The author is God; I'm just the writer. After Last Chance, He called the next pieces "themes," on Aug. 17, 2025. The entries here continue in journal format: all dreams are documented the morning after the night of their occurrence. Care is taken to note naps and dreams before midnight.
I'm John. Since June 2024, I've experienced nightly dreams, visions, and voices from God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. God cited literal hell as the reason to quit addictions, habits, hobbies, and hedonic pursuits. Ultimately, in March 2025, I even quit my job when God commanded it.
In May 2025, the dreams and visions began to show foods in unappealing ways. "The Classroom" chronicles the time when God had me fast in preparation for an exorcism, in Jesus' name, at an elementary school. I didn't believe it until a later dream revealed what happened. Before it was my idea, it was God's plan. This is the first theme, "The Classroom."
Last Chance continues.
I returned to substitute teaching after leaving Speedway. I'd sworn to never return, so as a compromise with myself, I worked only elementary grades. Previously, I'd subbed from 2017–2020 until COVID closed everything. There's no money or future in it, but it's never a dull day. I preferred fifth grade. They're manageable, not yet ruled by ego and pride.
Visiting my classrooms thirty years later had its novelty. Most rooms were remodeled beyond recognition. The traditional walls of windows were bricked up for enhanced security and oppression, perhaps to comply with active shooter protocols. I found my seventh-grade civics textbook with the photo of Tokyo's Ginza district, just as vivid as in '99. But I digress.
The particular classroom is a fifth-grade corner suite in a K–5 elementary school.
Here we go.
Today's split shift was a tale of two classrooms. The morning exemplified discipline administered properly. I met the outgoing teacher before her meeting to review lesson plans. She mentioned four boys were suspended for shoving pencil lead into laptop USB ports. Why? As she said, it shorts out and throws sparks. Naturally, once the USB-port gateway to juvenile delinquency fizzled, they found paperclips and wall sockets—that's why they were suspended.
I escorted the group to the gym after a peaceful morning, and on the way back, two young paraprofessionals giggled at my afternoon assignment. "You got that room," one said, in a portent of things to come. I wasn't worried.
I crossed the hall after an easy morning to the afternoon class. Trash, broken pencils, and puddles of water covered the floor. (Kids carry water bottles and thermoses.) The students milled about in transition from recess, I assumed. I greeted the teacher, a fifty-something woman who yelled at the class as we talked. As she exited, an assistant met her at the door. I faced the noisy, unruly class for the handoff. The three of us waited two minutes while the students ignored their teacher's harsh instructions.
I managed the room with some difficulty by reading aloud, but once I stopped, the circus broke out before I could move to the next lesson. I immediately removed an insubordinate student. (She refused to return to her desk.) Nobody cared. I called the office. The principal arrived with her laptop. The class fell silent. She worked at a back table for fifteen or twenty minutes before leaving.
The class reared up again. Students were out of their chairs to talk and wander. The ostracized boy—every room has one—rode a wheeled office chair back to the herd to antagonize and/or socialize. If I seated three students, the first was up before the fourth was down. They flung garbage and pencils across the room. (In another few hours it'd probably be excrement.) One boy lay carelessly on the filthy floor, another lathered his hands and wiped them on others. Two girls hid beneath a horseshoe table with their textbooks in a sad semblance of education. It continued for nearly two hours.
The only effective management tool was to corral one at their desk and invite them to admit they deserved punishment. I wrote their names on paper in front of them. It didn't control the entire class, but a few students finally showed remorse. One girl asked if there was anything she could do to get her name off the list. No. Psychological warfare.
We even had moments of self-reflection:
The teacher returned before dismissal, witnessed the chaos, and tried to rein in the class. One particularly unruly girl, the one I'd ejected earlier, had her phone out. (The office only held her for an hour.) That became the hill to die on. The teacher shouted furiously in a display of emotion at the edge of procedure and professionalism. The student simply turned her back and kept scrolling. She yelled harder, to the verge of tears. It seemed personal, as the bell was about to ring any moment, and the energy expenditure could hardly be worthwhile. No, this was about preservation of the last vestiges of classroom order: no phones. The student finally slipped the phone into her pocket without urgency. The bell rang.
