their graves. When I was hunting once with my dad, we came across a deer that was still alive after dogs had eaten its hind quarters off, and never killed it. It was just suffering until my dad shot it. I swore I’d kill my dog myself if it ever ran after deer. Samson was becoming a wild animal. He wasn’t the gentle dog that loved me more than anything else. All he ever wanted to do was to try to get off his chain, and run after deer. He howled inside or outside all of the time. It seemed that the part wolf that he was, had come alive and was ruling him. I didn’t know what to do.
On March 21, 1998, my dog Samson had been howling all night. My mind was fried from everything that had happened. I’d lost a fortune in the market, we lost a baby, my wife almost died, I was laid off from my job and couldn’t get unemployment because I owned a business, that business is seasonal from spring to fall, so we didn’t have any money coming in. The things my dad had said to me in the past were playing in my mind over and over like a broken record. Samson’s actions became the preverbal last straw that broke the camels back.
I grabbed my 20 gauge shotgun and took Samson for the last walk he would ever go on. We walked to a place across the road, in the forest he loved. We walked there 100 times in the past but this walk would be different. Samson was only a few feet away from me when I threw a stick to get his attention away from me. When he looked for the noise that the stick made, I put the barrel behind his left ear and pulled the trigger. The blast rolled Samson for 5 feet and he was stiff and convulsing. I feared he may be suffering so I shot him in the head again. I blew a 3rd hole in him to make sure he was dead.
It was like a bad dream. I snapped out of this trance I was in, and realized what I had done. I had just killed the only true friend, besides my wife, who truly trusted and loved me. I buried him in the marshy swamp nearby. I walked home alone and told my wife what I’d done. We cried like babies together and she assured me that it was for the best. His hips were going bad and he was real sick, but that didn’t make me feel better.
The very next day I walked to Samson’s grave only to find that the coyotes had dug him up and had eaten him in the night. I yanked out the fangs from his mouth, as a part of him that I’d never be without. I buried his remains deep in a river bed that no animal would disturb. Everyday for a week I visited him and told him that I loved him and I’m sorry it had to be this way. I told him to play with, and to look after the 4 children we had miscarried while he was with us. I’ll never get over the time the camels back broke, from the burden of the last straw.
Faith To Knowledge
By: Andrew J. Green
I now know why the Lord doesn’t show Himself to people except under conditions that are so severe, that only to see Him is the only way to help someone through a difficult time in their life. When I was 30 years old, my life became so destroyed, that I didn’t want to live any longer. I had been a devout believer in the Bible and had studied it extensively, in both the Hebrew and the Greek translations. If anyone needed to be encouraged or wanted a Biblical scripture to help them through a hard time, then many times they would come to me and I could guide them through the mine field of danger they were in, by giving them Biblical counsel. I could encourage anyone except myself when all Hell broke loose in my life.
Within one month in my life, my wife miscarried our child and she almost died in the process, I was laid off from my job, my 2 teenage kids decided that they weren’t going to serve the Lord that they had been taught about their whole lives, and they decided to let everyone in our church know about their rebellion in the middle of a church service. I guess they thought that drugs and dropping out of school were the gods that they wanted to serve. My wife and I were pillars in the church and the humiliation was unbearable. During this month, my beautiful Newfoundland dog was put to death because he was sick and he was beginning to chase deer on our property. A number of other bad things had happened in that month that I’d rather not say, and I didn’t want to go on living.
I was planning to commit suicide because the Biblical scriptures weren’t enough anymore to comfort me in this bad time. I had used the scriptures over and over again and they seemed all worn out. I can remember praying one day and I told the Lord that I felt like a fighter jet that was hit by a rocket and that I was going down in flames. I cried out as loud as I could, “Mayday! Mayday! Lord I’m going down!” I remember telling the Lord that His word wasn’t going to save me this time, and that I needed to see Him personally, or I wasn’t going to make it.
My soul’s cry must have touched the heart of God because as I was in our shed, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, was suddenly standing before me and He called my name. What I saw was too indescribable for words, so I won’t even try to because words would only insult Him by explaining. He said that I was going to make it through this and He was holding the child that we had lost. He told me why things happened in my life and I listened to Him and had the opportunity to experience something that very few will ever experience as long as they live. After He was finished, and I was ready to continue on with life, He left and I was alone again. I haven’t had an experience like that again and I now know why.
I no longer had faith in Jesus Christ. I no longer believed that He was born and lived on this earth for 33 years or that He died and was raised from the dead or any of what the Bible said. I no longer believed it because I now knew that it is all true. I once believed what I had hoped for, but now I knew it was true because I saw Him and I heard His voice. You may say that I’m mad, but I know what I say is true.
Seeing Him was the greatest experience anyone could ever have but as time went on, I missed seeing Him and I grew to hate this world. I found out that I was going to be a prisoner on this earth for 40 or so years more. My life, even though it became better, seemed like a life sentence in a damned world. I no longer felt compassion for people of other religions and I felt very special. I couldn’t tell anyone about what I had seen, except my wife. Everyone would all have thought that I was crazy, and rightfully so. You wouldn’t believe how many people I’ve met and heard about who’ve said that they have seen Jesus and that He told them to go to the deli and get a hoagie sandwich or something bizarre like that. The only problem was that when they went to the deli, it was closed. Like Jesus didn’t know the deli was closed or something.
Here I was, a man who had a personal interview with Jesus Christ and I couldn’t tell anybody. Well now I’m telling you. If you think I’m crazy, well then screw you. You can go on with your life as a heathen or a Muslim or a Hindu or what ever the hell you want to be, but when you die, you WILL burn forever and you will wish you had listened to the mad man who wrote this historical incident down. You see, I know what the hell I’m talking about. You on the other hand, only hope and believe that you’re right and if you’re not a believer in Christ, then you will live eternally apart from Him. There is no “special place” for your religion. If you refuse to receive the King’s Son, then you will surely burn.
As time went on I grew bitter when someone would cuss me out or try to humiliate me because I was a Christian. So instead
of doing what the Bible says and pray for blessings to come to them, and for the Lord to save them, I would tell them in front of all of their friends that I was going to loose Satan and his demons on that person and their family. I would tell them that Satan was going to destroy every part of their life and that they would come crawling back to me and beg me to remove the curse that I had put on their life. After a week or so of the Devil’s raping, they would always ask me to remove the curse. I would tell them to go screw themselves, and that I would remove the curse when my wrath was satisfied. Many times their friends would desert them because they didn’t want any part of what was happening. I would usually tell them that they didn’t appreciate what God had given them and that maybe they didn’t deserve their child. I would tell them that their child was going to be sick and would eventually die if I chose. I would use the supernatural powers to break anyone who cursed Jesus Christ or insulted me for my beliefs. Was it wrong? Of course it’s wrong, but I grew to hate this world and I wouldn’t tolerate anyone who opposed my God.
I would tell anyone of any other belief that if they wanted to see whose God is truly God, then we will curse one another. If their god is truly God, then I would die by the days end. But if my God is truly God, then they and their whole family would die by days end. I would also say that if no one dies, then I will go and serve another god and that my God isn’t real. I knew my God was real because I saw Him, and I knew Satan wanted to kill someone and take their soul to Hell, so I knew I would win. Believe it or not, people who had all of this great faith in their false gods wouldn’t take my challenge.