IMP DEN

The imp’s tiny claw traced the long, lightning-strike crack in the rough garage wall. The crack swelled from the concrete like a protruding vein, scabs of paint flaking off from the many, many times it had been painted over. 

Its pink, wormish tail lashed as it crawled up the wall, its claws chipping paint flakes as it ascended. Its sharp, pinched snout twitched above the crack, its curious sniffs blowing apart the thin veil of grime. It sneezed, tasting dust with a hint of brimstone. Its pink, handlike paws－ chubby toddler hands, with delicate, translucent claws－blackened with filth.

If there was a line to be followed, the imp must follow it. It needed to find a path. Any sort of path would do.

Its mother had taught its litter early on, when their white coats were so thin their coloring was pale skin-pink. The implings had tumbled over each other, trodding on tails and paws as they followed their mother. Their mother’s human was a tall, cloaked man that called her ‘minion’ and had her fetch things for him. The mother imp never showed him its litter, and it used its bond with the human to ease their essence through the threads between Hell and Not-Hell.

In their first excursion to Not-Hell, the implings had lain hidden, watching the mature imp approach a human traveler. It stayed in sight, but not in reach. The traveler would come closer to the mother imp, making soft, curious barking noises, and the mother imp would move away, matching pace for pace until the human was well off the path. Then she would disappear and reappear by her litter.

When the implings were old enough that their tails were as long as their bodies and their hearts tugged them away from the safety of the nest, their mother readied them by instructing them in the way of imps.

1. Imps are lesser demons, and thus a favored snack of greater demons. They must avoid these greater demons by following whatever thread they can to Not-Hell, where greater demons cannot follow. A greater demon without a summoner is weakened in Not-Hell.
2. An imp can shapeshift, transform objects, and conjure fire. These powers make it stronger than humans. Therefore, humans are harmless and not to be feared.
3. Humans are able to make small threads of energy that pass through Hell and Not-Hell. These threads help imps hide from greater demons. Thus, humans are key to an imp’s survival.
4. Humans are the makers of a substance known as ‘cheese’, which is very sustainable for a white imp. They are very fragile, so an imp must be careful not to harm them if they wish to have cheese.
5. Humans are silly creatures that carve scars in the ground. They walk upon these scars to keep from getting lost. These scars are called ‘paths’, ‘trails’, or ‘tracks’. An imp’s most important job is to lead humans astray without harming them. The best way is to lead humans off of their paths.
6. Not-Hell is an amusing place. Stay for as long as possible.

It had the human, but not the path. It needed to find a path, and it needed to get the human on the path, and then it needed to get the human off the path. Its mother had done its job well. The imp wanted to be just like her.

The garage door burst open with a bang that shook the wall and dislodged the imp. It fell to the floor in a tangle of squat limbs and white fur, gasping a startled “Tweep!”

“Milo!” the human cried. She set her stereo down and hurried to the imp’s side. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Oh, you poor baby!”

The imp rolled to its paws. It shook its fur out, its wormy pink tail whipping from side to side. Its large, white-furred, batlike ears twitched at the sound of its human’s bark. It looked up at its human with a bright shine in its beady black eyes. If its sharp mouth hadn’t already been shaped like a smile, it would have smiled on its own.

It didn’t mind the distraction. Its job wasn’t going anywhere. 

The human picked it up and cradled it in her thick, firm arms, enfolding the imp with the faint but potent scent of cheap lemon shampoo. “Poor wittle Miwo. What have I told you about climbing the walls? I’ll tell you what I said. I said ‘no treats’.”

The human’s breath smelled like Mac n’ Cheese. The imp loved Mac n’ Cheese. It placed a dirty paw on its human’s smooth brown chin. “Tweep!” 

“That’s right. No treats for Milo. And serves you right.” She ran a hand over its soft, velvety white fur and bopped it on its pointy nose with her finger. “Don’t go getting yourself hurt, you understand me? ”

The imp was very proud of its pet human. A full-grown female, with dark skin and a large, healthy bush of kinky black fur on her head. Henrietta was probably its best human yet.

Unlike its past humans, she didn’t wear dark, flowing capes and walked with an aura thick with the screams of dead enemies. At the moment, she wore light blue overalls and a neon green shirt bright enough to blind a night wraith. She usually wore a leather jacket covered in patches, which must have been a sacred artifact since she warned the imp to never, ever, ever touch it. On the sleeve was the word ‘Member’, and the back read ‘Valkyrie Riders: Ride Or Die Chicks since ‘78’.

