Quite possibly I have the world's most perfect job. I have a desk in one particularly cosy corner of the well-equipped studio taking up most of the area of Incendicom's office, on the fourth floor of the Beltane Building, a converted Twenties warehouse next to the river. I have an employer anal enough to deal with all the paperwork and clients herself, but docile and inoffensive enough, thanks to a regular supply of hashish, to produce a low-stress working environment. I have at my disposal every form of brush, ink, pen, pigment, paper, and image manipulation software known to man. I can wear my trenchcoat on the job. I am a graphic artist. I also do freelance evil. I have the business cards to prove it.

Today I awaken and go though my usual morning routine. I peer malevolently out at the world from beneath my blankets, cataloguing the countless reasons nobody should have to arise before noon. Chief among them is the sheer awfulness of morning radio of the sort my alarm clock wakes me with promptly at 8am. I make very sure that the clock is more than an arm's length from my bed; at last, when I can stand the DJ no longer, I leap from the sanctuary of bed with a cry of battle, and deliver a well-placed blow to the snooze button. The adrenaline from this is enough to propel me out into the living room and then the kitchen to my right. The wood floors are just chilly enough to make continued motion seem an attractive prospect. Once there, a cup of last night's tea and a cinnamon roll serve to restore my will to live. To the bathroom, and then to find my pants, and I'm ready, even eager, to face another day. I arrive at Incendicom after a fifteen-minute walk, trampling the freshly-fallen leaves merrily underfoot.

I'm due to meet with some new clients today. Normally Shikha Bose, the boss and owner, handles such administrative drudgery herself, and translates their wishes into comprehensible speech from whatever debased business dialect they speak, but it seems these clients had requested me specifically. Shikha had been strangely reticent with further details. I just bet they're porn moguls, I think as I pause at my desk to check my e-mail and nod at my fellow art boffins. Now it's off to the airy, high-windowed conference room next to Bose's office. My clients are due at half past nine. I take one of the profusely-upholstered chairs at the commendably round table and wait, doodling on a scratch pad.

Three minutes later, the very fabric of the space-time continuum is rent asunder as monstrous, twisted beings forced their way in from the pits of non-Euclidean geometry in a clap of thunder and the stench of brimstone.

They are tall, misshapen charicatures of humanity, horned and fanged, their rubbery grey skin cratered and lumpen, shoulders canted at strange angles to their humped spines. They wear sunglasses and Armani suits. They carry briefcases. The brimstone, I suspect, is an aftershave.

'Mr Crull,' one of them rumbles, 'we represent the Hellish Host, the Powers of Darkness, the Tainters of Souls.' It extends a fleshless claw. I rise, and shake it firmly.

'Please, call me Winston. How might I be of service?'

This was of course not my first dealing with the Powers of Darkness. I grew up in the American Midwest. We tend to have a good rapport. We take our seats.

'Winston, in recent aeons, the Powers of Darkness have lost considerable ground to our competitors in evil, primarily Microsoft and the Catholic Church. Our Medieval business paradigm is not connecting us efficiently with the consumer.'

I nod. Sad but true, as I learned for myself in my youth. Since I spent my adolescence in the Midwest and I didn't have the money for crack, I'd dabbled in necromancy and demonology. Very quickly I discovered why black magic had fallen out of favour over the centuries; blasphemous rites are simply more trouble than they're worth. Why spend four hours pouring hot goat's blood over a pentacle while the fumes from the brazier make your eyes burn, chanting the seven hundred unpronouncable invocations of power, to conjure up a fiend and bargain with it for the smiting of your enemies, when you can key their car and slash their tires in half a minute?

'Our organisation embodies a basically agrarian, feudalistic conception of the world, a hierarchy of steadily increasing power and influence and decreasing numbers until one reaches the Lord of Darkness himself. It mirrors the social structure of the peasants who imagined us during your Middle Ages, at the mercy of supernatural forces just as they were of their earthly masters,' adds another, folding his claws on the table.

'After years of market analysis and case studies, we are preparing to relaunch ourselves as one of the premier forces for the decimation of men's souls in the 21st Century,' the first continues.

'Like fascism, only kind,' chimes in a third.

'The cornerstone of this effort will be a vastly increased Internet presence, and that, Winston, is why we've come to you. We were very impressed with the resume Ms Bose showed us.' He opens his briefcase, scrabbling around inside for a few minutes until he finally manages to grasp the document in his cruel talons. 'It says here that you got your degree in Visual Arts from Columbia, with a minor in Evil?'

'I'm also proficient in Java.' The demons salivate unspeakably. I open my scratch pad to a blank page, and begin to take notes. 'What exactly are you looking for?'

