The Exorcism

It was homemade and primitive, like pulling a tooth with a string and a slamming door, like taking out an appendix by kerosene light where dogs wandered in and out the dirt-floored room. Nothing for the pain that everyone wanted to examine, the twisted heart they thought they could shout back into place. Moaning and fluttering their fleshy hands on the wind, on the wail of the soul possessed, they certified her in a manner Inquisitional, frantic when she held to the grip of darkness, grimly determined to wait the thing out, something learned from movie sheriffs, white hats ghostly in the moonlight. When she would not answer (though they conjured her by heaven and by the all mighty names they knew), they laid hands on her and shouted down the well of her eyes. Many tongues twisted in their mouths when she went, leaving behind only the smallest tooth of wickedness.