An Uncomfortable Avenue of Thought

Today my dead mother said something which gave me cause to worry. As is her wont, she had been expounding at length upon the nature of evil and had been tutoring me in the most efficient methods of bewitching the good people of the world.

"It is quite simple to hex the Godly," she said. "With the power of evil, we can make good people believe practically anything. The mentalist Derren Brown, for example, is adept at such mesmerism, for he is one of us - a being of pure evil."

This factoid concerning Derren Brown was not the thing that gave me cause to worry. After all, why should it? A man's moral tilt does not affect his ability to entertain and Brown is a showman of no small talent. No, the thing that worried me was this:

"Did you see how easy it was for me to bewitch that ass Gland and the two policemen?" she asked. "I merely twisted reality so that any good person in the immediate vicinity of our victim would perceive the victim as a pillow effigy. Of course, you and I saw the truth of the matter for we are each of us completely evil and have no trace of good in us, but the good doctor and the two lawmen saw a pillow effigy. Now Horton, fetch a blade at once! That Pole won't skin himself you know!"

You understand why this gave me cause to worry? I too had seen the Pole transformed into a pillow effigy when my mother cast her spell. Does this fact mean that I still have good in me? I hope not!

I have managed to put off skinning the Pole for the time being whilst I consider my options. I have fobbed my mother off by saying that because I am so evil, I wish to savour the Pole's terror for as long as possible before skinning him and she seems satisfied with this for the moment.

I do hope I am still evil otherwise I won't enjoy skinning the Polish man at all.