Its past humans always had one name. Mengloth. Parzebov. Ikkegorath. This one, however, had two (three? four?) names at once. Henrietta del Rey, though her coven (what she called a ‘women’s motorcycle club’) called her ‘Riot’.

A different breed of humans, perhaps? Most likely. It had been summoned with a sacrifice of what had tasted like burnt insects and butter, and the book that had done the summoning was opened to a page titled ‘Shrimp de Jonghe’. Leaping drops of oil had blocked out several letters, altering the book’s objective completely.

SHRIMP DE JONGHE

became

IMP DE   N

Henrietta gently set it back down on the floor of the imp den. “I have to get to work now, okay? I’d love to play with you, but I can’t get distracted. You be a good boy and explore the garage all you like.”

The imp blinked once. Twice. Its pet human was so cute. “Tweep!”

“Good Milo,” she crooned. Then she got up and walked over to a bulky mound covered in a sheet. The sheet came off with a flourish, exposing what she called her ‘other baby’. A light blue-and-grey motorcycle with an Autobot symbol above the headlights. Scripted in smooth, black cursive was its name: Indomitus Prime. Its midsection had been emptied, its glittering guts spread out neatly to the side.

For reasons unknown to the imp, Henrietta scootched herself under the motorcycle. She pulled on a pair of crusty leather gloves, pulled an old sock from her back pocket, and started to clean out the inside of her bike. The sock blackened quickly, running over the oily, glossy machine.

The imp left its human to play with her metal horse. It had a job to do.

It crawled over the walls, scuttled over shelves, and stuck its head into bins full of little octagonal pieces of metal. No paths. It sniffed at the hooks in the walls, pulling off wrench after smaller wrench after even smaller wrench and letting them fall to the floor with tremulous clangs. No paths. It stared under the visor of an old motorcycle helmet. Its big batlike ears flattened as it stuck its head inside. A tunnel, maybe?

A loud noise made it back up, startled. Its head wouldn’t come out. There was a brief moment of cold panic before the imp remembered to flatten its ears. It yanked itself out of the helmet and turned towards the sound.

Henrietta had turned on the stereo and was belting out a song as she worked. Her deep, rough voice twined with the higher, silkier one that came from the stereo. 

The imp didn’t quite recognize this incantation. It was the first one it had ever heard that wasn’t in Daemagi. A different breed of humans, indeed!

The imp wanted to help with the ritual. It had a job to do, but a human was a big responsibility.

It bounded off the shelf and scurried toward its human. It sat upon the white sheet. The white sheet would burn nicely. With a glorious “tweep!”, it burst itself into flames. The flames ate up the white sheet, blackening and devouring and burning like the depths of Hell itself.

“Milo!” Henrietta dropped her cleaning sock, slid out from beneath the motorcycle, and raced faster than Death’s pale horse. She gagged from the acrid, sooty chemical smell and grabbed a full bucket of water, which had been waiting patiently for a situation like this. 

She dumped it on top of the imp, splashing water all over the smooth concrete. A cloud of steam billowed out, making the white imp sneeze.

“Bad Milo! Bad mouse-cat-possum-monkey-bat thing! No fires! No!”

The imp blinked water out of its beady black eyes. “Tweep?”

Henrietta sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I said no distractions.” She sighed at the big, char-edged hole in the middle of the sheet, in the middle of which sat the imp. Miley Cyrus blared in the background. “It’s a good thing you’re so cute. I can’t even stay mad at you. But you’re still not getting any treats!”

Grumbling, Henrietta walked away and crawled back under the motorcycle.

The imp sat in mild confusion. If his human was upset, the ritual must have failed. And the imp had gotten no closer to finding a path. 

But the imp was not discouraged. It was a demon from Hell. 

First, it needed to comfort its pet human.

Its form shifted according to its will. Its front legs warped and expanded, growing into a pair of velvety white bat wings. With a strong downward thrust, it was airborne. It flapped in a circle around the motorcycle.

Henrietta’s frowning face popped out from underneath. “Cut that out!”

A word floated to the surface of her mind, and the imp gleefully plucked it out. It opened its smiling snout.

“CORONAVIRUS!” the imp said in Miley Cyrus’s voice. Its hobby was collecting voices.

“That’s it,” said Henrietta. “Broom time.”

She pushed herself out from under her bike and marched toward the broom. She jabbed it at the imp. She wanted to get it out of the air, but she didn’t want to hurt it.

