The Journey
Human souls are all the same. At least, they start out that way. Your life, your experiences, your choices can either strengthen your soul… or leave it emaciated. The decisions you make can sculpt it into something beautiful, or twist it into a hideously gnarled mess. But like I said before… it doesn’t start out that way. When you look upon a small child, any child, you can clearly see… their souls all start out exactly the same. Irrelevant of the wrapper that encompasses it, every baby’s inside is completely identical. Take care how you mold that precious life, parents. Good or ill, you will be held accountable.
JK Ensley
The Journey
Copyright© 2016 by Jennifer Ensley
The Journey is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance, similarity, or identification to actual persons, living or dead, events, products or locales is entirely coincidental and unintentional.
Cover Artwork and Design by www.selfpubbookcovers.com/Shardel
Editing by Mel Carey
Formatting by Jennifer K. Ensley. www.JKEnsley.com
**All credit and unimaginable praise and adoration goes to the many scholars and historians who came before me.**
**A special thank you and deepest respect for my preacher and lifelong friend, Eugene Underwood. I would know and understand nothing, were it not for your capable tutelage, Brother. Namaste—my soul bows to your soul… always.**
All rights are reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form, including but not limited to, characters, text, book design, and artwork all owned solely by Jennifer K. Ensley. Any unauthorized duplication and/or distribution of this work, characters, places, and story in whole or in part may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution.
In loving memory of Tracey Walker George. You still own the whole of my forever-broken heart, Trace… always.
Also by JK Ensley
Forgotten Grace
Gypsy’s Kilt
A Dance with Destiny:
Cursed by Diamonds
Blessed by Sapphires
Enthroned by Amethysts
Destroyed by Onyx
Protected by Emeralds
Redeemed by Rubies
Dragon Born
Book One: Liliquin
Chapter
1
The worst part… is the smell. If I spend too long there, I reemerge emaciated, skeletal, gaunt, ashen. I can’t help it. My physical deterioration is a byproduct of my inability to eat, to drink, and the ever-constant retching. Sulfur—the rotten stench of hell. It burns in my nostrils for days.
As I now pass through this unfamiliar, decaying maze—desperately seeking the hidden entrance to the beyond place—I stop to watch the unknowing masses I have just stumbled upon.
What draws them here? —the living. What kind of otherworldly pull does this stinking old tomb waft out into the night?
I cannot hear it, cannot feel it… but apparently they can. The elated glow upon their painted faces, their echoing revelry, their passion-fueled dances… these things all speak the truth of it.
Yet, what is it all for? Who is it all for? This… I cannot say. All I can say—and with one hundred percent certainty—they are burning an entire night of their precious lives away, for naught.
Not a single creature who passes through this crypt cares one whit for these delusional mortals. The dark ones who walk about this forgotten boneyard do so without so much as a passing glance to their right or to their left. If these humans are gathered here to worship or praise or impress… there is no such deity lurking amongst these cold stones. Only these ancient bones—morbid markers of the long since dead—bear witness to the partygoers misplaced glee.
And if it is not dark attention from the Nether they seek… then what? What can they possibly gain by coming to a place such as this? Another week’s worth of chemically-altered reality? An incurable affliction accosting their nether regions? A killer, mind-jarring hangover? Yes, all of those things can be attained here with little effort, it seems. Yet, I cannot for the life of me figure out the morbid appeal of such self-destruction.
Me? Yes, I am here as well—now surrounded by the many sins of the flesh, my eardrums vibrating with the foreign sound of an industrial beat I find myself becoming pleasantly accustomed to. No, I do not come to this place for the same reason as do these other poor souls. The things they seek… such holds no value with me.
My eyes have been opened and I can never go back to the wonderfully ignorant bliss of the unknowing.
No, I come here for a different purpose. An extremely different purpose. I come here for him… for Paltiel. I wait for him to pass through these cold, putrid corridors… wait for him to deem my suffering sufficient enough to warrant his help, warrant his guidance into the void. I cannot tread there minus that old devil’s assistance. He knows such, and revels in that knowledge.
