Saturday Short: Feles Daemonica

Saturday, May 9, 2020 at 9:41am

Yet again I found myself thinking about a short story idea in advance of Saturday, and, yet again, cats feature prominently. I decided this week to write about a demon who has for yet unknown reasons decided to infest himself into the soul of a manx kitten. The demon I decided to use is Aym, one of the dukes of hell from the Ars Goetia.

The main character of the tale is named Paul. He’s a tech company project manager by day, but he and his husband occupy minor positions in the Ætherial Legion on the side, an organization that protects the human world from incursions by demons such as Aym.

In this first story, Paul’s sister Kate decides one day that she wants a kitten, and Paul is horrified to discover both that Aym has bothered to infest a kitten in an animal shelter, and that, of all the people Aym could snuggle himself up to, he goes after Kate.

I’m imagining I could have a lot of fun with this story line over multiple Saturdays. Right now, I’m imagining multiple vignettes. Paul will constantly be trying to use his contacts in the Legion to exorcise Aym, while Aym pursues his covert goal.

This is largely a humorous piece, one of my lighter works, but it will let me explore the dynamics of relationships with family members who insist on making those relationships difficult. Kate’s insistence on adopting Aym will add a significant amount of stress to Paul’s life, and there’s a third sibling named Elliott, who I want to get involved, too.

We’ll see how far I can take the setup. It could just peter out. After my experience with Voyage, I’m wary of doing anything with a series until it is complete. If this does become a proper series of connected short stories, my working title for the series is Feles Daemonica. The title for the individual story I wrote today is “Enter Muffin,” which is a reference to Kate’s name for her new kitten (she has no idea he’s a demon). It’s about 4,000 words long.