"No, you cannot wish for three more wishes. No, you cannot wish for an infinite number of wishes. And no, I cannot give you the power to grant wishes."

Dear human, Akuma the demon has been trapped in a lamp for nearly 1,000 years. Now he's going to tell you HIS side of the story.

Written by: Jonathan Cohen

Narrated by: Trevor Schechter

A Faustian Nonsense production.

To read the full transcript of this episode, go to https://thelavendertavern.captivate.fm/episode/the-demons-tale

Transcript

The Demon’s Tale

No, you cannot wish for three more wishes.

No, you cannot wish for an infinite number of wishes.

No, I cannot give you the power to grant wishes.

And no, I cannot turn you or anyone else into one who can grant wishes.

Have you decided on your three wishes, then? No? You are struck silent? Then I shall speak instead.

Perhaps you wish for wealth – all the gold, silver, gems in the world. 

Or perhaps you wish for the land of a sultan, or the property held by your rival, or even the house where you were born. 

Or you wish for fame, and success, and popularity – for your name to be on the lips of the masses.

Or perhaps – and this I cannot grant – you wish for the particular love of a man or a woman who spurns you, or one who does not know you…or one who loves you, but not enough. 

Or perhaps you would wish for adventure…relief from pain…good health…friendship…or a world at peace. All of these wishes I have heard many, many times over the centuries.

But still you say nothing? Then let me tell you something. There is one wish that no human has made in the nine hundred and ninety-six years I have been trapped within this container. I shall make you a bargain. If you can guess what that wish is, then I will give you all of the wishes you could ever desire.

You would like a hint. A clue. Very well…I shall give you several, and I will not take away any of your three wishes for doing so. Am I generous? Perhaps. You see, since the last time I was released from this prison, seventy-four years have passed, and I do so long to speak to someone. Even if it is yet another human.

My name is Akuma, and I am a demon.

I cannot tell you how hard it was for me to say that at first. Now, I can say it without shame, but there is still a hesitation on my lips and in my heart, for habit dies slowly. At the start, though, being a demon brought me much shame.

At the start…we demons all start as angels. Fallen angels. There is an original sin inherent in our creation, and so we are damned without mercy from the very beginning. Or so they tell us, and so we believed.

I was one of seven demons. Their names are not important. My name was not important to me until much later.

We lived as a family, in an abandoned building down below. Here I speak of constructs that your mind may accept – ‘building’ and ‘down below’. Do not confuse ‘down below’ with your primitive visions of Hell or damnation. I have heard tell of how humans believe we live among flames and sulfur and rocks. None of this is true. Ours was a world of infinite dimensions, spaces without measure.

And yet we suffered. For we were damned.

We were a family, but we were not a family. How could you care for someone who was deemed evil? How could you care for yourself if you thought yourself evil?

No, we lived in shame, and although our building had rooms without number, we allowed them to decay into squalor. We lived in the shadows and corners, and did not want to be seen. We gathered as a group, but not as brothers or sisters.

And you hated us! Oh, how you hated us. From down below we could feel your hatred like an oppressive mass. Whenever you lost a relative to war, or fell ill, or stubbed a toe, you would curse us…as if we had started the war, carried disease to your lips, or tripped you as you walked.

We were rulers of our realm, and yet we lived as slaves. I was the least of our seven, the last-born and therefore the most wicked. Or so I was told. And so I believed. Perhaps I was hated most by the other six because I had most recently touched the heavens. I do not know.

The others left me to fend for myself, and I watched them from my own shadows, until one day I was sent to find food (for even demons must eat), and I found a visitor to our world.

A visitor! Such a thing was unheard of. The visitor was draped in clothes of fine brocade, and their skin was luminescent as pearls. I bowed down in front of them, but when they spoke it was not the booming lustrous voice of one from above.

No, the visitor’s voice was male, and scratchy and grating, as mine is to you. A fellow demon! But what demon could this be, one so well-dressed with a straight back and, dare I say it, smiling? What demon smiles? 

For one moment I wondered if he had somehow not fallen, not been cast out of the heavens. But such a thing was so beyond the realm of possibility that I dismissed it at once.

“I am Cythraul,” the shining demon said.

“I am Akuma,” I said in a hesitant voice, since I spoke little in those days and not well.

His smile grew greater, if such a thing were possible. “I have been looking for one like you,” he said, and spread his arms wide. I shrank back, but his illuminated finery had banished all nearby shadows.

“You are mistaken,” I said at last. “There is nothing special about me. I am only myself.”

At that, his smile faltered somewhat. “I want to invite you on a grand adventure,” he said, waving his hands in an approximation of said adventure.

“I am a demon,” I replied. “I cannot leave this place.” And then I dared to ask, “How can you leave? How can you smile?”

His smile returned at full force, and it was a beacon in the midst of the space where we stood. “If I told you the secret of how I am able to leave – how I am able to travel, and dress in finery, and smile…would you join me?”

