The words spoken by the demon were different this time. This was not a request, nor a statement. This was a command. These were the words of an incomprehensible being, a being who could order the earth to shake, the sky to collapse, and mountains to kneel. When faced with the unrelenting force of their words, I had no way to resist. Completely unbidden, my own dull, meaningless life was played like a movie reel in my mind.
The family I had run away from, my mother’s hands on my throat, the feel of my father’s fist against the side of my head.
Thump.
The people I had called my friends, the people I thought cared about me, loved me like their own family, who hadn’t even responded to the damn text I sent out, letting everyone know I was okay. The realization that they didn’t actually give a shit about me, leading me to throwing my phone away, now completely useless, as I apparently had no one who actually wanted to use it to contact me.
Thump.
The wife who had left me, the woman I had thought I would spend the rest of my life with. The one person who was supposed to always care, always want me to be with her.
Thump.
My insignificant job, and coming home to spend all of my time looking up random things that catch my curiosity online, and reading books or watching tv in a vain hope to escape the chains of my own existence.
THUMP.
I felt my heart start beating in overdrive, a feeling of weightlessness engulfing me, as though falling into an endless oblivion. I felt my eyes trembling at the sheer force of what I was experiencing, creating an illusion that the world was tumbling over itself beneath my feet.
THUMP.
No, what I was feeling was not weightlessness, in fact, it was the opposite. It wasn’t oblivion, and I wasn’t falling. I had a chain wrapped around my ankle, dragging me deeper and deeper into an ocean. The weight of thousands of pounds of water above my head was crushing me, as I was surrounded by the pressure of my own insignificance. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe in, I couldn’t hear. The pressure mounted higher, and higher, as I sank deeper, and deeper. My body couldn’t take the force any more, as the last remaining hint of life from within me escaped as I exhaled my answer, the words bubbling up and out like a dying scream into an eternal, abyssal void.
“I want…. I want to be free. I want adventure, to go places no one has ever even conceived before. I want a fresh start, a new life somewhere far away, where I can explore everything that catches my eye, where I don’t have to follow social customs I don’t even fucking understand, and I can live day to day just doing whatever I feel like. I want to be powerful. Powerful enough to take advantage of every single opportunity I find on my explorations.”
By this point, I couldn’t stop the words from escaping. I couldn’t stop the life within me from bubbling out, leaving me cold…breathless…lost. The words, my life, my deepest desires, buried so intensely that I hadn’t even realized they were there, hadn’t realized just how significant they were were flowing out of me. It was as though no matter how intense the pressure of the ocean engulfing me became, the pressure within myself, the pressure of my own existence made it seem insignificant by comparison. The words were flowing, no, wait, not flowing. They were roaring out of me like water from a dam. The pressure of existence forcing every drop of desire out of my very soul, squeezing it, wringing it out like a dirty, used up rag, until eventually, I would have nothing left to give.
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“I want to be loved, I want to meet someone who will actually stick around, not just because I provide something for them, but because they just fucking enjoy my company. I want to mean something to someone, so that whenever I do happen to die, whether in a mundane car accident or by pissing off a huge sentient pillar of fire, at least I know just one person will miss me when I’m gone. I also want to do magic because I’m a huge dork and accept that about myself and who the fuck wouldn’t wanna do magic if they found out it existed!?”
With that last sentence undermining the serious vibe I had going on, I collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. At first I thought it was due to whatever spell the demon had placed me under, or maybe just my own emotional overload, but no. I realized that I had given that entire spiel in one breath and was quite in danger of asphyxiation. So much so in fact, that black spots covered my vision, distorting the flaming figure of the demon. Black spots that expanded, consuming everything, my very consciousness. The last thing I heard before falling unconscious was a voice. Different from the odd crackling flame I had expected to hear, a woman’s voice. Soft, and infused with some odd emotion I couldn’t place.
“Very well then, Child of Man.”
Sophia’s POV
I watched as the human male drifted off into sleep. The spell I had used wasn’t one all that impressive. All that I had done was lightly stoke the deepest inherent desires of a person, causing no more than a ripple. Yet the effect it had had on him was far more pronounced. He had become almost desperate in his attempt to express his various desires. It was as though he had spent his entire life simply surviving day to day, bottling up and suppressing all other forms of desire or wants, until my one simple prodding, my one question, had sent him over the edge, and he finally received this chance to explode.
His desires themselves were rather odd however. The request for power was normal enough, but he hadn’t really cared about the power itself. Only the inherent freedom and ability to explore that power provided. Normally when I am summoned, the summoner has some form of grand plan, and I am no more than a tool to be used, a means to an end. They use me, and in turn, I use them. My relations with others, due to certain problematic racial tendencies, tend to work in this same manner. The people in my life and I generally only interact out of a sense of mutual self interest. I help them, and they help me. I receive demands of fame, of conquest and glory, and of authority. Even amongst demons, I am relatively powerful, and the people who generally contact me wish to use this power of mine to turn themselves into prominent world figures. This child however… This man didn’t care to be important to the world. He simply desired to be important to someone. Anyone. For someone to look at him as though he had inherent value.
Thump.
I could feel his wish resonating with myself, settling down somewhere in my own soul. The desperate dream to be wanted, to not be alone. To have someone around you who genuinely cared, not simply because you were useful, but purely just to have you there. To feel…connection.
Thump
I thought of the scenes of his life. I didn’t see them as clearly as he could, but the fluctuations of his soul had given me a general overview as to the tone of it.
Isolation.
Abandonment
.
Despair.
All the while, trudging along as though nothing bothered him. As though his suffering were just the punch line to a joke the world was telling. Unseen, unnoticed, unimportant.
I also saw something that very few had ever seemed to notice. I saw just how close this boy, this man was to completely shattering. To succumbing to the sheer weight of his own insignificance and completely losing the last remaining thread of what made him ‘him’.
I thought of how the first thing this human had done, despite being granted the opportunity to escape his miserable existence, was to offer me a drink. To extend goodwill and hospitality to this powerful and incomprehensible being before him. To not treat her like a superior existence to be worshiped, or a tool to be used. To treat her like a person to accept.
THUMP.
I bit my lip, and did something I hoped I wouldn’t come to regret. I took this fragile human’s desires, and composed them into a contract. I then took the droplet of blood he used in his summoning ritual, and used that to sign for him. I looked at him once more as I whispered,
“The contract is now written.”