Jonathan thrashed awake to a red glow and a crackling sound that set his heart pounding in sudden panic. Was his apartment on fire?! Oh, no, wait, it was coming from a giant array of glowing, occult-looking symbols floating above his bed.

The sight caused him to pause in his frantic attempt to free himself from his covers. A pause that proved a critical error when the symbols suddenly flared with light so strong it pushed right past red and into searing white. "What the fu—"

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Jonathan blinked, eyes smarting as tears trickled down his cheeks. He was standing. He didn't remember standing up. He blinked some more and scrubbed an arm across his face, trying to clear his vision. Gradually, his sight recovered enough that he could make out his surroundings. He was in a cluttered attic, still wearing nothing but the boxers he'd worn to bed. Trunks, burlap bags, and moldering pieces of furniture had been roughly pushed away from the space around him in an arc, leaving a jumbled, unnavigable mess, and the wooden slats of the floor beneath him had an absurd number of occult symbols drawn on them in...was that pink chalk? The space he was standing was clear of chalk markings and near the center of the attic, but even so he only had an inch or two clearance between the ceiling and his head.

None of that was what really arrested his attention, however. What really grabbed his focus was the small girl sitting cross-legged in front of him, with an absolutely massive leather-bound tome splayed open in her lap. The girl couldn't be more than six or seven years old, and she was wearing a drab gray shirt and equally drab, but differently gray long skirt. Her hair was a tousled dirty brunette, cropped unevenly about shoulder length, a brown-ish pink birthmark was splayed across the greater portion of her right cheek, and her eyes were light brown and staring up at Jonathan like she'd just met Santa Claus.

"It worked!" the little girl exclaimed, shoving the book aside to land with an almighty WHUMP on the bare boards nearby. "I can't believe it actually worked!"

"Whuh?" managed Jonathan.

The girl didn't seem to mind his lack of language, bouncing to her feet and pointing at him imperiously. "Okay, Mr. Demon, I order you to conjure me a sandwich!"

"...but I'm not a demon?" managed Jonathan.

"What in Anthrax's name are you talking about?" exclaimed the girl with a frown. "Of course you're a demon. Although I'm a little disappointed you decided to manifest in such a wimpy-looking disguise."

"Anthrax?" said Jonathan. Wasn't that a poison or something?

"Hold, please," said an androgynous voice that sounded like it belonged to a very high-class secretary, and the girl froze in place as the colors in the attic around Jonathan bled away into shades of dark blue.

Jonathan whirled in place, looking for the person who had spoken, but nothing was moving. He turned back. What in the hell just happened? The little girl hadn't budged an inch since everything turned blue, and...was she even breathing? Jonathan tried to step forward, but his toe slammed into what felt like a solid wall. Jonathan sucked in a breath and crouched down, gripping his foot in pain. He noticed with abstraction that the wood floor nearest him remained normal colored.

As the pain slightly subsided, he reached forward cautiously. It felt like there was an invisible wall that started immediately prior to the nearest chalk marks on the floor. He felt upward, and it extended all the way to the roof above him. Cautiously, he leaned more and more of his weight on it. It didn't budge at all. It was like pushing against a rock cliff, except perfectly smooth. Feeling around himself, he discovered that he was completely enclosed.

"Shit shit shit!" His breathing sped up as a bit of claustrophobic panic began burble up through his chest. "Let me out of here!"

"Well, this is a pickle," someone said.

Jonathan whirled. No one was there, and the girl remained frozen in the exact same position as before.

"Down here, boy-o," said the voice.

Jonathan looked down. The wooden slats of the floor, which just moments ago had looked completely normal were now partially transparent, as if they were the ghost of wooden slats. But underneath them, instead of a lower room in the house, there was a giant face. Feline eyes as big as his head looked up at Jonathan, while a hooked nose appeared to reach right up to the level of the floor. Beneath the nose, a mouth full of teeth that looked mostly human, except just a little too pointy, was grimacing. Near the edges of the floor around Jonathan, he could see slight curls of dark hair curving past the sides of the thing's head. Where the chalk lines were drawn, the floor remained opaque, but still weirdly blue-ish in color. It was like someone had pulled out a hole under Jonathan, and a giant was peering through.

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"Fuck!" Jonathan jumped sideways, instinctively avoiding the thing's mouth, and slammed his shoulder against the invisible barrier so that he was standing above the creature's right cheek. The thing's eyes tracked him perfectly, which did nothing for his burgeoning panic.