I shook my head, and turned from the dazzling brightness of his clothes, his smile, his eyes. “I have been charged with procuring food for my family.”

From the corner of my eye I saw him lower his arms. “I would bid you come with me, Akuma the demon,” Cythraul said, “but I cannot compel you unless you accept of your own volition.”

He disappeared at that point, transubstantiated from the world I inhabited to some other place filled with light, I had no doubt. “Tell me!” I called after him. “Tell me the secret of your smile!”

But he said nothing, and presently he was gone, and the shadows had returned. And I was hungry and had to find food for the others.

They beat me for being late with their meal, and I sat under a table in the far end of our smallest room and watched them eat and gobble their food, until they left a few scraps for me which I, too, gobbled.

The days moved on from shadow to shadow, and yet…and yet, I saw our world somehow differently. I saw the tapestries fallen into dust and insect-eaten ruin. I saw the bent necks and drooping shoulders of my kin, and knew I too was stooped, as if to ward off a blow. I saw all this, and I cursed Cythraul for the light he had shone into my eyes that gave me this sight. But of course, I was the one who was cursed: myself, and all of the demons that inhabited this plane.

And then, one day, I could no longer bear it any further. It was as if a pressure that had been building up in my mind suddenly burst like a dam: I had to leave. I had to escape – from my family, from the demons, from the shadows.

A part of me said, but there is nothing else! I knew this not to be true, for there were the heavens, where I could never set foot again. And there was the realm of the humans, which touched ours at several points above. I might not be able to leave our demon land, but I could leave the beatings behind. 

And so I did.

I expected to be struck down by lightning when I left the family’s quarters. There was nothing but silence. A silence that grew as I began to wander our world, and then dissipated once I found the spots where your world meets ours.

They are numerous, these spots – like the skin of the elderly that has become paper thin and allows us to see the flesh and bones underneath. I should have known this: we could hear the thoughts of the humans condemning us, hating us. But I had to discover this for myself.

There is a story among the demons that the humans have seven weaknesses; it was a matter of some amusement that our family had seven demons, though there was no relation. As I moved from spot to spot, and observed the humans through the thin gauze that separated our worlds, I saw these weaknesses.

I witnessed a woman who coveted her neighbor’s husband, and begged him to leave his wife and run away with her. When he refused to, she took a jewelled dagger and slit his wife’s throat in the night as she lay next to him. And when he yet refused her, and called her a murderer, she cried out as if she had been the one whose throat had been slit…all this while being led to the gallows.

I witnessed a man who had an enormous kitchen built for him to cook within. He spent his days and nights planning his meals, and pots stewed with sweetmeats and oils and all manner of soups. The ovens burned with fires lashing cakes and pastries and breads. And his family sat mute and dead and skeletal at the dining table in the other room, for he had plotted and salivated and cooked and baked, but he had never served a single meal.

I witnessed a king who ruled over a large area of land and wanted more. He sent out armies and ships to conquer other lands. And when he had conquered those lands, he screamed that the planets and stars that spun in the firmament above were mocking him in their freedom, and that they were to be his, too. His advisors counselled against it, but he sent up arrows and projectiles and finally succeeded in pulling the planets and stars down and crushing the castle and himself.

I witnessed a mage who wearied of the matters of daily life and wished for others to do his cleaning and mend his clothes and cook his meals. He cast a spell to contrive a mechanical assistant that would do his bidding so that he need merely speak his commands, and the assistant would carry them out. Until the day when he fell ill and lost his voice, and died trying to seek help that never came.

I witnessed a seamstress who felt she had been wronged by other sewers in her community, and who swore vengeance. Instead of tending to her work and her sewing, she carried out a campaign of revenge and anger against them. Whether she had been wronged or merely perceived it to be so, I cannot say, but her stitches became suffused with her wrath and the garments she sewed burst into flames.

I witnessed a town gossip who found the greatest happiness in the misfortunes of others. When someone’s life had fallen into disrepair, he would rush to their side to comfort and console them, but he would be sure to tell others of the calamity, and he relished every unpleasant detail. How he enjoyed seeing the mighty brought low, the strong become weak, and the rich become poor. It never occurred to him that in his own way, he was low, weak, and poor…and that his pleasure came not from the downfall of others, but seeing them brought down to his level.

And I witnessed a woman who knew herself to be more fair, more intelligent, more cunning and more beloved than anyone in her village. She did not spend her days telling others of her gifts, for were they not self-evident to everyone? She had admirers that she dazzled with her wit and sharp tongue, and she chose the most handsome and wisest to become her partners. Though she was wealthy and successful, she suffered the cruellest fate of all of these humans: never to become aware of her own faults.

They were not unique, these humans. I witnessed the same vices over and over again, time after time. History passed, cities rose and fell, and humans remained the same.

Until one day, when I was traveling through a barren spot of our land, and I heard a song. A lilting, gentle song that sang of happiness and love…and demons! Yes, it was a song of love for demons – something I had never heard in all my decades of traveling. I followed the source of the sound to a particularly thin wall between our worlds, and I saw a group of humans in black robes, anointed with ashes, smiles on their faces which reminded me of Cythraul’s smile…and they sang of demons!

