Assumption Ch. 09

Chapter Nine

I didn't notice my first successful listening session had been interrupted by a summoning until the sound of crickets and peeper toads exploded into the silence I had been focusing on.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself on a very small deck. On three sides, a low wooden fence outlined the space, attaching to a building on the fourth where a glass wall contained a sliding door into someone's home. The lights were on inside, but the shades were drawn, blocking my view of the interior.

The circle below me this time was the same as the one the Matron had used, except the triangles were not empty. A line at the top separated the tips from the rest of the shape. By process of elimination, I knew this had to belong to the Follower, but she was not waiting nearby.

Since the others had used me to inflict suffering, it felt safe to assume her deed would be similar. It also seemed likely that she had summoned me to the home of her intended victim but didn't have the heart to stick around and give me instructions. Of the three, she was the most timid, and I could see her having a hard time commanding me to violence.

I walked to the sliding door and tested the handle to find that it was locked. If I was going to enter the home, I would have to find something to break the glass. It was too dark to see beyond the fencing, and I didn't want to climb over in case the drop was farther than just one level, so I lied down flat on the deck and reached through the slats. There was no ground below.

The sound of the door being pulled open brought me back to my feet. Standing in the open entryway was the Follower.

Seeing the Matron and the Princess outside in the real world had been strange at first, but once I came to understand that the only thing that had changed was the location I had been brought to, I settled into the familiar unfamiliarity of being summoned. The Follower's demeanor suggested something different. Raised eyebrows and a friendly smile shaped her face, and although it did nothing to hide the wealth of nerves that shone out from underneath, it was clear that she was trying to hide the unusual nature of our relationship and force the mood of the evening into something more normal.

Like the others, the first thing she did was hold out her hand, but instead of showing me a circle drawn on her palm, she offered it to me to take. When I did, she led me inside.

We entered the home into a large dining area. It was closed off from the rest of the house but still felt open and welcoming. Various end tables and a sideboard lined the room and every surface had something on it, be it decorative or functional. The walls were covered in a floral design that never repeated. It wasn't wallpaper. The motif was hand-drawn onto the paint.

In the center of the room was an antique wooden table with eight chairs. Only two place settings had been fully made up and she gestured me toward one. "Please sit," she said.

It wasn't a command, but it was what she wanted. I sat.

Without saying another word, she left the room and returned quickly, carrying a cake and a large knife balanced on top of a glass stand.

She set the dessert down on the table between us. "It looks wonderful, doesn't it? You'll have some with me, won't you?"

Something had always compelled me to do what these women told me to do. Whether it was the power the circles had over me or some other supernatural force, I was unable to disobey. None of that was in effect that night. In that room, staring at the Follower and her cake, I was not a demon. Don't get me wrong, I was still a demon, but I was myself, the same myself I was at home or work. I didn't feel like I had to answer her in any specific way.

"Please," I said.

A slice of cake sounded nice and not just because it did look wonderful. It was the polite thing to say and if I was going to finally have a real conversation with one of my masters, being polite seemed like the best route to it.

Her smile widened and she picked up the knife, plunging it into the pristine icing of the dessert. She cut two perfect lines in a wedge that met precisely in the center and then, as if she had done it a thousand times, dove the blade underneath and slid out a perfect slice. I lifted my plate so she could unload it and she proceeded to cut another for herself before sitting down beside me.

I picked up my fork and aimed it at my portion, but before I could select my first bite she reached out and put her hand on my wrist, stopping me mid-motion. Her mouth flattened out and the skin around her eyes tightened. "I didn't bake it myself. I bought it. Is that okay?"

Store-bought cakes were the only kind I had ever eaten and up until that moment it hadn't occurred to me to wonder where this one had come from. "Of course," I answered, not sure how else to respond.

Her smile returned and she leaned back in her chair. "I can bake," she said. "I just-- I can't bake this well." She nodded to emphasize the point and poked the fork she was now holding into her own piece.

I decided to take a chance and try to ask a question before I lost the opportunity. There were so many stored up that it was hard to pick just one to start with. I settled on the most basic. "Why am I here?"

She reached out with a free hand and touched me, sliding her fingertips gingerly up my arm. "Tonight, I want to indulge a fantasy. I want to share a dessert with a young man and get to know him a little."

The Follower had answered the question I asked and not the question I meant to ask, but I had lost nothing. I put my hand over hers. "This is really good cake."

She laughed suddenly and squeezed my arm, then slid her chair closer to mine. "I know, isn't it? This one is my favorite, but I don't get sweets often. I don't get out much and I detest exercise so the best way to manage my figure is watching my diet." She stood up suddenly and twirled around. "I know I'm a little soft, but for a woman my age I've done a good job, don't you think?"

I looked her over to be nice. "You take good care of yourself."

