Scribbles and Drabbles

Notebook Drabble 55 - Demon Owned

Kit summoned a demon when he was young. It was after his mum died but before his father got into trouble. He was nine, and his friend from a book on the supernatural and the ritual looked simple enough. None of them thought it would work; the five of them huddled around a plastic cauldron from the Halloween supplies with Jet's sister's herbs and crystals. They laughed at how stupid they were.

Then it did. 

Nothing too bad happened; it didn't drink their blood or feast on them. The demon played video games with them. It was kind and tucked them into bed and made breakfast in the morning. It tried to claim them as minions but agreed to a trade when some people with official-looking badges showed up to deal with the mess. Kit wanted to think he'd dreamed it up. That Jet's Dad's shitty cooking gave them all a hallucination. It would not be the first nor last thing they saw weird things at Jet's house before he got sent to prison. 

His father got thrown in prison for a different reason, and he ended up with his former stepfather. The man smiled at the social workers, took their money and threw him out on the streets. Cold, hungry and desperate for help, the whispered promises from the past tugged. 

"If you ever change your mind," they had promised, fingers ruffling hair and kissing foreheads as guns aimed at them. "You'll know how to find me."

Some people whored themselves out to survive; others ran drugs or stole tyres. Kit didn't have the skill for that latter and his stomach retched at the former. Making a deal with a demon promising to keep and love him didn't seem worse than any other option. 

None of his friends would want this. He'd have to do the ritual alone, and it was different from before. Knowledge that he shouldn't have bubbled in the back of his mind. The first ritual gave the being access to the world. This one would bring it back to him, to a point in the world, instead of free to roam. They never closed the door. 

He sat at a crossroads, waiting for midnight under the light of a full moon. He didn't shiver at the cold wind, but his chapped lips ached, and his teeth chattered.  The area was nice enough. The kind of area people liked living in but grumbled about petty crime. He couldn't do this in a busier part of town. Some might question why a teenager was hanging about on a corner. They might move the bags he'd placed on each corner. A car would run him over before he finished drawing a chalk circle in the centre of the tarmac. 

His lip started to bleed. He sucked on his bottom lip and waited. Maybe it had been a dream. Perhaps this was stupid. Some long lost hope that something could save him.

Kit checked his watch, the last thing he had of his mother's family. 

Midnight passed, and nothing turned up. 

He fell to his knees and pressed his forehead to the metal. The concrete hurt under his legs. He didn't want this. He wished he'd died with his mam. 

"Oh dear, young one," a voice that haunted his nightmares and warmed his dreams whispered in his ear. "What hurts you?"

He lifted his head to see a shimmer of something old in the corner of his eye. It quickly vanished in a blink into someone young and handsome. Someone older than him but not someone too old to trust. The face remained the same as the one from his dreams of that night: pale skin with dark eyes and black hair. Long fingers neatened his coat and dusted off some dust as eyes that were slightly too old for his face studied Kit on his knees.

"Get up, darling; the ground is dirty, and there is no place for you."

The demon had arrived.

Kit stumbled, pressing himself up against the railing. The demon stood a few inches taller than him and had a kind face. The demon smiled approvingly and opened his arms. Kit took the invitation and moved into his arms. Arms wrapped around him tightly, and sharp nails combed through his hair as the man murmured some gentle words of comfort. The man was a touch too hot for a human. Kit would have declared he had a fever if he'd claimed to be, but Kit knew better.