There once lived a father whose daughter grew gravely ill. He was a poor man, and the necessary treatment was out of his means. He desperately tried to get the money, but could not. Out of options, he went to an unholy place and offered up his soul to any demonic force in return for the health of his child. Many dark specters crowded around him with interest, but their visages were too terrible and he turned away. But then he was approached by a smallish demon who looked nearly human in aspect and did not elicit the same feeling of revulsion and terror as the others. His horns seemed smaller and less sharp.
This demon said to the man: "I am not like the terrifying throng of daemons all around us, I am a demon, no "a," and I feel keenly for the human condition. I do not want your soul, or to cause you harm. If you simply serve and worship me for one year, I will heal your child." The man was overjoyed and the deal was struck.
The man faithfully served the demon for one year. He praised the demon to everyone he met as a humane and trustworthy alternative to other supernatural forces. Who needed prayer when here was a great cosmic power who felt true compassion for human suffering and offered genuine help in exchange for tangible service.
Most people were dubious. "Isn’t he a force for evil?" they wondered. "No!" the man argued passionately. "He is only a demon, not a daemon, there’s a big difference. Daemons are evil, all they want is power over our lives and possession of our souls! Demons on the other hand are simply maligned by the confusion in their names. Demons feel keenly for the human condition. They want to use their power to help us. We need to support them so that they can defeat the daemons and take power in the infernal spheres. Then, instead of evil, we will receive good from the demonic realms. Change is possible if we just hope."
These arguments convinced many, and multitudes began selling their souls to the demon and other demons like him. The movement grew. The new demonic clients spread the word farther, they used all available means of communication, they blogged, they phone banked. They raised donations and donated themselves, to build temples to the demons and buy them fancy horn polishers and advertising time in the infernal media. They sacrificed animals without blemish. Fed by the sacrifices and the good press, the demons grew very powerful.
About six months after their initial encounter, the man sought out his demon. "Your Demonic Excellency, I do not wish to bother you, but my daughter’s condition is getting worse. Isn’t’ there something you can do to help now?"
The demon replied, "It saddens me greatly to hear this. You have done well by me, I appreciate the services you have faithfully rendered me. In fact, your support and the support of other mortals whom you won over to my cause have allowed us to take control of the infernal power structure. Now we are the head demons, while the daemons are powerless, out of touch, disorganized and distraught."
"This is great news!" the man cried. "Now you will surely be able to help my daughter!"
"You would think," replied the demon. "But not so fast. It has only been 6 months and we agreed on a year. This period is not accidental. The machinery of infernal power is very complex, it takes a great deal of time to set it in motion, to reverse all the evil done by the previous daemonic administration, curses be upon them. Plus the daemons are setting roadblocks in our way, using parliamentary procedures against us. They are truly evil, and entirely lacking in bipartisan spirit. If one of them was here instead of me, he would be feasting on your entrails by now. And they’re racists. I, on the other hand, am working for you day and night, believe me, but even with our new found control, it is hard to make this machinery do something good for humanity when it is designed to cause only evil. But we are changing that, step by step. Have hope. And come back in 6 months."
The man saw that he had no choice but to wait. For another six months he watched his daughter suffer and wither, while spending all of his time campaigning for the demon, fundraisings and praising his name. Finally the one year anniversary arrived. The man went to the unclean place and waited.
Finally the demon appeared. He seemed larger now, more confident of himself, swollen with power. His fangs were more prominent and his bearing more regal.
The man addressed him with trepidation. "Your Infernal Excellency, as you will recall, today is the day on which you must discharge your obligations to me and heal my daughter."
The demon frowned. When he frowned he did not look so human after all, but very terrifying indeed. "Your daughter? It’s all about you and your petty interests, isn’t’ it? You don’t care that we are working on major, monumentally incremental reforms of the infernal machinery of power! You do not care that there has been a historic power shift from daemons to demons. You do not appreciate how difficult it has been to achieve systemic changes! Plus, in the last 6 months I have noticed a dramatic decrease in your effectiveness as servant. No longer are crowds of people thronging to hear my offers and sell their souls to me. And the donations have fallen off as well, and the slaughtered lambs on the temple altars have been terribly dry. No juice to them at all."
"But, sire," replied the man. "The people no longer throng to enter your service because, from what I have been able to find out, you have no fulfilled a single bargain yet. We have all served you and your kind with fervor, but we have as yet received nothing back. Well, that is not exactly true, the most evil of our elites have grown stronger with infernal help, now no matter what they do, they are bailed out and rescued and restored to power over us, while we grow ever poorer, both because of their depredations and because of the money and energy we have spent building temples and running a grassroots movement for your cause. Our world has been more blighted by manifestations of evil than ever. The wars have gotten steadily worse and bloodier. Divisions within the people are increasing, bitter recriminations are tearing our own body politic apart. The reason why your lambs are so desiccated is the almost half a year of drought we have had – not just lambs but people are dying of thirst. Some have begun to waiver and to say that these occurrences stem from the demonic machinations of your government. But I still have faith in you, and as soon as the benefits start coming back to us, starting hopefully with my daughter, I am sure that the others will see your true goodness and return to serving you with redoubled enthusiasm."
"You see," said the demon with disappointment, "This is the problem with your accursed pigmy race. You all want something for yourselves. Being a part of a historic power shift, being the faithful base upon which my throne rests, this means nothing to you. Unless I fulfill your absolutist demands, regardless of how silly or impractical they might be, you will not work. I have done my best to get something passed that would benefit your daughter and here’s the best I can do. How about in 4 years, you receive the right to shop around for insurance to cover her expenses. Obviously there will be the co-pays and high deductibles given her pre-existing condition, but, assuming you remain crushingly poor, as you almost certainly will, I think we’ll be able to offer you some sort of subsidy., perhaps a pittance plus and a half plus some rationing coupons. Oh, yeah, that reminds me, spread the word, there’ll be rationing soon. Try to put a positive spin on it, you are good at that."
"Sire, that is not good enough!" wept the grief stricken father. "My daughter will not make it for four years and even then, I don’t really see how getting this very expensive and limited insurance will heal her. She needs real help now. And rationing of what?!"
The demon bared his fangs. "Real help now? What an ignorant radical you are. How could you understand that this is the best I can do right now, and that later, perhaps when your grandchildren get sick, I might be able to do more? That the rationing of water and food will only be a temporary measure necessary for future growth? That there are numerous checks and balances in the demonic world, I cannot get around them all even with the mountain of souls you have supplied me."
The demon's eyes began to glow with a bloody light. "My advisers warned me that humans are an unstable base of support, temperamental and non-reality based. They told me you would demand actual tangible results, or turn against me! So we anticipated your fickleness, and no matter what you think, or if your daughter is dead by then, you’ll have to buy this insurance anyway! For your own good, though your tiny brain cannot grasp it."
Just then a portal opened in the ground and a crow landed on the demon’s shoulder. He listed to its cackling intently and then howled with anger. "Well, meat bag, do you know what your betrayal has cost?! My loss of human support, combined with certain political missteps which are in no way my fault, has meant that the daemons are now resurgent. So guess what? That plan I told you about, how in 4 years you would be eligible to bid for insurance? That’s off the table! You like that? Now we will have to create a compromise anti-human/pro-human agenda that meets itself half way! And all because of your lack of faith. If my base had supported me during the difficult months of me working behind the scenes on major reforms while giving the carefully created impression of complete inaction, and pretending to work for evil rather than good, these reforms would have been in place by now. "
The man was confused. "It is true that much is hidden from my understanding about how your government has functioned. I have served you now for a year, demon, and I have not been able to determine the difference between your "pro-human" demonic programs and what you call the" anti-human" daemonic programs, which you teach me so strenuously to fear. I have not been able to discern any reform beneficial to my race at all, much less understand them. I guess your disguised agenda has fooled me. But please let me in on your secret, what exactly is the difference between your positions and those of your opponents, this plan with the insurance? More inequality and special treatment? Less transparency in the already cryptic infernal governance? Because that wouldn’t be doing anybody down here any good. And the wars, I am still not getting, have you tried to stop any of the wars that are going on down here, because they have only intensified for the last year."
The demon furrowed his brow, which made his horns appear more prominent. Under the new angle, the horns could be seen to be razor sharp. "What is the difference between demonic and daemonic positions? Are you stupid or something? There’s an entire letter of difference, ergo they are 20% more demonic than us. I mean daemonic! And they are racists!" He came toward the man, who began shrinking away, now simply looking to end the encounter.
But the demon continued speaking, in a loud screech that chilled the blood in the man’s veins. "Now you are trying to piss me off on purpose. I see that you are no good to me as a base, you’ll always be complaining and demanding hand outs for yourself. Though perhaps there is value in you yet. You might make a better snack than you did a base. All of your ridiculous dreaming probably makes your spinal fluid thick and succulent"
With these words the demon pounced on the man, ripped open his belly and began feasting on his entrails as he was still living. The man scrammed in agony, writhing hopelessly.
"I feel your pain," said the demon. "It’s delicious."
After the demon was done eating, he looked at the mangled corpse lying before him in the dust, surrounded by many feet of intestines which had fallen out of the hole in his stomach (demons don't like intestines). "You know," the demon thought to himself as he picked his fangs with the man's finger bone, "he wasn't such a bad activist, just politically short sighted. He did leave it all on the road for me. And your can really taste the grassroots flavor, that's probably good for my cholesterol."