“An…an alternative…?”
“We may be able to exorcise the demon. We may be able to remove it, physically, from your head. If it works we can both save your life and return you to the Lord’s presence.”
“If it works…”
“You are a soldier. You know that death is always a possibility. It is a risk here, as in all things.” He takes a deep, considered breath. “On the cross, death would be a certainty.”
The demon in my head does not argue. It whispers no blasphemies, makes no desperate plea against the prospect of its extraction. It merely opens the door to Heaven a crack, and bathes my soul in a sliver of the Divine.
It shows me the Truth.
I know, as I knew in the crèche, as I knew this morning. I am in the presence of God, and if the Bishop cannot see it then the Bishop is a babbling charlatan, or worse.
I would gladly go to the cross for just such a moment as this.
I smile and shake my head. “Do you think me blind, Bishop?
You would wrap your wretched plottings up in Scripture, that I would not see them for what they are?” And I do see them now, laid bare in the Spirit’s radiance. Of course these vile Pharisees would trap the Lord in trinkets and talismans if they could. They would ration God through a spigot to which only they have access — and those to whom He would speak without their consent, they would brand possessed.
And I am possessed, but not by any demon. I am possessed by Almighty God. And neither He nor His Sons are hermit crabs, driven to take up residence in the shells of idols and machinery.
“Tell me, Bishop,” I cry. “Was Saul wearing one of your prayer caps on the road to Damascus? Did Elisha summon his bears with one of your wands? Or were they possessed of demons as well?”
He shakes his head, feigning sadness. “It is not the Praetor that speaks.”
He’s right. God speaks through me, as he spoke through the Prophets of old. I am God’s voice, and it doesn’t matter that I am unarmed and unarmored, it doesn’t matter that I am deep in the devil’s sanctum. I need only raise my hand and God will strike this blasphemer down.
I raise my fist. I am fifty cubits high. The bishops stands before me, an insect unaware of its own insignificance. He has one of his ridiculous machines in one hand.
“Down, devil!” we both cry, and there is blackness.
I awaken into bondage. Broad straps hold me against the bed. The left side of my face is on fire. Smiling physicians lean into view and tell me all is well. Someone holds up a mirror. My head has been shaved on the right side; a bleeding crescent, inexplicably familiar, cuts across my temple. Crosses of black thread sew my flesh together as though I were some torn garment, clumsily repaired.
The exorcism was successful, they say. I will be back with my company within the month. The restraints are merely a precaution. I will be free of them soon, as I am free of the demon.
“Bring me to God,” I croak. My throat burns like a desert.
They hold a prayer wand to my head. I feel nothing.
I feel nothing.
The wand is in working order. The batteries are fully charged. It’s probably nothing, they say. A temporary after-effect of the exorcism. Give it time. Probably best to leave the restraints for the moment, but there’s nothing to worry about.
Of course they are right. I have dwelt in the Spirit, I know the mind of the Almighty — after all, were not all of we chosen made in His image? God would never abandon even the least of his flock. I do not have to believe this, it is something I know. Father, you will not forsake me.
It will come back. It will come back.
They urge me to be patient. After three days they admit that they’ve seen this before. Not often, mind you; it was a rare procedure, and this is an even rarer consequence. But it’s possible that the demon may have injured the part of the mind that lets us truly know God. The physicians recite medical terms which mean nothing to me. I ask them about the others that preceded me down this path: how long before they were restored to God’s sight? But it seems there are no hard and fast rules, no overall patterns.
Trajan burns on the wall beside my bed. Trajan burns daily there and is never consumed, a little like the Burning Bush itself. My keepers have been replaying his cremation daily, a thin gruel of recorded images thrown against the wall; I suspect they are meant to be inspirational. It is always just past sundown in these replays. Trajan’s fiery passing returns a kind of daylight to the piazza, an orange glow reflecting in ten thousand upturned faces.
He is with God now, forever in His presence. Some say that was true even before he passed, that Trajan lived his whole life in the Spirit. I don’t know whether that’s true; maybe people just couldn’t explain his zeal and devotion any other way.
A whole lifetime in the presence of God. I’d give a lifetime now for even a minute.
We are in unexplored territory, they say. That is where they are, perhaps.
I am in Hell.
Finally they admit it: none of the others have recovered. They have been lying to me all along. I have been cast into darkness, I am cut off from God. And they called this butchery a success.
“It will be a test of your faith,” they tell me. My faith. I gape like a fish at the word. It is a word for heathens, for people with made-up gods. The cross would have been infinitely preferable. I would kill these smug meat-cutters with my bare hands, if my bare hands were free.
“Kill me,” I beg. They refuse. The Bishop himself has commanded that I be kept alive and in good health. “Then summon the bishop,” I tell them. “Let me talk to him. Please.”
They smile sadly and shake their heads. One does not summon the Bishop.
More lies, perhaps. Maybe the bishop has forgotten that I even exist, maybe these people just enjoy watching the innocent suffer.
Who else, after all, would dedicate their lives to potions and bloodletting?
The cut in my head keeps me awake at night, itches maddeningly as scar tissue builds and puckers along its curved edges. I still can’t remember where I’ve seen its like before.
I curse the bishop. He told me there would be risks, but he only mentioned death. Death is not a risk to me here. It is an aspiration.
I refuse food for four days. They force-feed me liquids through a tube in my nose.
It’s a strange paradox. There is no hope here; I will never again know God, I am denied even surcease. And yet these butchers, by the very act of refusing me a merciful death, have somehow awakened a tiny spark that wants to live. It is their sin I am suffering for, after all. This darkness is of their making. I did not turn away from God; they hacked God out of me like a gobbet of gangrenous flesh. It can’t be that they want me to live, for there is no living apart from God. It can only be that they want me to suffer.
And with this realization comes a sudden desire to deny them that satisfaction.
They will not let me die. Perhaps, soon, they will wish they had.
God damn them.
God damn them. Of course.