The small dilapidated office was covered in the dust, the air was stuffy and heavy, merciless to the nose, and hard to breathe in. Zeke could sense his sinuses threatening to close up as he scanned the room; next to the door was a rusty file cabinet that he believed to be pristine white at some period, there was a yellow hard hat that surprisingly looked to be in good condition on the decaying epoxy floor coating that was marked with scratches, crushed marble, and multicolored inkblots — it reminded him of a European painting.

AJ moved up to the window and pried it open; the nightly autumn wind pushed itself into the room. Zeke wondered what the time was, but was too afraid to check his phone.

Just knowing that it was clearly past 10 p.m. was enough panic for him to handle. He turned back to the bucket of paint that they found in the office. Zeke opened the lid and the foul, sour odor of the ancient sky blue paint hit him like a dodgeball. He winced and backed away.

“Is it safe to use that?” AJ asked.

“Paint has about a fifteen-year shelf life.” Zeke covered his nose with his arm and reached for the paint. He slowly peeled off the upper skin; releasing an even deadlier stench into the air. AJ retched. Zeke mentally transported himself to his happy place where he’s a world-renowned doctor without a care in the world, as he dipped his finger in the clumpy paint. It was warm, but Zeke shivered anyway; it felt like having maggots crawl around his finger — disgusting, but oddly soothing in a way.

Ugo entered the room with the girl in his arms, startling Zeke and AJ. “So, did you guys find paint?”

“Dude, what’re you doing bringing that thing here?” AJ badgered.

“I thought you were just in the other rooms searching for paint.” Zeke added.

“I didn’t want to leave her in that crater like that. She needs warmth. She needs love.”

Zeke noticed that Ugo’s arm was wobbling. “Mora, you sprained your wrist.”

“Eh, it doesn’t hurt.”

Zeke groaned and looked over to the black book near the bucket on the table. It was opened on the page with the emergency sigil. He raised his wet finger, slid his hand under the book, picked it up, and walked over to the door. Using his foot, he slammed the door shut and plastered his painted finger on the rotting wood. He drew the sigil.

Ugo walked to a corner and gently placed the girl down.

“So, what exactly is supposed to happen after you draw it?” AJ asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe it’ll summon somebody who knows how to resolve this.”

As Zeke moved on to the horizontal line, AJ glared at Ugo and said, “If you touched her where you shouldn’t have. I’m helping her form a lawsuit against you once everything is over.”

“I wouldn’t do that, and, please, my soulmate wouldn’t try to sue me.”

“You just met her.”

“And that’s long enough.”

“You don’t even know her name.”

“I will when we fix her.”

Zeke stepped back and said, “I’m done.”

They stared at the sigil smeared on the door.

“Now what?” AJ asked. They exchanged looks with each other and said nothing. The silence stubbornly lingered in the room as they waited for something to happen.

“I had low expectations and I’m still disappointed,” Ugo said.

“It would’ve been cool if a wormhole appeared and took us to another area like in Black Souls.”

“Mano, Dragon Blood!”

“And you guys are talking about your video games, right?”

Ugo rushed to the door. “In Dragon Blood, there’s a spell in which when you draw a certain symbol on a door and open it…” he opened it. Revealing just the main area of the paint factory.

“Nothing happens,” AJ said.

Zeke closed the book and grunted, “Great.”

Ugo pushed the door shut and then became still all over while staring at the sigil. “Wait, mano, you missed something.” He legged back to the bucket, dipped his finger in, and moved back to the door. He traced some curved lines on the ends of the cross.

Zeke raised a brow and popped the book open again. He flipped to the sigil’s page and saw that Ugo was right. He had only seen it once, and from a distance. His brother’s hidden talent was an envious one.

“I was literally holding it in my hand,” Zeke said while shaking his head.

“If only I had what you had,” AJ said to Ugo.

Ugo backed away from the door and analyzed the sigil. “Yeah, it’s right now.”

