Ermeneglossia

"Ermeneglossia" is defined as "the interpretation of tongues" by American anthropologist L. Carlyle May in his 1956 essay, A Survey of Glossolalia and Related Phenomena in None-Christian Religions. It entails the deciphering of jumbled, incoherent, cryptic annunciations emitted by an individual in an induced state by a religious layperson (a sorcerer, a shaman, a priest, etc.). It is presently the title of a short story I had written quite some years ago.

It is written from the first person perspective and concerns the misfortune of a man who awakes to find himself trapped in an incredibly small stone space with no recollection of who he is, where he is, and how he got there. His voice-box has been removed and he suckles from a drizzle of water as it runs down the wall from a crack in the ceiling for sustenance. After several days of examination, finding only petty artifacts, he retreats into wallowing as he contemplates his plight. To his relief, however, he hears a faint rapping coming from the wall of his confinements. In excitement, he attempts to contact the faceless entity through a small hole in the wall by his feet, only to be met with a greater horror.

Please enjoy the excerpt and let me know if you care to read the rest.

Ermeneglossia

Excruciated, trying still desperately to call out, to convene with the stranger, I could only make out one feature of him at a time: a nostril, an eyebrow, a lip. I whispered, but all I could make out from the thumper were muffled groans and grunts. I put my mouth directly in front of the hole, but received the same reply.

   It hurt too much to continue, so I stopped and swallowed a chunk of what I assumed to be my own tissue. I could hear the stranger on the other side continue to murmur and garble. Inquiring, I pressed my eye to the opening again and saw blackness, then I felt a moist, hot, foul-smelling gust lollop over my cornea and cause me to shut my eye swiftly to tear, and back away.

   Rubbing it and opening it again, I looked through and saw the beam of light once more on the other side of the gap. I saw the gentleman lean back and throw his opened mouth into the light as I continued to hear him gargling. The beam shot through his missing and broken teeth, and into the cavity, allowing effortless view to his tonsils. But where I expected to find a flicking, anxious tongue, as a line of drool rolled down his unshaven chin and neck, I saw only a bloody, knotted mass, sown up tight with blackish string, encrusted in a thick coating of uncontrollable mucus, a stale wound where his tongue used to be. It filled my gullet with contortions, shooting pains up my back and over my shoulders that bleated from my spine.

   I was overcome with coughing, the most painful, harshest coughing fit I had ever known, and I couldn’t stop because of the pain, but I pleaded for it to for the very same reason. Horrified, I began to whimper once more.