Lowerarchy among the very cinders of Hell, one’s
perspective is skewed. I must tell you the backstory
of my battle to capture the soul of a certain young
moron in England, in the hopes that either you
or Slubgob will change your minds and stop this
asinine charade of sending
me
here for “Incompetent
Temptation.”
Apparently you did not consider my first assignment
important enough to offer any constructive criticism
during the entire childhood of the patient I was
dealing with. Perhaps you are too good to get your
claws dirty. I attempted, using the standard parade-
ground method of transforming into an angel of
light, to teach him hygienic goodness. Remember
how I properly adjusted the household. Uncle was
a modern archeologist, dry as the bones he studied.
Grandpapa coveted, collected, and installed modern
conveniences until the day of his most unfortunate
attempt to light a gasolier with his pipe. It’s not
often we get them down on our end pre-cooked.
Mum, that dear delicate swine, was a sweet sort of
blend between Diocletian and Queen Victoria, and
governess Lisette set a pious example to the young
lad under her charge with her Balzac bound in her
hand-missal. But my best triumph was a few slight
suggestions to the correct tempters regarding the
patient’s father. Our own variety of domesticity had
been established at last, fulfilling the ideas of some
Down Here regarding the home as a domestic hell.
Dear ol’ Dad, that great tearful pomposity in tweeds,
was an Aesthete in the school of his era, retaining
the philosophy of the Green Carnation into the
midst of the patient’s childhood during the jazz age.
Dogmatizing about art for art’s sake and carrying
out the slightest tasks in a Wagnerian manner, Papa
worked perfectly to stifle the artistic sentiments,
and from there the religious tendencies, of the
patient proper. It appeared to work well enough—
the religious behaviors that started the patient’s
downfall were at least delayed twenty-five years. You
remember his mother well.
The last missive from Glubose said that she was safe
in Our Father’s House, and that she was kept in the
natural history department of the Training College
as a curiosity of gluttony. Her violent vegetarianism
and the husband’s diligent decadence left the
patient in a perfect state of confusion. I hope you
recognize how advantageous this was, and give
credit that I was able to do it on my own.
In one of your early letters you acknowledged
that he did not think of doctrines as true or false,
but in jingling jargon such as academic, practical,
ruthless, conventional. That also was my doing.
Argument merely entered in as an antidote against
some perhaps inconvenient behavior into which
he was falling, as he became more interested
in his own chain of reasoning. The works of the
Philological Arm have been invaluable in diluting
truth and falsehood in the humans’ perception, but
perhaps you spent too much time in their office.
The problem with humans is that they naturally
go through a phase of ‘reasoning,’ as part of that
useless hardwiring that the Enemy rigged them
with. You seem to have forgotten that it is part of
our job description to twist these things to our own
purposes. I simply wanted him to reason his way
out of the Church, and planned to get him thinking
that it could not be proved. (He always did respect
science anyway.) You have been very stupid to have
forgotten the triumphs of the Age of Enlightenment.
Oh, I realize you and your behind-the-scenes
scheming have stirred up some major hot water for
me after that debacle with the patient’s Christianity.
How ignorant and juvenile of you to deluge me with
your blandishments about a Religious Phase. Quit
burying your head in the coals and realize that, even
when it is not a phase, it can be manipulated to a
more advantageous end. You forgot your own advice
to me, that Spiritual Pride was an easy vice to get
a Christian started in. Why not allow me to have
continued warping his Christianity to a blend of that
nasty faith and one of the more productive Causes
I was working him into? He was developing mental
disorders as a result of the rather efficient bombing
the German humans were doing. I could have easily
had him a Christian Pacifist. You seem to have
forgotten that the quality of a fallen Christian is
7
BAYLEY BULLETIN, SEP-NOV 2016
