Quinton Morris pushed his wheelchair about in the house he called home. It was a decent life that he lived at the start of the new year. He had his entire room to himself; he didn’t have to hear the noises of his roommate playing video games when he was trying to get some sleep in, and he especially didn’t have to worry about anyone getting facts mixed up and having to correct them. It was such an idyllic situation.

“Hey, Quinton, good afternoon.”

Until the sound of his old roommate came to his ears.

Turning to face the person who spoke, Quinton saw him. Samuel Kauffman was most things that he wanted to be, but felt he didn’t even need. Able to stand on his feet and walk, able to speak his mind, and a more creative person than most. Quinton was a member of the BIPOC minority, while Samuel was a member of the Anglo-Saxon majority, which meant the two of them couldn’t be more polar opposite if you tried to look for differences.

And yet Quinton didn’t care.

What Quinton cared for was his music, wrestling, and his job at Providence Hospital in Everett, the latter of which he couldn’t do because of the issues of 2020. He wanted to, but the bus services were operating under normal procedures when the pandemic was still a thing. He learned to live with it for the time being, of course, but that was to be expected.

Still, it went without saying that the two of them had something akin to a decent friendship. It helped that Samuel was nothing like some of the older (and very much former) housemates in this residence. Better than most of them by a long shot.

“Hey, Samuel,” Quinton said. He waved at his old roommate. “How’s your day so far?”

“So far, so good,” Samuel said. He shrugged as he walked over to the landline the house had assigned to them. “Well, if you need me for anything, I’ll be using the phone in my room.”

“Okay,” Quinton said, wheeling his way to the restroom so he could wash his hands for a rather late breakfast. As he did so, he began listening to an inaudible beat, one that only he could hear.

This-this-this-this-this is the melody,

So, what’s a melody?

This-this-this-this-this is the rhythm,

So, what’s a rhythm?

I-I-I-I-I need some lyrics,

So, here are lyrics…

As soon as he finished washing his hands, he moved on to drying them off and wheeling back to the kitchenette that was right between the bathroom and the rest of the floor of the house he lived on. Looking at the time on his smart watch, he saw it looked to be at about 12:45 pm. There was plenty of time to do things in the light of day.

As he wheeled himself to his spot at the kitchen table, he saw it was going to be a bowl of cereal, milk, apple juice, water, and pills to make sure he had his health taken care of. He might not eat a lot under regular circumstances, but there was something wrong with today’s breakfast, and yet he didn’t know what it was. He did not know what the plan of action was to get some extra food, but he figured he’d get it pretty soon.

Still, he had to finish eating the food laid out in front of him to make sure that he could stay alive, as was the way things were around here. He started eating by pouring his milk into his bowl of cereal, followed by putting his spoon into the bowl and shoveling the combined foodstuff into his mouth. He chewed his food as much as he could, too, before he swallowed and put more food into his mouth. When he had finished up the cereal, he realized that his place at the table was a lot cleaner than normal.

He shrugged it off before he took his pills and drank the rest of his fluids. He needed to have a rational mind for the rest of the day.

As he put his tableware in his dish bucket that was to his right, he couldn’t help but wonder if this was all life offered for him, or if he had something else that only he could do with his life. Sure, he could fall back on his music, but how would that work? He couldn’t go to the places that he knew would have music playing for rookie and amateur singers, much as he wished otherwise, since the transportation was down the drain.

Well, at the very least, he knew better about what he could do. He decided he should play a game on his JoyStation 4. That way, he’d have fewer issues with being roped into things that he didn’t want to do. For instance, there were people who thought it a good idea to force him to do things out of the confines of safety from the pandemic. He wanted to do more with his life, true, but not to the point of losing it.

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With a practiced ease that he almost never had, he booted up his JoyStation and began playing his favorite game from the collection he had on the system, a game based on the WWE. As he played the game’s random matches, he had to wonder.

Just what sort of activities am I missing out on? I mean, this is getting ridiculous.

As he thought that, however, the game he was playing shut itself off.

“What the—?” Quinton jumped out of his wheelchair. “Come on! How am I supposed to unlock Johnny Tristar at this rate?!”

At that point, there was a knock at the door. “Hey, Quinton?” Samuel asked through the closed doorway. “Is it just me, or did someone think it a good idea to prank the entire neighborhood?”

“What do you mean by that?” Quinton asked back.

“I mean,” Samuel said, “the power’s out in our house, and the backup generator’s offline somehow.”

That caused all retorts that Quinton had in mind to die in his throat. How come I never noticed that the power went out? This makes little sense, he thought.

