How to Destroy a Marriage

Taking The Screwtape Letters as a model, Mr Hall envisions the demonic attack on the family during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

From One Peter Five

By Kennedy Hall

Read Chapter I here, Read Chapter II here, Read Chapter III here, Read Chapter IV here, Read Chapter V here, Read Chapter VI here, Read Chapter VII here, Read Chapter VIII here, Read Chapter IX here, Read Chapter X here, Read Chapter XI here, Read Chapter XII here, Read Chapter XIII here, Read Chapter XIV here, Read Chapter XV here, Read Chapter XVI here, Read Chapter XVII here, Read Chapter XVIII here, Read Chapter XIX here.

Chapter 20

You wretched imp.

If what you tell me is true, then we may lose the mother. I cannot stand this young man, this adolescent nemesis who acts nothing like his peers! Why can he not just acquiesce to our advances? What is it about his sickening devotion that allows him to avoid the blitz of artillery that swallows up the vast majority of his generation? He should be prideful, he should be effeminate, he should not contain such quiet wisdom and poise in his dealings with his own mother. He deals with her in a putrid and priestly manner. Never in my career have I witnessed such an inexplicable delicacy of approach by such a zealous and inexperienced youth. He does not argue with her on religion, he does not push his advances against her; he simply prays for her and loves her (revolting). Oh Hell! I cannot abide this abomination any longer. Now you tell me that in the short time since we last spoke, the mother has agreed to visit the priest and make her first general confession. If this tragedy comes to pass and we lose her to the Enemy, make no mistake I will blame everything on you.

We have done everything in our power to utilize the stupidity of the statesmen and Church hierarchs during this inverted quarantine, so that the Sacraments are practically unavailable. Priests all over the world have been forbidden by civil and ecclesial command to attend to their flock, yet by some sort of intolerable coincidence, the boy has found priests who obey the Enemy more than man. These unbearable clergymen care nothing for worldly acceptance or even their reputation amongst other churchmen. We have organized perhaps the most ingenious persecution of the Christians to date, one wherein the thought of them uniting in any form of worship is not only seen as nonessential, but even dangerous to public health. In the past we have fomented useful hatred of what they believe, but never anything so useful as labeling them as agents of viral dissemination by the plain act of congregating.

I knew that boy’s teacher would come back to haunt us; in that short time he spent brainwashing the son he sparked an insatiable rage against Hell and sin in his heart. His simple suggestion to the boy that he consult those blasted “traditional” priests has been as responsible for this butterfly effect as anything. There remains only a short while until the scheduled Sacrament, and we must act in a way that stops this once and for all. Fortunately, we still have the father tightly in our grasp. I am going to explain to you exactly what you must do. This may be our last option.

The mother and father are still in a state of resentment and silence, and the children—although they pray for their father—are not unaware of the dire situation the marriage is in. They may be on the Enemy’s side for now, but the influence a father has over his home is invaluable. Even with a pious mother and pious children, a fiendish father can thrust his offspring into our net at any moment. Like the plethora of priests who have damned practically whole congregations, the father of a home can do the same to his household. The man is in a state of such a spiritual and moral decay that we must unleash the totality of his Satanic stench on the others.

His addiction to evil images is so fruitful that the perverted visages are all he thinks about. Combined with his functional alcoholism, he is rarely coherent around his family and locks himself in his room for hours. The children are confused but in their blasted innocence do not expect their father to have such a victorious vice as he does. The wife however (although she may not know for certain), certainly has her suspicions. She may seem as if she is under a certain spell in Heaven’s favour, but at the moment she is still not in a state of reconciliation. The particular graces she accesses at the moment do not give the Enemy entrance to dwell in her soul. If we can force her husband’s hand and wrench him into a position that takes control of the atmosphere of the entire home, then we still stand a chance.

Now, the time has come for the husband’s habit to be made manifest for all to see. Normally I would recommend a long-term festering of his self-abusive devotion, which in reality would give us great pleasure for years to come. I actually prefer that the male humans develop manageable vices such as his, in order that they live a long life full of little slips and lies without ever experiencing excessive prompting from their conscience. If we were not in this position I might even tell you to have the man take a step back from his habit, but we are in need of a nuclear option. 