I tried to smooth it over rather than leave on a sour note: "I've never seen that with kids this age." Then, in reassurance, I said, "Probably because I'm a sub. They love you."
"They don't love me." She replied without looking up and almost coldly, as a plain matter of fact. She believed it. This was the routine; the kids said so earlier. Such a relationship with children so young was unusual in any classroom. There wasn't much to be done, so I wished her well and left quietly.
I took today off.
I value my church's weekly prayer group more than Sunday service. It's a place to share blessings or troubles and to pray with others about them. That evening, it felt appropriate to recount yesterday's absurdity. They were the most poorly behaved group I'd seen after years in the district. Even teenagers aren't that bad.
So, we prayed for the teacher and her kids.
I worked across the hall again, in the class with the wall sockets. I talked about "the room" with quiet curiosity to every coworker. I wanted to understand the situation. The room was well established among the administration, I found, when I mentioned the experience to teachers' aides and office staff:
I heard these curious statements repeated by a half-dozen staff members. Something here, in that little room in the corner? Are we educational professionals actually considering the possibility of a… haunted classroom? I asked the classroom teacher, adjacent teachers, and office staff. They found the notion of the paranormal agreeable—if they hadn't introduced it first.
She wasn't wrong about the four boys. It took dirty looks, close proximity, and stern threats to survive the day without electrocution. I read Goosebumps aloud, more for my nostalgia than their amusement. Kids today don't appreciate traditional classroom rewards like books or stories.
The principal poked in for conference hour, and I couldn't help but mention the phenomenon across the hall. She explained that discipline, like calls to parents, hadn't been handled earlier in the year. Now, at the end, there were no real consequences. Classroom management is paid work, and the administration considers student performance a result of instructor ability. "Look," she said, "they're sitting now." Across the hall, I could see a normal classroom environment: students at their desks. The class was taught by a building sub rather than their teacher.
Sundays often brought extra communication, like today. There were lengthy unrelated dreams and two quick visions before waking:
I saw a tinfoil wrapper from a submarine sandwich on a rectangular oven pan as it sat on my stove. Inside were pickles and jalapeños, as if someone had flicked them off in disgust.
Another vision: my cupboard above the counter. Inside, a large blue container of Maxwell House (Dark Roast) coffee sat prominently. Yes, that is where we keep the coffee, and the dark roast is my favorite. So? (Look, I couldn't tell if it was specifically the Dark Roast from their microscopic designation on the jug, but we gotta have a little fun.)
I gathered from this information that I should avoid these foods. Coffee made sense, at least; caffeine is addictive. Some religions forbid it, despite science's health claims. Pickled condiments, though—a glitch, maybe? I was used to God removing addictions, habits, or hobbies—not foods.
So I had breakfast, coffee, and went to church. After the service, I took a nap and experienced more visions of foods and a dream about a favorite pastime: video games.
I saw ragged strips of ham or prosciutto hanging over a pipe or rack, almost reaching the floor. The strips would have been over four feet long. It felt as if I were at the bench grinder in my grandfather's wood shed—over thirty years ago.
I saw eggs in a nonstick pan identical to mine, but they cooked in reverse, getting snottier. The eggs oozed into a yellow–clear smear as the pan tilted to nearly vertical. So much for non-stick.
Carrots? It was hard to believe what I'd heard, so I asked about carrots. I had a vision:
A young boy shook his head side to side, perhaps in disgust, even. Yep, no carrots.
There was a pattern here, I guess. No ham, no eggs—what would I have for breakfast? Ah, perhaps a newly discovered and recently purchased product from the local meat section: "PORK STRIPS (unsmoked)." It looks like bacon. It's cheaper than bacon. What is it? Only one way to find out. Yes, my friend, that is how temptation and the devil come—not as bacon, but as unsuspecting, unsmoked pork strips masquerading as a new, affordable bacon lookalike. Bacony. Baconesque. Like the beefy-but-not-beef mystery meats of modern curbside cuisine.
Yet, that wasn't the craziest part of the afternoon snooze:
Nintendo's Mario 64 filled my view, perfectly recreated. The area had a bay, as there was a vast ocean, a beach, and the typical steep green mountain walls meant to keep players in bounds. In the water, there was a pillar of grass about four character positions in size that was too tall to reach while swimming. Bowser appeared and had one hit left (somehow I knew that). Mario was knocked high into the air with only a single slice of health. He landed in shallow water, regained his health, but then foolishly picked up a star and exited the stage without finishing Bowser! It never felt as if I were playing, only watching.
