The World

Once upon a time, there was a man named Vincent. He lived in a house in the woods with his friend and only companion, John. On this specific weekend, John was visiting his girlfriend. The house was dark, as it always was when he was away. Hidden by the old Trees shrouding his home from curious neighbors, the Graham residence was covered by almost dead silence. The sound of whiskey being served into a dirty crystal glass and the taps of a dirty keyboard being the only things fighting of the silence like an artificial heart of distasteful nature. Vincent liked to look at some old photos of her. Like a dirty syringe, he was addicted to the short relieve of pain it provided. For every day he sacrificed to a future that would never come true, a part of him died however. Her smile was becoming more and more the reminder of a simple truth, he had to move on some day. Her green eyes stared at him more and more reprehensively. The memory of her touch had become impossible to remember. He felt guilty.

It was him after all, he made them disappear. He'd always known after all. People close to him die. Vincent didn't cut them open or something, but still. Once you got close to him, you can say sayonara to your future and hello to any life insurance you might leave to your relatives. Autumn had just began and the air in Vince' room as damping up the windows. He'd been drinking for over twenty-four hours and he was only aware of the fact that it was midnight thanks to the digital clock on the corner of his screen. His hands had been trembling for the last 2 hours or so, maybe even longer. He decided to turn off the cumputer and go take a shower. The smell of his dirty clothes could've killed as small African Community, he really should take better care of himself, he thought as he looked at his reflection in the mirror. His face was dirty from a browny he'd eaten for dinner. After shaving his beard and jumping into the shower, his trembling had minimized to a ignorable degree. A pair of comfy jeans and a plain white shirt with long sleeves were his vestment of choice. Opening the windows to get the damp air out of his room seemed like a good idea. Nobody ever came close to his residence due to security patrolling the area between his home and several other high-end residences. His was the only house not being rented to irregular visitors. This was the kind of place you went to hide away from the world.

The main living room was consumed by darkness. Vin, took the house remote control, a pad of the latest generation, and lit up a fire on the chimney. Suddenly, the cold environment felt more relaxing and less like the last scene of a thriller with him as Victim nr. 4. John had left the TV on some News channel. They were talking about how contact to almost all tribes of the amazon rain forest had been lost three days ago. He didn't give half a rat's ass about some stupid aborigenees at the other side of the world, but some expert, surely a republican, was trying to blame aliens for the disappearances... How low could the world's former Nr.1 news center fall? The guy talking on TV seemed to be some ex-professor (not a bit surprised by the EX part of his title) of NYU. He was trying to explain how several different cases of disappearances all over the world held certain similarities. The guy was saying how Aliens being responsible for these events were the least crazy explination for these coincidences.

The world was truly going to hell.

It was humid and hot around him. Hot and suffocating around Nathaniel.
He couldn't take the uncomfortable temperature that was stifling him from his sleep, pushing the covers from his head and torso as cold air blanketed his warm upper body, taking in the refreshing feel against his skin before the unsettling feeling of exposure gripped him with force that made him jump. This was routine for Nathaniel, one that he never grown out off when he was a kid. Night didn't bring salvation to the mind and body for him, it caused a lot of muscle and joint aches with the occasional baggy under his eyes. He had taken liberty to nap through daylight, during his break at work and even sleep a few hours during days off. When he wasn't plague by those old yet burdensome habits, Nathaniel had a somewhat okay life with a hint of over-stimulating senses, his ability to be dishabituated to his environment was unmanageable.

Nathaniel stared at the ceiling with half lid eyes, tired yet his senses frayed and vulnerable to the harsh nothingness that is his fear. He had been thinking about his stories, unfinished yet un-forgotten by him as he played the film of their stories in his head, ideas and plan of their continuation soon brought to a stop as his thoughts derailed. Nathaniel could feel his companion atop his legs above the covers, finding comfort in that but not enough for him to calm his jittering nerves.

After spending a considerable amount of time on his phone, Nathaniel breathed a tired sigh, his body protesting for release of the conscious bounds and slumber deeply. Tykki, his companion, had woken up at some point and felt his struggle with his mind and body, giving a few licks to the face before he chuckled lightly, moving closer to the wall as he allowed the canine girl to take a spot next to him, sleep far away but tonight he would get the few needed hours before the morning began.

