The Purpose of Demons

Note, this story contains graphic depictions of f/f sex... eventually. It's definitely one of my higher talk, lower action slowburn romances, so just be aware before you decide to dive in. It also involves consensual demon possession, public nudity, and a bit of light revenge humiliation (mostly verbal, nothing involving forced contact). Happy Halloween!

***

"Hey, what are you going as?" Mia asked me out of nowhere, looking up from her desk.

It was close enough to Halloween for me to catch her meaning.

"Nothing." I tried to sound offhand, and not pathetically homesick at all.

"Oh, come on." she swiveled her chair to face me. "You're not a 'this is my costume' orange t-shirt type of girl, are you?"

I aggressively wasn't, but I shrugged like those t-shirts didn't make me gag, and kept my eyes on my book.

"There's not much point in putting a bunch of work and money into my outfit this year," I said. "I'm just going to be staying in and watching horror movies."

"Uh-uh, nope," Mia shook her head. "You're coming with me to the Delta Epsilon party. And costumes are mandatory."

"Yeah, no."

"Yeah, yes."

"Look around," I said.

Mia humored me with a glance around the room.

"What am I looking at, exactly?" she sighed. "All the smoking hot costumes you don't have yet? Because there's still time to fix that."

"No," I said, "just the room. Look at the room."

Mia sighed again. "It's a room."

"It's a

dorm

room," I put her out of her misery. "The place where I live, specifically so that I don't have to deal with sketchy sorority nonsense."

Mia rolled her eyes.

"It's your room, too," I pointed out. "Why do

you

want to go?"

"Um, because Delta Epsilon Halloween parties are fucking

legend

."

"I've never heard of them."

Mia put one hand on her hip and rocked her arm back and forth, like a bird gauging the need for imminent flight, while she selected the tone of her next retort.

"You do know that you occasionally have to talk to people in order to hear things, right?"

She said it softly. It still hurt.

"I'm talking to you," I pointed out, feeling my shrug get a little stiffer. "So, go on, tell me a legend. Who threw up on whose gross novelty costume? Who got their stomach pumped? Who woke up somewhere upsetting with their underwear in a tree?"

"No," Mia was shaking her head vigorously. "No, not that kind of legend at all. Well... okay, a few of them are kind of like that," she admitted. "But any Greek house party can end that way."

"Yeah. Exactly."

"And that's

not

what makes this one special," Mia insisted. "We're not talking about just another kegger with some token pumpkins lying around. Supposedly, they do a full-on demon summoning ritual every year, like, with

real

demons. Serious coven shit."

"Real demons?" I raised my eyebrow in the way I'd learned to do whenever someone was obviously making fun of me.

"Yes!"

"How are real demons better than alcohol poisoning?" I asked.

"Well, people remember them, for one thing," Mia said, unironically. "Everyone I ask about the party gets this cute glimmer in their eye and just says something like, 'you have to experience it for yourself,' or, 'just go, you won't regret it.' That kind of stuff. You know what they

don't

say?"

"What?" I asked.

"They don't say, 'whatshername hasn't been seen since last year.' They don't say, 'I gave birth to a horned creature with yellow eyes.' Nothing like that. So, whatever happens there, it doesn't seem like, you know, like a

bad

kind of demonic."

"There's a good kind?"

"Obviously," said Mia. "Come on, I thought you didn't believe in that stuff anyway."

"I don't," I said. "I don't believe in Bloody Mary either, but that's no reason to say her name in the mirror."

Mia let out a delighted cackle, and clasped her hands together over her heart.

"Oh my god, really? Sweet little Addie is too scared to even play Bloody Mary?"

"No, it's just..." I took several breaths in a row, like I could save them up to avoid having to take one in the middle of explaining myself. "In the infinitesimal chance that she's real, you get murdered. In the overwhelmingly likely chance that she's not, you get nothing. Where's the upside? Why would you take that bet?"

"For the experience, duh," said Mia. "Same reason to do

anything

for Halloween."

Something about the way she said this shoved me to the verge of tears. Maybe it was how close it sounded to my own voice in my head these days, when I lamented how much I wanted to do something,

anything

, for Halloween.

Mia could smell weakness. Everyone could, when it was coming from me, but Mia especially.

