he landed beside the body of a young girl, curled up beside a
tree in a park. A little pipe lay beside her, with a butane
lighter. Blood gently trickled down her face from her nose.
"Stupid children!" The Ancient One sighed.
He outstretched his hand, and the blue light surrounded the body.
In a moment it sat up and began to stare at its hands and its
clothes.
"I kept my promise!" announced The Ancient One,
"You have a new body and a new life. This girl threw away
hers. She's got a nice mother and a nice father, and had
everything in life to live for. Now you have the opportunity to
take her place, to accomplish what SHE threw away. Do you
understand me?"
"Yes," the girl wept, "yes. But my boyfriend ...
what did you do to my boyfriend?"
The Ancient One bent down and took her face in his hands.
"Your wonderful boyfriend," he said, "was the
sickest and most despiseable thing on Earth .... a Demon. He took
over your boyfriend's body when he died a couple of years ago.
You've been making love with an animated corpse! Didn't you ever
notice the smell?"
"Oh, my God!" the girl screamed. "Oh, my
God!" She got up and ran off through the trees, somehow
knowing the way to the house she'd never seen. The Ancient One
picked up the pipe and the lighter and crushed them until the
lighter exploded in his hand. Then, dropping the mess to the
ground, he sped home. But he thought for a moment just before he
entered his own flesh how the girl's innocent body had accepted
him, how joyously she had shared consciousness with him, given
him total possession of herself without the slightest hesitation,
instantly understanding his goodness and purpose.
"Thank you, little one!" he thought to the child far
away. "Thank you for your love and your trust. 'And out of
the Darkness,'" he thought, "'the little ones shall
lead them.'" No truer words had ever been spoken.
THE END
The preceeding story is fiction. Any resemblance it bears to true persons or places is coincidental, and not the intent of the writer.
In their November/December issue the PETA made known the grotesque and useless experiments on cats performed by Dr. John Orem at Texas Tech. We have not the space to describe this horror, but we ask you to write to the two addresses below and tell them that you are against Dr. Orem's experiments and you hope that Texas Tech will put a stop to them. Our letters are already on the way.
*Dr. Robert Lawless, Office Of The President, Texas Tech
University, P.O. Box 4349, Lubbock, TX 79430.
(806) 742-2121.
*Dr. James Heavner, Chairman, Animal Care And Use Committee, Texas Tech University, 3601 45 St., Lubbock, TX 79430. (806) 743-2921.
"It is not the acquiring of knowledge that makes one great, but the using of it wisely."