Still, their illegal underground party did bless me with a taste of precious light. I am thankful for that. Yet… I must now move on.
This is not the tunnel I seek. That vicious little Angel won’t pass through here. I know this truth in my heart.
My knees are irrecoverably scarred—forever bloodied from this blind crawling—trudging my way through the unyielding abyss of the bitter trial now plaguing me.
“Ugh… They hurt. They burn. Ouch… Dammit…”
I pull another shard from my left kneecap. I know not if it’s a stone, a bit of broken glass… or a fragment of ancient bone.
Please let it be glass. Please let it be glass. Ugh… It’s cold down here. Sooo cold. How the heck am I sweating? Why am I sweating? I’m drenched. My shirt’s soaked clean through.
“Dang it…”
I immediately put my lips to the fresh cut on my palm… then spit out the dirt that had collected there.
I gag… again.
Why do we do that? –humans. Why do we automatically suckle our injuries?
Yes… a silly thing to think about at a time like this.
*****
I am weary. I have to stop a moment… rest atop these forgotten bones I now crawl through.
“My hands and knees are all but shredded. Before I make it through this wretched darkness, my outsides will mirror the scars my poor old heart has worn for years.”
The stale air is heavy, earthy… old.
Am I well? Perhaps I’m getting sick. Or… perhaps I’m just mad with hunger. Can starvation make you lose your wits? Can utter darkness? Or… am I yet sane?
“Pffts… Nope. Not sane. Not today. But tomorrow… tomorrow I will be.”
Yes, I am most definitely marred—marred by loss and gain, marred by suffering and joy… infinitely marred by enemies and friends.
It is a powerfully hard thing—trying to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Folks can say such noble words with ease, yes—spread peace and love and proverbs from the highest mountaintop. But down here in the valley… well, down here… it’s often hard to see that light. Real hard.
I remember when I was just a teenager… going through a loss I thought there was no way I could possibly bear. A sweet old lady patted my shoulder, smiling as she said…
“It’ll be alright, Honey. It hurts now, but it won’t hurt forever. You hear me? Just remember, God doesn’t put more on you than you can handle. Trust in that. He’ll never give you more than you can live through. It says so in the Good Book.”
But, that’s a lie. She lied.
That little old well-meaning woman imparted those words to try and give support, to try and be helpful. Yes, I know and understand that. But her sweet-sounding deception… it did much mor
e harm than good. To me, and to her as well. Why? Because she actually believed the Bible said that. It doesn’t.
She was confused about first Corinthians. It doesn’t say that. It doesn’t mean that. Her quote wasn’t even close to what the Good Book says. What the Bible does say is… God will not allow you to be tempted beyond your abilities. That He’ll always supply a way out of the temptation. You just gotta be strong enough to choose the way out and not the way in.
That is a far cry from telling someone that nothing will happen to them that is so horrible that they should not be able to bear the burden. Seriously? The truth is, the Bible says the exact opposite. If she would have kept on reading, that sweet little old lady might have stumbled across second Corinthians where Paul writes that he was weighed down with a weight of suffering far beyond his strength. That sure sounds a whole heck of a lot different than telling someone, “God didn’t give us any burdens we couldn’t bear.” And what about Jesus? Was his burden bearable? If so, why did he cry out… My God, My God, why have You forsaken me? Does that sound like someone who’s going through something he can handle on his own?
You see, the problem with all this tidy little encouraging bit of religious sentimentality is… It. Doesn’t. Help. People. It might make you feel better for saying it, but it makes the other person feel horrible, weak, inadequate. You’re just adding to their pain, their burden, the weight they absolutely cannot bear.
