Aaron Fleming

We shimmy down the stairs, loading screens from Resident Evil commandeering the mind’s eye. Posters crawl up the walls, propaganda articles, sowers of seeds pulsating with self-help strength, gestating a rebirth for subjects coiled 'round outdated philosophies and theologies. The stench of Tony Robbins, of charlatan healers, sapphire remedies devised by scoundrels bewitched by the dollar – transitory pecuniary harvests belying a carnivorous rampage that casts the vulnerable into pits of poverty. Outward charisma masks the revolting truth: how an industry built upon the idea of helping people inevitably only aids the perpetrators in amassing vast fortunes.

As the table proffering copies of Dianetics ascends out of view, Scientology’s kinship with the gargoyles of self-help is clear. Monies crisscrossing hands seems the only way for mental satisfaction, for fulfillment, to attain a contented mind and live a life not weighed down by melancholy. All are equal…in the eyes of the market – a monstrous entity bolstered by parasitic agents like Hubbard’s child, polluting the public space with its injunction to cleanse the mind of ills that are probably not there, and if there are, certainly some shite about thetans isn’t the cure.

The soft carpet rolls underneath our feet as we slink down, one step after another. At the bottom, in this enclave locked out the back of the church, we try to recall by which door we entered.

“Was it this one?” asks the Duke standing beside a plain white door.

“Who knows,” I reply, looking around another corner, sighting stairs to the basement, where stands a table flanked by potted plants. “We might as well try it.”

Opening the door brings us once again into the main space. Random people in red t-shirts are wandering around, picking up documents from one desk and moving them to side panels inked in sparkling maxims. Even more copies of Dianetics are housed here. The book slumbers in stacks on the mantle, English editions ruffle up against Greek and Russian editions, with French and Italian loaded onto a lower shelf. The Duke and I squint to see the covers. Stickers announce that two million copies have been sold up to now. A girl with a distracted gait comes up to the stockpile, floats her hand over the books for a second, then slides one out, ambling back to the front of the church.

“This truly is the idol,” observes the Duke.

“The girl?”

“The book.”

“Ah yes…I feel blasphemous just by looking at the thing!”

“It’ll eat your very soul that will,” warns the Duke.

Just then a chap in a red t-shirt approaches us, his American twang already revealed through his eyes.

“Like the film?” he quizzes.

“Oh aye,” we answer.

“Which one did you watch?”

“Uh…American football, legs – dirty ol’ psychoanalysis huckster bastards!” spits the Duke.

“Yes…” The word oozes from his lips, they upturning into a smile, his bench-pressed chest heaving with poorly-concealed merriment.