Lemme tell you a story about our family in Plague Time. Wait! It’s not a sad story and you won’t get depressed. It’s not that kind of story. You can look at the news for that kind of story. I hear everybody is way too depressed these days and the last thing you need is another story about folks dying. So, I promise you won’t get depressed reading our story. Promise. And we have something in our Plague Time story you just don’t hear about in other stories. Our story has a demon.

I write this on December 18th, 2023. I have had almost a year of uninterrupted solitude (heh, heh) to go over the events of November last year. And since I am on a strict time limit, I’m gonna get it to you straight and unvarnished as fast as possible. I have the court filings right next to me- thank you to Kim Wilde of the Southern Poverty Law Center. I also have access to the internet. Well, sort of. I can post this but can't access anything else. It's not really the internet, I suppose, more of a telegraph with no way to receive. I'm sending it out and hope you are listening.

When you read this, try to remember November 2021. That way, you can check my math, see if what I’m telling you is the … I was going to say “truth” but here’s the problem with that word: I got a truth that I know. And my wife knows, though she is not talking about it. We have our truth. The truth we lived. Problem is: It’s not the truth you heard. And the truth you heard is verifiable fact while our truth is, well, it’s just the truth of what happened. I am already down the rabbit hole and I didn’t want to go there this early… lemme get to the story and we can deal with the truth later. You can deal with it, I mean; I know what happened. Lemme give you a little background on the players in our drama first.

My name is Curt Joiner. It says Curtis on my birth certificate but unless you are my mother, you don’t call me Curtis. You call me Curt. I’m a professor. Well, I was a professor. I taught Acting and Audition Technique at a very prestigious University in Pittsburgh. Not going to name it because it’s a good school and has taken enough heat after my case. Suffice to say you would know the name if I said it. I taught some juniors but mainly seniors. And the seniors actually came to my classes. If you know anything about teaching, you know that is saying something. All to say, I was a very good teacher. It’s something I’m very proud of and despite my personal failings you have to know, from the start, that I was good because then you know I lost something that was valuable. I am not going to be too grand and say the “community of artists” lost something but it was a loss. (God, I wish I was teaching now.)

I lived in Shadyside, Pittsburgh, but am from The Hill. If you don’t know anything about Pittsburgh, that is like saying you live on the upper east side of Manhattan, but are from a still black part of Brooklyn. Or you live in Brentwood, but grew up in Compton. I probably need to work on my city analogies but you get the drift. I grew up poor… well, lower middle class would be more accurate, and now live and work with some upper class folks. More importantly for this story: I grew up with predominantly black folks and now live with predominantly white folks. It’s not really important for me, about me, I should say. It’s important because I was convicted of killing white folks in my current neighborhood. But the truth is (there’s that word again, hard to dodge it I guess) I was actually back in the hood of my youth at the time, as black folks were being killed. And not by me. Race is important in who got killed and why. Speaking of, I’m black. You probably knew that already. Maybe cause’ you saw my trial on YouTube or you might just know my face; I was the black terrorist icon for a minute. My blackness is important to note though, cause’ I’m gonna talk about race a lot in here. My American Negro family origin is the root of all of this.

My people came from down south. Not special, I know, most black folks in America trace their lineage to the south. My people are from Georgia. My great, great, great grandfather was Philip Joiner. Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of him; I hadn’t before all of this. Great, great, great grandfather Joiner (hereafter known as GGGD Joiner), was an incredible black man who was elected to the Georgia Assembly in 1868. 1868! In Georgia! As you can imagine, the white community of reconstruction Georgia didn’t take that well. They blocked him taking his seat and then attacked him, his family and the folks who marched with him to get their rights. That’s a cycle in America we are all familiar with: Black folks marching for their rights, white folks attacking. When I found out I was related to GGGD Joiner, I thought it just another statistic in America’s racial odyssey. But, oh no, it is not. It the first link in a chain binding me and mine to 1868.

