The Only Thing Worse is the Cure, Part 2

This is the much-requested second installment of The Only Thing Worse is the Cure. For the first chapter, click here.

For the entirety of my adult life, and for whatsoever of my immaturity I can recall, I have been observant to a perpetual war the angels and demons in every wall and fiber of our world. They are here now, in the bricks of this cell, in my mattress and pillow. They are in my hair. They are my hair. They compose the very door that protects you from me. Their battles are legion; they are infinite and infinitesimal. The demons circle around the angels in band of increasing number, as though waiting to strike, while the angels circle around something more central, the nature of which I have never determined. Perhaps it is The Lord Himself, or the Gates of Paradise. Yet they never battle over Him; in any case I have observed, demons leave their flocks for other shores, emitting sparks, static heathens.

I still perceive these miniscule wars, yet for the first time in memory, they do not terrify me. Strange how they ever did; I do not know the nature of the trick. As soon as you pushed that pram down this hall, the emotional reaction has simply severed. I see plainly now that they will not attack us, or undo our world; they merely are. Circles around circles around a neutral enigma.

As my neighbor now realizes he is the splendid Saint Augustine, and his neighbor professes to no longer crave human flesh, I am to puzzle on the meaning of delusions.

Perhaps it is the will of The Lord Himself that insists I see into the matters angelic and demonic, and thereby render unto you this: I see nothing unlike in the boy as to any other boy. He has no excess of angels or demons. Anyone in this house who sees magic in his constitution is still possessed of madness. He is a plain child who would, under other circumstances, require no more than baptism and proper diet.

Yet I appreciate that we are not under other circumstances. Should the manic paralysis of my wardens pass, they will be most cross with your young master, as will any authorities pursuing him. The mind lurches with your devotion to him.

Get him to Jerusalem, or unto any island in the south where the infectiously sick are banished. Upon the latter there will be no healthy jailers for his presence to harm, and I know of one colony that has a printing press with obtuse reputation. Perhaps that is where you can inquire as to your former mistress’s book. I would not have advised its immolation, yet can hardly criticize a man’s hysteria at matters uncanny. How I would have liked to study its demons.

How can such a boy operate? He breathes, his flesh is pink as dawn, his angels and demons no quicker or crueler than those in your hands. What about him could render this clarity unto me, or that copious vomiting unto the wardens? It is perplexing in a fashion I have never felt – that which must be normal confusion in the rest of human history. You have granted me the privilege of feeling what any Christian would consider confusion, and thus made me one with every other thinker on the earth. It is a sore unity. Thank you for the privilege, even if it should be counterfeit.

If you would do one more kindness: take me with you. Take as many from this house as you deem trustworthy, for your pilgrimage in any direction will require fidelity of numbers. This boy, innocent as I claim him, will be pursued. Any sane mind here is in gratitude to whatever gift you carry in that basinet, and even if I were still in mean fate, I would wish the best for a child. Will you let me guide you to that southerly island printing press?

Click here for Part 3.