Vague and Vivid Snip-pits of Memory
by Paul Schroeder

I am the priest and all is true; the experiences were dreamlike in nature because there is no other way to describe the astral-surreal limited awareness at the time; unfurling these vague and vivid snip-pits of memory revealed my knowing more than I knew, consciously ,or what it all meant; here's an excerpt from my developing book; Relaxation techniques, slowly bought him to an altered state; under hypnosis, a series of subconscious motor reflexes, a twitch of a different finger cemented a conversation with the body, not the mind; the thumb, indicated "Yes", the middle finger, "No", the pinky, "I (can't) won't answer". This technique would confront repressed fear, avoidance, or directives to forget, and allow direct conversation with the unconscious. By hypnotic suggestion, the body would answer, meaningfully, even if one fell asleep.

Doctor: "Let's begin; can we talk about his bad dreams?"

Priest: (film shows quick flash of thumb;) "Yes"

Doctor: "Go back to the day the two puppets floated outside the window, and, below consciousness, recall what happened, that afternoon. Show me that you begin by moving the "yes" finger, and the end of that recall by moving the "no" finger."

Priest: (film shows "yes" and "no" twitches)

Doctor: "Good; started and ended. Is there any unconscious, additional information, the father has not remembered concerning that afternoon?"

Priest: (finger twitches quickly with the "yes" thumb movement)

Doctor: "What happened? See it remotely, as if you're in a projector booth, watching yourself, on a screen; what happened?"

Priest: (increasing stress) "I don't want to answer digit", pinky, signal.

Doctor: "No? You don't want to tell me? Fine, can you talk to me orally, tell me what you're feeling?"

Priest: (more negative finger) Movements with agonized breath.

Doctor: "You refer to this as October,1999. Whatever happened was long ago. You're safe and in control; are you reluctant to talk about it because it's too upsetting?"

Priest: Film records positive finger movement

Doctor: "Freeze the scene and see part in full frame; like a snapshot? Is it okay?"

Priest: Film shows a "yes" twitch.

Doctor: "A still slide projected on a faraway screen; you're up in the projection booth watching the father in the theatre."

Priest: "As I was looking through the window, the eyes looked back. Staring back. The eyes are not normal."

Doctor: "Look closer; what else do you notice?"

Priest: "The face doesn't have any teeth, it's not a normal face. It's gone, now." Doctor: "Feel the relief that the face is gone. Now I have a question for your unconscious to answer by finger movement. Has any harm been done to the father during the faces' presence?"

Priest: (records a quick "no" answer)

Doctor: "Now what happened, later, that night, when you felt, sensed something by your bed? Was there anything done to the father, physically during that time?"

Priest: Head is shaking "no" and the finger movement is saying "yes", softly; "They took my clothes", sadly "They took my priestly vestments".

Doctor: "Who did?"

Priest: Very agitated, legs twitching, shoulders twitching. His head shook on a negative reaction.

Doctor: "Is the "no" for then, or now? You keep shaking your head "no"."

Priest: "For now".

Doctor: "You don't want to talk about it?"

Priest: "No".

Doctor: "Do you want to remember it when you come out of trance?"

Priest: "No".

Doctor: "Do you want to remember it some other day?"

Priest: "No".

Doctor: "Below consciousness, I want to ask your hand some questions. Hand in the course of that encounter, did the father leave the house?"

Priest: Thumb, positive finger response, "yes".

Doctor: "Was he removed from the house?"

Priest: (another "yes" response)

Doctor: "Would it be all right for him to remember the things that happened?"

Priest: (an animated "no" response)

Doctor: "Without him reliving the experiences, would it be all right for him to remember
what he saw?"

Priest: The little finger jumps repeatedly with "I don't want to answer" response. (Slowly) I want to see what happened.

Doctor: "Repeat that, please, say it again".

Priest: "I want to see what happened".

Doctor: "To avoid reliving; you do not have to relive the experience, speak of the priest as "He", it is not you, but a picture".

Priest: "He was on line, on a "tour", waiting on line, inside something large, humid, slowly entering a large carrier ship."

He is flying high over lush green tree landscape, over rolling tree lined hills.

