The Story of E--
The time now has come to turn to the curious tale of the devout E--, who on one morning when the crisp leaves of autumn were falling across the delicate New England pathways found, upon sitting down with her family at breakfast, that the very issuance of bread near her disturbed her sense greatly.
At first she thought it a matter of a bad batch, and so asked for a different loaf to be baked. This time, underneath her very instructions. After all, had she not won multiple baking contests with her spins on family recipes? Had she not deduced the proper and blue ribbon rum-soaked black cake that brought her a blue ribbon?
Yet, even upon her instructions, her own delicate hands kneading the dough, attending to the yeast, and carefully timing the magnificent rise of the loaf. What a thing of precise beauty, how time and bacteria yielded to the kitchen sciences that most wonderfully human of inventions: the rich warmth of warm flour and water.
But this loaf too broke her out in a rash. A doctor was called for. He could find nothing wrong with her body but suggested a dyspepsia and a nervous reaction to all breads. This was of course, after using the most reliable of scientific methods, he had her dine upon all the various loaves he might watch her eating. Rye breads, wheat breads, pumpkins bread and pumpernickel.
All led to the same kind of rash, the same kind of nausea.
The doctor came calling often, for a series of visits, bi-weekly. Over the course of three months, ending one month when on a bright day when the hot summer sun shone white E--'s family heard her cry for help in her room alone with the physician. When her father broke into the room, the doctor was standing by the fireplace, but E-- seemed so shaken, so panting with un-godlike tremors of fear that all further visits of that physician were supervised.
At this time she began to write, scrawling out lines in slanted couples on any piece of paper near her. Correspondences deep and passionate with old friends were festooned with poems scrawled in crosshatch.
E-- continued to be known as one of the great bakers of the region, sometimes delivering her foodstuffs down from her own room on the top floor of the family house to the children that passed by. Sometimes, after receiving such muffins and other sundries, the good children of the town could see two small mouse-like eyes peering out of her room.
All this must be known to understand a small occurrence in a nearby church that happened on a cold autumnal equinox.
E-- met with the pastor and asked him a fair few questions. She began with a Socratic investigation: "Why must communion involve bread?", "What does it mean to be 'saved'?", "How do we determine who is 'elect' if it cannot be known?"
On receiving answers from that stalwart expert in her faith, she continued in her inquisition. Now she turned to Aristotle, reasoning:
At that very moment, the preacher himself, feeling the weight of E--'s bread in his mouth began to feel sick and queasy. It is not said that he died, but speculated that he transferred away from the small town to somewhere else in New England. Some old wives, passing gossip in the old country manner, noted as saying he perhaps went down-country as far as Sleepy Hallow.
And as for E-- not much more is known about her other than the peculiar article after her passing. Her sister executed her will, and on command burned the many thousands of stacks of paper and poems scrawled by E-- during her life. They were strange spells, the sister said, with a grammar unlike any other.
But as for the contents of those scribblings no one on earth is privy to know. E--'s sister burnt them all.