1.

Screams

Wednesday, March 6 - 11:30p.m.

It was very noisy. Mike Tomson could hear frantic screaming and shouting all around him, a cacophony of confusion, drowning out even the ringing of the amplifiers in his ears. He couldn’t see anything, even though he was sure his eyes had just been open a few seconds earlier. Now he was lying on his back and he could feel someone holding his wrist, taking his pulse.

Am I having a heart attack? he wondered.

He felt embarrassed, not because he was the center of attention and people were staring at him (he was used to that) but because he had lost all control. Now he couldn’t even control his own body: he was paralyzed and terrified and he wondered if he was dying. He was only thirty-three, and nothing like this had ever happened to him before.

I’m too young to die.

Now a strange man–a doctor?–was giving him mouth to mouth and he could smell his bad breath. In a way, it was good that he couldn’t see because the thought of seeing some strange man putting that foul-smelling mouth on his lips was disgusting. If it was a woman, maybe one with long, dark hair and a nice pair of curvaceous hips, things would be at least acceptable. Maybe not even a bad way to die, he thought, but then he dismissed the thought of dying. He thought, I can’t die yet; there’s got to be more meaning to my life than that. All his life, he felt as if he had been born for a reason, some purpose to his life, some mission he had not yet accomplished that was buried somewhere deep in his subconscious. He couldn’t accept that his life would end like this. . . unfulfilled.

Something had obviously gone very wrong on stage, but what? As he lay there helpless, he tried to piece together what had happened. His mind drifted back a half-hour to when he had been on stage singing an old 38 Special song for the audience:

Yeah. . . Out on the back street, taking love where I can,

I found a sweet Madonna, Ooo, with a Bible in her hand.

She’s waiting, anticipating, well, for someone to save her soul;

Well I ain’t no new messiah, but I’m close enough for rock and roll.

And we were rockin’ into the night, rockin’ into the night. . .

The stage lights were bright and hot as he sang, and the audience was small but enthusiastic; not bad for a casino. He was sweating and breathing hard from the exertion, and he felt a bit light-headed. He didn’t think anything of it, of course, because it was the last song of the night and he had a right to be tired.

It was not a very good way to end a set. The only problem with the song was that there were no screams. He loved to scream and screaming was his business: he was a rock and roll singer and he knew his booming voice–his only musical instrument–was what made the band unique. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but Mike knew a scream within a song was worth far more. Good music was about passion and raw emotions, deep-seated, secret emotions that most men keep well hidden. Feelings other men bury deep inside came rolling out across the stage like thunder. His scream was why his band had enjoyed a steady income playing small nightclubs and casinos since he had moved to Las Vegas three years ago.

When the set was over, he felt woozy. He climbed off the stage and onto a barstool and tried to calm his stomach. He watched the guys pack their instruments while their girlfriends fawned over them and teased them with their cleavage. He watched them with longing because he wanted a girlfriend too, but didn’t have one. It wasn’t for lack of opportunity either; girls always flocked to the front man of rock bands. He had tried to hook up with some of these groupies before, but the girls always expected him to be the person they saw on stage, and he just wasn’t. Offstage, he was a very different man. His main problem was that he lacked self-confidence. He always felt awkward around women and didn’t know what to say to them. Maybe he was just afraid that when he opened his mouth, he would say something embarrassing. He wasn’t good with words.

Teetering on his barstool, he ordered a beer, took a few small sips and watched as the next act got on stage: a two-bit stage hypnotist, complete with mustache, black cape and a fake Count Dracula accent, who called himself “The Great Zolli.”

He felt a little short of breath as he contemplated the ridiculous man. Hypnosis is a crock, he thought. Sure, a hypnotist can make people do all kinds of tricks, but only if the people picked at “random” from the audience are his own employees. I should get on stage and prove it’s all bull. He wasn’t going to get back up on the stage when Zolli asked for volunteers, either, but the band goaded him into it. When Mike muttered, “What a fake,” within earshot of the band, Steve raised his beer toward him and said, “Show him, big talker.” So he got up on stage again and took a seat next to two other “volunteers.”

