CHAPTER TWO
Divine Providence
I was done.
Stumbling with fatigue I caught myself up against a tree. I had escaped, but I wasn’t going to make it any further. Closing my eyes, I whispered out brokenly, “Please God. Please I…… I….”
I shook my head and opened my eyes as I tried to express how I wanted to live, but had nothing more to give. A bright color out of place in the snowy forest caught my eyes.
It was a truck! Not an army truck, but a regular, extended cab truck. It was a bright blue, but it was covered with leaf debris and a fallen branch lay over the back bed of the truck denting in both side panels. It looked like someone had just left it there and it had sat out in the elements for a long time.
Cautiously I approached the truck. Peering into the bed of the truck I saw that it was filled about halfway with split wood that had weathered on the inner faces. This truck had been here since the EMP attack that had fried all the computer modules on modern vehicles.
I went to the driver door and opened the latch. It moved and with a tug the door came open. The interior of the truck looked like it had never seen a hard day’s use ever. I opened the back door and saw several items laying on the seat. One of them was a wool blanket.
I looked around, but saw nothing as the falling snow covered everything with an ever-increasing layer of white powder. Looking heavenward, I felt tears come to my eyes. Words failed me and truly it didn’t seem that they were needed.
I crawled up into the backseat and shut the door. Even though there was no heat, I felt warmer. The interior of the truck still smelled new. It was a good smell. It had been a long time since I had smelled something good.
I wrapped the wool blanket around me and began looking into what else the truck had in it. My hand came out of a box on the floor holding an energy bar. I stared at it in my hand for a long moment and then with as much reserve as I could muster, I opened the wrapper and had my first bite of real food in two and a half years.
Tears flowed down my face as the flavor of the bar exploded in my mouth and reminded me of how life had once been when a bar like this would have been nothing but a snack to me, but now served as the finest of all dinners. Truly the experience of life was a matter of perspectives.
I ate the bar and though I wanted to eat more I made myself wait. I continued looking and found a pair of hiking shoes, a pair of blue jeans, several T-shirts and a heavy over-shirt. I found more food bars and two bottles of water. I swigged down one bottle of water on the spot and felt the betterment of it almost immediately.
I had everything I needed within this truck. The only thing that felt out of place was me or better put the smell of me. The clothes would be baggy on me but they would work and I made the decision with sudden energy that not only was I escaping from my captors this day, but also from my smell.
I opened the door of the truck and got down. The snow had let up and sudden afternoon sunshine lit up the glenn I was in. The sight of the sun sparkling through the snow was beautiful to behold and for the first time in a long time I took in the wonder of creation.
The strength of the sun’s rays against my cheek emboldened me and I started stripping off everything I had on. I let the soiled and tattered garments fall to the snow and taking a step I got on top of them and leaned down and undid the binding cloth that was all that held my shoes together. I felt worn out all over again from just the act of undressing.
Finally, my feet were free and I threw the repulsive worn out shoes far from me. Straightening I stood up and breathed in. It was an odd moment as I hadn’t seen myself unclothed in almost 2 years.
I looked nothing like I used to. I actually looked good!
Gazing down past my surprisingly still full breasts I beheld in wonder the lack of extra weight hanging on my hips. Wonderingly my hands coasted down my lean sides to flare out over my wide hips.
I let my hands coast around behind me and with surprise, I felt at how well formed my rear felt. It no longer jutted out beyond me as it once had, and while it wasn’t small it was less than half the size it had once been.
Leaning forward at the waist I gazed back at myself and with shock beheld the fact that I actually had a gap between my thighs now. My thighs no longer touched and yet they were still quite full looking!
In no way other than my sunken in cheeks and visibly outlined rib cage did I look like I’d been cooped up in a concentration camp for over two years. Gradually my brain realized upon what my eyes were seeing and my hands were feeling. I was beautiful!
Tears came down my cheek and I shook my head. Why did being beautiful even matter?
Somehow though it did. I looked now like I’d always wanted to. I looked like my older sister that my father had always taken such pride in.
I raised my hands and cupped my full breasts. In fact, I looked better than she had. For what purpose had I been preserved into such a state? Truly, looking down upon myself, it was as if I stared at the body of someone else and not my own.
Looking up I asked, “Why God? Why?”
“Why not? You were made to be beautiful and truly you have always been. The beauty you now see is not what I’ve seen from the beginning. You are a faithful soul and you have remained constant in relationship with Me through great adversity. It is out of that relationship with Me that your beauty flows and truly it is nothing for me to make the outer form of you to reflect only in partial form the beauty that I see within you. Today may be the first time you think of yourself as beautiful, but from the day I formed you in your mother’s womb, I have never thought any different of you. Now wash the outside, even as you are a possessor of a clean spirit within made so by the blood of My Son sacrificed for you and by which you have truly been set free and now there is nothing impossible for you to achieve.”
