4

So.

The minister.

I know you’re huddled inside your snuggly, on your couch, dehydrated perhaps, or maybe really needing to pee.

“By now, there should be some kind of hook; some bit of intrigue! Some sexual innuendo to catch these pages on fire.”

That’s what you’re thinking, right? Memoirs of a Minister’s Mistress sounds so enticing!

Oh dear one, hang on just a minute. You’ve no idea the incendiary, flame-inducing mayhem written across the pages of my life. You’ve only just met me and, in the words of The Carpenters, we’ve only just begun. You must get to know all of my mundane in order for you to grasp just how incendiary the mayhem. Flickers, sparks, flames; fire red and glowing, sadly, turned to blue. Yes, it’s true; the minister and I are no longer friends. And he had told me this would happen long before it did. That one day I would have nothing but disdain for him. I didn’t understand. See, he is of the Christ Spirit, and can see all periods of time at once, because he is outside of time. There was a point in which I was there, too, with him. He told me, “There will come a day when you will not want to see me; when you will not even care to speak to me.” And of course, I thought he was crazy. He was the Morpheus to my Neo; I, the Magdalene to his Christ.

However, there did come a day in which I loathed him. Now, this is not, believe it or not, why we no longer speak now; but, it was the beginning of the end. He is still in the magnificent ether; I…well, I must have fallen back to the ground, but I did forgive him.

Imagine! Forgiving the Christ, man!

But things were just never the same between us.

See, social media can be both a blessing and a curse. For this one instance, it dared be the dagger that would shatter this seemingly beautiful friendship. A popular actor, one I still hold very dear to my heart, had been found dead of an apparent suicide. The minister, in very short order (because he is outside of time, you see, and able to access anything), posted photos of this actor that had been taken by the county coroner’s office on his social media account.

Of all the dastardly, blasphemous betrayals! How? Why?

My innocent soul could not fathom how someone of the minister’s stature could post photos of one of America’s most beloved actors in his saddest moment. The photos, which I will not describe here, will never leave my memory. There are some things in this realm you simply cannot un-see.

And then, poof.

The post was gone, and I questioned for a long time if it had ever even been there. Believe me when I say that it was completely out of character for the minister. But I didn’t speak to him again. I didn’t answer his chats, texts, phone calls. Not for a very long time. I don’t like explaining why I feel Certain Ways about Certain Things. I feel like putting words to emotions somehow lessens their impact, and that no matter what words I put to how I feel, no one is going to understand it; however, you can trust that whatever I do say is exactly what I mean when I say it. I put a force behind my words, so that I will never be misunderstood. A force with the strength of a thousand beating wings of soul-caged birds.

Something I learned from seeing that horrible photo was that our eyes don’t “play tricks” on us. The entire notion that something of my own faculties could deceive me is, simply put, just not how it works. In fact, that phrase is nothing more than an elaborate means of covering up the fact that this matrix has glitches. Just like any other computer program, it doesn’t work spotlessly all the time. Lines and lines of code? Tons of 1s and 0s? Do you really think that all this goes on with nary a crooked letter? No way. Everyone is inserting their own lines every single moment, or taking out lines. The processor isn’t equipped to handle that much information. It reminds me of the Madeleine L’Engle book I read (or tried to read) in fourth grade. I didn’t understand “wrinkles” back then. I thought they were just something that old ladies with white hair had on their faces. But wrinkles in the fabric of our existence are entirely commonplace.

Really, though, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. There is so much more you need to know, like the time (when I was still Magdalene) when the minister taught me manifestation. Once I had gained sufficient confidence in my ability, I told him (naming a specific date), that I would meet him in the flesh. Ah, but there I go again.