The only thing it said was, “Stop.”

Intrigued, I called the number to investigate and see who had left the mysterious message and what it might mean, but was immediately sent to a voicemail box that gave no indication of who, or what, might reside at the receiving end. Not wanting to give up on this communication, I texted back. These are the messages that ensued:

*********************************************************

Unknown Texting Entity: Stop

Me: Stop??? Stop what???

(One day passes)

Me: Can’t stop.

Me: Won’t stop.

Me: Maybe in the name of love. Maybe I will stop in the name of love.

(Another day passes)

Me: No. Changed my mind. Will NOT stop in the name of love.

(Two days pass)

Me: Is this the Instant Pot?

Me: You can see into the future, can’t you, Instant Pot?

Me: Is it true? Is it death by water for me? The Tarot reader said it was, but I’m not sure I believe her. I think she might have been unreliable. She was weird,  smelled exactly like a Harveys. Very suspicious.

( One day passes)

Me: And I’m never even in the water.

( One day passes)

Me: My wife told me that the Instant Pot cannot send texts, so sorry. I guess you’re not the Instant Pot.

( One day passes)

Unknown texting entity: Just stop.

Me: STOP WHAT???? YOU’RE KILLING ME HERE!!! JUST KNOCK OFF THE MEAN GIRL BULLSHIT AND TELL ME WHAT IT IS I HAVE TO STOP DOING!!!

Me: Sorry. I don’t normally lose my temper like that.

Me: I haven’t been sleeping well.

Me: Lots on my mind.

( Two days pass)

Me: You’re a demon, aren’t you?

Me: I always knew a demon would pick me to seed.

Me: I knew this would happen. Ever since I read The Amityville Horror when I was eleven.

Me: That’s when I created a portal for you to enter into my life, wasn’t it?

Me: Fuck it!

( One day passes)

Me: Well demon, as you can see into my soul, you know that I’ve wanted to stop for a long time.

Me: The problem is I can’t stop.

Me: That’s why I haven’t been sleeping well.

Me: I. Just. Can’t. Stop.

Me: It’s all I fucking think about.

Unknown Texting Entity: Paske, gen anpil moun ki rebèl, plen diskou sans ak desepsyon, espesyalman sa yo ki nan gwoup la sikonskripsyon. Yo dwe bese, paske yo ap deranje tout kay ki nan kay yo lè yo anseye bagay yo pa ta dwe anseye-e ke pou dedomajman pou malonèt.

Me: Is this you, Jen?

Me: Are you fucking with me?

Me: If so, this is NOT funny.

Me: So not funny.

Me: I just had to take two Lorazepams, you fucker.

(One day passes)

Me: Okay, this is Michael’s wife Rachelle writing now. Listen, if you actually are a demon, why did you start off communicating in english and then switch to whatever you switched to, when you saw my husband start to panic? Why not just continue with english? Seems like a rookie mistake to me.

Me: I think you’re a false prophet!

Me: Demon! It’s Michael here again! The above, the blasphemy about you being a false prophet? That was written by my wife, not me! I would NEVER say that about you!!

Me: Rachelle here, demon. Could you make yourself useful and tell me where Jones put the car keys? And if you’re the reason why the remote is always disappearing, you’d better knock it off. Don’t think I won’t holy water the shit out of this whole place. I will. And I have a Bissel steam cleaner that can suck you right out of the sofa.

It’s a real ghostbuster, so just consider yourself on notice.

Heidi, our dog:

Our eight-year old Miniature Dachshund has a mysterious marking that looks a little bit like a scar on her nose. When we asked the breeder about this she became very nervous and evasive, worrying the Rosary Beads she had around her neck. She told us it was a “bee sting,” but then begged us not to ask any more questions, knocking $50 off the price for Heidi, “Just take her now, please!!”

Since we took her, we did some research and found out that she was rejected by a previous family. The dog, apparently excited, jumped on the family’s three-year old daughter, knocking her over onto a coffee table. The girl hit her head and was rendered unconscious. The family found her probably about ten minutes after the encounter, with Heidi licking the blood off her head so that it was all over her muzzle. The family was utterly traumatized.  The girl fell into a coma, and although she survived, she now has an imaginary friend named Heidi who makes her do bad things. The family returned Heidi, our dog, to the breeder immediately after the incident. It was the fourth time Heidi had been returned to the breeder by frightened families.

Heidi has knocked me down on at least seven different occasions.

The Crying Boy:

This print, by the Italian artist, Bruno Amadio, was “given” to us by a friend who said he no longer had space for it as he had moved. The painting is huge, perhaps seven feet by five feet, and it looms massively above our living room sofa. Wherever you are, the crying boy is staring at you. We have had the painting for 1 year, and in that time I have been fired from 6 jobs, got shingles and assaulted 4 people. The painting is cursed. I tried to burn it once, but it was impervious to flames.

