"If thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."
F. Nietzsche
"Be wary of evil, lest evil may harm you. But be terrified of love, lest love may destroy you utterly."
R. Maurice
Oh Hell!
First there was light.
Then followed sound in the form of a rhythmic thumping inside his head. After a moment of confusion, during which his brain was gradually revving back up to normal processing speed, Mike realized that he was flat on his belly on the wooden floor of his room. Vision still blurry he sat up and cupped his face in his hands, relieved to discover that everything appeared to be in place and nothing felt bloody or misshapen.
"Fucking ritual musta blown up," Mike mumbled to himself. "What the hell was I even thinking? Not that this sorcery shit would have worked for real anyway. Gee, talk about being desperate."
He slowly propped himself up, checking for broken bones and bruises along the way. But luckily whatever had knocked him out didn't appear to have caused any permanent physical harm. With a final concentrated effort he rose all the way to his feet and turned to survey the damage in the epicenter of the calamity, the elaborate pentagram drawn with the blood of a chicken for the purpose of the ritual.
And froze in his tracks.
For in the center of said pentagram stood a naked girl.
Well, calling her "a girl" would be akin to calling a Ferrari "a car." Built like a fitness model, perfectly toned with all the right curves in all the right places. Sporting the kind of body that will make young guys drop down on all four and howl at the moon while older men reached for their heart medicine or Viagra. She was the ultimate walking wet dream of feminine perfection made flesh.
Or she would have been, if it hadn't been for the inhumanly cold black orbs inhabiting her eye sockets and her crimson skin crisscrossed with purple veins like a mesh of dark subcutaneous worms. Not to mention her long black fingernails, resembling the claws of a vicious predator rather than the meticulously manicured nails of a stylish woman.
The duality of sexual attraction mixed with demonic repulsion somehow made her the single scariest sight Mike had ever laid eyes on. Every cell in his body screamed at him to get the fuck out before it was too late. Run for his life before this being, virtually oozing inhuman power and menace, became aware of his presence.
Yet he didn't move a muscle. By all accounts he should have been fleeing in terror, but he remained stationary, frozen like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a speeding car. Paralyzed and unable to utter a word, let alone move.
Though technically not
all
parts of Mike's body were paralyzed. The front of his pants struggled to hide his throbbing erection, for as a healthy young man his sexual desire was on a hair trigger that not even the ultimate terror could defuse. After all, boobs are boobs. Even infernal and scary ones.
"Come on Mike," he chided himself in an attempt to muster his courage. "Don't chicken out here. You just summoned a genuine bona fide demon. You da man. You're fucking Gandalf. You can totally do this shit. A walk in the park for a master wizard like you."
The nightmarish apparition gradually seemed to become aware of the presence of somebody else in the dimly lit room and slowly turned to look straight at him. What little courage Mike had managed to muster so far immediately drained out of him like dirty water from a sink.
Her inhumanly beautiful face was framed by a veil of waist-long black hair that he now noticed was matched in color by a generous pubic triangle spreading out from between her legs. Her cold gaze seemed to peer into his very soul, and he could almost feel her presence probing the deepest recesses of his mind.
A few seconds ticked by - the longest few seconds in Mike's short life - and then the girl-thing's face transitioned from aloof predatory coldness to an expression of total disbelief and confusion.
"Thou hath designs on wooing me?" she uttered slowly in a surprisingly melodic timbre.
Mike made an effort to compose himself.
It took all his willpower to even attempt to address this scary girl or whatever the hell she was, but he was the one who had summoned her from the abyss, and that made him her master. Figuring that he'd better start behaving a little more masterly, he finally managed to jolt his brain into gear.
"Hey don't freak on me Desdemona. Just a date ok? I'm not after anything wooey or some shit like that."
"I am called upon to serve as thine escort for a ball then?" the girl-thing enquired, still seemingly baffled by the turn of events.
"Yeah... like my escort for the entire evening actually. Escort as in coming along with me that is. Not escort as in... y'know... an escort service..."
Mike pushed his chest out and declared in his most authoritative Ian McKellen voice: "As your summoner I hereby command you to be my Halloween date!"
The girl-thing smiled, showing way too many way too pointy teeth and stepped out of the pentagram as if it wasn't there.
"Thou commands me not conjurer."
"Whoa!" Mike yelped and jumped back in terror. "The book says that no demon can do that without the summoner's permission! What the fuck is going on here? Is the damned thing broken or something?"
"I speaketh only truth. Thou commands me not."
"So... erhm... you're like... really not in my power at all?"
"Nay."
"But the book said... hell... I mean, no demon can break a consecrated pentagram, right?"
"Demon I am not."
"Shit! You'd better not hurt me. I'm serious! My folks are downstairs... I'll scream... they'll call the cops... and I taste horribly anyway. Trust me, I wouldn't eat me even if the only alternative was airline food..."
The girl-thing's feral smile receded to a more somber expression.
"Fear not conjurer, for I would bargain with thee."
"Bargain with me?" Mike answered confused. "Like strike a deal? S...sure! For my life or for our date? Please let it be both!"
"Swear on thy life and honor to destroy yonder tome with thine own hands and pledge myself as thine escort for the entirety of this hallowed eve I shall."
"Tome? Oh the book? The Codex? Sure -- no problem your scariness. That musty old thing smells like used gym socks anyway and I've already scanned it to disk. We've got a deal. But I'm not getting rid of it until after the date, ok? Please don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think I can quite trust you."
"Thy terms are acceptable," she replied with a consenting nod. "Done."
"One more thing..." Mike injected nervously.
"Aye?"