Lucas wheeled around and looked left and right, but he couldn’t see anyone.

“Try looking down.”

So he did, and to his surprise, there was a dark brown cat, perched in front of his feet. It was unbelievably fluffy, unsuited for its intense, ice-blue eyes. Wait. Then did that cat just-?

“Yes. I am talking to you.”

He stared at it, his mind blank. The cat’s mouth moved in sync with the voice.

There was a moment of silence between the two, as Lucas attempted to process the situation.

“Do all cats talk in this world then?”

The cat stretched its mouth into something resembling a smirk. It seemed quite amused at his shock.

“Mmmm… No.” It replied.

No? Then what the hell was this thing? He glanced up at the ceiling, at the glass bottles with coloured specks trapped inside. Despite their tiny size, they were able to light the entire room.

This was not his world and the logic that he had known all his life did not have to exist here. But he couldn’t bring himself to believe it.

“Magic?” He spoke softly and expected to be laughed at for such stupidity. Magic wasn’t real. Of course it wasn’t.

“Magic?” The cat’s blue eyes were drilling into Lucas, “That’s a word for it, I suppose.”

No, it wasn’t. That’s not what this was. Right? He mumbled, “Is this… real?”

The cat sighed. “Yes, very, I’m afraid.”

Lucas stared at the floor. If he stared long enough, perhaps he could shoot a laser beam from his eyes and create a hole and then he’d get out of here. But nothing of the sort happened.

“I don’t care if you believe me or not. I’m just here to offer you a deal.” The cat’s voice was razor-sharp and cut through him.

The longer he stayed here, the less he knew. Discomfort had crawled inside him, and it was multiplying like a cancerous tumour, consuming him inside out. Reality was just a word, equivalent to an empty promise.

His fist tightened, jagged nails digging into his palm. Was this pain that he felt real then? He clenched it tighter, waiting for a response from someone, something, maybe his hand would start talking and berate him for its mistreatment.

The cat continued. “I’ll get you out of here.”

Lucas instantly looked up at it, and his gaze intensified. It hopped onto the table and flicked its tail.

“You’ll become a new person, live a new life. Peace, wealth, everything.”

It was too good to be true. He knew and it was so painfully obvious. But its words were honey, soothing his scepticism and he wanted it, he needed it. Comfort was comfort, even if it was just an illusion. He listened eagerly.

The cat’s eyes glinted and it lapped up his desperation, his misery, his greed. He was perfect.

“You must make Leta trust you.”

He thought for a little while and then responded. “What if I fail?”

“Then this will be the rest of your life.” The cat gestured to the room around him.

A house that can't be unlocked from the inside and has no windows.

This was not a house, it was a prison, and he would get out of there no matter what.

He released his clenched fist, a droplet of blood landing on the floor. He gave the cat a lifeless smile. Real, unreal, this was what was happening. He moved to the table and towered over it. It was a small, soft, vulnerable thing, reminding him of the time when he fed stray cats on the street.

He offered his bleeding hand to it.

“Deal,” He said. Choice did not exist in the devil’s realm.

The cat inspected his palm and outstretched its paw to it. There was a purple glow and the wound closed as if it had not existed in the first place.

“Deal.” The cat responded.

It hopped down from the table and padded towards the front door. It briefly turned its head just before it left, examining Lucas, who was now slumped down in a chair. The door opened, and then it was gone, the sound of a lock turning in place following just after.

Almost simultaneously, the back door opened and Leta stepped through. She was clutching a few brown, paper bags, and looked surprised when she saw Lucas sitting on the chair.

“You’re surprisingly low maintenance.” She said, placing the bags down on the kitchen counter.

He watched her as she took out the contents of the bag. Next to the sink was a metal box, like a fridge, although when she opened it, the inside was impossibly dark. Gradually, the darkness dissipated, turning into a shade of pink similar to her hair colour, as she placed some vegetables and fruits inside it. She put one of the bags sideways on the counter, and Lucas saw that it contained a bread loaf inside.

She moved towards Lucas, taking the plate from the table and putting it in the sink. “Seems like you enjoyed that meal.” She blankly looked at him.

“What do you want?” He replied, with a similar, expressionless stare.

She walked up to him, standing at an uncomfortably close distance. “Just an errand.” Her voice was dripping with malice. “You see I’ve been a little busy nowadays and I just decided that I needed a hand.“ Leta made no attempt to sound genuine, staring at him as a predator does whilst stalking its prey.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He stifled the dread that rose up in his throat.

“Alright then,” he said. “What do you need me to do?”

She circled the table, like a shark. “I need you to deliver a present to someone. They’ve been of great help to me and I just thought that I should thank them.”

Leta placed a small, black box on the table. It resembled those ring boxes from jewellery stores, although Lucas had never bought one. Never needed to.

She continued. “Hold it, and it’ll pull you in the direction you need to go. Once you’re there, find their bedroom, open the box, and then immediately place what’s inside in a drawer.” She stopped behind him, her breath tickling his hair. He felt shivers run down his spine.

He lifted his head up, meeting her eyes. They were also ice-blue, although slightly greyer, and much more soulless.

“First though, we have to deal with this.” She gestured to his tattered clothing and coughed,

Ah. Lucas had forgotten how dishevelled and unsightly his appearance was. She pointed towards a room and handed him one of the brown paper bags. He stood up and walked over, opening the door to reveal a bathroom. There was a toilet to one side, a sink on the other, and a shower area behind. “Don’t take too long,” Leta said, as he closed the door behind him.

He opened the bag to reveal neatly folded clothes. Inside was a simple cream-coloured cotton linen shirt with white trousers. He stuffed them back into the bag and placed it on the ground.

