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Torment (excerpt from novella)
Prologue
Boston, Massachusetts, May 7th, 1984
Felicity’s teeth were bloody from gnashing her skin raw from her own fingernails, but even when she spat and wailed in his face, the deacon refused to relent.
Resigned to his task, he tied the leather bonds around her hands and feet and let only the word of God enter his mind; God would set them both free. Suddenly the thing the deacon knew was inside Felicity ceased its howling and sprouted false tears from her eyes.
“Why are you doing this to me?” Felicity’s demon said.
The minister sprinkled Felicity with holy water, sending her into a new fit of rage.
“Douglas! Answer me!”
Deacon Douglas Mackinnon blessed himself and opened his Bible. His words soared above Felicity’s pleas.
“Let us pray. God, whose nature is ever merciful and forgiving, accept our prayer that this servant of yours, bound by the fetters of sin, may be pardoned by your loving kindness.”
“Douglas! Stop it!”
Douglas read on. “Holy Lord, Almighty Father, everlasting God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who once and for all consigned that fallen and apostate tyrant to the flames of hell, who sent your only-begotten Son into the world to crush that roaring lion; hasten to our call for help and snatch from ruination and from the clutches of the noonday devil…”
Felicity reared up in the bed and the bonds around her wrists creaked from the pressure.
“Douglas you have to let me go…I’m sick!”
Douglas looked at her for an instant and rejected her demon’s lies. “…this human being made in your image and likeness. Strike terror, Lord, into the beast now laying waste to your vineyard…”
“There is no demon in me!” Felicity screamed. “Douglas, please stop!”
“…fill your servants with courage to fight manfully against that reprobate dragon, lest those who put their trust in you and say with Pharaoh of old; I know not God, nor will I set Israel free…”
Felicity wailed again, a great curdling shriek.
“Let me go! Let me go! You can’t do this to me!” She writhed and pulled, but Douglas had tied the bonds tight. Welts had begun to surface on the skin of Felicity’s wrists.
Douglas continued to seek strength from the word. “Let your mighty hand cast him out of your servant, Felicity, so he may no longer hold her captive, whom it pleased you to make in your image and to redeem through your Son; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.”
Felicity’s eyes were wide with pain and fear.
“Let me go or I’m going to kill you, you fucking pathetic piece of shit! You think you know what you’re doing? You have no fucking clue. You never have! You have never wanted to help me!”
Douglas pointed a crucifix at her.
“That won’t help me,” she exclaimed.
“I command you, unclean spirit, whoever you are, along with all your minions now attacking this servant of God, by the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, by the coming of our Lord for Judgment, that you tell me by some sign, your name and the day and the hour of your departure.
“I command you, moreover to obey me to the letter, I who am a minister of God, despite my unworthiness; nor shall you be emboldened to harm in any way this creature of God or any of their possessions.”
Felicity’s screams flowed out of the room into the hall. There, cowering in the doorway to her room, her hands clasped over her ears, was nine-year-old Jessica. She had never heard her mother so scared before either and this knowledge made her tremble.
No matter how hard she squeezed her hands to her ears, Jessica still heard her mother’s screams and the deacon’s tirade. Jessica listened to it for years, but the din was at its very worst over the past few hours.
The deacon shouted at the demon to leave her mother over and over. Jessica didn’t know what a demon was, but she knew there was something wrong with her mother, there always had been.
The doctors couldn’t help her. Jessica prayed the deacon would find the cause; all she wanted was to have her mother back.
Suddenly, the screaming stopped.
Jessica was overwhelmed by the silence. She pulled her hands away from her ears and listened to the lock in her mother’s bedroom door turn. The deacon appeared, looking spent, his eyes red from tears.
“Is Mommy okay, Daddy?” Jessica asked the deacon.
Douglas MacKinnon crouched down and held his daughter’s hand. She could smell his sweat. Behind him, Jessica saw her mother’s face, blanched and frozen in terror, her tongue bulging between her teeth.
The deacon touched Jessica’s cheek, tearing her gaze away from her mother’s death mask.
“She’s with God now, Jess,” he told her. “She’s at peace.”