Forget Who You Are

"Imitators, behold!" bellowed the strange man. He was mustached and wearing a fancy, deep-purple top-hat that was coated with mercury. He held up an unknown object under a bright red, silk blanket, reflecting devilish light over the whole procession.

The audience shifted in their seats, glancing for expressions that were anything but confused. There was none in the building. They continued to watch without looking into the stranger's eyes.

"Have any of you...say...tried to break apart from this sick little town? Have any of you begun the process that will one day consume the entire world?" the little man asked. He watched with hungry eyes for a flinch from the audience. "Hmm... have folks ever heard of the saying- oh, never mind. Let's just get to the point." His hairy upper lip quivered as he spoke these last words.

He stretched out his arms in a semi-circle, as if displaying a magic trick. Then he fluidly lifted his hand to remove the silk from the object in his right hand. The crowd gasped and some cried out. Their eyes bugged out of their sockets and they tried to contain their stomach acid, for it was unruly to release bodily fluids in a holy place.

"This here is a man who did not follow his own wants, his needs. He did not do what he liked, therefore, he did this to himself," the man held the scraggly hair of the priest's head in anger,"And after declaring that, I'm sure he's submerged in more peace than any of you would ever be. Am I right?"

The audience slowly turned into drugged mice, motionless in their pews, yet panicked and bustling in place. They whispered to each other without removing their eyes from the man on the platform, fearing his following actions. Coughing echoed from the back of the balcony, silencing the thoughts of the naive vermin.

A loud bang sounded in the back of the church. The massive main doors were flung open behind the pews and the man vanished from the platform. Suddenly a loud hissing came from the behind the pews again. The audience turned and did not see the source of the violent hissing.

One man rose and ran towards the noise. Reluctantly, the rest of the men got up from their seats and followed him. A few women got up after the men impatiently.

"Oh, good God!" a man shrieked in horror. The mass turned toward the direction of his observation. Their eyes traveled towards the font in the lobby of the holy house and several of them walked back into the main room without a sound. The priests's head floated in the font, bubbling where it made contact with the holy water.

It hissed more violently now, sputtering some water onto the dumbfounded church-goers. They screamed and fell to their knees, crying out for their lives. They screamed out verses of the Bible and shut their eyes, this time on all fours. The other ones ran back into the main room yelling unintelligible gibberish left and right.

Soon, the people of the church decided that it would be safer to leave the holy house and retreat to their homes to forget all they had witnessed. When the last person walked out of the church, the volume of the hissing declined. Then, it stopped.

"Ahem."

The man with the top hat appeared in the lobby. He grabbed the hair of the priest's head from the font and observed the water.

"Hm," the man responded to his findings. The holy water did not contain any signs of blood and the bubbles had all disappeared.

The holy water was clearer than it had ever been.