The Seventh Demon

by Randy Chandler

     We were seven when he drove us out and left within me this wound that never heals, a raw lesion as foreign to me as a ruthless conscience. I was the first in her and the last to leave, which may explain why the other six were not so devastated. It was a territorial thing, I admit. Perhaps I was too prideful. She was mine and I wasn’t leaving without a fight. I wish now that we’d been harder on her before he evicted us. We should’ve made her grovel longer, deeper in filth. We should’ve marred her flesh with lifelong scars. Would that we had been more assiduous in sullying her soul before he came along and crippled me for eternity.

     His touch changed me in ways too humiliating to say. He knew me. He called me by name, and now I am become something other that what I was -- a thing I hardly recognize. I am a deviant shunned by my own kind, mocked openly in the Lower Quarter. My name has become synonymous with fool. Demoriel Beloved of God, they call me, delighting in the derision. I am the butt of mock tributes and comic atrocities throughout the low-order grottoes and far-flung archipelagos in the Great Sea of Darkness.

     The song of my shame sizzles even in the dreary patter of sleet on mortals’ panes. All because he touched me when he drove me out of that insufferable woman from Magdala. The other six growled and grumbled but wisely took their leave without undue delay. Naamah the Seducer, Rimmon the Syrian Devil, Zaebos the Count of Hell, Veltis the Scourge of Babylon, Thamuz the Summerian Braggart (who now claims he invented artillery and started the Inquisition) and Noxious Nergal of the Second Order — not one of them suffered the torment wrought within me by Yeshua, nor the ridicule that followed — and follows me still.

     I suffered deeply down the dark ages, a virtual outcast, forced to walk the cutting edges of the worlds, not belonging in any of them. A creature of darkness with a shameful lust for the Light. I, who corrupted the bodies and souls of countless pathetic mortals, no longer able to do spiritual violence? No wonder I was mocked and scorned.

     I was attired in the sallow flesh of a gray-haired monk when the summons from Satanael reached me. Croucher by the Door delivered it. It has been rumored that Croucher was one of the seven in partial possession of Miriam’s soul but this hearsay only serves to illustrate how little the human world knows of our kind. A demon of Croucher’s rank is never allowed to touch a mortal. Croucher is what you might call an inner-circle “flunky.” He crouches by door to the Dread Lord’s chamber, always at the Son of the Morning Star’s beck and call. While his physiognomic maladies do make him seem the stuff of mortal nightmares, no human has eyes sensitive enough to see him. When he passes, you might feel a nasty chill or briefly choke on an offensive odor of mysterious origin, but you could never catch even the most fleeting glimpse of him.

     Croucher came out of the darkness gathered in the corner of the monk’s cell. The pious brother was seated on his prayer mat, trying to reconcile the ravages of the Black Death with God’s mercy — with little success. He was aware of me only as a vague disquiet that often interfered with his deeper meditations, and I had no intention of giving away my presence. My purpose was finding a way to the Light, not devastating the monk’s soul. I wore him like a roomy habit, well-concealed within the flaccid folds of his flesh. I was there as an observer. A seeker. Croucher was oblivious to such nuance of purpose. He came forth as a single-minded shadow to whisper the summons and then dissolved back into darkness.

     Lord Satanael would see me at my earliest convenience. One did not ignore such a directive — unless one wanted to spend the rest of one’s interminable existence chained to tedious chores in the deepest trench of the Lower Quarter, with no possibility of reprieve.    

     The summons gave me the impetus I needed to depart the monk; for all his spiritual yearning and dedication, the fellow was a dullard. His meditations were often spoilt by thoughts of his next bowl of gruel or the next slice of warm bread. Cohabitation with him was not going to draw me nearer to the Light. 

      I should explain: I am in no way mortal, nor will I ever become so. It is not the human fear of death that makes me burn for the Light. My kind seldom dies. We may devolve into something resembling a large warty toad, a humpbacked homunculus or a mindless blob of protoplasmic goo, but death almost never claims us. When the Son of the Light reached into Magdalene to force me out, he touched me, ignited something in me with his power — something still smoldering which threatens to flare brighter than a storm on the sun. None of this is to say I am not on intimate terms with death. I know death inside-out. I’m in the body of a dead man at this very moment, using his fingers to make these words, though the blackened digits are going mushy against the lettered keys and the flesh is beginning to slough off. Damnation.

     But I am getting ahead of myself. I’ve inhabited human flesh so often that I have adopted, more or less, a linear sense of time, but sometimes — such as now — my native perception of time intrudes and I want to leap about, moving forward or backward at will, and in confusing fashion.

