Trafficking in Pleasure

It is a tricky thing to catch a demon. First of all, how do you get to hell? You certainly can’t easily catch a demon on earth—there is no telling a demon when you see one. They look just like you or me. It is much easier to “catch” a demon by bringing him or her to earth yourself with a complicated and very delicate process of summoning. It isn’t advisable that just anyone summon a demon—you must be very knowledgeable of what you’re doing and powerful enough that the demon cannot break your seal and overpower you. Luckily for him, Grimm Andersen fit exactly all of those requirements when he was still a young somewhat human wizard known as Rgiamr.

Rgiamr had come from another world, where mythical beings ran rampant, but mortal wizards were a rare thing indeed—he wasn’t now, but he had been a mortal wizard once. When he lost his mortality, he left his world, and when he found himself on earth he wasted no time in testing the limits of this new world. It would be a lie to say he was not pleased with the results of his experiments. The most rewarding experiment, in fact, was the culmination of all his research that he conducted over his many immortal years of solitude.

“What the fuck is this?”

“Interesting,” Rgiamr hummed as he eyed the figure that had apppeared in his wax runes. He looked quite human, aside from his pointed ears and sharp teeth. Not to mention those red eyes—a tell-tale sign of demonism in this world. “Scribe. It seems,” he dictated as a pen wrote on parchment for him, “that a summoned demon is not aware of when he is going to be summoned. Therefore, we can assume for now that it is a completely random process of selection unless I can find some way to hack the system. Cease.” The pen fell delicately off the parchment and Rgiamr turned his attention to the demon.

The demon’s red eyes flashed as he lunged for the wizard, but an electric pulse shot up from the wax runes and sent him reeling back—against the electric pulse on the other side of the runes and then on all fours on the floor. “What are you doing to me?!”

“I just wanted to see if I could summon a demon,” Rgiamr explained calmly. “Though I suppose I have to give you some purpose now. The point of the spell was to get you to do me a service and you can’t go back to hell—OR try to get revenge on me—until I have given you a purpose and you have fulfilled it.”

Growling, the demon stood up and dusted his clothes off. “Then let’s get this over with so I can pull out your entrails and feed them to you while slowly boiling you alive.”

Rgiamr chuckled. “Scribe,” he said and the pen stood up. “Demon is violent, spouting threats in response to the terms of the spell. Was considering giving him a simple task of picking up a paper, but am now fearing for my life due to the things he promises to do once he is free to do to me as he pleases. Shall test the strength of the spell by giving him an endless task.”

“I can hear you,” growled the demon, looking like he was considering lunging at the wizard again. But he knew better now, even if his boiling blood threatened to get the better of him.

“Then your hearing is in fine condition, I’m glad to see,” Rgiamr remarked with a smirk, arching his eyebrows at his furious company. “What’s your name?”

The demon said something unintelligble and he laughed when Rgiamr looked at him in bewilderment. “Kyriliah, in human tongue,” he explained.

“Kyriliah. I’ll have to learn how to pronounce it properly.”

“Don’t bother,” Kyriliah said with an air of superiority. “The demon language is one that human tongues literally cannot speak.”

Rgiamr didn’t bother to inform the demon that he wasn’t exactly human at this point, so that was a moot point. “Listen, Kyriliah, your task is to serve me for all of your days.”

“MY days?” Kyriliah repeated, eying the wizard warily. “I’m serving you for all of MY days? That’s a little strange, I think. My days will far outlast yours and so it might as well be for all of YOUR days…”

“I’m immortal, too, you dunce,” Rgiamr finally sighed. Kyriliah truly looked ready to murder at that point and, although he could escape the runes now, he could not bring himself to kill the wizard. His awkward frozen attack pose tickled Rgiamr something awful and it only infuriated the demon even worse when he laughed.

“But this way, even if something happens to me, if I leave you with a final task, you still have to carry it out even after I die,” Rgiamr explained, a wicked smile on his face as Kyriliah stepped out of the rune circle warily. “If it was until the end of my days, that wouldn't work. As soon as I died, you'd be free of any obligations.”

“Of course I would be summoned by a wizard with a brain,” Kyriliah growled, fingers twitching and eyes glowing with blood lust. “What do you want me to do, then, Master?” he spat.

“I hadn't thought that far.” Rgiamr looked at the floor. “Clean this up, I suppose.” And he left the house.


Kyriliah and Rgiamr lived like this for many years. Rgiamr became a simple sorcerer for a small town near a woodland and Kyriliah was his forcefully faithful servant. It was peaceful, even if the peace was the sort of tense peace that would be broke if only one party could do so.

It was in the very late 1800s when Rgiamr took the name Grimm Andersen and finally allowed Kyriliah more freedom. He wasn't bound to living with him any longer, but he had to come straight to Grimm if the man called him with a particular phrase; it just meant Kyriliah had to stay in the human realm. Which was a real downer, but Kyriliah would take any taste of freedom he could get at that point. He was desperate for even a moment to himself and he'd rather go among the humans he had been living with so long than face the ridicule of his demonic peers.

However, Kyriliah's freedom was short-lived during this period. Grimm began running a circus, a freakshow circus of sorts, and demanded Kyriliah bring him circus people. Any “freaks” by human standards that Kyriliah found, he had to take to Grimm to be put in his circus and often Kyriliah had to help him control the more unruly of the freaks who would not submit easily. Kyriliah found he had a knack for breaking the spirit of these people and Grimm was quite pleased with him.

Eventually, Grimm picked up a young girl by the name of Lehmä and she became his second-in-command. She belonged to Grimm by law and worked for him as such. She didn't have to use Kyriliah's violent and intimidating methods for submission, she could relate to the workers as she too was treated more as a possession as a person. But they all loved Grimm in their own way, too, because once Kyriliah was gone they had a better life than they might ever have had otherwise.

But, that is a story for a different time.


A/N: My deepest apologies for how long this took to get out. My computer broke a while back and by the time I got it back, I was going through a serious bout of writer's block. I had the first part of this story written already and I forced this part out in hopes of getting myself going again, so sorry if it sounds quick and forced... it was. I'll try to get the next chapter up soon, though if you all are still sticking with me!

I'm also considering writing a story about Grimm and his freakshow circus, although it would be focused a bit more on Lehmä's side of things. Let me know if anyone is interested and once I get back in to the swing of things with TiP, I'll see if I can't work on it as well.