The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Chandra was my first real girlfriend...best friend from Kindergarden through the 4th grade...before I started moving. She was sexually abused during that whole time by her mom's live-in boyfriend, Danny. She was a trade-off to him for his financial help in paying the bills. When I knew her, she was already being assaulted by Danny on a near daily basis of sexual intercourse. His influence for her cooperation was to threaten that if she did not comply, he would do it to her younger sister instead. There are several memories I've written down about my time with her. This is one.

I have other memories of my time with Chandra at her house that were really fun. She had a menagerie of animals and junk bicycles in the back yard, no food in the house save bread, sugar, butter, and generic soda...sometimes we got spaghetti or Ramen noodles. It was during all this time that my parents were having marital problems, my father was dating his secretary while still living with mom. I remember going out to the skating rink with Linda and her two children (my step siblings now), Dee Dee and Chuck on the sly while mom was at work climbing the corporate ladder at Winn Dixie.

We were going to church too...for a time settling on the Church of Nazarene...they believe in falling from God's grace and that you suffer in life because of your sins. If that was true, then I suppose because I was born into sin and a sinful world it was only to be expected that I was sexually molested and abused, even though as a child, I had no choice but to "mind my elders" when they told me to pull my panties down. It basically just eeks me out that there are people who think that a child abused, molested or raped deserved to suffer this travesty because they were "sinful" or when the divorce happened, it was because my mom was being punished for some terrible sin in her life...nevermind that my dad was the one screwing around on her.

Well... that's just the biggest pile of horse hockey I've ever had to listen to coming out of the pulpit aside from the "The Thorn in the Side" sermon I've heard from just about every religious venue... yeah...and they think they're the only ones making it into heaven and doing so without telling the Church of Christ. After all the rest of us are just heathens and can never experience God like they do.

At any rate, my mom started visiting different churches looking for a place she felt would minister to her during this obviously stressful time prior to divorcing my dad. A brief visit to a Methodist church Sunday School brought me to accept Jesus into my heart as the bell rang for the main service. The teacher rushed me through my sinners' prayer but that's all it took, I felt the change inside of me immediately and I knew something was different, I could hear the still small voice inside of me now.

We bounced around a bit before settling into the Church of Nazarene where I was baptized a year after my initial confession of faith at the Methodist Church. It was here at the Nazarene in this early part of the seperation/divorce process that I had a phenomenal spiritual experience of which I will post elsewhere.

Soon after, mom got a promotion and transfer to another town. I was able to see Chandra one last time. I went and spent the whole day with her and we knew that this was it...our last time together as kids...my one friend of my heart. I had other friends I visited..the ones my mom approved of, like Carla...she was pretty and nice to me although I don't think she ever got used to my having seizures. Yeah, I was epileptic too, part of why my memory is patchy in places and sequences are out of place for me sometimes.

Chandra and I were closer though for what we shared in life experience. We flew kites that whole day, just reaching for the limits of the sky and praying that the daylight and the wind would never die. Theresa I knew because of Chandra, she was Chandra's best friend before I came along. I remember being inside her house and I remember her very wacky and cool brother, "Packy." I liked him and he was cute too.

Theresa and I did not get the opportunity to know one another as well as Chandra and me, but eventually she married a boy who was abusive and controlling. He even put her eye out when she was dating him by firing a bottle rocket off in her face at point blank. She stayed with him and bore his children out of pure terror. Last I heard from Chandra, Theresa finally got away from the guy and settled down with an older, gentler man and lives under another name, her children too...she has asked that we not worry over contacting her again...she simply doesn't want to be found.

She got the shortest straw out of the bunch of us all...she is really quite beautiful, I still have the last school picture she gave me before losing that eye. It is a shame, really...that even as we grow into adulthood, we can never quite seem to get away from the savagery of men who know better or the fear that we are found out despite the secrets we hold so tight.

Chandra has some great kids too, although she lost her first baby to SIDS. She's always on the move, working as a mechanic for the racing circuit, her whole life in the trunk of a car. I still hold that day we flew kites as the best memory of my childhood shared with her...my friend, my angel for life.