My camera zoomed out, and I was now in a living room with a large tube TV in an oak entertainment center. I was angry at the weak play, and I considered starting a completely new game to do it myself. The game continued on autopilot, apparently, as I looked for a controller.
It doesn't make sense, even
A field of golden-brown grains waved under afternoon sun in a blue sky. Peaceful. It couldn't possibly mean DON'T EAT BREAD, no.
I kicked off the week decaffeinated. I drank more than enough coffee and never went without; taking a day off felt reasonable. I subbed for another fifth-grade class, and by ten a.m., a brutal headache had seized me.
I'd drank coffee since age thirty. Quitting 36–48 ounces of motor oil in a single day wasn't so easy. I skipped my 24-ounce morning cup but now thought it best to ease off gradually. I went to a nearby gas station for a 12-ounce, the weak stuff from a tank. The first cup had a crack and leaked; I dumped it and made another. Sigh. It was probably a sign.
That evening, I prepared the coffee maker for tomorrow morning with a fifty-percent blend of coffee and chicory root, a decaf alternative. I didn't even make it to sleep before I heard the voice of God:
Uh-oh. That was just the beginning. The big one came at midnight, timestamped by voice memo, but first, an aside:
I saw a dictation timestamped at midnight:
I am the river of life. I will revoke your blessings because you won't walk like me. The chewing gum woman will be taken away. There is a chance dependent on the prayer group Wednesday night…
Elegant script appeared on a scroll of aged parchment as I read. Sometimes, I seemed to know the words before the letters were written, comprehension before reading. Perhaps the visual script was illustrative instead of informative. (It's not the first overlap with spontaneous knowledge, the final and rarest form of divine insight I've experienced.)
I hurried to the kitchen, opened the coffee maker, and tossed the prepared blend and filter. I opened the refrigerator and grabbed the leftover pork strips along with a jar of jalapeños. I threw everything out in an act of repentance.
Jesus refers to Himself as the living water of eternal life:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb
Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them."
The Bible uses the allusion of a "walk" as obedience to Christ's commandments:
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
…Oh, the chewing gum woman? Well, last Sunday, as I pulled out a piece of gum in boredom, I gawked at a mere pixel of a woman across the megachurch in an effort to determine if she was attractive and whether she might consider me the same. The Chewing Gum Woman—a budding romance sure to eclipse Titanic or The Notebook—but I left that church, so we'll never know.
Now, what could the prayer group on Wednesday night have to do with coffee,
jalapeños, and unsmoked bacon pork strips?
Early-morning restrictions came after the night of the dictation:
It was for real.
What? I don't believe you. Carrots are my healthy snack; they're good for me.
I saw a young boy, three or five years old, as he shook his head side to side. It came as a response to my incredulity over the carrot commandment. (Shortly after, nods and shakes from strangers became a routine communication method.)
I saw a frying pan. A spatula separated cooked eggs from snotty eggs. In the brief dream, I rejected the snotty eggs. Additionally, I watched a spatula cut into egg white to reveal a fluffy, not snotty, middle. Eggs simply had to be cooked thoroughly!
Great. Time for work. I cooked my tofu omelette into leather—better safe than snotty. Today was a third-grade class two doors down from ground zero. Usually there's more variety in a week, but I'd restricted myself to elementary, and this was the closest. The caffeine headache returned but with less intensity. I had a classroom aide to help with the third graders. She knew all about the room at the end of the hall, and she had a story to share.
During winter, she said, there were groups of students at recess who'd made a game of simple bullying. They moved across the playground in mobs, knocking over snowmen, stealing balls, and disrupting others' games. Saboteurs. "…and it's all kids from that classroom," the assistant told me. The weirdness continued.
I came home and fell asleep with the dog at five:
Oddly, it took several repetitions of the first phrase before the second part clicked into place.
Well, that's a relief, I guess.
The Wednesday night prayer group arrived, the one foretold Sunday night. The pastor felt called to pray for me, he said, as he approached. Several others gathered to lay hands in prayer. We don't gather around one every week, but it happens often enough, especially for medical needs.
