Truth Rarely Dared Published - A Nightmarish Story

Disclaimer: No warranties! This story is pure fiction. Albeit inspired by what friends from Africa told me about their life in sex trafficking, repeated rape, and criminal press gangs enforcing prostitution and worse.

Trigger warnings:

Nightmares

Racism

Violence

Rapeculture

The story begins:

When it began, we all made fun of the topic, as we simply did not realize how fiercely serious these words spoken by Jerome really were. Yes, we made a cardinal mistake at the start, instead of helping and comforting our abused friend, who trusted us with the traumatic truth but found disbelief and ignorance too strong in us. Only years later did I find the wisdom to contemplate anew, and go awareness raiser. But, such is no excuse for my failure.

Back then, the closest to the truth that I literally could muster, and by now I am aware of how utterly wrong it was to jest: `So, each night, in your dreams, you are butt-raped by General Robert E. Lee?´

Jerome still kept calm and even replied to my immature and callous way of reacting to his statement of facts. God, bless him, please, for I failed to achieve that.

Let me not waste your time with amateurish mention of the interdependence between PTSD and recurrent nightmares. Some may have experienced similar, and some may not. Others had even fiercer problems to handle.

My idiotic and borderline-racist words, the above: `So, each night, in your dreams, you are butt-raped by General Robert E. Lee?´, inspired our bunch of supposed friends, and everybody in hearing range, to start giving pseudo-expert advice stemming from crappy horror movies. We had a ghost story-style urban legend that became popular within days.

We also had our share of being called racist, but there was no anti-African sentiment in it, as we still were convinced that Jerome was in denial about his real issues and instead came to us with a fabricated excuse for his distress. We were wrong, but, back then, I did not know that yet.

Then, it began. Subculture life may seem strange to mainstream people, but it was mostly horror movies, darker music, and admittedly for some among us also substance abuse, but within limits. Wake-up pills, smoking grass or dope, and whatever they did. I don't know, as a medical issue keeps me from indulging in such.

Checking the cheap hype-train website from my phone, I one night found the first video upload not seeming another crappy fake of BS ghosts and rubber-mask pranksters. A woman, if I remember correctly one of the tarot video monetizers calling it her full-time job, her business, attempted to list precautionary measures for those, who feel it happened to them. Once again, by all I knew: It seemed to mostly happen to males with African heritage. 

The woman, whom I nicknamed Condoleeza, listed breathing techniques, meditation for newbie stuff, and even `shielding´ from older, nowadays outdated occult sources. I was not convinced by the esoteric insistence of power, as I remembered movies warning about blindly following ritual procedures or similar.

Some nights later, if I remember it properly, our nightmares started. Just, that in our nightmares, as far as interviewing friends and acquaintances allows me to assume, in our nightmares we were the abusers. Sadly, those nightmares only happened to people NOT of African heritage, and we did worry about seeming racist AF.

We also worried about Jerome's words, as he had mentioned that the early stage, the nightmare-only phase, quickly evolved into a neural pressure to act on those urges steered by the nightmares. 

Early on, we all resisted quite easily. Though, in those days and nights, the exercises shared by `Condoleeza´ actually seemed more helpful and more wise than they had before.

Violence quickly followed, and several incidents did not even need media mention, as locals with smartphones, those mobile phones outmatched computers, already spread the news and several areas debated the legitimacy of neighborhood watches aka guards to keep the peace until police arrived.

Friends called, all struggling with their coping mechanisms, stressed out, and trapped between a need for solitude and the comfort of friends around. I felt similar, but I also had the fallout of my nightmares costing me plenty of sleep.

Tired people are prone to make more mistakes and are less aware of them. I remember that from amphetamine abusers, who did not even stop when waking up in psychiatric care after a complete blackout or loss of control gone violent or car accident.

There were no Confederates in those nightmares, as I had mentioned I had been wrong from the start. Those ephemeral phantoms were, as with many dreams, vague and menacing, dreadful and scary.

Still, it seemed to me more than once, that the most fitting ways to describe it, would be words so loony that I would have to watch out for my freedom. For, it was as if the traumatic energy of rape victims and abused people in the neighborhood had begun to orchestrate its very own reenactment of whatever occurrence was the true source. To us, clearly still a mystery. And, not so local, the Internet and those phone Apps indeed spoke of multiple regions reporting similar happening.

