--- *** ---
--- A Couple of Hours Later or So ---

--- 1st of March, 1965 ---

The following night. Like every ordinary nocturnal daily episode, emulating each commonly encountered day indicated according to the annual calendar.

The following night, when the pious sister of the church and the possessed doctor were accompanying the Bostonian in her booked hospital room for recovery and promising cure and bestowed her hope for recovery from earlier, in spite of the fact her stay inside the dully grandiose medical institution for straight two weeks from the glass wounds and ominous burns.

The middle-aged lady's encouraging recovery vibrantly, balmily swaddled her along with her hopes after not only receiving daily visits by her only contemporary, nevertheless, promisingly doting family Kit and Grace.

Besides the daily harmonizing prayers recited in inward mumbles, also the British compatriot and Mary Eunice's visits, which compensated for two weeks of partly accomplished felicity and unconditional comfort as if certain very fragments were missing from solving the ultimate puzzle. The hospital's wall clock ticked distressingly unnerved, incessantly uneven in every room and the monumental building.

The wee hours of the early morning were embraced by the gruesomely thick cloak of ebony, cloaking everything outside and indicating the true time.

Three o'clock in the morning was fatally apocalyptic and spooky, or rather, giving those apocalyptically spooky vibes to its still awake souls along with the others, vulnerable to the vile essences and monstrous dark silhouettes of supernatural creatures. They haunted the darkest corners of the room and their recent residence.

A couple of nurses and doctors were arduously in charge of the night shift they were taking. It wasn't child's play at all, especially in the former holy man's case to spend a couple of hours in rationally profound discussions, swelling in opulent topics with Sister Mary Eunice out of Jude's patient room.

"Wouldn't you like a cigarette, sister?" In spite of Timothy's deep acknowledgment of the juvenile pious sister of the church's non-smoking character, anyway he didn't want to disappoint her without offering her once a cigarette at least. The duo was recently seating on the balcony, linked to Jude's hospital room and it was already the third cigarette for the British compatriot for tonight and maintaining an adequate proximity with the juvenile blonde, measured truly in a few inches solely.

The late winter, frosty wind recklessly waltzed and stroked gingerly their exposed alabaster skins and stray strands, an abstractly chromatic medley of aureate, chestnut and opulent saturating pigments, glittering their hairs.

"That is quite nice of you, Timothy!" After shaking meekly, her slim forefinger in solemn disagreement, reaffirming her position's façade and flushing heavy sigh through her tiny, vulnerable nostrils, thereafter, meekly inhaling the refreshingly breathtaking wintery fragrance, bristling her facial skin.

She folded her legs whilst seizing firmly, roughly her conservatively wool, rigidly shapeless habit hem, squinting up her big, round lapis lazuli jewels at his kindheartedly handsome facial attributes, dimly cloaked in lit light, sourcing from the brightly illuminated hospital room.

"But no, thank you! I don't smoke."

"It is okay, Sister! I am not forcing you to smoke at all." When the British compatriot slammed shut the cigarette package's entrance and stealthily put it back in his doctor's professional apron socket, subsequently, his other mammoth, veiny hand's fingers supported the weight of the lit cancer stick's infectiously thick silver foggy smoke, permeating the nearby site.

A vaguely prim, friendly smirk unusually attractively adorned his facial attributes, darting his medley of brass and smoky quartz jewels to the young lady's guiltlessly childlike face, maintaining adequate eye contact with her.

"I know so far that you aren't a smoker anyway." Within taking his very second drag at his cancer stick, consequently, his nostrils and cherub, naturally baby-pinkish lips curved in a soft O to debar thickly silver foggy dim, suffusing carelessly disoriented.

"Even though I am not a smoker, I used to smoke once during my possession in old Jude's office." The revelation that the orphan recently made paradoxically tugged her flimsy heart in severe contraction, unable to properly function and reproducing the monotonously hasty thuds in her rib cage. When her naturally roseate, attractively plump lips popped up explosively and her front ivory teeth managed to nibble the raw spot of her lower plump lip shyly girlishly.

The revelation was just sincere and personal. Far from professional. Far from harmful, howsoever, the solely trustworthy faces in her inner circle or at least acquaintances would be the only ones hearing the roar of Mary Eunice's sincerity behind her masked innocence and the doldrums of her docilely velvety voice, spotlighting every word, slipping from her nubile mouth.

"I didn't know you have smoked even once." All of a sudden, the prim shock, entirely mantling in pure, ebony darkness the possessed doctor's parchment, still youthful complexion whilst stilling to stabilize the smirk, spread across his lips and his only free hand clawing viciously, idly his elbow. Even though the crystal clarity and intelligence of the possessed doctor which he is infernally graced with.

