Inside Man

by K.J. Parker

The prime directive of our order and Rule Number One: First, do no harm. If that sounds vaguely familiar to you, by the way, I’m not surprised. Your lot stole it from us, a long time ago. But we demons formulated our code of practice while the ancestors of your human doctors were still picking lice out of each other’s fur. First, do no harm: so I slide slowly and with infinite care through the upper layers of the unborn infant’s mind, like a thoughtful husband easing into bed next to his sleeping wife. Doing no harm in this context means not letting the subject know he’s being taken over. It’s an incredibly traumatic thing for you people, to know you’re being possessed. It’s terrifying and you can’t bear the intrusion—think what it’s like when you’ve got a sharp bit of grit in your eye, and then consider how infinitely more sensitive your mind is, and how much more damage you can do by rubbing at it. But all your instincts scream at you to fight, and you’re not to know that fighting us isn’t actually possible. Really—don’t try. The more you kick and thrash around, the more you bruise and break yourself, but you can’t touch us, naturally. We aren’t there, in your terms. We are spirit, essence, not of the body; not insubstantial, but composed of a kind of substance you could never even begin to understand. And if that sounds patronizing, you’ve missed the point. You really don’t want to be in a position where you could begin to understand us.