edwoodv2

The Adventures of Evilness

Chapter 1


Once upon an old time, there lived a small child demon named Evilness. He wasn't like the others of his kind, in fact, one could say he was the odd demon out, so to speak. He did not see any point in killing or corrupting like the others, and he always got low marks in all his classes. But he didn't seem to notice or care, he was happy just being himself.

One black day in Hell, he was walking home from the Canyon of the Damned, where his class had gone earlier that day for a career advisement field trip hosted by Balthos the Foul, when he came upon Glornak, one of his old classmates. They weren't really friends, per se, but whenever they met out and about, however briefly that might be, they would talk.

"Whatcha eatin?" asks Evilness, as he is always on the search for new food sources.

"Candy. Want some?" says Glornak, as he stuffs two handfuls into his gaping mouth. Two of his eyes are closed in a look of pure enjoyment, while the third glowers down at the small demon with suspicion. Glornak is two-times the size of Evilness, with a thick body the shape of a thick barrel, four arms that wave and move in many directions, two stocky legs, and a squat toad-shaped head with two eyes set into it over a wide gaping mouth, filled with pointy teeth in rows of two, while the third eye bounces wildly at the end of narrow flesh-stalk above the head. Glornak's skin is a rough mat of lizard-like scales, that seem to glimmer as he eats or moves. Evilness, in comparison, is quite distinct. He is small, with a head shaped like a fat sideways letter C that holds a wide grinning mouth with distinct marks that make it look like, at one time, his mouth was stitched shut, and two large black eyes. His red body is draped in a red skirt that is tattered at the lower end, and upon the chest is the word EVIL, the shortened form of his full name EVILNESS . His small red feet are bare and in his right hand he carries a pitchfork, a family heirloom.

"Is it safe?" Evilness ponders, knowing very well that Glornak, on occassion, has a habit of eating some really dangerous stuff.

"It's only sugar," he says between stuffing his face with two hands and whipping his face with the other pair, "And it's not like it can kill you. Have some."

"K." says Evilness, not really sure what to make of this thing called candy. Glornak hands over a small object no bigger then a marble wrapped in silvery foil. It takes a bit of trying but soon Evilness manages to unwrap it. Inside the foil is a small semi-spherical object that looks to be quite boring, and Evilness doesn't see what all the fuss is about. Not sure how he should proceed, he takes a hint from his friend, and shoves the tan candy piece into his waiting mouth. Since Glornak didn't seem to eat the wrapper, Evilness tosses it aside, where it flashes to metallic steam the instant it hits the ground.

At first the candy piece is ok, tasting rather like a stone he once tried, but the longer he holds it in his mouth, the more a distinctive syrupy taste fills him. Just when it seems like he can take no more, the candy piece has dissolved away into nothingness. It is a sensation unlike any he has known before. His whole mouth tingles from the experience and he must find out where to get more.

"Where did you get this from?" asks Evilness, his face flushed with excitement.

"Earth." declares Glornak, as he stuffs more into his slobbering mouth face, "They have tons of it there. And I hear they give it away in bags."

"It comes in bags?" says Evilness, his eyes growing large in wonderment.

"Sure does. All you have to know is the correct spell, and the humans will just hand it over to you."

"What spell?" asks Evilness, a little downcast. He had learned tons of spells in school, but he had never really been very good at performing them. He hoped it was a simple one, one that he could actually make work.

"Trick or Treat." says Glornak, as he polishes off the last of the candy, before eating the bag it came in, "Recite that spell and the humans will fork over all their candy, no questions asked. Well, I gotta get back to work, my break is over."

"Later Glornak," says Evilness, as he continues on his way home, daydreaming about candy, the friendly humans on Earth, and how he can visit to get lots more candy. He is so wrapped up in his fantasy, he doesn't even notice that fireballs that have started raining down from above or wretched wailing of the damned souls off in the distance. He walks along the fire-sodden ground, down the lane, and over the massive drawbridge that serves as his home. When he gets to the door, a statue of a beheaded knight greets him.

"Welcome home, Master Evilness. Your mother is in the kitchen preparing a wonderful blood stew, I hear." he says, as a small stone geyser of blood jets up from where his head used to be attached. Evilness giggles at this, before entering the door.

The castle in which he resides is one of the oldest known of its kind in Hell, having been built during the time of the very first demons. It has twenty-two hundred staterooms, eighty great halls, seventy bathrooms, twelve grand kitchens, and towers more then one thousand, eight-hundred fifty-two feet above the smoldering waters of the legendary Lake of Fire. It juts precariously over the churning orange waters, and it's impressive botanical garden, featuring all sorts of rare and wonderful species from Hell and several other dimensions, dangles above the leaping flames attached to the castle above by several lengths of extremely durable chain and a set of gilded stairs that snake down from the main house.

