“And that’s the story that caused you to become so afraid of rainbows?”
“Oh yes, for years afterwards, I had a bad fear of rainbows, and all because of that damn sermon. I would get very nervous every time it would rain, and whenever I was outside I tried my best not to look up at the sky, for fear of seeing a rainbow that had words on it announcing the advent of the end of the world… plus, the idea of my sins appearing on my face for all the world to see was also a big part of that worry. I know it sounds silly...”
“Did you ever tell your parents about this rainbow phobia?” Dr. Roxy asked.
“No, mainly because I was afraid that they would try to cure it the same way they tried to cure some of the other things that scared me: through direct and catastrophic confrontation,” I replied.
“What do you mean by that?” Dr. Roxy asked, and I could tell now that she was really interested in what I was saying.
“Let me give you an example: there was this one day at school where all the kids were talking about the Bloody Mary urban myth. The way they were describing it was, if you stood in front of a mirror in a darkened room and said the words ‘Bloody Mary’ ten times while staring into the mirror, then the bloody disembodied head of a dead witch would appear in the mirror and, if you did not escape from the room or turn the light on fast enough, then she would chop your head off, or something along those lines. As I said, many of my classmates were talking about this on that day, and some were even saying that they had tried it out themselves and that it was true, that she had appeared in the mirror,” I said. “Now, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who make up bullshit stories, and the superstitious, easily fooled poor souls who believe such bullshit stories. As you probably have guessed by now, I fall into the latter category. I even asked this one girl who said she had tried it out if she was telling the truth and she looked into my eyes and swore to God that it was true, that she wasn’t lying (I should have known better: this girl really had it out for me that year, for whatever reason: she looked exactly like Anne Frank but she was pure evil, and she took a special delight in tormenting me: once in Home Ec class our assignment was to bake pancakes and after we had baked the pancakes we ate what we had baked and this girl’s hands got all covered in maple syrup and at one point as I walked by her she grabbed my arm and she wiped her hand over my arm, as if it were a napkin, so as a result it got all sticky with maple syrup. It was a very embarrassing situation for me. But years later, I happened to find out that she had gotten knocked up, so, you know, like, karma, but I digress). Long story short, I fell for the urban legend hook, line and sinker, and by the end of that school day I was very shaken up. I suppose I must have been pale and quieter than usual when my parents picked me up from school because they asked me what was wrong with me. So I foolishly told them about how all the kids were talking about Bloody Mary. My parents assured me that it was all a hoax, but I didn’t believe them. To prove it to me, they took me into the bathroom of the first floor of our house. They closed the door and turned off the lights. My dad began chanting ‘Bloody Mary’ at the mirror while I stood at the door, my hand gripped on the knob, beads of sweat popping out on my forehead, and with each utterance of the words ‘Bloody Mary’ my terror seemed to keep rising to a feverish pitch, like a red line of mercury ascending a thermometer of terror. Finally, with the tenth ‘Bloody Mary’ being uttered, I screamed and ran out of the room, and in the hallway outside the bathroom I (somewhat humiliatingly) burst into tears. In the end, Bloody Mary did not appear in the mirror. And yet, I developed a phobia that day, not so much of mirrors, but mirrors at night. Even now, to this day, whenever I’m passing by a darkened room at night with a mirror in it, I keep my head down so that I won’t accidentally look into the mirror. I remember in 2011, we had a hurricane hit New England, and we lost power for a day. That night, I had to take a shower in the bathroom, but because we had no lights I had to bring a flashlight in with me, so I could see what I was doing. On the front of the medicine cabinet above the sink was a mirror, the same mirror that my parents had chanted ‘Bloody Mary’ into all those years ago. So I covered it up with a towel!”
“You sound as if you had an interesting childhood,” Dr. Roxy observed. “So this rainbow sermon and the Bloody Mary event: these are the things that scared you the most when you were young?”