Zeke closed the book and held it in his hand as he walked to the door. “Mora, I don’t think a couple of lines are going to make a difference. Maybe some things Aba made up and some she—” he opened the door and didn’t see the factory main area. Past the doorway was a room shrouded in darkness. He froze as Ugo and AJ crept up to him from behind and gawked at the inexplicably spawned room.

Ugo took one step forward and as his sole touched the beige natural stone tile cladding — the black iron candle sconces ignited and illuminated the room.

Zeke followed Ugo’s lead and entered the room. The scent was welcoming for how dirty the room was, and the air seemed filtered and mixed with smoked chamomile. The crackling sound of the tiny dancing fires was pleasantly soft on the ears. Standing in the room made Zeke’s skin warm and smooth all over feel as though he were being coddled in the embracing bosom of a goddess.

The sconces radiated from the white stone walls blighted with patches of missing plaster and blessed with wall hangings inked with apotropaic symbols; some Zeke could easily recognize, such as the pentagram, the Eye of Ra, the Hamsa hand, and the Algiz rune.

But others that didn’t seem right scared him with just one glimpse, like a bleeding eye, a cross coiled with serpents, and one symbol he concluded had to be downright Satanic and tried to forget everything about it. At one end of the room there was a colorful psychedelic tapestry of a three-faced sun, each one more deranged than the last; it hung over a golden wood altar that had a bowl of water.

At another end there were two sets of carved sofas without cushioning, a filled bookshelf, and a trestle table — all made from common timber, covered in cobwebs.

“What is this place?” Zeke muttered while scouting the place. He found a filthy, curved timber counter near a doorless arched frame. He peered down the hallway it led to, and it was dark, like a bottomless pit. Zeke turned back to the doorway they came from and could see AJ standing in the office.

She entered cautiously and scanned the area. “So, is there anybody here that can help us?”

Ugo flinched and rushed back to the doorway. He exited and returned with the girl in his arms. “Hello? Is there anybody here? We need some help! Anybody!” Ugo shouted as he looked around. He looked at the darkened corridor and approached it. “We need some help over here!” One step in the hallway made every sconce on the wall ignite. Ugo continued shouting as he zipped down the hall.

Zeke and AJ followed him. There were doors on either side of the walls, engraved with pentagrams and with plaques under it that Zeke didn’t bother to read. More and more doors spawned as the long, narrow hallway extended.

“Is there anybody here!”

Zeke saw Ugo shout at the near end of the hallway before opening a door on his right and going in. He and AJ sped up.

Zeke and AJ entered and found Ugo placing her down on a single white bed. The room was small; there was a nightstand, a large larder, a hand carved stone flower pot that only held dirt, and a bronze candle chandelier hung from the ceiling.

Ugo stared at the girl and then turned back to Zeke and AJ. “Did you see what the plaque on the door said? ‘Patient Room.’ Zeke… do you think—?”

“I don’t know what to think, Mora.”

“Okay, there has to be someone here, right?” Ugo started walking. “We’ve got to search this entire place.”

Zeke whipped back and stopped him by shouting, “Mora, there’s no mini-map in real life! You’ll get lost!”

Ugo gave him a smirk. “I’ll remember my way back.”

AJ groaned. “Oh, right…”

The door slammed shut, and they popped up like a gang of meerkats who just remembered they were on the lookout.

Zeke squirmed and shifted his body a bit as cold air blew in the center of stomach. He felt the black book causing his hand to cramp up, so he switched to his other hand.

“Zeke…”

Zeke heard AJ’s frightened whisper and looked at her — she was white as the fur of a polar bear. She was gaping forward. Zeke spun around and saw the girl’s unblinking, pulsating heterochromatic eyes beaming at him and his friends. She lied, perfectly still, on her back with her head turned to them — locked on them, like a predator who had already come up with a hundred different ways to enjoy her prey. The gray on her right had become cloudier and the blue on her normal left eye shone like sapphire in the deepest, darkest stone tunnel. They were open so widely that her eyelids seemed to be missing, as if they were torn off.