Evilness and his parents aren't the only ones living here, with much of the remaining space being taken up by his many brothers and sisters, and a various amount of relatives he can barely remember even talking to or what their names could possible be. Of the brothers and sisters, most of whom he gets to see on a regular basis, he enjoys their company finding no grievance with them. There is Darkness, a demonling made entirely from a living shadow, who can shape-shift at will into many forms, and who uses his powers to cause mischief. Then there is Uglyness , a rather odd girl that has an odd quirck of both eating worms and spewing black blood whenever the occassion presents itself, which is usually whenever someone happens to be looking at her. There are also the twins, Sadness and Loneliness , who are never away from each other. They are wretched things garbed all in gray, even their hair is gray and matted, with blank longing eyes. There is Misery , a gothy waif who will invite anyone she sees to a demented tea-party. He has a sister named Happiness , but he never really gets to see her, since the rumor around the family is that she is an outcast and forced to live in another realm entirely. His father was a circus performer his mother took a shine to when she visited Earth many years ago. Their first date was during the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Evilness was born exactly ten days later in a birthing chamber in Hell's foundry, where all demons are born. After he was born, he was taken home to this grand castle, where for a year after he arrived he was given the expert care of imps that served as nurse-maids to him, making sure he would have anything he required.

He finds his mother in the grand kitchen made to look like an underwater grotto deep beneath an ocean. The walls teem with various aquatic life, that swim, slither, crawl, and glide from place to place. His mother stands over a huge steaming cauldron that hisses and pops menacingly above the blue flames on the clamshell stove. His mother looks exactly like him, but older and taller, wearing golden bracelets and a haircut that one would normally find on a housewife from the nineteen-fifties. Over the same mouth as his, she has a small area marked off with red lipstick, and written over her breasts is the phrase DILF. Her Prada purse hangs over her right shoulder, as she stirs the concoction before her.

"Hi, sweetie," she says with her back to him as he enters. He always wondered how she knows that it is him and not one of his many other relatives, "How was your field-trip today?"

"Not too bad, mum," he says, taking a seat in a chair made to look like a coral reef full of multi-colored fish. The fish duck back into their hidey-holes as he sits down, only to re-emerge seconds later, when they realize he poses no threat to them, "Can I go to Earth?"

She turns around to gaze at him in wonderment. "Why ever would you want to go there, sweetie?"

"Glornak says that's where candy comes from, and I tried some and I want some more. It's wonderful."

"Yes it is," she says, dreamily thinking back to when she visited, "But Earth is a very dangerous place for a demon, and I'm not sure you're really ready to journey there."

"But, mum," he pleads, drawing his face into a mask of childish begging, "I want candy. I need it bad. I can't live without it. Come on, please? Just this once?"

"Oh alright, you can go." she says, almost chuckling, "I never could resist that cute face of yours. But, you'll have to wait until tomorrow, no arguments."

"Yes!" he says, jumping up and down in excitement, causing the fish to retreat into their hidey-holes once again, "You're the best mum. You won't regret this, I promise."

"I have to arrange a few things before you can go, you understand, now, go dirty up your hands, supper is almost ready."

Evilness rushes out of the kitchen, racing towards the sink to dirty up his hands in preparation of eating. That night at dinner, he barely touches his blood stew, as his mind reels with all the candy possibilities that await him on Earth. No one else in the family, besides his mom and him, even knew he was planning on leaving Hell. His mother hadn't told a solitary soul, so it was like their own little secret. He didn't mind, since the rest of his siblings would've just teased him or called him dumb for wanting to leave the horribleness of Hell, and he was more concerned about the millions upon millions of candy pieces he was going to consume. He wonders how many flavors there could be, and how he would store it all when he wasn't eating it. He nibbled on his food, before leaving the table for the night.

Since the castle is so huge, he decides to skip walking up the hundreds of stairs, since that would take far too long, and attempt teleporting to his little room. He had never actually used his native teleportation skills, but he did learn it in school, and even though he never really received high marks in any class, he decides to try his luck. His teacher, Mr. BloodField, always said; You must remember, class, that in order to teleport, you must concentrate on the place you are trying to teleport to. Think hard about it, and let nothing distract you, lest you end up in a wall, in pieces, or something far worse. So closing his eyes, Evilness thought about his warm and comfortable bed, a pulsating pile of embers brought up from the riverbank of the Lake of Fire and formed into the shape of a small slab, which was covered with the thinnest sheets of pure flame and topped off with a charcoal briquette for a pillow.

He could picture the dull red glow of the walls that make up his room, and the picture window that gazed down upon one of the smaller gardens filled with man-eating snapdragons and poisonous nightshade. As soon as the picture is clear in his mind, so that he can almost reach out and touch it, he vanishes from the stairway with a slight crackle of energy that seems to enunciate T-ZAM!. He reappears right beside his bed, overjoyed that he managed to do it successfully and not end up a permanent part of the walls. He climbs into bed, anxious for what tomorrow will bring, and soon he is fast asleep with visions of candy drifting through his mind. A huge smile plants itself on his face, as he dreams what Earth might possible be like.