Pleased to Meet You, Can You Guess My Name?

It was an unusually warm late October evening as we headed out to the party.  Being almost Halloween the neighborhoods were all decorated with their spookiest décor.  A strange feeling came over me as I entered the car.  I could not quite place what it was, perhaps a feeling of impending doom, but there was certainly a sense of evil in the air.

As I sat in the passenger seat, my friend Shawn looked at me slyly out of the corner of his eye and reached over holding a small piece of paper with a picture of a pharaoh on it.  “Drop this” he told me. “You know, if you take the whole thing, you are supposed to see the devil.”  What I now found in my hand was four hits of acid (LSD).  This was nothing new for me as I was an experienced traveler.  Something about this time though sent a slight chill up my spine.  One would be fun, two would be an experience, Three would have been at the edge, but the 4^th, that would have been going over the edge into the deep unknown.  

I decided to myself that meeting the devil this night was something that I was not really interested in doing, so I only took 3 of the 4 hits available.  This was something I could handle.  As I put the paper to my tongue, off we went to the party.  Being near Halloween, Shawn was playing all of his favorite satanic hits that he taped for this occasion.  Devil music was a popular genre in the early 80’s and something we were both into musically.

Just as we arrived at the party I could feel the effects of the drug kicking in.  All of my senses were heightened to a very extreme level.  Standing out in the dark parking lot was spooky as the warm wind rushed through the now leafless trees, screaming into my ears and tingling my skin as it rushed past.  The lone streetlight cast rainbows of color cascading outward in flowing rings from its source giving out a hypnotic hum.  Every motion left behind a shadow of what had just been there creating a trailing effect.  This was good shit.

The party was being held in a courtyard between a couple of apartment buildings.  To enter, you had to walk through an enclosed hall.  It was like walking through a pathway to another dimension, from the dark and scary outer world, you were transferred to a world of lights and sounds, laughter and fun.  Everyone at the party was on the same thing as it was the theme of the party, so there was an immediate psychic connection with all.

I was sitting at a picnic table just enjoying all of the sounds and sights.  I was watching an ant crawl on the sidewalk and giggled to myself as it became 2, then 4, 8, 16, 1,000,000 ants crawling all over, my legs covered with ants by the countless millions.  I was being buried by ants and all I could do was laugh hysterically (because I knew it was just fake).

As the evening wore on, I began to notice one of the guests.  This guest was not a part of the group as far as the trip goes.  He was always standing alone, off in a corner, and every time I would notice him, he was staring right at me.  I was not sure if he was really there so I casually asked someone who that was.  I could not quite make out the response, but I thought he said Lou.  Lou was an evil looking character.  He was tall and lanky with long straight black hair, a thin fu Manchu moustache, and a pointy beard.  He wore a wife beater tee that exposed his tattoo filled arms.  The tattoos were all of devils and demons.  I got an evil chill every time I saw him.

Later that evening I looked over and saw him by the fish tank inside the host apartment.  He glanced at me and gave me a wink.  He then began talking to someone walking by, having them look into the fish tank, he talked them into a hypnotic state.  He looked again at me slyly and pulled out the biggest rock of cocaine I had ever seen.  He pulled out a spoon and dug a snort out and put the rock away.  Nudging the person out of their trance, he offered them a the snort which they gladly accepted.  That scared the piss out of me.  What power this guy possessed over people.

Later as the crowds began to dwindle, and we were in the hosts apartment, I was noticing that this fellow, Lou, was always right behind me, watching my every move.  The host came out and announced that more beer would be arriving soon and he asked me to go out in the parking lot and help bring the beer in.  I agreed as all I wanted to do was to get away from Lou anyway.

I walked across the happy lit yard and back into the tunnel.  As I passed through I could feel the darkness begin to overwhelm me and I could see at the other end a brooding outside world.  I looked back a couple of times wondering if I should venture out and to see if Lou was behind me.  He wasn’t, but I could feel an ever growing presence of evil.

I exited the tunnel into the dark outside night.  The warm winds of earlier in the evening were gone, replaced by a cold hawk wind from the north howling eerily through the trees.  Off in the distance I could see flashes of lightning across the western sky.  A smell of sulfur filled my nostrils as a shiver went up my spine.  I turned around and standing in the lot was Lou.

Lou walked towards me, slowly, calculatingly.  He had been sizing me up all evening, and I felt perhaps for longer than that he had been watching me, watching me as I grew in stature from a small time partier, to a mid level dealer of weed throughout the area.  Perhaps he had surmised that it was time to take that step, that final leap into the realm of evil.

“I’ve had my eye on you”, he spoke in a low monotone voice.  He glared at me, his eyes appearing to glow in the dark night.  “You know, you could have anything you want;  and I can give it to you.”

I stared at him for a moment then looked away, not wanting to get caught up in his mesmerizing ways like I had seen other doing earlier in the evening.  “What are you saying?”  I asked.

“I’m saying that you could have it all, money, nice cars, big houses, all the women you could ever desire, all at your footstep.”  He said almost excitedly.  “With this.”  And he pulled out the big cocaine rock I had seen him with throughout the night.  “It’s yours, you can have it.”  I stood silent.  “This is the key to everything.  You can be a god!  Everyone will bow down to you.  You’ll be respected and powerful.”

Finally it hit me what was going on here.  A moment of clarity shown through the drug induced haze and I could see plain as day what was set before me.  This was the moment of my life where I had to chose whether to continue on the path of evil I had been heading down, or to turn around from the edge of the abyss.  I said a quick short prayer in my mind asking God for help.  Suddenly I blurted out, “I’m going to go get another beer.”  And I walked back through the tunnel into the courtyard.  That night, I had met the devil, face to face.  Never again would my life be the same.

It was only a few weeks later that I made the serious decision for Jesus.