My Guardian Demon

The vast majority of people are usually gifted with invisible guardian angels. I was told that they usually have lightly coloured hair with occasional blue or white streaks. They always wore clean white suits or dresses. Some took the form of children. Some took the form of adults. Very few took the form of elders. Perhaps I would have had an angel that was an adult. They probably would have had beautifully long soft pink hair. Their wings may have matched their hair and may have been as tall as they were. Perhaps they would have had blue streaks through their hair. I didn’t have an angel as lovely as the one in my imagination was, however.

My ‘angel’ wore a tightly fitted red suit and stood a head and a few inches taller than me. Their hair was short and black as charcoal with yellow highlights. Instead of beautifully pink feathered wings, two red horns stuck out of their head and matched their pointed red tail. The ‘angel’ wore no kind smile. They wore an egotistical smirk that never said polite or nice words. My ‘angel’ wasn’t an ordinary angel. In fact, they were a demon.

I never told anyone that my angel was a demon. No one would understand, anyway. Well, that was what my demon said. My demon was named some latin-sounding name. I call them Alastor. They seem to like that name.

Usually, Alastor stood looking over my shoulder as I made decisions. When I made a wrong one, I always heard their annoying click of the tongue. Sometimes I purposely do the wrong thing just to spite them. Alastor only tolerates the nice things I do. They don’t mind when I help an old lady cross a street. Or when I grab something off a high shelf to give to a friend. They do mind when I go out of my way to do nice things. Alastor is always there, hissing at me when I try to politely converse with anyone who wasn’t up to either of our standards. Tiring as they may be, they usually are right. Of course, sometimes Alastor is still a bitch.

“Kill him,” I hear my guardian demon say simply.

The man who walked by me, shoving my shoulder without apologising, was the person who apparently deserved such a fate.

“No, Alastor,” I mutter back to them and adjust my shoulder bag.

“Why not? He’s- Oh, he’s turning around,” Alastor announces. “Yes, he’s glaring at you now. Uh-oh! He’s stomping back to you with fury in his eyes! What a predicament you will be in!”

I let out a sigh but continue walking across the sidewalk. As expected, I feel a rough hand on my shoulder, urging me to turn around.

“Yes?” I ask as I am forcefully turned around.

The angry man wore a red jersey with a large number 1 on the front. Without a doubt, he was someone who had neither a demon or an angel. Sometimes I just sensed that sort of thing. Most times, Alastor tells me, laughing as they do so.

The aforementioned demon stands, resting their arm on my head. I’ve learnt to just live with this position, since I am shorter than most girls. I can practically see the demon’s smirk without even looking at them.

“You going to apologise?” The rude man asks, crossing his arms to show his dominance.

“For what?” I ask. Living with a guardian demon has taught me how to annoy people who obviously thought that they were better than you. One thing to do was to look bored as they either threaten or glare at you.

The rude man did indeed look pissed. “Apologise now. I’m having a bad day, and you aren’t as tough as the guys at work!”

“Alright, sweetie, repeat after me.” Alastor was helpful though. And the joy of not having to find a hard way to be nice came with my guardian demon. After their first idea of killing the person who stood in my way of comfort, they always give me a better, much cleaner way of getting them out of my way.

“Work? You look like a man who jacks off in front of a television on a Wednesday night,” I speak after Alastor.

I hear the demon laugh at the rude man’s offended expression.

“Why you-!”

“You get angry at me for accidentally bumping into you when you probably are the kind of man who tells woman to smile because they’d look prettier,” I say to him. I have no idea how these kinds of things even occur to Alastor when they only looked at this man for shorter than a minute. It is also impressive that they come up with new insults with every annoying person. They may have looked over the person with Sherlock vision or something, but I never thought to ask.

“All I see is a sad, sad man who needs to be acknowledged by strangers because his parents didn’t give him enough attention.” These words that weren’t my own were apparently jabbing at the man like knives.

Alastor starts to say something else, but I end the one-sided conversation before I made the man cry. I once accidentally did that and I felt so bad afterwards. Guilty? Not really. Embarrassed, more likely.

The demon sputters and runs after me.

“You didn’t let me finish!” Alastor complains and pokes at me with a jagged black fingernail.

“Let you finish? If I let you finish, that man would be reduced to nothing but dust!” I shoot back at the demon.

They hold their hands in the air, but the triumphant smirk didn’t disappear. “Be as it may, it would have been so funny if I just blasted him into pebbles or dust like you said.”

“Oh, you can’t do that.” I turn away from him and flip my dyed pink hair over my shoulder. “How would I explain if someone just turned to dust while I was talking to them?”

“Aha! You didn’t tell me to go back to Hell this time,” Alastor laughs. “Improvement, I say!”

I scoff and shake my head. My vocabulary has been changed because of my guardian demon as well. Karma spoke as if the 20th and 21st centuries didn’t exist.

Alastor rests their arm on my head yet again and sighed. “Maybe it is as they say… short people may indeed be closer to Hell.”

“I’m about to knee you in the crotch. Does that help?” I ask and shove the demon off of me. I hear them snicker as they place their hands behind their back. Angels may have been neat, but Alastor was excruciatingly neater. The demon’s posture was as straight as a ruler. Whenever I fail to do my laundry or clean my desk, they threaten to drop me face-first into Hell.

Maybe having a guardian angel would have been nice. Perhaps they would have just told me to apologise and walk away from that man. But having a guardian demon was so much fun. Alastor, my guardian demon, was way better than any guardian angel.