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This Week's Writing Challenge: All best efforts still ended in failure. At least 1000 words, don't worry if you go over.

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Writing challenge: all best efforts still ended in failure

We were! We were going to defeat the demon... we could do it, we had the very best minds in science working on it, we had the very best philosophers working in it.

We had everyone working on it, at first. First we tried the major and minor religions, everyone we could think of; first the priests, Rabbis, shamans, ministers, witches, monks of every stripe,,... we tried everyone, everyone! One of the cops shot it, that didn't slow it down.

At the end of the first week he had grown significantly, at least double the size, becoming really threatening and almost setting the building on fire. He was working hard by himself, clearly - in front of the scientists and all - he started working and opening a rift to hell, we could hear an unholy callings, laughter, and insults of the imps waiting to be freed.

We didn't know how the whole thing started for real, probably some kids letting things get out of hand --.... Well whoever did it, they used a chalk that had very good staying power, and it was a really broad and clear circle. He didn't have enough power to get out of it, but he was getting stronger everyday, feeding off the fear, the uncertainty, feeding off the lack of faith in the local government, state government, and the Federal government,

By then we had tried psychics, and faith healers, water dousers, magicians, one of the guys from Oak Island, a car mechanic who said he was abducted by aliens, copper cloth, magnets, all of it, ...

We tried three different witch doctors, silver bullets, garlic powder by the kilo, we tried sulphuric, nitric, hydrochloric acids. Doctors tried azithromycin, penicillin, we tried gassing the demon with chlorine, ammonia, and liquid nitrogen.

A school teacher suggested using holy texts to box him in. So we took pages of holy texts from all sorts of different books, papier-mâché-ed them into a box to put him in.

Took him less than seven seconds to burn that to ash. And he grew bigger.

All our best efforts ended in failure.

One of the interns said, "Hunh, I'll bet my Aunt Maggie could scotch his oats." Whichever scientist had hired him, said, "Then bring her up here."

The next day up walks his 'Aunt Maggie'. She walked right up to the circle stopping about two feet from the circle. She must have made an impression on the demon somehow because as she walked around the circle several times, he kept one of his faces toward her all the time.

She started talking to him and asking questions? He was growing stronger and bigger, every hour bigger and more powerful. We did not understand, was she trying to make friends with it? She asked how old he was, did he have a name, what did he like the best about earth? Stuff like that. Finally he roared and lunged for her. She didn't even flinch, didn't react. All she said was, "Do not cross that line, I'm warning you, do NOT cross that line, you will have pushed me to the limits." And she laughed, really laughed just like it was the best joke!

He was rude - insulting her physical stature, her white hair, her poor understanding of Latin. She frowned and reached into her pocket pulling out a stick of chalk. Like John Hancock put that little swooshy thing under his name, when he signed the Declaration of Independence? Like that, she made this huge elongated ess shape along one side of his circle. Still all these imps are pouring out of his rift, and escaping and causing all sorts of damage. Her swoosh was fully as long as the circle was wide. Then she put a weentzie little cross bar on it, and started walking around his circle. She kept telling him to stop it, or she'd get angry.

She knelt to one end of the stringy ess, bent over to put a little chalk mark near the circle, of a figure eight thing. And stepping to the other end of her big ess she used the chalk to make a little zero, also close to the circle. Jeeze, the demon was swearing and cursing, he cursed the heavens, he cursed the land and farmers, he cursed the oceans and everyone who fished, he cursed cursed all the children she would have from now until eternity, he cursed her womb, he cursed her eggs, he cursed her, ...

And she got mad. She got real quiet like and said it so softly we could barely hear it above the imps and flames, "Ok, now I'm disappointed with myself and with you. I mistook you for intelligent."

And went walking a little ways around the circle widdershins, and drew a long straight line along one side; like a professor does at the blackboard. Without looking up she said, "OK, goodbye!" Then she looked right at him and she drew the letter O below the line.

The demon paused in all his ranting, raving, threats, and curses. He laughed, "your puny alphabet doesn't scare me," He roared. The imps pouring out from the rift laughed and howled at his glee. Your line and O don't scare me. I don't turn off and on.

She looked up at him. She said, "You are ignorant, It's not a line, it's a solidus. Your circle is the numerator, above the solidus. And, ... It's not a letter, it's a zero."

"Hohohaha, you can't divide by zer..."

And he vanished with his imps.