She sat down again and slid her chair another inch closer. "Am I too old for you?"

The woman did appear to be twice my age, but that was less of an issue than the circumstances under which we had met. I also had to consider the fact that I had already gone down on her once and had not found it altogether pleasant, though that wasn't necessarily her fault. I wanted to answer her honestly, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings. Instead, I split the difference. "You remind me of a teacher I had a crush on when I was in middle school." That statement was true, just not necessarily relevant to what she had asked.

Her eyes lit up and she slid her chair towards me again. "I am a teacher!"

"What do you teach?"

"No, no. Tell me what you think I teach, first."

That was easy. "Art. You painted all these walls, didn't you?"

She smiled and lowered her chin. "You're right about the walls but wrong about the rest. I would hate to teach that to other people. My art is for me. You get one more guess."

I had been so certain she was an art teacher that I couldn't imagine what other subject it could be. I diverted. "What do I get if I guess correctly?"

"What do you want?"

The question caught me off guard, and I searched her eyes looking for a hint at what she wanted me to say. Was I supposed to want her? I started to say that, but she put her hand over my mouth.

"No, it's okay. Don't lie. I want to know, really, what do you want." She moved her hand from my face to my chest. "What," she pressed gently, "do you want?"

"I don't know," I said.

It wasn't that I didn't understand the question. She was looking for something deeper than my opinion of the cake and more honest than my opinion of her. The problem was nobody ever asked me what I wanted before and I hadn't lived my life in a way that took that into consideration very often. Like everyone else, I had the occasional food craving or saw a product on television that I thought I would like to have, but beyond that, I had no real ambition. I made it through the day to get to the next and the goal of that next day was the same. I was carving a path to the future, but I didn't know what I aspired to see there.

The Follower waved her fork at me. "I was just like you, once. I mean, not just like you," she touched my hand and laughed. "I didn't want anything. I thought things just happened to you, you know? You work hard and you keep your head down and you try to be a good person and things come along. Money comes, love comes or recognition or whatever those things good people are supposed to get are, but you can't wait. It'll never come. I'm forty-five and what do I have to show for it? I have a nice home, sure, but what is there here but me and my drawings? I want more. I think, always, deep down, I wanted more." She spoke quickly, taking little bites of cake between each sentence. Her slice was almost gone already while I had mostly forgotten about mine.

Ambree had told me knowledge is power and this woman seemed intent on sharing. I had to keep her talking. "So what did you do?"

Her face lit up again when I showed interest. "I thought, being a good person isn't working, so maybe I need to be a bad person. So, I thought again, what do bad people do, and then it dawned on me. I should become a witch!"

I laughed. It was the sort of revelation a child would make, but it spoke to her innocence. Thankfully, she didn't read anything disparaging into my reaction.

"But how does someone become a witch? Well, I googled it, because what else am I supposed to do, and you know what? Witchcraft isn't even a real thing. I mean, there are people out there that cast spells and dance naked in the moonlight, but they don't like to be called witches, so I don't know what to tell you.

I got into some new age stuff for about five minutes, meditation and all that, but when I would try and clear my mind, I just fell asleep, and I didn't want more sleep. I wanted more..." She paused. "More, I don't know. I just wanted more. That's when I found semiotics. That's not witchcraft or anything like it, it's just about the evolution of symbols and that's when I started to see patterns. It's my artistic eye, and it was like all of the world was connected. It's ironic because that's what meditation was supposed to do for me, but that just isolated me more. Sitting at home alone, browsing the internet is what allowed me to see the inter-related nature of human history across time and space."

She stopped suddenly and touched the edge of my plate. "Do you want more cake?" She asked.

When I nodded she cut me another slice, then pushed her own plate away. "I have to stop here, or I'll get sluggish."

Sensing the danger that she was going to lose her place and not finish the story, I tried to point her back in the right direction. She was mere moments from answering another of the most important questions I had. Why, and to a lesser extent how, did they summon me? "So how did that help you?" She looked at me blankly until I prompted again. "The symbols?"

"The symbols! Well, at first, they didn't. I mean, it was fun, I like to draw." She waved her arms outward gesturing to the walls of the room. "The most interesting ones were very simple. They weren't all about what was drawn, but how. These symbols, the special symbols, have so many rules, and depending on where you put what, they mean entirely different things."

She reached out and touched my arm again, holding me back from putting another piece of cake in my mouth to make sure I was fully listening. "These symbols weren't just messages, though. These symbols were spells. I had found the witches!" She yelled the last sentence. "Of course they don't call them spells and they still don't call themselves witches, but a spade's a spade as far as I'm concerned.

"That's when I found her, on one of these websites. She was looking for a special symbol, she needed this to do that, but not do this other thing. It was very complicated. Nobody else understood it. It wasn't because they were dumb or I'm so much smarter, it's just that it couldn't be done. You can't build a circle the way she wanted it. She was missing something, something only I could see."