She put her hands on both my shoulders.

"Look me in the face and tell me you

really

want to stay in and watch movies on Halloween night," she said. "And I'll shut up about the completely bitchin demon party that's going to be happening right down the street."

I reached up to pinch the bridge of my nose and discreetly wipe my eyes.

Why did those have to be the two options?

Why couldn't we just dress up as our favorite characters and go trick-or-treating, without receiving more dirty looks than candy? Why did the rules for fun suddenly have to change when your chest filled in, or when you ran out of grade years and had to switch to a new school, the kind with majors and minors and creepy cult houses marked with ancient lettering?

"Ugh,

fine

," I tossed my head back. "What kind of costume do I need, exactly?"

Mia hugged me, hard.

"Thank you," she squealed in my ear. "I really didn't want to go by myself."

"So comforting," I said.

She let go of me and backed up to clap her hands.

"God, I love how easy you are to bully," she said.

"God, I hate how you say that like it's a joke."

#

Mia drove right past the Spirit Halloween and took us to easily the coolest costume store I'd ever seen in my life. Lit by rows of flickering LED torches, there were mannequins in spandex super-suits, racks of princess dresses on hangers, and cases of spider earrings and pirate swords under glass. There were rainbows of makeup kits, complimentary instructional cards, and posters everywhere of stunning cosplayers, each one accompanied by a suggested shopping list to match the look.

There were even dressing rooms.

Everything about the place suggested respect for the value of its contents. For this ritual of dressing up. This store did not fancy itself a vendor of disposable gestures. It did not demand that the thought should count — and therefore command full price — regardless of how little care went into its execution. There were no torn plastic bags here, decorated with pictures of accessories they had never contained.

The neat racks held these costumes in equal regard with the "real" clothes people might buy to go about their everyday lives. And when I reached out to touch them, I felt more fabric than plastic, held together with seams that left no gaps, and zippers and buttons that would close more than two or three times without breaking.

I was almost scared, no, scratch that, I

was

scared to start checking price tags. When I did... I couldn't call them cheap, exactly, but then, neither were the crummy costumes that came in clear plastic bags. It looked like we'd be paying more or less department store prices for our new outfits, which was a better deal than I would have dared hope for.

Mia could have asked me to do just about anything right then, and I would have considered it a fair exchange for learning that this shop existed. But to my relief, she didn't insist on dressing me up like a naughty nurse, or a naughty maid, or a naughty beekeeper, or anything like that.

I picked out a full-body suit that gave a great illusion of being nothing but a glowing skeleton in dim light. It fit surprisingly well, and looking at myself in the mirror gave me a taste of that Halloween anticipation I'd been pining for all season. I skipped the mask and grabbed some glow-in-the-dark paint instead, to make my face up like a skull.

Mia did go naughty, but with a typically Mia twist. Instead of some random job uniform with an inexplicably bare midriff, she got herself a mini-toga cut so short that she could show off a pair of cardboard-brown silk shorts just by bending over.

"Pandora's box-ers, get it?" she giggled at herself.

"I got it," I said, mentally counting out exactly three seconds of looking at her. I couldn't trust myself to intuit the right length of time to avoid staring, and also avoid looking like I was trying to avoid staring.

"I'd better get a name tag anyway," Mia decided, and grabbed a blank pin-on one from the accessory display near the dressing room. "Gotta make sure if someone offers to open my boxers for me, they'll know what they're getting into!"

Before we even got to the register, she was writing "Pandora" on the tag with a marker from her bag.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing." I shook my head.

Of course Mia knew cool out-of-the-way shops that I'd never even think to look for. Of course she treated things like they were hers before she'd paid for them, and didn't stress about whether her debit card would work. Of course she would go to a party in the house of a sorority she didn't belong to, in a costume that was a classical reference

and

a pun

and

a bit of crossdressing, and not worry about what anyone would think.

She didn't have to worry. All things were cool when you did them with Mia's confidence. And all things were hot if they involved showing off an ass like hers.

"Are you sure it's nothing?" she bumped her shoulder playfully against mine on our way out the door. "You look a little flushed for a skeleton girl."

#

I don't know what I wanted the Delta Epsilon Sigma house to look like when we got there.