“Yeah, but there were some other things,” I said, thinking back. “In the 1980’s, my mother went through a heavily religious phase. She had always been a very devout Catholic, but during the Reagan era, she seemed to become almost fundamentally fanatical about it. She read this really awful Christian horror novel named, let me see, what was it, oh yes, This Present Darkness, and after that she became obsessed with spiritual warfare and demons. Like St. Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, and many of the other early apostolic fathers, my mother saw the world as the divine battleground of a cosmic war being fought between the forces of Light and Darkness, Christ and the Devil, Good and Evil. And like Tatian the Assyrian-“
“I’m sorry, who?” Dr. Roxy interrupted.
“Tatian the Assyrian, a second century Christian theologian,” I explained. “His name is spelled T-A-T-I-A-N. He operated under the theory that demons were present in everything, even the stars in the sky. He believed that it was demons that had placed animals in the heavens, in the form of the constellations, and that the pagan gods were demons who had introduced astrology to humanity. He even believed that the planets themselves were demonic gods who arranged the Zodiac based on animal life.”
“All very fascinating, but what exactly does all this have to do with your mother?” Dr. Roxy asked.
“I realize that it might seem like I’m showing off when it comes to my theological knowledge, but I can’t help it, it’s just the way I was raised,” I sighed. “I think my mother really wanted me to be a theologian, like my cousin Franz, and she was disappointed when my life path took a different course. I’m sure you must remember the Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria that spread like wildfire in the United States during the 1980’s, the conspiracy theory that a worldwide and wealthy organization was abducting children and killing them for satanic rituals? Well, my mother really believed in all that. She was always getting into arguments with my father. He had been a hippie, and she objected to his use of the peace sign: she claimed it was a Satanic symbol, representing a broken cross, she used to call it the ‘witch’s foot.’ Then she became obsessed with this book called Turmoil in the Toybox written by this guy named Phil Phillips. She got this book in 1987. Turmoil in the Toybox had been published in 1986, I believe. The book’s main argument was that various occult, New Age, Satanic and Antichristian forces had infiltrated the world of children’s toys and cartoon shows, and that these diabolical forces were deliberately introducing occultic imagery into the susceptible minds of kids. If only! She made my sisters and I read the book, and it was one of the craziest things I’ve ever read. I mean, this guy was seeing Satan in pretty much every toy or cartoon you could name: He-Man, Barbie, Care Bears, Gremlins, even My Little Pony!”
“My Little Pony, huh?” Dr. Roxy smirked.
“I forget exactly what his problem was with that show: perhaps it was because of its use of unicorn imagery, the unicorn being a symbol of the New Age Movement and also a reference to the Antichrist, the ‘Little Horn’ spoken of by the Biblical prophet Daniel. Of course, rainbows are associated with Christianity as well; just look at the story of Noah’s Ark in Genesis. But I mean what the hell, this was a man who saw a homosexual connotation in The Smurfs, so, you know,” I said with a fey shrug. “Around the same time my mother read this book, she also became obsessed with Gary Greenwald’s Eagle’s Nest Ministries program, which she first came across on one of the religious channels she was always watching. In 1984, this program aired a documentary called ‘Deception of a Generation,’ guest-starring Phil Phillips. The subject matter was pretty much the same stuff he covered in his book, just with visual aids. The TV progra
m was even more batshit than the book, actually. These guys were saying that Darth Vader from Star Wars was designed by the sinister and shadowy conglomerate of occult/New Age/Satanic/Anti-Christian forces to resemble the Norse god Odin, and that the big flying insects of Sectaurs resembled the winged horrors from the Book of Revelation. I know that in retrospect it sounds pretty funny: two grown men debating the occult characteristics of freaking Skeletor from Masters of the Universe… but it all had a scarring effect on my childhood.”
“How so?”
