Can’t swing a cat these days without hitting some fantasy or urban fantasy property obsessed with demons. Television is awash with them: Sleepy Hollow, Supernatural, Constantine, and so on and so forth. We just love watching mortals dabble in “powers they can’t possibly comprehend.” It’s all pretty good fun, admittedly. There are, however, some pretty odd conventions about the whole thing I’d like to explore for a moment.

Demons Always Double-Cross You

We’ve all seen it: ill-trained sorcerer or power-hungry doofus decides to summon a demon to extort some kind of boon. Demon acts as though everything will go as advertised, but then betrays said doofus at last minute (or first minute – some of these people are pretty dumb), and then the demon gets to escape/claim doofus-soul/do something else nasty. This apparently happens all the damned time. Here’s my question:

Sure, she looks trustworthy. Right.

If you are going to summon a demon for this kind of deal, what did you expect would happen? You’ve just yanked some hellspawn from Hell and forced it to talk to you – cool, fair enough –  but then you start barking demands and you expect it to roll over and obey? Why should it? Because you won’t release it? Dude, it just got out of hell! Do you honestly think an eternity of fiery brimstone will make it poorly prepared to squat in your garage for a few months? You just brought it to the demonic equivalent of ClubMed! It has literally no impetus to assist you so it can “return,” nor does it have any particularly good motivation to tell you the truth. Do you think telling the truth is useful or valued characteristic in Hell?

Basically, you cannot trust these things at all. You can reasonably assume it will act only in its own best interest. If you want to make a deal, you really need to make sure the whole thing is mutually beneficial and build in a plan that assumes you’ll be double-crossed. You’d think more people would catch on to this.

Demons Are All Murderous, Destructive Monsters

Okay, okay – I get it, they’re from Hell. Still, evil does extend beyond homicide and vandalism, you know. Just because you get sprung from Hell doesn’t mean you go on a bloody rampage across town. If you were a soul that just spent umpteen thousands of years locked in an oven full of pitchforks, don’t you think you might have better things to do upon release besides stabbing the lovable neighbor kid or eating the dog? Heck, I’d guess they’d go straight to a nice restaurant, use their infernal influence to get a free meal, and eat good food and drink good drink until the angelic authorities come to drag them away. That’s gluttony, right?  Beyond that, might the occasional demon go in for the other less brutal sins? A non-stop demonic sex party in Bangkok, perhaps (Lust)? Binge-watching every episode of every CSI in a comfy motel room (Sloth)? Heck, there might be a demon who might just love bopping around violating the first couple commandments – yelling obscenities in church, starting random religions oriented around various food products, and so on. Maybe one of them is responsible for organizing bus schedules. That sounds like it would be right up an enterprising demon’s alley.

Demons Like to Possess the Innocent Above All

Sure, the innocent are annoying and such easy targets, but exactly how much mileage is your average demon going to get out of possessing a child or a child’s toy? Demonic possession targets all seem to be such waify, miserable things – bony women, kittens, despondent mental patients, toddlers, etc.. If you were a demon, wouldn’t you prefer to possess a 6’5″ brute named Bruno with a neck thick as a Honey-Baked Ham? Why go for the skinny kid when you could possess her real estate attorney mom? Demons, you’ve only got one shot at bringing about the apocalypse – start at the top!

(By the way, all of this reminds me to remind you all to check out my friend Gina’s book, Hellhole, which is about a particularly invasive but a-typical demon)

Demons, if they are meant to represent evil, can and should be as varied and as numerous as the forms of evil itself. Horror movies have seemed to back us into a corner over all of this – demons are simply base, bestial, and bloodthirsty. Evil, though, can be as calm and collected as anything. It needn’t be powered by lust or rage or avarice, necessarily. A demon can play the long game. A demon can be polite. The only thing a demon needs to be is wicked. Let’s all use our imagination about that, as the truly wicked in the world (few though they are) seem to have no shortage of it.