What façade could possibly have made me want to go inside, more than I wanted to turn and run until I was under the covers with a bag of Snickers and the entire Child's Play series queued up on my phone?

The place was done up nicely, with cobwebs and graves, hand-carved jack-o'-lanterns, blood-spattered cauldrons, and a row of toy bats hanging from the underside of the roof, blinking their glowing green eyes at unpredictable intervals. All things that would have drawn me in with eager awe as a trick-or-treater.

But the bucket of candy on the step wasn't for me. That was for the neighborhood kids. I was supposed to go inside, with the strangers. And there were edgy little touches here and there that made this prospect all the more intimidating — a rival sorority's letters on one of the tombstones, the back side of one jack-o'-lantern crushed in with a ceremonial paddle, a dummy hanging by the neck from a tree branch with a haircut so purposeful that it had to be an effigy of some real person in particular.

It wasn't me, but the night was young.

My feet were numb as I jabbed one in front of the other up the front walk, with Mia's hand on my shoulder.

Not

everyone

here was a stranger, I realized as we crossed the threshold, though it would have been better if they were. Robyn and Tori, two former classmates of mine, were greeting people at the door in a coordinated angel and devil costume. Both of their gazes passed over me without acknowledgement.

I kept my gaze moving, too.

Between the sorority and the guests, the crowd was about three quarters women.

Men were clearly permitted, although most of them were standing in tight clusters, limbs pulled close to their bodies, acting like what they were: outnumbered.

Being a computer sciences major, I could admit to feeling guiltily refreshed at seeing them that way for a change.

There were a few, however, who were strutting around, reveling in their own scarcity among all the beautiful women in skimpy costumes.

More nerve-wracking than Robyn and Tori's glances, I could hear Nolan's braying laugh among the strutters.

Calling Nolan my ex would be an exaggeration. We'd been on one date. But if you believed any of the jokes, rhymes, or crude sketches that had come out of Omicron house in the weeks afterward, there was no depraved act he had not performed upon me.

Purely for the sake of looking busy, I got in line for the bar, where a woman dressed as a zombified fifties girl in a torn-up poodle skirt was serving cocktails named after various monsters, killers, and candies.

"Okay, focus up, thrill-seekers!" a woman in a Pikachu minidress waved her arms and clapped her hands.

I stepped gratefully out of line, ready for a structured activity.

"I'm Kaylee," said the Pikachu woman. "I'll be your mistress of ceremonies for tonight. And this..." she grabbed another sister out of the crowd and pulled her into view. "This is Evelyn. She's the expert, so, you know, be nice to her and don't get turned into a frog!"

Evelyn was wearing a pointed witch's hat, which I was willing to guess was the only costume piece she'd bought for the occasion. The skillful gothic makeup, the chipped black nail polish that was already several days old, and the well-worn black t-shirt, jeans, and lace-up platform boots all definitely belonged to an everyday wardrobe rotation.

She had a pair of candlesticks tucked under her arm, and she gave the crowd an obligatory nod before pulling away from Kaylee to arrange them carefully on the floor, according to a set of criteria known only to her.

"Are we having a good time so far tonight?" Kaylee asked the guests, holding her palms out and flicking her fingers upward in a clear request for loud, affirmative replies.

We obliged her.

"Yeah, I'm super happy with how it all came out this year," said Kaylee. "Vibes, tunes, treats, I'm not ashamed of any of it. Let's give all these ladies a big hand!"

We obliged again. The sister behind the bar waved and blushed with beauty queen modesty.

"But we all know what we're really here for!" Kaylee interrupted, raising a finger high in the air. "You could have gone anywhere tonight, to see some fake demons pop up from inside crypts."

I could?

I thought.

Where exactly could I see this, would I be welcome, and is it too late to get there?

"But you came here to Delta house, where the demons are real, and better yet, the demons are

yours

. So let's get ready to give them a warm welcome, huh?"

Faintly wondering what she meant by

yours

, I started to offer up another round of applause, before taking note of the appropriate response from the others around me.

The crowd was starting to spread out along the walls, yielding more space for whatever Evelyn was busy setting up, and turning eerily silent for a sorority house party, even with the scattered, excitable whispers.

