It was a beautiful night, a slight breeze kept it from feeling too hot, and the summer rains had given the area a break. It would have been a perfect night, for anyone but him. He was trapped in a hell of his own design. It was warm, but he was shivering as he stumbled along the sidewalk. He did not live in this area of town, but he had to come here to get what he wanted. Jeremy had given up on life after the “Great Disappearance.” He had lost his entire family in the incident.
He did not care what the explanations were about why so many people disappeared; all that he saw was that his family was gone. Aliens, radiation, ghosts, goblins, Jesus— it did not matter what anyone tried to tell him, he did not want to hear it.
It started with getting drunk, that grew until he wasn’t fit to work even at the easiest of jobs anymore. He started to deal drugs to make just enough money to keep a roof over his head, but that did not last after he began to do the drugs that he was peddling.
That was why he was here, to buy drugs. The money in his pocket was stolen out of a woman’s purse at the grocery store. As this grandmother of eight was picking out the perfect peppers, he took her wallet without being noticed. He paused for a moment, realizing it was wrong, yet there was another voice in the back of his head telling him to take the checkbook too. He had shrugged off that temptation and only took the wallet. As soon as he had gotten outside, he took the cash and left the wallet where someone would find it.
He refused to take any of her credit or debit cards, just the cash. There were tears in his eyes as he dragged his feet along Grand Boulevard. He knew what he had done was wrong, and he did felt bad for it, but when the ache for the drug came he felt like he did not have control over himself. He also knew it was wrong as he placed that little white rock on that burnt Brillo, yet he would still melt it down and smoke it.
There was no one left to try and stop him. Everyone he loved went away in the Great Disappearance, and he could not find a reason to clean himself up. He was starting to come down. His body was beginning to ache, and he quickened his pace as the house he was headed to came into sight. Grand Boulevard met Light Lane in a “T” formation, the house was dead ahead.
He kept his head down in the hopes that no one would see him. He was ashamed of what he was doing, and what he had done. “You are so stupid,” he whispered to himself as he walked, “why can’t you just go home.” He said it out loud, but he had no real conviction behind it. All thoughts of his habit and what he should have been doing left his head when he heard a loud crash ahead of him.
A silver Ford Taurus had slammed into the concrete light post almost fifty feet from him. He forgot why he was even in this neighborhood and ran to make sure that anyone in the car was alright. The first thing he noticed was that there was no one in the vehicle. He continued walking up to the car. As he got up to the passenger door, he noticed that there were no keys in the ignition. The car was not running at all.
He looked around to see if anyone else had noticed what had happened, but he saw no one. All the street lights suddenly went off and he was caught of guard by a silence that he had never experienced. There were no crickets chirping, no dogs barking, all that Jeremy could hear was his own breathing. “Get it together,” he sighed to himself as he tried to slow his breathing. “Gotta be that I’m coming down,” he began to sob.
The shaking he was experiencing from coming down from the drugs was intensified by what he was seeing. He knew it was irrational as soon as it went through his mind, but a thought popped in his head that whatever took the people during the Great Disappearance had come again, to leave him all alone on this planet. A cry of fear rose up from deep inside of him as he gave in to pure panic. He suddenly wanted to be as far away from that car as possible. He ran in the opposite direction from where he was going. He was going on pure instinct to keep moving, to keep running until he was away from whatever it was that was freaking him out. The problem was that there never is anyplace you can hide from your fears.
He found himself between two large bushes, in the dark, against a strange house. His legs were drawn up against him so that his arms were folded on his knees. His head rested in his arms as he cried to himself. He was unsure of how long he sat there, it felt like an eternity, but it was not long before he felt like he was not alone anymore. He slowly raised his head from his arms and saw that the feeling was well founded. There was man crouched right in front of him, but for some reason this did not concern him at all.
The stranger had a face that just seemed to exude compassion. This man seemed like he would have been good at working with children, he had that type of aura about him. “Are you alright?” The stranger was not wearing clothing that would make him seem rich, poor, or in between. He looked average yet did not seem average to Jeremy.
“What do you think, Man?” He was upset and shaking like crazy still, and it was only getting worse.
“I think you need help. Why don’t you come with me, I will take you to get help.” The stranger had compassion in his voice; Jeremy did not doubt that this man would try to help him.
“There ain’t any help for me man. My whole family is gone, I don’t got no insurance, there ain’t no where for me to go,” the boy was nearly in full sobs again.
“Where I will take you, you won’t need any money.” The stranger reached out to Jeremy and placed his hand on the Jeremy’s arm. “You won’t need insurance; all you need to do is come with me, and want my help. I will not turn you away, I promise you.”
There was something very familiar about this man to Jeremy, but there were still drugs in his system and he could not figure out where he knew him from. “Do you really mean that?”
“I have always meant it,” the stranger said and he rose to his feet and offered a hand to help Jeremy up. “You must want the help, but I will be behind you all the way.”
As Jeremy reached out for the stranger’s hand, he noticed that the man had a terrible scar on the palm of his hand. He did not know why it gave him reason to pause, but it did. He laughed it off as he accepted the man’s gesture and got to his feet.
“This is your first step, Jeremy,” the stranger said as they began to walk. “What you have just done was the hard part, the rest will be easier.”
“Did I tell you my name?” He was pretty sure that he had not, but at this point he could not be certain of anything.
“I have always known you, Jeremy,” the stranger led the boy out of that neighborhood. “You may not have seen me there, but I have been, even when you chose not to believe in me.”
The boy suddenly realized that he had been brought to a church. It was not a grand cathedral; it was a small church where maybe only a few dozen might be able to fit. The boy looked up into the stranger’s sparkling eyes, “Are you sure that this place is where I need to go? I don’t need to pray, I need rehab.”
“Are you so sure that you do not need to pray?” The stranger placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Like I said, I will be behind you all the way.”
He felt a slight bit of confidence as the stranger smiled at him, so he took a deep breath and walked along the sidewalk to the front door of the tiny church. The door was locked, so he knocked. The boy looked behind him at his new friend, “Thank you.”
The stranger smiled brightly as the boy turned his attention back to the door as he heard it unlock. A man who appeared to be young answered the door. “Yes, son?” This was a man that had not always made the right choices. He was now in the business of leading others to where he found the answers to all that he had needed to know. His arms were sleeved-out with tattoos, and he had piercings, but his heart was now in the hands of Jesus.
“My friend…” he said as he turned to look at the stranger, but the stranger was gone. Yet the boy still felt the pressure of the hand on his shoulder.
“Come in, son, I knew you were coming.” The boy looked at the pastor and smiled as he accepted the invitation to enter the church.
