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Chapter One “You don’t go through a deep personal transformation without some kind of dark night of the soul.” Sam Keen Looking up I could see the clear, vast blue sky canvassing the horizon in only the way that perfect weather can. It was clear and limitless, the omen of a perfect day. Then blinking I heard the click, click, click of a revolver being cocked. Turning, I saw standing not ten feet in front of me a disheveled man his eyes wide and wild and in his trembling outstretched arm he held a pistol aimed at my head. The end of the barrel from my vantage point loomed large and ominous and looking down the barrel, I imagined that this is what death must look like. Black and dark and violent. In a split second I knew I was going to die. In my head I heard a warning to run but my body wouldn’t respond. My legs felt like concrete and I could hear my heart pounding like a jackhammer. “Bitch!” I heard the man say and then a string of other words followed but I couldn’t hear what he was saying above the thump, thump, thumping of my heart. His shouted profanity sounded like gibberish and even if he had not been holding a gun to my head I would have known something was not right with him. His eyes burned wild and bright, lit by a crazed imagination. There was no time for me to react. This was all happening so fast! I did not want to but I stood riveted, paralyzed by fear. I noticed his knuckles turn white as his grip tightened around the gun and waited for the gun to explode. Suddenly my body began to tremble uncontrollably and the movement frightened me. I wanted to be still. Still, like a rabbit hunched motionless in a thicket. Then, the gun barked flames and the bullet exploded from the barrel. In that split second I wanted to scream but no sound would come. I wanted to run, but my feet would not move. I had never seen this man before. He had appeared seemingly from nowhere. The force of the bullet slicing past my right temple sent a whoosh of air, raising the hair on the side of my head, the clap of the gun’s report crashing into my ear drum. Another explosion and in a split second the day turned to night, sparklers of light bursting before my eyes. Then, it was over. A senseless act of violence that would change my life forever. At the last I remember the smell of the earth coming up to meet me as my body fell, its scent fresh and autumn-sweet from the decomposition of the cottonwood leaves and pine needles. In the darkness that followed was a sense that I had been born a thousand years ago and I had lived a thousand years. With that sensation came a rapid stream of hyper-lucid thoughts. And an awareness that I was meant for something purposeful. I was not conscious when this reality struck. Yet I had an intense awareness of all that I am and was to become. With this came a vision. I saw horses, dozens of them. The images moving through my consciousness like ghosts in the night, startling, vivid, and haunting. |