The Back Attack

The back demons that had been lying low for the last six years or so launched a sneak attack more than a bad week ago.

I don’t know where they had been hiding all that time; I thought they had left, defeated at last.
They hadn’t.  Are they ever?

Had they retreated to their hibernation lair?  But I don’t think demons hibernate. 

They scheme, they plot, they gather their arsenal, they sharpen their daggers, and they wait, they wait.  Wait for just the right moment when their victim is working out and congratulating himself, if not on his athletic prowess, then at least on all fitness systems functioning smoothly.

With a sinister grimace the lead demon launched a soft musket ball.  At least the initial impact was soft, making itself felt in the lower back over the succeeding hours, but gently enough to be dismissed easily.
The next day a bit less easily.  Gradually I surmised that the musket ball had more likely been a delayed reaction armor-piercing incendiary.  The fire was spreading. My panic button flashed.

Those who’ve been under a back-stabbing attack already know what was to follow.
Yes, the torture instrument was readied and, like some medieval torture box, steadily and unrelentingly encased around the lower back. 

It became apparent all too quickly that the demons had fitted the inside with spikes that would pierce different parts of the body, depending on the body’s movements. At times they would touch a raw nerve, triggering a wave of spasms. 

The victim heard the demonic laughter over his own pain-driven outcry when that happened.  Because the sharpened spikes would penetrate the same “wounds” again and again when motion would precipitate, each motion became necessarily minimal, tentative, experimental, as if I were moving through a mine field.

It was a torment getting there, but once in bed flat on my back the feeling of bliss came flowing back. As long as I remained immobile. 

And that was the demonic objective: keep this booby down!

But when nature calls in the middle of the night, the booby must rise. 

One painful little motion at a time, until the body must actually rise to get up on two legs.  It’s not something I wanted to try again after the first heroic attempt.

Easier and less painful to walk barefoot on burning coals.

Or sit down bare-bunnied on a giant Arizona cactus.

It  became a grim, teeth-grinding battle between the booby and the spiky demons, for nature was urgent.

When I finally sat on the edge of the bed, I felt like I’d reached the edge of disaster. The spike belt was tightening around the waist. 

And now I still had to try to stand up. 

Trying it that first night, and many nights, and mornings, thereafter, I felt as if my upper body had separated from the lower, and now I had to fit the jagged edges back together, each edge wired by the back demons to a touchy nerve.  It required an irrational act of courage of the kind that belongs right up there in JFK’s Profiles. 

But the booby got up, more or less, each night, each morning, for a Calvinist simply cannot let the demons of any kind have their way. 
His faithful helpmeet was needed to get the socks, etc. on the aching body parts.

Total immobility was best, thus his movements were minimal, his small steps extremely measured.  

Yes, he learned that demons can teach a man to “walk circumspectly.”

But during all his waking hours there was no place of comfort.

After ten days or so, the demons held council.  Their verdict: a slow retreat, and “we’ll catch him again another time.”
There are a couple left. 

I can feel their presence. 

They’ve probably been assigned to the clean-up task, packing the torture devices and gathering the ammo before moving on to the next victim.

Hamlet said: “Readiness is all.”

He never had a back attack, I think.