Nevertheless, playing the role of lowbrow and scarcely possessing a modicum of knowledge with his supernatural bless was sufficiently spooky and gave somehow apprehensive, dubious vibes to the young woman.

"Haven't you smoked before that?"

"I have to admit once when I was at a swimming pool party when I was only seventeen years old and the majority of the guests were popular kids from school." Bobbing excitedly his head in solemn agreement, subsequently bestowed a myriad of encouragement to the orphan to drop the sequel of her revelation of her grim, desolated past with recollection of disturbing memories, burdening every ounce of her until it wasn't lifted off persistently. "One of the popular kids asked me if I have ever smoked in my life and I confessed to her I have never."

Flattening his mouth in a politely thoughtful, attentive purse, consequently, the former aspiring Monsignor curved the arches of his thick, masculinely dark eyebrows.

"Mhm!" Lowly droning quietly, melodious tune, solely discernible for himself, Timothy took another drag at the cigar length efficiently, greedily.

"Then she offered me tobacco though I told her it is repulsively reeking and it may taste disgusting." Her white-knuckled, roughly calloused hands maliciously grappled the rigidly shapeless wool hem, lingering her pristinely spidery fingers on the rigid wool fabric. The painfully soar flavor of the word and the reeking cancer stick laced ominously unholy her strawberry-coloured, wet tongue.

Pinkness playfully tickled her well-carved, naturally, healthily chubby cheeks with mischievous, healthily normal blush.

"Then, she was like I shouldn't be worried at all and it was cool as she lit a cigarette only for me,"

Sorely fresh, lukewarmly unnerving lump seethed her finely feminine Adam's apple, hesitantly ushering her throat muscles to gulp abruptly, lifting off the ounce from her muscles which once bloodthirstily, gut-wrenchingly encumbered her frail skeleton.

The greatly blended medley of blush, series of modestly honeyed, insecure stutters, zinging her lusciously plumpish lips, humdrum uneven pauses stunning her and suffocating with uneven quietness the duo's atmosphere ideally unsacred granted hints to Timothy how genuinely embarrassed was Mary Eunice before joining the church.

Most of all, fortunately, not tempt herself to obtain daily in humdrum bad habits which her peers' majority were woefully fated and apocalyptically dropping in the pile of their infernal temptations and once childish curiosity.

"Well, once I took a puff at the cancer stick, I wasn't nicely impressed at all."

"Then, how did those popular riots react?" Although the myriad of compassion, spotlighting exquisitely the older man's enquiry, he wasn't very fond of the famous children in the educative institutions as his crystally obvious experience with such problematic children were obnoxiously spellbinding him with dreadful memories from his earlier years along with his siblings.

"The girl that hosted and offered me a cigar was clearly disappointed and questioned me why I didn't like it like everybody else."

"Oh, those children! It is sickening me what kind of sadistic little monsters they could be." A heavily arduous sigh elaborated at the top of his fragile lungs, lingering his pristinely masculine, strong fingers cheaply around the cigar length, admiring the nicotine diminishing his hunger and unnatural nerves. They boiled and cooked inside him foreshadowing the sequence of incessantly boiling blood with its adrenaline criminal pulsation into his veins. "To such good kiddos like you, Mary Eunice!"

"No wonder they plotted their nemesis with taking off our bathing robes," The haphazardness in her series of stammers and sweltering heat boiling her well-sculptured, chubby cheeks stilled the unhealthily sanguine blush, generously stroking her facial skin registered Timothy's gruffly cleared throat with a dryly cold-blooded cough.

"Hold on a second, Sister!" Fixing his professional medical apron's collar with true deftness in his only free hand's fingers, throughout the woman of the cloth's breathing hitched momentarily. Her spidery palish fingers commenced trembling in choir, dancing yet around the rigid curve of her hem's grasp. "If you don't genuinely feel comfortable sharing that, I am not forcing you at all."

Curtly cutting off the woman of the cloth rendered her tongue conjugating diabolically relentless, frequent irrational babbles and coos.

"I am totally okay with that, Timothy!"

"It is pretty pointless to continue telling me if you don't feel comfortable at all, Mary Eunice!" An uneasy pause suffocated their numbing doldrum, settling conveniently on the balcony, in the meanwhile, the wintery chilliness swaddled and fondled them delicately, daintily their seating postured figures. "Just stop up to now! I know how embarrassed you are. I know how terrified you are telling this experience to somebody, even if it is dearly trusted,"

At the moment, within another took drag at the cigar length and puffing after parting in a soft O his mouth the heavy foggy dim strong-willedly expanded, flaring his flexibly wee nostrils at the acutely sinful, venomous tobacco scent. It invisibly polluted and penetrated his attires and his overall figure from head to toe.

