As many of you know by now, I am a part of the Choate Road community. It’s a rewarding experience. One of the perks of working on a site such as CR is the incredibly entertaining forum, also known as The Pub. Our forum members are like a box of frisky marmosets, always eager to interact and participate in a variety of bizarre – and often obscene – tomfooleries.
One popular thread in the forum is the Time Bomb question. It’s simple: someone asks you a question of their choosing, you answer then pose a question to a different forum member. (The catch is you’re supposed to reply within 24 hours, or certain destruction befalls the earth. We’re all ghosts now, by the way!) Sounds easy, right?
Oh you insolent monkey.
Time Bomb questions are rarely that simple. Come on, you’re dealing with a community of twisted horror writers, most of which are just as smart ass as me… do YOU think the questions would be that easy?
What you are about to encounter is my response to the latest Time Bomb question. It is an easy question to answer only because it is TRUE. And because the experience was so harrowing, I had to break it into parts.
My friends, lock your windows and doors, but do not turn off your lights. Do not attempt to read this if you are skittish or afraid of sharks.
Welcome to my nightmare…
PART 1
I knew something was wrong when I came home to find my ferret Azrael lounging on a chaise. Around his fuzzy neck was an abnormally large pendant. Judging from his pose and the strangely seductive candle lighting, I realized he was re-enacting Rose, from the movie Titanic.
But I don’t own a chaise. It was then I knew my ferret was possessed by demons.
It was no laughing matter. So after I got up off the floor and wiped the tears from my eyes, I called the local parishioner. Once he finally stopped laughing, he told me there was only one man certifiable enough to help me.
Father Prescott Williams.
I found him at the Sisters of the Immaculate Sanctus Sanctus Sanitarium, which if I’m not mistaken, translates to the Sisters of the Severed Brain Stem… or something like that. When I asked for Father Williams the nuns gasped, genuflected, then scurried away like panicked penguins. Moments later they returned with a young priest.
“Father Williams?”
He giggled in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, then said, “Hell to the no!” With a charismatic clap-clap above his head, he summoned more penguins, er, nuns to escort me to the Holy Cafeterium. And there, amidst a table of lunatics and obsessive compulsives, sat Father Prescott Williams.
He looked up from his plate of kale, and exclaimed, “This dish is so planty!”
I leaned towards one of the penguins and whispered, “He’s the priest here, right?”
“Oh no,” the nun said, “he’s a patient. He was committed after the ‘Poodle Incident’.” She whispered that last part like it was some big secretive secret. I considered my poor ferret. Was he really that bad off that I needed some weirdo throwing poorly prepared vegetables at him?
No.
Formulating a believable story, I excused myself. “Holy shit!” (I thought they’d appreciate the reverence.) “I left the faucet running and there are poodles… I mean, puddles all over my floor!” Father Pressie’s face brightened at the mention of poodles and he started to stand, but a couple stern penguins pushed him back down. I couldn’t remember the proper exit in the presence of church officials, so I did a quick Vogue maneuver and courtesied before leaving the cafeterium.
I’m not a complete moron, so I looked up the information I needed on Google. There is not an incredible number of sites with helpful ferret exorcism rites. In fact, most of the links led to pages of really cute fuzzies doing all sorts of inappropriate deeds, and I got lost in their mustelid hi-jinks. I would have completely forgotten my mission had Azrael not decided to jump on the desk and pole dance with my lamp. There are moves ferrets are just not meant to do, so when my fuzzie did a flawless shimmy half-step with a tango cha-cha, I remembered my concern.
Finally I found a site that provided extensive instructions on proper ferret care and exorcism. In between sections pertaining to bathing and ear wax removal was the complete 12 step program to removing fleas and demons. It surprised me that the process served such a two-fold purpose. “Cool,” I said aloud to myself for no good reason, “maybe I’ll exorcise all the ferrets while I’m at it!”
I printed the instructions and began to gather supplies. Some of it was self-explanatory: holy water, a crucifix, a Bible. But then there were more exact necessities, such as a large tub full of Catholic long grain uncooked rice, and a blessed dryer tube smudged with sage. Now, I’m no expert on religious crap, but I can use my infinitesimal powers of deduction to figure out the gray areas. I stopped by the grocery store and picked up a sack of rice and a jar of dried ground sage. Next stop was the hardware store, where I bought the dryer tube. Not far from the house is a church, and there I placed the bag of rice in a Confessional booth. By the time I finished rubbing sage all over the tube, the rice was good and Catholicized. I had an empty soda bottle in my pocket, which I filled with Holy Water before heading home.
First step was to identify the possible cause and/or source of possession. That was easy enough. I’d received a package in the mail from a friend who attempted to send me a homeless ferret and failed to properly ventilate the box. As upsetting as the discovery of the poor dead ferret had been, I couldn’t be mad at my friend. He’d been beaten one too many times in the head with a soggy tentacle. But as a result of his miscalculations, the spirit of a very angry ferret leaped into Azreal’s body as he climbed into the box for a nap. Cause and source identified, I went in search of my Azzy.
“Come on out, you feisty fiend from hell! I’ve got a bag of Spicy Doritos and a shiny thing with your name on it!”
From under the sofa, I heard the dooks of a thousand ferrets.
(To be continued…)