Oh, how they sang of demons. But I saw no demons around them – whether in our world, or in theirs. They sang of demons, but they were demon-starved.

I wondered whether Cythraul had happened upon this group of humans in centuries past, and if this was what had made him so happy. But there was no sign of Cythraul or his sigil.

I listened for a while to their song, and then it occurred to me that I could do more than listen. They sought advice and help from a demon, and I was one who could advise and help them.

I could not pass through the barrier between worlds, but it would stretch so that I could lay a finger here, or apply a bit of magick there in their world. The first action that I took was to banish the storm that gathered over their group, and then to light the torches which had gone out in the rain.

When they realized who I was, they were overjoyed and redoubled their hymns. I caused their crops to bloom without blight, and sent away a passel of animals which had been preying on their community, and they begged me to stay.

I stayed. I was praised, and so I stayed. Though even then I did not smile, for demons do not smile.

Was I happy? I was content, perhaps. I had a role and purpose in their world, and they loved me. Perhaps a part of me allowed myself to think I could be happy.

Then one year a plague swept through their village, and many fell to its hand. They gathered in the center of the village to beseech me for help, and I was ready to do so when I saw what they were offering as a sacrifice.

It was a newborn baby, still red and squalling, fresh from his mother’s arms. Of the mother I saw no sign, and I knew not whether she had fallen to the plague, or…but I thought only of the child, and the dagger poised above its breast.

And as I had witnessed humanity before, I witnessed it again. 

“Help us!” the priestess called. “Help us, Akuma! We sacrifice all that is good and holy in thy name!” And the crowd muttered and pleaded behind her.

I stayed the priestess’s hand. I admit to this one weakness: I do not wish death performed in my name. I had seen rape and murder and neglect in the name of humans, but never in my own. “Akuma does not wish this,” I said angrily, and my voice shook the village.

“How can we please you, Akuma?” the priestess asked.

Akuma: “Speak to me of your love. Tell me of the wisdom and goodness and kindness of demons.”

There was silence. And then I knew. They did not praise demons because they thought we were blessed and wonderful. No, they praised us because we were wicked and evil. 

Of course! Are not all demons wicked and evil?

In a fury, I cast winds and fire and stones at the village, and the townspeople scattered. But the priestess must have been expecting such a trick, for she made a gesture with her hands and then –

-- And then…how to explain? I was translated, cast out from a world I’d been cast into, and surrounded by a bubble around me from which I could not escape. This I came to learn was my CONTAINER. My PRISON. It was magickal, and it kept me imprisoned. 

As I learned, the container could appear as different objects to different people. To one man, it could be a vase. To another woman, a lamp. And to another, even – and here I shudder – a chamber pot. Such was the magick the priestess had used.

The plague carried off all of the villagers, or maybe their wickedness consumed them. I was alone for a long period, until a traveling merchant found me in the ruins and used a cloth to clean the container…and I discovered the other aspect of the curse that had imprisoned me.

Once I had granted the merchant her three wishes, she carried the container to the next town, where she sold it (and me) for a princely sum. And so I traveled along with the container around the human world, forced to grant three wishes to anyone who asked for them.

Wait – you have found your voice?

[pause]

[laughs]

You think you know the wish that no human has ever made? You think it is a wish to free me from the container? No…that is one of the most common wishes. Humans believe they can please me by offering to free me and thereby acquire more wishes, but this is not permitted by the magick that animates this container.

Now, be silent and listen.

There is a…sameness…to humans that saddens me. Each demon is different in our own ways and manner, but every human is the same. Everyone thinks that they should free me, but nobody thinks to free me for selfless reasons. Such is the thought of a human.

I have listened to humans for nine hundred and ninety-six years, and you are a predictable lot with predictable desires: love, power, fame, fair appearance, wealth, and so on.

Humans have hated and mistrusted demons forever, and when I was young, I did not understand why. I understand why now. When I was first locked in this container, I found it a relief to be released by each human. I would work with them to grant their wishes in the most lavish, kind, extravagant ways possible. The joy on their faces…!

But as the centuries passed, I saw that it was always the same. More of this, more of that…more, more, more, and always trying to wish for more wishes. You humans are never satisfied.

I grew annoyed. Then I grew bitter. And then I grew angry. Woe befall anyone who should choose to rub my vase…or my lamp…or especially my chamber pot.

If you are thinking, certainly I could ask Akuma not to twist my wishes. I could examine my wishes for loopholes and ensure that Akuma will play no tricks, I tell you that you are wrong. I have spent centuries granting wishes, and there is no wish that cannot be twisted in my favor and against yours.

I shall give you an example.

Sand, a nobleman in a large town acquired my container from a passing merchant some hundred years after my capture. The nobleman spent his days advocating on behalf of others (or so he told me), and was confident of his skills at logic and argumentation. His first wish, he said upon my appearing before...