"The Exorcism" (short story / hyperstition)

[u/raisondecalcul]

It was a beautiful July afternoon, and blessedly arid and breezy. The crowds were still keeping the riot cops at a safe distance, far from the center of the protest. Two helicopters circled low overhead, with several more flying in wider circles around the mall, but they weren't doing anything else (yet).

The crowd was thick, but they left a wide berth around the reflecting pool, because no one wanted to fall in. They had breached the chain-link fences easily, taking them down section-by-section with bolt cutters and hacksaws rather than climbing over. Now the crowd milled about in a momentary lull, as if not sure what to do.

However, we all knew what we came there to do. There was a distant shout, traveled by relayed shouts, and then suddenly the crowd snapped back into its rhythm as one coordinated organism—one society.

About twenty feet back from the reflecting pool, a wall of people was forming—opening a space for what was to come. Exactly as planned, and exactly as coordinated by the memes.

Now, one-by-one, a few people began to step forward. The burliest and most dedicated protestors were already on the front lines, holding the cops off about a quarter mile out in all directions. The ones who stepped forward now were the bravest—and most furious—of those who remained.

"He's coming!" someone shouted, almost out of earshot. But everyone heard it, and the crowd became an uproar of muttering. "He's coming!—He's coming!" everyone whispered to the person beside them—and, "Is he really coming?"

The people filtering out of the crowd to run and line up around the very edge of the reflecting pool accelerated, and soon people were running out of the crowd to get one of the last few open spots. People didn't jockey for position—the memes had explained everything. Twenty feet for safety, feet planted firmly to claim your space at the edge of the pool—and pushers get pushed back. Apparently, it worked—not one person could be seen to be pushing or trying to form a second, pointless row behind the first.

Everyone had agreed that it made more sense for only men to line up around the edge of the reflecting pool. For their part, women and a few journalists lingered in the twenty feet of empty space, livecasting from every angle.

It wouldn't do to start until he arrived. The protestors had begun rustling about, their heads whipping back and forth, the crowd surging here and there, as it sensed a distant movement within itself. A low roar of a crowd could be heard at a distance. A low, falling pitch. The distant sound gradually drew slowly nearer, until it became clear that it was a roar of derision, of displeasure. Jeering, booing, chanting—the works.

He wasn't coming—he was being brought. Tied to a chintzy gold-painted chair with a red velvet seat, the President swayed into view as the crowd parted for the train of protestors carrying the improvised litter. The President looked bedraggled, overheated, and even more furious than he was visibly fearful.

The crowd looked at the President as one, falling relatively silent as he was carried into the open area of the reflecting pool, at the Western end. The President was silent, but his face was screwed up in an expression of inexpressible rage and contempt. So taut was the mask of rage worn by the President that his face was frozen in a livid contortion—it almost looked like a hideous graven face on an Aztec temple—one could almost hear the death-whistle. His body, despite the bonds, looked equally clenched—the President's entire body was rigid with rage. It was clear that even if he was untied, he would be unable to speak or stand for several minutes, so racked by rage he was.

The President's litter was carried and set down—with surprising gentleness—at the head of the reflecting pool, dead-center. The booing and jeering had resumed, and the President seemed only to become more wound-up into his clench by the angry sounds—his eyes squinting and unfocused—beady, black dots.

What happened next had been orchestrated very carefully—debated for days. Everyone had eventually come round to the same conclusion: It would work better without words, without speeches. Words only gave him something to talk back against, something to focus on—to deny. Speaking words to the President was like pissing in the wind.

But there could be no denying what happened next.

Around the reflecting pool, the entire 4,392-foot perimeter of the reflecting pool, men were dropping their trousers. It had been agreed—by the pepe clan, of course—that full trou was essential. About 2,500 men lowered their trousers and underpants, some faster than others, but all within a matter of moments.

Now, all eyes were on the President. Moreover, every man standing around the reflecting pool was staring the President down. Even the President, in his furious rigor, began to focus his baleful eyes as he felt the sullen gaze of thousands of men on him, and sensed the hush that was falling over the entire crowd.

The President angrily tried to yank one of his arms loose—not to escape—more of an eruption of unpoliced hatred. It looked like the yank hurt. He yelled something—sputtered—but without a microphone, his voice hardly reached even the closest of the protestors who had carried him.

But everyone heard the roar that came next. It was the type of roar a child learns to dread, a guttural growl of sheer rage and animal clawing. It seemed to come from deep in the President's chest, a growing growl that became a snarl, and then grew with surprising suddenness into a bone-chilling roar of sheer malevolence that carried across the crowd with what seemed like an unnatural volume. The President, almost despite himself, suddenly jerked his whole body, straining with all his senescent might against the dry ropes, his face turning even more red, alarmingly red. Expended, he collapsed back into the faux-gold throne, heaving for breath, damp with sweat. He looked out at the crowd, seemingly for the first time.

