His Infernal Majesty

Started out in third person - a crazy old wretch in a dilapidated castle called out hideous commands from an ancient book. The fabric of the universe stretched and tore, with smoke and light effects. In another room an enormous glass bottle fell over - when I say "enormous," I mean "as big as a cow" - and began to move.

The bottle, previously normal (well, other than size) became a huge dragon, awesome and only slightly translucent. The dragon stalked through the castle, ducking a little to get under the doors. As it approached the spell caster, it started to change shape again. It became smaller and more nimble, more of a drake, then a lizard-man, then --

(wait for it)

-- DANNY ELFMAN!

And somehow I knew that besides being a Danny Elfman made out of a glass bottle dragon, it was also SATAN. Or at least very, very close to Satan in terms of power level/evilness. A vice president of Hell, sent because Satan was busy. This was easy to tell, because
a. He was looking _especially_ evil.
b. His eyes were a solid, glowing red-orange.
c. He was superhumanly well-groomed and had on a diabolically nice suit - not the business kind, but the sleek, creepy kind with velvet lapels and such. And his hair was nice, while most pictures I've seen of Elfman look like his hair was styled by poodles or the mad.

Then, wham! First person! I am the glass bottle/dragon/Danny Elfman. I know that I have to follow the commands of the guy who summoned me, up until he says something I can misinterpret and use to destroy him in an ironic fashion. I guess they watch a lot of Twilight Zone in Hell.

I'm wandering through the castle. Boy, is it full of junk. Old armor and weapons, tapestries and statues and portraits are piled up everywhere. Newer junk is here and there - food wrappers, dust and dirt. I'm getting annoyed at this and thinking about just setting it on fire (of COURSE I can set things on fire at will) when I find the summoner. He's in a smaller room, about the size of a tennis court. The floor is covered with a bumpy blue blanket, which I belatedly realize is an enormous sleeping bag. A big bump is moving around inside: my (temporary) master.

It takes a while to find the zipper, but I do and I'm in. I'm a very dapper demon - solid black tailored suit, immaculately styled hair. It's quite irritating to crawl around in this filthy sleeping bag. Why don't I get assigned to businessmen and students dabbling in the occult? I bet there are plenty of demons who would enjoy crawling around in dark, filthy places.

There are rats, dead rats, lying about inside. They're damp, probably with their own blood and decay. Finally, I crawl to a hole in the center, where the old guy is sitting, in the light, doing something to the rat corpses. Great.

Turns out he's made little crosses out of bits of furniture, and he's busy tying the dead rats on them with twist ties. He's made a couple dozen of them so far and has them set up in a window - to dry, presumably.

Okay. Better get this over with. I stand up, straighten my tie and ask what he wants. The old guy's eyes get very big, but he quickly regains his senses and puts me to work --

-- arranging things for a garage sale. See, he's got a ton of old stuff, as I said before, and he wants to sell enough of it to fix up the castle. So why not summon a demon?

Next thing I know, it's very early morning and I'm setting up card tables in the castle's lawn (right inside the moat, of course). Being ever-appropriately equipped, I have a jet-black pricing gun and am making good time. I manage to get everything labeled in time for the antique shoppers who arrive with the sun.

Everything gets sold by the end of the day. I've been working the register and am exhausted and irritated. I guess demons don't like being outside during the day, much less having to haggle with doctors' wives over crumbling tapestries. We've made a lot of money, and the old guy who summoned me walks over to collect.

"I presume this ends my half of the deal?" The old man starts to nod, then catches himself.

"Well, there is still the attic?"

Okay, that's about enough of that. So I grow to my largest size, which is several times larger than the damn castle. My suit and hair and stuff stay the same, but I also grow some kick-ass bat wings and big evil horns. The ground trembles as I raise my arms and Night-on-Bald-Mountain that damn castle. Demons and skeletons and Bill Peet drawings mill and teem, screaming and howling. The sky turns black and red with fire and damnation. The ground shakes and the buildings of mortal man are demolished, leaving only flaming ruins and the pitiful cries of the wounded and dying. My job done, I shrink back to a more manageable size and fly back Hell-ward.

I think it's fairly clear that the moral of this story is:

Don't Mess With Satan. Or Danny Elfman. Or Me.