He then undressed, and caught a whiff of his ruined clothes, reeling in disgust. He dumped them onto the floor and stepped into the shower area. There was no shower head, and no valve to control temperature and pressure.

Instead, warm water just began to pour down from the ceiling, directly onto him. He moved to the left and the stream followed him. So this was what magic could do.

He stood there for a little while as the heat seeped into his skin. The minor cuts that he had were fading before his eyes, and his abdomen, which had become more painful since his fall, was now pink and smooth. He wondered if he could just stay there forever.

But the healing properties of the water could not prevent the apprehension he felt, which grew stronger by the second. The butterflies in his stomach had turned into a stinging sensation, and he did not want to think.

So he didn’t, and he stood there, silent and still.

He vacantly stared at the ground as the water switched off, feeling a chill settle back into him.

He blinked a few times and shook his head. There was a way out. He had to believe in that.

The droplets on his body instantly evaporated once he stepped out of the shower area. He promptly got changed into his new clothes and placed his old ones inside the bag.

Lucas opened the door and walked into the main room. Leta was sitting at the small table on the side, reading some sort of book. She did not notice that he was finished.

“Am I delivering this now?” Lucas asked, gesturing to the black box.

She nodded and put down her book. She picked up a black cloak next to her, as well as socks and shoes that were on the floor, and handed them to him. He noticed that there was a slight pink glow on the cloak.

He put it on, as well as the socks and shoes, and he clutched the black box.

He raised the hood over his head and opened the back door. He was surprised to see that it was already nighttime, but he realised that he could not have seen the sunset trapped inside a house without windows anyways. He stepped outside and the darkness engulfed him, the door behind him slowly creaking shut.

A pink tint settled into his vision, and the landscape brightened. He could see the outlines of houses and the streets much clearer. He had to admit it, the magic here was fascinating.

A small spark of determination had been lit within him. He would learn more about magic and with it, he might even be able to forge his own way out of this place. He would make it.

The box was tugging Lucas’ hand in the direction that it wanted to go. Running was a thought, but it was squashed by the cat’s words. Make Leta trust you.

So he complied with the boxes’ demands and it pulled him left, right, another left, straight ahead. There was no one in the street and the only light source came from the windows of houses that he passed by. He had always found nighttime to be the most comforting, granting him much welcome solitude. Although, in more recent times, he had attributed it more to his bad habit of pulling all-nighters.

He probably wouldn’t be sleeping much after this, though.

The force of the box strengthened greatly, and Lucas stopped in front of a house. It was smaller than Leta’s house and was decrepit, the windows poorly boarded up. Tiny slivers of light slipped through the gaps between the boards.

He recalled what Leta told him. Open the black box, and put whatever was inside in a drawer next to their bed. He peeked through the front window and was able to make out a man, facing in his direction, which prompted him to duck underneath, out of sight.

From what he briefly saw, the man was sitting at a table in a living room area, looking down at something. He waited a little while under the window, in case the man had seen him and decided to check outside. Thankfully, he did not hear anything that indicated movement.

Lucas went around to the side and found another window, which was completely dark. With his modified vision, he could see that there was a bed and a drawer next to it. That was where he needed to go.

He went to the back of the house and located the back door. Slowly, he tried the handle. To his surprise, it turned and he sneaked in, gently closing the door behind him. The shoes that Leta had given him made no noise as he crept towards the room door that he presumed would lead to the bedroom.

The man was hunched over and he was absorbed in the sheet of paper he was holding. There were papers everywhere, piled up on his table and all over the floor next to him. Whatever he was doing, whoever he was, Lucas didn’t care.

He opened the room door and slipped inside.

He walked towards the drawer. Somehow, he hadn’t been caught, and he wasn’t about to. In and out, and that was that.

The box was shaking, signalling that it was time.

Lucas opened the drawer and slowly lifted the box cover. He expected a ring or some other piece of jewellery. Maybe even a magical artifact.

He could have never expected that what lay inside was just a rock. He refused to believe it. He held it up and inspected it, waiting for something more to happen. Maybe it would start glowing? Perhaps it was a special kind of rock, taken from the depths below, or from some extraterrestrial origin.

But nope, nothing. He sighed and put it in the drawer. Just as he was about to leave the room, he heard something.

It was a sound that no one would want to hear if they were intruding on someone’s house and it was getting closer. Footsteps. His eyes darted to the bed. Hide.

The door creaked open, and the man stood just below the frame, a colossal silhouette compared to Lucas’ body which was sandwiched between the dusty floor and the underside of the bed. He walked forward and his feet were just in front of Lucas. They were swollen, and red, the toenails were yellowed and destroyed, and sections of his foot seemed to be rotting. Lucas so desperately wished that the night vision the cloak gave him had an off switch.

To make it worse, they let off an abhorrent odour, which almost caused him to gag. The man slumped onto the bed, his weight causing it to bend violently, and crush the air out of Lucas. It was getting harder to breathe.

His lungs were beginning to burn. This was how he was going to die? Not by hunger, thirst, or some crazy person, but this?

There was absolutely no fucking way he was going to let that happen. He sucked in his chest and clawed at the floor, dragging himself little by little out from under the bed. The man had begun snoring, a deafening sound that seemed to shake the room, but at the very least, that meant he was fast asleep.

His body tightly hugged the ground, but he was nearly out. He used the leg of the bed to help, and then, finally, his chest was freed and so was the rest of him. His heart was hammering in his chest, as he stood up and left the room.

He scrambled for the back door, exited the run-down building and collapsed onto the ground, where he coughed and wheezed.

He was out. He was alive. And this would be his first stepping stone in gaining Leta's trust.