001
"Do you really think the Demon of Fakes will give anyone their real name? Ha-ha!" The Dealer of Names burst into laughter, sending spit flying everywhere and making his enormously obese demonic body shake.
"I don't," I had to wipe my face. "But this particular demon had crossed the wrong kind of people. The kind that enjoys cheap fake identities much less than they enjoy being paid with fake bills. That's why I came to you. I need a name and I am willing to pay for it. How much?"
"Sorry, girl, I can't sell it."
"Why not?"
"I don't have it." The Dealer slapped his belly with both hands. "Nobody has. That kind of demon just don't have a real name."
"You're lying, you useless lump of fat," I squinted at him. "Everyone has a name. Everything has."
"Now that was offensive, girl," the Dealer pouted and with his fat drooling face it was the most disgusting thing I ever saw. "It was so easy before your kind rolled in and started making rules and giving names… and now I have to scrape out a living out of it all while being insulted by you."
"I… I see…" Somehow he was surprisingly charitable today. Unusually so. Maybe the operations of the demon I was after had hurt his business too? Or maybe - and was more likely to be true - the demon I was working against had crossed someone from the other world as well.
"How much do I owe you?" I asked.
"Nothing… just stop calling me fat."
"Not a chance, fattie," I tipped my hat at him and turned away. "See you!"
"Pah!" He spat me in the back.
Well, now there's just one thing I needed to do: let myself be captured by the right demon.
002
Some would say that people can only be their true selves in the dark. That's… a limited point of view if I know anything about darkness. And believe me I know a thing or two about the place opposite of the light.
What the darkness truly does - it simplifies things. When the light lets you pick up every little detail - the darkness mashes them all together into one easily comprehencible pile. Where the light casts a miriad of shadows and breaks itself into a whole spectrum of colors - the darkness is just that: the darkness.
And in that darkness you are either the hunter or the hunted.
No halftones, no complicated multivariant choices.
It is that simple.
And of course people, being inherently messy creatures, are utterly terrified of that simplicity. Such simple drastic choices feel almost physically sharp - like a meat cleaver to the head.
So people start fires, light torches, gas lamps and shiny neon lights. People do anything and everything in their pover to cover the darkness under the colorful blanket of city lights. Anything and everything for their right not to choose, not to get that final sharp answer to the question if they are afraid of what lurks in the dark or is they are what's lurking there.
It's like if the proverbial donkey when faced with two identical piles of hay decided to kick them both in one bigger pile and piss on top of it instead of dying of hunger how the philosopher intended. That's what metaphorical donkeys do to survive. That's what humans do to survive. Lite up the lamps, sprinkle the demonic darkness with the holy water out of the lightbulb, exorcise it with the ritual flick of the switch.
Easy, right?
The darkness isn't so easy to kill though. The lights can be extinguished but the dark… the dark just slithers away under your bed, hides in shadows of the narrow passageways and hisses at you from behind the iron bars of the rain sewers.
Not here. Not in this place.
This place was filled with the darkness and the slithering and the hissing - but its darkness wasn't giving me any choices. And unlike most people this absence of choice was what sent shivers, cold as the ice of Cocytus, down my spine. I wasn't the hunter here. I wasn't even the prey. I was trapped.
It wasn't even a real darkness. It looked like one but it was so obviously fake it hurt and made the silver pocket watch in my pocket helplessly spin its phosphorous glowing hands in circles.
This place.
Was fake.
I took my smartphone out and looked at its screen. It didn't pick up any networks but I still found the number and tapped the green circle to begin a call.
It rang a few times then seemingly disconnected.
"They've got me," I said into the microphone. "Now I need to find an owner of this place. I hope I'm not too much to take care of."
The phone choose to remain silent.
003
There are doors that are made to divide the space and to protect what's behind them or sometimes to protect the outside from what's locked behind the door. The heavy doors to the vaults and safes containing valuables, the locked doors to the castles inevitably containing distressed princesses, that sort of thing.
There is the other kind of doors too - the doors made to connect different spaces. The passages between here and there. The thin thresholds between one world and another.
These two types of doors are both distinct and similar and can turn one into another with one turn of a key, with one click of a lock.
And then there is the third kind. The doors that aren't doors at all, that lead to nowhere or can't be opened. Fake doors drawn on canvas hanging on the walls of reality.
This place was filled to the brim with the latter kind - it was a fake space after all. But even in a fake space belonging to a demon there are the rules that still have to be followed. My rules.
Every door has a lock. Every lock has a key. A door, a lock, a key - those three things are bound to exist together and when combined create a passage.
And at the end of this passage is a small room with a leather chair next to the round wooden table. In that chair sits - if that can be called "sitting" - a large green snake with keen eyes that looks at me with disdain and curiosity.
