The figure reached out to sweep up the rolling papers and box of loose tobacco with one hand, and the shadow moved simultaneously, on the far side of the room. Bags of trash were gutted, torn open.
The smell of the trash filled the room. More musty than rotten. Wet paper and cigarette ash, old coffee grounds.
But there was rot in there, too. There were maggots, freed to spill out like grains of rice from a bag, crawling for the nearest spot of darkness.
The practitioner didn’t care. Even if he somehow survived, he rationalized, he’d never be able to return here.
The idea was borne of the same sort of sentiment that made people uncomfortable with living where murders had happened. He couldn’t imagine willingly coming back to a place where he knew this thing had been.
It busied itself, hands moving in a practiced way as it rolled up the cigarette.
It picked up a matchbook from beside one candle, folded the match around back behind the book, and scratched it against the strip, all with one hand.
It drew in a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.
Without even thinking about it, the practitioner held his breath, as the smoke reached his way.
Not that it truly mattered.
The entire apartment, even parts behind him, in the hallway adjacent to the kitchen, was moving in response to the spirit. The thing that wore the appearance of a man breathed, the shadow that revealed what was behind the mask also served to hint at the truth, and blinds, spice bottles, trash bags and more all moved in response.
As though the kitchen were alive, the flesh of a living thing, an extension of the figure.
Making the practitioner the man that had unwittingly entered the belly of the beast.
“Sit?” the man at the table asked.
The practitioner shook his head.
“Sit,” the man at the table said, firmer.
Outside, something crashed. A dog started barking violently.
“I prefer to die standing,” the practitioner said.
The man at the table took a long drag on his rolled cigarette. “Did I suggest I care what you prefer?”
“No, but I’m going to fight for it if I have to.”
“To die on your feet? All of the things you could fight for, things you could beg for or actions you could take, and you choose this.”
“Have to take a stand somewhere.”
“If you say so,” the figure said.
Where one ankle rested on his knee, the figure let his foot fall to the floor, toe pointed at the practitioner.
It was pain in the same way that a tsunami was water. Pain had flavors, and in one moment, the practitioner tasted all kinds. Sharp sorts of pain. Broken, crushing, burning, and loud sorts of pain. An agony that defied description. He hit the ground, hard, and the feeling of his chin hitting the tile from a five foot, five inch height, without arms moving to break the fall? Only a drop in the bucket.
And underlying it all was the idea that it was a wrong sort of pain. That something wasn’t operating like the practitioner’s past thirty years of experience had told him it should.
While he became aware of the welling tide of blood, his hands fumbled for traction.
One hand touched his leg, which was closer to his shoulder than his knee. The flesh beneath the pants leg was oddly cool, and the stump leaked an awful lot of blood. More than he would have thought fit inside.
He tried to get his bearings, struggling to operate before the shock set in. When he opened his mouth, however, all that came out were huffs of pain.
A tiny part of him wanted to believe that this was retribution. That it was karma in the vernacular form, eye for an eye justice. A whipping for the criminal. But that part of him wasn’t satisfied. He couldn’t feel it. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry.
The figure wasn’t even looking at him. The end of the cigarette glowed orange as the body perched on the stool inhaled. Smoke leaked out between large white teeth.
The practitioner moved his hand, and the numerous scratches and cuts made themselves known, though the sensation of pain was so far removed from what he experienced now that it felt almost alien.
The practitioner reached out, and he touched one finger to the blood.
He started to draw lines.
“No,” the figure at the table said, still not looking.
The practitioner stopped. It wasn’t that the words had power, per se. Only that he knew the actions were fruitless. He was only undertaking them because the past several days had made it habit. Already, he was so weak that a word was enough to stop him mid-action.
The man who was now sprawled on the floor, bleeding out, didn’t reply or move. By some reflex, he gripped one of his dismembered legs, clawed from his body by the movement of a shadow too substantial to simply drape itself against the wall. A white-knuckle grip, as if he physically clung to life.
The figure glanced down at the man on the floor.
The smile widened.
“Mann, Levin, Lewis,” the man on the floor said.
The smile faded.
“Mann, Lev- Levin, Lewis,” the man managed, once more.
The figure that was perched on the stool took another drag of the rolled cigarette.
“Mann, Levin, Lewis.”
The front door opened. The man who let himself in, unlike the figure in the chair, did not look like he belonged, nor did he look like he had any association with the dying man that lay on a floor covered in blood and crawling maggots. He was thin, handsome but for a scar at the corner of his lip, his hair carefully cut, and he wore a suit.
The shined black shoes stopped before crossing the threshold to the kitchen, normally meant to bridge the gap between hardwood and tile, a cross-piece of wood now served to block the ever-spreading filth.
“Good evening, Mr. Mahoun,” the lawyer said.
“Good evening, Mr. Mann,” the demon on the stool said.
“What is a noble of your stature doing here?”
“I was called,” the demon noble replied.
“By him?”
“By our acquaintance here, yes.”
“He overstepped.”
“If the greatest free diabolist in the field were to summon the least of my kind, it would be overstepping,” Mahoun said.
“In a relative sense, then, he overstepped.”
“Yes. In a relative sense,” the demon agreed.
Mann hiked up the pants of his suit, freeing the fabric enough that he could bend down, sitting on his heels, to get a better view of the limp form. “I know of him, the face is familiar, but I don’t truly know him. What possessed him to try to summon you?”
“The greatest of sins.”
“Hm. What for?”
“He summoned lesser demons to amass a small fortune. A friend of his tried to take the money.”
“Angry, and arrogant. A story I’ve heard often enough. Though to go to such an extreme, that’s unusual.”
“Extreme anger, extreme arrogance. He was quick to realize what he’d done.”
“At which point it was too late to undo it.”
The demon smiled. It lit the second rolled cigarette.
“I have some of my own, if you have a taste for those. It helps to get clients to calm down.”
“This is fine,” Mahoun said, through teeth that bit hard on the cigarette. He leaned over, looking at the fallen practitioner. “You’re aware that he’s dying?”
“Yet not permitted to die. We can leave him as he is for now. I’m not in a particular rush.”