The Big Bang (Part 2)

"This, I thought, is crazy. If true, it is evil. But surely it is too crazy; it implies too gross a violation of ordinary human behavior, to be true. If it was true, there was something totalitarian there, something like the atmosphere of a Stalinist show-trial, the demand that privacy and dignity be ripped away to appease,...apparent emotional derangement,.."

- Hal G.P. Colebatch, in The Spectator, commenting on the public displays of emotional blackmail during Princess Diana's death.

(I'm only using the quote, above, as a launching-off point because it captures, perfectly, what I thought about the occult - and the behavior of it's practitioners - as I slowly discovered the metaphysical underpinnings of my wife, Karine Anne Brunck, being taken advantage of by Robert Wohlfahrt, Wissimbourg, France's homeopathic village quack who had just euthanized her mother, less than a month before:)

[Continued From The Big Bang (Part One):]

"Honey, what the hell have you been doing?"

With that, Karine had pulled the bed covers close and turned so her back was to me, feigning sleep. "Oh no" I said, "We're gonna talk about this!"

I was sick of the chaotic control she had gotten used to using on me since she got back from France, hot and cold in an instant. I grabbed the covers and tried to take them away, but she fought me until I gave up. I started backing out of the room with her staring at me in defiance.

I walked into the living room, dazed, and wondered how I was going to handle this. I couldn't call my friends. I'd tried that years ago, when she claimed she could walk through walls, and they were of no help. The smartest guy I knew, Tom Foremski, who I relied on for help in thinking things through in those days, was trying to get me to read a book about a talking gorilla, with "a message for humanity", and, back then, he'd easily told me not to worry, Karine's beliefs were harmless. Just go along with it, he said, it can't hurt anything.

Yea, right. Now look at us. (He eventually left his own wife and kids for a heroin addict, after a visit to Burning Man I refused to join him on. We stopped talking after I also refused to lie to his wife for him.) I didn't know what to do.

All of a sudden, in the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of our bookcase, and something striking hit me: Karine didn't own one book about anything other than new age beliefs - unless I'd bought it for her - and I knew she didn't read those. That sent a shock through my system, and I started to see the outline of what I had to do (though, honestly, I had no idea).

This was some kind of mind-control and, whether she read them or not, those books were symbols of allegiance to,...something. A profound sense of anger, and a protectiveness for my wife came over me, and then a bellow erupted with a force I wasn't expecting:

"This shit's gonna stop!"

I went to the kitchen and got a handful of brown paper bags, and started throwing every new age book I could find into them, one after the other. Karine must have gathered what I was doing, because she ran from the bedroom, screaming hysterically, "My books! My books!" She jumped on my back, clawing me and reaching for them, trying to stop me. I shook her off easily, and stayed at my work, determined to get the damn things out of our lives forever.

She gave up trying to fight me and just stared at me with a hatred I'll never forget. She watched as I filled several bags, and then, quickly threw them away in the garbage.

When I was finished, I felt better: I had done something. But that was just the beginning.

When I returned to the living room, Karine was in a chair, smoking a cigarette and not looking at me, filled with such nervous anger her hands shook. I let loose:

"Look, I don't know what's gotten into you but you've been stomping around this house for months, like you're little fucking Hitler, telling me what's what, and what you're going to do, like I don't get a say. Well I do get a say, and you know as well as I do, that ain't how shit's going down - this is a marriage - and we make decisions together. Like that trip to France for the $5,000 check? I didn't agree to that shit, and if they can't mail it, we don't need it, so that's one trip that ain't gonna happen!"

I saw Karine's purse laying on a couch, and went for it, but she jumped up to fight me. I shook her off and started rummaging through it, looking for the airline ticket I was pretty sure she'd already bought. Once I found it, I was looking at it, holding it in my right hand, when she made a desperate grab for the purse in my left.

I snatched the purse away. And then, immediately, started to wonder why the purse was still so important - when it was the ticket we were arguing about? I looked at Karine, and as it became obvious she wasn't getting the purse back, that's when the strangest thing happened: her face started to distort, grotesquely, like a confused digital signal warps images on a cable television. I just stared at her, horrified, and started getting unnerved again. She's losing her fucking mind, I thought.

I went back to looking in the purse. I didn't find anything special, just the usual stuff a woman would carry, and looked up at her again, wondering what was triggering her anxiety. She seemed to become content that I was sufficiently brain-dead, and went back to her chair and cigarettes.

Then it hit me: The purse might have hidden pockets!

I started looking for pockets, but didn't find one; and then, being a musician, I started to tap the purse until the very-familiar sound of a cassette tape's rattle got my attention. As it did, I could see Karine's back stiffen: The jig was up.

I found a small, zippered, side-pocket, where a cassette was hidden, and tried to see what was written on it. Pulling it out I read:

DOTI BOON: THE CALIFORNIA PSYCHIC

"Psychics? You're still giving money to fucking psychics!?! I thought we were done with this nonsense years ago!" I said.

Karine just stared at me blankly, but obviously embarrassed. "What the hell is on this?" I yelled, as I turned to a cassette player and slid the tape in. "We're getting to the bottom of all this shit right now!"

I pushed the 'play' button.

The first sounds I heard were garbled, but I could hear a woman I didn't recognize say "I talked to Nadia,...". (Holy shit, I thought, my mind reeling, not her too!) The tape's sound slowly cleared up, and as it did, I could hear Doti Boon explaining that Karine already knew how the process worked (!) and where the cassette would be mailed. And then she announced she was "ready to go.".

That's when Karine's familiar french-accented voice started speaking, tentatively, but clear as a bell:

"I have met a man,...."

To be continued by: