Last November, I felt totally underwater with grading and parent-teacher conferences. So I arranged all my students’ papers in a stack and jotted down some bullet points for the P.T.C.s. Then I drew a pentagram on the floor.
A crack of thunder, a flash of light, and a sulfurous mist flooded my apartment. Marax, President of Hell, stood before me. Marax entered my summoning circle, eyes burning with unholy fire, and I gave him the stack of homework to flip through while I brushed my teeth. Marax marked up the papers and fleshed out my bullet points into thoughtful feedback before I even got to my molars. Then—three hours of my life, saved!—I banished him back to Hell before my strength gave out.
I am not ashamed to say that I use demons for work. I use a demon to make the assignment, another demon to grade the assignment, and a third demon to write constructive comments. At the end of the day, I use a demon to look in my fridge and tell me what to cook for dinner (tonight: rigatoni with charred entrails).
Using a demon is not cheating. Cheating is pawning off somebody else’s work as your own. A demon is not “somebody.” A demon is a being of pure malice. If I catch a student copying another student’s work, that’s a zero. If I catch a student’s demon filling out their test for them, that’s being prepared for the future—A+.
Every paradigm-shifting invention is met with a hysterical reaction. What if, when the calculator was invented, we had acted as if it was going to eat our children’s faces and wear their faces out to dinner and then eat us, too, before dragging our souls down to Hell for an eternity of torture? We would never have made it to the moon.
I, of course, have gotten an earful from the usual Luddites in the teachers’ lounge. Mr. Reed—who doesn’t even own a laptop—is flunking anyone whose work stinks of sulfur and has singed claw marks on it. Well, while he is busy teaching cursive penmanship and struggling to get home in his busted car (he is poor), my students and their demons will be lapping him. Sorry, but it’s just a fact—demons flat-out get the job done.
It would be irresponsible not to teach students how to use demons. Jobs in the twenty-thirties will be totally different, and we need to prepare the employees of the future. They need to be ready to summon demons properly. If they can’t draw a tight summoning circle, they’ll never find work in the demon economy. We have called demons in, and they are not going anywhere. Not unless they are fleeing an even fouler, more powerful demon.
Sure, demons make mistakes. My demons have gobbled up my neighbor’s dog, burned down the assembly hall, and fabricated countless sources. But it’s all worth it for the moment when a student says, “I finally get trigonometry,” or, “My demon is my best friend, and has taught me that man is by nature fallen. There is no ‘good,’ only sin, might, and fire.”
So, open your door, open your windows. Remove that crucifix from your wall. And rejoice—there is work to be done, and the demons are hungry.
—Valefar VI, Duke of Hell, writing on behalf of Charlie ♦