Like I said, prior to November of last year, I didn’t know who GGGD Joiner was, never knew I was related to him, never even knew our people were from Georgia originally. Nope, I was blissfully ignorant in my fifth year as an associate professor at said prestigious university in Pittsburgh. If you asked me, and I was telling you true, I would’ve said that my past didn’t matter. I would’ve blindly told you that today, today is what matters. What Curt Joiner is doing today. Cause’ Curt Joiner, ladies and gentleman, is comin’ up today. Tenure, rarely given by this institution, was definitely, possibly, on the horizon. Curt Joiner is a force to be reckoned with because he gets amazing reviews from his students. Amazing. With quotes like: “This class has been the single most important class in my entire college career.” Yes, that is an actual quote from a student who took my class.

I’m not blowing smoke, I’m setting the true scene so you see. Prior to November last year, I was on top of the world and held up there by the adoration of my students. Alright, “adoration” is a bit much, but you get the idea. They thought I was a very fine teacher, the University thought I was on the road to tenure and life was grand. My classes were small, like a good acting class should be. You want everyone to work every week if possible or at least have the threat of working, in the air, every week. That way the students stay in the game and don’t drift off on their phones in the back. I’d do a group exercise to start class often. To get everyone engaged from the jump. I clearly remember using the mask exercise to start class many, many times over my teaching career. Wait. I’m rushing too fast now. Before I get to the mask class I need to make sure you know about Sharon and where she came from. Because Sharon pieced it all together. The true truth, I mean. Sharon did all the work. I did nothing. Nothing helpful.

Unfortunately, you are going to get my translation of Sharon’s thoughts and feelings here. You would be much better off hearing it from her; she is smarter and more eloquent than I am. But you are stuck with me. I am stuck with me. And Sharon is nowhere to be found to explain herself. She would definitely find fault with my descriptions of her. If you read this honey, please believe that I am trying my hardest to tell the truth about you. What you thought and felt. What you did. I desperately want to get it right. I want you to come off as the amazing woman you are.

Sharon is my wife of four years. Was my wife. We are still legally married but very, very estranged. If you ask her where she is from she quickly says: “Newark.” Her friend, Cynthia, even calls her “Sharon from Newark.” It’s such an identifiable part of Sharon, you would think it was something she is proud of and it is, sorta. She’s proud she got the hell out. Her family lives on Irving Turner boulevard. Rough. She brought me there once and only once. Like I said, I’m from The Hill, which is black and poor, but Newarkis a whole different level. Like, not America...Newark is third world poor. Only place I can compare it to is Peru. I gave myself a solo vacation to Macau Pichu after I got my Masters degree. I flew into Lima and the drive from the airport to the heavily guarded safe district of Miraflores wound past that third world, documentary style, poverty I had never seen before. Shanty shacks, fires in garbage cans with families cooking over them, no electric lights. Newark was closer to that than America. I grew up in regular, segregated, American poverty, but Newark blew my mind.

Sharon’s family in Newark was rough too. Her grandfather, Al, got a good job when he came back from WW II and was the only solid center of the family. You never, ever, called Al a “garbage man.” He was a Sanitation Worker and everyone was proud of him for it, cause’ a steady, union job was near impossible for black folks to come by in Newark, circa 1945. Al got one though, God knows how, and stayed with it for thirty five years. He was long since retired when I met him. He married Thelma in the early fifties, I think, and they stayed together till he died a couple of years back. Thelma went back to her people in North Carolina after he passed and, hopefully, is there today, living peacefully. God knows they got no peace in Newark all those years. Al and Thelma were like angels, dropped into hell by God to make a little patch of calm and rest for all the weary souls around them. I never understood how they could be so calm, living in that house, in that neighborhood, seeing their children and grandchildren having babies at fourteen, getting shot, going to jail. That was the norm for everybody I knew in the family except Sharon and her cousin Rosie. Just death and misery everywhere. But somehow, Al and Thelma were always there in the middle of it with a clean, safe, house, a hot plate of food and a spare room for whatever child was most wayward at the time. Sharon was there for a few years when her mom ran off somewhere. She said Al and Thelma saved her life in those years. They were the only years of her childhood she felt safe.

