I was having an online chat to my horror writer buddy Daniel I Russell about an interesting concept he came up with in his work. What if, in addition to the traditional old school demons of biblical lore, the modern world spawned an entire new set of demons to provide modern day temptations?

Dan has created a couple. There the porn demon, of course, who lives inside a Japanese schoolgirl (of course). He got his first outing in Dan’s story, ‘The Love Revolution’, which you can find in his collection, Tricks, Mischief and Mayhem. https://www.amazon.com/Tricks-Mischief-Mayhem-Daniel-Russell/dp/099217077X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519653047&sr=1-1&keywords=tricks+mischief+and+mayhem

Then there’s the aptly named Television, who lives inside the trash tv mogul Simon Coop (ahem). On the exterior, Coop is tanned, groomed, all trendy clothes and shiny teeth. But on the inside he is the epitome of trash/reality tv and mayhap its viewers – corpulent, lazy and bloated. Sprawled on their couches, televisions rusted onto brain dead reality shit, stuffing their fat faces with junk. And this was written before Goggle Box was a thing, Dan is keen to point out.

You can read all about the demon Television in Dan’s cracking novel, Entertaining Demons. I highly recommend it. A damn fine read. https://www.amazon.com/Entertaining-Demons-Daniel-I-Russell/dp/1937009564

This got me thinking about what other new demons the modern world could spawn.

For a start there has to be an Internet demon, trolling the social networks, looking for weaknesses he can exploit. Telling kids to take a gun to their school… telling kids they are worthless and they should kill themselves.

Also, Dan’s Television demon has been surpassed by an even more insidious creature – the iPhone demon. He’s with us all day, every day. He sees, knows and records everything. Holds every piece of human knowledge in his palm. He liberates us…but he’s addictive. He insinuates himself in all of our personal relationships, he makes us angry and jealous, envious. He distracts us, stops us thinking for ourselves. He kills our imagination. He feeds especially on the young. He shows them things they shouldn’t be seeing – sex, death, murder and live executions. He makes them turn on their friends. The weaker ones lives are ruined. Some of them suicide.

The iPhone demon is ubiquitous. It’s a narcotic. Walk the streets and you see them all, interrupting face to face conversations to get a fix. We’re all addicted. Kids staying up all night in their bedrooms, scrolling through the screens, afraid they’ll miss something important.

Yeah I like this one. Dan rates it. He’s got one more too. The industrial demon. He was once so powerful, when the industrial revolution was at its height. He brought suffering to millions with his dark Satanic mills, but now he’s been sidelined by technology. So he stalks the empty factories, longing, hoping for resurrection.

Hmmm I’ve got this idea for a novel set in a factory about an abused teenager and a bullying Vietnam vet with a dark secret. Adding Dan’s industrial demon to the mix would be ace.

I wonder if Dan will swap me his industrial demon if I let him have iPhone. Maybe I’ll just text him now and ask…