Minions of Darkness

We never act alone. All through your entanglement with us we will utilise the services and dedication of those who are loyal to us. Before we have even spoken to you we will be compiling a dossier of information about you by contacting those who know you. We will utilise our lieutenants to approach you and gather intelligence which will all be passed back to us for the purpose of analysis and subsequent application. Once our seduction of you has begun you will be taken in by my butterflies. The butterflies are those who do my bidding and they always do, who always appear and please you. Like a beautiful butterfly he or she will flutter around you, making you smile with his or her pleasantries, charm and general goodness. Like a butterfly with striking colours and that delicate movement they have been sent to enchant you on my behalf and alongside my own endeavours. My butterflies will only ever say pleasant things to you, repeating and consolidating the charming words which I have sent your way. They will flutter around you complimenting the things that you dp, how you look and who you are. They will remark what a wonderful couple we are together and how they can see it lasting forever. Primed with all the speeches, sentences and rhetoric that we use, these butterflies will remind you of all our magnificent attributes and thus reinforce how fortunate you are to be with someone like us. They will point out how happy you are and confirm that you make us happy too, far happier than that other harpy that came before you. You must watch out for her by the way, she is a trouble maker and will want to split you and us up. These butterflies will primarily be friends of ours but over time we will want to recruit your own friends and family to be our butterflies as well. Not only is such a recruitment a massive boost to our egos, it also means that there will be added credibility when they fly around you issuing their compliments about us both. When you are told time and time again how wonderful you are, how sensational we are and how magnificent we are together, any doubts that you may have had, any degree of modesty about such over compliments will soon melt away as the array of fluttering butterflies transfixes you.

Real butterflies only live for somewhere between one and five weeks and like their real-life counterparts my butterflies have a limited shelf life as well. This of course is down to you because as usual you always end up spoiling everything. If you maintained my interest and ensured that the high-grade, positive fuel you have supplied for the last year or so was maintained then my butterflies would have continued but your fuel diminishes, it turns stale and is not at the required level we demand. Accordingly, the selfishness you exhibit in behaving in this manner causes those beautiful and mesmerising butterflies to fade away. Your lack of loyalty and treachery means that these beautiful creatures become replaced by my crows.

Noisy, dark and petulant my crows will descend on you as I commence my devaluation of you. Remember you have brought this on yourself so you cannot expect any sympathy from my dark minions who have been recruited, brainwashed and controlled in order to further my own malevolent ambitions. My crows act at my command as they, like you, relish any opportunity to gain my favour and attention. Like some medieval king I will grant them access to me and allowing the crow to bask in my radiant brilliance secures their loyalty. Like the butterflies my crows come from my ranks of friends and family but once again I shall seek to corrupt those from your support networks so that they might first appear as a butterfly before transforming into a squawking and mocking crow. It is even the case that some of my cast-offs, desperate to remain around me and be subjected to my wonderful largesse are recruited as my minions. Thinking that they will win my favour and more importantly keep you from it, they readily agree to carry out my will. Some of my minions do not realise that they have been manipulated into doing what I want. Instead they carry out my instructions in an oblivious fashion. Others are well aware that they act as my agents of destruction but they revel in this role. Their loyalty is without question. I have flattered and charmed them as I did with you. They recognise you as the enemy who has sort to usurp their king and therefore you must be destroyed. No wonder the collective noun for  crows is a murder.

My crows are unleashed to perpetuate the devaluation against you. My dark minions come forth in order to do my bidding. The crows flap around you, their dark wings making it difficult for you to see clearly. Their incessant squawking fills your ears as they scold you for your treason. My crows move quickly, announcing to your support network the terrible way you have behaved and before they can be struck down they fly away to flap around you once more, their cacophony of insults swirling about you. This near constant noise of insult and vitriol has all been fed to them by me. Like dark messengers they repeatedly assail you with their name calling and lies, making you anxious as you are under sustained attack. You try and swipe them to one side but they merely dodge your attempts and continue to mock you. As you grow weaker from these repeated assaults they fly closer and then begin to peck at you. Just as we control you through our notorious salami-slicing techniques this pecking from my crows steadily erodes your confidence, your self-esteem, your self-worth and your identity. The crows land on your shoulder and with vicious beaks peck away something more of you as you try to fight them off but the weakness that has gripped you makes this difficult. More crows come, ordered by me to continue this campaign against you. The deployment of my dark minions saves me energy and allows me to create my butterflies for my new target whilst you lie there curled up in a ball, the dark crows hopping over you, twisted beaks pecking at you, weakening you further. Those in my coterie, my lieutenants, my agents of darkness provide a fundamental role in both my seduction and devaluation of you. I cannot succeed without them and will always ensure that I have both a box of butterflies to open for you and a tree full of black crows waiting to attack you. Perhaps you need to find a scarecrow?