Heidi’s toy, Belial:

The breeder hastily shoved this toy into Heidi’s crate just as we were about to drive away, “It’s named Belial,” she shouted, “ it is of your dog!” We thought it was a pretty weird thing to say, but whatever. As it turns out, this squeak toy is indestructible. I have thrown it out at least a dozen times and even gone so far as to bury it in the backyard, but it always returns, lying at the end of our bed, staring at us with it’s dead, demon eyes.

Sometimes, when Heidi is playing with it and there’s a frenzy of squeaking in the apartment, Rachelle and I can sometimes hear recognizable phrases forming amidst the cacophony. ” Four-eyes must die,” “Drown him in blood,” “Eat all his food,” “His fear feeds you.” Once, I woke up from a nightmare*(see next entry) to see Belial in the chandelier above our bed just staring down at me. It was the most chilling thing I have ever felt.

Squirrel Pelt Blanket:

When we first got this blanket as a gift, we kept it at the foot of our bed, but both Rachelle and I were plagued by horrible dreams about being a squirrel and getting hunted down and skinned by an old, West Pennsylvania Mountain Man. The same dream, again and again and again. They were utterly terrifying and we’d both wake up screaming, the dog shrieking, too. When we moved the blanket and put it on a radiator in the living room, the nightmares stopped, although squirrels, baleful and lost, often mass on the fire escape outside the window and just stare in at it, as if in silent, foreboding judgment.

Ford, perhaps anticipating all of the apologies he’s going to have to make as part of his 12-step program, is said to have already written one to Stintz:

Dear Karen:

Geez, I can’t tell you how sorry I am for saying that I wanted to fucking jam you. It was inelegant of me, and you are a classy lady who deserves better. In fact, when I get back (I will have a tan and expect to have lost another 30 pounds) I would like to take you out for an elegant dinner at Splendido (Spendido!).

Just the two of us.

On me, not the city.

I can apologize in person and we can talk policy and then you could listen as I explain how business and government work. You are easily the most attractive of my opponents, and it wouldn’t bother me in the least to give a pretty lady like you a little help.

I think it would have been cool if we went to high school together. I was really good at sports, rich and quite a bit thinner than I am now, and I bet we would have gone out. Do you ever think about alternate universes? I do all the time. In one alternate universe I bet we’re together, in an open kind of relationship, and are political dynamos. In another alternate universe I live in California and spend a lot of time on the beach and in another I’m an MMA fighter.

But right now I’m confronting reality head-on. It’s what a man does.

Anyway, now that I’ve wrestled and vanquished my demons, it’s time to forget the past and move forward. I’ve survived a terrible disease now, showing a lot of courage in doing so, and I’m no longer going to be a victim to drug monkeys, the media or left-wing politics. I am going to be a new and improved Rob Ford, slimmer and more deserving of having an affair with a woman like you. I swear, you’re so pretty that you could be a figure skater or a hot sportscaster.

I really respect you, Karen and look forward to working with you in the future!

Cheers,

Rob Ford

Joel Osteen @JoelOsteen 1 Jan

Don’t go into the New Year holding a grudge from last year. Leave the hurts and disappointments behind.

Michael Murray @michaelmurray 1 Jan

But I am still very angry and disappointed! Why did God forget to make me money???

Joel Osteen @JoelOsteen 1 Jan

Get ready; things are shifting in your favor. Don’t talk yourself out of it. Believe this is your year for acceleration.

Michael Murray @michaelmurrayca 1 Jan

I don’t understand. Do you mean my anger and disappointment are going to accelerate or that God is some kind of passive-aggressive reverse psychologist?

Joel Osteen @JoelOsteen 2 Jan

This is a new day. The tide of the battle has turned. Declare freedom from anything that is holding you back.

Michael Murray @michaelmurrayca 2 Jan

I declare freedom from our Visa bill. Also, amnesty from poker debt. Supernatural debt relief is completely fucking awesome!!!

Joel Osteen @JoelOsteen 3 Jan

Make room for something new. Go out today expecting blessings, divine connections & unprecedented favor.

Michael Murray @michaelmurrayca 3 Jan

I am stoked. Will wear my favourite, God-approved argyle sweater!! Look out, ladies!

Joel Osteen @JoelOsteen 4 Jan

Whatever wrong has been done in your life, get past it. God knows what He’s doing. You are not at a disadvantage.

Michael Murray @michaelmurrayca 4 Jan

I only have one lung. God made humans with two lungs. I have one. How is that not a disadvantage??!! Do you or God even have an idea what getting through a humid day with one lung is like???

Joel Osteen @JoelOsteen 5 Jan

Don’t settle in the land of barely enough. Have an abundant mentality. Make room for God to show you His goodness in a new way.

Michael Murray @michaelmurrayca 5 Jan

Still angry about your last post, but it’s true, I’ve been living in the land of barely enough WAY too long. Also, God would want me to let your last post go, right?

Joel Osteen @JoelOsteen 6 Jan

You can’t think thoughts of lack and expect to have abundance. We serve a God of more than enough.