The imp gracefully avoided the bristles. “CORONAVIRUS!” it said in Frank Sinatra’s voice.

Henrietta swatted the broom through the air, barely missing the imp.

“CORONAVIRUS!” the imp said in Morgan Freeman’s voice. That was its very favorite voice.

The broom finally hit its mark. The bristles pinned the imp to the wall. Henrietta grabbed the imp around the middle before letting the broom drop.

“Milo go time-out,” she said firmly.

“Tweep!”

“Don’t you ‘tweep’ me, you demonic little rat mutant.” Henrietta shook her head and muttered, “Travieso.”

She turned back to her bike only to find that there was no bike. In its place was a large pile of deodorant sticks. “Milo!”

“Tweep!”

“Milo,” Henrietta said calmly. “I’m a biker. My bike is my baby. You’re my baby too, but Indomitus Prime is my first baby. You just turned my baby into a pile of antiperspirant. Please turn it back.”

The imp blinked once. Twice. “Tweep!”

“I’m serious, Milo. I have to finish cleaning the engine by tonight, but I can’t do that if you keep getting me off-track.”

Off-track?

The imp turned those two words around in its head. Off-track. A track was a path, and he had gotten his human off of it. Somehow, it had finally finished its job. 

“Tweep!”

Henrietta sighed. She reached for the flyswatter clipped to her waistband, where she’d kept it ever since she summoned the imp. She gave him a gentle pat on the head with it.

The imp’s ears perked up. It knew what this was. The mighty weapon, the terrible blow that caused no pain to those of Hell’s own. This could only be an exorcism. It disappeared in a puff of smoke. Another puff of smoke engulfed the pile of deodorant, revealing the sleek, shining form of the motorcycle Indomitus Prime.

Henrietta glanced at her watch. She had a full five minutes of uninterrupted peace, and the seconds were counting down fast.

The biker blew out a deep sigh. The girls in her motorcycle club all loved Milo. In reasonably bad taste, the club president had been ready to rename the ‘Valkyrie Riders’ the ‘Possum Riders’ once she got a good look at Henrietta’s weird pet.

“I don’t even think he’s a possum,” Henrietta had protested.

Whatever Milo was, he was really cute. But he looked like no creature that walked on or even belonged on Earth. The superpowers gave it away. Maybe he was an alien or an escaped lab experiment. A mutated lab rat.

Oh, well…  Whatever he was, he was hers now. Milo could be a handful, but also very sweet at the same time. 

Henrietta got right to work, letting her hands take over. She sank into a place inside herself that saw only the tangle of engine wire and gear and her own two hands. 

She didn’t even notice when the Miley Cyrus CD ended and started over. Or when Milo reappeared in a puff of smoke right on top of the leather bike seat. Or when he knocked all her tools off the bottom shelf and turned an old rear fender into a plastic flowerpot.

Or when something dark and shapeless bubbled under the door, slithering through with all the ease and slickness of shadows. Its thick shape rose from its intangible form, as burly as a badger but as tall as Indomitus Prime. Its form was concave with a slightly pointed spine, like a rounded sand dune, and its limbs were thick and studded with large claws. Where its face should have been was a giant mouth that never closed, lined with rows upon rows of jagged teeth. Dim orange light showed from deep within its maw, hinting at a belly full of Hellfire.

It was a greater demon. It had no eyes, nose, ears, neck, or name. It needed none. 

The scent of imp filled its mouth－ a faint but potent whiff of brimstone and dew. It had been following the scent for leagues. Now it smelled human－ strong and gamy, soft and lemony. 

An imp was but a morsel. Its human would make a hearty meal.

Silent as a shadow, the greater demon crept along the wall. Its prey lay prone on her back, lying beneath a tangled mass of metal. It would be a perfect kill.

“Tweep!”

The sound reverberated against the greater demon’s hide. Before it could react, it felt the fluttering of wings between its teeth. Its jaws snapped shut moments before it burst into flame. Its body broke down, disintegrating into clumps of shadow and smoke before it could even make a sound.

The imp licked its paw. Its pet human provided all kinds of treats. Treats like these were its favorites. Almost as good as cheese.

Henrietta paused in her work to glance over at Milo. He had been oddly quiet. She grit her teeth, ready to berate him for whatever he did this time. But Milo was sitting quietly to the side, licking his paw.

Henrietta guiltily returned her gaze to her bike. What was she thinking? Milo was just a little…  whatever he was. Harmless, she thought, ignoring the strange chill in the back of her mind. Perfectly harmless.