Everything You Wanted to Know About Demon Loopholes (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Dec 14, 2004 16:13

Anything Goes at now_ish:

I didn't so much steal the book as ... well, you know. I took it without anyone seeing or knowing. I smuggled it upstairs under my hoody, claiming that I was retiring early to do some studying. That wasn't a lie, really. Reading this book would be like studying. I'd leaf through the pages in the relative privacy of my room, with two Hot Pockets and an English Beat CD to keep me company. Getting to my rroom, I felt just like Bastian Balthazar Bux, holed up in the attic of his school with a few sandwiches, and opening up The Neverending Story for the first time.

Except The Neverending Story's cover was like, way way cooler than the cover of Everything You Wanted to Know About Demon Loopholes (But Were Afraid to Ask). NeS had the Auryn on the cover, but this just had the title in gold leaf and, in the corner, something that looked like a smashed bug. I don't think anyone here had really used it, except for the noted bug-smashage. Some bargain-hunting genius picked it up at an EVERYTHING MUST GO!!! W&H clearance and I, Andrew Wells, Summoner Extraordinaire, was about to reap the benefits.

I woke up an hour later because my CD was skipping right in the middle of "Best Friend"... the part when it's all "talk about yourself again, you you you" was just going "you you you you you you you you you you." Dear god in glowing places, this book was boring. Not even like, Episode II boring, but, "Steven Wright Reads My Friend Flicka" boring. I must have passed out of sheer exhaustion somewhere between Article Five-Thousand and Sixty Seven Point Oh One One Seven Tenths and... yeah, whatever the next number was. I thought the book would be cooler, like, a spellbook. Or even a cookbook. A textbook, even. At least illustrated, come ON! Instead it was just like the title sort of implied -- a big book of really boring legal loopholes. No wonder the intended reader was afraid to ask.

After fixing the CD player by throwing my neck pillow at it, I decided to employ another method. Hovering my hands over the closed book, I concentrated on focusing on finding the right spell. I tried doing the "Om" thing too, just in case that would help. "Om." Keeping my eyes closed, I opened the book and pointed at a random page. Chance divination... it works. It works. It --

Yuck. "Reguritation of Newborn Sacrifices, Bile Market Value, and You!" read the heading. No. The divination wasn't working.

I'd had just about enough of this. Out of sheer frustration, I shoved the book off my bed. It landed heavily on the floor, bouncing off the binding and coming to rest up against my laundry hamper. Out of sheer curiosity, I rolled out of bed and crawled over to it to check out the page. Maybe now? How 'bout now?

"By gum..." I murmured to myself. Just because, you know, it sounded cooler than "Eureka!"


Two hours, two hot pockets, three scorch marks in the rug, a hot shower and a Red Bull later, and I'd finally done it. Thankfully, I had a dodecahedron on me at all times, because the spell wouldn't have worked otherwise. It was supposed to be made of amalgam, but, I figured that resin is some kind of amalgamate, right? I mean, whatever. The point is: I had a twelve-sided die on my person. That's a dodecahedron.

"By the power of the luckiest d12 in this hemisphere, I call Anyanka!" I whispered into the shoebox-sized vortex that was swirling above my toaster oven. Even if it sounded like I was calling Pikachu into battle, this was part of the ritual. This is what I had to do to get what I wanted.

OMG. This was going to be the coolest thing EVER. The Wish-Granting Demon Loophole was going to be my equivalent of a genie in a bottle. And, even better, it would be Anya and she was always just really sweet to me. Okay, except for the times that she hit me during interrogations or burst in on me in the bathroom. Other than that, she was super cool.

As a figure began to materialize, I couldn't contain myself. I'd been dreaming of wish-fulfillment since pretty much ever, and I wasn't going to pass up this opportunity. I knew it was rude to not say "what's up?" or "welcome back" first, so I said it as fast as I could, in the hopes that I could get it out of the way: "FOR MY FIRST WISH, I WISH FOR TEN MORE WISHES!"

I'd seen that Tales from the Darkside, dude. I knew how this crap worked. ALWAYS ask for more wishes first.

[[ Thread with First Wish ]]
[[ Thread with the Second Wish ]]
[[ Thread with Third/Fourth Wishes ]]
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