There was an alchemical magic to it, Charlie was so curious and willing to ponder any notion and I was so packed with sacred ideas that I had enclosed in iron-clad orbs of doubt and shame for protection, but I was finally free to release them, to speak them as Truth, impart them on another to amplify their power. I didn’t proselytize and he wasn’t hypnotized, blindly absorbing my message. It was Socratic and invigorating, and had that energy of kindergarten, where Charlie innocently questioned and challenged everything including the reality of the leaves we walked on, the space between us. And I enthusiastically, joyously shared with him the staggering idea that it was all an illusion, that in fact, there was no space between us, and we were recreating the appearance of the leaves underneath our feet with every step we took, in perfect cooperation with their own consciousness, of course.

I saw him, but not clearly, not at first. First, I saw an aura, a swollen, angry aura. I hadn’t seen an aura so clearly in a while. The young man, as I said, was stooped over slightly, and so, spurting spontaneously from his back, energetically, were these small fires, like volcanic eruptions. They were violent swirls of orange and yellow light, but they subsided quickly and smoldered, choked out without steady fuel. Then all around him were hazy layers of smoke, grays and browns, wafting, swirling. I could feel him locked in an obsessive thought loop of shame and disgust, anger and despair. Occasionally, it would add a sputter of fire to the aura, and his penitent trance didn’t allow any of the smoke to clear. I just watched it thicken around him as though he were in a glass oven. He sat transfixed in the chair, hands palm up in his lap, weakly clasping an imaginary object, his eyes locked onto an unforgiving abyss. I saw in his mind’s eye, a heavy pistol, a handgun.