Her chest raised slowly as the rest of her body remained limp. Gravity pinched her and was slowly lifting her off the bed. She floated mid-air with her head, arms, and legs dangling about, all while maintaining her gaze on the herd she will devour.

In an eye blink, she flipped up and became vertical. She floated forward with her head floppy and titled it to her right in a position that looked painful just looking at it. The veins on the side of her neck stretched and bulged, teasing that they could snap at any given moment. She stopped mid-air. Zeke, Ugo, and AJ were cowered gargoyle statues who just gawked up at her as black goo oozed from the corner of her bottom lip and colored the stone tiles with disturbing bacterial shapes.

The girl raised her hand lazily with an open palm and gave Ugo a dead look. He smiled. Then, she pushed her hand forward and Ugo flew and collided with the wall.

“Ugo!”

“Mora!”

The girl spluttered in the ancient tongue with her horrifically ungodly, blusterous voice. Hearing the voice made Zeke’s inner ears hurt with stabbing pain. His heart was beating so violently, he swore it was bashing against his ribcage.

As Zeke reached for his chest, the book slipped out of his hand; he saw it fall towards the floor as he got further and further away from it. He looked directly at the girl as she was raising a hand, keeping it flat, and then she swung it up — Zeke hit the chandelier with his back rib and plummeted head first. On the floor on his stomach, immobile, his back was on fire, but it stayed focused on one spot. Zeke wanted to scream, but it hurt so badly that it felt like screaming would make it worse. The top of his head was warm and pinging; it felt as though he never stopped banging it on the stone floor. The pain was persistent and increased in small doses. He could feel tears gathering in his eyes, but did his very best to keep them from escaping. He started blinking the tears away as he looked up at the floating petite 100-pound monster.

A size eleven running sneaker shot at the girl and smacked her across the cheek. Her head jerked to the side and some white and gray strands of hair glued to the wet glob on the side of her mouth. Zeke turned in the direction where the shoe came from.

“Stop hurting my friends, you demon,” AJ said.

Zeke peered through her eyeglass lenses the best he could and saw the eyes of a hunter. Her posture was daunting despite missing a shoe; head balanced in place, back straightened, and shoulders broad. She scowled at the girl.

“What are you doing, idiota!” Ugo screamed from the end of the room and then returned to hissing at his pain.

The girl’s eyelids appeared and started dropping. Her head wobbled back and forth. She lowered her hand and crashed down.

Zeke propped himself up on his elbows and stared at AJ alongside Ugo with a dumb look.

“I can’t believe you threw your smelly shoe at a demon,” Ugo said.

“I don’t have smelly feet!”

The girl grumbled; the room hushed once more. She twisted and squirmed, and then slowly sat up.

“Oh, no, it’s phase two of the boss fight!” Ugo yelled.

The girl opened her eyes and the gray in her right eye slowly dissipated and the blue on her left lightened. Zeke held her confused gaze as he studied her eyes that reminded him of the

light, cloudless sky that early summer afternoons would offer. They radiate nothing but innocence and ignorance. “Her eyes are back to normal,” Zeke said.

Ugo shot up from the floor, let out a painful groan, and then stared at the girl. “Does that mean she’s back to normal now?”

They focused on her as she scanned the room, shivering, and her fretting worsened with every object she observed. She crawled back as her expression tightened and twisted with terror.

“Where am I?” she shrieked, with a quaver in her voice. Her voice returned to its regular sweet idiolect with a slight disturbance. She whimpered breathlessly.

Ugo moved up to her. “Hey, it’s okay—”

She backed away with more haste. “What are you?”