Alice sat on her bed, looking blankly around the room she called home as long as she remained in this school, and contemplated what had just transpired. She had, using a set of instructions that she had obtained on the internet, contacted and had a conversation with, the Devil. With this knowledge, the whole world seemed irrevocably changed on some fundamental level, though it was plain to see with a glance at the room around her that it was not. Indeed, her small room, packed with various video tapes and discs, stacks upon stacks of papers, yet meticulously organized, was exactly the same as it was every other day, save for the notes resting on her nightstand.

Even in the near perfect darkness, the adolescent could still make out the clock, revealing the time to be closer to early morning than it was night. She didn't actually need to look of course, as a precaution for the ritual she had spent the last two weeks perfecting her sense of time, but she still did so to confirm regardless. The silence in this place was overwhelming at night, that was something that Alice had noticed from the beginning of her stay here. The only sounds that she could here were the steady tic of the clock, and her own breathing, interspersed with the occasional noises that all old buildings seemed to make. The walls were too thick for her to hear the other girls in their rooms unless they happened to bump against a wall, and as a result imposed a feeling of isolation. This wouldn't normally bother the girl, but the night's events made the usually calm atmosphere seem somehow ominous.

Well, if she wasn't going to sleep, and quite frankly she found herself unable to at the moment, she should at least review what had happened. Gathering her notes from the nightstand into her lap, Alice began to go over what she had done.

---

Alice had woken up at exactly 11:30pm and, after making her preparations, made her way to the school's, thankfully unoccupied, chapel. Technically, the ritual said that it needed a church, but her lack of access to any actual church at midnight led her to decide that she'd just have to try the chapel and hope that it would be close enough. The mirror had been a bit more difficult. The chapel itself did not have a full-length floor or wall mirror, so she had been forced to drag a floor mirror out of the supply closet, where she had stashed it after bringing it down from the attic the previous evening. Then, after placing the mirror, and setting up her wards, she began the actual summoning.

As had been suggested in the instructions, she began by turning one of the nearby crosses upside-down to attract the devil's attention. Alice was of course aware that the inverted cross was just the cross of St. Peter, and thus it should be just as holy as the regular one, but it had been specified in the ritual and probably had more to do with the way it had been depicted in recent years than it did with the original meaning anyway. After that was done, she checked one more to makes sure the doors were locked before switching off the lights and seating herself in front of the mirror. beside her lie the papers and pencil she had brought in an attempt to record what was to transpire. Outside, since electronics weren't aloud in the room according to the instructions, was her music player was recording using the "voice memo" feature, but she had doubts that it would be able to pick up anything her "conversational partner" might say, particularly considering the poor audio quality of its recordings at the best of times.

The rest of the directions for the summoning were very simple; stare into the mirror, wishing for the Devil to appear, and then close your eyes for ten seconds. Alice did genuinely want him to appear. It would mean finding answers, and gaining a piece of knowledge possessed by only a few individuals. All that just from the confirmation of his existence, not to mention any information she might be able to get out of him. This in mind, the girl closed her eyes, and silently counted to ten.

And, just as it had said, there he was, standing casually in the center of the mirror. The being before her appeared in the guise of a man in a business suit, seemingly in his late twenties or early thirties, with a pleasant smile and a kind face. His eyes however... His eyes were horrible, gleaming with insidiousness and arrogance. Even so, even with the gleeful malice so evident in the Devil's eyes, Alice could not keep a wide smile of victory from spreading across her features. In the simple act of showing up, he had validated the work she had been doing for the past year and a half of her life, proven the accuracy of at least one creepypasta, maybe lent some credence to the Abrahamic religions, though the fact that making St. Peter's cross might argue against that one, and opened up a whole new world of possibilities and questions. Speaking of questions...

"You called?"

