“Now is not the accepted time to make new enemies,” said the philosopher on his death bed, responding to the priest’s exhortation to renounce Satan.
“Why the intransigence?” marveled the young clergyman. “Frankly, sir, I cannot imagine there could be a downside to rejecting the devil.”
“Just you ponder that question, padre,” said the wise man. “You seem an intelligent person, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
A month later when the plague hit most of Europe and the priest started developing chills and fever, he conceded that on purely practical grounds the old knucklehead might have had a point.
He also decided, if he survived this perilous ordeal, he’d write an essay on the conflict between official wisdom and common-sense practicality, without delineating the religious aspects of his own experience.
After recovering, the good pastor did pen the piece, embellishing it enough to be a pamphlet. Next, under his obsessive writing hand the pamphlet grew into a full novel, a bestseller with an overarching theme of the wicker-man rituals of ancient Celts.
As a result, quiet a few well-read people blame all of humanity’s ills on the pagans.
- A sketch of this article was published in Friday Flash Fiction, October 10, 2025.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by J.S. O’Keefe.
J.S. O’Keefe | Radio Free (2025-10-15T14:58:06+00:00) The Chips are Down. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2025/10/15/the-chips-are-down/
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