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Candles

  By Robert E Vonne

  Copyright © 2014 by Robert E Vonne

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  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Table of Contents

  Disclaimer

  The Exalted Mortals

  Strange Jill

  Also by Robert E Vonne

  Any resemblance between the characters herein and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The Exalted Mortals

  Something began to go wrong with Lester's mind in puberty. Entering that age without having had much guidance from others, save for the good examples of his parents, he was a normal child emotionally, and precocious in his explorations of the world around him. He wanted to be an artist when he would someday grow up, and his mechanical skills in drawing and painting were prodigious. Unknown to him or anyone around him, there were mortifying and scarring times ahead for him.

  Just when he should have been making his first tentative appearances in the world of adults at the age of twelve, Lester's genome stepped in and altered the functioning of his brain in such a way that he lost self-awareness; he treated fantasy as being as important as reality; he expressed delusional ideas about his life and the world around him; and he developed a remarkable paranoia. Lester's young life had become the painful world of the adolescent schizophrenic.

  The first testimony to how hardy he was in his constitution came in the non-event of his suicide. Despite the ridicule and bullying of many of his peers throughout middle school and high school, Lester never gave in to the almost overwhelming desire to end his life. His life was as lonely as any creature, human or animal, could endure; he suffered like a crucifixion figure, including having been mercilessly beaten in a park one night by kids who knew of the "weirdo" and stumbled upon him as he walked home from the mall. His punishments for being ill, different, and an outsider were unending and were the sort of cruelty that one might think would break a person's spirit for life.

  His will to live was almost snuffed out in those early years, and after high school he stumbled through a series of jobs where he would again, as in school, be ostracized, bullied and tormented. As an only child of older parents who could not endure the contemplation of their son's suffering and therefore tried to turn away from him, Lester had no one to turn to for comfort and companionship.

  His first psychotic break had been at the age of twelve and carried on for two years, and had gone undiagnosed. His next breakdown would be at the age of twenty-four, following a harrowing year of living with an older women who had preyed on his vulnerability; she abused and manipulated the helpless young man, took him for all the money he had in the bank, and drove him to work two jobs so that she could stay at home in their apartment and live the life of Riley. She then threw him out onto the street one day after he lost one of his jobs; the eviction and firing happened when the stress of the ill woman's abuse had begun to catapult him into his second mental meltdown.

  This second time when he had become extremely paranoid and delusional would not go undiagnosed. His parents had had enough of watching their adult child fail to cope and show no signs of being able to learn the necessary skills to make it through life. Their denial evaporated when they imagined Lester's life as a loner in the world without parents. They were in poor health, and wanted Lester to be taken care of before they were gone. They did what any loving parents would do: They insisted that Lester see a doctor and tell him all his problems, and they assured him that he would not be locked up for life {many young ill people believe that lifetime institutionalization is the norm for ill people - the opposite is true.}

  Nobody can imagine the pain that the ill experience in their lives, save for other people who have suffered with severe disabilities. The sad truth is that some are broken in spirit by their years of agony and the plethora of emotional traumas that they must endure; these individuals live hole-in-the-wall existences.

  Lester had a secret ally in his struggle to recover from twelve years of untreated mental illness: It was the philanthropy that lay in his heart and had never been completely squelched by his torment. His self-esteem was a non-existent; his confidence was as weak as a person's could be; he had no friends, except for his parents; he had no faith that his life could turn out well or that he would find for himself his share of happiness and contentment. Even after the correct combination of medications had been found by he and his doctor, Lester still had an air about him that he could be abused, and on occasion a social bully would try to victimize him.

  What those formative years did to Lester was to teach him the false idea that he had no rights in life: No right to be treated with courtesy and respect; no right to advance his interests in constructive ways; no right to be heard; in short, he had been made to feel that he had no right to live.

  He was acutely aware of the stigmas surrounding the mentally ill and psychiatric patients. When at first he told people of his diagnosis, he was often treated by those people as though he was imagining his problems, or that he simply had poor character and a weak mind. Being diagnosed and treated with medications and therapy did not turn out to be all that was needed for Lester to embark on a fruitful journey in life.

  The picture began to form in Lester's mind of what an ideal life would be like for him: He could be an artist, perhaps a notorious or celebrated one; he could make the object of his work the plights of the homeless, the lonely, and the ill that seem to be everywhere; and, he could fulfil his spiritual longings by making the Human Spirit the inspiration for his work. "There's got to be something in this life for me." He vowed that he would work and search until he found that meaningful something.

  At first, he dazzled himself with a kind of surreal beauty in his paintings that was injected by him unintentionally; later, he would dismiss these early works as simply formative of his later style. There was no doubt in people's minds - the few people to whom he showed his artworks - that Lester was an original, if not a creative genius.

  He considered trying to show his paintings to the public in a desperate search for a career - the problem was that his themes of depicting the spirits of the downtrodden weren't what the art-purchasing wanted to see, for the most part. That's when Anne came into his life.

  Anne coordinated a program for people suffering from a mental illness at one of the local hospitals. The purpose of the workshops was to help the members identify and pursue their goals in life; it was known as POMPOM - Pursuit Of Meaning by People Overcoming Mental issues. The image of the pom-poms was to emphasize that the members of the group really cheered each other on in their endeavours.

  Some people who attended had no idea what their talents and desires might be; others, like Lester, knew what they wanted - they just needed their morale boosted by the company of fellow seekers.

  It was after the first meeting that Lester attended when Anne asked if she could speak to him privately, explaining that she liked to get to know each member on a personal basis so as to better understand what they might need from the group. She was a heavy-set person, about ten years older than Lester, and had a commanding yet gentle presence when she focused her attention on an audience. Lester explained in brief that he was really looking for inspiration from the other people in POMPOM - he didn't really see a niche for his kind of art. That's when Anne made a simple suggestion - "Why don't you show your work to the group at our next meeting {in two weeks}?"

  At first, Lester was puzzled by how this could be helpful, then with sudden insight, it occurred to him that he could make the subjects of his art the mentally ill helping others, as though there might be a secret fraternity of guardian angels and saintly figures at work in the world. "There
such a beauty to how much generosity there is out there, and in my experience, the mentally ill are among the most noble of all people - they just need avenues to channel their philanthropy," he told Anne. She replied that Lester "got it" about the paradox of being a helpful person in this world whose help is not wanted by some others - his art could help break down the perceptions that mentally ill people are typically deranged, dangerous, deceitful and unreliable - that their work is tainted by insanity.

  Lester's first plan was to paint images of the people at POMPOM - their exact features altered to protect their privacy - in all kinds of situations where they might be found helping others. The first piece he produced was a rendering of Anne speaking to the group at a POMPOM meeting, everyone's attention riveted on her; he titled it The Teacher. The group members loved it, and it sparked a discussion about