The Demon’s Wish

I wish I could be braver. More hopeful, more confident, more willing to charge into the fire.

Demons aren’t supposed to want, to wish. Demons are created to follow orders, to march like soldiers, to cut souls down and douse them in flames. Demons are made to be ruthless, soulless creatures, their only emotions thriving off the fear and anguish they inflict.

I think they must have forgotten a piece when they made me. A big piece.

I trudge through my duties like a ghost, torturing souls and ending lives with no passion for it. The demons around me wield their emotional massacres like medieval knights on a battlefield, imbued with a soul-satisfying, deeply embedded knowledge that they were made to do what they’re doing.

I envy the surety of their minds.

Passion and confidence are something I’ve never felt. I stride awkwardly through the ranks, copying those in front of me and occasionally glancing back to make sure I look like the demon behind me. As living souls say, I “fake it till I make it”. As the next plague commences, I wonder if I will ever make it.

I look to the sky, towards heaven, and feel lost there too. Angels would never accept a demon into their ranks ever since Lucifer fell.

I feel torn between worlds, a halfling of a half-life.

Torturing souls isn’t what I’m meant to do, but neither is saving them.

The fights pass, the anguished souls never standing a chance against our psychological war of horror. Days, years...then centuries. Every new target another chance at changing apathy, passing each time as their souls turn to dust in the flames. I yearn to feel a part of something, to feel connected to something.

After decades of copying and half-hearted condemnations, I am chosen to carry out solo missions. Most targets require a host of demons as the targets are usually older, adults who have only the beginnings of evil and need persuasive presence to descend fully into the darkness from which we will claim their souls.

The apathy and faking have paid off, and I have been promoted to solo demon, leader of a lone mission to corrupt a child. Children are inherently young and fully innocent, fully impressionable, an easy target yet a difficult one to fully turn. These targets are only given to the most experienced of demons.

Yet again, I feel like an apathetic imposter. The promotion gives me no source of joy in my colorless life, and I’m unsure why they would have chosen me for this.

They tell me her name, send me to her town, and instruct me to corrupt her.

Here in this wilderness of animals and forests, I hone in on my target, a young girl with strawberry-blonde hair and the most charming of freckles spattered across her cheeks.

I set about corruption, facing her with her father’s loaded rifle, a gas stove waiting to be lit, a discarded mound of dry hay and a waiting match. Literal child’s play, easy as pie to corrupt yet difficult to discern what will be the deciding factor. Children are intuitive and far more intelligent than adults give them credit for. They will often stick to their morals faster than a 90-year-old Christian. But this strawberry-blonde defied all my apathetic ambitions. When faced with the rifle, she unloaded it and locked it in its cabinet, tucking its key back into her father’s desk, assuming it had been left out by accident. The gas stove primed for a destructive explosion became a saving grace when she realized the gas had been running too long and saved her mother from lighting it. The dry hay bales with a waiting match fluttered in the summer breeze, and exploded with gales of laughter as she launched herself into it and built a palace out of straw.

Over and over I tried new approaches, my apathy waning as I put forth real effort for the first time in my existence. Each one failed, more spectacularly than the last. The girl was full of kindness, unselfish to her very core, and always putting those around her before herself.

It was maddening.

Months passed, the girl growing towards her next year and my time running out. If I didn’t turn her, a team of demons would be sent in to finish the job, and I would be banished to the pits, a lifeless expanse of darkness that permeates you to the very core until you go insane.

Exhausting all my efforts, I turned in frustration to the closest living creature, a small rabbit intent on a bed of grass nearby her playing field. I willed my legs to stretch as I grew into a predator, growing sharp fangs and gray hair, calloused pads budding beneath my four paws, a low guttural growl sounding from my throat. The rabbit’s right ear twitched in my direction.

I pounced. The fresh taste of blood flooded my mouth, and I gave a slight twist to the bunny’s neck, feeling the life draining from its panicked eyes.

