This one came from staring out a train window, listening to "Supermassive Black Hole" by Muse, and "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'" by the Scissor Sisters. I had to trim like mad to get it into 1000 words.
Demon Driven (998 words)
It’s carnival time in Dindrisk, has been for three days, will be for another ten. They know how to party here. I barge my way through a drunken crowd, a blur of masks, feathers and spangles, to the spaceliner’s dock. A young man fidgeting in an engineer’s uniform meets me at the top of the gangplank.
“Astromancer Pierce?”
“That’s me.”
He’s probably expecting a corset, a lot of eyeliner and black leather. I did all that. Now I’m older and a little bit wider, and I stick to comfortable and easy to clean.
“I’m Bradford,” he says. “The Portal Engineer.” We jog along a plush corridor, all oval windows and gold swirly bits, strung with carnival feathers and shiny beads.
“We picked up a new artist here two days ago,” he says. “The last one went, well, you know how they do, and we had to drop him off for, uh, a quiet rest. We can’t get another one until the carnival finishes, we’re supposed to take off tomorrow and it won’t work and...” Bradford swallows.
“You’ve got a Muse, right? With a sculpture kink?” I ask.
“Yes, but it doesn’t like the new artist.” He hustles me through a door into a more utilitarian space; industrial grey, tracked with cabling ducts. “It ignores him, and it’s moving around. A lot.”
I can hear what he’s screaming in his head. “What if it gets out?”
“Muses are tricky,” I say. “Not big on ripping out guts, but they’re the definition of changeable.”
Bradford cranks open another hatch and we’re in the portal drive room. Sage burns in the censers, the silver circle set into the floor is filled with the blue shimmer of magic, and with demon.
“The binding looks solid,” I say.
The place is littered with discarded beads and champagne corks. A skinny, clay-smeared bloke circles around a huge lump of a work, darting in to pinch on another piece.
The demon spins, stamps, points a talon at me. “I smell magic on you,” it says. It grins a zig-zag half-moon. “And Incubus. Ha!”
Talons are bad. A happy Muse usually takes human form, and is all big eyes and improbable breasts or chiselled cheekbones, whatever works. Unhappy demons won't bend space to move your ship.
“Greetings to you too,” I say in its language. “Don’t you like what they’re feeding you?”
“So stale. I feed. I hunger.” The demon rocks rhythmically, waving its skinny arms.
“What is it you want?” I ask, not expecting much. Demon and human concepts don’t relate too well. Everything is energy to them.
“I crave. New flavour in the air, and then gone. I starve.”
“Uh huh.” I wander over to the sculptor. The work looks familiar, and when he looks me in the eye my instincts scream “fake”. But there are formalities to observe.
“Tell me about this piece,” I say. It takes a moment for the bullshit to kick in, and it’s all the wrong kind. He spiels about light and angles and sublimity. He doesn’t talk about how he saw it in his head, and what the work demanded. And his aura stinks.
“This guy’s a forger,” I tell Bradford. “He’s just recycling somebody else’s work, even with the Muse there, so his energy is stale. You got any sculptors on the passenger list? One or two pieces should get you to Bratngash. You can hire a new artist there.”
“Do you think they’d want to do it?”
“For inspiration from a Muse? They’ll bite your hand off.”
#
The enthusiastic volunteer has hair dyed green and chews gum non-stop. She works with wire and discarded carnival feathers and beads. I can see her ride that rollercoaster of doubt and exaltation as the extraordinary piece takes shape. The Muse stamps and claps its hands as the sculptor pirouettes around her work. And it complains.
“Stale. So cruel to give delicousness and take it away. I starve. Give it back to me.”
“Give you back what?”
“This,” the demon stamps and waves its hands again. “What was here before.”
“What does it want?” asks Bradford. His eyes are red, and ringed with dark circles.
“I don’t think it knows. But I want a drink. And you need one.”
“I’m on duty.”
#
The bar is crowded. Drink is drunk, quite a lot of it. Bradford leans forward, leers, wobbles, rights himself and shouts over the music, “I heard your first job was with an Incubus.”
I look out over the dancefloor, where couples are doing their best to shag standing up and fully clothed, and I smile. My Incubus had been a – well - a demon on the dancefloor; all that eye contact, bodies almost touching, the pounding beat. He needed sex, but he loved to dance, and he taught me a thing or two.
“When exactly did your Muse start acting up?” I ask.
“First night of the carnival.”
A day before the forger came on board. “And you were partying in the portal room?”
“Look, I was off duty,” he says. “And all these passengers wanted to see the demon.”
“They danced around it, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So your Muse has changed its kink. It’s come over all terpsichorean.”
#
The demon perks up as soon as the bass beat kicks in. I clap my hands and twirl and suddenly there’s a man with angular cheekbones and snake hips in the circle. I undo the binding with a flick of my wrist, ignoring Bradford’s screams. Demons work better when they’re willing.
People use sex to describe the feeling of sharing with a demon, because it’s the closest common experience. But it’s a eureka moment, the flow, the surrender to spontaneous art. Your head and heart are wide open, you are relaxed and powerful and everything is just fine.
The demon might have to go back in its cage at Bratngash. But right now we’re dancing, and I could stand to lose a few pounds.
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