He knows that it is night but the fields and countryside below are lit up as though it were day but he knows it's night because he is dreaming. For a few brief seconds he sees the green granular nature of the trees below and a visual exhilaration of flying combined with a sense of peace and happiness. He marvels at the texture and color and his movement above it.

He is dreaming but he is awake.

He is told by a tour guide, who is always just out of sight, that he is to wait on line for a tour of the insides of a country estate. He is numb and is dreaming. But he feels that he is awake.

He is moving forward, people in front and in back of him, all adults on a narrow path surrounded by flat, English gardens. It is hot and humid with the rank smell of soil. People clutch what looks like brochures and move slowly in a single line, towards the country estate. He feels bored, but he is mildly interested. A ticket taker sits at the entrance way, on a stool behind a lectern; He is a slim teenager but as he looks, he turns into a kindly old man.

Everyone is awake but dreaming.

Inside is a waiting room; a dull, white room with no adornments and a black floor. Inside, a dozen or so middle aged men pace nervously. Some speak in brief low voiced non-sequitors and look worried. Some of the men move towards a buffet table, strangely empty of food or drink. An unhappy, slight, balding man peeks up at him from the paper cup he is holding in hand and makes furtive eye contact.

The tour guide, who always remains out of view, now tells him that it is a cocktail party. He senses an uncomfortable corporate uneasiness in each face that repels him from the room. He thinks to himself: I'd like to find the hosts of this party and give them a piece of my mind; no food no drink! What kind of party is this?

As he starts off to look for the host with that thought in mind, he is slapped with an emotional wave of terror and remorse. It is the tour guide again who tells him it would not be a good idea to insult the host. In the dream, he asks himself , why would it scare me to insult the host if I have no idea who the host is? But he has the feeling of having averted jeopardy, he quickly dismissed the idea.

He went back into the party. Everyone stared at his nakedness.

He blinks and looks again; many hold and drink from invisible cups and are half dressed. Each man is in an unhappy jittery dream. He is quickly overwhelmed with the feeling of not belonging in that room.

Although the tour guide is watching, he sneaks out into another less crowded smaller room. Free-ego-child-wild and mischievous glee overcomes him. He drops and darts under a table whose tablecloth drops to a few inches above the floor. He is underneath. He is hiding. No one knows. Again he is suddenly gripped with a joyful childishness that forces his eyes and mouth into contorted joy.

He can hear voices of the people talking in the room but he feels safe, hidden, draped on all sides by white cloth. Someone is about to pull the tablecloth up and find him; the tips of black shoes intrude under the cloth's edge. He reverts, atavistically; growling electrified, animal like and launches himself, snarling, forward. It is a dream within a dream.

A bright light and he is dreaming, but he knows he is awake; He is not awake but moving, climbing up a steep stairway ladder path-bridge in a very large room , still in line with people in a guided tour, dreaming awake.

The tour guide, always just out of view, tells him to keep climbing up a ladder towards a small room at the top of the stairs.

Someone in front of him dreams, wakes up dreaming. He looks to his right as he climbs by an enormous domed -curved window which makes up the whole upper wall.

He is slowly climbing, feeling very numb. He pauses, stopping the line of climbing people and places his arms on a curved railing where the staircase meets the bottom of the window. Cupping his chin on his hands, he tried to understand what he was seeing but he was so numbed that what he saw didn't affect him, emotionally.

Outside is blackness. The Earth and the Moon are far to the right portion of the glass, the Earth swimming in blue-white haze, except for a large red area which he saw as the desert of North Africa, or the Arabian peninsula. Far away, violet splashes of nebulae and points of red pinpoint starlight intersperse with millions of white stars.

Chin in hands, he leaned over and said in a sad, wistful, admiring tone, "These people who live at this estate have some view; "wow what a view!"

The tour guide, always just out of view, was startled and quickly changed the scene to that of a uni-dimentional English garden landscape.

Chin in hands, still looking out of the window, he said again, but this time looking at the garden landscape, They do have a nice view."

The tour guide was startled to hear him repeat, and not realizing that the scene of the garden had already worked to distract him, over reacted.

He was thrown into a vivid emotional ecstasy.

