Damned: The Intimate Story of a Girl

by E. S. Dorrance

“The only real value of a story is its effect upon yourself,” he said. “I must have an interval in which to judge the worth of yours.”

At the time Dolores felt relieved, although he had not confused her with the interruptions and insistence of the previous séance. He had allowed her to tell her story her own way, swiftly and simply, and showed a positive gravity of attention over the ecclesiastic incidents.

Not until the next night came and went without the call for a third installment, did she suspect that he had been merely bored.

When a second night passed with the same significant omission and, after that, a third, fear possessed her.

Had she, then, fallen short of his expectations? Had she done what he had warned her not to do—had she failed?

She took to staying in her chamber and hoping for his summons more than previously she had dreaded it. Over her babe she would hover the hours away, brooding rather than rejoicing at each cooed assurance that the infant-shade was content. Would the price of the respite be paid in part by the blameless soul of her soul?

To her here, through the guarded gossip of the proud Adeline, came reports of a direful activity on the part of the King. Never had he been more exacting, more merciless in his reversal of punishment for reward. His disposition of that first evening during which she had waited in vain seemed directly inspired by her reminiscences of the parson person. In an open-air camp-meeting, “His Damnity” had preached the first of seven announced “sermons” to a vast concourse. Seven, it seemed, was the perfect number—a royal superstition. Hadn’t she counted his seven courtiers, the seven windows of the throne-room, seven courses at dinner, seven days in his week?

Adeline admitted herself to have been a unit of the congregation of fiends. The first sermon had been, to say the least, impressive. Satan’s text had been orthodox: “A star fell from Heaven unto the earth; and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.” He had attacked the letter of The Law. To be saved by “believing”—how vain a promise when to that Star of Heaven was given the key to the pit into which all eventually would be hurled who had been born heirs to sin!

Over Omnipotent Egotism he had ranted himself into a rage which had made his audience tremble. Fire flashed from his nostrils, his eyes, his finger-tips, as he compared his own indefatigable assertiveness with the retirement into the Light of the Great-I-Am. How dare He sit back, smug over his one noteworthy achievement—the Creation?

The Law of Redemption, pah! What were laws that were not enforced—mere vague threats of a future state? He asked consideration of the handling of his own first law as keeper of the pit key. Did he ever delay collection of the wages of sin? Angel worship was forbidden and he didn’t expect them to worship him. But they could fear him and, fearing, must serve him. He advised them to hitch their hope-wagons to that fallen star—“their archangel in eclipse and the excess of glory obscured.”