Dear Wordworm,

J.P. Zmirak

You have always been my favorite nephew. I have often looked in upon your progress, pulled your case file (I have that prerogative), and put in a kind word for you with the lower-downs. You have answered my kindness admirably, amassing a fine “kill rate” of souls. I've watched you grow up flush and full, a proud spirit whose black wings shimmer and red claws glint, nourished regularly on newly fallen fools.

I was frankly impressed with your exquisite work among the journalists — and not a few of the prelates — last spring in our campaign of managed hysteria aimed at the Enemy's priests. How many millions of dollars will now be diverted from cancer hospitals and pregnancy shelters to tort attorneys’ vacation cottages in Provence!

How many mortal fools will now justify their old apostasies with a lazy reference to half-skimmed newspaper accounts of sins committed decades ago, far away, perhaps long-repented, by men they will never meet, against boys they've done nothing to help!

The transport trains are packed so tight that they burst when we open them, and our tables are literally groaning. It was a very good year.

Your excellent work has won for you, nephew dearest, a very high honor. In recognition of your entrepreneurial ferocity, the lowerarchy have granted my request that you work — at last, after so many centuries — in tandem with me.

Be not afraid! I will not bite, unless provoked.

As part of a tactical experiment, you and I will work together on a pair of mortals who are themselves about to be linked in the so-called sacrament of matrimony.

As you know, this arrangement is fraught with dangers. The Enemy has made them for this. He has constructed their frail, decaying frames to join their enduring spirits in a bond that lasts at least until they come to meet us here. He is perversely fond of such spiritual contamination — the mixing of like with like, the fusion of souls, which are natural enemies and competitors.

The Demiurge manipulates his coupling creatures in ways we do not yet understand, to frustrate our work of formation. For instance, he stirs in the murky depths of their mixed psyches twinges of biologically superfluous fondness and affection. To watch them nuzzle and cuddle each other — the very sight is sickening!

Disclaimer: The reporter wishes to ensure the reader that, in following the C.S. Lewis literary device of letters from demons, he did not consult Ouija boards, crystals, mediums, séances or any other means incompatible with the First Commandment. Nor is the reporter, to his knowledge, possessed.

It's our task to stifle such impulses and render the spouses alternately coldly distant and lustful — preferably out of synch, to maximize frustration and resentment. Let him reach for her and receive a slap of annoyance; let her reach for him and find his hand welded to the remote control — and so on, till the lovers meet again in divorce court or here.

To suit his ends, the Enemy perverts nature differently in each of the sexes. In time, he mitigates the male instinct for variety (which our father planted at our first victory) with a quite irrational loyalty to a single female, despite the inexorable withering of her charms.

In turn, he transforms the female's broodsow appetite for safety and a reliable supply of feed into something different and much more sinister. The females of the species actually transform their inbred egoism so that it includes the best interests of the male himself, and of the little worldlings they produce.

We know, of course, that such a phenomenon is only apparent, that the real renunciation of one's self-interest is quite as impossible for this species as for any other, such as our own.

One objection only arises to this convincing hypothesis: the appalling case of She Whose Name is Unspoken. Alone among her sex, she resisted our every advance — leading some to hold that she was in fact an imposter, not really a human at all. This theory has been refuted and its advocates rendered (quite literally) speechless.

No, it appears to respectable opinion that That Woman was in fact a human, albeit one enjoying special privileges, in pursuit of her ghastly mission.

In my next correspondence I will discuss the particulars of the primates we have been assigned. They may seem insignificant at first — two ordinary adherents of the Enemy's religion, astray in a culture we've carefully crafted to eat it away. You may feel insulted to switch from advising hierarchs and opinion-makers to hunting such humble fare. Do not be deceived.

I have it from the lowest sources that these two anonymous Christlings are of great importance to the Enemy, that he sets great store by them and what they do. Consequently, we have been commanded (do you take the virtue of subservience as seriously as you might?) to pay them our special attention, to apply our advanced techniques to recruiting these two, and all of their offspring, for our father's kingdom and cafeteria. So read my letters carefully, more than once.

Set them aside as spiritual reading, and whisper them softly to yourself at idle moments. Your own fate could well rest upon what you learn from them.

Your Affectionate Uncle,

Screedbait

J.P. Zmirak is author of Wilhelm Röpke: Swiss Localist, Global Economist (ISI Books, Wilmington, Del., 2001).