Sharon called Al her Uncle, even though he was biologically her grandfather. Everyone called him Uncle Al and she was Aunt Thelma. If you are black, you understand. She never met or knew her father. Her mom, Tania, had eight other kids. Sharon told me: “She got me and all them kids from as many men as she could get her hands on. Uncle Al got a doctor to tie her tubes, without telling her, after the last one or she’d still be droppin’ babies today.” With all those kids, and spending her time chasing all those men, Tania didn’t have time for Sharon. She was the sixth, with brothers older and younger on both sides of her. Sharon doesn’t talk in specifics about her childhood; generalities of abuse, neglect, hunger and fear. General misery and terror. And history. Sharon loves history; books, TV shows, movies- anywhere she can dive in to what happened in the past. With that mangled childhood, it’s no wonder, right? But the amazing thing about Sharon - another amazing thing - is that ties that past into today. She has made a profession out of discovering the links from yesterday to today. She is a professor at said University and is up to her third published book with another on the way. I hope she is back to working on it now.

We, me and Sharon, don’t have any kids. We were trying for one but I screwed that up. Sharon wanted to have one and only one child and shower that baby with love. I have a brother and grew up, like I said, normal black poor so, I thought that two would be good; keep each other company like me and my brother, Arthur, did. Sharon let me know from the jump that she was going to be mother to one child and I could accept that or move on. Wasn’t that big a deal to me, so I agreed. We met at the University. Like I said she’s a professor of history. Particularly, African American history; with a focus on the great migration of black families from the south to the north in the early twentieth century. If you know anything about academia, you know that different departments in the University are very insular. Not a huge amount of interaction between the Humanities, where Sharon taught, and the College of Fine Arts where I teach. There are, maybe two or three all faculty events each year that we can’t get out of. We met at the dinner for the new provost or president or some such. Somebody who you had to be seen welcoming to the fold.

I saw her standing near one of the banquet tables, talking to the caterer as she was setting it up. Sharon likes to know how people get things done. She was quizzing the cater waiter on how and why she was boxing the table. Apparently there is a technique to folding the linens, getting them to fit correctly on the table and fall off so they create a nice box. Not something I would be interested in at all, but fascinating to Sharon. I was fascinated by two attractive women standing together away from all the university types I didn’t want to be around, so I sauntered over to learn about table boxing. Sharon will tell you I stalked her the rest of the night. I don’t remember it that way but, I will defer to her memories. I do remember being primed to marry. Like, that was the only reason I was talking to women at that point of my early thirties- I was looking for a wife. It was time.

I had certain parameters. Black, definitely. I had been an equal opportunity serial monogamist for years, dating women of all tone and origin but there was no way I was going to settle down with anyone I had to explain blackness to. Blackness had to be our shared history. Not because I am a race man or anything like that. Definitely not- I am an avoider of responsibility. I’m not here to represent anyone or continue my legacy through the ages; nothing like that. I just didn’t want the hassle. If I married a white woman I’d have to be the cypher. The explainer of ‘how it is being black.’ I’m not interested in doing that. Truth to tell, the white women I dated previously weren’t looking to learn about blackness either or prove their liberalism by dating me. Actually, they were, by and large, fantastic women who just liked me for whatever reason. It’s not on them so, please don’t get that impression. I felt the need to explain why the cops killed another boy in The Hill. I had to explain why there was a march against mandatory sentencing. I felt that need and it wore me out. I didn’t want to feel chased by that need for the rest of my life so, I was looking for a black woman and only a black woman in those wife hunting days. And Sharon was one standing near a banquet table at an event I didn’t want to be at. Not romantic, I know. I’m working hard to be truthful in my last days here.

