Arnulf the Destroyer Read Free Page A

himself.  All at once it can be life or destruction, arrogant pride or the power of confidence.  In the briefest of moments it can flare or die.
    For just one person to show faith in us can make all the difference.  And if that faith is from a woman a man loves, then the effect is boundless.  One person is all it takes, just one, and the character and strength that lies dormant within us, the true essence of our being, the greatness that God has endowed us with, can come struggling free from its confines of self-doubt.
    It was that way with Randy Yarbis, mailboy.  For once someone in the world outside of the Kingdom saw him as he saw himself; saw him as he did in the moments when he nursed his deepest dreams, when he saw naked the potential that slumbered within him.  In the Kingdom others saw it, if only for moments.  There he could safely walk in his dream self, without the worry that someone would mock and tear him down and tell him that this deep and powerful man had no place in the world of real life.
    Maybe it was this life that was the illusion, Randy thought as he undid his hair and let the golden locks fall free and glorious.  Maybe this world is the fiction, crafted by small men of small minds and small courage.  Frightened of the blaze of greatness in others they crafted this mediocre world where true passion, true love, even true life, cannot threaten their safe and predictable existence.
    The sound of obnoxious laughter drew Randy’s attention down the corridor.  A young woman leaned over a copier.  Rich stood behind her using his hockey stick to lift up her skirt.  She turned to swat him away but he persisted.
    Randy had witnessed scenes like this countless times, had even been a victim of them.  It had always seemed to him as a powerful bully taking his rights as strongest of the pack.  But now he looked through the eyes of Arnulf.  And a slight change in perspective altered everything.
    Randy took hold of his mail cart and charged forward.  Bearing down on the fiend, the scoundrel who would stain the honor of an innocent maiden, he rumbled past the unsuspecting workers buried in their computers.  A battlecry erupted from his lips as the cart slammed into the unsuspecting Rich.  The hockey stick flew out of his hands as he thumped to the ground.
    “Randy, what the hell?” Rich stammered, a look of confusion and panic etched in his features.
    “I’m not Randy,” Randy said, the mad blaze of the warrior burning in his eyes.
    “Who…who are you?” Rich asked.
    Climbing up to straddle two desks, Randy looked over the sea of cubicles.  His prison.  His prison no more.
    “I am Arnulf the Destroyer!” he cried out, brandishing the hockey stick above his head, the spoils of victory.
    “All tremble ye who look upon my blade!”

Reading Wine
    Most people believe I am magic.  That’s what it looks like to them at least.  But to me it comes as natural as breathing, reading the wine.
    I didn’t name it reading wine.  Other men who saw what I do called it reading wine and the name stuck.  I guess that’s how things go.  I guess that’s how people try to grasp what they really don’t understand.  They slap a label on it as if a name says it all.  Never mind that most of our names are useless anyway.  That’s how they think at least, you name something and you’ve got it figured out.
    Like reading wine.
    I just call it tasting.  Then again, everyone calls it tasting, and everyone claims to do it.  But I found out real early in life that no one can do what I do.
    I can assure you that all I do is taste.  I can’t read wine like I read a newspaper or you are reading these words.  I simply let the wine dance across my palate and I can taste every drop of rain, every ray of sunshine, the tilt of the earth, the coolness of the air, even the dirt on the hands that picked the grape.  It all jumps out on my tongue in an instant.  I promise it’s nothing magical.  All I do is