"DEMON IN THE ROUGH"

(The passage below is taken from Andy Nowicki's new publication, RAVAGES OF THE "ROUGH BEAST," now available on Kindle, and in paperback.)

I write with the consciousness of a man who strongly suspects he has acquired a demon.

While not feeling himself to be overtly possessed by said demon, your faithful interlocutor nevertheless struggles to comprehend his current psychic state in absence of rhetorical recourse to citation of the doings of the denizens of the infernal realm.

I am not possessed, I don’t think. Nothing unknown has invaded my body or breached the borders of my consciousness. Still, my mind is demon-haunted, and my heart is devil-bedeviled. An infernal element has entered my interior line of vision, and I can’t seem to avoid glimpsing him; he is always in front of me, though often merely in my peripherals. At times I can forget that he is even there, but then, with a wash of dread, I remember him again.

And once I recall him, there he is before me again.

Your faithful interlocutor is hardly a scholar of demonology. At one point, he would even have doubted the actual, non-metaphorical existence of entities known as demons, devils, or ghouls. Yet now he has discovered that in a sense it scarcely matters if the entity which oppresses his senses is literal or figurative. It is no less real, either way.

I am thus left with the conviction of being in the state known as “demon-oppressed.” No hell-spawned pest has taken me over, yet something wicked clings to me at all times, from which I am unable to break free.

Of course, demonic oppression, as commonly understood, shares many characteristics in common with what those in the medical field would call “depression” or “anxiety.” There is an ever-palpable conviction of dread, worry, and sadness. And there is a perpetual overload of empathic awareness. Now empathy is a gift, properly belonging to a well-functioning human being, but demons can turn blessings into curses: thus it at times becomes difficult to avoid fixating upon the pain, heartbreak, or suffering endured by others.

This seeming curse, after serving its cursed role, may indeed loop around and again transform into the blessing it was first intended to be, thanks to the gracious intervention of Heaven. Perpetual empathy in the face of tragedy can lead a man into a debilitating mental state, but it can also shake that same man out of the stupor of his ignorant complacency.

So I suppose (and I am only realizing this now), it is unclear to me if my demon is a demon at all, but rather a chastening angel, scourging my consciousness with horrors which are ultimately designed, not to debilitate, but instead to rouse me to action.

Still: would an angel, even a chastening angel, be so relentless? If God wants joy for the creatures that He has fashioned in His image and likeness, would he send a such a spirit which now seems to find fiendish delight in the act of dunking me headfirst into horror?

Moreover, like St. Paul (though unlike him in that I am in no sense saintly), I have received a “thorn in the flesh,” one which will not depart, one which serves as its own kind of reminder of that which I cannot forget.

 Perhaps God is allowing me to suffer with these interior depredations, which may indeed be demonic in origin, in order to create within me a cleaner heart and a more properly-oriented spirit. Perhaps even demons can be utilized, against their own infernal wills, to accomplish just and divine ends. God grant that it may be so!

The demon which grips my consciousness, if demon it be, whether literal or proverbial, does not oppress me only. Your faithful interlocutor feels quite keenly that he is not merely a voice crying in a wilderness of indifference; rather, the demon which attacks him now is of the same sort as his kin mentioned with respect to the possessed Gerasene: “My name is Legion, for we are many.”

Yet this very multiplicity of entities has but one purpose: the dissolution of harmony, order, reason, joy, and hope in our world. This legion of demons wishes to erase these sweet, harmonious aspects of existence—and all others which savor of Heaven and right living, and to replace them with a cacophony of chaos and an acrimonious atmosphere of debilitation and despair.

And in our age, they have made advancements towards this goal with one particularly devastating all-out crusade against one particular virtue: chastity. Everything else has followed forth from this one concerted and organized attack upon this most vulnerable of human pressure points. Restraint has been eroded, and Hell has been unleashed.