     But back to the summons. I wasted no time in departing the monk. Leaving him to his quotidian search for the Light in a bowl of gruel, I slid out of him as discreetly as a silent fart escapes a matron’s rectum in a front-row pew. In fact, he did fart at the exact instant I exited – and such a fragrant fanfare it was!

     I translated myself immediately to the Lower Quarter, not pausing (as I used to do before my feverish affliction) to admire the asymmetries of the Dark Sea’s shoreline where it encroaches upon the human realm. I had never had an audience with Satanael and I didn’t want one now. I drifted down the dim corridor to the great iron door to the Dread Lord’s chamber. I rapped and waited. For the Son of Dawn “brought down to the grave,” as some pious Hebrew scribe once wrote of him.

     Finally the great door opened with a groan and Lilith appeared in the annoying splendor of seductress. During this era Lilith was a fixture at the Lower Palaces, privy to court secrets and intrigues. No arse was kissed nor diddled without her knowing every mundane detail, no nefarious plot hatched outside of her hearing — or that of her proxies, her bottom-feeding parasitic spies.

     “Demoriel,” she said, her long tongue lashing voluptuous lips. “Beloved of –”

     “Don’t say it,” I said. “Don’t say his name.”

     Lilith laughed. Her laughter spawned legions of slithering echoes. I wanted to do great violence to her. Delighted to defy me, she said God’s Secret Name, long forbidden here. I cringed and gnashed my long teeth.

     Lilith reached between my loins to fondle me. Her lust for my kind was legendary, but I knew this fondling was mere mockery because she knew I had been corrupted by the Light and had lost much of the daemoniac fury that could inflame her prodigious carnal appetites.

     I seized her wrist and said, “I am summoned by the Dread Lord.”

     “As I was summoned by God’s angels and commanded to mate with Adam, and you know how that turned out.”

     “You refused and proceeded to fuck every earthbound demon you could find.”

     Lilith shrugged, her breasts writhing restlessly within her leather bodice; in the World Next Door a volcano rumbled, convulsed and belched smoke. “Adam favored fucking his sheep anyway, so that simple cunt Eve was the perfect mate for him. He could never have survived me. And he certainly would not have satisfied me.”

     “Stand aside,” I said.

     “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”

     I pushed her aside and entered the chamber.

     Satanael greeted me with much warmth — too much warmth. I bowed and kept what I hoped was a safe distance. Three walls of his great chamber were living murals reflecting red-tinted scenes of Heavenly beings; by what magic Morning Star animated these scenes, I had no idea. The fourth wall was studded with countless trophy heads of dead mortals, the faces of which were similarly animated with grimacing contortions. A number of them appeared to be mouthing soundless words, pleading, while others were silently screaming.

     “We have watched you with great interest,” Satanael said, “since your encounter with the Magician.

     “With the Son of --”

     “We call him Magician for his all his pedestrian tricks.”

     The great mural on the left wall dissolved into a muddle of colors which then resolved itself into sharp focus as a writhing orgy of Egyptian gods, some with heads of hideous beasts, others with human heads. The angels in the other two murals were compelled to witness the varieties of carnal perversions and ingenious couplings, triplings, and in a few cases, quadruplings. 

     “As you no longer serve your nature,” said Satanael, “I have brought you here to charge you with one last chance to extinguish your unnatural desire for the Light.”

     The enormous head of his phallus peeked out from the golden folds of his magnificent robe. I knew then that the rumors were true: Satanael’s phallus had grown larger in proportion to his aeons spent away from God’s light, and in the fertile darkness of his dominion it wasn’t done growing. This erotic ratio was fearsome even to me.

     “You will receive two gifts,” he went on, “to symbolize the battle raging within you. This is the Magician’s foreskin, circumcised in the usual tribal ritual and fashioned into this ring. You will henceforth wear it on your little finger as a symbol of your lust for him.”

     He slid the leathery ring onto my finger. Then he grabbed me, spun me round, bent me over and rammed that huge phallus up my arse. “And I give you the gift of my seed to put iron in your withered wick!”

     The mural angels turned away in horror. The Egyptian gods looked on in envy. I screamed as his semen flooded into me and inflamed my innards. Lilith howled in laughing delight.

     The Dread Lord pushed me away and it felt as if his phallus had pulled my guts out. Lilith took my hand and led me out. I didn’t like the way she was looking at me, but the pain in my anus absorbed the lion's share of my attention.

     Lilith took me down to the bank of the River of Fire and rode my engorged cock until it was raw and bloodied. When at last she fell off me and sank, sated, into soft ground, I stumbled to my feet and went on my dreary way -- the way pointed out to me by my raging phallus.