Shaking I reached down and grabbed a handful of soft wet snow and began to scrub away the grime. It was the most invigorating bath that I’d ever had. By the time I was done I was completely chilled to the bone and my teeth were chattering, but it was worth it. I was clean!
Shakily I pulled myself up into the backseat of the truck and feeling too tired to even dress I wrapped myself in the blanket and lay down across the seat. Warmth and contentedness spread through me and for the first time in a long time I felt myself smile. It felt good.
My eyes opened and I pondered on something. Sleepily I spoke, “Nothing is impossible for me?” I felt an assurance from all I knew about the Bible to know that was the truth.
“God, I fully submit myself to Your plan. It is clear to me now that You have a plan. I may be able to do anything with Jesus’s help, but I’d rather You do what You want with me. Even when I don’t understand it.”
My eyes closed and I was soon lost to the world as vivid dreamery descended upon me. Somehow I knew I was dreaming, but I just let the thoughts and impulses flow, trusting in God to protect me. There were nightmarish moments and then peaceful moments and then something else. The feeling of being touched.
In startlement I woke up. Everything was quietly, still in the truck and it was completely dark outside. Nothing had touched me, but I had felt it in my dream as if it were real.
My heart beating heavily I lay back down. Closing my eyes, I felt myself pulled back down as if drugged and the dream came back in full force. The touch I had felt was a man’s. I couldn’t see him.
He was always out of my sight like an invisible phantom and it would have been nightmarish if it weren’t for the fact that his touch felt good. Very good!
In shock I looked down to see my breasts held by this phantom man. I tried to turn and look at who held me so intimately, but he was always gone and yet his hands remained on me and moved across my flesh in a way as had never been done before.
The presence of the unseen lover was strong, even as he mastered me in some deep way that caused me to feel like endlessly surrendering to as if it was something I had always longed for and I finally found. Whatever he wanted I would do. Anything!
In shock I felt him in me moving and I exploded with orgasm. Crying out I reared up on the truck seat and my eyes looked for the man who’d just been aggressively owning me in a deeply sensual fashion that I had never actually experienced in the flesh as I was still very much a virgin at 22 years of age.
I flung the blanket from off me and I stared down at the apex of my thighs in shock. It had been so real. My whole body still shook with the vibrations of the orgasm that I’d had while still in my sleep.
Looking around in a daze, I blinked as I took in the bright sunlight shining through the dirty windows of the truck. It was morning, but it was lost on me as all I could do was reflect on how real the dream had been.
Reaching for a clean rag on the floor I wiped the copious amount of fluid that had come out of me and was bathed across my inner thighs. It was almost as if I’d peed myself only it wasn’t pee.
Shakily I brushed some of my hair out of my face. For a moment my eyes closed and when they did the imagery of the dream assailed me with what it had been like before I had come awake. My eyes shot open again as I looked for the man, but I was alone. Whatever did this mean?
“God…… I…… What’s this about? You know everything…… Do I need to worry about this?”
“No.”
I lay back down upon the seat, wishfully hoping for a much more detailed answer than that.
“Embrace My plans for your life and it will go well for you Tamara.”
I stared wide-eyed at the ceiling for a long moment. All I had seen of the man had been his hands. They had been strong and capable and yet I remembered receiving no pain from them. They had been burnt brown by the sun, swallowing as, I searched through the dream for remembered imagery I realized that they had been the hands of a white man. There was no doubt in my mind that God was telling me something. A great deal really.
I bit my lip from questioning Him on why as I remembered my own words of surrendering my future from the night before for God to do with me as He wished to over any disposition of my own will. He’d said as much to me just now.
How could I doubt what He meant when it had been made so clear? What would my mother say?
What did it even matter, if what God wanted for me was something different, besides it was highly unlikely that my mother was even still alive, let alone any of my family. The good Christian lady that she had been she had still looked down on anybody whose skin wasn’t as black as her own. It had been one thing to tolerate the presence of a white person at church or around town, but the concept of her daughter being with a man of such color would’ve awakened every last nerve in her.
I had always found her prejudice distasteful, especially when it had come to who my friends could be and could not be. I’d had my share of white friends in school despite her objections and now as the future seemingly was already planned out before me it would appear that God’s Word was true in that He was not a respecter of persons for surely He was discarding many a prayer said by my mother in regards to me and any future candidate for husband.
My father had been more ambivalent about matters of race, but he wouldn’t have liked what God seemed to have planned either. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it either, when it came to that, but in the end it didn’t matter.
I was going to honor God’s wishes to the fullest and that was that. I sat up on the seat and awakened need for food assailed me almost instantly. Fortunately, I had food and I made a point of thanking God for it before I gobbled down three of the bars and drank the last bottle of water.