Jeremy

The philosopher Nietzsche once said, “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything”. Clearly the staff in charge of The Hexagon had never heard this quote, since a large portion of the North-North-Easterly wing was used as a magnificent chapel.

For many years the gentleman who ran the chapel was a man named Father Jeremy. Jeremy was a man who could not look more like a priest if he tried; he always wore a wide brimmed hat and a long clerical robe. His eyes were always hidden behind thick, bottle-bottom glasses, and his pale, bony face looked like it had been chiselled into a permanent frown.

Father Jeremy acted like a man of the cloth, too. Specifically, he acted like the stereotypical ‘Angry preacher man’ that you might see on TV. Whenever he preached it was always about hellfire and brimstone, and if you enjoyed something that he thought was wrong then by god he had no qualms with letting you know.

Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of Jeremy’s personality was that he did not have the common courtesy to keep his pious lunacy confined within The Hexagon’s walls. No, he convinced himself that he could do a much better job of spreading the good word if he took his preaching into the church in the middle of town. And onto our streets. And into our homes.

I did not put much stock in the old man’s ramblings. In fact, I think that is how I have managed to stay comparatively sane while surrounded by lunatics. Mother, however, was behind the father’s teachings one hundred percent, and regularly invited him over for religious guidance.

Given the frequency with which el padre visited our house I was forced to listen to more of his incessant droning than any one person reasonably should. Every time he visited he would remind me over and over again that I was filled with sin and succumbing to terrible vices, and that I had best change my ways lest I end up in the lake of fire.

Jeremy spent most of his time telling the townsfolk just how wicked and sinful they were, both during his sermons and during home visits. Occasionally, though, he would stop trying to run our lives and speak of other religious matters. One of the topics he visited the most was that of angels.

He talked about guardian angels; ethereal beings that watch over certain people or places to make sure good people are kept safe. He also talked about another rank in the celestial army – Assailing angels.

Father Jeremy told us that both kinds of angel exist to keep the world a better place; they merely had a different modus operandi to one another. That is, while guardian angels assisted the good, assailing angels did just the opposite and sought out the wicked, punishing them for their misdeeds. He made it clear that assailing angels were not bad or malicious entities, not at all. You see, while their behaviour would be considered barbaric by human standards, they are angels who only punish people who truly deserve it.

According to the minister, the way it works is like this: Everybody has an angelic counterpart somewhere in the world and every time a person does something bad their angel takes a step closer. Whether you commit a minor sin like taking the last cookie or a major crime like murder, each wrongdoing will bring your enforcer one step closer. Tim would always end his story here and finish with, “And when they catch up to you? Boy, I tell you what!”

I was, and indeed still am, convinced that the “I tell you what” angle was merely the old man’s way of ending a fairy tale without actually ending it. To me it was a religious version of, “But it was all a dream.” I was so convinced that the reverend was spouting nonsense that I attempted to trip him up by asking him to continue his story. Specifically, I asked him what would happen if my assailing angel ever caught up with me.

He told me that my angel would kill me. If I continued staying out past curfew or kept neglecting to tidy my room, my angel would find me and end my life as punishment for my vile, wicked misdeeds.

It would be nice if he had finished his story with my unjust demise and left it at that. But, like many preachers, Jeremy was as much a showman as he was a clergyman and he continued his tale.

He told me that, when my angel caught up with me, she would wrap her hands around my throat and push her thumbs up under my chin. The grip would be gentle at first, so soft I would barely notice it, but with every additional sin I committed the grip would get tighter. If I continued to commit heinous misdeeds then the grip would get so tight that it would crush my throat and I would asphyxiate. And it would serve me right for being such a wicked, sinful little child.

As if things were not bad enough, Jeremy capped the whole story off by saying there was no way to undo the strangling. I could stop doing bad things, of course, but there was nothing I could do to stop my heavenly stalker from putting her hands around my throat and choking the life out of me. I would be a marked sinner the rest of my days and everyone who met me would know it.

Over the years Father Jeremy told this story time and time again. With each retelling, however, my punishment became steadily more severe. The basic principle remained the same, of course, but the way in which it would be executed became more prolonged and more brutal.

I think Tim was trying to scare me, and indeed everyone else, into believing him. Really, though, the scariest part of Tim’s stories was the voice he used to deliver them. He was a smoker, you see. At least, I used to think he was, given that he had a smokers voice; a deep, scratchy voice that was a mere semblance of what he used to sound like.

As the years went on and his stories became more and more farfetched his voice became worse and worse. His once scratchy voice became more strained and painful as he got older. Eventually it sounded like he had to painfully force each word out as it came.

Mercifully, both for his voice and my sanity, Father Jeremy died some years ago when he choked on a fish bone. Ordinarily this would be the end of my tale, but this time we have one additional point of note. When the surgeons came to harvest Father Jeremy’s organs, his lungs were undamaged. In fact, they were in such pristine condition they went to a young man a few states over as soon as they were ready for transportation.

Apparently I was wrong when I said Father Jeremy had a smokers voice; the man had never lit up in his entire life. So if it was not his lungs making his voice rasp I wonder what was. But what do I care? He was nothing but a crazy old man who tried to control people with crippling fear, so I tend not to think about him too much. And neither should you.