We still have the reality of the failing marriage on our side. For this reason we must facilitate an irreparable schism between the mother and father. I believe that we have the ammunition to do so. It is a bit of a risk however, because whenever we force explosive conflict between spouses there is always the possibility of empathy and reconciliation. But his drinking habit and pleasant perversion has rendered him completely callous and self-involved. He is diving deeper into more violent genres, and his continued unemployment and financial anxiety has further developed. In all my years I have never seen a man in his sort of situation who could respond any differently than I expect him to. He will undoubtedly blame the woman for his faults, and insult her in a manner so exquisite that he may as well be repeating the wrathful musings of our favourite damned residents. His current disposition is one wherein, during moments of conflict, he will lay all blame for his own faults on his wife, which is why we must now act in an opportune fashion.

How do we pull off such a maneuver? It is not that hard. You must remember, the man is nothing more than a walking corpse at this point. His intellect has been deadened due to his increasing sinfulness, and he has become numb. He will not fight for his marriage, because he will not fight for anything. A man who has given into his most animal appetites goes from being a man to a wonderfully effeminate limpnoid, and now we get to enjoy him like a cat with a dead rodent.

I mentioned some letters ago that the usage of sexualized images has narcotic effects on the user similar to other drugs that tickle the degenerate fancies of the participant; this means that with every up there is a down, and after the elation comes a state of self-loathing. With this particular activity, there is an added moral dimension that ruminates in the deadened conscience, as every man knows he is committing adultery of some sort when he indulges. As a result, each man knows he is a criminal and deserves a punishment. However, those far from the Enemy do not seek to repent—thanks be to our Father Below—but instead they seek to justify. Justification of one’s own failings can come in a variety of forms, but for our purposes it is relevant to focus on the act of projecting one’s guilt onto another.

As the man wallows in his fallen and shameful filth after partaking, you may effortlessly draw his attention to all the things he resents about his wife: she has not “met his needs,” she is a prude, she is selfish, she is illogical, she looks down on him, and so on. It is not even necessary for his ideas of her to be true, all that matters is that he can convince himself that she is to blame. The woman has a co-worker, a man, of whom she has spoken fondly before, perhaps this man could be imagined as a threat. For all your man knows, maybe his wife has been having an affair with him for years, it does not matter that it is fiction. All that matters is that his rage and emotions are whipped into a volatile cocktail with enough strength to inflict fatal marital damage. This rage gives him pleasure, but it also causes him harm, which means he will simultaneously indulge the feeling, but also want the feeling to end. A most pitiful man and a tasty specimen.

Due to this imagined affair—that did not exist until five minutes prior—he will be in a fighting mood and therefore can be agitated into a seemingly petty altercation with his wife. They are still rarely speaking, so when they do fight, his volatility will catch her off guard in a way that frightens her. She will react with severity as a form of self-defence, and within a short time they will be hurling insults back and forth. What a perfect moment this will be to remind her of the time he spends locked in the basement, or the obsession he now has with guarding his mobile phone. “What is he hiding? For what reason does he cling to that device like a dog to a bone?” She may be an idiot, but even she possesses enough brain matter to solve this obvious riddle; he is enslaved to the solitary vice.

Her stomach will sink through the floor and she will feel as if she is standing in the room with an intruder. “This is not the man I married,” she will say to herself, but you will reply, “This is exactly the man you married.” She will inevitably ask him in a quiet voice to explain what he has been up to, but he will not answer. Immediately she will shriek like a melodramatic windbag, demanding that he tell her the truth. It does not matter if he replies or not, his silence will suffice for consent. Hysterical women are masochists, and they obsessively dig deeper and deeper into their own gaping wounds. “How many times!” she will probe, “what sort of stuff are you watching? Let me see your phone! I want to see!” Depending on her disposition she will either shrink into a deeper depression, or lash out with whatever weapon she has. Hopefully she will belittle him in ways that shorten him to the size of the rat he is.

Now, at this moment you must pay attention to his interior dialogue, because something quite peculiar will take place; he will actually experience a moment of relief. This moment will be short lived as he watches the nuptial murder of the woman he promised to “have and to hold.” He will finally see that he is not even a man; he is a monster. If you arrange the event to happen in front of the children, I may even have to suggest a promotion for you.

Oh we do get to have a bit of fun in our line of work don’t we?

Act now 

Quelle

To be continued next week. 

Editor’s note: this serialization is from the novella Lockdown with the Devil.