this newly-completed chapter from my work in progress, empty away, is not told in the ordinary narrative voice of the piece, but in a special tone, derived as one can plainly see from c.s. lewis' screwtape letters, with i hope 1/1000 of the enjoyment quotient of the original.

CHAPTER 17 – An Ecclesiastical Feuilleton Left Lying About in the Pews of the Student Chapel

Archdemon’s Lenten Appeal
To be Read from the Pulpit in All the Parishes
of the Archdemonicate of Hell Gate

Dearly Beloathed Spawn of Satan:

It is the festive time of Lent, during which we rejoice in and commemorate how our Maximum Leader’s near triumph over the Forces of Light led by our Enemy was so closely contested. In the midst of such vast matters it is easy to forget how simple our duty ultimately is. And as we continue our Lenten celebration and rejoicing it behooves all of us to remember the humble Hot Cross Bun.

Defaced as it is with the symbol of our Defeat, you may wonder how we, the parishoners of the Archdemonicate of Hell Gate who do not even eat, can draw any inspiration or insight from a raisin-besmirched lump of gluten.

Yet as we go about our modest daily duties of multiplying pain and suffering, we too require sustenance and reinforcement if we are not to backslide into routinely torpid efforts. Continually subjecting humans to temptation, deception, and fraudulent glimpses of what they foolishly hope will prove to be the tastier sins in the catalog, is not a piece of cake!

As we have no material bodies we must subsist upon ideas. And the idea that gives our work the strongest impetus is fear. Just as Homer depicted the gods as feeding upon the smoke of the burnt offerings of cattle, so in a manner of speaking do we feed on the fear that humans exude like their very sweat.

What wonderfully bleak and sodden days the earthly weather in the Northern Hemisphere now brings us! These are among the best in the liturgical calendar; they precede the unfortunately irrepressible annual outbreak of new life among the temperate species. The readings of Horrid Scripture with which the humans beguile themselves at this season are rife with betrayal, hatred, stupidity, despair, hopelessness, political chicanery, economic inequality and racial prejudice, especially during Horrid Week.

And on Palm Sunday we read of the fickle crowd acclaiming the ridiculous figure of our Enemy’s Son riding upon a donkey. Yet that same crowd in Jerusalem, representing all of humanity, would turn upon our Enemy’s Son and demand his death, as we read upon Horrid Thursday. It is this propensity of theirs -- to reject the source of their salvation -- that makes our work so very easy, and so rewarding.

When the baker makes a Hot Cross Bun, the last ingredient applied is the white sugar paste, drawn in the form of the mechanism of the Son’s satisfactorily humiliating, though regrettably temporary, death. It is this symbol that transforms the pastry into a teaching tool for the Enemy. To the Enemy, ordinary life leads to salvation, and even ordinary bread can remind the dullest human of his salvation and redemption.

Fortunately for us, however, whose Maximum Leader has always striven against the Enemy and all his ways, the ordinary can also lead to damnation. It is our happy task, in fact, to convince humans that damnation is preferable to ordinary life and is, in fact, inevitable so they might as well not struggle against it.

In this conceit we are materially assisted by a huge concatenation of social and economic forces. Indeed, the world seems to have constructed itself these days to assist us, rather than the Enemy. There are even those who posit that this is some Divine Plan of the Enemy’s to strengthen his ultimate triumph.

This kind of defeatist talk is naturally being dealt with by our Maximum Leader with the utmost ferocity, force, and dispatch. Our condolences go out to the families of the disappeared, but we remind you that a defeatist Demon Spawn is no spawn at all, and deserves whatever disappearance the Maximum Leader may devise. For truly is it said, The Wrath of Our Leader Is As Justice Unto Us.

Their sad passage reminds us that we must resolutely pursue the souls of humans with every device at our command. At one time, doubt was a useful snare. We could confuse men and women into destruction with a little logic and less effort. But now we need stronger medicine when the faithful are impervious to logic while the doubtful are some of our strongest foes.

No, only something as simple as the Hot Cross Bun itself will work. And the primal simple something of all humanity is, of course, forgetfulness. In forgetfulness of the Enemy, humans always find fear. Anything we can do to distract humans from the Enemy’s presence will lead inevitably to fear.

For of fear are born our best friends: pride, self-centeredness, lack of sympathy, oblivion to others, superiority, inferiority, self-effacement, defensiveness. All of these disproportionate views of the human self stem from fear, and lead straight to our Maximum Leader. His soothing whispers of riches, power, domination, and all the false flags that take away freedom, substituting reactivity instead – it is these that we prepare the way for when we wean humans away from the Enemy and into fearfulness.

So go forth, my fellow Spawn, and discourage the humans while it is still today. Their need shall be our opportunity; their weakness our prey; their fear and pain our constant labor to increase.

And thus, when you see the seasonal bakery goods of song and story proliferate upon the earth we labor so hard to doom, we remember always our motto, “Loathe thy neighbor.”