Working for fiends from the pits of Hell proved to be more difficult than I'd expected. They fussed at every stage of the creative process. Can't you render this in 3D? How about animation? The graphics should have more intestines in them. I don't like your use of colour here. This text should blink. Frames. Evil is one thing, but I have to draw the line somewhere. This is craftsmanship. Three weeks into the project, they had yet to agree on so much as a logo and my nerves were fraying. I was angrily masticating a stalk of celery at my desk when Bose stuck her head into the studio.

'Winston? The Powers of Darkness just called again. They wanted to know if you could have a new banner for their site by the end of the day. They said that, on reflection, they rather liked your first design,' she says. Her voice is liquid, refined, English with a hint of Bombay. She remains unfazed when I begin shouting 'Ass.'

'Ass!' I thump my forehead down on my desk, celery flying from my mouth. 'Ass.' I restrain myself from tearing at my hair melodramatically; it's taken me too long to grow this ponytail. 'Ass, ass, ass.' I thump my forehead against my desk again, gently, just for emphasis. 'I could have finished the entire project by now if only they'd leave me to it. God, the legions of Hell are annoying.' I look up, rubbing my forehead. 'They said my first design was too Gothic, not "hip" enough for their new image.' People who make quotation marks in the air when they speak annoy me almost as much as the legions of Hell, but I do it anyway. 'Then the next one was too impersonal. They want an evil people can relate to.'

'To which people can relate.' She places a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. 'Why not take the rest of the day off, Winston? You're letting the pressure get to you. I'll keep the Hellish Host at bay for a few days, so you can work undisturbed.' Another reason why I have the world's most perfect job (usually): Shikha's tranquility is contagious. Maybe it's a contact high.

'Thank you,' I sigh, rising. 'I'll be in tomorrow as usual. Just let me clear my head and I can sort this out.' There is no need to get my coat, since I never took it off, but I pluck my white aviator's scarf from the antique hatstand as I head out.

Andrew hails me as I'm leaving. He specialises in 3D animation. He's been with Incendicom a few months longer than I have, about a year and a half. He has an honest nose. 'Annie and I were going to head to Cinémathèque at 9, if you wanted to join us.'

'Thank you,' I nod to Andrew and Annie both. 'I just might.'

Six hours remain before the appointed hour, and I intend to make the most of them. Breaking with routine, I walk home the long way, along the river, the banks of which are a rather well-maintained park, to Elysium Street, up past the Church of St. Brendan the Fornicator, and back along Mordant Lane to my apartment on the second floor of a rather splendid little C-shaped block done in salmon-coloured brick with periwinkle wood trim. I climb the stairs and unlock the door, stepping at last into my sanctum. I slump into my leather sofa, and close my eyes.

Within five minutes, of course, I've become crushingly bored. I need to take my frustrations out on something. There's an easel by the window opposite me, but I'm not in the mood. My computer beckons from the desk in the corner, but it reminds me too much of work. I decide to go back downstairs to my workshop. One of the perks of renting this apartment was that it came with its own one-car garage in a barn-like row across the street. Being as I am carless, I'd soon adapted it for other uses. My free weights are out there, and I pump them for a time. Now I'm no longer frustrated; I'm frustrated and sore. I turn to the workbench. My painting and drawing I do in the living room upstairs, but my other hobbies, which might be somewhat awkward to explain to callers, I indulge in here in the garage. This is where most of my freelance evil takes shape.

Nothing relaxes quite like a little welding. Mask in place, I blast away at a mass of scrap steel which will become either an abstract sculpture or the housing for a working model of Nikola Tesla's earthquake machine, depending on whether or not my torch slips. If it works, I think I'll test it on New Jersey. Garden State, my ass.

After showering away the grease and the scent of acetylene, I have time to do up a simple vegetarian curry and listen to David Bowie's 'Diamond Dogs' before leaving to meet Andrew and Annie. Normally I'd catch a bus, since Cinémathèque is on the opposite fringe of the downtown area from my home, but I could use the exercise so I walk. Cinémathèque is an interesting little place, one part art house cinema, one part jazz bar, and one part headquarters for a revolutionary Communist organisation. We are regulars.

The movie this evening is something we'd all seen, so the three of us keep ourselves entertained at the bar. The band playing now, Sodium Overdrive, is decent but not spectacular. I've never quite been able to work out whether Andrew and Annie are dating or not. They usually come as a matching set, but I've never seen them so much as kiss. Their names sound too cute together for me to believe they are actually a couple. We avoid talking about work, instead taking turns Marxist-baiting.

'Marx's historical dialectic,' Annie is saying loudly and distinctly, waving her vodka meaningfully at the room, 'failed to account for the partial socialisation of the capitalist system and the rise of the service economy, rendering the working classes in the industrialised world relatively comfortable, content, and unrevolutionary.'

We snigger drunkenly. Someone takes the bait. 'But gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth and power still exist, and perpetuate the exploitative, oligarchic commercial state. If the common man wishes to enjoy the fruits of his own labours...'

