Awesome dream last night. Slender Man was being terrifying in this city (despite his usual inclination for the woods) and got into a fight with an angel.
Slendy kicked its butt, of course.
Every time the angel slashed at him with this big-ass flaming sword, all it did was open up a gash that healed over within seconds. Inside the gashes were gazillions of eyes looking around and sunken in some black goop. The angel saw this and basically went, 'Aww hell naw' and flapped the hell out of dodge, leaving the local cops trying futile to shoot Slendy down with puny human weapons.
My subconscious gets really fun when I eat too much sugar.
*****
So Easter was a blast.
It was crazy crazy insane at the coffee shop, and not just because of the lady who tried to exorcize me.
There was a constant stream of people. Before and after service it was the regular churchgoers, during the first part of service it was the crew from the play, all thirty-plus of them decked out in their costumes swarming into the shop for caffeinated pick-me-ups.
After them, the TV crew and the tech guys and the custodial staff and a few of the teachers and the ushers all came in.
Busy busy busy.
The lady who tried to exorcize me was around the middle of the second service rush. I went into the back kitchen to wash pots. It was crazy busy back there, too, since we share the kitchen with the rest of the building and they were making the Easter lunch for all the actors in the play.
So I didn't notice her until she'd come up beside me at the sink and grabbed my wrist.
"Wha-?"
"Dear lord," she said, looking me straight in the eye. She looked kinda crazy. her hair was very short and kind of wispy and poofed out the way some older ladies wear it. She was dressed like any other well-to-do older churchgoing woman.
"Bless this child-"
I relaxed slightly. Okay, she was aggressively praying for me. I'd been prayed for before, though usually it was people I knew, and they weren't so grabby about it-
"-And rid her of evil."
Eh?
"Rid her of the dark, oh lord. Bless your daughter and cleanse her spirit of the darkness festering inside her."
"Uh, ma'am?"
She glared at me and squeezed my arm harder until her nails were digging into my skin. "Quiet. Father save this child, empty her of Satan's presence-"
What.
"Fill her heart with your love-"
No. Wait. What.
I was still trying to figure out what Satan had to do with it and was not so discreetly trying to pry me arm away when she started on the gobbledygook.
It sounded like gibberish, but I think I heard a few El Shaddai's and an Adonai in there, maybe an Elohim, so maybe she was speaking Hebrew or maybe she just sprinkled a few words in there for form's sake.
A few of the people cooking for the actors stopped to watch, jaws dropped.
"Excuse me, ma'am? Ma'am?"
Well she apparently wasn't going to listen to a little heathen filled with the dark lord's presence like me. I tried shaking her off, but she wouldn't let go. "Linda?" I called, probably shriller than I would have liked. "Linda?"
My coworker came in, stared for a second, then told the woman her latte was ready.
ALL CRAZY OUT THE FUCKING WINDOW.
She looked up and smiled and looked normal. "Thank you, dear," she said.
She left back to the shop and totally ignored me until later, after I'd gone back to the front, to tell me that the back bar was out of half and half.
She didn't look or sound crazy at all, then. She tried to strike up a conversation, even, while I was filling it up.
"Do you like working here?" she said, all calm like I didn't have little crescent-moon-nail-marks on my arm from when she's grabbed me.
"Yep," I said, all smiles. "Have you come to the church before?"
Code: have I totally missed your brand of crazy before, or is this a one time thing?
"Oh, this is my first time here. I just came to see the play." She put a hand on my shoulder while I screwed the top onto the canister.
"Thank you, dear."
"You're welcome." I kept on smiling and retreated back behind the counter and focused on work. I think she left shortly after, because I don't remember seeing her for the rest of the day.
So that happened.
At home Pastor Carl and Tanya and Tim were over for the usual BBQ and many chocolate eggs were eaten.
'Scuse me, I'm gonna go have me some leftover rabbit-shaped chocolate cake.