When I came up to Sharon that night, she looked at me like I was a serial killer. Told me later that she wasn’t used to men coming up to her, trying to talk to her. Ummmmm, I have to call BS here. Sharon is an attractive woman. Smart, funny when she wants to be, so I know she was getting multiple come ones. She says she wasn’t. And Sharon doesn’t lie. Sharon does, however, have a very selective memory when it comes to her own life. She is the queen of deeply researched footnotes on her papers, but when it comes to her own history, she has some glaring blind spots. Honey, I am not trying to be mean here. You have your view of how men see you and then there is reality. I’ve had a year to go through every conversation we ever had about your love life before me; to piece together an external view of how you were seen, through what you told me and what I observed. You were wanted. You were desired. You ended up with me, but you had other options.

That first night we met… (I lost my train of thought. Come on back Curt… I’m just gonna keep pecking at the keyboard till it comes to me…. Dinner for the provost, the caterer, the table boxing… there was something I wanted to say specifically about that first moment we met….Damn, It’s gone. It’s gonna be like this folks. I got no time to go back and edit so, you are getting it straight from the brain. Damn! Alright, guess it’s gone. It was important…. And gone. This is bad, I have to tell you the important moments and if I am just gonna blank like this…. Ah God….)

Sharon took my phone number. That’s all I got. She accepted my number when I offered. I think I had to offer a few times, and she accepted it, that first night. She left a message two days later. Made a point of telling me that she only responded to calls - no texting. Clearly said that if I wanted to ”move forward,” I needed to risk actually speaking. The first date was awful. I was checking the boxes on my black wife checklist. Not hot. There should never have been date number two. We were brought together by Oculus. If you haven’t seen it, Oculus is a fantastic horror movie from that year about a possessed mirror. I wasn’t trying to be impressive, I was trying to see a movie I heard was good, and Sharon lit up laughing when I called and suggested we go see it. The first date was so bad but there was hope for me, she thought, if I wanted to see Oculus. A shared affinity for otherworldly evil come to torment the innocent and the damned alike was our first bond. The tragic irony jokes write themselves, I know.

Oculus, and my good sense in liking it, led to another date and another and finally to engagement and marriage. I tore through that, I know. Indicative of how unromantic I was, and am unfortunately. And how rushed I am here. The university party and Oculus took me two hours of writing and rewriting. If I get into our whole courtship, I will spend the next week telling you how much I really do love Sharon. How amazing she is. How lucky I am to have been with her. How she could’ve saved me, wanted to save me, if I could’ve followed her out. But I’m here to tell you about November 2022, not prove to you that I can write a true memory about my wife, even if it takes all night. Gotta keep moving. Sharon would understand. You do, right, honey?

Next, Plague Time, if you don’t know the details. The details of how we saw it then. All we knew in the beginning of November 2022, was that the symptoms and progression from infection to death were very similar to Corona. We wore masks, washed our hands and practiced social distancing. Just like Corona. Most everybody thought it was another strain of Corona that had mutated and was resistant to the vaccine. Those of us who knew the wacko conspiracy theories about Corona were just that, wacko, started to wonder about this new outbreak. Please remember: In November 2022 we saw folks getting sick, the hospitals filling up and white people fleeing for their houses outside the city. Just like Corona. And just like Corona we were wondering how it was that there was no decent antibody test or enough tests for the damn disease itself. The thing that flipped it for doubters like me, was when the government started mass production of genetics tests. If you remember, that started in early November 2022.

