okay but hear me out, demonic possession would be a really good diagnostic tool. Especially for illnesses like fibromyalgia that are hard to test for and have “subjective” symptoms (like, you can’t externally measure pain and fatigue, and someone who’s had it all their life won’t always know it’s not normal.) You just draw a nice pentagon, set up all the protective candles, and summon a demon into the patient’s body and ask them the sacred Questions Three, which are “okay Demon Todd how bad is it in there,” “where are the main places that hurt more than the last thirty humans you possessed” and “got any wisdom to share?” and then you give Todd a beer and politely excise him from this material plane and start drafting your new treatment plan.
tell me more of your sorcery hospital.
it’s actually a diagnostic clinic only because last time they tried an innovative treatment it blew a hole in the ceiling and all the streetlights on Market Street glowed green for two weeks and when that kind of thing happens people with clipboards and crucifixes start to show up and poke around in your cupboards and ask what all the pentagrams are for
“IMPUDENT MORTALS, YOU HAVE SOWN THE SEEDS OF YOUR OWN UNDOING! YOU HAVE GIFTED A VESSEL UNTO ME, THE – oof, sweet Iblis, that’s tender.”
“Is it a sharp pain or a dull pain, Shadowlord?”
“It feels like a muscle pain, but it also kinda doesn’t? It definitely gets worse when I move the vessel’s shoulder.”
“it’s simple really- care for me and you will have me, abundant and bright. sing to me and i will compose an orchestra of colors for you. touch me gently, with good intent, and i will never prick you with sad thorns. love me and i will love you in return.” that is what the garden said to me when i was lost and unfeeling. i can tell you now that she is my favorite little world, and she is beautiful.
The ice cream truck arrives, right on schedule, at 2 AM, the third Friday of the month.
You sigh, rolling out of bed to look out the window and watch. And to listen.
The ice cream truck plays its usual haunting melody, parked outside your apartment. But what you strain to hear, feeling as though your ears are on tiptoes trying to make it out, are the wishes.
Coming from all around the neighborhood, children are running through the streets as fast as they’re able, forming an impatient line by the ice cream man’s window.
At the front of the line is a boy of perhaps 5. He excitedly wishes for a puppy, then hands the ice cream man a baseball card. Then he skips off down the starlit street, a smile on his face.
After he leaves, a girl, maybe 12, and her younger brother approach the ice cream man. The girl whispers something nervously, then hands the ice cream man a Valentine. You smile. You’ve seen this before. Children wishing for their crushes to like them. The ice cream man nods and accepts the card. The younger brother doesn’t wish for anything; he just wants to say hello. The ice cream man ruffles his hair and sends him on his way.
The last wish of the night, a teenage girl, self-conscious in the wake of the children. She approaches the window of the truck.
“I just want my mom to wake up tomorrow,” she manages. She throws coins on the counter and begins sobbing.
“The payment has to be something important to you, miss,” says the ice cream man, gently. The girl says nothing, still sobbing. The ice cream man nods, then closes his window and drives off into the twilight.
You’ve never seen a single wish given to the ice cream man actually come true. That’s why you don’t go down there much. But the children, the children.
ifesbob 