"Now, now, calm down, boy," said the giant head. "You'll do yourself an injury at this rate. I'm not going to incorporate myself in that realm, thank you very much. Whole place smells like fish."

"Fish?" said Jonathan.

"Look, doesn't matter, how about you just take a couple deep breaths, yeah? I don't want you fainting on me, thank you very much."

Jonathan was well beyond freaked out at this point, but the giant head evidently wasn't going to eat him, and that advice sounded good. He steadied himself against the invisible wall and tried to take a few breaths. The first couple were more like gulps, but he got better at breathing with practice.

"That's right, that's right. Nice and easy."

"What's going on?" Jonathan at last managed to choke out.

The giant eyes shifted away, giving the monster a decidedly guilty look. "Ah, well, it appears that there was a bit of a clerical mix-up. The young human girl over yonder performed a summoning ritual to manifest Typhoid, a Greater Demon of the Abyss, but someone made a bit of a mistake and you were summoned instead. Your name wouldn't happen to be Typhoid, would it?"

"No!"

"Ah, no, I suppose not."

"And I'm not a demon! I'm human!"

"Yes, yes, I'm well aware."

"So send me home, then!"

The giant face grimaced. "Well, that's the thing. The only reason we're able to talk like this in the first place is because your summoner smudged the containment clause a little bit on accident, so the connection to the Infernal Abyss is just a tad stronger than normal. But it's a strong enough formation otherwise that I definitely can't physically extract you or swap you out for Typhoid. Also, you appear to have been dragged over from a different reality, and I don't have any extra suns lying around that I can consume to send you home. Plus, you wouldn't be worth destroying a sun over, anyway."

"DESTROYING A SUN?!"

"What, you think you can just cross realities with a hop, skip, and a jump?"

"Then how did I get summoned here in the first place?!"

"Like I said, some mistakes were made, and let's just say that astronomers are going to have a fun surprise in a little over a decade."

"God damn it." Jonathan slid down the wall and slumped over his knees.

"Now, now, no need to be rude. We're not huge fans of the 'G' word around here." The giant face was practically cross-eyed trying to look at Jonathan from so close.

"So, what, I'm just stuck in this summoning circle until I die of hunger or go insane?"

"Pfft, no, what gave you that idea? Did you never learn the basics of summoning rituals? At your age?"

"There's no such thing as magic in my world!"

"...ah. Well, uh, my condolences, I suppose. To answer your question, no, you're not going to be stuck in the summoning circle. Once time resumes and your summoner is through extorting you, she'll likely banish you back to the Infernal Abyss."

"YOU CAN PAUSE TIME, BUT YOU CAN'T SEND ME HOME?!"

"I'm right here, there's no need to yell. And I only paused time in a very localized area. It's no big deal."

"That makes no sense to me whatsoever, but whatever. So I just need to make this girl a sandwich and then...hold up, did you say Infernal Abyss? That doesn't sound like a very human-friendly place."

The giant face looked shifty again. "Yeaaaaah. About that. We don't really want any humans around here, either. No offense, but you'd really stink up the place."

Rude! What was with this thing and smells, anyway?

The giant face didn't give him a chance to interrupt, however. "So since this was our mistake in the first place, we'll grant you some demonic powers so you can help out Little Miss Precocious over there, and as long as you keep her happy she'll probably keep you around so that you don't get banished to the Infernal Abyss, die a horrible death, and ruin the neighborhood with your stench."

"Did you say d—"

"Nevermind that." The thing's eyes had been focused on Jonathan for a while now, but the pupils suddenly contracted. Jonathan reflexively jumped to his feet in surprise. "GAZE INTO THE ABYSS."

The face suddenly fell away from Jonathan, and he saw—

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Jonathan coughed violently, something coming up with it and filling his mouth with the metallic hint of blood. He was lying on the ground, the floor beneath him normal wooden slats once more. He pushed himself to his knees, then to his feet. His whole body ached. He could vaguely remember that crazy giant face falling away from under him, but nothing after that.

A gust of air brushed past him, and Jonathan looked up. Colors were seeping back into the world around him, a breeze picking up more and more as movement returned to the world, until the pages of the giant grimoire on the floor were flapping and goosebumps were standing up on Jonathan's chest and arms.

The girl in front of him blinked, then her eyes narrowed. "What did you just do? Where's my sandwich?"