And just like Corona when you couldn’t get a test outside of a hospital and then couldn’t get a reliable antibody test until more than 50,000 Americans had fucking died...oh wait, it wasn’t like that at all, remember? Yea, the government found all the money and resources and executive actions needed to mass produce DNA tests right quick. Those test rolled out for anyone and everyone, funded by the government and traced by federal agencies, by November 12th. Don't believe me? Check it. Dean Don testified to getting a DNA test at the Falk clinic on November 14th. All the faculty were aware of a genetic tests the government was recommending to citizens by that second week of November. Hmmmm. They knew that this new virus had something to do with genetics. The government obviously knew as well. And those of us who were reasonable, intelligent black folks, started to wonder. What does a genetics test have to do with a virus? You might not remember how strange that was. You might remember it as just another step in the scientific process that revealed what the new virus was. But that is your memory today. There was a distinct moment for each of us when we finally believed the virus was tied to African descent.

My moment came that second week of November, some, like Sharon, knew earlier. November 16th, was the day the scales fell from my eyes and I finally saw the truth of Plague Time. I was deep in the throws of my own personal hell by then but I remember the press conference with the Senate majority leader. Our leader, known ever after as “Multiple Mitch,” got up there and cried. Cried like a baby when he told the world that his test had come back with “multiple ethnicities, including (sob, sob), some African.” Multiple Mitch secluded himself in his Kansas mansion after that. His wife stood by him in his hour of despair, we were told, but his children did not. Multiple Mitch faded away, swallowed by the darkness he didn’t know he had inside him and died in early December. It was the best thing to come out of Plague Time. The senate started taking up bills and actually passing legislation once he was gone.

And finally, you need to meet Her. I think I’m gonna lay out this whole story for you day by day, how it happened, last November. That’s the plan anyway - we will see how it goes. Important thing to say here and now: All the background you are gonna get on Her was found by Mrs. Ella & Sharon. I did nothing. Nothing…. I know, now, what She is only because of research Mrs. Ella & Sharon did. (Damn…! I realize I didn’t introduce you to Mrs. Ella. I can’t go back... just gonna have to wait cause I am on a roll and the light, if I could even see it, has long since faded from the sky. I am tired. So, here comes the demon, folks. Mrs Ella has to wait.)

The tokens were how She got to the men of my family. Each man who met Her, and was taken by Her in her different forms, had given her a token. Willingly. That’s the key: She needed to be paid with a token each generation. Only needed to get one token, from one man per generation. Why me rather than my brother Arthur? If we were taking bets on who would be more susceptible to demonic enticement, me or Arthur, I think momma would’ve picked Arthur. My father woulda picked me. I bet he knew I was the weak link in our generation of Joiners. Just like him. But he didn’t warn me, did he? Didn’t warn the son he knew would be most vulnerable to Her. Cause I am just like him. Weak in the flesh. Easily corrupted. Hey Dad, if you read this, here’s a message from my generation of Joiners to yours: Fuck You.

She got daddy in 1985 on a river boat in Memphis. Before that, it was my grand Uncle and before him, my great grandfather, both in Pittsburgh. She got great, great grandfather Joiner in Atlanta and he was the son of GGGD Joiner- where it all began. That first token GGGD Joiner had in 1865. The first one She wanted. Sharon and Mrs. Ella learned Her history from Her diary. She keeps writing in it up to this very day, I bet. She wants folks to know who she is and what she’s done. She didn’t fret about Mrs. Ella & Sharon finding it or me telling you her story here. She knows the villagers aren’t gonna come with the torches or the Ghostbusters are gonna get her. She doesn’t fret cause’ no one has ever believed it. By the end of this maybe you will. Maybe YOU will do something. Least you could do is find my cousins, the next generation of Joiners, and warn them. I can’t. Sharon won’t. Mrs. Ella is dead. (I gotta keep this in mind... Get my strength from it. Maybe it will keep me awake.)

She came from the Montague family. They were a mid-level planters with a little over a hundred acres in Georgia. They got the land in the 1830’s originally like the other white “settlers” of the time: They would set up a few small homesteads, then form militias and attack the native tribes around them over and over. During these attacks a settler would be killed or injured and this was the pretext the US army needed to come in and eradicate the natives. The whole process of attacks, then retribution and eventually deportation of the natives to reservations out west took about twenty years. By the 1850’s the lands made into the states of the deep south had been cleared and whites like the Montague’s could bring in their slaves and set up the economic engine of American. Cotton. The Montague’s were not Scarlet & Rhett level aristocracy, they only had that hundred or so acres and twenty African born souls to work it, but that was enough to get them the title of “planters” and have their daughter be part of “society.”

