I Need To Exchange My Demon, Please

Chapter 2: Desperate

Mila dragged the knife across her finger, letting the blood fall onto the white candles. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, opening them so she could read the summoning words once more. If that stupid demon wouldn't kill her, she'd just summon another one. She didn't have time to waste trying to track him down or convince him to do something she thought would be pretty simple.

After saying the words three times, her light flickered just like it had hours before. She may have been drunk, and still was, when she became frantic enough to summon a demon, but she remembered the summoning vividly. After spending months working nonstop and still never making enough money, she was desperate enough to go back to the superstitions she grew up on and go online to look up summoning spells for demons. Several failed attempts later, she got frustrated and broke just about every goddamn thing she could find in her apartment. After collapsing on the ground, hopeless, frustrated, and on the verge of tears, she almost gave up until she glanced up at the one part of her apartment she wouldn't touch because it meant too much.

Her closet. Her closet that had a cardboard box packed away in the back.

That cardboard box held possessions of her mother's. Possessions Mila kept at the back of the closet because it hurt too much to see them but she couldn't let them go. Desperation got her willing to go through her mother's things and find the old, leather book her mother kept locked up in an intricately carved, wooden box. Mila hesitated when she saw a lock on it that had no key and she couldn't get open, but with alcohol affecting her judgment and desperation on her mind, she smashed open that beautiful box holding the book, then spent the next several hours crying that she broke anything of her mother's. It was necessary, but not painless.

Inside that box, she found a book with all kinds of things that made her mother sound insane. Her mother passed away from dementia years before and everyone assumed her babbling about demons wasn't real. Mila agreed those babbles seemed unlikely but after finishing a bottle of whiskey and opening another, after soaking her feet that were bleeding from all her hours of hard work on her feet, after looking into Stella's eyes and telling her she still didn't have the money, she was desperate enough to wonder if all those years of her mother being superstitious had some merit. As far as Mila knew, the dementia that took her mother only started affecting her later in life, but her mother had always spoke of demons and always insisted they attend church because of it.

The book her mother had locked up was more a journal, where her mother documented every time something odd happened that she truly believed could've only come from otherworldly beings- demons and angels. Mila ate up those superstitions as a child but fell away from them as an adult. Apparently a combination of fear, missing her mother, and drinking, all left her going back to those superstitions and looking through several failed spells online until smashing open that box was her only option. Once she got past the pain of breaking her mother's box, she read through her mother's journal, finding a ritual that would summon a demon.

That ritual was the one that worked. If Mila wasn't in such a hurry, she might've read the rest of that journal with fresh eyes and an open mind, a lot more willing to hear what her mother had to say about the matter. Unfortunately, time was not something she had the luxury of and so after her first summoning that included a demon unwilling to kill, she was back at it again, hoping she'd get a more accommodating demon the second time around.

Mila finished saying the words, saw the lights flicker and waited for someone to appear, but something different happened. The entire room seemed to fill with fire and she screamed as it surrounded her. The silhouette of a tall person with long hair and attractive curves stepped through the fire, her features not visible until the flames suddenly died out and all that was left was a woman with black hair, black eyes, tight clothes, black curved horns, and an intensity that left Mila staring at her with wide eyes.