Whispers in the Shadow
In the quiet suburb of anytown, USA... where picket fences hid the fractures of ordinary lives, lived Elias, a man whose faith once burned like a lighthouse in the storm. He had knelt in the pews of St. Mary's every Sunday, his prayers a shield against the world's chaos. But the years had worn him thin—bills piled like accusations, a marriage fraying at the edges, and the endless scroll of news feeds that painted the world in shades of red and blue rage. "Where is God in this mess?" he'd mutter, his Bible gathering dust on the nightstand.
It began on a Tuesday evening, the kind where the sky hung low and heavy, as if heaven itself had turned away. Elias slumped in his armchair, the glow of his phone casting demonic flickers across his face. The headlines screamed of division: politicians as saviors or serpents, neighbors as enemies in ideological wars. His thumb paused on a post—a venomous rant against a figure he once admired, now twisted into a symbol of all that was wrong. "How could anyone follow that fraud?" the words hissed from the screen. A flicker of doubt, a momentary lapse in his armor of faith. Just this once, he thought, let the anger feel good.
In that sliver of weakness, the air grew thick, though Elias couldn't say why. A shadow uncoiled from the corner of the room, not a man but a presence—Satan, cloaked in the guise of a weary friend, his voice a silken thread weaving through the silence. "Elias," it murmured, "see how they mock you? How the world laughs at your quiet devotion? They're stealing your peace, one lie at a time. Hate them back. It's justice, not sin."
Elias blinked, shaking his head, but the seed was planted. Faithlessness is fertile soil, and Satan tilled it with expert hands. That night, as sleep evaded him, the whispers returned. They deserve your scorn, the voice cooed, for dividing what God meant to unite. Let it grow—let it fill the emptiness where prayer once lived. By morning, Elias's thoughts were no longer his own. He refreshed the feed obsessively, each post a thorn embedding deeper. TDS, they called it in the comments—Trump Derangement Syndrome, a polite label for the hate that consumed the soul like acid. But Satan knew its true name: Envy's blade, sharpened by pride. It wasn't about one man or one side; it was the universal poison, a tool as old as Eden, turning brother against brother, voter against voter, heart against heart.
Days blurred into a haze. Elias's prayers became accusations, hurled not at heaven but at the "other side"—the fools, the traitors, the enemies of all that was holy. His wife noticed the change, her touch recoiling from the cold fire in his eyes. "You're not you anymore," she whispered one night, tears tracing the lines of her fear. But Elias only sneered, the hate now a lover's embrace, warm and insistent. Satan watched from the shadows, his laughter a distant thunder. See how easily it takes root? he reveled. Your weakness invited me, your faithlessness opened the gate. Now, I impregnate your mind with my truth: that love is weakness, and rage is power. One thread at a time, I unravel your soul from the Lord's grasp.
The theft was subtle, a soul pilfered not in a blaze of brimstone but in the dim flicker of a screen. Elias's church seat grew empty, his Bible's pages yellowed and unread. Friends drifted, replaced by echo chambers of fury. And in the quiet hours, when doubt clawed back, Satan was there, ever the midwife to malice: "Hate keeps you safe, Elias. Without it, you'd shatter.
"It ended—not in fire, but in a mirror.
One dawn, as Elias stared at his reflection, hollow-cheeked and wild-eyed, a fragment of an old hymn surfaced: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound... The words pierced the fog, a lifeline from the Almighty he'd nearly severed. With trembling hands, he closed the phone, knelt on the cold floor, and wept. "Forgive me," he gasped, "for letting the serpent in.
"Satan recoiled, his whispers fading like smoke.