Sympathy for the Devil

I had a great deal of fun visiting Animus Imperium , a timely offering from Miss Emilly Orr, Mr. Fawkes, and Mr. Rucker. At least, a great deal of fun at first. “Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and screaming,” as Dr. Ian Malcolm said in The Lost World. And I found what Dr. Alter did with the giant tentacle thing .

I walked into the spectral estate, and nonchalantly sat on a convenient coffin as wraiths flittered before me.

What’s a girl to do, all alone in a creepy yard? Visiting the graves of recently-departed spirits was possible.


But spirits are not much fun unless they are animated by being conjured up from the netherworld. And, really, what’s the worst that could happen? Consulting my spell book, I folded my arms and concentrated. Soon, I began to levitate,


then whirl.


Making a fire and throwing in the bones of the unburied,


I summoned the forces of darkness and bade them to obey me. (Really, this is one of my all-time favorite poses :).)

Whose blood was this, if I was alone in the house? The demons came, in the form of giant skulls with fiery eyes,


lightning, and the enormous demonic hand (of glory?).

As in all such stories, however, I could not control the power; it controlled me. With my last flicker of consciousness, I realized that the blood I had seen earlier was a premonition, and the blood was mine.

In the end, the demons collected one more soul that night.