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Extremities
— David thinks Jez is being a little extreme;
Jez is tying up Ella and lighting St. John's Wort candles.
Ella says that St. John's Wort kills her power, and that
Jez's sole purpose is to kill her, all of which just sounds
like more crazy to David.
Jez:
"Ella, this is paranoia."
Ella: "Go suck your master's
dick."
Um,
what? Hey? Huh? Sometimes it becomes painfully (or perhaps
wonderfully) clear that I am not watching American TV.
Headmaster
David decides that Jez is not qualified to light candles
and dish out platitudes, so he calls a proper doctor.
Without
the normalizing force of an average human, Ella is suddenly
face-to-face with a still-droning Azazeal, who reminisces
about his encounters with Ella. They faced off during
the Civil War and at the pharoahs' palace and whenever
and wherever else insufficiently diabolical demons like
Azazeal like to hang.
Speaking
of insufficient — Leon and Roxanne (the
latter of which is still wearing that not-quite-a-noose
thing) ponder their choices. Leon concludes he has none,
thanks to his nearly high tea. Roxanne just always chooses
the door marked "bitch."
Azazeal
leaves, giving Ella a kiss as he goes, but I'm too busy
retching to give you the details.
Back
in the day — Ella is in the torture chair,
and Azazeal is the chair of torture. He makes some compromising
comments about her "pleasing shape" and righteousness
and redemption, but again my brain short-circuits in time
to keep me sane and keep me from recapping it.
Here
in the day — Apparently Thelma's feeling
the strap squinching around her head, just as Ella experiences
it in the past. Huh.
An
aside: Ella is remarkably fetching in her ancient witch
getup (whereas Azazeal the Righteous Witch Finder looks
like a Halloween costume that didn't sell).
Doctor
Slaphead — A wanker with a too-wide grin
diagnoses Ella as possibly schizophrenic and definitely
dangerous to herself. Whatever she might be, doctor, the
magnitude of it is far inferior to that of your bald spot.
Oh,
and as the doctor pretends to examine her, Ella relives
her past, and we flash back to that soul-destroying day.
It's a witch trial, and Roxanne and Leon are witnesses
— while Azazeal is the mockery of all that is good
about law and order. Thelma is in the gallery, but as
herself as we know her, not as some past version of herself.
The
verdict — Seventeenth-century Ella is being
lowered from some sort of winched-up ladder... she's being
lowered toward a pyre. There are sanctimonious spectators,
and she's screaming, and it's kind of awful.
And
then there's a pause, and the winch reverses, and Ella
rises silently and gracefully back up as the winch turns
back steadily and spookily and even... hmm... even kind
of ghostly. And the pious folk run away.
Yes,
Thelma's there, stopping the singeing and still wearing
her modern-day corpse clothes. What are we to make of
this: was Thelma there in 1666 as well? Or has she time-traveled
in a way that makes about as much sense as the invisibly
lobbed grape?
The
next phase of torture — Never mind: we're
back at Medenham, and Ella's still screaming. Thelma is
outside, apparently back from wherever she was. Thelma
tries to follow as the ambulance takes Ella away to a
modern form of torture, but her ghostliness (or her bad
timing) slows her down again. Thelma stands at the gates
of Medenham as Jez saunters up beside her. "Not so
lucky this time, eh?" he spits, and then looks Thelma
right in her ghostly eye.
Hospital
— Ella sleeps as Azazeal watches.
NEXT WEEK ON HEX: A naughty nurse!
I don't really need any further incentive.
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