Young Writers Society

Okay, so it had started with red wine, then she’d run out of red wine and gone to vodka, vodka and orange squash and cranberry squash, because she was a goddamn alchemist, and then she’d ran out of that and gone to gin, stupid bastard gin. Max liked gin. Max would like gin, because bastards love bastards and he was a bastard, a big one.

She drank the gin from the bottle. Then she threw it at the wall. The shatter was firework loud, and she laughed at it.

She cried at it. Idiot. Idiot. She shouldn’t have done that. That was white paint. It was a special white paint. It was Egyptian Cotton white, from Dulux. The tin had cost twenty pounds. She was stupid. She’d have to paint it again and she was stupid.

Her feet strained for the floor. Clean it up. Rub-a-dub-dub. They were clumsy, so clumsy, so she pushed herself off the sofa with the heels of her hands, like a gazelle, like a bird shooting into flight. Grace. Her name was Grace and she had grace.

Suddenly she could taste the carpet in her mouth. Her teeth ached.

Max was going to pay for this.

*

The demon was knitting when the summoning began, warm from the fire, the cat pressed close to his chest. The incantation plucked at his heart, like fingernails on violin strings, and he stared at the wool until his eyes blurred. If he focused hard enough…

The pluck came sharper, firmer. He sighed, squeezing the bridge of his nose, and lifted the cat off his chest. She mewled indignantly.

“Yes, yes, you may well whine,” he muttered, setting her down.

He scooped his tea up off the coffee table and downed it, then readjusted his knitting needles. The plucking picked up the pace, twanging through his chest. It was a gappy, disjointed rhythm, as if the fingers had been stiffened by cold. If he was swift enough, he might just get this row of stitches finished before-

He crashed slantwise into the room, leather slamming into his face. A sofa. Pain tweaked up his knees as he straightened – god, he was too old for this – and peered at his surroundings. A small, messy lounge, crumbs down the cracks in the sofa, cobwebs flapping from the ceiling. He could smell something like…

“Yo,” a voice said.

He turned. A woman sprawled on the carpet below him, her face a watercolour blotch of makeup. Next to her lay an empty porcelain bowl, crusted with dried soup and scattered with half-glowing runes. Her eyes shone like plastic.

The demon closed his eyes for a moment. “You summoned me?”

“Mm, you betcha,” she mumbled, wriggling around. “I want you to kill someone.”

The demon raised his eyebrows. He glanced around, spying the empty bottles on the coffee table, the shattered glass, the dark spatter of gin on the wall.

“I see,” he said.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, propping herself up on an elbow. “He’s a b-bastard. He’s a gin bastard. He likes gin and he’s a bastard.”

“Naturally,” the demon said. “I’m afraid I cannot help you, summoner.”

The woman stared. “Why?”

“Well, you see, I have a small suspicion that you are intoxicated. Rule one of the crossroad code states that demon deals may only be agreed with the sound of mind.”

“Bluh,” the woman said. “I p-piss on sound mind. You can have my soul.”

“You'll find I can't, summoner. May I ask you to empty your calling dish?”

“May you ask to shut the shit up?” the woman slurred, pointing at him. “You’re going to kill him. I’ll give you my soul. You can have my first born too. Bargain. Demons like that shit.”

He’d been pulled away from his knitting for this. “A first born is a faerie preference, summoner.”

“Same bastard difference,” she said, letting her head flop back.

“Nevertheless, I will have to decline.”

“You can’t,” she wailed, and then she was sobbing, kicking at the air like something drowning. “He fucked Stacy. He said all the shit and he said love and love and love and then he fucked Stacy.”

She sobbed, her face slick with tears. Her words smeared together like melted wax, then a jerk shook her body and vomit jetted from her mouth, slopping down her chin. She rolled onto her side, whimpering, and fell limp. Soft, vomit-clogged breathing filled the silence.

The demon eyed her. In the corner of his eye, the glow seeped from the runes, and with it the grip on his chest unravelled. He stepped backwards. Home was waiting. His knitting was waiting.

He didn’t move.

The glass crunched under his slippers as he stepped out of the room, then crunched again when he came back, sopping J-cloths in hand. He knelt next to the woman, wrinkling his nose. The smell was fumes and vomit.

He dabbed her mouth with the first cloth, wiping the sick away. With the second, he sponged the make-up off. Her face looked younger without it, softer, like the surface of a peach.

She was heavy in his arms when he lifted her, the extra weight settling as an ache into his knees. He tipped her onto the mattress, then sculpted her onto her side. Her hair spilt over her face, pale as milk. He looked at it for a moment, then brushed it behind her ear.

He clicked his fingers, and the weave of his own rug grew up around the soles of his slippers, the fire roaring hot and sudden against his legs. He collapsed into the armchair. The knitting lay across the arm.

He really was getting too old for all this.