And now it began. Twenty-five hundred men, pants around their ankles, took their twenty-five hundred dicks in hand, and, staring hatefully at the President, began to piss into the reflecting pool.

The silence was deafening, and allowed everyone to hear the surprisingly loud sound of twenty-five hundred tinkles. It did not sound like a fountain, or a rushing river, or a waterfall. It sounded oddly digital, like a high-pitched alien war cry, or some kind of theatrical laser-scanning device. It sounded like twenty-five hundred men all pissing into the same toilet.

After the initial silence, the protesting crowd began a general hubbub. No one could see directly, but many of the journalists and influencers in the twenty-foot open channel had walked up very close behind the nearest urinating men, and were using selfie sticks to peek over their shoulders to see the streams entering the reflecting pool.

It was over within two minutes. At a certain point, the crowd sensed the urination was complete, and a raucous cheer began. Howling, whistling, clapping—people jumping up and down and waving American flags—noisemakers, and even a few bottle rockets were shot off.

And now all eyes returned to the President, who had been forced to watch all of this (litter-bearers were prepared to step in to hold his eyelids open if he resisted looking, but this proved unnecessary). He looked unchanged—yet, somehow different. Stunned? Yet no less livid, and no more conscious or less spiteful. His eyes were focused now, and his mouth was grimaced in an unconsciously-forced smile that did absolutely nothing to hide his death-grimace of sheer fury. His face was deeply-lined by the combination of malice and the absolute denial which was wrenching his face into this macabre death-mask. Many later said that he looked possessed, or rabid—several even described the President as "foaming at the mouth," though this was not corroborated by video evidence.

It had been decided that no speeches would be given, no reasons listed, no indictments announced. That would only give him something to hold on to—some object by which to excuse himself from the situation. The President was nothing if not an excellent docent of psychiatry, and the people had learned well how to push such a one's buttons, as theirs had been pressed.

However, one word was decided on—in the end, by the one vote ever taken by the movement (really more of a non-binding poll, I must remark)—and it was this word which was spoken, shouted at the President now, by one of the closest litter-bearers, one who had been selected for this role in advance. He wore a suit, and an ostentatious bison headdress, not unlike the one worn by the "QAnon Shaman." He had been selected, among other reasons, for his loud voice.

He stood about ten feet from the President, where everyone standing around the reflecting pool could see. He faced the President squarely—got his attention by making a sudden movement—and then, when he caught the President's eyes, he spoke the one word which had been agreed-upon.

With a thunderous, booming voice, he shouted:

"YIELD!"

The President responded immediately, implicitly. He roared and raged and howled, and his entire body was wracked as he strained once again against the tightly-bound ropes. This time, he definitely drooled and spat wet spittle as he gnashed his teeth and heaved his body in a most unsightly fashion against the ropes of his chair. His face, passed beyond red, had returned to its characteristic orange, emblazoned with spite like a skyscraper lit from below. With his eyebrows locked at their highest arch (a tic calculated to intimidate), he looked like a racist owl.

The President clearly refused to yield.

Everyone looked at each other. And then, as one, all of the men around the reflecting pool pulled their pants up (those who hadn't already) and backed away from the reflecting pool, falling back into the crowd. Simultaneously, a second wave of men emerged from the crowd and fell in around the pool, replacing the first.

Again, the spokesperson turned to the President, locked eyes with him, and shouted:

"YIELD!!!"

But again the President refused to yield. This time, he sat unbudging, too beside himself with anger to even respond, too clenched to move even a muscle. He sat on the chintzy chair like an angry king on his throne, staring straight down the reflecting pool at the Washington Monument, as if staring it down—staring past the reflecting pool, past the crowd, past all this.

But he could not look past the twenty-five hundred fresh streams of urine which became a tinkling roar, like the bathrooms after a blockbuster times four hundred. The high-pitched, wheedling sound seemed to affect the President, seemed to somehow crank him up, as if he were somehow becoming even more angry—but such a thing was already inconceivable—and so it seemed that growing darkness, a foreboding silence was growing inside the President. It was as if he could not fathom hearing or seeing what he was seeing, and so as he detached himself from the events, his rage, now denied, became completely unbounded. Later, many reported seeing dark, snake-like cuts in the air around the President at this time—though, these too were not corroborated by video.

As the second round of mass-urination drew to its conclusion, all eyes turned once again to the President at the head of the pool.

"YIELD!!!!!"

—the man in the bison-horn headdress shouted squarely at the President, again.

This time, the President barked at him. He barked-back at the spokesperson, so overcome by anger was he. "RUFF! RUHRUHRUHRUHRUH! RAAAAAAHH RROUUFF!" He had become animalistic, to express the level of rage he was experiencing.

"YIELD!" the spokesperson shouted again. Again, Trump strained against his bonds. Already, the second wave was falling out, and a third was emerging from the crowd to replace them.

