The Blind Devil and His Pitchfork

Icky was an apprentice devil who, on most days, delivered a mediocre haul of souls to his master. He was regularly outperformed by his codevils, so the big horny boss assigned him to Cleveland, Ohio.

Being a devil in Cleveland can be compared to being a doctor in a country with no disease. The job almost does itself. The real hotshots get sent to places like Los Angeles where hopes and dreams run rampant.

One day, Icky was walking down a dilapidated Lake Erie beach with some humans he "worked" in a factory with. He was subtly trying to convince them to go out drinking with him that night. Upon learning that 66% of them were sober, he felt smoke flowing from his ears.

"Another lost cause," he thought. "I should recommend to Big Red that he fight this anti-alcohol indoctrination they're pushing so hard."

"You guys go on without me," he said to the others. "I need to make a phone call."

He sat down on a large flat rock that lay across the line dividing lakewater from sand.

As the others walked on, he established a telepathic link to the big boss. He gave a long-winded (that expression doesnt work for telepathic speech, does it?) rant about the need for more pro-alcohol and drug propaganda in the contemporary music.

After the communique, Icky sighed and scanned the shoreline for his quarries. They were nowhere to be seen, but he noticed a large sewer pipe opening into the bluff behind the shore, wide enough for a hunched human to crawl into.

Icky, feeling bold from bereavement, decided to venture into the large circular channel.

He crouched down and walked through the large concrete cylinder. A small stream of water ran underneath his feet toward the opening near the beach.

After about a quarter mile, he reached a large chamber where he could stand upright. The chamber was a vertical cylinder that appeared to run upward for over 50 feet. Other pipes branched off from this main trunk, like a tree. A metal ladder ran up its sidewall.

Icky almost immediately climbed up the ladder and entered one of the branching pipes. This pipe was also walkable if he knelt, so he followed it for about 100 feet until he reached a grate with warm air rushing out of it. He pushed the grate open, and poked his head up into what he immediately recognized as an old basement.

Laundry machines and washbasins filled his view.

He instinctively climbed into the room and began to look around, when a sudden voice startled him.

"I didn't know the sense of adventure still existed. It's been decades since someone found their way in here." An elderly but strong woman's voice.

He jumped and began grooming his lies.

"I...I'm doing inspection work for the city," he stammered.

She sighed. "Honey, relax. Listen, I'm no leprechaun, but one of the conditions of my living in this house is that I must grant a single wish to the soul that finds me here. That's better than a pot of gold, isn't it? You can wish for anything in the world, but it can only be one idea."

"A wish...?" Icky thought aloud. "I thought only Big Red had that kind of magic...what is your name?"

"They call me Lucretia," she said. Her long gray hair was clean but unkempt.

Now, you might think from his lack of results that Icky would squander such a chance as this, but he was quite the dreamer, and often bemoaned his lack of control over the humans' language. If you command words, you can easily corrupt souls. He knew without any hesitation what to ask for.

"I wish that I could control the humans' language. I wish that every word was associated with a person, and that only I know which word goes with which person," he blurted out.

The gray lady smirked. "That's two wishes, farmboy. Let's grant the second, and assume that a clever boy like you can figure out the control part on your own."

Lucretia then ambled over to a large rack of servers in the corner of the room. Icky hadn't noticed them before. She read a few displays and pressed a few buttons, and said "Done." It was oddly anticlimactic. No plumes of smoke or flashes of light.

***

Icky reveled in his newfound wisdom.

The big boss was impressed with his numbers now, and had given Icky some time off. As it turns out, being friends with the men linked to the words "jealousy" and "greed" made him a much better corrupter of souls.

Today he had decided to find the person associated with "wealth", and find a path to a bigger house. He walked into the dining room and opened his rolodex--a single sticker decorated its outer plastic shell...a picture of an ancient three-pronged trident.

He was supposed to be at "work", but that corporate facade was quickly becoming unnecessary. He expected to quit it soon.

As he opened his Anthrophilological file, he heard the door open, and a familiar giggle as two people stumbled inside.

The lust of his life, his new girlfriend, was frantically groping another male as she stumbled inside.

His blood boiled, and he shouted.

They froze, and looked at him, her with amusement, and him with terror.

Then Icky grabbed a toaster, rushed to the competitor, and bludgeoned him over the head.

As he looked down at the bloody carcass, he murmured aloud..."maybe I've been hanging with jealousy too much."

Lust smirked.

A few minutes later, Icky noticed that his vision was beginning to fade.

***

Icky was now totally blind, and he was fairly close to understanding why.

He had made Lust (he now referred to people by the words associated with them) search his rolodex for the man she had brought home, and learned that he was the human associated with the word "sight".

He cursed Lucretia (rather impotently, still in love as he was with his newfound gift), and asked Lust to search the rolodex for the person worded as "heal".

And that brings us to the explanation of how I, the author, learned of Icky's story. For his wish had associated me, A.S. Lawrence, with the word "heal". He demanded my help, and I acquiesced after demanding a more polite tone from this strange ornery creature (his spiky dark hair seemed to stab outward from his head in a visual rhyme with his hostile, violent intentions).

After many long discussions, Icky took me to see Lucretia, and I wished for the ability to return eyesight to the blind.

And that's the creation "myth" of the power grid, which is a story much longer than Icky's.

Suffice it so say that Icky still can't see, but he's able to use EMF fields to obtain most of the information that his eyes used to give him.

And I charge him a hefty fee, like any good doctor.

Let's just say my children's finances won't need healing any time soon.