The Devil Aspect

by Craig Russell

“The Sudetendeutsche Partei is just the Nazis in regional dress. Dr. Platner’s enthusiasm for the party is something of a problem for me. I think it best if politics are left outside the castle.”

I normally wouldn’t have said anything, but these are difficult times. As a clinician of madness, it’s difficult for me not to diagnose it when I see it in its collective form, as well as the individual.

She wasn’t being cruel; she wasn’t being rude. She simply forgot I was there unless I was right in front of her. That’s the way it was with everyone. No one even noticed my dress. I realized that the dress was pretty but there was no one in it. I started to think maybe I didn’t exist at all. That I was just a story I was telling myself.

“Everyone went back to having fun, to laughing and playing and hugging each other, hugging themselves with the joy of being children and being happy. I just sat there and watched. It’s been like that ever since.”

You don’t understand; nobody understands what it’s like to be truly lonely. Everybody feels it sometime, but what they experience is a passing infection, like a cold. The loneliness I experienced as a child, as a young woman, was a cancer.

The long dark coat that Filip put on was one that Viktor recognized: when his friend had bought it, it had looked stylish and expensive, fitting Filip perfectly. Now it seemed to hang loose on his frame and looked shabby and bagged from neglect. Filip’s hat too was battered looking, and he pulled it low over his eyes as if concealing them from his friend, from the world.

“Platner, Krakl and all their Sudeten chums see Hitler as some kind of savior. Some kind of racial protector. Trust me, when the Nazis come marching into Czechoslovakia, Platner and Krakl will be there waving their little swastika flags with all their other Skopčáci chums.”