herself
for a while and savor it. And regardless of what anyone else would say to doubt it, from that point on Tina was convinced
that an angel, somehow cloaked in the appearance of her father, had been there. Perhaps he would always be there, watching
over the daughter Paul Ewing had loved so much.
This notion was confirmed five years later when Tina was working in Los Angeles near the Federal Building. She went into town
for lunch and was returning back to work when she paused at the curb, waiting for the light to change.
Suddenly, there was a firm grasp of a hand on her shoulder. The hand pulled her away from the curb with a force so strong
it nearly knocked her to the ground. At the exact same instant, a city bus jumped the curb directly where Tina had been standing.
If she had remained standing there, she’d have been killed.
She turned at once to thank the person who had rescued her, but there was no one within fifty feet ofher. Again she felt an overwhelming sense of peace and reassurance.
“The Bible says God assigns his angels to watch over us,” Tina says now. “He did that for me when I was a teenager, devastated
by my father’s death. And he does it still.”
A Face Like Jesus
T he market colors began changing while Steve Getz was shopping for a cold can of Mountain Dew. Mixed up with the wrong crowd
during his eighth grade year, Steve had dabbled with drugs ever since. But that summer he had just turned sixteen and promised
his parents he was finished with doing drugs and hanging out with other people who did them.
But in the San Francisco neighborhood where he lived, drugs were easy to find and the shady friends hard to shake. Less than
a month after his birthday he began using again and now here he was on a full-blown trip like he’d never experienced before.
An hour before coming to the market, Steve had taken a mixture of illegal drugs, and now, suddenly, the walls of the market
seemed to be melting, their colors running into each other.
Without a doubt Steve hated this—hated how it made him feel panicked and sweaty, hated how hisheart raced, making him feel like he wouldn’t last another minute. Steve looked around desperately, trying to steady himself,
aware that sweat had begun pouring from his forehead, dripping down his face, neck, and arms.
Why do I do this to myself?
The thought tapped at the inside of his brain until the sound became a deafening drumbeat.
“Not now,” he whispered out loud. “Please not now.”
He turned toward the produce section, but the fruit and vegetables had turned into large blob-like substances, and worse,
they were coming toward him.
“Help!” he screamed. Then he began running full speed through the store, up one aisle and down the next. Finally, alerted
by concerned customers, the store manager and someone who looked like a customer caught Steve and forced him to the ground.
As strange as Steve was feeling he was surprised at the strength of the customer, a tall man Steve guessed to be in his late
twenties.
“Hold his feet!” The customer directed the store manager toward Steve’s legs. “I’ve got his arms.”
Steve could barely make sense of any of it. His heart was fluttering within him and he couldn’t breathe right. He struggled
to break free from the grasp of the two men, but he couldn’t find the strength. The hallucinations were worse than ever and
he felt himself twist wildly on the floor. He hadto be free! The tomatoes were going to get him, bury him alive if he didn’t find a way out.
Steve closed his eyes but when he opened them, he screamed in terror at what he saw. Horrible, dark demons were coming toward
him. They had fierce expressions and fangs that dripped blood. There were small, evil demons floating near his face and laughing
at him, and there were huge, monstrous demons circling him. Worse than the way they looked, the demons seemed to be emanating
a sense of utter evil, a
C. J. Cherryh
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