“At the end of ‘Deception of a Generation,’ Greenwald advises parents to burn toys that they claimed had a Satanic influence on children,” I said. “They believed that these toys were haunted by the spirits of demons, and that when the toys were burnt they would release the demons that were trapped within. Even when I was a child, I questioned the wisdom of this course of action: better that the demons be in possession of harmless chunks of plastic rather than, say, inhabiting a human body, right? And when you would free the demons from these toys, where would they head off to next? Wouldn’t it be likely that they’d try to take over the bodies of the people who had just torched the toys? I mean, I imagine that if one were a demon, it would be more fun and satisfying to corrupt a human host as opposed to an inanimate toy. But in any event, my mother decided to follow their advice to the letter. And seeing as I just so happened to own many of these so-called ‘demonic’ toys myself…”
“I think I can see where this is going,” Dr. Roxy said, a sad smile on her face. “Let me guess: your mother burnt all your toys, then?”
“Well, not all of them, only the ones that had been fingered by Phil Phillips,” I said. “Mainly my Star Wars and Masters of the Universe toys, all of which were my favorites. She might have gotten some of my Ghostbusters toys as well. I still remember that day, even the exact date. May 30th, 1987. Symbolic in some ways, as Joan of Arc was burnt on May 30th, you know. My mother started a bonfire in the backyard, picked up a box filled with my He-Man and Star Wars toys and, one by one, began tossing them into those greedy flames, where they then melted. Not that all of them melted... When my mother threw my Castle Grayskull into the bonfire, the playset literally exploded, in the most dramatic fashion imaginable. And during all this I was reduced to standing off to the side and wailing, as I watched my beloved toys melt away to nothing. The last one I remember being tossed into the bonfire was Enchanta, She-Ra’s giant fabulous flying swan. God, how I loved poor Enchanta: she had a long strip of pink hair that slinked down her long swan’s neck, and I used to spend hours combing and brushing it with the pink comb and brush that came with the toy. And maybe it was just a case of an over-active imagination on my part, or the sound of a loud gust of wind suddenly blowing through the trees, or that of an animal being hit by a car nearby, but… I could have sworn that the moment Enchanta hit the flames, I could hear the toy screaming. And that’s the last thing I can remember of that afternoon, for it was that moment that I fainted, dead away.” I paused, shuddering at the grim memory of that long-ago day. “My childhood died in that bonfire alongside my toys that day.”
At this point, Dr. Roxy apologetically excused herself to quickly dash off to the restroom. I knew that she suffered from Irritable Bowel Syndrome, much like myself, so I didn’t judge her too harshly. While she was gone, I glanced at her bookshelf in greater detail. Some of the titles on it included Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America (Penguin Books, 2006), Wilhelm Reich’s The Function of the Orgasm: Volume 1 of The Discovery of the Orgone (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973), Richard Von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (Arcade Publishing, 1965), Marie-Louise von Franz’ Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology (Inner City Books, 1980), Alexander Roob’s The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy & Mysticism (TASCHEN, 2001), and many books written by C.G. Jung, including Psychology and Alchemy (Princeton University Press, eight printing, 1993). Having an interest in both Jung and alchemy, I took that book off the shelf and flipped to a random page, which ended up being page 57. On this page was the description of a dream of one of Jung’s patients: “A rainbow is used as a bridge. But one must go under it and not over it. Whoever goes over it will fall and be killed.” Beneath that description was Jung’s impression of the dream, which Dr. Roxy had underlined with a red pen: “Only the gods can walk rainbow bridges in safety; mere mortals fall and meet their death, for the rainbow is only a lovely semblance that spans the sky, and not a highway for human beings with bodies.” Smiling, I put the book back on the shelf, shaking my head at the odd coincidence: here I had been telling Dr. Roxy about my rainbow phobia all afternoon, and just now I happened to pick up a Jung book and flipped to a random page that talked about rainbows. I wondered idly if Jung would have referred to such a thing as a synchronicity.
Eventually, Dr. Roxy returned to the office and we resumed talking. As the session neared its inevitable end, I said, “I don’t know, Dr. Roxy, how can something like that childhood bonfire, or the Bloody Mary legend, or Father Doyle’s sermon, not mess a kid up for good? What do you think?”
