“Let yourself breathe away all the demons that have been possessing you…. Send them back to where they came from,” Karma said in a whisper as Paris lay down on the table. She hadn't been aware of being possessed by demons lately. And without a word, breathing deeply herself, Karma moved her hands several inches above Paris's somewhat anxious, rigid body. This felt silly. Karma waved her hands like magic wands, and said she was feeling Paris's chakras. And then she stopped abruptly just above Paris's liver. She frowned, looked at Paris with concern, and spoke with genuine worry. “I feel a blockage.”
“Where?” She was beginning to make Paris nervous. All she wanted was a massage, not a news flash from her liver.
“I think it's lodged between your kidneys and your liver. Have you been having a problem with your mother?”
“Not lately. She's been dead for eighteen years. But I had a lot of trouble with her before that.” Her mother had been an extremely bitter, angry woman, but Paris hardly ever thought about her. She had far bigger problems.
“It must be something else then … but I feel spirits in the house. Have you heard them?” She'd been right in the first place, Paris decided, trying not to let the “therapist” unnerve her. It was a séance.
“No, I haven't.” Paris's philosophies were generally firmly rooted in fact, not fiction. And she wasn't interested in spirits. Just in surviving the divorce, and Pe-ter's impending marriage. She would have preferred dealing with spirits. They might have been easier to get rid of. Karma had begun moving her hands again by then, and she stopped with a look of horror two inches above Paris's stomach.
“There it is, I've got it,” she said with a victorious look. “It's in your bowels.” The news was getting worse by the minute.
“What is?” Paris asked, torn between a sense of the ridiculous and a wave of panic. The idea of this woman finding something in Paris's bowels did not reassure her.
“All the demons are in your intestines,” Karma said with a look of certainty. “You must be very angry. You need a high colonic.” Whoever this woman was, she was obviously from the same planet as Peace, Meg's vegan boyfriend. “You're really not going to get what you need out of the massage until you clean all the toxins out of your system.” This was getting more frightening by the second.
“Could we just do what we can this time, without the high colonic?” It was the last thing Paris wanted to contemplate. All she had wanted was a massage and a decent night's sleep immediately thereafter.
“I can try, but you're really not going to get my best work without it.” It was a sacrifice Paris was willing to make, despite the fact that Karma looked extremely discouraged. “I'll do what I can.” And then, finally, she pulled a bottle of oil out of her bag, basted Paris liberally with it, and began rubbing it into Paris's arms and hands and shoulders. She worked on her chest after that, her stomach and legs, and made unhappy clucking sounds of despair each time she passed her hands over Paris's stomach. “I don't want to make the demons comfortable,” she explained. “You have to flush them.” But by then the music, the oil, the dark room, and Karma's hands had begun to work their magic on Paris. In spite of the alleged demons in her bowels, she was finally relaxing. And she already felt better, by the time Karma whispered to her to turn over. And what she did on Paris's tense back and shoulders was the best part. In spite of the demons and bad karma she was now lying on, she was so relaxed, she felt as though she were melting. It was exactly what she had needed. And as she lay there with her eyes closed, it felt heavenly—until suddenly she felt as though she'd been hit between the shoulder blades by a tennis ball flying at a hundred miles an hour, and then felt as though Karma had ripped a piece out of one shoulder.
“What are you doing?” Paris said, opening both eyes in panic.
“Cupping you. You'll love it. It'll pull out all the demons in your body along with the toxins.” Not them again. Apparently, the demons had moved from her bowels to her upper body, and Karma was determined to get them. She kept hitting Paris's back with a hot cup, which created a suction, and then she ripped it off with a loud popping sound. It hurt like hell, and made Paris squirm, but she was embarrassed to ask her to stop it. “Great, isn't it?”
“Not exactly,” Paris said, daring to be honest finally. “I liked the other part better.”
“So do your demons. We can't let them get too comfortable, can we?” Why not? Paris was tempted to ask. Because when they were comfortable, so was she. The cupping seemed to go on forever, and then mercifully stopped. And with that, she began kneading and slapping Paris's bottom. It was obvious to Paris now that the demons were sitting on her buttocks. But if so, they were getting a hell of a beating at Karma's hands. And then with no warning, she took hot rocks, almost beyond bearing, and laid them on Paris's shoulders, took two more from her bag of tricks, and kneaded the soles of Paris's feet with them until they felt like they were on fire. “This will clear your intestines and your head until you do the high colonic,” she explained, and while she was still torturing the soles of Paris's feet, the smell of something burning filled the room. It was a cross between seared flesh and burning tires, and it was so pungent that Paris began to cough, and couldn't stop. “That's what I thought. Breathe deeply now. They hate this stuff. We need to get all the dark spirits out of the room.” It was a smell Paris feared would be in the room forever, and she was beginning to worry that she had set fire to the couch, as she opened her eyes and looked around. There was a small heater with a votive candle under it, and a bottle of oil poised over it in a clamp.
“What is that stuff?” she asked, still choking from the fumes, as Karma smiled. And the purity of her face reminded Paris of Joan of Arc as she was engulfed by the final flames.
“It's a potion I mix myself. It works every time.”
“On what?” It was going to wreak havoc with the carpet and the curtains. The pungent, oily smell seemed to permeate the entire room.
“This is great for your lungs. See how you're starting to clear everything out.” Paris was beginning to fear she might throw up. It was starting to clear the instant soup she'd eaten before Karma arrived to massage her. And before she could ask the woman to put the votive out and get rid of her magic potion, Karma put a different bottle over the flame, and within seconds there was a smell so powerful in the room that tears had filled Paris's eyes. It was a smell somewhere between rat poison, arsenic, and cloves, and was so overwhelming Paris could hardly breathe.
“What does this one do?” It was becoming something of a challenge just to survive in the room while Karma continued the massage. Paris was still lying on her stomach, and the small of her back was now on fire from the hot, oily rocks. It was agony, and yet in a funny way, both the heat and the weight of them felt good. She was beginning to understand the philosophy that led some sects to sleep on beds of nails, or swallow flames. It turned the mind away from its many ills and made you concentrate on all the places in your body that were either burning, in agony, or simply hurt. And when Karma told her to turn over again, and Paris did, without warning she spilled a cup of salt onto her abdomen, covered her belly button, and dropped a hot ball of incense on top of it, while Paris watched in fascination.
“What is that going to do?”
“Suck all the poisons out, and bring you inner peace.” The incense was an improvement over the burning oils at least, but the next one Karma put on over the flame was like instant spring, and the flower scent was so powerful that Paris sneezed violently, and it sent the incense on her stomach flying across the room. “They're hating this,” Karma smiled, referring to Paris's demons again. But Paris couldn't stop sneezing for the next five minutes, and finally conceded defeat. The oils had done her in.