'Why this emphasis on labour and the common man?' Andrew chirps in. 'The working classes are for the most part too occupied with providing for themselves to develop much political consciousness. Any revolution based on ideals must come from above, from those with the money and leisure to afford such ideals.'

'Revolution is too important to be left to your idealistic elite,' he protests, cocking his beret. 'The Soviet and Chinese Communist experiments show that such power invariably corrupts the revolutionary leadership into something worse even than the capitalist oligarchs. Revolution must stem from the wills and desires of all.'

'By Christ's hairy balls,' I bellow, slapping the table, 'I've got it!'

Incendicom the next day is like a scene from Dante. A cloud of winged horrors--demon locusts, flying polyps, old-fashioned devils--hovers around the Beltane Building, diving and hissing at us as we approach. 'What about multimedia content? Can you give the logo more texture?' As we run up to the fourth floor, I see that Bose has been as good as her word. The walls, floors, even the ceiling of the office have been covered with chalk circles of protection, pentacles, wards, glyphs, runes and Sanskrit slokas. The Hellish Host flaps and spits, but keeps its distance.

'Good morning,' I greet Shikha with a smile as I step in, unwinding my scarf. 'Busy day?'

'Oh, you know,' she waves vaguely. 'There are days, and there are days.'

'By any chance, pray tell, do the Powers of Darkness wish to see me?'

'Why, yes, I believe they do. Shall I show them in?'

'That would be much appreciated,' I beam, motioning my companions to stay as I skip into the conference room. Within moments three of the grey Armanis have burst through the outside wall, spraying the table with fragments of brick and mortar. Somehow they missed the window.

'Mr Crull, we are most displeased with your lack of progress,' one says, foul ichor dripping from its forked tongue.

'You need fret no longer,' I announce, reclining in a chair. 'The project is complete.'

They seem taken aback. 'There are still changes we wish made...'

'If you'd care to take a look at the files I've uploaded to your server...' I point to the computer on the table before me, before noticing that a bit of shrapnel has reduced its monitor to a sparking ruin. 'Ah. If one of you had a laptop along...?'

'No need,' they say. 'As beings of pure chaos we can access the Internet using only the power of the mind. And a phone jack.' One of them inserts a slender, silvery protruberance into the aforementioned receptacle in a manner which I consider quite unnecessarily suggestive. Its face contorts in anger. 'This is your unacceptable first design! Do you toy with us, mortal?'

'It is also your finished product,' I smirk. 'You will accept it, or face consequences too terrible to bear.'

They roar and gnash, leaving rather unsightly gashes in the tabletop. 'Do you dare to threaten us, we who are the embodiment of pain itself?'

'I do. Tell me, despite your adoption of more contemporary business methods, the Hellish Host is still a strictly hierarchial organisation, is it not? No pension plans, no employee profit-sharing?'

'Naturally. We are the Powers of Darkness. We obey only those whom we cannot destroy. The feudal model of lord and vassal has served us well for centuries.'

My moment of triumph. 'If you wish it to serve you well for centuries to come, you will accept my design.' I wave to Bose, who ushers in my companions.

'Feudalism is a deluded and naive system, designed in complete ignorance of the true sources of political power,' their leader snaps, his beret at a jaunty angle. 'The entire system, as in all other sociopolitical models, rests in the end on the working classes. Without their consent and labour, a tyrant finds himself economically paralysed and powerless. Aristocracy is doomed to topple once the people begin to understand their own economic leverage.'

'Meet the Manitoban People's Liberation Brigade,' I purr, 'the most dedicated revolutionary Communist force in central Canada. If someone were to open for them a gateway into your infernal realm, they would forment an insurrection in your oppressed proletariat before you could say "sweeping programme of sociopolitical reform and enfranchisement".'

The demons huddle, whispering for a few moments. The fire in their eyes has begun to flicker. 'You are indeed our brother in evil, Winston. Columbia taught you well.'

'The professors said I was a natural,' I admit modestly.

'You have won this battle, but beware: we will return.'

'Shall return,' Bose corrects quietly as the demons dissolve in a maelstrom of tortured spacetime. 'It conveys more a sense of promise or threat.'

At the day's end, I settle into bed a happy man. The Powers of Darkness recommended Incendicom to all their friends, so impressed were they by our mastery of evil. Evil.com goes live tomorrow, and I've picked up some tidy stock options for when the Powers of Darkness make their initial public offering. I left the radio on, soothing me to sleep. As I drift off, I catch a snippet of a news report: '...never touched her. Also today, Hoboken, New Jersey was consumed in flames and swallowed by the earth after a surprise tremor...'

I love my job.

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©2000 Luke Gutzwiller. I really mean it. Violation may result in the unwanted collapse of your state vector. This is a work of fiction, and as such any resemblance to real graphic designers, living or dead, is purely coincidental.