Look at your little syrupy sweet, bumper sticker, pick-me-up-poster quote this way… Would you say it to a child dying from cancer? Would you say it to a mother who just lost all three of her children in a house fire? Someone who’d just been handed a diagnosis of a fatal disease? Would you say it to an Auschwitz inmate? Any man, woman, or child in a Chinese Death Camp? Would you? Well, would you? Would you walk right up to that helpless, hopeless human soul and say… “Don’t worry about it, Honey. God never gives you more than you can bear”? Not only are you telling that poor, destroyed person they should just suck it up and go on, you’re also telling them that God did that to them. That apparently they deserved it, that it was their fault. Are you even listening to yourself? Do you honestly believe that our Heavenly Father makes bad things happen to us? No!
Don’t believe the lie, my friends. Our suffering is not caused by God, no. Ahh… but it is where we can find God. He comes there to meet us, to help us, to hold us while we suffer.
That’s what it means when God says… “Come unto Me all ye who are weak and heavy laden, and I will give you rest”.
Rest… That’s what I need now. I need rest—sweet, beautiful, blissful rest. I am tired, so wretchedly tired of crawling and groping and sitting here in this vile darkness.
The way I feel right now… I can barely raise my head to seek out that faraway brightness, that promise… that hope. The pain when it isn’t real, when the light isn’t there… these torn up old knees mean little compared to that kind of misery.
I think I’m dizzy… but how can you tell in the dark? Perhaps I’m a tad feverish.
The popping of my weary neck bones echoes quietly through this nothingness.
My shoulder hurts… feels like it’s bleeding again. Well, there’s nothing to be done for it now, I suppose.
So, here I sit… in the darkness… in the doubt… in the exquisite unknown.
And… here I wait.
My last mission was extensive and tedious. I had to travel the width and breadth of this old world to find the needed words, the needed knowledge to help guide the blind sheep along their journey. Yes, even the ones gyrating back in that bone-strewn cavern. And it is because of those same extensive wanderings, I now find myself injured, hungry, and completely depleted of the vital essence needed to continue my journey.
The only way back to the Angel who holds the key… is through that pompous, arrogant, overly pious Paltiel.
Paltiel—the very creature who swore me harm if I should come to him thusly in need, ever again.
Yet, it could not be helped. Not this time.
So… I wait.
*****
Who am I? Well… my story began many years ago in the heart of a peaceful little community located in the beautiful hills and valleys of East Tennessee.
I grew up in a wonder-filled land of beauty and discovery. As a child I camped out in the Great Smokey Mountains, swam the dingy waters of Norris Lake, hiked the many trails of Cades Cove, and basked in the colorful beauty of a place Mother Nature loves above all others.
I was blessed—ignorantly blessed and happy in that ignorance. Yet, as with all things we become accustomed to… I took my rare childhood for granted, thought the whole world was as blessed as I was, or even more so. And like all other children with a vivid imagination and a heart full of fairytale dreams, I wanted nothing more than to leave the suffocating confines of my small town home and strike out into the great big wonderful world.
My head hit that feather pillow every night filled with the most amazing dreams—dreams bursting at the seams with rare magic. My enchanting nighttime fantasies were sculpted by my happy childhood—loving, doting parents, friendships formed in kindergarten, and the contented ability to sleep with the doors unlocked and the windows left open for the cool breeze.
Whether Maynardville, Tennessee was the epitome of wholesome small town living, or simply the byproduct of protective parental nurturing, I know not. Well… I didn’t know. Not back then.
I thought the whole world was as charmed as my lovely little piece of it. I never heard a single curse word at home, went to church three times a week, and made straight A’s pretty much all the way through school. Spanish sort of kicked my butt. Geometry, too, but I emerged nearly unscathed. Such was my life. I was a child. I knew what I knew, knew what I was taught. As do we all.
I can remember coming home from school, asking my sweet mother the meaning of the strange words I had heard some of the bigger boys saying on the bus. She would answer my embarrassing questions the most appropriate way she could. She always did. I can look back and laugh about it now, but I truly hate some of the things I ignorantly put that poor woman through. My mother was the kind of woman who would make our lunch, then pop it all in a basket and drive to the nearby park just to spread it out picnic-style on the ground. It was the exact same peanut butter sandwich we would have eaten at home, but it tasted sooo much better next to the large swing set and enormous metal slide.
