Chapter 3
Sorescrape,
Absolutely, get your patient in with a better group of people. She's been spending far too much time with Alice. I don't like the look of this "mask-sewing circle" one bit.
It's better for us if your patient has no friends at all. Unfortunately, few humans will accept that. Even the really misanthropic ones substitute a dog or a cat or even a plant for this function. Humans seem to... understand that they are being groomed for an eternal society and, consequently, they're irritatingly attached to each other. Instead of doing away with friendships, we have to make them useful.
Friends bring the good and the bad out of each other. Your job is to direct her to friends that draw out her most desirable traits. I assume you also remember the Enemy's story about the prodigal son's friends? And if not, you have surely read Screwtape's bit about the middle-aged couple? Her friends can be your accomplices. Your twittering in her ear thus far has done very little with what you've got. Focus on your raw materials.
Your patient has inside her a collection of imaginary, contradictory selves. Each self tries to move her forward in a different direction, and each one gets bolder as she appeases it. For example, the self that imagines her as a great writer will insist it is reasonable that she writes every day. She might not become a Dickens this way - but she might becomes less bored, more industrious and harder to tempt.
You can, perhaps, distort these selves. With proper handling, you could warp the "writer" self an artistic brute whose "inspiration" betrays a friend's secrets or whose characters are caricatures of everyone who has ever upset her. Alternatively, you can create new selves that are vaguely glamourous to her. Isn't she quite an angry sort of person, deep down? You could create a "harbinger" self, a bringer of justice through which she grows petty and little-minded without ever realising that she has become a bully. Be very careful about who you allow her to become, and makes sure the new selves are less recognisable to the Enemy. He always recognises them and tries to retrieve them at every turn. But your patient doesn't know that.
What vices does your patient have, and what frustrations? You want to keep her as close to her type as possible but not so much that she notices. For example, if she is a proud or a greedy person, who feels she deserves nice things but cannot afford them, make her friendly with a shopper and emphasise her "socialite" self. She will either bend to the friendship (buying what she can't afford) or become ill-tempered at knowing that she can't have things so close within her reach. An experienced tempter could then persuade her into stealing. Resentment between friends is an exquisite thing, particularly since your patient is a woman and as such, has been trained to avoid "making a big song and dance". Such women are normally very crunchy by the time they get to us and add wonderful spice to the bland hedonists we're sadly becoming used to.
The delight of friendship as temptation is that it plays nicely on human idea of loyalty, and specifically of disloyalty, which is one of the earliest and more disgusting sins to them because most human endeavour depends on it. Indeed, Adam might be in Eden now if he wasn't a pathetic little tattletale. The good news is, you can of course dilute loyalty to be demanded to any number of bidders, however contradictory that might prove. If your patient begins to doubt your taste in friends, convince her that cutting ties would be disloyal. Even better, convince her she's "making a big song and dance about it", and ask how she can be so mean as to cut off friends over nothing? Humans will tolerate all sorts of things for No Good Reason.
Of course, friendship is a two-way transaction. Your patient's friends could just as easily tempt your patient to patience, charity and forgiveness if left unsupervised. Pick out some proper friends for her and that will do most of the work for you.
On that note: I think you need to re-evaluate the loud-mouthed woman in your patient's office. She is not the type of atheist you want your patient getting along with. She might perhaps be helpful in pulling your patient away from Alice's set, but you may be sailing your patient out of the storm and into the whirlpool. Of course, the Christian bond your patient shares with Alice is troubling. However, you could trust Alice to judge in silence. This woman, on the other hand, is very quick to warn your patient against her own bad ideas - that puts her closer to the Enemy's side than she might think.
Oh, and break Alice's sewing machine.
Yours,
Scabtree