A woman alone.
by Mingus Casey
A woman alone.
They lock you up if you don't believe.
Then they make you take the holy water until you say you believe.
You have to take the holy water, they lock you up if you don't take the holy water and you don't believe. The holy water makes you believe.
They think the holy water makes you believe. It just makes you tell them you believe so they stop giving it to you. They know that happens though, if you tell them you believe and they think you don't believe they make you take the holy water and lock you up until you believe.
The dungeon isn't that bad but I want to go home. I miss my husband and my family and they don't believe that I believe. I don't fit the profile of a heretic, I don't work against the church, I only don't believe, and how can one believe if one has never seen?
So they give you the holy water until you see, and when you see the truth, and you understand that they will never let you go and never stop hurting you until you believe, then you say you believe and you say you have seen the truth but it's so hard and you really don't believe.
At least they don't burn us, like they used to, like they do to the witches and pagans, they just lock us up and don't let us go until we believe.
It's the same sort of people now though, that would have done that. The workers here all look similar, all neat and organised and mentally acute, no creativity, no ingenuity, no disbelief, they just follow the Act of the last Pope and they wear the crosses around their necks.
They misinterpret the last Papal Act, the Act say that if someone is a non believer and a risk to themselves or others through their lack of belief, or cannot care for themselves adequately due to their lack of belief, then the Act applies and they must be taken away and treated.
What they really do, is if you are an unbeliever they say that is a risk, and means you cannot adequately care for yourself, after all you will not go to heaven if you do not believe.
They are all prison guards, because this is a secret prison, they say it is there for our own benefit, to help us get back to society, but really it is a prison. They took us away from society, and now they are going to put us back, but before they do that they toy with us like a CAT toys with a mouse.
The CAT Teams, Compulsory Atheist Treatment Teams, they come out whenever someone does not believe and it's obvious that they don't believe. They have informers, and the Papal Guards give them people to treat. Anyone can inform. Then they catch the people, take them away from their homes and make them drink holy water.
If they say no to the water they say the person is sick, the person is only making that choice because they are sick, they do not respect that choice, if they say no to the accomodation, they say the person is sick and needs a change of accomodation to get better, they do not respect that choice. And then when the person gets sicker in the dungeon, unhappier, they give them different kinds of holy water that maybe they don't want to take, to help them deal with the sadness of being detaine.
They don't respect what the non believers want, they say they know best, and that the words of the last pope guides their judgement. I say that God knows best, and perhaps God guides this.
I have no quarrel with God, should he exist, and I will try to live my life as a good woman.
It makes no difference to them though, I am unsure of my faith, an unbeliever.
The holy water told me the truth, it said that some of them had seen what they thought was God, it said to me that they were arrogant, that they wanted to force their beliefs onto others, that they felt insecure in their own beliefs and so they had to make others believe, it said that if you don't believe, they will hurt you.
No one listens to me in here, its difficult to get messages out.
I talked to the County Advisor, I told him that I believed, and I told him how they had made me take the holy water and kept me locked up before the Act was in place, and he smiled and nodded and walked away and I never heard from him again, he's meant to investigate when they breach the peoples rights. But they don't properly investigate here, they just lie and forget that it happened and say things are in the now and when the holy water makes you forget, makes you feel dizzy and strange, they know that you won't remember the rights abuses.
I want to go home, the cell is too small. They let us smoke ciggarettes, they let us have visitors, but we're not allowed to leave, and if we leave they send the Papal Guard's after us, men with truncheons and swords who are violent and cruel.
I talked to other people, one said she had sent a letter to her priestess saying she was unsure of her beliefs and she needed help, and the priestess sent the Guard's to drag her in, they were violent, left her covered in bruises.
Another stole money off her parents, and they said she must be crazy to act against the words of the prophet, "Thou shalt not steal", and got her thrown in there. She has a funny look to her eyes, like a cat that is looking for a vulnerable mouse to toy with, but she still doesn't want to be in there.
I talked to another man, he said that he was trying to get into his own home after being locked out and the guards came, he didn't see that they were guards in the dark and thought they were thieves, fought back on instinct, he was once a soldier, and they put him in the cells too.
It was that or the prisons for him, and he does believe, but they still make him take the holy water and it is changing him, and they still keep him here.
There is a woman here, she doesn't want to be here, she just wants to be at home. She was crying when they brought her in and she talked to me, told me that at home she'd been unable to cope, wasn't looking after herself properly, wasn't sure if she believed or not. They didn't give her partner more money to ensure he could care for her adequately, they didn't deliver her meals on wheels, they just picked her up and threw her in here and it's breaking her heart. She is old, and she has the same name as me. Someone needs to help her, she doesn't belong in here.
It's difficult to get help when you are in here. You can always talk to a priest, but to get real help, to have help to harvest the crops, to ensure the house is safe, to get work, none of these things happen. The High Priests take notes of all the non believers, write in their little paper books with their pens, always funded by the holy water makers, there are so many different sorts of holy water now, for so many different sorts of sick people.
They never needed the holy water before, they just let people be, the holy water is new, it's the new way of thought, the new inquisition but noone believes me when I say it.
It's horrible and wrong and unfair and these people shouldn't be treated like this, it makes me feel so badly for them.
They say we are sick if we don't believe, and some of the people in here are sick.
They say we are at risk because we do not believe, and we must be made to believe, or we may be hurt by other believers out in the world. They say they are doing it for our own good, to save our souls, to stop the troubling thoughts, but to be detained and made to take holy water only makes the troubling thoughts worse.
If these people truly served god, would they harm others?
I just want to go home.