He was thirsty and regretted leaving his beer behind as he studied the fast-paced technique Zolli used to hypnotize the first volunteer, a fat man named Paul. He waited patiently while Paul, after he had been told he was Albert Einstein, explained “his” theory of general relativity with a thick German accent.

His depth perception started playing tricks on him while the second volunteer, a woman, squirmed nervously in her chair beside him. She looked relieved when Zolli walked over to him instead and presented a glowing red ring in front of his face. Zolli touched Mike’s shoulder as he had done with Paul/Einstein to distract his conscious mind, then started talking in the same monotonous auctioneer manner. Zolli spoke so fast to him that his conscious mind didn’t have time to analyze what he was hearing. The words skipped right past his conscious mind into his subconscious. It was soothing, rhythmic, and it preempted every thought, doubt and misgiving in his mind.

He tried to resist the hypnotic suggestions, but he had used all his energy singing earlier, and was tired. At Zolli’s suggestion, Mike’s eyes shut and stayed that way.

Then Zolli addressed the audience: “Ladies and Gentlemen! The subconscious mind remembers everything. With hypnosis, you have perfect recall of any memory, past or present.” He regressed Mike back to his tenth birthday and asked him a few questions. Then he took him back to his first birthday and asked some more.

Zolli turned to the audience again and said, “As you are about to see, a person under hypnosis can even remember the experience of his own birth.” Then he tried to take Mike back to his own birth, but that’s when something went terribly wrong. Mike misunderstood his instructions. Zolli said, “When I count to three, you will go even further back in time, back to a time when you felt the joy of entering a new world.”

Mike didn’t remember what happened after that. The next thing he knew, he was lying on the stage, sightless, with all the screaming and shouting, and now the man with bad breath was pushing on his chest, forcing air in and out of his lungs.

Of course, the audience saw what happened. They saw extreme pain–the pain of a dying man–wash over Mike’s face. Then he stood up, opened his eyes, and yelled out at the top of his lungs, “Ely, Ely Lema Saw Bach Thany,” then screamed and collapsed on the floor in a heap. This was not his usual rock and roll scream. This scream sent a shiver of terror down everyone’s spine. Everyone in the casino stopped and turned to stare. Zolli knelt down beside him and spoke into his ear. “Mike, listen to me. When I count to three, you will wake up feeling refreshed and relaxed. One, two, three. Wake up, Mike.” But he didn’t move. Zolli picked up his wrist and felt for a pulse. He yelled into the audience, “We need a doctor here!” That’s when things got noisy.

For a moment, Mike felt the doctor pushing on his chest, then the noises faded into the distance and he found himself floating, suspended in front of a great stone wall. Am I dreaming? he wondered. The wall was made of large yellow sandstone blocks, but the funny thing was that there was a large archway built into the wall, and on either side of the archway, empty niches. As he watched, the stone blocks in the niches and under the archway disappeared and he could see a beautiful courtyard beyond with two beautiful mosques and people walking around. Some of the people looked like arabs, but others looked like tourists with cameras slung around their necks. The place looked familiar, like maybe he’d seen it on television, but he couldn’t place it.

In the midst of the golden silence, a white light appeared in the courtyard beyond the archway. It seemed so vibrant and alive–even loving–that he felt an overwhelming urge to go to it. He was mesmerized by the peace he felt and the beauty of the light. It radiated love.

He started floating toward the light, then he heard a man’s voice behind him say, “No way.” Startled, he turned to see a man with a devious smile perched in midair behind him. The man had curly red hair and eyes that looked half-Asian, half-Caucasian. The man said, “Oh no, you don’t. It’s not your time yet. It’s time to wake up, Mike,” but that was strange, because instead of waking up, he blacked out.

Excerpt from The Gospel According to Mike

He said, “Discard the hatred and replace it with love. Discard the pain and replace it with forgiveness. Discard the fear and replace it with knowledge. Discard the sadness and replace it with laughter. Discard the depression and fill it with hope. For the former traits are short-sighted and based on the physical world, but the latter are farsighted and based upon the kingdom of God.”