Well I was telling you, my Japanese teacher had asked me to meet her at Teradatcho train station. During this time in japan I wasn’t working all that much, in fact I was probably only doing 4 hours a week. So, with this in mind I didn’t put up much resistance when asked to meet someone, any excuse to get out of the house.

I walked up to the station and met Ikuko there. She was waiting by the ticket machine looking like a little Japanese rodent. Don’t get me wrong my Japanese teacher has a heart of gold but she does look like a rodent, not her fault she’s just ugly. Anwho, she bought me a ticket and of we headed to the next station. Along the way I asked what I was doing. She quickly explained to me that her mother was in hospital and had a brain tumour. I thought to myself, why in hell would someone with a brain tumour want to see me, why would want to see me, regardless of what aliment they had.

So I asked where did I fit in to this little adventure to the hospital. Ikuko told me in Japanese, and then pulled out her Japanese-English dictionary. After a stupid blank look came across my face, she tried saying the word a few times. What she was saying and what I thought she said seemed all to wrong. “Exsirsisim” she exclaimed.

I’m thinking “exercise???”

I admit I was carrying more weight then I should have been, but a simple walk to a hospital wasn’t going to solve that problem. I gave up a grab her dictionary and there the word was… “Exorcism”

Crap! Now, being bought up in a good old catholic house and seeing the movie “The Exorcist” I was well aware what see was requesting. I pointed to the word again and said with an confused look on my face (yes, my usual facial expression), “Exorcism, you want me to preform an exorcism?”

With an even more confused look on her face, she said, “Yes, you do exorcism on mother”.

I replied in what any normal catholic would do in my place, “What the fuck? You want me to take the Devil out of your mother?”

I was thinking, if I had a brain tumour and the Devil wanted to pop in for a bit of a visit that would be cool. After 5 minutes of fantasying about what it would be like to have a brain tumour and have the Devil possessing me, I remembered what I was doing here. I asked her why she wanted me to do such a task. She replied by reminding me that I had shown her a necklace my mother gave me before I left Australia. The Saint Christopher medallion, it was suppose to protect me whilst travelling.

Protect me my butt, Saint Christopher wasn’t protecting me, he was taking the piss. But I should say, bless his heart cos, I haven’t had bad experience whilst in transit, touch wood.

So, I was kind of compelled to attempt to drive out this evil spirit. How could I say no? My Japanese teacher was clutching at straws, for God sake, she just asked the closet thing she new to a priest to preform this ritual and to think about it I was kind of turning into a priest, I hadn’t had sex for a few months and boys in school uniforms where looking a little more appealing.

There I was, going up a elevator in this hospital about to preform an exorcism on a lady I had never met before and wait, shit, I have never preformed an exorcism. I had to think of something, and quick. What the hell was I suppose to do?

I was know walking toward her room and still had no idea, I was trying to remember what the priest did in “The Exorcist”, but instead all I could think of was Dr. Evil sitting in his moon chair spinning around yelling “I need two priests and some holy water”.

This obviously wasn’t helping and in fact was having a negative effect causing me to nearly laugh.

I turned a corner and entered the room. There laid an old Japanese lady, balding from chemotherapy but sitting up lively watching television. She gave a slight smile when she saw her daughter Ikuko, but when she saw me, she gave a hideous cry and started yelling at Ikuko, I freaked and Ikuko asked me to go wait out side. I thought to myself maybe this old bird is possessed. Ikuko came out a few minutes later after explaining to her mother what I was here to do. So I walked back in knowing that this old dying lady knew and agreed to what I was doing, this freaky thing began to settle in and no longer was this just a strange Japanese teacher asking for a even stranger favour, now I had an old lady believing I was going to remove an evil spirit from her. I began to fell very out of place.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I said hello to her in Japanese and she fired back a quick non-comprehendible response. I looked at Ikuko for a translation, but she was far to busy staring at her dying mother. This was starting to freak me out a whole lot and then she moved her hand towards me and invited me to hold it.

This was it, this is where she wanted me to do the exorcism. I moved towards her and took her hand, closed my eyes and then did something I hadn’t done since I was very young; I began to pray. Now, this is where I began to wig myself out. With out any sense of hesitation I tried talking to God. So, what does one say to God in this circumstance? Strange thoughts where running in my through my head like; man, I haven’t prayed since I was a child and what about all those unholy things I have done in the past 20 minutes, not to mention the past 26 years and shitte, all the Satan worshipping music I listen to. The more I thought about, the more I realised that if I start praying to God, there’s a good chance this lady is going to die there, as punishment for meeting me, the newly crowned “Boy Satan”. Now I began to have a feeling I have never felt, I didn’t know what it was, when I later describe it to someone they called this regret. Lucky, this felling passed soon after I left the hospital, but back to the exorcism. So, there I was; dying ladies hand in one had and my head racing with this thing called regret. If I think about it, this would probably looked like praying. So, I put all my fears of talking to God aside and started to pray. And, what a killer opening line did say, “Hello, God, haven’t spoke to you in along time…” what the fuck!!! If you had asked if I believed in God a day before I would have probably called you an idiot for even asking that question, but there I was praying like a good little catholic boy asking God to help this woman.

Now, seeing this was my first exorcism I didn’t want to ask for a miracle, so what did I ask? A killer orgasm for the old bird? Well, that though came up but then I realised being married to a Japanese she probably had never experienced this before and I didn’t want to come back here everyday.

So, I asked that he helped her with her suffering. This way I will never know it worked. So after that, I tried to do an “Our Father” but I couldn’t remember that, so I moved on to a “Hail Mary” but alas, that did work either. So, I opened my eyes and said, “All done!”

Gave a little smiled and walked out. I waited out the front of the room for Ikuko to come out and then we headed out of the Hospital. Now everything was beginning to sink in a little and wondered what I did was wrong. Ikuko took me to a Japanese restaurant and bought me some lunch. I thanked her after my meal and headed back home still contemplating what I had done. I went for my pocket and did what all-catholic boys do when the mess up with their religion, rang my mother. I gave her a brief explanation on what happened and she told me I shouldn’t be meddling in such matters, that I should leave those things for priests, I tried to explain that I didn’t really preform an exorcism and just prayed, but it was useless, mum was pissed at me for interfering in “priest’s” business. So, with that making me fell even more confused, I arrived home.

Jezz had just got home from work and was doing some intensive porno research on the Internet. I proceeded to tell him what happened, he looked at me and began to piss himself. This is what I really needed; my mate laughing after I just cast the Devil out of an old lady. A smile returned to my face and began to see the funny side to the whole event. So, there it is kids, Roycie “the exorcist”, prepared to remove any evil spirit that may be troubling you. Either it be in your CD player or your dying mother, I don’t mind as long as I get a feed and get another chance to tell a funny story.

Oh, and for the record, Ikuko mother died about a week later. This I think may prove that if there is a God, he has a sense of humour.

And, one more thing is, there are One thousand and six hundred and Sixty Six words in the story. Suppose there wouldn’t be if I just wrote 1666 hey.