Demons at Work

About the Book

The Demons gather at the beginning of each one of these stories to plot the destruction of the hero or heroine of it, an exceptionally endowed human being. Thus we see in succession CEO´s, lawyers, doctors, architects, painters, businessmen, teachers, poets, beautiful women, husbands, and simple people, struggling against enormous temptations, difficulties and dangers thrown in their path by the Demons.

Man oscillates between two poles: The Ideal or Absolute Perfection at the top, and Inertness or Total Imperfection at the bottom. The Universal Spirit imagines first the beings that constitute our world. The force of Its wish to see what It imagines take a concrete shape produces an upward push on the inert material It has at Its disposal to model these beings with. Out of the upward push are born the noble feelings and conditions such as Love, Wisdom, Beauty, Grace, Generosity, Justice, etc. But this upward push also generates a resistance in Matter, out of which are born the lowest feelings or passions, things such as Lust, Greed, Hatred, Anger and Sloth. These lowest feelings are characterized by Selfishness, the wish not to transcend the boundaries of Matter. It is these lowest feelings or destructive passions that I call Demons. The identification of passions with Demons has the advantage of giving to the Demons more work to do. In the traditional Christian view Demons are left only with the rather senseless task of roasting people in Hell, or if they are not doing that, what is it that they do? To tempt us. And how do they do that? By instilling a passion in us. Thus, it seems only right to go all the way and make the identification complete. Besides, anybody who has experienced the sway exercised on him or her by a passion such as a deep Despair knows how destructive, how truly Demoniac it can be. But you don´t need to agree with this identification in order to enjoy these stories. You may still cling to the customary view and still derive pleasure from them. Chief among Demons is Doubt. What he does is more than is implied by the name. Its main occupation is to make us not to believe in the possibility of an order transcendent to what we ordinarily perceive through the senses. In one word, It wants to tie us to the material world only. Its opposite is Faith, or Self-confidence, as it is also known in this book.

A brief description of the plot of the stories is as follows. In "Destined for Happiness" we see the Demons trying to stop the promising career of a young manager by causing a break-up in the relationship with the woman he is deeply in love with. In "Temptation of a Judge" we see an honest judge being driven to act recklessly because of the uncontrollable attraction he feels for a beautiful criminal woman. In "Hatred and the Architect" we see an influential architect´s life in danger when an illegitimate son he had in his youthful years, and whom he never recognized, full of hatred against him attempts to murder him. In "Doubt and the Painter" we see the struggle of an artist with the feeling of insecurity that besets him as to his real talent for the art. "The Fallen Goddess, or the dangers of Lust" shows a woman doctor falling from the pinnacles of success and fame to the lowest depths of moral depravity, and murder even, under the influence of a passion that completely dominates her. "Mr. Hutch and The Demons of Minor Inconveniences" is a humorous story in which a cranky man is made to lose his temper when everything breaks in the house. "Old Horse" is a story dealing with the love a much older man feels for a young woman. Of a somber character are "The Death of Laura Bernal", "Alice and the Demon of Lust" and "The Palermos and the Demons of Sloth and Vice", in which the Demons succeed in destroying a very beautiful woman, an exemplary wife´s happy conjugal life and a couple of very likeable people, respectively. In "A Case of Eternal Love" we see why certain two people are t

About the Author

William Delgado was born in Colombia, in 1957. He came to the United States in 1989. A former schoolteacher, Mr. Delgado combines an impassioned love of literature with that of philosophy. A total dreamer, he is currently at work in more books, especially one of fantastic literature. Besides the present volume he is also the author of: “A Brush with Magic: Science and the Possibility of the Wonderful” and “The Poor Student and Other Magical Stories”. His e-mail address is: wdelgado10552454@aol.com