Korridorium

♫ Induc­ing Mag­netic Lucid­ity ♫

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I enter the cor­ri­dor. A wom­an’s moan­ing drifts from the treat­ment room. I knock and enter, plac­ing the requested mag­nets on the table for the Maître. He holds his hands over his patient, pays no fur­ther atten­tion to me, and mut­ters, “The fluid must flow; the invis­i­ble fire of life must spark the cri­sis to pave the way to heal­ing.” Then he reaches for the mag­nets and passes them along the body of the woman, who is breath­ing heav­ily, her eyes rolling back.

I have also tried my hand as a mag­ne­topath, covertly bor­row­ing the Maître’s heal­ing stones and wav­ing them over the slowly swelling belly of my girl­friend, Eloise, the Maître’s maid. She, too, rolled her eyes, but likely because she found me and my mut­tered incan­ta­tions quite ridicu­lous. In the end, she went to an angel-maker.

Per­haps it is not the mag­nets at all, but rather the Maître himself—his own grav­i­tas ani­malis—that causes the reac­tions of his female patients and these mirac­u­lous heal­ings? I still hope that he will take me on as a dis­ci­ple and ini­ti­ate me into his secrets. With an impa­tient wave of his hand, he dis­misses me.

I step back into the cor­ri­dor. For a long time, I lis­ten at the door, hear­ing how, with the help of his mag­nets and incan­ta­tions, he melts away the wom­an’s block­ages bit by bit.

Ani­mal Mag­net­ism: