Blackout

Wretched

[adj] (of a person) in a very unhappy or unfortunate state


I was in love with my boss. Horrible, right?

Want to know what’s worse? He’s married. Want to know what I think is worse? He never casts a second glance at me. Not even a glimmer of curiosity about what it might be like to fuck me on his desk. No eyeballing my low cut top or acknowledgment of my short skirts.

I try desperately to get his attention, and when it doesn’t work I go home feeling sorry for myself. Not because he didn’t acknowledge me in any way other than in a professional manner, but that my life has gotten to the point where I’m obsessing over a married man and worrying about how I look when I’m around him.

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t in love with him, but I was definitely in something with him. I had never felt such a deep seated feeling of want. All I thought about was him.

I imagined him coming into work one day, his wife having just left him, and him finally seeking me out for comfort that only I could provide.

I was sick.

I needed to grow up and find a nice boy, and settle down, find happiness somewhere that wasn’t in the imaginary arms of my married boss. But settling down wasn’t what I wanted, and that was the problem.

I never used to be this way. My therapist told me it was probably my way of validating myself and trying to get attention since my mother remarried. I definitely wanted attention, so maybe she was right. But why listen to reasonable explanations when you can try planning your next steps in trying to get with your boss?

Those next steps came in the form of my friend Bree. For as long as I had known her, she had always had an interest in the occult—something I never really latched onto and Bree knew that. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

I was at her house one night, looking at her books as she prepared our dinner for the evening. If we didn’t want to eat out we went to Bree’s house, because she could cook and I couldn’t.

“Hey Bree?” I called, taking a sip from the wine glass I was carrying.

“Yeah?”

“Could I borrow one of your books?”

“Which one?”

“Umm,” I ran over a finger over the book spines looking for a title that sounded useful. “An Overview of Supernatural Beings?”

I heard footsteps coming from the kitchen and then Bree was standing in the entrance to the living room, looking at me in surprise.

“Seriously?” she questioned. “I thought you weren’t interested in that stuff.”

“Yeah, well, I thought I’d just check it out,” I answered, shrugging and drinking more of my wine. I pulled the book off the shelf.

“Okay,” she said, smiling before returning to the kitchen.

I plopped down on the couch, flipping aimlessly through the book, stopping to read the descriptions of some of the different creatures. Hopefully I could find something useful in here.

---

And two days later I found it: a crossroads demon.

According to the book, if you summoned one of these you could make a deal with them in exchange for your soul, which would be taken from you ten years after the deal was made. From where I was standing, ten years was a long ways away. This seemed doable, assuming crossroads demons were real and that I could actually summon one. All I needed was graveyard dirt, the bone of a black cat, and a picture of me.

I thought that the trickiest part would be locating the bone of a black cat, but a Google search made this simpler than expected and several days later a package arrived in the mail containing what I needed (assuming it actually was the bone of a black cat and not of something else). I was just glad that I didn’t have to go out and harm a black cat myself.

As soon as the bone had arrived, I placed it in a small box with the other two items that were needed. The graveyard dirt and picture of me was the easiest to collect on my own.

I was antsy to get this over with. I needed to know if this was actually going to work and if I was finally going to get what I had wanted for the past year and a half.

Finally, at quarter to midnight I left my apartment and drove my car to the outskirts of town where I had found two intersecting dirt roads a few days ago. I pulled over on the side of the road when I arrived, looking around to make sure there were no cars around before getting out. In the trunk of my car I had the box with the three items that I needed and a trowel I had picked up at Walmart.

Kneeling down in the middle of the crossroads and digging a hole in order to place the box in it had me questioning what I was actually doing. Was I seriously trying to summon a demon in order to sell my soul just to get with my boss? Why yes, yes I was. Had I gone crazy? Probably.

But I didn’t care. I was young and naïve and wanted everything now, now, now.

Once the hole was deep enough, I placed the box in it and quickly covered it back up with the dirt I had dug up. With trowel in hand, I stood up and took a couple steps away from the center of the crossroads. I fidgeted as I waited for something to happen, some sign that this had worked… you know, like a demon popping up right away would have been nice.

I sighed and shivered, the fact that this whole thing was crazy and that I was wasting my time started to set in. After a few more minutes and nothing happening, I turned and headed back to my car, angry that this hadn’t worked. The whole thing was stupid. I mean, what kind of person actually believed that demons existed and that they would just pop up to do your bidding?

“You’re such an idiot, Sophie,” I said to myself, opening my trunk to put the trowel back.

When I closed the trunk, I looked back at the middle of the crossroads. I jumped and a chill ran down my spine. Standing there now was a figure I hadn’t even seen appear. I took a few steps toward it, and gasped when I saw a flash of red eyes.

“You summoned me?”
♠ ♠ ♠


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Okay I lied. I was totally going to wait to post this, but as usual I don't have the patience to wait until I have a good chunk written. But I'm excited about this story and I planned it out a bit... So hopefully I can keep up with this one.

I'm basing the crossroads demons in this on the one's from Supernatural.

~Sally