I rushed over to the kiln, my internal monologue screaming Crap crap crapcrapcrap! It was sizzling. It smelled terrible. I pulled the mug out, spilling blood everywhere. I hurried over to the sink, leaving a trail of blood in my wake, and dumped the mug in. It landed on its side, thankfully not smashing even though it hit the metal basin hard enough to make me wince. It continued to pour and pour blood, endless blood, almost as fast as the plug hole could drain it out. Why this? Why couldn’t it have been a nice ineffectual ghost like last time? The thought felt more like frustration than terror. Honestly, my panic was more about how I would explain all these bloodstains to the police, or worse - to my mum - than it was about the mortal terror of infinite blood spewing in, presumably from some crimson plane of Hell.
With the tongs, I managed to get the mug upright again, and it stopped spilling out. It quickly filled to the brim, then stopped. Okay, at least it had some kind of equilibrium and wasn’t just going to spill forever. It didn’t really surprise me that much, to be in possession of a mug of infinite blood, once the initial shock of finding it was over. I had briefly convinced myself that accidental demon summoning was a one in a billion chance that surely wouldn’t happen again in the same workshop, but I think I always knew deep down that it would. I sighed in simple acceptance and set to work trying to mop up all the blood before it dried, though it was already too seeped into the wooden workbench to erase completely.
“Do you have a fear of blood?” asked Kazzifrezz from his place on a nearby shelf. “Ooh I hope this fuels some nice nightmares.”
“Oh shush you,” I told him. He seemed even less intimidating now than back when he first breached his way into this reality - less Kazzifrezz the Vile and more Kazzifrezz the Needy Little Scamp. He had been particularly talkative the last few days, repeatedly asking how many people had listened to the podcast.
“Although,” I admitted, “While I’m not going to have a nightmare about blood itself, I might well have one about the police showing up and having to awkwardly explain this whole thing.”
“Hmm, that will suffice. Nightmares about social situations have an unpleasant aftertaste, but better than that stupid happy dream you had where the man from the post office put his-”
“Now, now! Enough of that!”
Kazzifrezz still had a lot to learn about human boundaries, but by then I was used to it enough not to blush every time he said something inappropriate. I looked around at the stains on the workbench.
“I don’t suppose you have cleaning powers as well as dream-eating powers, do you?”
He did not. I managed to get the worst of it cleared up, but that worktop remained a problem. There was still the mug itself too, which was currently just sitting there with its endless blood supply ready to spill at any moment.
I imagined myself making a call and saying, “Hello, is that the blood bank? I have a mug of infinite blood! What blood type? Oh, I don’t know, it’s summoned straight from a river of blood in Hell or something. Hello? Oh, you hung up? Okay.”
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“What are you talking about?” said Kazzifrezz.
“Oh, nothing. Just muttering to myself…”
He scowled at me. I stuck my tongue out, and he growled and huffed, and seemed to shrink in size, folding his little smoky arms.
“You’re a demon, right?” I asked. He grunted.
“Do you know anything about mugs of infinite blood?”
“Rude of you to assume! Hell is a very big place! Do you know anything about Tibetan weaving?”
“Fair point. But, you think it is Hell, though?”
“Well I do know that there are a lot of rivers of blood in Hell. Never heard of a mug of blood though. Most demons would drink straight from the source while it still lives or at least out of a freshly harvested human skull, not a silly little mug.”
“Maybe it has a portal in it. Did you come through a portal?”
“No. I just appeared here.”
“Oh.”
Well that was a useless conversation. Most with Kazzifrezz were. I decided to do my own tests, since he couldn’t help.
It seemed that as long as the blood mug remained perfectly stationary, it was safe. It filled to barely a millimetre shy of the brim then stopped. The second any spilled, it would continue to fill again to that level. It must have been some kind of inter-dimensional equilibrium. I was still going on the assumption that it was a portal in there. Would a portal even be visible anyway? If I stuck a finger in, not that I was considering it, would it immediately get torn apart by blood demons or get chopped off or something? Not a risk I was willing to take.
Instead, I tried pushing a stick from the garden in. It took several angles and approaches before I found a spot where it would go deeper in than the base of the mug should allow. That probably confirmed the portal then. The brief joy of being right in my theory was cut immediately short by the realisation that there was literally a portal to another world and I had no idea how to close it. That new horror was brief though, as nightmare demons seemed to be able to enter this world via my workshop anyway, so an extra portal probably didn’t make much difference. It was still unsettling to have such a tangible bridge between worlds though, even if it was only wide enough to put a little twig through.
I did some measurements, such as tipping out a little blood and measuring the time it took to refill, but really that was only to have something to talk about on the podcast, not because I thought there would be any value in obtaining useless numerical figures to describe the impossible portal in my mug. My initial fear and discomfort continued to dissipate over the day. It was just a mug of infinite blood, nothing to worry about. I repeated to myself the same thought that had helped me approach Kazz: if it was going to hurt me, it would have done so already.
I didn’t have all that much to say about the mug, not the full hour’s worth anyway, so I brought Kazz in for the next episode of the podcast too. Most of the time was spent talking about everything I covered above in more detail than could actually be considered interesting. After my monologue, Kazz and I argued back and forth about the logistics and implications of a small mug-sized portal and failed to get any clearer answers. We ended up with around fifty listens that time - half as good as episode one, but still in excess of my expectations. Kazz seemed unable to understand that it was probably fifty of the same people, not fifty new people, but I let him believe it. He was very proud to have reached one hundred and fifty minds with his demonic corruption. I also didn’t tell him quite how much of his “nightmare chant” I had edited out before uploading. He was calmer and happier when I told a few white lies about the reach of his nightmarish voice.