The commotion was enough to attract the girl’s attention and she came running, her tiny figure waving sticks at me and shouting to scare me away. My wolf form slinked back, letting her run her course and watching with curiosity to see what she would choose. Would her kind nature take over and try to save the doomed rabbit, or would she succumb to darkness under the guise of being kind and take its life to spare it from further misery?

I fell back behind the bushes, ready for my final plan to take hold in her corruption. Any sane person would see that the rabbit was beyond help and would endeavor to end its suffering.

The child fell to her knees beside the ailing creature, its furry chest rising and falling rapidly, eyes wild with fear. She gasped, and I reminded myself this would be one murder of many in her life. Her tiny hands cupped together, gently scooping the rabbit up into her palms as her eyes brimmed with tears.

I knew I had her.

As a wet drop slid down her freckled cheek, the bunny stared at her with an all-consuming fear, as if begging her to end its pain. Their eyes met, brown to brown, soul to soul, and her shaky demeanor turned to determination.

She stood, slowly, careful not to jostle the rabbit, and started walking purposefully towards her house. All the while whispering solace to the bunny, ensuring it she would take care of it and help it back to health.

Shocked but not surprised, my demon self followed her back to her house, watching her build a bed for the bunny and give it a dropper of liquids, solo drop by solo drop. I felt certain she would lose faith when the bunny died and her soul would be mine.

Daily my certainty lessoned as her ferverence and protection healed the little animal, its nose twitching and eyes regaining spark as its neck slowly healed. A month later, and it was hopping around. Two months, and she set it free. I was astounded, my apathy replaced by shock and questioning. I had been told every human can corrupt absolutely, that every mark was achievable, that every soul had its darkness. The child had hers, to be sure, but she wielded it with strength and conviction, embracing the darkness to achieve a greater good.

My will steeled as I knew the end approached. I knew I had failed, and the other demons would be arriving soon to try to finish the job, ganging up on her defenses until she crumbled to their will. Yet for the first time, I felt something. I felt confused, and the conviction to find out why this uncertain thing had happened, why this girl had showed so much steel in the face of adversity. And for the first time in my existence, I felt passion. I felt.

When the demons arrived, I faced them down, defeating them one by one, letting them dissipate into ash to be tortured in darkness for eternity. I felt such a stirring at the one sight of defiance that I had to protect it, to learn about it. One by one, the demons came at me with their weapons of fire and destruction, and one by one I struck them down, adamant that nothing should harm the one good soul I’d met in centuries of despair.

When the fighting was over, the girl was in the same spot, watching the now healthy bunny run around the grassy yard, unaware that anything had happened, that I had just fought a battle for her soul, and by so doing, excommunicated myself from the demons forever.

Not a demon, not an angel. I didn’t care who I was, as long as I could protect this sweet soul who had showed me there was hope, who had disrupted my sense of apathy and taught me to feel.

The demons abhorred me and disowned me; the angels could not accept me for the evils I had done. I was once again lost in the midst, floating through a societal limbo, yet finally I felt free, at peace. I felt I had done something that mattered. The girl’s determination had startled me out of my apathetic centuries of existence, showing me that hope and passion could endure past all obstacles if one was a warrior.

So I determined to be her own warrior. I put on my imaginary armor and determined that I would be braver, for her. She gave me hope that the world was not yet completely lost, and through that I gained confidence in my abilities. I stepped into the fires of evil so she would not have to walk through them. I devoted myself to protecting her life and watched her become a doctor, saving lives instead of ending them as my fellow demons had predicted. I watched with something akin to pride as she devoted her life to embracing her kindness and darkness equally, changing life after life with her hope and compassion and uncompromising honesty.

She gave me passion and a reason for existing.

I defied my own kind to protect her from the forces around her that threatened her existence more than I ever could.

I felt stronger, more confident with each evil being I struck down, with each life she saved instead of ended. My apathy was gone, my reason for existence extended. I was not meant to be a demon, nor an angel. I could not enjoy destroying, yet I could not guide to salvation. I was on my own, a rogue protector, devoted to the one hope I ever saw in the world.

I was the guardian demon, a being of my own making, saved by her hope and defiance.