That daughter, born as Cora Montague, was in her teens by the time the war came. Cora was the kind of daughter a mid level planter looking to keep his fortune and move up the social ladder does not want to have. She was a spender. Fancy dresses and parties and sweets. Cora wanted all the bubbles and trinkets she could get and when daddy couldn’t or didn’t want to pay for her whims, she went out and got them paid for by someone else. And how does a precocious southern debutante get things daddy doesn’t give her? She makes a deal with the devil. Yea. Not the answer I expected either. But this is the choice Cora made. She went down to the crossroads, said his name three times in the dusk and made the deal. She was gonna get her fancy dresses and sweets, but when it was done - all done, like dead done - the devil got her soul. This suited young Cora fine and she loved her high life. Then the war came.

Something you gotta remember: the war was fought in the south. We northerner’s forget that sometimes, when we get all high on the Gettysburg address. And look, I am not pitying the white ruling class of the south. I’m black so, I always hated Gone with The Wind and that lost cause shit. The planters and their poor brethren in the armies got, maybe, one one hundredth of the suffering they meted out to Africans over the preceding two hundred years. One one millionth is probably closer. And I now have a personal beef with the old south so, believe, I’m no dumb ass sympathizer. I’m just clarifying for y'all the fact that the war was fought on the land of the confederacy and that is where the physical devastation happened. The Montague's house was burned and their slaves were freed, though most of them didn’t know it till Juneteenth.

So, after the war Cora had no home, a mangled brother, a dead daddy and no family income, cause the slaves thought they were free. Cora still had her deal with the devil but there weren’t a lot of fancy dresses or sweets to be had in the burnt out Georgia of 1865 so, Cora was feeling short changed bout’ the whole thing. But as you may have heard, a deal with the devil is binding. You don’t get to take it back. Apparently he will bargain though. On his terms. You don’t get out of the original deal, but he will renegotiate for more, if you are so inclined. Cora went out to the crossroads again and called him forth. She had already sold her soul, which is the only currency the devil deals in, so she didn’t have anything more to offer, right? What more could she give? According to her diary, the devil turned round and smiled in the dim light of evening, down in that burnt out Georgia crossroad and said: The souls of others.

Cora, being the vain little creature she was, jumped at the deal. The devil could have all the souls he wanted as long as she got her dresses. How could she get them for him? This is where the southern myth of the Old Hag comes in. Heard of her? Me neither. You probably know her in some other cultural context or seen her in a movie though. You know her. You might know her as a witch. You might know her as a demon; that’s the PhD level name of a Hag. Or you might know her as a Succubus who comes to men in the shape of a beautiful young woman and steals their souls through sex. Which, when you think about it, sounds pretty easy, right? There are a lot of men who want to sleep with young, hot girls. The devil should be cleaning up, with an army of girls like Cora, turned into Old Hag Demon Succubi, out there taking men down. Devil should have the majority of male souls in his debt long past. But it ain’t that simple. In Cora’s diary she tells us there are rules. Rules around how a young girl becomes a demon. God musta set these rules, way back, and makes the devil play by them to this day.