"Or at least this person can be trusted and it is worth listening to your song."

What perpetually invincibly startled the young lady was how deeper, and raspier was rusting the older gentleman's timbre, prominently accentuating Demogorgon's potent influence and commands instantly registering their manipulations, stretching every tissue of his like voodoo doll, targeted maliciously.

Within a few minutes later, throughout the former member of the clergy, accompanied by the religious nun entered back in the former sleazy nightclub singer's patient room with the brilliantly shimmering hope of beholding her again either drifted off asleep or dwelt out of reality's sane realm to ponder abysmally her misty reverie's realm. Or otherwise, brass insomnia's disguise dolling her up.

"And I was thinking," As soon as the older gentleman gently, politely held the balcony's door, linked with the patient room and stepped aside, in order to give Sister Mary Eunice more enormous space to step inside the sufficiently expansive room. The empty hospital bed was eerily austerely embracing the platonic pairing's twains of inquiring eyes, landing categorically perplexed on the emptiness.

All of a sudden, the double beamingly charming smiles, extraordinarily tattooed on their parchment, young-looking complexions ebbed out and blurred each pattern of mirth, dumping their once saturated facial attributes in artistically sunny contour.

"What is going on?" The duo swapped morbidly skeptical glances just shortly after venturing inside the desolated in unpromising loneliness with lethally early morning hush, settling conveniently in the very outskirts of the room. Whilst the juvenile blonde's series of mastered stammers railed out of her tongue in no time, widening momentarily their huge, round embers and flaming stark bleak skepticism.

"I don't even have any idea, but I am sure Jude must be gone to the loo." Even though Timothy's sole speculation was that his rare bird was gone for a few minutes to the toilet to clean herself like every patient, whose needs were fiercely erupting and a far cry from sluggish to manifest any kind of physical purity.

Thus, the nun whirled boldly once Judy's hospital bed with its dumped lazily unwrapped duvet and dully, blatantly scrunched bed sheets, embellishing the mattress and pillow.

"Or only one God knows."

"But also the bathroom is strangely unused at the moment."

"Holy!" An unholy murmur was crafted with hitched breathing and a raced heart when the British compatriot acknowledged that his right hand wasn't residing her exact patient room inside the grandiose medical building.

Thereafter, he ushered his both hands' virginally diabolic, creamily smooth fingers massaging gently his temple. He opted to retrieve murderous sanity and control over his nerves just shortly before the adrenaline's ferocious impulse urged him to be a participant in an unspeakably villainous deed.

"That is impossible."

"I really don't know how it's possible even for her to escape just like that."

Meanwhile, both adults were far from potent after the discouraging disappearance of the former promiscuous jazz nightclub singer blanched the healthily palish skin tone of their complexions. The eerie echo of their docilely humble footsteps ghosting the carpeted flooring was the only productively bubbling sound, amalgamating with their featherly soft breathing as background noises.

The homesickness of the once occupied with her own authentically remarkable presence the Bostonian was nothing more than just a straying ghost ghosting with its memorable petite frame. The crinkled bed sheets, and lazily unwrapped duvet glinted starkly hideous melancholy into the possessed doctor and the recent visitor's cabochons, still questioning who would be responsible for the former pious woman of the cloth's disappearance.

--- *** ---

The senseless condition, swaddling lukewarmly, conveniently the former pious holy woman's frail skeleton nonetheless, was conveyed emphatically surreptitious by the angelic humanoid form of Josiah Chance up to his office.

Perhaps it had been a while since the Bostonian had drifted off asleep profoundly promising until Josiah surreptitiously yanked her by scooping her petite frame into his foreign secure. Nevertheless, a comfy embrace and stilling his transportation to his office out of his co-worker's sight and detrimental presence which may illuminate every sinister harm, sketched austerely on the blonde.

Almost four o'clock in the morning. The nervously quiet ticking of the wall clock in Josiah Chance's office after wrapping and swaddling warmly, conveniently the older woman and locking up his office door, to allow unwelcomed visitors into his space unless his consent was brightly screaming.

The majority of the general population was either kipping leisurely or on the contrary a certain scale of them was getting ready for the day from earlier.

In the interval, whilst the weightless frail skeleton of Judy was peacefully, cozily terminating the emptiness of the double mattress of the patient bed and a sheerly oyster-white blanket generously altruistic blanketed the weight, at the moment, the angel jotting down a couple of prominent notes in his note pad.

