“You are as useless as a nun’s clitoris!” the young woman spat at me, her eyes rolling up in her head. Or, rather, it was the voice of one of the town demons who now possessed her body, seizing it into luridly erotic poses. There need not be any extended question-and-answer session. I already knew who this must be.
“Rhyx Achoneoth, I command you to leave this young woman’s body!”
A stream of vomit exited her mouth and I had to wrench my gaze towards the ceiling to avoid it entering my own. Even so, it dripped down my shirt-front and waistcoat like a green-brown gruel.
“What’s your hurry?” Rhyx’s gravelly voice asked. “Straight to my bloody name? What’s that all about?” This reply was festooned with a spray of additional vomit droplets.
“Didn’t I just exorcise you from young Morris, the ploughman’s son, three days ago?”
“Oh, no, guv. It must’ve been longer than… I mean, no. That must have been Ornias.”
That was the problem with working as an exorcist out in the sticks. When I did my internship in London, you could go for over a year without running into the same demon. Here, it was more like being a slumlord, evicting the same squatters from the same bodies, week after week, month after month, year after year.
“Then why was it your name that compelled him from Morris’s body?”
“He must’ve misheard you, guv. Ornias must be going deaf. He’s over forty-thousand years old, you know.”
“Well, you’re not deaf, Rhyx, and you have clearly understood the request to vacate this young woman’s body.”
“Please, governor! Just a few more days.”
“No. You’ve done enough harm already. Do you know how long it’s going to take me to launder these clothes? Why should I let you possess her body for a moment longer?”
“Because…” his voice broke. “Because she’s beautiful and… and when I’m inside her… I feel beautiful.” He then made the cat-retching sounds of demonic sobbing.
“Don’t cry.” The sound of it made me want to retch. “If you leave her, the family has promised me payment of a guinea. I will do what I promised I would never do and allow you to possess me, go down to the bar and buy yourself half a guinea’s worth of ale. At the stroke of midnight, you will return to the depths of Hell and I don’t want to see you again for at least a week. Is it a bargain?”
“You would allow me… Inside of you?”
“We’ll just have a couple of drinks and it’ll just be for one night. It’s important you understand that or I’ll just evict you the old-fashioned way right now.”
“All right, guv’nor, you’re on, but I ‘ave just one small condition.”
“Very well. What is it?”
“Could you please wash up and change before I come aboard? It’s just that if I’m going straight to Hell after midnight, I don’t want to go smelling like this.”
Literature in Small Doses 