Chapter Text
You smack your palms onto your keyboard, watching with a furrowed brow as the jumble of letters and symbols fills the screen. It’s more words than you’ve been writing anyway, ‘progress is progress ’, you think to yourself, half-joking.
Looking away from the brightness of your monitor, you check the time to see that it’s way past midnight, and you wonder out loud what the hell you were doing for 3 hours, considering that none of that, as you recall, was spent writing.
Flumping onto your bed, a hard corner digs into your side. “Ouch!” you say, letting out a litany of curse words accompanying it. Pulling it out, you see that it's a wrapped something.
‘ Oh right. It was my birthday. ’
Your close friend, Caroline, had given it to you with a wink. She always had a weird vibe to her, but the two of you have been through thick and thin, coming out inseparable.
Slowly you unwrap the thin wrapping paper, revealing…
A spirit board?
You knew what these things were, saw that movie, played it with your friend after-school with the curtains drawn and candles lit. It never held much reality or power in your eyes.
But now those eyes were lacking some 18 hours of sleep, and in your sleepless state, you think ‘ hey, maybe the demons aren’t so bad, right? ’
Laying down the lacquered planchette on the wooden board, you hope the dim light of your laptop will suffice as a replacement for candles. In a last hail-mary, you ask aloud if there are any demons who would help with your writing. You stifle a mad laugh, ‘what am I even doing?’ you lament to yourself.
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Deep, deep down, where fires burn eternal and the smell of brimstone and ash floats through the still air, a small, unassuming landline rings. It rings and rings, echoing into the darkness, when a gaggle of barrel-chested demons come stomping in, clad in business attire , their scarlet eyes burn red and horns tall and pointy. With a burly, clawed hand one of them picks up the phone as his companions crowd around trying to listen.
“Are there any spirits who will help me write?” a voice asks.
“What the-” A demon asks. His name tag reads ‘Balroth’, “That’s not what they usually ask.”
“Hmm...” the one holding the phone ponders. His name tag reads ‘Tul’gon’ (The Most Popular Demon Baby Name of 400 AD!), “Do we indulge this human’s...odd request?”
“I don’t see why not,” Another says. His name tag reads ‘Kenneth’. “We’ve got time to kill, being stuck here for eternity.”
“Fair point,” Balroth says. He presses a button flashing red on the phone, and suddenly a small tear appears into existence, looking down into a darkened room illuminated by a dim light. The demons jump through, their incorporeal forms wafting in and around the hunched human figure. They float towards the light, the blinking of a computer cursor staring back into their invisible eyes.
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As you look around your messy study, hoping for something to happen in a deranged stupor, it might be your eyes finally shutting down, but you see the scroll bar on your monitor inch it’s way to the top of the document. Slowly, it inches down, and up, and down again, as if multiple people were reading through the same document together.
After a while, a sudden ‘skrrt!’, you swivel your head back to the spirit board, where the planchette is inching itself across the painted letters. Rubbing the sand out of your eyes, you watch with your mouth agape as it spells out;
R…O…M…A…N...C...E…?
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“Oh, the human is nodding,” Tul’gon says as he re-materializes into Hell, “Don’t we know a guy who’s into that?”
“Yeah we do,” Balroth replies. He turns towards a section of the void. “OI BORIS!” he bellows, his roar bouncing off the volcanic walls, “WE GOT SOMETHING FOR YOU!”
Silence. And then, a dull thud. And another. Rhythmic pounding shakes the cavernous walls until a hulking, barrel-chested demon materializes out of the void. He looks around, confused, and spots Balroth and the rest surrounding the phone and portal.
“Uh...what’s up guys?” he asks, his voice booming and rolling like thunder.
“Hey, you like romantic stuff right?” Tul’gon asks, gesturing to the portal, “We got a human down here who is in need of assistance.”
“I uh...” Boris trails off. He’s never been one to share his personal interests, much less expect them to be brought up in the workplace . He decides that he probably doesn’t want to disappoint his co-workers, though. “Okay...”
Crouching down to fit into the tear, he phases to the laptop, scanning through the written words. He is suddenly transported into a world of intrigue, love, and emotional depth, something he’s never experienced in the millenia he’s been down there. Scrolling to the bottom of the page, his clawed hands shake as he imagines how the chapter would end, how these characters would meet and interact and form something truly beautiful.
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A few minutes pass by until the planchette moves again. You look over and see it rapidly going across the letters of the board. “Wait hold on!” you say into the darkness, “Slow down!” you say, rushing to grab a notepad and pen. When you return, you find the planchette staying still on the board, wavering slightly as if someone were holding onto it, watching, waiting.
You settle next to the spirit board, notepad in hand. “Alright,” you say, “I’m ready.” You almost laugh to yourself, thinking that all of those all-nighters you pulled and redbulls you drank have finally pushed you off the deep end.
Slowing, the planchette moves to a letter, and incredulous, you write it down.
It moves again after a few seconds to the next, as if it were waiting for you to finish writing. Again, you write down the letter.
This cycle of moving and writing continues until you fall into a steady rhythm, writing the letters as they form words, form ideas, that you definitely didn’t think of.
By the time the planchette stops moving, the morning calls of birds sing through your window, and in your hand is a notebook with a conclusion and several other ideas that you could use (“F O R Y O U” the board read when you asked why it was giving you more than a conclusion to this chapter.)
Suddenly feeling the weight of exhaustion dump on you like a ton of bricks, you are quick to move the planchette to “GOODBYE” before falling into your covers. After all, you need to make sure nothing stays with you, right?
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The portal winks into nothingness as Boris steps back into the fiery pits of hell. He’s never interacted with a spirit board that much, never interacted with a human that much either, and his breath is shaky.
Watching this human write, the way they ask why or talk to the board as if it were a person, strikes a chord within Boris’ psyche (he’s not sure if he has a heart. Or if demons do, for that matter.)
But as quickly as the fluttering started, it was stomped down as reality made its way into Boris’ head.
‘It’s just a human, a mere mortal.’
‘This was probably a one-time thing anyway.’
‘ I want to see them again. ’
That last thought catches him completely by surprise, but it stic ks with him as he walks back into the churning darkness, his head in the proverbial clouds.