“Um… a guy?” Ugo answered, confusedly. “Seventeen-year-old Spanish boyfriend material. Never seen one before? Oh, you must be from Eastern Europe or something. I didn’t realize the lack of diversity there was that bad.”

Zeke forced himself back on his feet. He put on the least threatening face he could conjure and cracked a soft smile. “We’re not going to hurt you, okay?” Zeke said to the girl in a honeyed voice. He could tell that the girl’s terror of them was genuine. It was the same expression that characters in a horror movie would have when encountering the monster for the first time. Something they only heard stories about; brief physical descriptions and the greatest efforts of their imagination to visualize it and then seeing it in person and realizing the horror of the real thing beat their imagination by a landslide.

It was like watching a kitten shivering in the rain all by itself. Hard to look away but painful to stare at. Her eyes were glistening with tears as she continued to back up. “You’re all human!” She exclaimed.

Their expressions went blank.

“Um... yeah?” AJ said.

“Look, panicking isn’t going to help your current situation,” Zeke said. “Please, calm down and, maybe, tell us your name?”

“Yeah, definitely tell us your name and, maybe, your phone number while you’re at it,” Ugo chimed in.

The girl hit her head on the side-rail. She squealed and rubbed the back of her head.

“Hey, be careful,” Ugo said.

“Get away from me!” she shouted. She arose and looked back at them with a grim expression. She hunched over out of nowhere and put her hand on top of her head. “Virgil… Nananiel… no…” she groaned loud enough for them to hear.

“Neither of those names refers to a boyfriend of yours, right? Y-Y-You’re definitely single, right?”

“Mora, focus!”

“I am! I’m asking the most important questions here. I know I did not just wrestle with a demon for a girl who is already taken! My wrist is on fire!”

“I thought you said that it didn’t hurt.”

“Of course, it hurts! You know how fragile I am. I went to the hospital last week because of a paper cut, goddamnit.”

The girl silences and lifts her head. She sobbed. “I let everybody down…”

“Hey, don’t cry,” Ugo said. “What’s wrong?”

She sniffled and wiped her tears away. “I have to get out of here.” She marched towards the door.

After she brushes past him, Zeke spun around and gripped her shoulder. “Whoa, wait!”

She shrugged off his hold and barked, “Let me go!”

“I’m sorry we can’t let you leave!”

The girl sniped at him with a glare. “Are you going to stop me?”

“Yes…” Zeke looked over to AJ. “Okay, AJ, stop her.” AJ shook her head and blocked the door.

“Let’s just talk, okay?”

“No, I have to go—”

“Look, there is a demon inside of you. We’re not sure if it’s actually gone or not.” Ugo said, while running up to her. “As much as I hate to say it, the demon could be using her to talk with us right now.”

“Right,” Zeke said.

“That’ll also explain why she’s dodging all of my questions and doesn’t seem the least bit interested in me. Prince Charming Syndrome should be in full throttle now!”

The girl walked up to AJ. “Get out of the way. I don’t want to hurt you.”

AJ tried to keep her brave face, but her body trembled. “Maybe, this isn’t the best idea.”

Zeke and Ugo exchanged looks and ran up to the girl and grabbed a hold of her.

She resisted and screamed.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’m just trying to help!” Zeke shouted.

“I said…” the girl trailed off and then she emitted an ear-splitting scream. They fought against the piercing song and gripped harder; and then she sprouted her giant, tricolored wings out of the holes on the back of her blazer. The tips knocked Zeke and Ugo away a couple of feet. They tumbled across the ground.

AJ flattened her back on the door and slid down while ogling at the angelic visage. Zeke and Ugo stared in awe as well. The girl stood firm; solemn and proud as she expanded her wings to the side.

Ugo gasped. “She’s an angel.”

Black goo trickled from the girl’s nose. She dabbed it with her finger and stared at the sticky

liquid and then hurled a waterfall of the goo; drenching her hand in it. Her wings disappeared as she swayed slowly until her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she collapsed.