The girl turned out to be Sophronia. Somehow, Zachary had slept for two and a half years, and the little girl who'd been shaking in bed, frightened of a storm, was older now and comforting him.

Two and a half fucking years.

"It's okay, House," said the girl, walking through the dining room area and going back to her room. She'd tucked the book under one arm. The title read: Intermediary Circles: How to Banish the Souls of the Maleficent. "I'm just happy you're here. And I saw you ate all the bugs I hated when I was a kid! Did you know we didn't have a single roach all this time?"

When you were a kid? You’re still just a kid! But at her words, he felt that crawling feeling again and wanted to throw up. So many, many bugs crawled through him again, all over him. The wooden floors. The plaster walls. Countless hairy legs swept across his skin. Even though there weren't as many as before, plenty more creatures had made him their home, and now there was even a family of rats! Two large ones and their nest of babies, all nestled into a little hole in the wall behind the stove, inside him. They might’ve been mice but he couldn’t tell the difference, all he knew was that they were furry and warm and had long pink tails, and he wondered how they would taste.

His mind was reeling, firstly with hunger and want, that sugary sensation from when he used Ingestion before. It was at the forefront of his thoughts, and it made him hungry in a way he didn’t like. And secondly, how had he slept for so long? It didn't feel like that much time had passed at all. As far as he could tell, a few minutes ago, he'd just gotten home from a shitty day of delivering things, sweaty and tired, an obnoxious party raging in his apartment... I just wanted to sleep. Was that too much to ask for?

The storm. The rain. The little girl wanting a friend. Eating hundreds of insects and spiders and other things...

But now the breeze was gentle as it ran across his walls. Sunlight warmed his tiles, his sides. He felt it in the glass of his windows, but when he pushed his consciousness outwards, Zachary couldn't see anything but the gray of his walls. He could see himself, but it wasn't really seeing. Just an awareness of how he looked.

Black tiles covered his triangular roof like scales. Some were cracked, others were missing. Cracks ran along his walls as well, and plants like ivy grew into his body.

He had no sense of the world beyond him, not even the road or anything. The rest of existence might as well not exist. All he had was the sensation of wind, pushing lightly against his walls. Sunlight warmed him, and he tried not to think about everything crawling on his outside, because that only reminded him of the countless insect legs crawling through his insides and...

He focused his senses on the girl. She was alone in the house. Her parents were out. Sophronia had taken off her shoes and left them by the door. She walked barefoot across the dining room and opened the door to her bedroom. Zachary could feel her footsteps, could feel her hand grasping the doorknob and turning, could feel the push against the door. Somehow, he was present in all these things: the door, the flooring, even the air that stirred through the house, but these sensations were such everyday things. Normal things. Yet they were his entire world at the moment.

"I know you can't talk... yet," she said with a sly smile. She placed the book on her table; Zachary kept his mind outside her bedroom, looking in from the doorway even though he could feel the table, could feel her moving through the room.

She'd tidied her desk, instead of books and notes open and splayed all about, they were neatly piled. She'd added another shelf so that three sides of her rooms were now bookshelves, all filled with books of various colors and sizes. Strips of colorful paper stuck out of each one. She had glass orbs and little jars between her books, and baskets on the floor, filled with mushrooms and dried plants. She paused by her bed, straightening her back before glancing curiously at the door.

She beckoned Zachary closer with a hand. “Come inside, House. You're my friend, okay? You don't have to be shy. I didn't know Daemons could be shy." She scratched her chin, frowning.

Zachary's face felt heated, but that might've just been the sunlight shining on the front door, as he moved into Sophronia's room. He wasn't good with children. They weirded him out. They were so earnest and so curious and so... he knew it was envy. He was envious that they got be so childish, so carefree, and he'd grown up looking constantly over his shoulder and worrying what his parents would think. He never got to be a child. Not really. He’d always been too stressed about consequences, too stressed about how he looked and behaved. He lived his life not wanting to get in trouble cause trouble meant punishment.

She raised her hand, eyes shut. Her fingers fluttered, searching the air for something. Zachary wondered what she was doing until her fingers closed, grasping something invisible, and she yanked.

From the other side of the room, something flew off the shelf and straight into Sophronia’s hand. It was a book with black binding.

"This is you," she said. Holding the book up for him to see. Somehow, she knew exactly where his presence was, that he was near her door.

Zachary couldn't respond, but he looked at the brownish-reddish circle on the cover. It glowed gently, and there were three symbols set inside. They looked like calligraphy, going down vertically, but he had no idea what they meant.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

“You're only Bronze right now,” she said, placing the book on her bed and touching the symbols. She traced the circle with her pinky finger, and a violent shudder ran through him. The house creaked and groaned, shifting as though it was storming again, and Sophronia smirked, wrinkling her nose. “Sorry. I did that a lot while you were asleep. I was trying to wake you up. This is you, House. As a Daemon. Your spirit. And look!”

She opened to the first page of the book, and on the paper were the exact words he'd seen floating through his mind.