In case to keep notes for his impending night shift even though his shift was approaching its apogee within a handful of hours solely to get back home, collect sufficient rest and sort his day somehow with his hectic daily schedule.

The fountain pen grasped in its gingerly dancing fingers supporting the weightless pen and manipulating with each motion its oily tip inking anything on the sheet of paper, lowly humming himself, solely discernible for him, due to the fact the doctor wasn't all alone at all.

Although Josiah wasn't genuinely trusting, or at least didn't have any intentions of granting a modicum of his trust to any other colleague, even Timothy to look after Jude until her condition's utter improvement. He decided riskily to extend his shift until it peaks at approximately eight o'clock in the morning, and phone Kit and Grace to pick up their solely trusted family member or at least relative they had for now.

Josiah as a humanoid form of an immortal angel was extraordinarily acknowledged about the spiritually possessed by vile essence preys and their masters' spine-chilling intentions of harming or at least leaving a criminally irreparable, unavoidable track of the ventured damage, tattooed on their preys.

He couldn't even bestow with a modicum of his divinely unique trust to anybody who was not only filthily corrupted by the vile essence's population, furthermore granting the former ambitious Monsignor anything, which Demogorgon commanded him to obtain momentarily or at least sooner than later.

"W-Where am I?" Once the older lady came to her senses at last and stirred whilst stretching her leanly alabaster arms into the thin air, her groggy eyelids wrenched open and kneaded them with the fashioned in balled fists brittle hands. He cleansed gradually her unevenly foggy vision, reciting in a reluctant mutter the posed question as the younger gentleman was truly caught off guard.

But for the younger gentleman's luck, his fingers stilled their authentic dance around the fountain pen, whereas his figure was seating on his hardwood bureau and scarcely mopping off his benevolently shining smile, glimmering past his handsome facial features.

"Who the hell are ya?"

"Don't be scared of me, Jude!" Pure honey and nonchalance roughly, outstandingly touched the Michiganian's angelic caution, shifting his attention directly to the older lady, dumping the pen on his bureau and lifting his rear from his seat. "I won't hurt you."

"Just tell me who you are!" The former pious sister of the church's vouch was potently, stubbornly begging for the angelic doctor's retaliating position, surging the intensity of her megawatt sharpness in her Boston lilt, fashioning in furious balled fists. Whereas her white-knuckled balled fists hands were headstrongly grappling the duvet, flicking up her pools of deep hazel into the tall masculine figure, ghosting with his own promisingly comforting, foreign presence nonetheless. "I promise nothing detrimental is going to happen."

"I am Dr. Josiah Chance Crawford, Judy! You are in a much safer place." As soon as Josiah was ambling up to the hospital bed, to join the patient's company, his introduction was sufficiently auspicious for the blonde, managing her throat muscles begrudgingly to swig the bittersweet lump, vigorously bulging up her neck. "I promise everything is okay, and I am going to extend my shift, in order to wait until eight o'clock in the morning to inform your relatives about your release."

"W-What release?"

"You are fully recovered, Judy! You are as healthy as an ox and you are on your feet finally, which is beatifically relieving me."

"It is blindingly unbeliev-"

"Trust me, I won't allow you to be under the supervision of that vain Dr. Howard!" When the foreign consoling sensation of snatching the middle-aged woman's petite, quivering hand into his larger, creamily soft. Consequently, the duo exchanged painfully piercing gazes, speaking galore of emotions and sentiments that were absolutely platonic. No romantic intentions. No malicious intentions. No detrimental intentions. Everything just seemed smoothly promising and welcoming.

"Ya don't even know him, Doctor! He is an old friend of mine and he has got that-" As it was high time for the Bostonian to elaborate sluggishly the vowels and syllables, lurching awkwardly on her wet, berry-coloured tongue and perpetually conjugating them into an utterance which was curtly cut off by the Michiganian, grasping even tighter the reassuring grip.

"Demon inside him! I know him better than I do myself, Judy! Trust me it is not worth leaving you under his supervision and anything strangely harmful to happen to you until your relatives are here to retrieve you back at home."

What severely hurt and agonized them during their heated debate about the British compatriot was the somber contrast they shared in their worldviews Judy and Josiah.

Ironically, Josiah attempted to persuade emboldening the patient to join temporarily his side and most of all, grant a modicum of her celestial trust to him, even though the angel had never taken care of the patient even once at least.

Notwithstanding the relentlessly realistic circumstances, sooner or later the brilliant crystal clarity Timothy is going to be after his recently targeted prey which was stealthily ugly connoting their conspiracy. An unimaginable jealousy would well in the very being of the former holy priest as soon as he acknowledged Judy's interactions with other males than him behind his back.

