Frank's Bad Day Part XII

They had been driving for about 30 minutes since they had picked up Taariq and the Lost Souls.  He had taken a seat near the middle of the bus sitting next to the haggard looking middle aged woman in a ragged jean skirt and dirty red sweater. Frank had kept his eyes out the window or straight ahead as he had been told, but he had been studying Taariq from his peripheral vision. He was truly scared of him, yet at the same time he was fascinated with how childish he was. Taariq was like so many people Frank had known in the business world, on the playground at Elementary School, in countless classrooms in High School and College, and even at church. He remembered the nuns at his Catholic High School. There was one in particular, Sister Maria Teresa, who seemed to enjoy making students cry by belittling them with harsh words at any opportunity. She always explained to people how much she loved the students and that she was there to, “prepare young people for a cruel world outside these walls”, but everyone saw through that; she was just mean for the sake of being mean. 

When Frank had imagined supernatural creatures existing outside of the superficial atmosphere of earth, he always thought they wouldn’t have the sort of silly insecurities and obvious self-deceptive tendencies that are so common on earth. Frank had always believed that outside of earth everyone could finally see truth for what it was; that for once things would be truly black and white, but he could see this was not the case with Taariq.

To people like Taariq, the response of others to his actions was like the reflection of light on a mirror, defining who he was, minute by minute, second by second. Without that mirror Taariq did not know who he was. That’s why he made such a big deal with Charon; that’s why he loved to jerk the ropes, bite, shove and punch his captive souls. Frank wondered if maybe he was actually afraid he would disappear without continual redefinition of who he was by the people he tormented.

Frank decided he would ask Leslie or Charon about this later, but he suspected the answer had something to do with the source of evil and the Father of Lies.

"Great...more theology lessons", Frank thought with a slight grin.