Monstrous House

Class: Daemon

Size: Small Dwelling

Spirit Rank: Bronze (2/5)

Essence: 0/200

Durability: 702/1169

Skills:

Awareness: Bronze (1/5)

Ingestion: Bronze (2/5)

Poltergeist: Silver (1/5)

“These are your stats. These are your updates.” She pointed to a line of text. “This is where you used ingestion that night, but you overdid it, and it...” She looked around. “Well. It converted to Durability. That’s good. It makes you stronger. But it made you very sleepy.”

So? Zachary stared at the list of things on the page. At least it was all in English. Or if it wasn't in English, at least he could understand it. But can you set me free?

She turned the page. Everything else was blank. “I can't wait to see how you keep growing. I told Ma and Pa but they didn't believe me. They said I was making you up. But I wasn’t!”

I don’t know what these ranks mean, he thought. Is this girl out of her mind? Or is she just a kid making all this up? But he’d just seen her pull a book from the shelf across the room. And she seemed to be able to see him.

As if she knew what he was wondering about, she held out her hand. “Look at this, House. This is why my parents won’t let me go to school anymore.” A yellow aura shimmered around her palm and fingers. She smiled an evil smile. “I’m already Gold. Gold rank 2. I’m stronger than most of my teachers from back then. And when I summoned you, I was only Silver 3!

Energy radiated from her glowing hand. The light was yellow and gold, and as it swirled around her, it shifted from a soft yellow to a metallic, dark gold, as though it was alive. As though it was her living force. He didn’t exactly know what the numbers meant, but he glanced at the book again. He had numbers too. Ranks. Bronze. Silver. Gold. It was all attributed to his abilities and his level. But her being Gold, stronger than her teachers, was a scary thought. It reminded him of kids he’d hear about on the news, prodigies who could do college-level math as little kids. Was she some kind of little genius?

“I wanted to study more,” she said. “But they said it wasn’t safe for me and... it’s not like I had that many friends.” She looked sad, pulling on some hair as she glanced down at the floor. “They used to tease me lots because I was smart and I have big teeth.” She opened her mouth wide to show him. “Then I went from Bronze to Silver too quickly. We’re not supposed to do that till we’re fifteen or something, but I couldn’t wait!”

She walked around the room and over to the window. Zachary couldn’t see out of it, but he could feel the warmth of the sunlight and the day beyond him. What was the view like? What kind of world was he in? But Sophronia was sad, and that tugged on Zachary’s heart, and he felt rage and sadness all at once. Who would bully a sweet little girl? Just because she was smart? Had big teeth? Weren’t these her baby teeth? And they didn’t look bad at all to him. But kids were cruel.

She almost reminded him of himself when he was a kid. He’d do too well at school, and his parents would expect more and more, and if he ever got below a 95 on an exam, they would take away his games and ground him for a week. And on top of that, the kids teased him because he would rather read a book than run around screaming during recess.

A part of him understood Sophronia's loneliness. The other part... the rest of him... was a fricken house and he wanted his body back.

She sighed and ran her hands through her bushy hair. Then she turned, and she was grinning again, the sadness melting away. “I was only five when I reached Silver. The youngest ever, I think. And now I’m seven, okay? So I’m not a little fraidy-cat anymore. But it made me so happy that you were here, House. You made me feel safe, and I don’t feel alone anymore. I just know we’re going to be best friends!”

She doesn't even talk like a seven-year-old. There was an almost menacing look to her when she called him, best friend, but there was something deeper too. Something childish and wanting, something born from the loneliness they both knew. And beyond that, there was a sharpness in her green eyes. Like she knew too much. Like she could do anything she wanted.

He wanted to protect her. He suddenly understood why people wanted to become parents. She was special. And she needed him, to keep her safe. But he got the sense she was strong enough to protect herself. She just wanted a friend. It was a different kind of safety.

But it was strange. Zachary felt... small compared to her? Even though he was a literal house, several times her size... this girl was... powerful. He didn't even fully understand, but clearly, she was far ahead of most people. Was that how she'd summoned him? Bonded his soul to the house? Was she trying to summon something else but because she'd been so capable, and maybe because of how upset she'd been that day, and the fear of the storm, she summoned a whole human being by accident?

He didn't even have a voice to ask her these questions.

“Also,” she said, wrinkling her nose again. It was surprisingly endearing. “Can you use Ingestion again? There’s a big bug in the bathroom and I really have to go!” Her face reddened and she started bouncing up and down. “I was waiting for my parents to come back so they could get it, but I don’t think I can wait anymore. Please? I’m not allowed to use magic on living things.”

BUT I’M A LIVING THING, thought Zachary, prickling as he sensed the presence of the large roach. It was humongous. Brown and with wings and bigger than even the alarmingly huge ones that sometimes flew into the apartment. He wanted to shudder. He wanted to run away screaming. He wanted to burn the whole thing down, but he couldn’t do any of that. He was the house, and the big ass roach was crawling all over him.

And the girl was looking at him with such earnestness! Her bottom lip stuck out. Her eyes were big and hopeful, and he knew he couldn’t say no to her. He focused on the crawling creature in the bathroom. It was moving across the ceiling above the toilet.

Zachary used Ingestion.