Devil's Trap

A little bit of self-mockery in this one - a love letter, if you will, to the teeming masses of Supernatural fans, who take things too far and leave no stone unturned.

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Devil’s Trap  

There was no one in the devil’s trap when Mike first began to recite the incantation.  Halfway through, Kat knew she’d chosen the right man for the job – Mike was top of the class in each of the foreign languages their joke of a public school had to offer, so his Latin was surprisingly good.  By the end, Kat had glanced away from the empty scribbles for just a moment to scratch her nose, and when she turned back, there was a woman standing in the middle of the circle, trapped.

The demon crossed her arms over her ample chest and leveled her gaze at Mike, first, since he was the one holding the notebook.  “Can I help you?” she said coolly.  “I was in the middle of a business transaction, if you don’t mind.”

Mike could only stare back at the woman in reply.  The pharmacy store notebook began to quiver violently in his hands, the paper rattling in a most becoming way for setting the proper scene.

“Holy – holy shit!” Kat exclaimed.  She clapped a hand over her mouth and held the demon’s eye when she looked at her.  “You’re a demon!”

The demon tilted her head to one side and raised an eyebrow.  “Come again, darling?  You’re a little muffled, there.”

Kat removed the hand from her mouth and pointed weakly at the woman in the center of their inexpertly drawn (but, thankfully, effective) devil’s trap.  “Demon!” she squeaked.

The woman smiled, lips drawn into a taut line, and blinked.  Her eyes clouded over from enticing mahogany to a matte black, pupil, iris, and all.  “Very observant,” she noted with false enthusiasm.  “Well done.”

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!” Kat chanted, dancing giddily over to Mike’s side and clasping his arm.  He dropped the notebook full of what he’d thought was half-assed Latin in fright.  “Look at her!” Kat continued, giving his arm a shake.  “No, forget the book, we don’t need it.  Look!  Crap, Mike, look, we summoned a demon!”

“Any particular reason you brought me here?” the demon continued, her eyes flickering back to a human color.  “Or did you just plan on charging a fee to parade your little friends past while I made scary faces in the dark?”

“We just wanted to meet you,” Kat said, her voice high and airy.  “Well, one of you.  This is just incredible!”

Mike stooped to retrieve the notebook and began flipping through the pages of Kat’s scribbling.  “Can we send her back now?”

The demon raised her hands, pleading her innocence.  “Whoa, whoa, let’s not get too hasty here,” she said with a forced chuckle.

“How rude!”  Kat punched Mike in the shoulder.  “She’s our guest, dude!  We can’t just gawk at her for a couple minutes and then send her to Hell.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” the demon chimed in.  Kat was too excited to notice that her sweet tone was as fake as the breasts on her chest.

Mike faded into the background to fall into a rickety rolling chair, as Kat crept closer to the devil’s trap.  “What’s your name?” she asked, her voice hushed by awe.

“You can call me Julie,” the demon replied.

Kat’s eyes went wide, then she glanced at Mike over her shoulder.  He was nodding slowly with a bemused look on his face.  A moment later, and they were both on the floor, laughing their all too mortal asses off as the demon looked on with distaste.

“Julie, the Devil’s Handmaiden,” Mike managed to gasp.  He was only able to speak because laughter made him incapable to remembering that there was a powerful and potentially hazardous creature trapped mere feet away from him with only neon blue spray paint and some dwindling candles.  His eyes were shut tight as he clasped the book to his chest, howling with laughter.

“The terror of God-fearing men everywhere,” Kat answered.  “Julie, Lucifer’s apprentice!”

“Yes, well.”  The demon cleared her throat and stuck out a hip, striking a rather intimidating pose of utter boredom.  “We don’t always get to choose the meat suit.  Sometimes, the meat suit chooses you.  Along with all its emotional baggage and shitty nicknames.”

Kat wasn’t listening.  She was looking at Mike again.  “Hey, remember that episode of Paranormal?  It was just like this.  They called up this demon to get information about their missing mother.”  She glanced at the demon as she climbed back to her feet and shook away the last of her laughter.  “But that demon was named Moloch.”

“Favorite episode of all time, for real.  Dude, he was such a badass,” Mike agreed wholeheartedly.  Then he caught the eye of Julie the demon and immediately fell silent, quaking in fear once more.

Julie rolled her eyes.  “Dear God, not more of you people.”

“What us people?” Kat echoed, hurt.

“You…you fan people,” the demon replied.  She gave a weary sigh.  “All the time, all of a sudden, one of us is getting called up, forced to listen to you people babble incessantly about some television program no one even watches.”  She narrowed her eyes at her captors, daring them to argue.  “Just because some idiots in Hollywood happened to stumble upon just the right incantations, we’re all at the mercy of nerdy fangirls the world over.”  She snorted, most unbecoming.  “And we all thought we were already in Hell.”

Kat clenched her fists to hold back her rage.  “Hey!  Paranormal is a cult favorite with a very evenly-distributed viewership!”

“They hit number one in their time slot last season, a good number of times,” Mike offered, only to cower behind the notebook once more when Julie’s eyes went black once more and the full force of her hellish gaze fell on him.

“Well, if I’ve offended you in some way, feel free to send me back.”  Julie sounded all too excited at the prospect of the sweltering depths of the Underworld.

Mike stood and raised the notebook, preparing to deliver the death blow, as it was.  But Kat crossed to him and put a hand on the page, subtly shaking her head.  She turned back to the demon in the devil’s trap with a hellish smile of her own playing on her lips.  “I think we have something better in mind,” she said politely, grabbing the chair Mike had occupied and sliding it towards Julie.  “Have a seat.”

If they had learned nothing else from Paranormal, Kat liked to think that she, Mike, and the thousands of other loyal viewers had discovered how to properly torture and dispose of a demon.  She had knicked holy water from the Catholic church down the block in preparation for the night, along with anything silver she could find, a few knives, some rope, and whatever else she could lay hands on that might come in handy to defend herself.  Mike had arrived similarly armed, but he’d done her one better – all six seasons of Paranormal, already loaded onto his laptop.

“You’ll love the pilot,” Kat cooed to the captive demon as Mike set up the computer and turned up the sound.  “It’s probably one of the best episodes they ever shot.”

“How many seasons did you say there were?” Julie asked, trying to discreetly scratch at the paint surrounding her.

“Not enough,” Mike replied, setting the player to full screen.  “Here we go!”

The credits rolled.  Kat leaned forward and Mike settled back, both a safe distance from the devil’s trap, though they were close enough to ask questions about the netherworld whenever the fancy struck them.  Not that they didn’t doubt their beloved showrunner, but they just wanted to make sure he’d gotten everything right.  They wanted authenticity.  And what better way to find out about Hell and the supernatural beings of the world than from the mouth of a living, breathing, human-covered demon?

In her spray paint prison, the demon sprawled across the stone floor to wait out the end of her torment.  “When I get out of here,” she said, just loud enough for the pair to hear over the roar of a mythological monster on the screen, “I’m going to throttle you both and then rip your eyeballs out through your anuses.”

Because this was Hell.  And, in Hell, you did what you had to do in order to survive.  Wasn’t that what the entire third season of Paranormal had been about?