In The Hour of The Moon, On The Night of Lucifer, the Moon a Crescent:

After I had closed up and driven home I was relieved to see nothing awry upon my arrival home. Artie greeted me with an uncharacteristically languid meow and so earned her bi-daily bowl of treats. I collapsed onto the sofa with a stupid grin on my face, still pleasantly surprised by the chance meeting at the end of my shift. I looked to the workbench through the hollows of the bookshelf that served as a makeshift room divider, and took further pleasure in knowing I had made it almost through the whole ritual week.

That's when my phone started buzzing in my pocket. I checked who it was. It was Annie.

"Hey! What's up?" I answered.

A heavy silence hung on the other end.

"Hey Silvana. I... I need to ask something." Annie said.

"What?"

"Are you... up to something? Like... are you... doing something weird?"

"um... maybe? I mean, hahaha, you know me! I'm always doing something weird! Why?"

"Whatever you're doing I think you should stop." she said with terse seriousness in her voice.

"What!? Why!?"

"Because I just... I felt something really weird when I was checking out that necklace you made. Something about that image on the stone is really weird. And... and you know those things that show up in my room when I try to sleep sometimes?"

"Yeah."

"Well it happened last night and I think that shadow... whatever they are... I think it was talking about you. I looked up that name you gave to that stone, 'Scirlin'... Silvana... are you... are you trying to summon a demon?" she asked.

"Oh don't be so dramatic! Of course I am! Annie, what have I got to lose!?" I exclaimed.

There was a silence on the other end of the line. "How could you be so thoughtless about stuff like this when you know what I go through."

"Oh look Annie, this isn't the same thing at all! The demons aren't just bad nightmares or cartoon villains, and they aren't all the same."

Annie rasped with a tone of indignation in her voice."So you're just ignoring hundreds of years of people saying this is a really fucking bad idea because you read some weird books, and you think you know better!"

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

I sighed in stubborn exhaustion. "Of course, Annie. Why would I believe two thousand years of polemics from pedophiles, nazi collaborators, and slavers. Nothing in any of those books has shit on the authoritarian soul-swallowing ponzi scheme that is Christianity! Besides, what else am I supposed to do? Wait for the bank to tear me away from you and the last things I care about the same way Dad was torn away!?"

There was another moment of silence on the other end. "I didn't know you felt this way about it."

"Look, I'm sorry Annie. Just trust me. I can take care of myself."

"If you had seen the things that I have then you'd know that you can't." She said.

"Well, I'm well past the point of no return, so just with me good luck and have a good night, okay Annie?"

I heard Annie whimper as she cracked her goodbye. "G-goodnight Silvana."

I hung up and slumped over the couch. I regretted how I had spoken to Annie. Maybe there was truth to her cautions. Even the old grimoires themselves say you have to always keep your wits about you when you deal with these things, but I was surely too far to look back now. I had to Orpheus this shit.

I decided I needed to unwind and drill the bad vibes out of my skull.

I loaded the octobong, a waterpipe I'd bought a few years ago with an elaborate blue-ringed octopus sculpted onto the base, with water and chunks of ice from the freezer. I retreated back to the couch and packed the bowl with some Hyksos OG, a cross between the sativa Tutankhamun and indica Kosher Kush, and lit it up. My lungs filled with the bold smoke that tasted like a mixture of jasmine and chocolate, and melted into the couch.

My whole body tingled and I felt like I was floating. Ideas and images flooded in the particles of dancing rorschach hieroglyphs behind my eyelids. I massaged my stomach and felt my warm skin, my hands wandering to my breasts and my inner thighs. I took a deep breath and began to touch myself lovingly.

I slipped my fingers beneath my jeans and panties and pressed down to tease and graze at the skin around my clit, squeezing my breasts. I started to think about Grant, about his nimble body pressing against mine and pulling me towards him. As I thought of his face a kind of forlorn sadness came over me, like it was too hard to pleasure myself knowing I would never feel his touch.

Instead, my imagination began to move to my new acquaintance. I felt Eli hovering above me, his green eyes, his stoic self-discipline focused on the exploration and conquest of my body. I began to grind my clit in spirals of ecstasy as he pressed himself down and entered me, slowly penetrating deep into me and languidly withdrawing, like the battering and receding of the tide. I imagined his palms weighing down on my flesh, gripping my waist like I was something to be studied in detail and exhausted once all pleasure and carnal experience had been extracted. I became wet and with heavy rubbing a deep pleasure began to rise in me.

I pushed further, imagining Eli pinning me down on the ground and smothering me beneath his chest. I reached down my left hand and shoved my middle and index finger into my pussy and groped the roof of my g-spot like teasing the trigger of a gun. I felt Eli's pelvis hammer into me, beating me down and liquefying me in a puddle of passion. I grabbed hold of his shoulder blades and pulled him close. As I came, I looked straight into his eyes, and there was no longer the aloof dispassion of the man I had met that day, but a determined intensity that burned orange like the coals of the bonfire.

"F-Frimost!" I moaned as I began to cum, my infernal lover unphased, only intensifying his lust, thrusting harder, deeper, and faster, pounding my insides in pure uncompromising desire. With every thrust he drove me down deeper and deeper into the crevasses of the pillows beneath me, smothering my quivering body in heat and darkness.

"Frimost" I murmured longingly, splayed out over a sweaty lake of flame.