Maschalismos

  Every small town has it's oddities and traditions, but most aren't as gruesome as Ville Monstre's. The town has long been haunted by gods, cryptids, and curses inflicted by the encroaching forest. In response the people have grown superstitious and paranoid. They don't want to add ghosts or zombies to the lists of threats, so burial rites are therefore... specific.

  Corpses with broken limbs, no eyes, removed hands and feet, and chopped off heads. The local mortician's practice looks more like a butcher shop than a morgue. All the same, tradition is tradition. Rules are rules. All corpses must be treated this way, even those who died naturally, even those who's revenge would be justified.

  Luckily, there's someone the family can call on to exact punishment on their behalf. When the dead cannot walk the earth, a demon comes out to play.

  Wrath and vengeance have long been the domain of Hell's denizens. Macha was one among thousands that humans could call upon to smite their enemies at the cost of their souls. He wasn't even the most popular option, or a popular option, at the time Ville Monstre began. He starved, shoved out of the running for new clients by stronger demons. He grew desperate.

  So desperate, in fact, he answered a call barely fueled by wrath at all. A mourning woman crying out for justice for her murdered husband. The grief drew him to her, tasting more like the ocean than like hellfire. It was a call the law should have answered, but didn't. It was a call God should have answered, but didn't.  The murderer was wealthy, popular, pious. Above reproach.

  Macha looked into the grave, a ghost at the woman's side. The man couldn't even rise to avenge himself. He torn into pieces, sightless, without a tongue to accuse.

  There was no one else, so Macha answered the call. He was hungry, desperate, even a bit pitying. When the deed was done, Macha dragged the murderer into the fires of Hell, the murdered rested easily, but the woman... He descended back to his home and left no mark on her. 

  After that, more and more people called upon him. All from Ville Monstre where the dead were always buried unable to rise again. Unlike other wrath demons, his calls were never filled with spite or petty vengeance. Each person who asked him for help wanted justice. They were good people, kind people, driven to their wit's end. Desperate, like he was. He finally had a specialty. This usually made demons stronger, and it did, but it also spelled out the end for him.

  Machalismos never took his client's souls, only the victim's. This is what got him in trouble. The cost to have a demon drag an enemy into Hell was your own soul. A fair trade. One contract, two graves. If demons only dragged people into Hell who would have gone there anyway, where were their profits? Macha knew this, but couldn't mark the good people who called on him. A husband, a mother, a child. How could he drag any of them down when all they wanted was justice? Although the souls of the wicked barely fed him for the work he did, he worked for free. As free as you get with a demon.

  His superiors found out. They weren't happy with him. Demons tempted humanity, with contracts and vengeance, and lead them to ruin. It was their job to destroy the unworthy. If one called upon a demon, they were not worthy of Heaven. They should have waited, had they been good people, and let God sort their aggressors out. Macha could not accept this, he would not, and so he ran away. He would continue to avenge the humans he'd come to care for. In a weird, pitying, demon-y kind of way.

  Obviously, this could not stand with his superiors. They couldn't let some two-bit wrath demon break the rules and get off unpunished. Each demon had a quota to make, they weren't allowed to quit.  They sent someone to chase him, to bring him back or crumble him back into the dust he that made him. In the woods surrounding Ville Monstre, the hunter routed Macha and forced him to fight.

  He lost.

  They cut off his arms and legs. His eyes gouged out. His lower jaw removed. It wasn't long before he looked exactly like the people he avenged. His masters left him there in pieces to starve and evaporate. Before that could happen, Ville Monstre's mortician found him. The mortician knew about Macha, everyone did, and even had friends and family who had called upon him. The man rushed to collect what pieces he could find and dragged Macha back to town.

  The mortician and his brother the blacksmith fixed Macha. He got new arms, new legs, and a new lower jaw. They put the eyes of a dead hawk into Macha's empty sockets, which melted into void and red light. With bits of corpse and metal, the demon was reborn. Having escaped his punishment, Macha stayed in the town to serve the humans. The guilt the mortician had long felt for mutilating the dead eased with the demon's work. The morticians of the town swore to keep Macha functional in return. And so it has been and will be, until the end of days.

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