Bump and Jump

"Get ready to jump," Smyth purred. The young demon next to him shivered with excitement.

"Do I just jump on their back, or grab an arm?" he asked nervously.

"Whatever, just make sure your grasp is firm," Smyth said. "Get your hooks in them when you land."

After seventeen centuries of training new entities, he was getting tired of the same old questions. Didn't anyone listen to his introductory talks about possession of the living?

Halfway down the sidewalk an elderly woman and her young companion strolled slowly towards them. The elderly tended to be easier targets because they moved so slowly, but the younger companion, slowed by her friend was an easy target too.

No matter how many times Smyth explained the possession process, the new demons usually failed to grasp the basic concept and ended up spilling onto the sidewalk or the ground beside their victims, not gaining entrance to the person's body in the smooth, seamless manner Smyth valued.

"Once you grab them you need to find a slit, a hole, some tear in their energy field where you can slide right in," he cautioned the young demon. "But we're just riding these two to someone better, so don't enter, just hang on." The young demon nodded, anxious to find a home - he didn't care where or with whom.

Demons needed bodies. That was well-known. They couldn't indulge their desire to lust, steal, kill, or do all the things they did in human bodies. Without a body, they possessed all the desires without the ability to exercise them.

The problem was there were more demons than bodies available, meaning bodies went to those who were best able to navigate their way in. This supply and demand opportunity wasn't lost on Smyth, who charged a pretty penny to attend his "university" and learn how to spot, possess, and even transfer bodies at will.

His credentials were impeccable. He'd been present at Noah's flood - and after. He'd possessed several Roman soldiers at the crucifixion of Christ. Although the carpenter's death had, admittedly, caused over a dozen soldiers to accept Christ as the Son of God, forcing him to vacate their bodies when they pledged their allegiance to the dead carpenter, he'd done well for the next century - albeit barely keeping ahead of the followers and their wanderings.

Things had really slowed down in the three years Christ had roamed the countryside. Everywhere he went the carpenter Rabbi turned evangelist cast out Smyth's kind, sending many to the abyss - a trip no one came back from.

There was that incident with the thousands of pigs on the hill. Two demon-possessed men met the carpenter, coming out of the tombs. Smyth was proud of those two legions of demons - all some thousands of them graduates of his school. He was sad to see them fall screaming into the fiery abyss where they began to burn with a fierceness that made him shudder.

They had been some of the most fierce demons he'd tutored noting that no one could pass that way until the carpenter and his rag-tag group of disciples came along. They'd done exactly as he'd taught them, crying out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”

The carpenter was not deterred. So the demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.” He said, “Go.” So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. What were they thinking? He shook his head. Then there was the man in the tombs at Gerasenes. He had a particular fondness for him. The man ran naked and slobbering among the tombstones. It made it hard for demons to make the jump to another, but in the meantime, the body was theirs to abuse and use - which they gleefully did, chasing anyone and everyone out of the graveyard with their screams and wild gyrations.

The carpenter cast them out as well and it took Symth almost another century to find another body as comfortable as that and able to host so many demons. It annoyed him as he had a guarantee with his school - to provide new bodies if the old ones became uninhabitable.

"Now?" Damon, his new charge asked. The two women were almost abreast of them. Smyth looked them over carefully. The younger woman had a cross around her neck. That didn't mean anything. It was a popular piece of jewelry for the young these days. They had no clue what it truly meant.

"Yes," he said. Damon lept at the two women, landing on the back of the younger. As Smyth watched the young demon encircled the young woman, putting hooks into her energy as he rode high on her shoulders.

Smyth easily jumped aboard the old woman. As the four of them strode along the sidewalk Smyth eyed the crowd ahead of them. There was some sort of gathering at the crosswalk. Perfect, he told Damon.

"What did I tell you about transferring?" he asked.

"Lean on one side and make them bump into your true target," Damon said.

Well, well. He had listened. Smyth smiled coyly. He left the old woman and floated ahead, scoping out the crowd.

"There is no God!" a young man screamed from the sidewalk. At the center of the circle, a young pastor lifted a Bible high into the air.

"There is a God and He loves you!" he said to the young man who angrily screamed back at him.

Smyth wasn't deterred. In fact, he loved street preachers. Lots of jostling and anger, non-believers, and opportunities for demon possession. Sure, there were one or two who came to a belief in the Almighty and the carpenter. Their demons were forced out of them, if they had them, but the pickings among the rest of the crowd was so plentiful, it was rarely a problem.

"Just pick a loudmouth and transfer," Smyth always advised. Not only were they perfect targets, but their anger and other issues made them a great home for demons of any size, power, and affiliation. All it took was a bump, a contact, a slight jostling, and a connection between bodies. No one ever noticed. At best there were apologies, both parties confused by the sudden loss of balance, the bumping into a stranger. At worst, it resulted in accusations, fists thrown, and the opportunity to transfer easily as veils were ripped and souls exposed.

The two women slowed to listen to the preacher. Symth noticed the young woman bow her head and reach for the old woman's hand. Panicked he screamed at Damon, "Get out, get out!" But Damon, enthralled by the harvest of bodies to choose from, didn't hear him. The preacher, seeing the shadows on the two women was already laying hands on the two women, casting out the shadows, calling on the carpenter, commanding them into the abyss. Smyth cursed and swore and fought the man, hissing loudly, sounding for all the world like a vampire caught in the daylight.

"In the name of Jesus Christ, and by the blood of the cross I command you to leave these women and go to the abyss reserved for Satan and his demons," the pastor said loudly.

Damon flew off of the woman immediately, unskilled in spiritual warfare, quickly spiraling into the darkness below them, unable to fight back.

Smyth struggled a bit longer, cursing, spitting, and swearing. He knew his actions only convinced more people in the crowd to accept the carpenter's grace, but he didn't care. He only wanted to stay out of the abyss. Unfortunately, he soon joined his young charge, screaming all the way into the eternal fire pit below.

"That's what you don't want to do," Ammon said, turning to his young student. The two had watched Smyth and Damon cast down from the shadows.

As the preacher continued to preach and lay hands on people the two demons circled the crowd like a dim fog, looking for the groups of students who laughed and cursed, and joked, teasing and harassing the young evangelist.

"Isn't he a threat?" The young demon asked, nodding towards the preacher.

"Not really," the older instructor sighed. "For every two he saves there are two dozen open to us. Easy pickings."

The young demon smiled.

"Don't forget, bump and jump," the demon said. "Bump and jump."