~ by Hannah Skipper
My Dear Leasprink,
Well, I have to say, I wasn’t totally surprised to receive your most recent update. After all, you’re the most incompetent and foolish of all my students so, naturally, when your colleagues said that they had all lost their patients for a minute, I assumed that you would try the same excuse. However, I saw some very excellent clues in your letter as well, so with my brilliance to guide you, it is still quite possible for you to make amends for your completely incompetent performance, and present your worthless little varmint’s soul to Our Father Below.
Now, let’s get started because the faster that you correct your mistakes, the faster that I can boast about turning a stupid little fool into a Tempter that is worth his salt.
You wrote that your little varmint spoke about being a queen during a golden age. Now, in case you weren’t aware, a golden age is a time of great prosperity in a land, and I know this because we have had our own golden ages down here and you can be sure that Our Father Below is planning to have many more. Anyways, the point is that the Enemy promises great prosperity to those vermin who worship and obey His commands, but since your patient isn’t a great queen anymore, I think it’s obvious that He doesn’t care about her as much as she claims.
Now, to be sure, I don’t think that she will respond to Doubt as well as Brank’s patient, because little varmints are more difficult to infect with Doubt—which is why the Enemy tells his followers to be like them in order to enter His kingdom—but I do think that she might be a prime candidate to become infected with Disobedience. After all, if He has broken faith with her, why should she continue to do what He likes?
One way you can infect her with Disobedience is to suggest that she knows the best way to do this or that and that she doesn’t need anyone to tell her how to do something, where to go, or how to act. Start out by suggesting that this applies to her so-called friends and relations, but don’t forget to make a particular point to eventually mention that she doesn’t need the Enemy’s help, too. That way, with any luck, when you finally suggest that she should disobey the Enemy, it will seem like a natural extension of what she will already doing and it will be easier to swallow.
Another way that you could coax her to be disobedient is to suggest that she should be Jealous of her older Female relation. After all, doesn’t the Enemy command His followers not to covet what someone else has? Hasn’t He told them not to compare themselves to one another? Doesn’t He claim to give each one their own special gift to use for His purposes?
By the way, did you realize that it can be quite easy to infect a younger varmint with Jealousy, especially if they are in a hurry to catch up with their older relations? But it would be particularly hilarious in your patient’s case because, as both you and Brank have admitted in your letters, both of your patients claim to have been crowned queens when you lost track of them, so it’s not as if one has a better status than the other.
Say, before I sign off, let me tell you a story about one of the many times that Our Father Below tempted a varmint who had been living his own personal golden age to be disobedient towards the Enemy. It all started when Our Father Below and the Enemy were chatting about one of His disgusting followers—I mean, this guy was really awful because he never did anything that we suggested. Anyways, as is always the case with His obedient followers, the Enemy had given this guy everything that he could possibly want, and Our Father Below, quite legitimately, said that the guy would be a lot different if he didn’t have all the stuff that the Enemy had given him.
Well, to make a long story short, the Enemy allowed Our Father Below to test that theory. That’s all I’ll say on the matter because the rest really doesn’t matter, but you would do well to suggest to your patient that she must have done something wrong or she would, undoubtedly, still be living as a queen in her golden age.
Of course, naturally, I have to warn you, as I did your colleagues, that your task will be a difficult one. The Enemy has said that the varmints in His camp know His voice and they will follow Him, so you will have to be subtle. Come as a thief in the night and I bet she won’t even know what blindsided her.
Above all, don’t give up and keep me updated on your progress. Our Father Below needs all the souls that we can steal.
Affectionately your Uncle,
Screwtape
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Author’s Notes: Screwtape’s story is based Job 1-2
Leasprink is named for the Lead Sprinkler, a device used to pour molten metals into the body parts of victims. The most common use was pouring molten silver into the victim’s eyes. I chose Leasprink as Lucy’s demon because she is the one who sees Aslan most often, so if she became spiritually blind there would be grave consequences for both her and the others.
In a lot of ways, I think, Lucy is as much or more of a leader for the family as Peter is, so if she resented Aslan or became disheartened after their return to this world, I think the others would have been more inclined to do the same.