004
"So you finally found the door, detective," the snake hissed, setting aside the glass of whisky.
"That calls for a drink, don't you think?" They poured a second glass and put it on the table in front of me. "Don't worry it's a perfectly fine poison if I say so myself."
"Well… if you are who you think you are, it's a perfectly fine methanol." I said looking the snake in the eye. "In which case… I'd rather keep my eyesight, thank you very much."
"Oh you're no fun…" The snake sipped their drink. "So… grounded. So… insistent on a reality."
"What can I say," I said looking around. "I never was of the opinion that the fake is more valuable than the real thing…"
The room we were in was decorated sparsely but tastefully. A few masterpiece paintings on the walls looked almost like the genuine works of great artists. The chinese vase in the corner probably was just several hundreds of years younger than its shape and look would suggest.
"I hope detective," the snake coiled in the chair. "You understand the purpose of this meeting… After you ruined my business so completely and utterly I can't let you be in the world of living any more."
"What I don't understand," I asked. "Why drag me here? Yes, I uncovered and undermined your operations. But with your resources, you could've had me swimming down the river in a steel box in no time. So, why all this?"
The snake hissed. And hissed. And hissed for so long I understood it was actually laughing.
"Because you're human," they finally said. "And humans belong here, in my little fake pocket dimension. It is filled with all sorts of counterfeit things - it even is by itself a copy of your world. So humans, being fakes as you are, belong here."
"Oh don't make that disgusted face at me detective," the snake continued. "The human body… your very form… You love saying it yourselves: 'We are made in God's image!' Isn't that a definition of a copy? A fake? And not even very good copy at that… or your kind would still be roaming the green fields of Eden naked. But you were found flawed, 'buggy' in modern terms, and discontinued."
"What, did you see it with your own eyes?" I asked them while playing with my smartphone. "Are you implying you were there yourself, selling your bullshit and apples to the only two potential customers in existence?"
"No…" They were visibly annoyed. "That was that snake's work. The snake. I am the viper. We're different… Ah."
They've shut up seeing the kind of grin I was wearing on my face.
"Ah, yes," I tapped the touchscreen and the phone tried to call the same number as before. "Of course you aren't a snake… The viper. Bright green, red stripes… Trimeresurus fucatus?"
"What?"
"It's your name now." I put the phone back into the pocket. "After all, as you've said, I'm a human. So I do what humans do: making rules and giving names."
"Do you really think you can just walk in like some lady in red, utter some words and bind me?" The angry viper stood on its tail like it was about to pounce at me.
"No," I hid my hands in my pockets and smiled. "But she can."
005
The red glow appeared on the floor under the chair, circling it and spreading out forming intricate sigils.
The viper darted forward but hit its head against the glowing circle and recoiled, hissing in anger.
The room shook, the walls cracked, the paintings fell, the vase shattered, the liquid from the glass spilled onto the floor and burst into flames.
The viper slithered back and forth inside the glowing circle.
Then the world began to fade out.
Or, should I say, the reality began to fade in?
For a moment I could see the contours and shapes of things that belonged in a place I call home…
And a woman holding a book and loudly chanting spells in latin.
Then my legs gave in and I fell on the floor finally merging with my unconscious body.
006
"So this is it…" I said, rolling the counterfeit coin - with the Demon of Fakes bound inside it - over my fingers. "Thank you for helping me Annah."
"Oh, you're welcome," my trusty librarian friend waved my thanks away. "I just read some words from the book, that's all. You did most of the work yourself."
"I mean… it was you who suggested using soy meat and fake blood as the sacrifice…"
"But it was you who told me that demon's name." Annah took off her glasses and squinted at them looking for the specks of dust. "I was worried when you told me you'd be in another dimension completely… what if we wouldn't be able to communicate?"
"Don't worry," I took her hands still holding the glasses in mine and looked in her eyes trying to sound as convincing as possible. "We will always be able to speak to one another. No matter what dimensions we are in."
"But Madeleine, what if…"
"No 'if's. I set the rules here."
I let go of her hands and turned away, closing my eyes. Better not push too hard or the librarian will start hyperventilating and blushing. And I had one more heavy but important thing to tell her.
"Annah…" I began. "Was it your first ritual ever?"
"It was! I did well, right?" Annah looked so proud of herself, I almost bit my tongue. But what I was about to say needed to be said.
"I see," I said, nodding. "Welcome to hell then."
"Hell? Did I? Did I do something wrong?" She clearly started going over the details of the ritual in her head, trying to find which part of it had the fine print that landed her immortal soul in the fires of Gehenna.
"No Annah," I shook my head. "It's much simpler than that. You dabble in the occult - you go to hell. Just like that."
"Oh…" She suddenly looked at me with wide eyes. "So… you too?"
"Yup. It's definitely to hell with me."