     I proceeded to cut a swath through humanity that became legendary. I laid souls to waste where I found them, allotting no time to look for the Light. I was quick and brutal, working without the subtleties I’d always savored. Centuries passed but I did not lose my desire for the Light. (Yes, even then I reckoned time by the Christian calendar.) No atrocity was great enough to extinguish the flame of desire that still burned within me. I took little pleasure in my work. The evil seeds I sowed in the human race yielded no joy for me. By the 1800’s most of my devilish rage was gone, and I went once again in search of the Light.

     As I could not take possession of the virtuous souls of saints and true holy men, I went after artists and poets. Anyone who opened himself, either deliberately or whimsically, to unseen influences was fair game, and I the cunning muse. I confess that I took some small pride in directing the creative urges of men like Baudelaire, Poe and Van Gogh, though it did cost them dearly. I had much in common with them. They hungered as did I for the ineffable, for a measure of grace, for a portion of Pure Light or mystical enLightenment. I take no credit for their talents, having only provided daemonic inspiration for their darker works. But in the end, my labors with them brought me no closer to the divine luminescence I’d glimpsed in Yeshua. So I withdrew for a time from all men and attached myself to the underside of the mortal world and sank into solitude.

     Then came my mad nun. Perhaps I heard her deranged yet impassioned prayers because my finger bore the ringed foreskin of the Son of Light: I was, in a sense, a “bride” of Christ too. Whatever the reason, I entered her with ease and immediately felt at home there. Perhaps you have seen a grove of small trees growing near the seashore and have marveled at the way the brisk sea breezes have permanently twisted their limbs into bizarre reaching postures. The young nun’s soul was similarly twisted by the winds of her dementia, reaching ever outward in spiritual desperation. Her warped interior was precisely the environment I needed at the time. I settled in and promptly fell in love with her.

     Now I must tell you a secret. A secret that even the most experienced exorcists know nothing about. I hinted at it when I told you the Evil One buggered me. Though it is against my nature to reveal such things, there is no other way for you to understand my unholy union with the nun. One of my kind needs nourishment to thrive. We feed on the darker impulses and overwhelming anguish of those we inhabit; we feast on mortal dread, doubt and fear, and then we loose the foulest excrement into the pits of their souls, which in turn increases their vile emotions and makes for an even richer repast. This evil cycle continues until the host dies or until its soul is so devastated that it no longer offers a viable abode. In this way I ate and shat my way through many a mortal soul.

     But with this nun it was different. I didn’t occupy her to foul the seat of her soul. I did it in hopes of finding a way to the Light; instead, I found love. Need I say it? A demon knows little of love and isn’t meant to be capable of experiencing it directly. And yet I found it in the heart and twisted soul of my demented little nun. Once I’d made myself at home inside her, we spent many an idle hour gazing into a secret looking-glass at our reflection.

     Unlike angels, we demons cannot fully materialize in the mortal world — which is precisely why we must take possession of human vessels in order to do our work. Nevertheless, I could see the reflection of my presence in her face and in her glowing eyes. She was looking for the divine spark within herself and I was doing my best to help her find it. The intensity of her desire to know her Savior was too much for her small heart to contain, and deeper madness was inevitable. I zealously wallowed in her mad love, hoping my little nun would find the Magician in the extremities of her religious mania.

     She did not. But her search made me realize what I had been after since my fateful encounter with him. It was at the heart of my longing for the Light. I wanted to be saved. Ridiculous, no? A preposterous weakness in a daemonic being. A perversion of absurd proportion. Beyond ironic. Unthinkable!

     When angels assembled around her bed I knew I would have to leave her. I was in no condition to challenge them, so I left her masturbating with a candlestick, my farewell gesture to her and to her greedy guardians.

     After the nun, I took possession of a series of ambitious radio and TV preachers. They were all charlatans so it was easy to set up housekeeping in them. My plan was to deceive those pious sinners into thinking I was an angel sent to lead them to salvation. It’s a standard tactic for a demon to disguise himself as an inner angelic voice in order to misguide the human host, but my goal was not to lead them to the Sea of Darkness. I wanted to set them on the path to the Light. With only one of them did I come close to reaching the goal, but in the end the evangelical’s “conversion” crumbled when he exposed himself to his tent congregation and began to flog his phallus in front of the mortified crowd. Mortals often respond to daemonic presence in such unforeseen ways. I left him as he was preparing to hang himself with his belt.

     I kept to myself for a long spell, avoiding the low places where a new summons from Satanael might too easily find me. I took refuge in a small country church in a no-name hamlet and went to sleep in the bigger-than-life crucifix behind the altar. Carved wood makes a good resting place, though it promotes tumultuous dreams. Most demons prefer the dreamless slumber an idol of cold stone offers, but I craved the porous warmth of wood fashioned in the likeness of the Son of Light. I clung to the silly notion that the prayers of his worshipers might afford me a measure of divine protection.