One of the candlesticks was now standing in a garbage can lid full of a few inches of water. The path from the lid to the other candlestick was demarcated with a line of some sweet-smelling herb, and the whole setup was encircled with an unbroken line of salt that just barely brushed the back wall.

In a finishing touch that gave me a new round of run-for-it chills, Evelyn attached a short and very real-looking chain with a cuff on one end to a bolt drilled deep into the floor.

"So, for those who don't know, here's how it works," Evelyn explained, taking a long drag from a vape and testing the chain with a rough tug. "This goes around each volunteer's ankle before the summoning. No exceptions. It'll stop you from going too far, but also the demons don't seem to like steel, so it'll keep you in control of your right leg. Any time you want to stop, just kick over the candle," she pointed to the one poking out of the water, "and the connection will break instantly. We keep the other candle out of reach of the chain, so someone else can also blow it out if there's an emergency."

"Or if shit gets too wild!" Kaylee added to a thunder of cheers. "Okay, but seriously, to be clear, no one has to do anything they don't want to do, and someone

will

step in if anything starts to look unsafe. That said, we're here because we recognize that these demons have a

purpose

, right?"

More cheers.

"They guide us to places we would usually avoid," Kaylee went on. "Places we fear. Not at random, but because there's something valuable to be found there. For everyone to get the most out of this experience, it's important that we don't meet the demons with more resistance than we need to. We strongly encourage following where they lead, in all situations where you feel brave enough to do so. That goes for everyone, not just the person wearing the chain." She pointed knowingly at a few individuals in the crowd. "So. Do I have any volunteers to go first?"

Several voices exploded out of the crowd at once. Hands shot into the air.

Kaylee waved a very buff man, definitely an athlete, forward to be shackled.

"Hello again, Craig. How many times is this?" she asked while Evelyn fiddled with the padlock on the chain.

"Four," he answered, like he'd been counting down to it for long enough to etch the number into his brain.

"Four! So, you know the drill by now."

Craig nodded and accepted one of two lighters from Kaylee's hand almost as soon as she offered it.

"I, Craig, do open the veil within myself," he recited, spinning the striker on the lighter and holding the flame to the wick of the water candle.

The candle took the flame, and so did the other one, under Kaylee's care.

Craig hovered a hand over his candle as he finished murmuring an invocation. "...And invite the creatures it holds at bay all year to join me for a dance!"

Instantly, Craig's whole body went rigid, then soft, and he slid down onto the floor like a boneless plush toy.

The crowd watched him in perfect, anticipatory silence.

Craig rolled onto his back, stroking his hands languidly up and down his own chest, shamelessly caressing the peaks of his nipples through the button-down shirt of his Ash Williams costume, without seeming to consider for a second the fact that he was being observed.

One hand continued up to his face and poked a few fingers into his mouth, which he sucked absently. He rocked from side to side a few times, as if for the pure joy of the movement itself, and then looked up at me.

"Would you hug me?" he asked, spreading his arms with that same languid, luxurious gentleness. "I'd really like a hug."

I froze, staring down while he stared up. I couldn't say no to such a soft, earnest-sounding request, but nor was I willing to bet that there was no cruel change of demeanor waiting for once I stepped within reach.

Thankfully, Craig was more interested in

a

hug than in a hug from

me

, and he moved on quickly to scan his pleading gaze across the rest of the crowd. Someone dressed as Catwoman jumped in soon enough and held him. He buried his face in her ample chest and began to sob real tears, first softly, then in unrestrained heaves.

I glanced back and forth at the other guests to see if I was supposed to look away, but no one else was.

It was just a game, of course. A performance, or some effect of the power of suggestion, but it was still startling to see that kind of expression come so willingly and publicly out of such a butch looking guy.

After several minutes, a measurement that didn't accurately reflect how long a time it felt at all, Kaylee blew out the candle with a sharp

puff

.

Craig instantly sat up and wiped his eyes, looking almost like a different person for how he held himself. He shook the Catwoman's hand a little awkwardly, and then Evelyn's when she freed him.

"Well done as always, Craig!" Kaylee patted him on the shoulder on his way out of the circle. "Who's next?"

She surveyed the whole clamoring room before allowing Mia's wild gesticulations to direct her attention to me.