A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 26

This is the seventh year in a row I’ve run this series in April.

Today’s story: Chief exorcist says Devil is in Vatican.

Father Gabriele Amorth said people who are possessed by Satan vomit shards of glass and pieces of iron.

He added that the assault on Pope Benedict XVI on Christmas Eve by a mentally unstable woman and the sex abuse scandals which have engulfed the Church in the US, Ireland, Germany and other countries, were proof that the Anti-Christ was waging a war against the Holy See.

“The Devil resides in the Vatican and you can see the consequences,” said Father Amorth, 85, who has been the Holy See’s chief exorcist for 25 years.

“He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, or even appear to be sympathetic. At times he makes fun of me. But I’m a man who is happy in his work.”

Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist

In a rare insight into the world of exorcism, the Italian priest told La Repubblica newspaper that the 1973 film The Exorcist gave a “substantially exact” impression of what it was like to be possessed by the Devil.

People possessed by evil sometimes had to be physically restrained by half a dozen people while they were exorcised. They would scream, utter blasphemies and spit out sharp objects, he said.

“From their mouths, anything can come out — pieces of iron as long as a finger, but also rose petals,” said Father Amorth, who claims to have performed 70,000 exorcisms. “When the possessed dribble and slobber, and need cleaning up, I do that too. Seeing people vomit doesn’t bother me. The exorcist has one principal duty — to free human beings from the fear of the Devil.”

What if you were the Roman Catholic Church’s chief exorcist and you received visitors from a country like the Ukraine, officials from the state government. They request you to accompany them on a most urgent matter: The President of the country, they believe, has been possessed by demons. Worse, the country is holding a secret cachet of nuclear weapons which the President is threatening to use to instigate a nuclear holocaust.

That’s about a clean a set-up for a story as you can get.

It’s The Exorcist meets Dr. Strangelove.

There you go: My twenty sixth story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

What would you do with it?

Each day this month, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Gender bend, genre bend, what if. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in comments (hit Reply to join the conversation). And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.

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