<span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 13pt;">Pardon me for breaking the precedent that I have established, but one cannot maintain a discourse on husk references indefinitely; instead, I shall begin this entry with a simple description of my current surroundings (thought I hope not to stray too far from dies into diurnus).<br/><br/>I sit with one leg crossed over the other, leaning back in my stone seat atop the balcony abutting my bedchamber. Though stone is not at all comfortable, its stark, Spartan nature appeals to my ascetic sense of refraining from the use of any frivolous accoutrements. I must also admit to a more practical reason for choosing to use this rigid slab for a seat: stone cannot blow away in the storms that so often scour the lake that my asylum inhabits the shore of. Even now, Borea and his oread bride Oreithyia’s consummate exertions send gales of wind howling down from the North. Dark clouds, pregnant with pent-up moisture, roll slowly in behind them, carried in the wind’s wake. As I watch, the birds and beasts of the surrounding woods flee the coming onslaught. Bereft of the sun’s comforting rays, they run to hide away in even deeper darkness; obviously, Aesop was mistaken.<br/><br/>Ah, Aesop, just a drop in the sea of Classical brilliance. His Fables have been downgraded to nothing more than mere children’s stories, meant to impart their morals upon our offspring, yet when those children reach adulthood, they think of his stories as a childhood memory, a simple child’s tale; they see them not a source of valuable lessons, not a source of insight into how to lead your life as Aesop meant them to be. We smile vaguely at the half-remembered stories, but the morals within them are entirely forgotten by the time we reach maturity.<br/><br/>The same can be said of countless Biblical passages. Daniel and the lions’ den, Joseph and the coat of many colors, Noah’s Ark, Moses and the Ten Commandments, Pharaoh and the Ten Plaques, even Adam and Eve—past cultures and societies treated these and other stories with reverence, respect, and high regard for their spiritual resonance; now, we make asinine songs and animated tripe that trivializes the true impact and meaning of the ancient experiences recounted in scripture. A sort of unintentional iconoclasm is taking place under our noses, and we hardly even realize it. Half of the Old Testament is sneered at and scorned for being an outdated, rigidly strict throwback of an extinct patriarchal society that flourished on the enforcement of arcane orthodox rules, and the other half has been relegated to the fare of absurd cartoon programs for children. The most recent blasphemy I have seen involved anthropomorphic legumes singing and dancing in a terribly misguided attempt to convey the Word of our Lord to a clutch of ADHD-ridden brats whose brains have been addled by the overabundant lack of proper parenting. <br/><br/>With such garbage passing for spiritual enrichment, it is no wonder that so many of my patients are on the young end of the age spectrum. The girl I met with last week, for instance—she was barely twenty three years of age, yet the iniquity within her could easily rival that of any Midianite; however, just as the children of Moses triumphed over the children of Midian, so too have I triumphed over this witch, Ciarra, by name. As with the patient I described last time, she turned to seduction in an attempt to escape her fate; unlike the previous patient, however, she then turned to bribery, mockery, and finally mania. Her fiery hair seemed to be a physical manifestation of her fiery temperament. <br/><br/>Like a modern day Circe, she tried to transform me into chauvinistic swine with her seductive wiles, yet I resisted her ensorcellment of my flesh and bested her finally with the sharp end of a hypodermic needle. As my thumb slowly forced down the plunger, filling her with a Chloral Hydrate/Anxiolytic Mood Stabilizer compound, I once again succumbed to the urge to carry out God’s Justice here in the mortal realm.<br/><br/>Now, as her wasted, withered body wheezes beside me on the balcony, desperately trying to stave of its final death rattle yet despondent in its futility, I cannot decide to whom this loathing I feel is directed. The obvious answer would be towards her for her earlier harlotry, bribery, blasphemy, and violence and her present pathetic state; on the other hand, deep within my soul, I somehow feel as though my actions were ignoble as well. Why else would I feel compelled to detail them in this growing collection of confessions?<br/><br/>No matter. Thought I feel no pity for this wretch, I shall nonetheless grant her a pittance of mercy. The Lord would do no less, so it is only fitting. <br/><br/>The storm arrives. The rain on my face feels refreshingly smooth; the thunder in the sky strikes fear into the dark heart of Ciarra. Fitting, is it not? I often feel that names have an intrinsic influence over how we develop. In Irish, Ciarra means “dark”. As she was named, so has she become. I shall now deliver her to her namesake: the swirling pitch black waters that roil so many stories below my balcony. I see now that God has sent this storm to wash away the sin that weighs so heavily on my mind, my soul.<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>Her body, broken on the rocks below, swept away in the undertow, engulfed for eternity by the storm, carried under to rot with the rest of her ilk. The Lord may work in mysterious ways, but his methods were startlingly literal today. The storm truly has washed away my sin- her dying body, now a corpse I suppose. <br/>Rest well Ciarra, rest well. </span><br/></span><br/><br/><div style="text-align: right;"> <span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Vivaldi;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 21pt;">Ignatius</span></span></div>