My Best Friend's Exorcism

by Grady Hendrix

Abby wanted to say “Up yours” or “I didn’t want to sit with you anyways,” but to her profound disappointment she found herself looking down at the grass, embarrassed, desperate to be allowed to sit at the picnic table.

Ah, high school in the 1980s.

The day you become an adult is the day you learn that in Charleston, the worse something is, the less attention it receives.

“Demons are ideas made flesh,” Brother Lemon said. “Bad ideas. The one inside your friend is discord, anger, and rage. He is the bringer of storms with a smile like lightning, brother of owls and giver of nightborn intelligence. He is the cleaving that can never be healed.”