Apparently, we were poor—had it pretty hard at times, they say. But I never knew it. I never felt denied. I never went without. I never wanted for anything, not that I can remember. If we had times of need, my parents never let on. I didn’t have a clue they ever had a worry in the world. To me… we weren’t poor, ever. I remember, even as a small child, feeling blessed. Blessed with everything I ever needed, especially love. Did my parents ever tell me no? Yes, of course. Did I get everything I ever asked for? Not by a long shot. Did they ever spank me? Are you kidding? I got my legs switched more times than I can count… but not nearly as many times as I needed. As I said before, I felt blessed. Life was good.
When I left for college, I took my little bubble I’d been raised in right along with me… and found my first taste of what the world was really like. At least bits of it, anyway.
College is this amazing place where people of all upbringings, all races, all nationalities are brought together and mixed into the same pot—eating together, working together, living in the same room… the same home. It can be wildly incredible and exceedingly dark, all in the same breath. At Lincoln Memorial University I met my very first Wiccan, my very first Japanese person, and I even heard a real honest-to-goodness Australian accent with my very own ears. It was amazing!
I quickly made friends from all over the world. In the first week alone, I ate lunch with some guys from Saudi Arabia, sat between two Swedish boys in Lit 100, and became best friends with a girl from Guatemala who couldn’t even pronounce the J in my first name. I was fascinated beyond being able to clo
se my eyes at bedtime.
College was also the place where I saw my very first live, grown boy, real fight… the first time I’d ever met a guy who didn’t know who Cain and Able were… and it was also the place where I heard my very first derogatory racial comment.
So, within my first week of higher education, I became educated in a way I had never expected, never wanted. I remember not even knowing what was going on. Not truly. I asked a boy standing next to me to enlighten me. Reece was from Harlan, Kentucky and had the clearest, prettiest blue eyes I’d ever seen. He laughed through his traumatizing explanation of what we’d just heard, then yanked on my hair before walking off, still laughing. In that instant, tears filled my eyes like burning lava. My heart ached with a sympathetic pain the likes of which I had never known. And in that same heartbeat, the fairytale bubble that encompassed my whole world… burst.
Sitting here now… I still remember how that felt, the bitter taste it left in the back of my throat. Hatred—unjustified, unfounded hatred. It was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, ever heard. It tore away my bliss, caused my idyllic little world of peace and harmony to come crashing down around me. Out of all the things I have forgotten—and there have been many—that was one scene that burnt its disgusting image in my mind forever. No matter my years on this Earth or the many places I have roamed… I’ll always remember the burning fire in the brown eyes of a boy I didn’t know, yelling words I didn’t understand, at an infuriated young man from a place I’d never even visited. I carry it with me still—a dark spot on my psyche, a black cloud in my mind, an unyielding scar across my soul.
Could someone actually hate me for no reason other than the color of my skin? The unimaginable answer… was yes.
What could have happened to that brown-eyed boy from Kentucky to make him feel those horrible feelings? What trauma caused the green-eyed boy from the other side of the world to say such wretched things? Their revulsion one for the other was mirrored in every possible way. Why? How could this happen? What were they taught? What did they see—did they hear—that made them carry such hate around inside such a young heart? I couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t fathom such a thing. Did their parents teach them that? Surely not. How could they? They were parents—people tasked with raising these young men, leading them. There was no way such ugly things were taught to children by their loving parents. Was there? I myself had only just met my very first non-white person that same week. Heck, I’d even met my very first non-Christian person that same week. I was fascinated, elated. I thought this big wide world to be an amazing place! How was it then that those two boys… how was it their view of the world could be so utterly skewed from mine?
The Journey Page 1