Life rarely went how I imagined it would. I didn't particularly plan to be working retail. Nor did I plan to surf the web as much. I especially didn't plan on drawing circles and runes on the floor, nor on sitting in the dark by the candlelight, reciting what sounded like nonsense, with chicken blood stains on the wall. To be honest, I'm not sure why I did any of this.

That's a lie, I know why I did it. I wanted to prove a point. I also hoped for something. Wishful thinking aside, I never thought anything would happen, which made it all the more terrifying when it actually did. I couldn't believe it at first, but my senses couldn't lie so consistently. And there she was, a voluptuous, winged female demon was in my bedroom, and I think I screwed up the summoning ritual.

My name is Matthew McNowdy. I live in a small, rented apartment in a boring part of a forgettable, small city. I've been bouncing around jobs, none of which seemed to be relevant to my education, or had any chance of evolving into something better. My time and energy have recently been sapped by working in a chain clothing store. It's one of those small hell scenarios, where you're forced to deal with ungrateful customers and unhelpful coworkers, two of which are bratty teenagers who screw each other instead of working, but the manager doesn't even care about who does what - unless he can tell you off.

It was just another day I was glad was over.

Mom keeps calling. She asks if I'll ever introduce my girlfriend to her and keeps on blabbing on about how my sister got a promotion. I can't bring myself to tell her there is no girlfriend - better to have her live the lie. I'm trying to not feel bitter towards either of them, but dad makes it hard when he reminds me of how well I did in high school. He's busy, but not too busy to stop recommending an accountant's certification.

High school was the prelude to all of this. I wasn't athletic or cool enough to make the cut for the popular kids, nor nerdy enough to hang around with the bookworms. And even though we all drifted apart, I still kept tabs on some of them. Call it spite or morbid curiosity. It's funny to watch how people's lifes turn around, for better or for worse. Four girls have kids already, one guy is a convicted arsonist, and two others started their own companies, one of which went bankrupt.

All of this means little to me, I'm just thankful for social media letting me get a peak on the beach pictures. Who would have thought Ashley, the bespectacled weirdo who used to chew on her fingernails, would like sunbathing so much? All the better that she keeps us updated about it.

I sometimes get the idea of comparing myself, but I shut it down thoughts about comparisons quickly. I'm not on these sites for the sense of belonging anyway - not that the dipshits who kept on throwing my food out and hiding my backpack would want to be friends.

Life gets tiring after a while, and you sometimes just want to forget about it all. That's why I preferred to just gawk at those pictures.

I've been through the dopamine rush so many times, I already knew how it would all play out. It irked me. Suddenly, it felt wrong - I knew I was cheating myself. One hand going down to my pants, I mustered the inner strength to stop myself. "There's only a few hours left before I need to get ready for the next day," I reminded myself, "I can't waste any time."

Two hours later and I've gone through my regular list of porn sites. I can only vaguely remember looking for erotic anime. One thing led to another, and I eventually started going down the rabbit hole of succubus anime porn. A thread on a big forum led me to browse a major imageboard, from there I followed a link that led me to a weird, obscure blog that seemed to be someone's private collection. Before long, my browser started warning me about missing certificates and other things I don't understand. Eventually after my antivirus stopped acting up, I seemed to go almost a full circle. I was browsing some very obscure imageboard which had the same image that led me down this path, in a thread among many others with anime porn. After a dozen posts or so, a discussion about the supernatural was started by someone fantasizing about having sex with an actual summoned spirit. God knows what led me all the way down this rabbit hole. Damn it.

There were some dorks in the thread who started genuinely discussing summoning literal demons. I cracked up as they quoted titles of some obscure books written by even bigger dorks. Pentagrams and black color abounded. My sense of playfulness got the better of me.

"Hey, does anyone know how to summon a succubus?" I posted, seemingly innocently, just beneath a post that declares nobody should post any instructions, for the safety of others.

"Lol this guy," came the first response.

"Why do you want to summon a succubus," soon followed another.

"He's really thirsty lol," and another.

"Do you know anything about summoning?"

"He wouldn't post here if he did, none of you tards know anything about demons"

"Shut the fuck up"

"Lmao"

"Admit it, you want to fuck it," says another reply directed at me. I take a breath.

"I don't want to fuck it, I know it's not real. None of this is real," I smirk as I click "Post".

A flurry of angry messages danced in front of me as I refreshed the page. Among variations of "GTFO", one post stood out in particular:

"I can tell you how to do it. I know that it works."

Feeling way too invested in something this stupid, I kept on going. The other person responds, apparently in earnest, every time.

"Go on, tell me. If you do it, I'll record the summoning on video. I'll do everything as instructed and you fuckers will see you're delusional."

A few more minutes passed, then a quarter of an hour. People kept on poking at each other and mocking me. I decided to refresh the page one last time before I just jerk off to anime.

"I can't post pdfs, so here's scans as an image. Sorry for the low quality," the poster said. There was a really big image attached, couple thousand by couple thousand pixels. Looked like screen captures done with a phone, of a scan of some hand-written book. It really was low quality, just barely legible. "I really don't think you should do it."

"Lol thanks," I replied. "I'll keep you guys updated on how it turns out."

"Inb4 he vanishes," a reply to me came almost instantly, followed by a dozen or so people urging me to record everything.

The final few posts I remember reading were more toned down, one in particular telling me about how irresponsible I was, and how I don't know what I will summon. One asked if I ever summoned anything before, and when I said "no", they said I shouldn't do it and wished me good luck. The last response I remember was a troll post about ghost sex. A pretty standard thread, supernatural content aside.

Armed with a summoning walk-through, I quickly skimmed the text and realized I'd need ingredients. Chalk, candles... chicken blood? A book, apparently Bible is the best... It would be another trip to the stores, it seems. With the day nearly over and none of my short nor long term plans realized, I figured I might as well go through with it. I took a trip to the home decor store, the butcher's, and then I remembered I had a Bible given to me by Jehovah's somewhere at home already.

Carrying the ridiculous groceries on my way back, I ran into Isabelle on the stairway. We've been neighbors for quite some time. She looked like she was heading out for another late evening run. She had really short hair that she further kept immobilized with a bandana. The training clothes fit tightly over her body and I tried my best not to stare.

"Hey Matt!"

"Hi Izzie," I responded, my voice failing me unexpectedly.

"Some groceries, hmm? Oh, candles?" she inquired, stepping closer to me. I took care to give my eyes a neutral heading. "Wait, are you getting a date?"

"Haha, mm... no, those are just for decor," I responded.

"Wow, I never pegged you for a decor guy," she replied and chuckled. "I'm gonna go for a run! See you around!"

She started jogging down the staircase before I could respond.

"Yeah, see you..." my voice drifted as I stared at her toned butt jiggling as she stepped down rapidly.