cNutgroist

i had a very strange experience yesterday. Walking through the centre of Dublin, I saw a perfectly normal man, a lovely old Dubliner turned out nicely but with a big black smudge on his forehead. Of course, to see an old man with a slightly tragic facial disfigurement is still commonplace in this day and age and if I had believed in god I would have thanked him for making me pretty near perfect. So I thought nothing of it and moved on. Until I turned a corner and saw another old man sporting something similar. And then a middle-aged couple. And then a couple of flower-traders. And then a whole family. I thought, for one brief moment, 'this is it. i've gone mad. i've gone absolutely mad. at last' and went and looked in the nearest shop window to see if i, too, bore the mark of the Beast. Was I merely to be given a silent portent of the coming tribulation, or was I too a child of the Apocalypse?
Staring hard at the still-very-handsome-for-my-age image in front of me, it was as i suspected: I was not one of them. So I had been set apart from the sons of Satan and chosen by God to warn, to organise and to fight. My mission was clear and with this in mind, I sat down to contemplate how my fate had resolved so clearly in such a direction. I revelled in my purpose, feeling validated in my childhood decision to believe my bullshitting parents that i'd been marked for greater things. I begun to think of weaponry.
I also came *this* close to calling my analyst and shouting 'I think i've gone fucking insane! I can see a sinister black mark on the foreheads of about 10% of the people in Grafton St'. But instead I went to the gym, my reason for being there in the first place, and ran myself silly to forget all about it.
90 minutes later I walked out, fully refreshed, into a swarm of people rushing through the late-afternoon and pretty much immediately saw at least another dozen people with the Sign. What amazed me was that nobody else noticed, or seemed to notice, and that they felt they could walk through this world without fear of recognition. A highly relevant passage from Revelations sprung instantly to mind and I laughed grimly to myself, the newly apppointed Angel of Death, but for fear of copyright enforcement I shall pretend to have forgotten it entirely for this account.
So as I walked past Trinity on my way to Tara St, a well-dressed and not unattractive girl carrying flowers, a handbag and the black smudge of Beelzebub was strolling parallel to me and I thought i should confront her right there. It would bring the fight to them. Besides, she is not unattractive and perhaps we can achieve universal peace if she just lets me do it to her. I know I would get halfway there anyway.
And so:

"Excuse me, I don't mean to be rude but...what's tha..

(interrupting)
-It's Ash Wednesday!

"Ohhhhhhh! Of couuuuuuurse! So you..."

(interrupting)
-Have some ash put on my forehead, yes

"Aaaaaah! Of couuuuuuurse! Um, good for you!"

-ah thanks.

"All these people. I was thinking...you know...I thought I was going MAAAAAD!"

She smiled. And turned left.
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