Excerpt: Inhabited

Soon-To-Be-Damned Dwelling,

I like to get acquainted with my dwellings before I lead them to damnation, so I thought you might like a brief synopsis of myself. My name is Barthkaur, or Bart for short – but only call me Bart if you want to get on my bad side, which wouldn't be a bad thing for me. It would probably help me break you. Anyway, I've been around for... Oh, I don't know, something like two thousand years now – I'm actually one of the younger generation, spawned to combat all the losses we sustained when Curse-His-Name roamed the earth and plagued us with his existence. Those were days of suffering for my race, but we've made a great comeback since then.
After doing a brief study of you, I have decided that your most deplorable distractions are work, education, and love. I hate that last one the most, for more often than not it causes more of a barrier than it does a distraction, because Curse-His-Name is so full of it. Love has been one of the hardest barriers I've had to overcome, and yet I have confidence that I can rob even you of this addiction. I know how it works – you crave love, like every dwelling craves love. It's one of the strongest drugs of them all. I like to undermine it, without the dwelling being able to tell, and then at the very end, when they are breathing their last months or weeks worth of life, then I pull the rug out from underneath them and leave them destitute. Those are the best finishes – Hollywood doesn't know anything (though that scene is another fantastic filler for a dwelling so that it doesn't know what it's missing).
Just in case you hadn't guessed it yet, I am entirely evil. I know this might frighten you, particularly right now when I am so new and you haven't gotten used to me yet, but I assure you, you'll become accustomed to me in time. Your kind is remarkably adaptable, which is something that never ceases to fascinate me, as my kind is quite stuck in its ways. There's no adaptability to us, other than our ability to adapt to the changing times in order to “reach” our dwellings better.
I've probably rambled on rather longer than I had intended, and so I will leave you with this, soon-to-be-damned: You are in perfectly good hands – or claws, as the case may be. Good meeting you, and I'll definitely be seeing more of you. I'm looking forward to sending another present down to Him. You'll do quite nicely.