The Pains 241003-01

Mr. Norman Lux, nSF, woke up with a pain in his body that felt s if it might have been a soul gone bad. He first perceived the pain as a toothache in the general area of the upper right quadrant of his mouth.

But as he fixed on it and tried to determine which tooth it might be that was hurting, he experienced a swift vague transfer of pain from the upper portion of his mouth—by way of the right side of his neck, down the right side of his body, traversing his torso near his belt line—to a region just north and to the left of his scrotum, where it briefly ceased.

Two seconds later he felt the sharp ingrowing of the pinky toenail on his right foot.

That pain stopped after about five seconds and was almost immediately replaced by the crushing weight of the white linen sheet under which, exhausted from prayer, Mr. Lux had drifted to sleep only a few hours ago.

By faint dawn light, the sheet, where it pressed upon the bad toenail, showed a small bloodstain.

Mr. Lux’s breath was forced from him. The sheet, which still looked as if it were made of white linen, seemingly changed its substance from flax to steel to lead, and now to uranium or even, perhaps, some condensate of neutrons. It weighed tons. Mr. Lux could feel the pressure building in his eyeballs and wondered if they would explode.

There was a burning constriction around his throat. It was as if the Savior’s own noose were tightening, pulling his head up—even as the weight of the sins of the world, transubstantiated into bedclothes, pulled his body down.

“Fred, have mercy on me,” Mr. Lux managed to whisper.