Lightning without Thunder

Two of swords

I stare at the demon in front of me.

"I, I didn't mean to kill him." I stammer, tears welling up in my eyes. "He grabbed the gun, and it went off, and I didn't mean to."

The devil laughs. "Please. Save your excuses for the police. Or for the court."

I tilt my head. "Are you enjoying yourself?"

He grins. "What can I say? I just love my job."

I cross my arms. "Why are you here, Mephistopheles? The video stated that you can only appear if summoned by someone."

He shakes his head. "Don't believe everything you see on the internet, Marissa. I also appear to people once both parties have fulfilled their part of the agreement. That being said, I was indeed summoned."

I frown. "By who?"

"Poor mister Miller here," he says, pointing to the corpse, "was so desperate to save his sister that he was willing to make a deal with me."

"Wait," I respond. "He made a deal with you?"

Mephistopheles leans backward. "Nope. You interrupted us as we were negotiating. I'm not sure we would have reached an agreement, though. He did not want to accept that the terms were non-negotiable. Business owners have the annoying habit of thinking they can always negotiate a better deal."

I shrug. "Yeah, I guess never being told no or having to play by someone else's rules makes them cocky like that."

Mephistopheles laughs again. "Maybe. Or maybe they are smart enough to not just blindly accept a bad deal. That being said, I am glad I get to chance to talk to you again instead. You are way more fun."

I frown. "What do you mean by that?"

He snickers. "Remember the day we met?"

I shrug. I remember it as if it was yesterday.

I hid in my closet. My mother was having a bad day; she was yelling and throwing bottles. I was cowering there, hoping she wouldn't find me and smash me in the face with another broken bottle.

She was walking around the apartment, stomping and yelling. Yelling that I was nothing and that if she killed me then and there, nobody would miss me. Yelling that nobody would even notice that I was gone.

I put on my head phones, and I scrolled through TikTok, hoping to distract myself from the yelling. And one video caught my eye. A short titled "How to summon a demon."

I normally would have scrolled right past it, but at that moment, I was desperate. Desperate for anything that would save me from my predicament.

The short video made it seem very easy. Step one: go to the graveyard and steal some human ashes. Preferably ashes that are very old. Step two: poor them into an intricate pattern, as shown. Step three: clap three times.

It appeared to be very simple, so I decided to try it. That night, I went to a nearby cemetery and stole an urn. I used the ashes to pour the pattern described in the video.

To my surprise, Mephistopheles appeared in a puff of smoke.

"Hello, mortal," he said. "What do you desire?"

I looked up at him, amazed. "How," I stammer. "How did it work?"

He rolled his eyes. "Typically, mortals. I write instructions for summoning me on random book pages and in random texts, and they follow them exactly, only to be surprised when it works. If you didn't expect it to work, why did you try?"

"I didn't find it on a book page," I said. "I saw it in a TikTok video."

He shruged. "A demon has to evolve with the times. Nobody has summoned me in over 200 years. Books no longer do it for people. I needed to change tactics."