The Devil's voice seemed slightly bored, but politely understanding of her initial speechlessness, and just kind enough to make a tone that would otherwise be interpreted as impatience, seem instead to be mere tired acceptance, almost as if he were thinking "Not another one." His eyes however, still shone with that malicious hunger. Straightening herself up and adopting a serious, businesslike, tone, Alice answered with “I wish to challenge you in a game of question-and-response.” The man in the mirror beamed, and the game began. "What is your full name?" he asked almost instantly, which was answered in equal speed with "Amadeus Arkham." This earned a chuckle from the Devil. Knowing that she wouldn't be able to get any reliable information from her next question as a result of the lie, Alice decided to ask something that she was more curious to hear the chosen response to than any truthful answer. "What is you true name?" For a moment, her opponent seemed mildly surprised before answering in the same fashion she had. "Ferris Bueller."

For some time after that, he continued to stonewall her attempts at getting reliable information by asking nothing but impossible questions, occasionally interrupting the game in an attempt to talk with her, only to be stonewalled himself. As time wore on, and eventually began to approach the specified limit, Alice began to grow frustrated with this, until finally, when the time was almost up, she decided to use her last-ditch strategy. "I would like to take a dare." She hadn't been able to come up with a riddle that she believed beyond the abilities of the Prince of Lies, and so a dare was the only sure way of getting a straight answer. Besides, it was close enough to the time limit that, if she was unwilling to go ahead with the dare, she'd just invalidate the pass that he'd get by ending the game then and there. As expected, this seemed to please the Devil, and he answered with a speed that made her question if that might have been what he had been waiting for all along.

The "dare", if it could even be called that, was not what she had imagined. A place, a time, and the instruction to be there. That was it. It didn't even seem to fall under the category of throwing an unknown number of strangers under a bus, metaphorically, since it didn't even involve doing anything, just... being present. It almost screamed of danger with its obvious inoffensiveness. Why would he possibly ask that? What could he conceivably gain if she didn't do anything? While it was possible that he wanted her to refuse a dare out of justified paranoia when it genuinely was harmless, it seemed rather out of character. Of course, these questions just provided even more reason for her to accept, being unable not to learn why. What made it worse was that he clearly knew too. This was bait, and, while they both knew that she could see it as such, they also knew that she wouldn't be able to refuse. After a few moments, time was ticking, Alice gave a nod to indicate that she would go along with it.

This was the last question, and the only one that would definitely receive a truthful answer, so she'd have to make it count. After considering it for a time that bordered on dangerous, Alice eventually asked "Which, if any, of the other creepypastas are true?" This got the biggest grin yet, as he answered with "To a certain extent, all of them." This was definitely worth further inquiry, but there wasn't enough time left, and judging by the expression on the Devil's face he knew she was aware of it.

Alice was forced to end the ritual then by thanking the being and politely sending him on his way. It took almost a full minute for the girl to make absolutely certain that it was her own eyes in the mirror and not a tick, before she was finally willing to turn from the mirror, turn the lights back on, and collect her things. The mirror was returned to the supply closet, she'd return it to the attic tomorrow night, her tools were gathered up, and the devices that had been deemed inappropriate for the ritual retrieved from outside the room. She only just managed to remember to kick the ring of salt under one of the pews before she left, returning to her own room.

---

And so here she sat, awake at this hour wondering how she could possibly have allowed herself to be so foolish. Self-preservation was always her number one priority while investigating these things, it had to be, but she had gone ahead and accepted that dare anyway, just to sate her curiosity. At the time she had been able to justify it as him trying to have a laugh at her expense for throwing away what was essentially free information, but even then she knew that was almost certainly not the case. If things ended up going poorly as a result Alice supposed that what had actually happened was not him tricking her so much as her tricking herself. With this joyful little thought in mind, the girl looked down at her notes that she had taken during the ritual. Surprisingly, they were completely legible, and she assumed accurate as well, at least as far as she could tell. Supposedly, the player of the Devil Game wouldn't be able to remember the questions they were asked, so as to avoid them being able to look up the answers later. Alice had taken these notes in an attempt to combat this, which, in retrospect, may have been the reason he never asked her anything she could conceivably give the answer to.

Although, under normal circumstances this new influx of fresh info and experience would have happily kept Alice awake for day so that she could analyze and dissect every little piece, she really needed to sleep. She had promised to be somewhere after all, and she got the feeling that she was going to need the rest.