At first, the world froze.
I was home alone, so the only noticeable movement other than the rise and fall of my chest as I breathed took place on the twenty-four-inch television screen in front of me. My equipment was old enough and my luck that day was going just badly enough that when it stopped I assumed it was a problem with my cable.
It wasn't until I climbed off the couch that I encountered the real problem. As I stood, the empty space I moved through cracked like a thin layer of glass. Thick lines spiderwebbed out from where my body impacted the air, growing deeper as I continued to push forward, until finally the room around me simply shattered into pieces to reveal a black void hidden beneath. The further I walked, the darker the room around me became until I was swimming through a colorless sea flecked with bits of light that would have looked like stars if they weren't just big enough to make out what part of the scenery they had previously belonged to.
Fire came next. It seemed to flow out of me, its light reflecting on the substantial nothing that I had become lost in. My hands instinctively clapped across my body in an attempt to put it out and I would have stopped, dropped, and rolled, but there was no longer ground beneath me to drop to. Before I could rationally choose a better course of action, my lungs froze, and I could no longer inhale. I had never been so certain before in my life that I was going to die.
The light of the fire yielded to pitch black, and soon the darkness turned to a purple fog. I floated there momentarily until reality poured back in on me. My eyes took their time adjusting to the new surroundings, but when they did, I saw I was no longer in my studio apartment. Instead, I was lying on cold concrete in the center of an elaborate piece of artwork.
The whole of the design was contained inside a perfect circle spaced around three equilateral triangles; one in front of me and two behind, creating a larger triangle of their own. The one in front was plain and empty and pointed forward in the same direction I was facing. Behind me and to my right, another similar triangle was drawn, but with a short line across its forward vertex point, resembling the snow cap of a mountain. The last triangle, behind me and to my left, was identical to the first but pointed in the opposite direction. Connecting them was a series of rounded lines touching every point to every other point and merging into the outer limits of the circle. A few other shapes, impossible for me to describe in simple terms, were scattered about. Some yielded to the inherent flow of the work while others forced it to bend. It was equally simple and complex and must have taken a skilled hand hours to construct.
I reached out to touch it and felt its texture. It was rough but permanent.
"Look to us," a woman called out from somewhere in front of me.
I looked up. Twenty yards or so from the edge of the circle there was a ring of candles mounted in standing holders. This created a wall of light in an otherwise very dark room that I could not see beyond. I squinted at it anyway, trying to look past.
"Hello?" I called back. "I'm sorry, but I can't see you. Can you tell me where I am?"
"Quiet! We are in control of you now, Demon."
I didn't catch right away the name she had given me. There was so much going on that made no sense that it was difficult to focus on any one detail. I opened my mouth to ask for help again, but something had stolen my voice.
A figure stepped into the light and approached. It was a blond woman in a red robe. She stopped and crouched as far away from the circle as she could get while still being within arm's reach and extended a stick of chalk to touch the edge. She pressed it to the floor and dragged it as she walked backward toward the ring of candles, creating one long, straight line. Before reaching the edge of the light, she branched it out into a fork with three tines. When she was done, she disappeared back into the darkness only to reappear holding a chair.
Two other women came with her carrying chairs of their own. Each placed their piece of furniture at the end of one of the lines and sat down.
"Crawl to us, Demon," the woman in the middle commanded. This was the one who had been talking to me since I arrived.
My first instinct was to walk directly to them, but even though there was nothing visible blocking my path, I found it impossible to move past the outer line of the circle I was standing in. As I tried to step over it, something pushed me back. The resistance lasted just long enough to stop me from crossing and then immediately departed.
I tested the edge of the pattern, finding the same result until I came to the fresh chalk line drawn by the lady in red. Here I was able to pass, but the same force that had pushed me back was now pressing me down. In order to keep moving forward, I had to lower myself onto all fours, and once I did, I found I was no longer able to rise again. I couldn't even turn around or move backward to return to a place where I had a greater range of motion. All I could do was follow the line to my audience, and so I did.
As I got closer, I was finally able to see all three women clearly. They were older than me and softer, but that is where their similarities ended.
The blonde woman who had drawn the lines was seated in front of me and to my right. She still wore an expression of terror, bordering on panic, and gripped the seat of her chair like she was ready to jump off and wield it as a weapon.
On the left, sat a woman dressed in a green robe in the same style as the first. This one also seemed tense, though less afraid than cautious. She watched me carefully as if she thought there was a possibility that I might do something unpredictable, yet I don't think she was too worried about her ability to handle me.
The woman in the middle, the only one whose voice I knew, wore white. She had a very different look on her face. Instead of anxiety or caution, I saw, if I have to give it a word, amusement. As she watched me crawl slowly forward, following her command, she was visibly quite pleased with herself.
