SHADOW TRAPPERS
Chapter Three: Calamity Sam
“There’s no way to tell if a dog is sick, unless he’s done ralphin’ in plain sight.”
- Calamity Sam
Calamity Sam had it made. Sam, like me, received his disability money on the 3rd of every month! The first week of money allowed us to hang out in the forest and have fun. We would drink, start fires, take pills, and tell stories. I would tell him stories of my made-up acting days, while he would tell me stories about different animal encounters, usually involving dogs and raccoons. Carol and I would laugh at Sam's stories, and we would always have a good time.
The name, Calamity, came from something he would occasionally allude to about his past, although never directly. It is something he would talk about, not just to me but literally everyone, called the Calamity Proposition.
Basically, it was a plan about how he could really shake things up by convincing everyone that he was Jesus Christ. He was often oblivious to the offense he would create in some people. Everyone called him Calamity Sam because of the stir he would cause when he said things like this. None of us were exactly sure why Sam believed this, but something happened to him in the past.
I asked him about the Jesus thing and why he believed what he did. Usually, his reply was that it was just something he had to do.
But there was one time when Sam's reply was more cryptic and revealing.
He mentioned a past animal friend, a truck accident, and simply stated that he needed to atone; he had to make a sacrifice. In retrospect, it is clear to me that Sam had done something so horrible, at least in his mind, that he repressed the past event and tried to replace it with a pathway to redemption. In a sense, we had it all figured out, but for Sam, that potential pathway to redemption crumbled before he could reach the finish line.
I understood Sam—he blamed himself for the death of his animal friend, and that was all. Later, Carol and I would tell Sam it’s not his fault, and for a while we could literally see the guilt melt away from him. The Jesus thing would go away for a while, too. We could thank God for that, or maybe I should have thanked Carol. Carol understood Sam even better than I did.
Carol would say this about Calamity Sam:
“You know Katerina? There is a good chance that he could be right, and wouldn’t it be great if our Lord and Savior were hanging out with us, getting high with us, in the forest every night?”
It was a cool fantasy that I humored and would do so forever, even if it meant lying to myself a little.
“Hey Calamity!” I would say, “Are we in revelation yet?”
And Sam would always reply,
“Revelation!?! Revelation is old news! I am here. I know the way. I am the way. I just need y’all to follow me. She-it!”
And my reply was always,
"We're following, we're following!"
One time, Calamity Sam was in a heated debate that was normally avoided by an assortment of different types of mood elevators he would take whenever we were at the bar so he could stay cool. The heated discussion was with a man about the same age as Sam. Sam was in his forties.
It began with Sam’s comment,
“You’re right, I do know.”
Evidently, the man had remarked,
"God knows,"
to which Sam made his reply.
The man was so perturbed by Sam's comment that he finally, in an aggressive manner, posed the question:
“What do you mean, you know?”
Despite the man’s intuitive nature, he had no idea as to the can of worms he had just opened.
Sam then explained,
“I know because I am Him... I know all that we are and all that we do. I know that deep down inside you are ready to give your life over to me and follow me as your Lord and Savior.”
There was silence. Nearly everyone around us was witnessing this conversation unfold. Carol had just walked over to where I was standing to see what all the commotion was about.
“Oh no,”
Carol whispered into my ear amidst the silence.
“This is bad. Something is not right.”
I didn’t agree or disagree, but I wondered what she meant.
Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a 6-inch, 7-layer burrito came flying in the air and landed right on Sam, hitting him square in the face.
I was watching this in slow motion thanks to some mood elevators that I had also taken, and after the burrito had hit Sam, I reveled in the majestic brilliance of each layer of burrito falling perfectly off Sam’s face onto the floor. It was as if the impact of the burrito and Sam’s head disrupted the integrity of the burrito itself—in a way that each layer fell one after the other in amazing harmony down to the ground.
There was silence again. This time, everyone in the bar stopped what they were doing.
Finally, without moving a muscle, Sam began to laugh a hearty, joyous laugh. He was not angry, like the flying burrito had knocked some last-minute sense into him. Many of the bar patrons were also laughing. It was a wonderful time.
But then, out of the corner of my left eye, I spotted trouble.
Carol nudged me to look, but my eyes had already locked on them.
It was the Shadow Orbs.
Within seconds, Sam stopped laughing and seemed to be gasping for air.
He clutched at his chest. Then his arms went limp, and he collapsed.
Calamity Sam was dead.
Heart failure, they said, but I knew the truth.
The Shadow Orbs stole his heart for trying to be too much like God. It was justice for the Shadow Orbs and for God, I suppose. It was an injustice for Sam and for me and Carol since Sam was our friend.
After Sam died, a policeman found me and gave me Calamity Sam’s journal. The most intriguing entry is confusing to me, so I included it below...
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