The black hole (part 2)

There were two brothers among my brothers friends. They were an interesting pair. The youngest was one of those characters that you usually only see in the movies. He was young, charismatic, and very good looking. I know this is hard to believe, but he actually looked better with his black and white mohawk. Everywhere he went the girls all looked at him. Even the non punk rock girls, well, especially the non punk girls. He was the dream man, beautiful, and really bad. Their parents would hate him.

The older brother was a good guy. Would get very paranoid when he was up too many days. And, well he was a bit jealous of his little brother. They both boxed when they were younger, and the younger was even the better boxer. It seemed to be very hard to live in his little brothers shadow, and he had a bit of anger over the whole thing.

They both had a lot of anger over some other stuff too. See mom and dad went to a pentecostal church. And when these two would misbehave, as teenagers often do, their parents would take them to church and the elders would cast demons out of them. They preached a fire and brimstone version of pentecostal holiness at their church, and these boys bore the brunt of it. They didn't care much for the church, but did seem to understand me, a bit.

One time when the oldest had been up for about twelve days he went a little crazy. He had turned over the couch in the living room, and was hiding behind it with a pellet gun. He was screaming and shooting at anyone who tried to come in the housse. We didn't know what to do, but eventually he ran into the bedroom and locked the door. He fell asleep for a few days and life returned to normal.

Another time we were talking in the living room and I saw the older brother standing at the door watching his little brother. He seemed to be muttering to himself and getting angrier and angrier. The younger brother didn't notice him. But all of a sudden the first born starts running across the room and at full run punches mohawk boy right in the face as hard as he could. He didn't even slow down but ran right into the bedroom and locked the door. It took two of us to keep him from breaking down the door. Big brother slept for a day or two again.

Funny thing is I really loved these guys. I realised I was in a pretty intense situation, and tried to be responsible. I would wake up at 4:30am so I could pray for an hour and a half before I left for work. Then I would listen to bible tapes on the way to and from work. And listen to preachers all day on the radio at work. I had people from the church praying, I was serious.

The black hole was a scary place, sometimes a dangerous place, but it was my mission, my home and my prayer chapel.

the rev