Possession isn’t how it’s portrayed in the movies. There’s no speaking in the voice of a goat drowned in a swamp, no 360-degree projectile vomiting, welts and buboes pustulating on bile-pale skin. In fact, you only notice it in the little things: the hand that isn’t your own squeezing fresh produce too hard in the supermarket; the feeling that, although you’re in your favourite chair, with a mug of tea and the cat purring on your lap, you’re not quite settled in your own body; the overwhelming desire to shout Fuck This! at your Annual Progress Review. On the whole, demons are just happy with the rest from eternal, infernal torment, happy to get a bit of tactile flesh on their incorporeality and catch up on a boxset or two. So, when your spouse calls the exorcist while you’re sleeping, and they intone poorly-pronounced Latin at the foot of the bed, you needn’t assume guilt for the fire, the locusts, and the sheer racket of it. Nothing’s like it is in the movies, but for all the mundanity and contingency of ‘evil,’ as soon as there’s incense and crucifixes, there’s always going to be collateral damage.
Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
.