Now, I have only three left.I had seven, the seven Reri gave me. I hid these where I thought they would never find them, but they are ferrets and have found four of them so far. Four, and now I have only three left.They can come at any time but they cannot hurt me.By law they can search any Reader's place anytime they wish, and they do. And I know they will come and search my place again and again, that they will keep looking until they are certain I have none left.

On April 13, 1996, going on 2:30 in the afternoon, in a sunny clearing by a marsh not half a mile from the small red house (with white corners) where he lived with, and took care of, his aging mother, Ezra Wildmark, precisely fifty-one years and fourteen days old that day, met God—and God, as it happened, turned out to be Eskimo.That is, God was shortish, maybe an inch or two over five feet. He was slim, fit, and relaxed. His face was red leathery skin where dark eyes sat deeply am...

To say that Sam was obsessed with reincarnation would not have been too wide off the mark. His childhood experience pointed in that direction, but how could he be sure? How could anyone be sure?In his search for the truth in this regard, he discovered that early Church Fathers, like Origen, definitely held the immortality of the spirit to be a fact; as did many of the classic (and many more recent) philosophers. But did they know? Or just speculate? Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus. Did...

This happened when I was twelve. I was there and I saw it with my own eyes. I know what happened. There's no talking or threatening me out of this.I have kept my silence since, all the way to this day. I have kept my silence all these years in order not to shame my parents, for I ask you: who on earth would have believed me? And for that matter, who will believe me now? My parents would surely have thought me deranged beyond repair and I would have shamed them greatly had I spoken ...

"How I shall admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs, and fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians." Tertullian, 160-225 AD"Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have ...

The finer strands sway in the warm, dusky air, perceptible only to the dying. No, perhaps not strands; they are more like the long, dark gossamer tendrils of a celestial man-of-war descending through ether, through the high, indiscernible stone ceiling, through scream-filled air, there to melt into wrists and ankles, chest and hair, and now silently to shift in the poor light, savoring the pain.There are other, coarser strands, though they are not strands either but leather thongs,...

Professor God stepped a little closer, then bent forward and gazed over his student's shoulder and down on the trial universe soon to form under the transparent reality dome in front of them. Then he frowned, straightened, and said "No. No. No. That's too many."Student God, a creative and eager-to-learn lad of about eight or so billion years turned away from the dome under which he was constructing the first molecule, and looked up at the professor, then turned back to the shiny, s...

"You don't really exist, do you?""Well," he said, pulling at his long beard with a gnarled little hand, his booted little feet barely reaching the edge of the seat and showing dark leather soles scratched and patterned by years and miles, "that depends on who's looking."He didn't exist, of course. Couldn't.Still, as if to humor the hallucination, I asked, "Can I touch you?"He hesitated, but after a heartbeat or two answered as if he had not, "Of course."...

They say Jesus Kristus was untouched.You learn it in school, you hear it from parents, from grandparents—from them especially—from friends, and from preachers. You read it in the Bible: Jesus Kristus was the first to, and the only one ever to, escape, ascend, transcend, what have you, the Storm. He was the first ever to rise above it unscathed, as they like to put it on the late-night TV preacher-shows, especially now with a new Storm approaching, although unscathed means the same ...

He had a nose to scare children. It was half a large punctured pear, red and pockmarked. He was bald but for a grayish sprinkling along the sides and back of his head: almost, but not quite, monkish. He had the brow of a sperm whale. He could often be heard mumbling to himself. He was not underweight. He was considered strange.But he did have the kindest eyes—doglike, wet.He lived three flights up in the elevator-less building on the corner of Madison and Hoover. It was a f...

His room was small and warm and he had now sat so still for so long and said nothing for so long that I would be justified in wondering whether he was still awake.He was though. His eyes were open and resting on his hands, on his hairless hands one on top of the other, who in turn rested on the cluttered table. He could have been inspecting them, could have been figuring something out about them, or pondering what to say next, or none of the above: it was anybody's guess.Th...

I attempted suicide in 1965. I wasn't very good at it.For one, while I have since learned that the lethal dose of regular 75 mg aspirins lies on the far side of 500 tablets, I attempted my lethal feat with 121 of the little darlings (yes, I kept a tally).For two, I did lose my nerve late that fatal afternoon, and alerted my dad to my Bayeresque overindulgence.This is not to say that this was not an interesting exercise, it was. I was sincere in my banging on that da...