Orsday Programming April 19 2025
brief, synopsis, bacteria, sunlight
“Does the story end like that?” was what Asmodeus said as I finished—she was disappointed, I knew, having retreated back to the depths of the closet with her presence being none more than mold again; I’d myself felt none more than mildew.
“It ends like that, it was all I had time to prepare.”
“All you had time to prepare.”
“All I had time to prepare,” it was too tiring to speak much more and my body had gone too stiff by now; how many weeks it had been since the aluminum shielding peeled and the darkness that had once gathered now began to groan. The story was being told and everything had been breaking under the sun that crept it—I think we both had felt that, even then; even now.
“You airy thing; did you really imagine to appease me with a likening in the closet? To use my words and to allude and allude. These are all just piecemeals of faith; there is nothing to gleam about greater lessoning under a ‘bacterial will’ from some airy fiction without point or purpose. Faith was lost on you, will was lost on you; did you fancy yourself a throat for Underground—the imagination of Underground? How much time spent on seeking to entertain me at expense of directing prayer to Underground? Do you not see how brittle the silence that had once been so grand and heavy within this cloister of ours has now become, this once sacred place has become loud with anorexia with only two last heaving organs viciously wrecking themselves apart of any last shred of fat and the delusion of one (you being a liver fooled to be a brain) spreading fever to the other. Speak plain and of meaning of bacteria, of will, of etiquette. Waste not the muscle any further you louse. Speak or pray in quiet and alm to this sun-bleached room what last silent currency you have.”
“All true, dear brethren; I am not a good ear to Underground and the etiquette within me may have wildly begun to unspun from fever already; all left is the terminal whine of bacteria sinking to a lowest frequency baked away by sun; ate away by the gnats in sun.”
The closet glowered and spoke nothing further to me, only I had a sense of the pulpy darkness retreating further in as a blade of sun edged itself deeper into the niche. My body offered no more shade to the closet.
“All true, my sister; at best I am a splinter of the shepherds hand or rib of a stray lamb gone under the morass. I did wish to speak a lesson hidden away about bacteria. How it affects and seeps through the topsoils into a child porous enough to receive it; how the world itself shifts to make sense of this pollution in slight ways; how bacteria lives outside and yet can flourish inside. My vanity was that I did wish to entertain you. True, at the cost of prayer and at obedience; my speaking itself breaks the silence which is more pure than any word and more grand than any communication. I imagine at times a church of us idiots as we had been over at the Adventist ruins, done away with the poisons of Adventist remnants and good Floridian culture or whatever cheer had swept in from the Caribbean members of our congregation; we each speak without emptiness lacing our language. The emptiness from masking intent so the brain is laid bare at the feet of another and with it, exposing the nape of each insect that makes its home in our scalps—and, greater than that: a doing away with communication. The grand silence as you speak. The quiet of our lady underground from where we are made true brethren splintered from her hand. With each word we speak, we lose more molecules to the insects; our breath itself its own heartbeat limited in number before our scant glisten spirit is finally supped away by flies of loving grace. I speak, and speak, and become less, and less. We each may be completely gone, dear sister, with that splinter of ours being ate away by connective intelligence and now just prattle together under their control, carcasses unaware; I driven to entertain, you driven to chide.”
“Some sense is left.”
“Some sense is left, Asmodeus.”
The niche in the closet filled with white light and laid open, and quiet.
“Orcus, Underground, portraits, angels, demons, church, Adventists, left-handed dummies and right-handed morons; it’s all just dirt suspended in brine, Asmodeus. Will you hear more of my story?”
The niche in the closet flattened under the sunlight, its shadows and features smoothed away to just a white plain pushed into the wall, with nothing in it except a crisp breath of air conditioning that kicked on and ran through the home, being felt by nothing in particular.
this article is part 14 of the [Asmodeus and Glassware] series found on the Concordance