He first visited me during my freshman year in seminary. Some would no doubt say I conjured him up through black magic or sorcery. I was well known on campus as a freethinker and accusations were flying back in those days of devil worship and witchcraft. An urban legend popular at the school was that two students had been expelled the year before for being caught with a goat's head and occult books. Of course, no matter how many semesters the story was told to new freshmen it was always "just last year" and no one could remember the deviant students' names. I wonder what they would've made of my experience?

It was December in the Ozark Mountains and extremely cold. I had made it through my first semester and stayed at the school for Christmas break when everyone else went home or visiting with someone. One night at about three in the morning I woke up in a sweating profusely. I got out of bed and checked the thermostat; it read over a hundred degrees.

Knowing that the furnace had stuck open again, it was a reoccurring problem in my aging apartment building, I went down into the boiler room to fix the problem. The boiler flames were red hot and twice as high as normal.

He waited for me. The man stood at least seven feet tall, had dark red hair the color of blood, a thick beard with crumbs matted around the mouth, and long flowing robes sewn together from different animal furs. In his left hand he clutched a severed human head by the hair and in his right he held a rusty iron chain on which a feral looking chimpanzee in black priest's robes and white collar leapt up and down.

"Spahkoynoy nochee." He spoke in a voice that commanded fear and attention. I took two steps back too afraid to turn and run.

"Vi guhvahreetye puh-rooskee?" He leaned towards me and the firelight of the boiler sparkled in his dark, grim eyes. They seemed to change from blue to green as he spoke. "Pah-ahngleeyskee? Do you have vodka?"

"I...I..."

"Guhvaryu! Speak!" He bellowed out and the chimpanzee jumped in terror. "I...I'm a Bible student. I don't have any alcohol."

"Hmmmp." He leaned even closer and looked me over. He was so enormous that he almost covered the space between us just by hunching in my direction. "Do you know who I am?" His speech softened, but an edge still existed in his accent.

"Russian?"

"Da."He moved away from the furnace and its fire fell off the further from it he walked. "I will visit again when you have vodka." He held up his massive left arm and extended the mangled head at me. The eyes rolled open in the disembodied orb and its jaws began to move. It whispered, "where sin abounds grace doth more abound."

Until this day I've told no one, not even my wife, of this initial encounter with the Russian. With-in a few months I had convinced myself that it never happened. And I told myself that it was an unrelated coincidence that by year's end I had dropped out of seminary to pick up my new dedication: getting drunk every day. Yes, off of vodka.

The second visitation came in the spring of the following year. I had run off to Texas, dragging my wife and young son with me. We lived in a run down loft apartment in the outskirts of Houston. My job paid minimum wage and my drinking held steady at a maximum rage.

I knew when he was to come. I felt him from afar off, like he had walked all the way from Russia and was now on my street. The vodka waited for him, just as he had predicted.I fell asleep in the living room with a .38 clutched in my hand and my family hiding in the bedroom. It had become a common occurrence.

When I woke up he sat on the couch staring at me. Instinctively, I snatched up the revolver and pointed it at him.

"It would take more than that, tovorich." He parted his robe across his barrel chest to reveal several knife scars and a gunshot wound that was purple and puckered like a third nipple.

I lowered the pistol. "What do you want from me?"

"They call me a mystic? Da. Me, a mystic. I ruled all of mother Russia by mere suggestive smiles and the best Western historians can come up with is 'mystic'?" He stood up and looked menacingly huge in my small, low ceiling apartment.

He produced the human head from somewhere in his robes and tossed it at me. I deflected it and the head made a sickening sound like a rotten melon falling off a pick-up truck onto the highway when it hit the wall.

"That was the Apostle Paul. You should show proper respect."

"You shouldn't throw heads at people!"

"Da." He laughed. "I'll take vodka now. With milk. In a glass."

I made him the drink. I offered ice but he refused.

"What did the good Apostle teach you?"

I hesitated. "The more I sin the more I have to be forgiven."

"Da." He nodded approvingly. He gulped the vodka down and milk stained his thick mustache. "Expound."

" Paul taught that when we sin we are forgiven. The more we sin the more God is obligated to forgive us. It is a loophole in Christian theology. Once I looked it up in Romans and really understood the implications I left Bible school...and God...behind."

"Excellent." He picked up the bottle and drank its entirety. Then he swallowed half the gallon of milk spilling it all over his robes and bare chest.

"What else will you teach me?" I asked with mixed feelings of fright and anticipation.

"I will return when you have climbed out of your stupor and are ready to begin your calling." He yanked on the iron chain in his right hand and the chimpanzee scurried across the living room, carefully picked up the head of the Apostle Paul, and brought it to the Russian. The monkey grinned at me wickedly as the Russian opened the front door.

Two years later, just a few short months ago, my tormenting mentor returned. I was working at a slaughterhouse in North Carolina as a night watchman. As part of my duties I had to check the temperatures in the hanging coolers when the plant was shut down. On a hot summer night he appeared to me from between two rows of gutted pigs.

"Reminds me of St. Petersburg the winter of my death." He laughed as he looked around at the slaughtered hogs. "Are you ready, tovarich?"