The ladder path transformed into a delicately patterned, dazzlingly ornate inlaid wood design cryptic and deep in beauty and complexity. He was forced to kneel and examine it, and turned away from the window.

Powerful awe, love, admiration and godlike reverence flashed through his mind and body, at the wood-inlay staircase, suspended in air, lushly constructed in multi-colored wood. An awe, tingling through his skin, thrilled him.

He felt a powerful, spiritual deep love for the construction, the unknown artist, the wood pattern, and became so absorbed, that he forgot what he had seen outside the window.

The sleeping line of climbing people was stopped by his fawning and repeated examination of the simple metal staircase. He repeatedly retraced his steps to further examine it.

The tour guide, always just out of sight, had had enough. A paternal, parental impatient voice said in his head, "just keep going; it will be there for you to see when you get back." But things change in dreams he tells himself and does not trust that it will be there again for him when he returns.

The guide had made the staircase the unrightfully recipient of the awe, rather then the scene outside the window, so that he would not remember; but when he woke he did remember.

He awoke exhausted, with a dull headache and a nose bleed; more tired getting up than he had been going to bed.

He opened the door, slowly and peeked down the hall; there was no one in evidence. He threw on his red-striped, tattered bathrobe, full of holes, and barefoot, stole out into the hallway, leaving his door barely ajar. He went to the stairwell; chose the second floor, and peeked up and down the hallway from his vantage point behind a hinge of the stairway door. It was five fifteen a.m. He bolted quickly down the hall and turning quickly in reverse, in three swift movements, picked up, first, from one doormat, a bottle
of fresh milk, from a second, a small bag of bakery delivered fresh rolls, and finally scooped up a morning; paper, under his arm, from a third. His heart pounding, lest he be detected, he ran up, breathless, to the fourth floor his stolen breakfast in hand. He locked the door.

He heard, in his head a voice and a buzz. It was a slight ring in his left ear. that odd inner ear ringing tone, one hears sometimes for no apparent reason. Concentrate on it, it gets louder; pay no attention, it dissipates. The ringing in his ear got louder and he shook his head to stop it. It was, he thought, clanging loud enough for the neighbors to hear it coming from his head. He wildly moved his head to stop it. It grew louder. The sound moved deeper into his head and melted into a humming vibration. The whole left side of his head was humming.

He heard a voice which began quietly, but he couldn't understand anything, not a single word. He began to pray silently to St. Jude, as he stood there alone with a voice grinding out sounds in his head. His heart pounded and his jaw fell slightly open as the stolen groceries fell from his grasp to the floor. He held his hands to his ears, supporting his head, and tried not to scream and run.

He thought people in insane asylums who heard voices could be like him or him like them.

He was climbing to the small room at the top of the ladder. He was dreaming awake.

The high school basketball game was in the last quarter; the crowd's howl and the tattoo of the drums from the drill team seemed miles away. He and she had left the game and now sat on the sweet smelling lawn of the school, in the night listening to the sounds of the game behind them.

He was cloaked in blackness; dreaming a memory: she was in his arms; soft, dark., long brown hair brushed his face; coquettish liquid dark eyes looked deeply into his. He returned her gaze with a passionate, loving sensuality. She held his hand; it was cool and slender. A mysterious and provocative incense coursed through his blood and made him dizzy with desire for her. He moaned and leaned closer.

She pressed her slim body close to his and he lowered his eyes closing his lids, flushed with lust.

She suddenly stiffened and withdrew, and he sensed a wave of disgust and disdain from her wash over him; he was crushed; why had the sweetness of the dream soured?

She withdrew, backwards into the blackness. The girl in his dream stared at him; in her hands was a funnel-shaped cup, attached to a tube receptacle. He was hurt and puzzled and said "Is that all, Is that all you want?"

Before the darkness came and swallowed him he realized that her coldness was the coldness of one running an experiment; caring more about the outcome then the methods used.

Even though he was dreaming he knew he was awake and he struggled with a feeling if hopelessness in the dawning realization of his experience.

Cold, dispassionate, unblinking eyes recorded both psychic and anatomical responses; they registered his emotional responses, categorizing, summarizing, analyzing and judging him. The alien administered a progressive personality assessment, a standard psychological measurement exam which had more subtle discernment and calibration of the soul than any earthbound measurement.

