An Excerpt from Guitars & Lies

Sometime later, the four of us went out to Chinatown to walk around. Carol wanted to go into this New Age store for incense. They had a fortune teller and she decided she wanted a reading. If I'd wanted to, I could have done the reading for her but I didn't like being a dime store psychic and I also just hated her guts. Sometimes I did slip up and tell them things that would happen, but I realized it had been quite a long time since I'd foretold them of anything.

The psychic was pretty accurate from what I heard her tell Carol. Afterward Carol was giddy about what the psychic had told her and she badgered me into getting a reading, mostly because I was objecting to having it done.  She liked to provoke me anyway she could, and this was just another way of doing so. Now Jace was badgering me.

The psychic was dressed like a gypsy but she was Hispanic. I mean we were in Chinatown; you know? She had me shuffle the cards and she told me that my father had died and that he was trying from the grave to get me to be the person he had lectured me to be. I hadn't felt that but he had always lectured me against drugs and alcohol and now I did them often enough but not to the excess that the rest of the band did. Heck, David had quit after having an overdose and that had slowed them down for a while but now all that was forgotten. I guessed that Kevin was about the only one that never got crazy drunk or high anymore, and I didn't either. I'd never been one to get that wasted.

The psychic told me that a guy that I'd met recently would stalk me and that he was crazy. "He's not going to stop." She told me. "You, will have to stop him. There's even a chance you'll find yourself in a situation with him that you have to defend yourself and kill him."  She further told me that although he wasn’t around at this moment that he would be stalking me soon and that a lot of the stalking I would never know about until years later. She told me that someone who had told me in passing that he'd loved me, really did love me, and that I would meet up with him one day, and because I hadn't heeded the universe's advice that our time together would be really hard for a long time, because this person would be in my life for a long time. She said if I had just done what the universe had told me that everything would have been so much easier.  I sat there trying to figure out what in the world she was talking about. When had the universe asked me to do something when I'd met someone? I'd met so many people, so many male fans. Most of them told me that they loved me, so to narrow it down to just one, would be impossible. Did she mean my cowboy? Would we meet up again? God, I hoped so.

She told me that I had recently gone through a personality change that would help me for a while but then at some point it would do nothing but make my life miserable. She saw me playing the guitar and that I was great at it, and very conceited about it.  She said she saw me some years in the future committing suicide by falling backward off a rooftop and she cautioned me to start seeing a shrink. I was glad the rest of the band was distracted by something else several feet away and hadn't heard what she'd said. I certainly didn't think I'd ever commit suicide. It irked me that she'd told me something that I didn't think would ever happen so as she now held my hand reading my palm, I read her. I had wanted to obtain something about her to turn around and be spiteful to her about. The problem, however, was that the universe was telling me that I needed to help her, not hurt her, and it told me how. I made a face thinking about the way it ruled my life.

She dropped my hand suddenly with fear in her eyes. "You're not from this earth." She said. "And you're protected by them." She had pushed her chair back further as if to distance herself from me, making me feel like a monster.

"No, I'm not from this earth." I told her matter-of-factly. "But I'm not a bad person."

"You can do things that most humans can't." She told me.

"It still doesn't make me a bad person." I said as my temper rose.

"But you can be, and you have been at some points in your life."

"I might have had one or two truly evil thoughts in the past but I didn't carry through with them." I informed her.  Daddy wouldn't have loved me anymore had I done them.

"I don’t think you’re being honest with yourself. You'll think more about doing evil as time goes by. You have to curb this urge and handle it before it gets out of control." She told me, her eyes wide with fear.

I just stared her. I couldn’t see myself ever getting out of control. I wanted to argue with her but I just let it drop.

"Do you know your mission here? They say that it's important that you finish it. Your powers are stronger than you even realize. You’ll gain more abilities as you get older. If you commit suicide, you will have failed your mission." She told me.

Why was she still talking about me committing suicide? Yeah, I'd hated a lot of my time on this earth but that didn't mean that I'd do anything. "Yeah, I've known all that since I've been a kid. They should have told me that I'd be like a fish out of water on this earth. I would have let someone else take the job."

Rick, Carol, and Jace walked back up to us at that point and the psychic was still looking freaked out of her mind.

"Oh shit! What did you do to her?" Rick asked me. "Did you fuckin' tell her you were an alien or something?"

"Yeah, my bad." I replied as I stood up ready to leave.

"Crap!" Rick muttered under his breath. "C'mon, let's go."

"Give me a sec." I replied. He shrugged his shoulders and the three of them walked towards the door with Carol muttering if I wasn’t out in five minutes that they’d leave without me.

"They know yet they don't believe you." The psychic remarked as she watched them walk away.

"Nope. They sure the fuck don't." I agreed.

"Why don't you show them?"

I shook my head and smirked in amusement. It was better that I didn't.  How could I possibly prove anything to them? They couldn't see the ghosts, the angels, and most likely they couldn't see the spaceships either. "I really don't need to scare the crap out of them at this point in time." I smirked as some ideas came to mind.

"This reading is on me. You can go now; your friends are waiting for you." She replied. I smirked because she'd sensed the things I'd thought of doing, and now she wanted to get rid of me.

"You need to help her." the universe reminded me. There was a gemstone necklace that was lying on the table. She watched wordlessly as I took it, held it in the palm of my hand for a moment and Archangel Raphael helped me to breathe life into it. I handed it to her. "Give this to your sister and have her wear it for a month or until it turns white. The cancer will be gone then. She has to have it against her skin and close to her heart though for the cancer to release. I have infused the necklace with the healing power of Archangel Raphael." I told her.

She was still staring at me as if I were the devil. "Good reading. And just for the record, not all aliens are evil. We could be, but most of us are not. I choose not to be. But the same thing can be said about humans too." I told her, then I held out fifty bucks which was twice what it had cost.

"He'll always cheat on you, you know." She said softly. "You should let him go before something bad happens."

I closed my eyes in frustration and sucked in a breath. I didn't want to be reminded that he'd always cheat on me. I loved Jace and the thought of letting him go made my heart break. I thought I could live with his cheating. I wasn't sure what bad thing could happen if I didn't let him go. Rick and Carol had been together for several years now and they had just about always cheated on each other. Nothing bad had occurred because of it. Wait a minute. Had she said that I should let him go before I made something bad happen??

"What did she say?" Carol asked eagerly.

"That someone is going to stalk me and I might have to kill them in self-defense down the road, oh and that I'm going to commit suicide sometime in the future." I replied.

Carol's eyes widened and everyone kind of stopped in their tracks. "Oh my God! Seriously?" She asked.

Rick and Jace looked at me for an answer too. "Well, that's what she said." I replied.

"You are kind of psycho." Rick informed me, and we continued walking.

"And you're an asshole." I replied back.

"I'm just telling you how it is." Rick said as he glared at me.

"Me too." I agreed.

"Do you two have to be this way?" Jace complained to us.

"Yeah, they do." Carol told him.

With that comment, I stopped. I didn't have to be that way.