And one more thing . . . I had a dream that has haunted me all my life.

Right after I “gave my heart to Jesus Christ” when I was twenty years old and two thousand miles from home after I had misspent my youth on sex, drugs, and rock & roll, I had a dream, the most erotic and prophetic dream I’ve ever had.

In my dream, I was back in our Grannie Esslinger’s house in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, back in the little bedroom upstairs right by the bathroom at the top of the stairs where I spent many a summer after Suzi, me, and Janice had been adopted by our new Dad and Mom.

In the dream, I was now a man of twenty, no longer a boy, and I was just drifting off to sleep alone upstairs because our Grannie, Aunt Tootie, and Aunt Doris were downstairs playing pinochle at the big kitchen table. I don’t know where anyone else was. I never saw anyone else in my dream . . . except “her.”

She appeared out of nowhere and sat beside me as I lay on my back looking up at this young beautiful dream lover. Her raven hair fell about her ivory bare shoulders and framed her pretty oval face with her emerald eyes looking straight and unashamedly into my baby blues.

She was naked and perfect and as she leaned down to kiss me with ruby lips that glistened in the moonlight, I was entranced and could not move even if I had wanted to which I did not except to part my lips slightly to receive her kiss.

Just before our lips met, she suddenly opened her mouth wide to bare her white fangs and she lunged for the jugular vein in my neck.

Now eros turned to terror as she only just barely missed piercing my neck and most likely too my very soul. In silent rage she was on me and we were locked in a mortal embrace, she still trying to suck out my blood from my body and me just trying to fight her off of me!

As we rolled onto the floor it could have been ecstasy from the feel of our two naked bodies entwined like they were but was, instead, nothing but sheer horror for me and probably for her too having failed in her first attempt to draw the life out of me for which she was so desperate.

We rolled together to the wall and then up it to the ceiling like in a movie about demon possession and then over to the bedroom door and then out into the hall but still on the ceiling and then we tumbled together down the stairs to the landing where the stairs turn either into the kitchen to the left or into the living room to the right.

I was was trying to scream for “HELP!” but no sound escaped my mouth. In comic relief, our Grannie and two aunts glanced up from their cards and one of them said, “Oh look. Mac and his girlfriend are playing so nicely together!”

When my playmate and I rolled into the living room still locked in our death grip, I grabbed the pair of long knitting needles that always sat ready in the basket beside our Grannie’s television recliner and I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed this she devil over and over and over again but no blood came out of any of the puncture wounds.

I realized in a panic that my lover had no blood but needed every drop of mine.

And then I woke up from my nightmare . . . still twenty years old . . . still living on my own in a rented room in Tolland, Connecticut . . . still a believer and pretty poor follower of Jesus Christ . . . still nude but now in a cold sweat.

I never told anyone but Maria about my prophetic dream . . .

but Priscilla had emerald eyes.

[DISCLAIMER: OK. THIS CHAPTER HERE IS SURE AS HELL MADE UP, AND IF YOU CAN’T SEE THAT THEN YOU ARE NUTTIER THAN A JAY BIRD!]