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I've been trying to track down this story for years now.

It's a short horror/fantasy story from the 1980's about some kind of demon that lives in an ink bottle. I believe a writer is using the bottle of ink to write stories and the demon lives off the creative energy - or perhaps I'm getting that confused with some other story. I particularly remember a creepy scene where the tiny demon is licking the ink off the writer's pen with a long tongue. At any rate, the story ends with the demon killing the writer, with his pages of writing filled with blood/ink spatters and tiny footprints.

Lisa Tuttle comes to mind as an author but I can't find anything in her list of stories that matches this. Anyone? I believe I read this in either Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine or Asimov's Science Fiction mag or Analog - one of the monthly magazines from back then.

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  • Good luck with web searches, given the prevalence of "bendy the ink demon"...
    – user180810
    Commented Aug 8 at 17:57
  • 1
    @clvrmnky if you use Google's advanced search page (google.com/advanced_search) you can match pages without certain words.
    – Sotto Voce
    Commented Aug 8 at 18:10
  • @SottoVoce I know the syntax for many of the filters but I honestly find it's like playing whack-a-mole. Google just wants to show you what it wants sometimes. But in this case perhaps omitted "bendy" might be enough. But my experience is I try a few tweaks and more or less give up.
    – user180810
    Commented Aug 8 at 18:12
  • @clvrmnky Google is not your friend. Nextime you're looking for a lost SF story try the Internet Speculative Fiction Database or the Pulp Magazine Archive.
    – user14111
    Commented Aug 8 at 20:04
  • Don't worry. I don't use Google.
    – user180810
    Commented Aug 8 at 20:26

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"The Ink Imp", a novelette by R. M. Lamming in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1980, available at the Internet Archive; apparently never reprinted.

I felt no fear. Neither did I rush out of the room, crying for Mrs. Brideson to fetch a doctor. Instead, stretching out my pen, I endeavored to poke the manikin very gently, to discover whether it had substance; but he moved too quickly for me. He slid along the shaft of my pen like a child sliding down a bannister until he reached my fingers. Then, springing nimbly to his feet, he ran back up the shaft onto the rims of the inkwell, and from there he put out his tongue at me before slipping down once more into the ink.

September 22nd
We've had a fight! Tonight I lost patience and refused to stroke him. So he retaliated by tearing up every page I began to write. I moved across to the sofa, rested a sheet of paper on a book, and tried to forget him. But the devil had stolen a ride in my pocket! I was no sooner settled than he leapt out, opened his mouth, and spewed ink, thick black ink, onto the book — a precious copy of Engels.

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