Making The List

A quivering, steaming, wrinkled naked body squirmed on the floor. The air was sprinkled in the smell of sulfur and ginger.

Marlowe picked himself up. The blast had knocked him backward into an old shelf full of knick-knacks. The kind one can seemingly always find in a basement. An unstrung tennis racket. A desperately aged edition of Monopoly. A coffee decanter with a crack down the length. A box of assorted Christmas decorations hastily labeled 'X-mas stuff'.

A cursory check of his limbs and a quick dust off assured Marlowe that he was uninjured. His Slayer shirt was torn, but he wasn't sure if it was anymore torn than it was before the ritual.

The ritual. "Holy shit!", he thought, "It worked!".

He parted his long greasy hair out of his face and stepped towards the center of the basement floor. Where once was a poorly chalked pentagram, now, to his surprise, a naked old man.

"That doesn't look like the devil.", Marlowe thought.

Marlowe glanced around the room until his eyes locked on an old bamboo fishing pole. While its days of angling were long since passed, it made an ideal poking stick.

"Hey! What kind of demon are you? Are you even alive?"

He gave a few good thrusts into the fatty tissue of the man's posterior.

"Hey! Are you Satan, or what?"

The old man began to rouse. He propped himself up on his hands and elbows and stared widely at his surroundings. His thick white beard hung from a gaping mouth, that reflected the shock in his coal black eyes. A hollow and ancient voice crept out, "Where...where am I?"

Marlowe stood silent for a moment. His mouth opened and closed few times, but words didn't follow. He gazed at the results of his ritual. A ritual that had taken hours to plan, research, and Google. His posture changed from a slouch to a proud and straight stance.

His pointed finger wafted upward, "You're in my basement, demon. I summoned you to do my bidding!" The confidence in Marlowe's voice hadn't been that pronounced since he uttered his second place victory speech at the Des Moines, Iowa Magic The Gathering championships in 2010. One of his greatest moments, he mused, up until now.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Your what?" Croaked the old figure, who had taken notice of his lack of clothing. "Where are my clothes, young man? Where's my hat? What have you done?"

Marlowe wasn't expecting this kind of back talk. He assumed the demon would know the routine. "Well, I...uh." he stammered. "Do demons even have clothes?", he thought.

Marlowe reassumed his proud stance.

"I didn't know demons wore clothes.", he said, with a bit less confidence than Des Moines, but still enough that it would have secured him a solid C in his public speaking class.

The old man's coal black eyes were suddenly altered by the appearance of a thick white brow, angrily pressing down upon them. His hand pressed against the side of his nose, and a blast of what Marlowe was sure was gold glitter, shot out and twirled around the body of the old man.

Just as quickly as the golden cloud appeared, it just as hastily shot straight back up the man's nostril. The man had gone from prone and naked to standing and clothed with one stout, glittery exhale

.

Marlowe stumbled back. Before him stood an intimidatingly large fellow, dressed in a red velvet suit, long red cap, and black leather boots. Marlowe wondered why he was looking at Santa Claus.

"Why do you look like Santa Claus?". The sound of Marlowe's voice was a gentle mix of stupidity and genuine curiosity.

"Marlowe Goethe, you have been a very naughty boy!"

Santa's voice reminded him of his grandfather's voice when Marlowe was young and spilled paint on the carpet. It had that familiar old, yet really pissed off quality.

"I summoned you to do my bidding, though. You're supposed to be a demon. My demon. You're supposed to be the devil!", Marlowe barked, bewildered by the continuing strange turn of events.

He was pretty sure he followed the directions correctly. The cool guys on /r/summonsatan even gave him fantastic pointers on how to use corn syrup instead of blood for the ritual. "Just dye it red!", one comment said. "It's basically the same thing." He didn't have any real blood.

Santa took a step forward and said, "I'm not a demon, and I don't do the bidding of adolescent miscreants who try to summon dark spirits!" His voice seemed much darker and scarier than Marlowe's grandfather's, now. There was a deep and primal growl that seemed to accompany the words.

Marlowe parted his greasy hair, "So you're not gonna make a deal with me?"

"I don't do that." Santa's coal black eyes reflected the light of the single candle left burning from the ritual. The fire seemed to dance wickedly in their emptiness.

"So, you're not gonna teach me to play guitar?" Marlowe whimpered.

"I don't do that." Santa took a step closer to Marlowe. He seemed to swell with each step.

Marlowe backed himself into the shelf of odds and ends. "So, you're not gonna get me a girlfriend?", his voiced cracked. There were no traces of Des Moines.

Santa's immensity loomed over Marlowe. He was bent and twisted in the small basement. His shoulders pressed into the rafters, but his head and beard were perched perfectly in front of the boy. The shadows seemed to swirl out from their corners, no longer bound by the reality that held them in place.

"I don't do that!"

Marlowe slid to the floor. His arms moved up to shield himself from this unjolly horror. "Please...don't hurt me."

The skin on Santa's face began to squirm and writhe. The corners of his mouth slowly stretched from one pointy ear to the other, exposing rows of uneven jagged yellowed teeth. A deep growl bubbled up from the depths of Santa's gullet.

"Oh. I will do that."

Marlowe closed his eyes and squeaked, "I didn't think Santa hurt people."

A cold whisper slithered into his ear, "Who said I was Santa?"