My husband went to the King's palace and asked for mercy for me, tried to say that I would not harm others or myself, that I could look after myself, but it made no difference because I did not believe, and the High Priests lied on all the pieces of paper.
My husband talked to the High Priest who said I needed this, told him how I should be treated, that I should be treated with respect, listened to me when I didn't want to take the holy water because it made me feel sick and listened to me when I said I wanted to go home, he told them they were breaking the law and then I went home with him. A few days later they put me under the Act.
Then my husband got a letter from the High Priest, that he was keeping me in a dependant and unwell situation, that he didn't want me to get better, it wasn't true but whoever wrote it believed it. The author didn't understand, the author had never drank the Holy Water, had never been detained, he was a High Priest and this doesn't happen to High Priests.
All my husband wanted was for me to be respected, we both thought I had rights, and High Priests had responsibilities, but they throw those rights away when you are a non believer after the CAT Act, and they say they are doing it for your own good.
It's not true, to be good to me would be to let me go home, to not make me drink the holy water that makes me feel sick, to give me holy water that makes me better and doesn't make me feel sick, to treat me with respect and let me see priests when I want to see them.
You can't be a High Priest and not believe, so he will always believe. If he does not believe his career will be over, he's a good man so one day he might try it, but he should be careful, not to do it until he is ready to retire, to make sure he has belief insurance in the background, to not believe is dangerous and if you believe again they will say its the Holy Water, and you must take the Holy Water forever.
Then when he is older, if he gets sick, gets dementia, they will say he went crazy in the past, and it will be worse for him then.
I pray he admits to his mistake, if he admits that he perhaps had mistaken beliefs, then maybe there will be hope for him in the afterlife, should it exist.
The High Priests say I am paranoid, because I believe the High Priests are out to get me. They are out to get me, they want to change me into something that believes, but I don't want to change, I want to be me. The holy water pharmers, they say the holy water doesn't make people sick. But it makes me feel sick, I don't like how it makes me feel, it changes the way I think, it makes me feel tired, my heart is beating differently.
The holy water sellers, they bribe the High Priests, buy them dinners, give them pens with the holy water pharmers logo's on them, give them pads, treat them to holidays where they grow the holy water but the High Priests, give them paper with lies on it and tell them it is as true as the first Prophet's word. The Priests don't take the holy water, they just believe the holy water makers because they already believe, otherwise they would never become High Priests.
And only unbelievers have to take the holy water, so they never know what the holy water feels like.
They don't know what the holy water really does, how it makes me feel strange, how it stretches my thoughts, why I don't want to take the holy water, they just think that because it makes people believe it is good.
They make it worse if you don't want to take the Holy Water.
The dungeons are cold, with wool mattresses and beds, cotton curtains, and everything is made so you can't hurt yourself. The only reason I'd hurt myself would be to stop the misery of the dungeon, I just want to go home.
If you hurt yourself or others while your in the dungeon they make it worse, they say you are dangerous, they don't understand why you would hurt so much from being locked up that you would want to end your life, or hurt others.
They let you go up for review sometimes, you have to convince the Judge that you believe, if the Judge isn't convinced that you believe, they don't let you go out. I got a lawyer to help with that, and my partner and some friends came and talked, said that I believed, that I went to Church, that perhaps recent events had made belief more difficult, after I lost the baby.
They tried to say I was unstable, that I had a mood disorder because first I smiled at the high priest, and then I cried when he asked about the baby.
They tried to say I couldn't make rational decisions when I said I didn't want to drink the holy water, that I wanted to know how it worked, what it did, and they didn't tell me. It's because its a religious decision for a non believer to drink the holy water, and if a non believer doesn't want to drink the holy water the non believer cannot make proper religious decisions.
They tried to say I had strange beliefs and delusions, because I didn't believe. I should never have told them that I didn't believe, I should never have told them anything. I should have kept to myself and stayed at home and gone to Church and been good.
I wanted help though, so I went to my counsellor, her and her assistant said that I didn't believe, that I had to be locked up and made to drink the holy water, to make me believe, they didn't understand.
When my husband went there, they told him half truths and humoured him, they tried to say this was for my own good, they didn't understand that I didn't want it. He got angry, he doesn't like it when they hurt me, and they didn't understand, they didn't let him just talk to the counsellor one on one, they said the assistant had to be there, she's chubby with beady hawk like eyes, waiting to kill, looking for another victim.
They don't understand that I want to believe, but their trying to make me believe, their not letting me not drink the holy water and their keeping me away from home and it hurts, it hurts really bad, they should respect me and then I would trust them and be more likely to cooperate and read the words and understand what it is to believe. It's making me unhappy.
They give you a new kind of holy water if you are unhappy, they say it makes you happy. It makes you happy for a while, but if you stop taking it you get sadder than you were before you tried it, and then maybe you kill yourself.
They call it crazop Holy Water, it takes two months and then you get really depressed and maybe kill yourself and the makers, Lily Waters, they say if you stop taking it you get sick again, they don't tell the truth about how it changes your mind, intertwines itself with you, makes you need it to survive.
They wheeled someone out of here on a stretcher a few nights ago, allergic to holy water. Must be the devils influence, no way to cure them. Wonder what happens to them next. I hope they let that person go home one day.
There are two paths that societies evolve down. One leads to good science, the other leads to authoritative dogma. Ernst Mayr said that, Ernst Mayr was pretty onto it.
Authoritative dogma often poses as good science. The priests justify it by saying look, man has only been flying for a hundred years and now we have 747's, but that is different, that is not the human mind and soul, that is merely physics and aerodynamics.
The priests are on the path of authoritive dogma and someone must correct them. They do not know or listen to science, they merely believe their diagnosis's, unbelievers with delusions, false beliefs,
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