Michael Murray @michaelmurrayca 6 Jan

And Satan is like the tax department? You’re starting to confuse me, or a demon has seized me with the bafflement. Maybe both.

Joel Osteen @JoelOsteen 7 Jan

Good news: The right people are already in your future. It’s just a matter of time before they show up.

Michael Murray @michaelmurrayca 7 Jan

And they’re bringing the money, right? God and I need to be straight on this.

It’s hard for me to imagine a creature more physically dissimilar from a human than a lobster– an entity that inhabits the same planet as the rest of us but lives on the cold, dark floor of oceans. If we could imbue it with a human intelligence, could it possibly conceive of the terrestrial civilization above that actually farms and manages lobster communities and then eats them as delicacies? My guess is that no, the lobster is not thinking this, and so I assume that whatever my instinct is about what lies beyond the field of my imagination, the actuality is going to be so much stranger and greater that there’s absolutely no point in trying to codify it into a religion.

I have a friend who is a Charismatic Christian, and knowing that my wife was out of town one weekend, he invited me over for dinner with his men’s group. I did not know what a men’s group was. I imagined a bunch of guys who liked fantasy football, crossbows and the free market, and with that in mind went over expecting to eat a huge steak.

When I arrived there were about six other men sitting in the living room, as if waiting for me, as if they’d been waiting for me for their entire lives. There was something unusual about these men, an aspect of aggressive contentment that was entirely humourless and disquieting.

One man seemed to make a special project of me. He handed me a piece of paper upon which were what he considered to be numeric proofs of the immaculate nature of the Bible. After looking at it for a minute or two, and commenting on the interesting connections it made, I joked, “If the Bible were perfect, surely it would contain a few photos of Raquel Welch, don’t you think?”

I was being charming.

Men’s Group charming, I thought.

He gave me a long, hard look and then nodded to the other men, who over the course of the next fifteen minutes filtered out to the front porch to have cigars.  Thickly built, the man was probably 20 years older than I was and gave me a look that suggested he’d seen my type before. We talked for a good half hour before he announced, “You know, when I was younger I was a sex addict.”

I nodded respectfully.

“There seem to be very few old sex addicts,” I couldn’t help but add.

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?”

“Not funny Ha-Ha, funny the other way, I guess.”

He snorted, “When I met a woman do you know what I saw?”

“No,” I said.

“Genitals. That’s what I saw. Just genitals.”

He spat out the word “genitals” in the same way a serial killer in a movie starring Morgan Freeman might. “But it was the Lord Jesus Christ who saved me from this sinful bearing!” And then he shouted something and raised his fist into the air.

“Come with me, son, I want you to see something.”

He led me out to the front porch where the rest of the men were, and for the first time in my life I saw people speaking in tongues, or at the very least, pretending to speak in tongues. With their arms up, aspiring for heaven, the men were shouting and crying. As a holy babble poured forth from their mouths, they twisted and spun, undulating, as if no longer owner’s of their own bodies. Ferdinand, the Congolese guy who had been addicted to heroin and cocaine, was so stricken by the Lord that he collapsed and fell into the Weber barbeque. I rushed over to him, and upon revival asked him what he had seen during his hallowed transport but he did not know what to say. His wide, innocent face just looked back at me, “ All was good,” he said, “all was glory.”

“But what happened when you collapsed into the barbeque?” I pressed.

“The Lord spoke his miracle into me.”

I looked at the men on the porch. Although in a state of ecstatic transference, they still managed to hold their cigars and glasses of whiskey. Each one was recovering from some life seizing passion, be it drugs, alcohol or an addiction to sex, and it was clear that they’d replaced one obsession with another. It was fantasy football, only with the Pentecostal Church replacing the NFL.

As I crouched near Ferdinand with what was likely a look of wonder on my face, they asked if they could pray for me, the black sheep. I was a little bit anxious about what this meant, but said yes and inched into their prayer circle clutching my scotch like it was a holy talisman. They all put a hand on me and lifted the other toward the skies, and then they really put their hearts into it. The man who had taken me on as a special project reached out to touch me, and when he did, he shuddered away as if suffering an electrical shock.

But he was strong, and reached out to touch me again. It pained him to do so, I could see it in his face, but he persisted, Satan was not going to beat him. Powerful, unguarded commands from his heart issued forth, and then he proclaimed that he saw a serpent wrapped around me, a serpent coiling tighter and tighter. The other men were shrieking and howling. “You must come to the Lord, the serpent is winding itself into you, I see it,” my exorcist proclaimed in a voice that seemed to come from a TV set. I nodded my head and looked at him, “No,” I said, “you don’t see a serpent. You’re lying. I think the serpent is wrapped around you.” And I looked at him like I was goddamn Clint Eastwood. And then Ferdinand, whom I think has peace-making instincts, distracted everybody by being struck by the Lord again, shouting, “The Lord has seized the Serpent, it departs!” before collapsing once again into the Weber.