If you don't believe in laying hands or even the power of group prayer, well, don't knock it until you've tried it. Whether or not it's God's will to miraculously heal someone of an ailment, the emotional significance and therapeutic power are visible upon the subjects. When I first experienced laying hands, I took most things of a spiritual nature with an open mind, given my circumstances. Jesus heals, but laying hands in prayer is an act of faith, and God responds to faith as small as a mustard seed (Matthew 17:20).
One member expressed interest in cleansing the room with prayer in person. I was naturally apprehensive about such displays in the workplace, and guests aren't easily allowed entry. Yet, the idea wasn't so far-fetched. All of our community schools have at least one prayer walker, allegedly.
The topic of "prayer walkers" had come up before, since I talked regularly about our schools. Community schools are, perhaps unsurprisingly, public buildings; anyone associated and permitted may enter after school hours. Our community has dedicated volunteers who walk the halls and pray each Friday in every school building. Another woman, a church elder, happened to be the prayer walker for another school. It meant she already had visitor clearance.
Perhaps not coincidentally, tomorrow's work assignment was across the hall (again) from the classroom. We exchanged numbers. Of course, I'd still need approval from the teacher.
That's right, back to the fall of 2018, the first and only other time I've ever set foot in that room. I know what you're thinking: "But John, how could you possibly know something like that?" I have detailed files. I mean, I have an email for every assignment, and I remember the teacher's name.
I recalled a memory from my earlier substitute years, before COVID closed the schools. I've been here before. That year, the room held fourth-graders and had large tables instead of individual desks. I remember because the day was unexpectedly out of control.
I witnessed previously unimaginable chaos. The trauma moment came when I saw children lying on the sink's counter and sitting on their tables. I felt like a maypole. How had we gotten here, a circus? Still, it didn't compare to the state of total anarchy with the fifth graders.
The dreams were relentless.
Early Morning:
It's a warning about the next commandment: no bread. Why isn't it in all caps? That's how I wrote it at the time. Maybe it was faint, forgotten, or inexact in the first place. Some things are extremely loud and clear. Others are so quiet, I miss them completely and wonder, what was the point?
Someone in jeans sat on a curb. The camera was first-person but the angle was strange, as if they were too tall. I saw ants on bread in a bowl next to them, to their right.
It reminded me exactly of the bread and fancy olive oil my mother shared the previous day. Oh! That field waving grain did mean "don't eat bread."
"Did it happen," I asked, wondering if the contingency at the prayer group had worked. The response came instantly. (5:18 AM)
I fell asleep as I waited.
I awoke to hear it. Before I read the Old Testament, I simply associated Moses with unleavened bread. I used AI to parse Exodus and find the verses in chapter 13.
No more bread/toast with breakfast omelettes, lunch sandwiches, or dinner salads. Awesome. Off to work.
I arrived and headed to the haunted room. The teacher shuffled papers at her desk. I started broadly, then remarked about her "challenge" students. I laughed offhandedly about the staff comments—a haunted classroom. Unamused, she solemnly added her own speculation: she, too, wondered if there was something about the room.
I leaned into the pitch: strange dreams led me to church; I've come to believe in the power of prayer; I arrived here despite a personal preference for atheism. Then, I heaved the big one: "A prayer walker from my church would like to bless this room."
She identified as non-religious and laughed: "You think my room needs an exorcism?" Her word, not mine. She apologized with a hint of embarrassment. "I shouldn't laugh, that's your religion. My father was Catholic. He believed." Maybe she couldn't double down on her disbelief after the guilty comment, or perhaps just to make peace, she obliged to the blessing after school today. We laughed together about "getting out the snakes and serpents." She was full of jokes.
The bell rang and the building emptied. I walked to the office to meet the church elder as she checked in electronically. We entered the room at the back corner of the building. I felt uncomfortable despite my company. The teacher shuffled books and papers busily from behind a barrier of butted-up desks. I introduced us with secret apprehension and embarrassment as I asked for her blessing to get started. "You guys go ahead and do your thing," she said, with at least a hint of annoyance.