Chandra is still out there, somewhere and I know that if I should go through anything chaotic that turns my thoughts to that day in the late hours of the night, she'll call me and ask, "Are you o.k.?" February 2006 was the last time I heard from her, when my mom was going to have heart surgery the next morning.

I miss her terribly and I wish that we could take back up like before...but there is always something to keep us apart. I like to think that maybe she's on a beach flying a kite with her beautiful kids. For me, I'd love to just go and fly a kite but there is no wind in Louisiana unless a huricane is blowing through. The humidity alone is enough to slog the butterflies out of the air.

She is my Watcher now, seeking me out from afar when most needed to lend her voice over the phone and let me know that I'm still not alone...never alone.

Although I experienced carnal knowledge at a young age, I was still in my simplicity a child. Since my relationships to people were somewhat twisted and unhealthy, I began to concentrate my communication and bonds with animals, whether tame or wild.

I lived in the country during the upheaval previously described and my backyard consisted of a patch of sparse woods with a ravine running through from a branch off the Brazos River located in the far acrerage of my grandfathers' land. The ravine was my playground, nearly 100+ feet deep in some places and I would go and lose track of the time exploring every crevice, climbing to the bottom and back up again. I thought I was Indiana Jones back there and sometimes even put together my "survival-archeology" kit complete with old paintbrushes, butterknife, and holey towels to carefully wrap my uncovered dinosaur bones! I used to keep a cluster of oak trees as my "clubhouse" and kept an old Christmas tree stand as my "pot" for boiling as I pretended to make tea out of acorns and crushed them later to make a salve for neutralizing my wounds from the poison-tipped arrows of the Native Indians I narrowly escaped climbing out of the ravine. What can I say? I had a vivid imagination and still do.

My grandfather had animals he raised too, cows, goats (lots of goats), and chickens. Usually the Native Indians I was fleeing from was actually the billy goat as he took chase after me when I got too close to his harem of nannys. I had cats and dogs too and at one time befriended a wild mockingbird I affectionately called "Tux" because his markings make him look like he was wearing a bow-tie. He would meet me every morning and mimick my whistles and calls and we would converse with one another for over an hour each day. It was pretty fun to be in my bed snoozing in the mornings and hear Tux come and perch on my window, twittering as loud as he could to wake me up for our "conversations."

Sometimes I would sit on my porch and just watch the goats climb the trees to the utmost tops, stripping the bark and leaves, munching happily then jump out straight to the ground, always landing nimbly on their hooves with as much precision as a cat with nine lives. This was my place, my solitude and sanctuary where I could only just think of a world that only I could imagine and not think about the reality of the world I lived in.

This story is from my childhood that demonstrated a moment in my life when I was most "naturally" inclined to intuitive perceptions about people and situations that I now reckognize as one of my earliest death premonitions. As a child, I always took to heart and by faith what the Spirit told me and accepted it as Truth without the doubt that can so readily plague us as adults. The following takes place about 6-8 months after my parents separated and started the proceedings of their divorce. I believe I was around the age of 9.


My mom dated briefly with a man named Curly. He appeared nice enough and he didn't bother me. I remember however, sitting on the floor at his feet, mom curled up behind him and he was telling us that he was going through a divorce with his wife and he would soon be a "free man." I don't know what came over me but just as soon as he said that, I looked up at him and said, "No you're not, you're not divorcing your wife at all, that's a lie and you know it."

He could have just been the Encino Man frozen in a block of ice as I stared him directly in the eyes. My mother thought I was just atrocious at the time and chastised me for even saying such a thing. I've always been like that though, able to sense when something wasn't on the up and up. Later on we found out that my words rang true enough when his wife came to our house with a gun looking to shoot my mother. It happened at that moment that she and I were walking in the back acreage because I insisted on showing her something, now I don't even remember what. I have no other recourse but to believe it was divine intervention that caused me to grab my mother's hand and lead her deep into the woods unseen.

It wasn't until after we returned from our nature walk, that friends staying behind at our house frantically told us a woman came looking for mama waving a 45 around, saying she was going to shoot her for messing around with her ol' man. To say the least, it was a frightening consideration to entertain the possibility of what might have transpired had I not insisted she come with me that day. Curly was history after that.