"Timothy isn't a bad person, Doctor Crawford! He is really a benevolent person with a golden and big heart, although now he is combating persistently with the demon and his dark corruption."

"Look what, Judy! As soon as I arrange your release from the hospital, go immediately and contact any priest or member of the clergy nearby in Boston and try your best to protect yourself if he is going to hurt you. It will be a great case of arranged exorcism."

"Don't be ridiculous, Dr. Crawford! I am going to kick the bucket once he acknowledges who is the one that stands between the exorcism and the interaction with other priests and nuns."

"I don't want even to argue with you, but it doesn't make the things easier if you are keeping yourself quiet and you are tolerating that abuse towards you." The haphazardness of curving motions in the pensive purse of the Bostonian's naturally nude pink, plumpish lips quivered disquietly. Whereas uncurled the duvet from her grip and folded dramatically, coldheartedly her arms across her flimsy chest, attentively listening to the doctor's advice.

"Exorcism is the only alternative for his soul's salvation. Just imagine this man with the devil inside him hurting at least fifteen people or killing you if the exorcism doesn't even happen at all."

The unthinkable alternative which was the lastly remaining and unnervingly clicking in her vortex of thoughts aroused a tempest of stormy prejudices about how the conjuration of the demon from the vulnerable identity of Timothy would advance and would lead to his ultimate spiritual salvation or the contrary, it would destine him with its apocalyptic demise.

"I don't know!" All of a sudden, the former licentious jazz nightclub singer's facial expression broke into an unspeakably sore sob, a nude sanguine blush creeping beneath her facial skin and electrifyingly heating her flesh as crystalline, translucent tears pronged her pitch-black, gorgeously long eyelashes, dimming dew of moisture. "I just can't trust any exorcism would be as successful as it may be. It led to many death cases instead of salvation."

It was far from an authentic victory or at least depicting the explicitly graphic images of a mere conjuration of a possessed former clergyman who was struggling with his fiendish demons.

"At least, his soul would be in a better place! Much better place than torturing and regretting deeply whatever woe slipped from his foul hands that were entirely corrupted by the devil!"

"But do ya know what, doctor?"

In the meantime, Judy drew instantly Josiah's attention promptly with the husky sharpness, puncturing her brutal seriousness in her rhetorically posed question as a begrudging arch of his eyebrow indicated his incredulity in the wee hints of the blonde's intentions of saving Timothy's soul via seeking a member of the church's council and arranging anytime the dispossession of the vile essence.

"My quietness is under no circumstances to keep him as diabolically harmful as he is right now. I will try to help him as much as I can just to banish that malicious demon out of his body and see again the same old Timothy I knew before."

At that moment, the younger man draped his strongly, muscular arms to scoop in a firmly kindhearted embrace the former nun, resting his forehead on top of her head whilst registering one of his hands to smoothly soothe and knead her bony upper back.

Encouraging her scintillating comfort and unconditional platonic warmness as her tears drenched his professional medical apron with her own salty, translucent tears, sobbing inwardly deferential in the crook of his arm, finding her own flimsy heart torn off on trillions of glassy pieces, waltzing into her void ribcage.

"But I am afraid he will die just like the other victims of exorcism who haven't made it up to the last prayers."

"Sh, sh, sh, everything is going to be alright! I strongly promise you Dr. Howard will be on his feet after the conjuration and your deadly concerns will cease from existence."

In spite of the headstrong comforting words of the angelic doctor and trying his best to soothe his patient. Nevertheless, the impossibility of ceasing her bittersweetly sticky tears along uncontrollably melancholic, grotesque sniffles, pitching the early morning atmosphere inside Josiah's welcoming, glowing office, was impossible. 

✞ What are your actual thoughts on the interaction Mary Eunice and Timothy shared in the initial/starting scene of this chapter? ✞

✞ Do you think that Dr. Josiah Crawford has genuine intentions of protecting Jude from possessed Timothy or otherwise not at all?✞

✞ If you really liked and enjoyed the chapter, don't forget to leave an outspoken feedback! It is cordially appreciated. :)) ✞

Author's Note: Do not kill me for the sloppy dialogues between the characters, nevertheless, I opt to amalgamate the emotional and verbal atmosphere as much as possible. Anyway I'd like to express my immense gratitude to jlangster_, southernauthor and Celeste-Moore for  being the most loyal and active readers of this book! I genuinely appreciate it and you're strongly loved by me not only as promising readers and extraordinary writers, but also spectacularly awesome people! Furthermore, within 5 chapters solely we will get to know the epilogue, or rather, the prologue of the pre-Purgatory book! I hope you liked and enjoyed this chapter! :))