The church elder began to pace and pray throughout the room. I wiped blessed oil on each desk, even the teacher's, glad for a busy and silent role. It took only a few minutes. The teacher thanked us for our prayers in Jesus' name. As we left, we decided to prayer walk the rest of the school. The elder shared a past experience about a locker she couldn't bring herself to walk past, so she knew she had to touch the locker and pray for its student. The principal bade us farewell and thanked us with a sincerity that showed her faith.
I didn't realize it at the time. I considered my own anxiety from bring-your-religion-to-work day. No, that wasn't it. Later, I recognized the overwhelming supernatural emotion of being absolutely unwanted, when the elder and I entered the room. What a day. I went to bed.
Before I fell asleep, I saw a gas station coffee handed to me. Specifically, I saw the ground before me, and someone's hand came into view with a cup not unlike the coffee I bought to abate the caffeine migraine.
Coffee was granted back. I was thrilled with the gift of coffee, of course, and looked forward to a rise and grind. I probably should've expected crazy dreams tonight, but what went on didn't seem like a big deal. Nothing happened.
Backstory. They call those awnings over the pumps at the gas stations "canopies." I worked at Speedway from June '24 to March '25. God speaks to us in our own language.
I dreamed of bounding in low gravity through a tower of stacked gas station canopies on a central column. There was nothing else, just white canopies and blue sky. There were also small white platforms outside the canopies at different heights. I leapt from the initial canopy to the side platforms, used them like steps, and reached the next higher canopy at its back (narrow) side.
It's a life-sized platforming game, basically. The step-size mini-canopies on one side allow ascents to reach the higher canopy.
The second canopy was different: two separate rectangles bolted on each side of the column created a narrow gap. There were people-shaped outlines on this level (lol) that moved in stiff superposition, floating and bouncing through walls and floors. I tried to jump the small gap between the split canopies and bounced backward off one as it passed before me. I jumped again, successfully. The second panel had an enclosed stairwell wrapped around the central support. Approximately six wide (6') steps led up to a square landing and turned left.
The people-things are two-dimensional transparencies outlined thickly in red or blue, as if they were drawn in MS (Spray) Paint or bathroom signage. I took the stairs, but mid-step, a red outline bounced me back. Enraged, I threw my hands back and clapped them together around the head of the figure like an annoying insect. Eyes shut in gritted fury, I felt dry, spongy material collapse and explode through my fingers.
I awoke sickened by the barbaric rage and savagery. I slept. Hours passed.
The dream returned. I dangled from the long side of a canopy, its worn edge exposed a sandwich of plastic and Styrofoam in thin layers. It crushed under my grip vividly. A thin white rod rose from the inner edge, a handhold to get leverage. I grabbed the post, swung my left leg onto the ledge, and climbed up as the dream ended. Next level. (4:05 AM)
It's a dream of ascension challenged by spectral humanoids: evil spirits. In a bout of annoyance, I destroyed a "red" one in the vein of Mortal Kombat II's strongman, Jax. God has portrayed religious people in my dreams as strong men and women on 4 separate instances. God would go on to show me two more of Jax's fatalities, from MK2 and MK3, upon spiritual enemies.
God has used three of Mortal Kombat's Jax's fatalities in dreams of successful spiritual warfare. Jax is the game's strongman/grappler. It's the destruction of evil by the power in the name of Jesus Christ, a fatality. I can't discount it as just another dream, the brain's rehashing of prior days' events. (Such "regular" dreams have become uncommon.)
I passed up a final half-day at ground zero for most of two weeks until it came down to whether I would work at all that day. I returned for the morning shift. Things were markedly different from the standing zoo weeks ago. Everyone remained seated. I sent multiple students to the hall and made threats of discipline to others. Yet we had school that day; we learned a lesson.
It's an undeniable pattern of impossible odds. If I were able to willfully dream up—or make up—a contiguous soap opera, it would be about something more exciting than coffee, condiments, and architectural fragments of my past workplaces.
The story is true without embellishment, exaggeration, or altruistic gaslighting. The only murky detail is when exactly the teacher introduced her suspicion of the paranormal as an explanation for the unusual misbehavior. Was it the day of the first encounter, a visit before school, or the morning of the prayer? Each shift in the period is documented, all dates are accurate, the last Metroid is in captivity, the galaxy is at peace.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…