The surrounding darkness became dense. It wouldn’t be long before the shadows overtook him completely.

“You want I should turn on a lamp or something? Dark in here.”

“What the hell?”

“Hi. You summoned me?”

“Um… yes? I mean, I think, uh, I’m pretty sure I followed the instructions correctly, or, well, I’m sort of new to all this.”

“Cool, cool, cool. You like to keep it dark in here, huh? I like the candles, but, you know. I’m not exactly a spring chicken. Just had the ol’ bifocals talk with my optometrist. So, you cool if I—“

“Oh, right. Yes, of course.”

The entity clicked on the light. “What can I do ya for? Your dime, don’t want to waste it.”

With a flourish and bow: “I am Azrael Nightshade, a novice in the ancient ways of the arcane. Please, allow me to welcome you to—“

“Says here the account is under a… Dave. Dave Huggins.”

“You, uh, you brought a clipboard?”

“Yessir. It’s like my peripheral brain. Keeps me on schedule. So, uh, is Dave around, or—“

Sheepishly, “I’m Dave.”

“What’s that?”

“Me. I’m, uh, Dave. Dave, ahem, Huggins.”

“Oh. Ok. Gotcha. What was all that Anusol Nightbeard—“

“Nightshade. Azrael Nightshade.”

“Is that what you want me to call—“

“It’s fine.”

“I mean, ‘cause I don’t care what people do behind—“

“It’s, whatever, can we move on, or…? I don’t know how this goes, normally.” Azrael looked over his visitor. Not what he’d anticipated. He wasn’t expecting the horns and red tail business, but all the ancient scrolls made the devil appear so terrifying: an eater of men, destroyer of worlds. What stood before him was more akin to a peewee football coach than an ancient evil force.

Maybe he’d done it wrong?

No. It wasn’t that. Couldn’t be. He’d done everything correctly, down to the last detail. He had perfected the Latin, found all the proper herbs, and stuck to the exact order of operations on the website. There was only that one small thing that he was unsure of initially. But it had to be okay. So what if he didn’t kill the cat himself? A dead cat was a dead cat. And he might have even been the one that hit it. He’d nearly run over it a hundred times before.

“Well, normally, you give me the 411 on what issue you’re dealing with here, and I get to work.”

Ah. Okay. Finally, progress. It was a rough start, but who was he to challenge an ancient being on his choice of disguise? He couldn’t exactly go all out with the bat wings and fangs and stuff, right? So maybe the Carhartt cargo pants and Under Armour shirt fashion choice was some kind of demon camouflage or something.

His visitor rocked back on his heels and tapped his clipboard with a pen. “So…”

“Right. Sorry. My issue. Well, the reason I summoned you, see, it all started when I changed to this new school where everyone is a total douche and the teachers are all, like, super jerks, and so I want to, well, you know, like, I want to have extra power to, you know, mess with them or get them to leave me alone, or whatever.”

“Ah, okay. So, sounds like an issue with your bandwidth. That’s an easy fix.”

“My bandwidth? Oh, you mean, like, my ability to deal with multiple things simultaneously? The bullying and a new school and my homework and my parents. Wow. You have great insight. It is a lot to handle.”

“Yeah. Sure. I bet. Did you want to show me where your router is?”

“My router?”

“Yessir. I got my tools with me; it shouldn’t take long.”

“Long to… what?”

“Well, I’ll run a test on your upload and download speeds and—“

“What? I don’t—I summoned you to help me exact revenge upon my enemies, to sell you my soul for the chance to bring those that would do me harm to heel. To rain down upon—“

“Ah. I see what happened here. Happens quite a bit. You wanted the devil, huh? Yeah. I wish I could say this was new for me, but, well, I feel for you, buddy; I do. But I can’t help you. I’m Stan with Comcast. Just the one ‘A.’ We at the Cable Company are confused for Masters of the Underworld all the time.” He laughed, “Dunno why; maybe our phone numbers are close or something? But, who knows?”

Azrael could feel himself deflating under the combined weight of embarrassment, disappointment, and the realization that he still had no answer for his troubles.

“But, hey there, listen, I’d stay away from the devil. I did an install for him a few months back. He’s a major league butthole, man. He wouldn’t turn on the AC even though it was hot as, well, and then he wrote a bad review on Yelp even after I vacuumed up the hoofnail clippings he leaves behind his desk. And, get this, he totally ate the leftover pizza I brought for lunch. He was like, ‘No, I didn’t,’ but I was like, ‘Okay, whatever you say, but I’m not the one known as a ‘Master of Lies!’ Totally burned him on that one.”

Azrael could feel his whole identity imploding at once. Everything he thought he was—all those nights spent practicing sacred geometry, all those wasted trips to Hot Topic—crashed around him. He felt like crying and yelling and collapsing all at once.

What was he going to do now?

But something happened. A weight lifted. As quickly as Azrael died, Dave came back to life. Maybe things weren’t as bad as he thought. Perhaps he hadn’t given the new school a chance. Some of the kids were jerks, but other kids seemed nice. Maybe if he just put himself out there he’d make a friend or two. And wasn’t his loneliness causing the conflict with his parents anyway? They were only on him to make an effort, to accept that they had to move due to work, not because they didn’t care about his feelings.

Dave pulled back his hood before deciding to take off the whole ridiculously heavy cloak and throw it on the couch. He looked at the kind smile of the goateed football dad he’d accidentally summoned.

“Can you really increase my bandwidth?”