She released my arm and I took another bite of cake. She watched me chew instead of continuing.

I verbally nudged her again. "What did you see?"

Her right hand slid up my left arm and she wrapped it around my elbow. Leaning in, she whispered, "She needed a third division. What she wanted couldn't be done with two. She wanted a circle, but what she needed was a triangle, or more correctly, a triangle in a circle."

The story finished itself. That's how she ended up joining the other two. She was the artist they needed to make their circle and the third element that would allow them to use it.

"Take the last bite," she encouraged, looking down at my plate.

There was a small portion of cake left, too big for one acceptable bite, but I forced it to make her happy. As soon as I swallowed, she smiled devilishly and took my hand, then stood up and gave me a slight tug. I took the hint and got out of my seat, letting her lead me by the hand.

We left the dining room through a door opposite the one we entered through and walked down a narrow hallway. The walls there were hand-painted as well, but the concept was more abstract. Colors swirled around non-descript shapes and blended into blotches. We stopped at the end in front of a closed door.

She planted her hand on the knob and twisted the rest of her body around to face in my direction. "Don't judge me," she whispered.

Her wrist turned and she pushed the door open quickly. Inside, pink painted walls yielded to white carpet. The bedspread varied the color palette a little bit, but still had enough of the same to continue the theme. The comforter and pillows were lined in thick white ruffles and lace and there was a large stuffed teddy bear on top. Glass and ceramic unicorns danced across floral-trimmed wooden furniture. It was like stepping into a little girl's room.

She let go of my hand and ran to her dresser, opening the bottom drawer and digging around inside. After a moment of searching, she threw a couple of garments onto the bed. Her investigation moved to the top drawer next, where she carefully took out two more items and brought them to me, holding them up proudly. It was a pair of pajamas.

"I wasn't sure what color you'd like," she explained. "So I went with red. I hope that wasn't too obvious."

They were a bright crimson, the shade the devil might prefer, which was as appropriate as anything. The material felt like silk, and when I put them on, I was surprised by how well they fit and how comfortable they were. Despite that, I was put off by how the soft fabric outlined my nipples and I might as well have been naked for the treatment it gave my genitals.

"My turn," she cooed, returning to the bed to pick up the clothes she had discarded there. "Don't peak, now." She wagged a finger at me.

I played along, putting my back to her and waiting even though there was nothing for me to see that I had not already seen, touched, and possibly tasted.

When she allowed me to turn around again, I noticed her pajamas were also red. They hugged her body a little tighter than mine, wrapping around her curves quite flatteringly. They were made of cotton, instead of silk, so they stayed well in place when she moved and concealed those bits that made me self-conscious.

"Can you spend the night or do you have somewhere else you need to be?" she asked. It sounded like a serious question. She was genuinely concerned about my plans.

"I'm free," I answered.

She walked over to the bed and turned it down, then looked back to me before climbing in. "I just changed the sheets."

Her eyes never left me as I walked around to the other side of the bed and climbed in. Once I was under the covers, she rolled to her side to face me, reaching out her hands. I took them, and she practically yanked me to the middle of the bed.

"Tell me. What's Hell like?" she asked as soon as I was settled.

For the first time, I considered where I was versus where I had come from. I had seen all three women's homes and they didn't look in any way out of the ordinary. We all spoke English. It was just as likely that I was being transported across town as to another dimension. "It's a lot like this," I said.

She laughed. "You know, I'm not surprised." She lay her head on her hands and watched me for a moment, then scooted closer, bringing her face to mine so our foreheads touched.

"When is the last time you were in bed with a woman?"

I answered honestly. "Two years ago."

"Was she special?"

"No." That answer was honest too.

"We can't make love," she said. "We're not even supposed to kiss."

That answered another one of my questions. The way the evening was progressing I thought maybe one of my roles was sex slave. It turned out I was just a kidnapper and a murderer.

She rolled over suddenly and shimmied herself closer. "But you can hold me."

It wasn't a command, but I still felt compelled to follow it. I wrapped my arms around her, and she settled into me. After a few minutes, her breathing slowed, followed by soft snoring.

I fought the urge to fall asleep and instead made plans to look around the Follower's home. This was a rare opportunity to know more about where I was.

Every time I tried to remove myself from the bed, she started to stir and I lost my nerve. During one especially jarring attempt, she woke up entirely. I took advantage of the opportunity to explain that I needed to go to the bathroom. She simply mumbled, "Demons don't use the bathroom, do they?" and gripped the arm I had around her more tightly.

After that, she began murmuring in her sleep, making slight noises that sounded like they might be words. I listened intently, trying to make them out in case she was revealing more secrets. At some point, I closed my eyes so I could concentrate better.

I awoke the next morning sitting on my couch.