     When the dreams came, they terrified me. They came up from the earth and down from the stars. They came from the living and as well as the dead. I became a teeming conduit of cosmic nightmares and numinous desires. The sacred and the profane commingled as they coursed through me and streamed out into chaos. I stood my ground and maintained the iconic posture on the cross, fully prepared to sacrifice myself to the greater glory of the God of Light.

     I knew I’d failed when Satanael buggered Christ in my dream.

     I fled in the decrepit vessel of a repentant warrior, an elderly man who’d knelt at the altar to pray for forgiveness for killing civilians in wartime. Surprisingly, he was acutely aware of my presence and believed I was an invisible instrument of God sent to purify his soul with torment. I chose not to disabuse him of that belief. Moreover, I wondered if I might serve the Light in just such a manner. A tiger can’t change his stripes but he can be sufficiently tamed to serve his master.

     I made the old soldier my test case, my lab rat. I thought that if I administered just enough psychic punishment, I could cleanse him of his past sins; I would serve the Light by preparing his soul for ascension. If it worked, I reasoned, then my good deed should attract the attention of heavenly powers and my sincerity would be recognized. But in the end, the old soldier’s soul was too frail to withstand even my restrained ministrations and he fell back into his murderous habits and went on a rampage with a high-powered rifle. He gunned down six innocents before the police felled him with a headshot.

     I would have to find some other way of getting the attention of the Son of Light.

     Wandering once again between worlds, I began a descent into a madness of my own. Were I not mad, I wouldn’t be writing this down like a dutiful scribe, revealing forbidden secrets. But I had faith, faith that the gates of madness might open to salvation. In exhilarating desperation, I decided to take a lesson from legendary Lazarus.

     I would make the dead walk.

     Never mind that reanimated Lazarus never lost the stench of the grave and dreamed every night of maggots eating his flesh.

     I would make the dead walk.

     It’s a trick nearly as old as humanity. A demon has the ability to extend the life of his host in order to prolong the demoniac’s suffering. The mortal’s soul can even be made to remain for a time in its decaying body, which is on a sort of daemonic life-support. The soul’s suffering is exquisite, but the risk to the demon is grave. Stay too long and you become imprisoned in mortal flesh until it turns to waxy stew, or even to dust. The trick is to depart at just the right moment before the rancid flesh slams shut on you, leaving the human’s soul to shrivel.

     I invaded the soul of a dying hermit sunk in the mire of a spiritual crisis. Once a devout Christian, the solitary man’s faith had been shaken by the cancer spreading throughout his body. He was caught up in the age-old spiritual conundrum: Why does the Lord allow His faithful servant to suffer such grievous affliction? The hermit’s love for the Lord warred with his growing hatred for so cruel a deity. Such fertile ground normally would offer a delicious feast for a demon, but I found in him a reflection of my own affliction and felt great kinship with the modern-day hermit.

     In the exhilarating grip of madness, I was confident that my plan would work. With my hermit’s help, I would perform a very public miracle. I reasoned that I had enough of the Magician’s fire in my smoldering wound to resurrect my dead man and make him walk the world. Surely this would attract Heaven’s attention. And if I failed, I would mark a miniscule measure of eternity imprisoned in putrid remains -- no great loss in the cosmic scheme. Putrescence, after all, has its own charm. I had everything to gain and very little to lose.

     The hermit died in despair at moonrise three nights ago. I’m sitting at his desk, using his rotting fingers to type these words. Angels and demons are gathering here at his mountain cabin. Representatives of each camp have tried to engage me, presumably to dissuade me from pursuing my chosen course of action. I will not truck with any of them. The hermit’s soul has attached itself to me, and this I did not anticipate. That remnant of Yeshua’s fire in me was enough to draw the tortured soul from its corporeal ruin with the unspoken promise of eternal life.

     Something truly momentous is happening here. I am absorbing the mortal’s soul and it soon will be my own. I am becoming something never seen before in any of the dimensions. I am not something the Lord made. I am my own Creator. A demon with a soul! The repercussions will be profound.

     Madness has made me visionary. When I leave this mountain and walk this dead flesh down into the world of men, everything will change. A new religion will spring up around me. I shall deliver a new message to the masses. This angel-infested demon-haunted world will collapse into chaos and I will raise up a new one.

     Rebellious Lilith now looks upon me with worshipful lust. She is eager to assist me in spawning a new race. We will dance and fornicate upon the rubble of civilizations and bring about a true marriage of Heaven and Hell.

     The Dread Lord will tremble before me. The Magician will no longer shun me.

     Death is life! Life is death!

     Amen.

           -- Demoriel, Beloved of God.