"I am." And I was. I had not drunk since the night of his last visit. I had begun to study philosophy, Eastern religions, metaphysics, parapsychology, and biology. I waited for him to give me direction.

"Behind the last row of swine you will find two tables." His chimpanzee played with one of the hog carcasses causing entrails and blood to splatter the concrete floor. The Russian yanked on its chain and the monkey scampered back behind its master's robes.

"What's on the tables?" "You will see. Remember, once you choose you cannot turn back." He turned to leave. "Dah sveedahnyah."

"Wait." I demanded.

"Your courage grows with our every encounter." He stopped and looked at me.

"And my knowledge, Rasputin."

"Ah...the boy is learning. They were right to choose you. Don't let them down, boy. They can be hard schoolmasters."

"Who can, Rasputin?"

"Call me Grigori. When I was your age I traveled to Mount Athos. It was to be my great pilgrimage to the seat of my orthodox Christianity. What I found was dirt, vermin, and moral filth. They found me in the woods cursing religion for the pack of lies it is." He took a deep breath, "the tables await!"

After a long moment of doubt I ventured into the dark and past the last row of pigs. Just as he had said, two tables awaited me. On one table thousands of books were stacked to ceiling of the cooler. On the table lay one solitary volume. I read the cover out loud, "Authorized King James Version, 1611."

I stepped to the other table to find every title to every book ever written. I had a momentary lapse in reason and considered turning back to the other table and its one book. Then I came to my senses and pulled one of the books from the stack. Its author was Jean-Paul Sartre. I flipped through the book and read a random passage, "no man chooses evil, for when he chooses evil it becomes good to him."

The cement floor to the cooler burned away like a match set to the center of a piece of paper. The tables floated, suspended above a fiery pit, as if the floor was replaced with an invisible sheet of glass.

I looked down into the pit and saw several figures in the darkness. The first figure stepped into my view. He smiled at me and I could see his rotten, discolored teeth. His goatee chin was fashioned in such a way that I could tell he was a Frenchman. (The French can be picked out of any crowd; they have an aire about them.) He wore a pair of tan slacks and a black turtleneck with a red sweater. He removed a cigarette from the sweater's pocket and nonchalantly held it up to one up the flames licking their way upward.

"No man chooses evil." He took a drag of the cigarette, coughed violently, then took another toke. He smiled with his black teeth in an obscene, effeminate way. I could smell his cancerous breath even over the brimstone escaping from the pit.

"Excuse him." A timid, bald man in a long brown robe edged the Frenchman out of the way. "Jean-Paul can be a trite dramatic. He never gave the cloth a try like we did." The man made motions like he was dusting of his robes. "I am Augustine. The fools made me a Saint, can you believe that?" He clasped his hands behind his back and paced in circles.

"I'm terrified." I called down to him.

"Don't be!" The Frenchman shouted from the darkness. "You're one of us now!"

"You had your turn, Sartre." Augustine pushed the Frenchman back into the recesses of the pit.

"What is going on?" I wanted to run, but my feet were frozen in place by fear.

"When I was young," Augustine smiled, "about your age, I had to walk half a mile to the church. I was an altar boy...and a favorite of the Abby." He smiled nervously and stretched his back. "Where was I? Oh, yes. Every day as I walked to the church I passed a small vineyard where pears were also grown. The husbandman of the vineyard was a poor serf who was dependent on the sale of every pear to purchase bread for his small children. Even though I knew this, everyday I would steal a pear from him."

"You were hungry?"

He looked at me with tears in his eyes. "No. And I do not even like pears." He looked away into the darkness. The flames shined off his bald, sweating head. "Everyday I stole one pear and everyday I threw it away."

Suddenly, the pigs began to squeal and kick around trying to free themselves from the large metal hooks that protruded from their bellies. I spun around looking at them and bumped into the table.

The books fell. Hundreds of books dropped to the ground, which had (gratefully) reverted to cement.

The screams of the pigs reached a fevered pitch until someone shouted, "enough!"

I blinked my eyes and then the pigs where as before. "Stand up, tovarich."

I looked up to see Rasputin towering over me. "I said they could be harsh schoolmasters."

"What the hell is going on?!"

"Pick up the books. I will explain."

As I stacked the books back on the table he explained it all. God is dead or otherwise distracted. The vengeful, cranky despot of the Old Testament has moved on to other pursuits. In his absence the angels have set up shop. But the angels are as mean and bitter as the old people that fill up church pews are. They seek to control humans and force them to bow down to them. They take great pleasure in blind faith and inquisitions.

Religion feeds them. They grow stronger on the prayers of humans. When they gain enough power there will be a second war in heaven and the angels will make themselves gods and enslave humanity even further than it already is. Such is the way God came to power eons ago.

The few who know the truth are called to draw their fellow humans from away from religion with reason and common sense. The war is waged in the hearts and minds of the unaware.

Every generation someone is chosen to defend the free will of man against jealous cowardly would be gods. I have since accepted my responsibility and learn everyday from my teachers: Aristotle, Buddha, de Sade, Darwin, Jefferson, Marx, Freud, Camus, Cobain and many others. All in anticipation of the day I am to write my book. Through books gods are defeated and heavens brought down. There is no greater weapon in the entire universe. Why do you think God chose to reveal himself through a book?