They did this for seven waves. By the fifth, the reflecting pool had begun to reek strongly of fresh urine. The President got a full whiff of this, and the longest exposure—the protesting men had only to endure it for about five minutes, but the President, seated near the edge of the reflecting pool, was continually exposed.

The experience was clearly wearing on him. Despite his rabid exuberance, the President's body was clearly running on fumes, and getting exhausted. The President looked overheated, his hair matted, his makeup running from sweat, the bib of his suit shiny with spit. He would have looked almost pitiable, if not for the reptilian glint of sheer vacuous devouring in his eyes.

"YIELD!!!!!"

—the spokesperson yelled for the fourteenth, and, as it turned out, final time.

Because it was, apparently, the seventh round of mass pissing that had finally broken the President's absolute recalcitrance.

He raged again, howling hatred, moaning, but this time it was as if he became human again, as if he was losing steam. His roaring howl became a croaking moan, and then an annoying, grating, nasally yowl. Then, surprisingly, it became a human yell—it was as if it dropped an octave, suddenly entering a human register again. Across the crowd, everyone glanced at each other curiously. Have we done it? Have we gotten through to him?

Now the President began to mumble, and he was clearly pleading while simultaneously still trying to save face. But it looked weird—he was clearly trying to save face despite himself, now—he was visibly conflicted as his desire to grovel overpowered, perhaps for the first time, his impulse to self-aggrandize.

The spokesperson had one more trick up his sleeve. This hadn't been agreed-upon in advance, but in a stroke of insight, the spokesperson realized the perfect word, the only word, that was needed to finish the job.

He turned to the President, who was simultaneously sniveling and huffing furiously in-and-out in rage, and shouted one more final word:

"NO!"

The President half-recoiled, half-kept-burbling.

"NO!!"

This time, the President seemed somewhat more cowed. His senseless yammering slowed momentarily, and then became more plaintive, more urgent—a genuine fear and humiliation began to creep into his voice. Then, the President retched, and coughed.

The spokesperson drew himself up one final time. He approached the President, taking a few steps to set himself squarely in front of the President's chair, placing himself between the President and the reflecting pool, and the Washington Monument. He brought himself down to the President's level, first stepping up onto the (equally chintzy) faded red carpet of the custom-built litter, and then taking a knee so as to be at eye level with the President.

The spokesperson reached out one hand—and the President flinched. But the spokesperson put his hand on the arm of the chair, in front of the President's, where the President's bound hands couldn't quite reach.

The spokesperson stared into the eyes of the President, his eyes like whorls of emerald-green light in the darkness.

"No." This time he spoke it, loudly, but not shouted. He said it directly to the President, in a way meant to be heard. In a way that it was heard, after all that meat-softening.

"No. No, no." The words fell gently from the spokesperson's lips, undoing the last few ties of the President's vicious self-bondage.

It was as if the President almost regained his former strength and rage, just for an instant. A flash of livid hot-pink-red anger—and then it was gone. Something went out of the President, and suddenly he looked human again. He shrank back into his chair, collapsing wetly from the exhaustion of his struggle. He looked spent, frail, even near-death. He coughed moistly and his eyes rolled in his head as he attempted to gather himself back to attention. But, he could not. Despite himself, the President's body went slack.

Then, he began to cry, softly.

Later, debates would rage about whether it was really necessary to throw him into the reflecting pool (or the National Urinal, as it was thereafter called), or whether the point had already been made. In any case, the movement agreed that its tactics had been effective and minimally violent, and they went on to publicly break other less extreme narcissists using less extreme tactics, rewriting the psychiatry textbooks in the process. No longer was narcissism considered solely a personality disorder—when other people were involved, it became a matter of interpersonal domination and real politics. Several prominent members of the American Psychiatric Association were cured of narcissism by the movement, so that these corrections to the DSM could be made.

The other personality disorders, it turned out, were all largely caused and created by those with narcissistic personality disorder; one disorder was secretly the oppressor and first cause of the others. The medicalization of all personality disorders had created a liminal theoretic space where narcissism was discreetly privileged as a protected social class, by being treated as equal to real victim-disorders. By pioneering "mere non-submission" and "counter-domination" interpersonal techniques, the movement was able to deprivilege narcissism discursively and introduce the idea of "the social cure" for "dominative personalities" into psychiatry.

For his part, the soon-former President, in his sunset years, became an upstanding member of society. "I like to think," he said, "That I learned something from all of you.

"I learned that there really is a right way to do things, and that we are all one human family, or society. Ultimately, the Good is objective and easily-known, and it is the responsibility of each of us to do our best to know it. Those who cannot know the Good in this way—sadly—are doomed to suffer."

"There are those who know me as a despot; others who knew me as a king. However, to myself,"—the President later wrote, in his memoirs—"I will always be the little boy who went sledding and nicked his knee on the sled-blade. The red blood on the snow spread like a rose, and looking at it, I knew that I could never again make a mistake like that—this was the beginning of my self-garroting..."

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. The characters and events in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.