“I warn you, if you bore me, I shall take my revenge.”
One minute, Xernox was at home in the bowels of the underworld, taking in the scent of the brimstone candle his mother had sent for his birthday. The next he was coughing up toilet water in a cramped bathroom stall.
“FUCK,” he spat. He choked and sputtered, rubbed his eyes, and when his vision cleared he found himself staring at a young human–a girl? He could never tell human genders–staring back at him with big, round eyes. She was kneeling at the toilet, an old book in her hands.
“You can’t say that here,” she said in a hushed tone. “This is a middle school.”
“Sorry,” Xernox muttered as he gripped the toilet seat with all four of his arms and pulled himself out, two red spindly legs stretching out and dripping water all over the stall. Next he pulled his wings free, loosing them from their washroom prison with a satisfying pop.
The girl backed up, but she did not stand or even attempt to leave the stall.
Xernox looked around at the walls, covered in what he thought was standard middle school graffiti. On closer inspection, he saw runes of the Old World, scribbled in sloppy Sharpie.
“You really couldn’t have found a better place to do this?” he asked. “Like the janitor’s closet? Classroom sink? A friend’s house?”
She flinched at the last example, so Xernox dropped it. “You flushed first at least, right?” The girl nodded. “Alright. Well, you called me here, kid, so what is it? School bullies? Parents too hard on ya? Got a teacher I need to take out?”
She held up her hands and shook her head furiously. “No, no, please don’t hurt anybody.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I just…didn’t want to eat lunch alone.”
It was then that Xernox noticed the girl was carrying her entire life with her–messenger bag covered in pins, cartoon character lunch box, and a heavy sweater tied around her waist (the edges now drenched in toilet water). She was leaking from her eyes, or maybe that was stray toilet water too.
“Fine,” he said, crossing both sets of arms. “A summoning like this requires something in return, but if it’s just lunch, I’ll settle for half your sandwich.”
The girl lit up and jumped to open her lunchbox and set up the toilet picnic.
“But if it’s a bad sandwich, I reserve the right to take your soul, you got that?”
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