A Visit From The Devil (Part 2)

As he went and left the room, I felt emptiness. Was he filling a gap in my soul? He was raising real questions. Questions I didn't dare to ask. Ten days and the guest didn't show up. I was waiting for him like a soldier's wife, maybe just because I wanted to talk about my illness to someone who could understand it. I told humans about it but they didn't get it. Humans cannot bear living with a person who talks à tout propos about her illusionary issues.

The guest finally came the following day.

“I am back. I had to keep an eye on some of my work, sorry for being late. I wanted to make some of your neighbors get involved in one of my perplexing conversations, but it seems like they don't understand and refuse to listen to my daring questions”. I couldn't tell him that I didn't miss him because I did, and I was sitting in the corner looking at him and waiting for his first words.
“So, you look pale, are you sick?” He said.
“No.” I replied.
“Seems like you didn't leave this garret for too long.”
“Right, I didn't. I was here thinking about our last meeting, and the questions you asked. I couldn't afford a clear answer.”
“The inflection point?” He exclaimed.
“Yes. It turns out I was making up stories. There was no inflec...”
“I know you are making it up now, not the other time” he interrupted me abruptly, “you can tell me when the straight path started wandering, I am listening.”
“I told you I fell one day of July. And that was the beginning of a sickness journey, and I was alone in the trip, I had series of illnesses... Euh! Mental ones! I could not concentrate anymore on my daily life, and I went to work a mess. I lived two infernal years. The doctors said that they saw fear in my eyes, I wasn't afraid of anything though. Two years! Do you imagine what two years are in a human being's life. I don't know how long do you live, but we human beings have a short lifespan. I couldn't work as I did before, I struggled to go to work and hid what I was suffering from, but beasts do not feel the prey when it is sick, they devour it and savor each morsel of it. Oh! I just have been unjust to beasts. People are worse. I tried to live a normal life but people started to doubt me as I was acting in weird manners and talking extensively about anything that my friends bring into discussion or when there is nothing on the table I had intensive intra-personal communication sessions. That was what I endured for two years. I started to write just after my sickness genesis. I wrote some papers where I described some of my sufferings, it helped me a lot, I found relief in expressing myself for the first time. It happened that in the last four months of the two years, work became tougher and I was not able to object or to say that I couldn't go on although the doctors made it clear to me and told me that I should stop working at least for a while till things came back to normal. I was working like a sewing machine, spent my days working till night and had been wide awake when people were snoring beside me, and when I was finally getting the chance to close my eyes, I was seeing nightmares. People couldn't understand it, people are worse I said..”
He interrupted again, struck by some idea that came all of a sudden into his malevolent mind: “You have just brought to my memories a famous quote of one of my favorite human beings, I love a lot of human beings even the most religious ones. One of the persons I liked the most is Darwin who concluded in The Descent of Man: “But we are not here concerned with hopes and fears, only with truth. We must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which he feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest creature, with his Godlike intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system -with all these exalted powers- man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.””
“I don't know if our origin is bestial. I don't want you to start those kind of philosophical debates. I know nothing about them but what I have been taught. Can you please listen and not interrupt me again?”
“Sure”, he said smiling at me as if he was amused by my story.
“And guess what? After the two years, things got exacerbated, I fell again. At this time, I couldn't carry on. Halt! I stopped working. I could no longer focus on anything. I could no longer hide my issues. Listen! I won't carry on, leave the rest for another session, say it is a respect for my current emotional state.”
“But what happened after that? Are you still suffering?”
“I told you to cut it here. I promise I will carry on when my feelings get back to normal”
“I understand tha...”
“No seriously, you do not understand. Leave me be.”