I spoke my prayers, not in Catholic litany style, but in my sincere words. Asking for God's protection and help for my feeble attempts to oppose that Evil, and for the protection and blessing of my friends.

If my prayers were answered, I would never know.

The doorbell rang, and my contemplation was shattered by an unexpected visit by Jerome. Contrary to me, who looked gaunt and tired, he looked a bit better than before, and soon told me, why:

With whatever was going on, several victims of the specific gang-keeping people like Jerome trapped in forced prostitution had managed to escape their captors, albeit at the price of several dying, when the nightmare-crazed share of their abusers went extra-monstrous on them.

Jerome did not even ask me to let him stay overnight. All, he expected from the lousy friend I had been was my OK for him to take a shower and get some of my spare clothes. Seriously, he did not even ask for money, and the look in his eyes convinced me that he was doing so in absolute, unshaken certainty.

On the next morning, Jerome's visit was as vague in my memory, as those remnants of nightmares. Lucky me, I had a coffee and time to handle my inner affairs. 

I felt walking in a daze, although much less wrecked due to the caffeine and the rest allowing my body to go on.

Trusting intuition, to me, was often nine parts feeling like a deranged idiot, and one part surprise that the rational mind oft comes to the same result, when we train our observation and contemplation skills.

In horror movies and folklore alike, churches and spirits had a vague connection. Not always, but it was not rare either.

Jerome's group had been kept prisoner in the cellar aka basement under a bankrupt church! 

While I wasn't into ghost-hunting, I was empathetic enough to consider feeling for the energy of places, the bad vibration detector stuff. 

For whatever reason, I felt wrong about calling the others, as whatever drove me on seemed to be certain that I better go alone. Needless to say, the risk of running into violent criminals outnumbering me for sure DID scare me AF! But, while flawed, I was a friend of Jerome, and I was not fond of forced prostitution. Especially, when supposed victims had so far not found any police willing to help them.

I braved the scouting tour into that former house of religious worship gone sexploitation hideout.

Not for me, not for God, but to make up for the failure I had been to Jerome. To redeem myself from my own toxic and possibly uncaring ways of letting friends in need down.

My discoveries came in different parts. The first, visible signs of crime, and remnants of church paraphernalia, was to me only a distraction. The crucial part was what my observing, feeling, and scanning for hints of truth about the nightmare ordeal allowed me to muster.

One cannot shoot a ghost with a gun, would need something different. Sadly, holy water poured onto bullets or stone salt in shotgun shells was NOT the solution.

Victory by sacrifice, a choice that needed true virtue and conviction. A choice that also meant having to accept the consequences, which may include eternal damnation, if God does not agree.

Spare me the `If there is a God!´ sermon, I had my years of doubt, my years of blaming God, my years of still hoping that a better God somehow has our back anyhow.

The nightmare was not literally emotional energy, but it was something manipulating the central nervous system of humans and mammals. Those, who learned to handle PTSD may realize how much it takes to make it through the ordeal.

Keeping it short, as my time ran out: I came, to free Jerome from his abusers. To end the nightmare, at least for my friend. Clearly, destroying the only shreds of evidence that a tracker could use to find him again easily was only the first step.

I could, of course, not simply end the nightmare for us all. Hubris like that only works out well in movies for really immature fools.

But, if I would be willing to pay the price, then I could sever the connection the nightmare still had to Jerome.

I came, to free my friend. It took me two hours, the first hour still desperately hoping that there was a better option than winning by sacrifice.

I found none if there was any.

Without any incantation, any occult ritual, or prayer: I focused on my conviction, my belief in friendship, and my willingness to oppose injustice, even at a cost.

I know churches were often built to make the sunlight seem more divine than it ever was. I also know that the wings of pigeons on the rooftop had nothing to do with angels.

Still, when I stood there, a found handgun pressed into my mouth, I really channeled every bit of goodwill I could muster, every bit of faith in friendship. I also became OK with being another confused dolt committing suicide coz the nightmare-specter messed with my mind. As said, I found no better choice.

My leap of faith, albeit aware that Catholicism makes suicide an auto-roast-in-hell. I had no more doubts, and I pulled that trigger in more good faith than anything that I ever felt in my life.

Each of us has to face our own challenges. Each of us has to fight our own fights. Hopefully, mine would not be the worst. I'll never know.