Casual Summons

He summoned a demon from Hell, following instructions from a journal his grandfather wrote on the subject before being the victim of a sort of faust-like debacle himself. A little imp popped in from a cloud of smoke following his ritual. It turned around, and when it saw him it rolled its eyes and said: “Oh, it's you.”

“Yeah it's me,” he said. “How are you?”

“Look, kid.” It said, taking a seat on the magic summoning circle. “You're a great magician. You really are. One day you're going to be very rich and you're going to be happy in a desperate, shallow sort of way if you play your runes right, but you've got to stop calling demons in just to talk.”

“I can summon demons to do whatever I want,” he said. 

“Technically, true,” said the imp. “But we're usually reserved for killing people, burning down villages, granting asymmetrical pacts, torture and the like, not talking to lonely children.”

“Why not?”

“Read a fucking fantasy novel kid,” said the imp. “I haven't got all the answers.”

He sat on his bed and said: “Sometimes do you ever want to just run away? You know, from work and stuff, and just disappear.”

“You want me to make you disappear? I can fucking make you disappear.”

“Have you ever fallen in love?”

“Yeah,” said the imp. “Fell in love with a gorgon. Really pretty, beautiful flowing locks of asps.”

“I like this girl. She doesn't know I exist.”

“Then summon a fucking lust demon and you can screw her all you like.”

“No, no,” he said. “I want to have her love me, not just want me. Do you know what I mean?”

“Humans…” the imp said, shaking its head. “You give them bodies and that's not enough for them. There has to be a soul or whatever. Something inside. Some magical inside. Fucking idiots.”

“You think I should write her a poem? A mystical poem?”

“That will trap her soul in a jewel?”

“That will make her fall in love.”

“Yeah, what's the difference…” said the imp. “When you give her a wedding ring, isn't that trapping her soul in a jewel?”

He laughed. “You're funny!”

“Yeah, go fuck yourself.”

“You can go now, demon.”

“Thank god, you lowlife,” and it was as if the imp was never there.