There are three parts to the transformation: First, The demon needs to get a man to pay Her for sex. The man has to willingly and knowingly pay for Her earthly pleasures. This ain’t too hard: She takes a pleasing form and gets the man to give her a token for some lovin’. This is happening right now all over the world. I did it when I converted cash to online tokens and paid Her to perform for me online. I didn’t know that's what I was doing…. Second, after the payment and the sex, the man has to agree to the sell his soul to the devil as well. This step is much more difficult. She has to get the man to knowingly pay with his soul for the pleasure of staying with Her for the rest of his natural life. He can never go back to the home he knew; has to live the rest of his days as her slave. The third and final part is what I call God’s Guardrails. It’s the reason the devil hasn’t got every male soul owed to him today. The demon can only get male souls from one bloodline. That’s why She is sometimes called the OLD Hag. Cause’ it takes a long time to get in place to receive that token, then take a man, suck him dry or just leave him in a jail cell to await death, while another male child of the same bloodline grows up to the age of temptation. And if she fails, in any generation, she forfeits her soul then and there and goes straight to hell. On that crossroad, in 1865, Cora chose my family.

Why us? Well, after Her first deal with the devil, then the war and destruction of Her world, Cora had to sell herself to stay alive. Yea, war is hell, even on the wicked. First, she tells us, she sold her body to the Union soldiers, then when they left -yes, most of them left really quick, don’t belive any lost cause bullshit- she sold herself to any white man who could pay. Course’ there weren’t many white men left who had coin for Nora’s body. So. when she was at Her last, she went to the blacks and offered Herself to them. Sounds like congress today, right? She received kindness instead of usury. Ain’t that a bitch? In the hardest time for everybody down south, the poorest of the poor offered their former owner kindness. Cora was offered a bed in the slave quarters, which hadn’t been burned cause’, why would the Union army waste a match on those disgusting hovels? She was invited in out of kindness by someone who was owned, beaten and abused by her family...Black folks are amazing.

Cora met GGGD Joiner in those slave quarters that were her last refuge. Did she thank him and the staggeringly kind women who took Her in? No, Cora did what Cora always did - does - she tried to strike a deal with GGGD. A Union soldier had given him a Union dollar coin. Another random act of kindness in the midst of horror. This coin was GGGD’s prized possession and worth an incredible amount in those days. Cora couldn’t abide a nigger having a coin when She had nothing. So, first, she set out to steal it. In Her diary I think she said she was “reclaiming our family’s money from the nigger who stole it.” How she saw stealing a coin, given to Her former slave, as “reclaiming?” This is the mystery and madness of white supremacy. Anyway, she got caught and asked to leave the slave quarters. Those saintly black folks had reached the limit of their generosity.

Now she’s sleeping out in the elements. If it keeps going like this the devil is gonna get her soul right quick. One night she catches GGGD Joiner when he goes out to relive himself. She offered him the same deal the Union soldiers had got before they left: Give me the coin and you can have me. GGGD said no. This was the last straw. She had been thrown out, then sexually rejected by the niggers! Her mind snapped. She ran into the Georgia forest, raving, until she came to an old abandoned well at midnight. Cora screamed down that well. She yelled deep into the earth begging the devil to come up and curse the uppity niggers. And the devil heard. He musta been waiting at the bottom of that dark old well for the time Cora was at Her lowest. When she was ready to make the long deal. Cora can’t come right out and say it in Her diary, but she intimates that the devil took her youthful beauty that night and turned her into the Old Hag. I remember her diary, read to me, saying something like: “The dark well had reflected a comely, youthful visage but a moment before in the moon's light, but now showed a twisted figure of torment and rage. Never again would I see the sparkle in a good man’s eye, now for me there was only the lust of dirty niggers from that day forward.” Cora made the second deal with the devil. The deal to become a soul stealing demon and torment my family through the ages. All because my GGGD would give Her his token.

Alright, you have the background now. I have set the stage and introduced all the players, save one, as quickly as I could. Now I’m gonna take you through November 2022 and show you what you didn’t see at the trial. There are gonna be some CUTS in places where the events are spliced together without a linear chain. Sometimes you are going to read events or conversations that are verbatim; I remember them perfectly and will basically be transcribing from my brain to the page. Other times...not so much. Other times you are gonna get the sum total of what happened without the specific detail. That detail will prove that she is the reason I am sitting here, alone, in a cell today. She is the reason those people died in Shadyside. She is the reason Sharon is gone.