[continued from previous message]

Then next day, Melissa was contacted by one of the Chacmools, who invited her to a private class, and she went, and Carlos seated her front and center, seemed to be lecturing only to her. The next day, one of the Chacmools called to ask if Carlos might
have the privilege of calling her at home. Soon, Carlos was telephoning every morning at nine a.m. sharp, sometimes late in the evening as well. He called her his baby girl. He asked her about her life, her family, her past sex life, her history of
venereal disease. He told her that if she smoked pot, she should stop, and that
she must completely stop having sex. “You must zip it up! You must not let anyone touch your baby-thing,” he’d said. He asked her to tell him her innermost secrets; he
asked her to make a list of all her sex partners, to recapitulate each experience. He asked her if she’d ever “been taken away kicking and screaming by men in white coats.”

Frequently, he’d ask her to lunch or dinner, for sushi or Cuban, his favorites. Usually, she said no. On those occasions when she relented and said yes, one of the Chacmools invariably would call and cancel at the last minute, telling her that Carlos
was sick or that he had to leave town unexpectedly. Though they never met alone
outside the weekly private classes, Carlos continued to call each morning. He told her that her energy was incredible, that they were soulmates, that he would never leave her.
Melissa didn’t know what to make of his attentions. Though his tone was distinctly sexual, he never made a move. It was like he had an obsessive need to make women fall in love with him, then to keep them at arm’s length. While
she had no interest
in him sexually, his attentions were oddly addictive — she kept coming back for more, despite her better judgment.

In time, Carlos began telling Melissa that she was the Electric Warrior that they’d been searching for, and on Christmas Eve, 1993, they held a special banquet in her honor. Though she was creeped out by the notion of what seemed to be happening, she
attended the dinner, a classy affair for 18 people with champagne and candlelight at a long table in the banquet room of a four star French restaurant in Westwood. There were toasts and speeches and each of the Witches came in turn to sit next to her and
chat. Though the Witches struck her as being very catty and a bit hostile — asking her, for example, what her favorite kind of music was and then berating her for her answer — she got the feeling like she was the bride at a wedding,
albeit a bride
who was marrying into a family who had mixed emotions about the union. With dread, she sat at the table — Carlos at one head, Florinda at the other — imagining a wedding chamber set to receive her and her sexagenarian groom. To her great relief, when
she said she was tired and wanted to leave, no one stopped her. The minute she got into the door of her apartment, Carlos was on the phone. “They all love you! The phone hasn’t stopped ringing!” he said excitedly. She could hear the call waiting
feature beeping on his line. “Everyone’s crazy about you, baby girl!”

From that night on, Melissa was part of the inner circle. She didn’t understand what this Electric Warrior thing was all about; nobody bothered to explain. There were others too — the Lecture Warrior, the Blue Scout, the Orange Scout, The Trackers,
The Elements, the Chacmools — most of them attractive younger women. It was a
little creepy, all this attention from a man old enough to be her father, but nobody was touching her, nobody was really acting inappropriate — though Carlos had this weird
obsession with teaching her to make a fist. Truth be told, the inner circle was
kind of fun. She hadn’t had a group of friends for many years; it took her mind off her problems, and that was a great relief. The members of the inner circle were all
smart and well read. They were up on current events, loved nice clothes and making puns, were always joking around and pulling practical jokes, infantile stuff, like a bucket of water atop a door. They had dinner parties at people’s houses and at fancy
restaurants; they loved going to Tony Roma’s for ribs — in short order, Melissa, formerly a vegetarian, gained ten pounds. Once, at Tracy Kramer’s beautiful Craftsman house, Carlos prepared a jelly which he said was made of devil’s weed. He said
it would make them all fly, but nothing happened to Melissa.

Often, there were madcap performances by something the inner circle called, alternately, the Sorcery Theater or the Theater of Infinity. Written by Bruce Wagner, the skits were hilarious.

[No. Not written by Bruce Wagner. Most of them were written by Carlos.]

Slickly produced affairs, complete with props and costumes, most of them were didactic, portraying Carlos’s philosophy and his rules, but always in a lampoonist fashion. One favorite skit featured a gypsy fortune teller who picked out members of the
audience and proceeded to ruthlessly deconstruct their personalities, their idiosyncrasies, their habits, their oddities—fertile ground, to be sure. Another favorite featured the Chacmools doing nude, martial-arts-like movements
with sharp knives in
their hands. There was a skit featuring a six-foot dildo; another number was aimed at Melissa and the Lecture Warrior — a musical rendition of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar. In time, the Witches — all of whom wore
their hair extremely short and dressed in designer clothes — seemed to grow to accept Melissa; they began inviting her along to movies and on shopping trips to Century City Mall, which was walking distance from the Pandora compound.

Toward the end of 1994, Melissa began seeing changes in Carlos, in the inner circle. Though Cleargreen was getting stronger, holding more seminars, the group seemed to become directionless, like they were waiting around, trying to figure out what to do
next. Carlos even said as much: “We don’t know what to do,” he told Melissa, “we don’t know where to go, we don’t know what’s happening.”
Carlos also started complaining about the tyranny of the Witches. He said they were bossy, that they
wouldn’t listen to what he said. He spent the whole of one Sunday private class railing about the fact that Taisha had made herself a hamburger one night
and refused to make one for him. He was obviously having trouble seeing — she
heard whispers
about diabetes — but no one said anything out loud, though everyone had suddenly taken on a new interest in acupuncture and nutrition — an area in which Melissa was very knowledgeable, a fact that seemed to draw the inner circle more closely around
her as she began advising them on meal preparation. One thing was certain: Carlos didn’t look very well. His skin had become ashen, his hair had turned entirely gray. He wobbled just a bit when he walked. And sometimes, when he came close to talk to
her, or to help her practice making a fist, she noticed this peculiar, sour kind of smell about him; it reminded her of the way her mother had smelled before she died.

[Carlos did have diabetes, and openly admitted this to the next
incarnation of the Sunday class (the one I was in, which came after
the one Melissa was in).]

Then one day Carlos approached her in private. “I’m leaving soon and I’m taking you and everyone else with me,” he said.

Melissa was horrified. The first thing that came into her mind was Jim Jones, Kool-Aid, the mass cult suicide in Guyana. She didn’t know what to say.


(To be continued...)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)