“I think that just because something scared you when you were a child, it shouldn’t necessarily mean that it should scar you for life,” Dr. Roxy said. “Sometimes confrontation isn’t always a bad thing, if it’s handled correctly: in regards to Bloody Mary, your parents had the right idea, it was just their execution and technique that were flawed. You know, I have an idea. You know St. Stephen’s Church? This weekend their students are performing a play, a dramatic rendition of the story of Noah’s Ark. I was just reading about it in the paper this morning: they even constructed a gigantic glass rainbow for the event. There was a photograph of it and everything: it’s really something to behold. Why don’t you and I go there this Saturday and check it out? Maybe by walking beneath that big glass rainbow you can cure yourself of this old phobia of yours.”
“I’ve actually heard of this St. Stephen’s Church,” I remarked. “I know that that’s the church that Father Doyle was transferred to sometime in the mid-1990’s. He’s been the head pastor there for years now.”
“Wow, what an interesting synchronicity,” Dr. Roxy said. “So, what do you say?”
“I don’t know…” I said, hesitantly. “Is it really that important that I tackle this phobia? I mean, in the grand scheme of things?”
“Need I remind you, Christopher, of what landed you in therapy in the first place?” Dr. Roxy asked me gently. I groaned inwardly, but didn’t need her to remind me. Despite my childhood fear of the sky, prior to 2013 I had made a living as a pilot, flying planes for the Calm Horizons commercial airline. That had been my dream job growing up, actually: to fly planes. As a teenager, I had assumed that my phobia of rainbows would prevent me from ever getting such a job, until my high school guidance counselor convinced me to follow my dreams. So that’s what I did, and for many years, to my surprise, I flourished as a pilot: until that horrible event in March of this year when, startled by the sight of a rainbow, I made an emergency landing in a cornfield in Nebraska. No one was hurt, and I was lucky that I didn’t get sued: Calm Horizons, however, was hit by a number of lawsuits, and not only was I fired, but I was also forced to attend therapy if I ever wanted to get my license as a pilot back. Hence my sessions with Dr. Roxy.
“Oh, what the heck, why not?” I asked. “It’s not like I have any plans for this Saturday anyway, and it would be cool to see Father Doyle again, after all these years.”
“Great. Why don’t you meet me there at noon? The play starts at one,” Dr. Roxy said.
After saying goodbye to Dr. Roxy, I made my way back to the waiting room, where the receptionist scheduled me for my next appointment. While I waited, I glanced over at a nearby bulletin board that was covered with flyers advertising psychosynthetic training programs, clairvoyant readings, soul retrievals, plant spirit medicine, reiki practitioners, womyn spiritual festivals, the 53rd annual convention of the Ame
rican Society of Dowsers, holotropic breathwork workshops, yoga training, metaphysical bookstores, colon cleaning hydrotherapy, David Singingbear’s Bioridian™ level one training, and a Himalayan singing bowl clearance sale. Staring at all of these flyers reminded me of a quote from Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum: “When men stop believing in God, it isn’t that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.”
Once I was done at the Plaza Center, I exited the building and made my way to the parking lot located to the side of the building. As I walked there I looked out at some of the nearby establishments and businesses, which had names like Duncan’s Drugs and Kirkbride’s Curios. My car was parked in one of the ecclesiastical shadows being cast by one of the towers of St. Durtal’s Cathedral. As I started up my car I turned on the radio and flipped over to my favorite radio station, 8-Bit FM, a local station that only played music from video and computer games. At that moment they were playing Junichi Masuda’s “Lavender Town’s Theme,” the original version which had first appeared in the 1996 Japanese release of Pokemon Red and Green. As I drove home I listened to this song, feeling slightly nervous: I had read somewhere on the Internet once an urban legend about how that particular song had to be changed for the US and European release, on account of the original version supposedly utilizing high-pitched sounds that only children aged 7-12 could hear, sounds that were said to have caused many Japanese children to either suffer horrible headaches and nightmares or caused them to mutilate and kill themselves.
Autopsy of an Eldritch City: Ten Tales of Strange and Unproductive Thinking Page 7