The creature stared directly into the priest's eyes and induced a delusional thought system; a gauntlet of nightmares, a funhouse of terrors. A series of three-dimensional scenarios in crystal clear virtual reality were projected into the priest's mind. His reactions, nuances of feelings to the projected visions, were carefully registered and recorded. The aliens had already found a genetic site for dysocial psychopaths and for people of moral goodness.

First he was pushed into a small room with white walls and a red. bloody, gory floor. In the center of the room, back to the viewer were two butchers, white coats splashed with blood, busily chopping infants into butcher cuts. He was urged to enter the room but his mind rebelled in horror and fear and he refused. The horror of the chopped infants saddened him, tightened his stomach and filled him deeply with fear. He trembled in terror. "Who in God's name could bring himself to do such an evil thing?"

He was thrust into another scene; a rubble-strewn street with burnt shells of vehicles, some upside down surrounded by shells of fragmented buildings which were precariously perched. In the background smoke and flame issued all around. At his feet, injured, partly buried in the rubble was a frail old woman with a kerchief covering her head. She weakly jestered for help. He knelt beside her, but his eyes were on the building above him which began to weaken and shift. Fear of death overcomes him and in agony he runs
from the scene, leaving her behind. He is stricken with grief and guilt over the decision, but he feels grateful for having escaped unscathed.

All of this is carefully registered and recorded. Again he is thrust into another scene, the small, dark creature staring fixedly into his eyes. He hears the repeated cracking sound of a whip on flesh overlaid with screaming pleas of mercy. It is just around the corner.

Shrieks and howls in loud, deep agony accompany satanic laughter. Fear crawls down his arms and legs. He is psychically prodded to look within. A tall, muscular, athletic young man with black hair is writhing in pain, chained by arms and legs to a wall-mounted wood cross. A black-hooded inquisitor, demonically laughing delivers loud, whip-snapping cracks onto the screaming man' s back who pleads for mercy in fervent agony. Blood and tissue, noisily splatter the walls at each stroke.

The priest's mind shrank back in mortal terror, disgust and raw horror.

Next, a thick-bodied, squat, gangster-type sat at a table playing solitaire. With a growl rich and deep with menace he picked up a hand gun and told the priest that he was going to kill him. The priest nodded in silent placation and tacit agreement. The gangster, never taking his eyes from his cards placed the gun at the far end of the table close to the priest. The killer assured the priest that no matter what the priest did, he would definitely murder him. He was urged to go for the gun. The priest's mind eye measured the distance between the gangster's hand and the gun and his own relative distance from the gun; he decided it was probably a trap and did not go for the gun.

The next scenario - a beautiful woman, a Hollywood femme fatale with short skirt, long white gloves, very long legs and dark hair told him that she was in danger and needed him to go with her to help her. He patently refused, smelling danger, seeing through the disguise. She promised him her body if he would help her. He abjectly refused. The alien introduced a promissory image of her long limbs lasciviously intertwined with his. He still refused.

The next psychic measurement was for honesty and guilt; he was left in a room with money piled high on a table. He was urged to fill his cassock pockets and he did. He as made to feel the slow burn of shame.

At the end of the exam, bereft of strength, disheartened, deeply depressed, he sat in the spacecraft drained and exhausted. At this point the alien applied an artistic touch to the delusion. It gave closure and diverted the priest's mind, but it also mercifully alleviated his soul's suffering. Each main character from each scenario filed in one by one with knowing smiles and sat at a table in front of him. He was at the center of a "Mission Impossible" scenario.

With the dawning realization that these people were simply players, conspiring to fool him, two things happened; surprise at the complexity of the dream, and awe, at the enormity of the staging, by seeming strangers. This revelation replaced the angst this series of visions had provoked. It also underlined the alien's total duplicity; when the alien saw the priest's slow smile and lightening of spirit he brought him out of the delusion and back into blackness. When his alarm rang, he swung his feet onto the floor.

"Dreadful dream," he thought "My god, what a dreadful dream; someone was butchering babies; horrible dream."

Contact Paul Schroeder: Cecropia999@aol.com