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Asked the Demon

“Hello Demon.”
“Hello my little monster. How are you?”
“I’m here.”
I didn’t say, “come in,” but the cloaked Demon drifted through the doorway and I stepped aside.

The Demon surmised my collection of old typewriters and took the blood-red 1930s portable Royal off the shelf and over to the kitchen table. He pulled a stack of typing paper from under his cloak and set it neatly beside the typewriter. The Demon then aligned and threaded two pieces of paper and began to type.

I stayed in the doorway, knob in hand, watching until the ding of the margin bell, and the zipping sound of the platen carriage moving to the beginning of a new line, told me to concede to the return of the Demon. And so I lowered my head, shut and locked the door, and languidly shuffled through the living room, hands in pockets, looking at my feet.

“Can I offer you a cup of writer’s block,” I said when I arrived at the kitchen table. The Demon continued typing.

I turned out the lights in the house, closed my bedroom door, and went to bed to the sound of his long bony fingers tapping the keys to the page.

At 2:10 a.m., the Demon grabbed me out of bed by my t-shirt and threw me over Mary (who can sleep through anything). I hit the wood floor and slid into the closet door. Mary didn’t flinch, but the Demon, in three long strides, started kicking me. His ferocious eyes enflamed with furious emotions, he kicked me three, four, five, six times, and with the last kick, suddenly and uncharacteristically, collapsed on the floor beside me.

The flames in his eyes, like an oil lamp run out of fuel, dimmed, went out with a poof, and smoldered with smoke rolling out of the sockets. Afraid he might come back to life, I slid carefully around him and crawled back into to bed. I held very still to keep my ribs from hurting, and after a long stay in the twilight, finally started to pass into sleep. But at the moment just before falling into the darkness, I heard the Demon whisper, as though in my ear, “Are you still a writer?”

END
© 2006 Christian Cloud Abraham

Posted on January 25, 2006 in
Emotion: Subjection, Type: Fiction