“Quinton, are you doing okay in there?” Samuel asked. “I just hope that you will not need a book to read or something, man.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Quinton said. “I just need to get some sleep in.”

As Quinton made his way to his bed, though, Samuel opened the door. “Are you kidding me, Quinton? It’s still the early afternoon out there!”

“Wait, it is?” Quinton asked, looking out the window to see what time the sun said it was at. He saw the light of the sun before a cloud covered it. “Well, I was wrong, then.”

“Great…” Samuel said, a depressed sigh escaping his lips. “How are we supposed to do what we need to with the power around here out? We don’t have any way of entertaining ourselves outside of books and maybe pre-charged electrical items like flashlights and my JSP.” He then walked into the room. “Come on, man, we need to find out what to do next, what with Wes out of the area for now.”

Quinton remembered. Wes Hartwig, the main owner of the property, was the husband of the landlady, as Samuel more often than not called Ellen. Wes was also the one who took care of the property and kept it running. For something like this to happen, especially while Wes was out of the house… it was a disaster.

“Okay, fine,” Quinton said. He then wheeled himself away from his bed, turning his wheelchair toward Samuel, before something strange happened.

“Hey, Quinton,” Samuel said, pointing at the TV screen where Quinton was playing his JoyStation earlier. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, man, but this is looking like something from an anime.”

“What do you mean?” Quinton asked, a single eyebrow raised.

“I mean, there’s a magic circle forming on the TV screen,” Samuel said in as deadpan a tone as he could muster. “The power’s out, and something is forming on the screen, with no input from the cable company or us. I’d say that qualifies us for getting an anime treatment.”

Quinton turned to face his TV for a brief bit before he did a double-take at what he saw. “What—?” he just had time to ask out, before a hand emerged from within the magic circle.

Samuel pulled Quinton’s wheelchair away from the mysterious hand that reached out past the desk the TV was on. “I’ll buy you time to get out of here, Quinton,” he said, glaring at the TV. “I’ll deal with this threat, don’t worry.”

“Dude, what do you know of this?” Quinton asked, his eyes going wide.

“Admittedly, not much,” Samuel said with a shake of his head. “What I know is that this is a demonic entity, one that seems to have an interest in you. Why, I don’t know.”

“But—”

“Oh, my, how rude of you,” the owner of the hand said, moving the rest of his body up out of the TV. “I’m not a demon, gentlemen, merely a dimensional traveler looking for a companion.”

“I’m calling BS on that,” Samuel said, a hint of snark in his tone. “If you’re a dimensional traveler, then how come you entered the room via the TV?”

“Well, simply put,” the newcomer said, putting a hand through his crewcut hair, “it’s because that’s how the vast majority of us dimensional travelers go through dimensions.” He then smirked as his eyes gazed at Samuel and Quinton. “Now, why don’t you be a good boy and come with me, kid in the wheelchair?”

“Kid… are you talking about me?” Quinton asked, pointing at himself.

“No, I’m talking about the older guy who can stand on his own two feet,” the newcomer said, his voice full of sarcasm. “Yes, of course I’m talking about you!”

“Quinton’s older than me, though.”

“Eh?”

The newcomer turned to look at Samuel, who walked up in between the newcomer and Quinton, before he asked, “How old are you supposed to be, anyway?”

“I’ll be 31 this October 22nd,” Samuel said. “Quinton’s a couple of years older than I am.” He then shook his head. “Now, are you going to leave us alone peacefully, or do I need to give you the boot?”

The newcomer gave off a few barks of cruel laughter. “Listen to you,” he said, “this ought to be a riot!”

“This isn’t Dies Irae, you demon!” Samuel looked as if his next response to the newcomer was to pummel the guy. However, the guy in question merely tilted his head in confusion.

“Dies Irae? What does that song have to do with anything?” the newcomer asked.

Quinton looked at the newcomer and at Samuel momentarily. “Uh, what’s going—”

“In the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, I command you, demon! Begone!”

With that imperious order, Samuel stretched his hand out to force the newcomer away, before two unexpected things happened.

First, the newcomer started convulsing and expelling black smoke from his orifices. This proved Samuel’s point that the newcomer was a demon of some stripe.

Second, Quinton and his wheelchair fell through the basement floor that made up the residence of Quinton, Samuel, and a few others.

“Uh-oh…” Samuel said as he saw what happened to Quinton. “That didn’t go as planned, now did it?”

The reason he said that was simple: there was a second Magic Circle that formed under where Quinton used to be.

“Now, how am I supposed to explain this to Ellen, anyway?” Samuel asked. “I doubt she’ll believe me about this…”