An Accounting of Sub-Basement Realities

"Outer perimeter is secure, Penny," Robb said, his voice low and calm. "Pure sea salt, consecrated. No gaps."

"Copy that," Penny's voice crackled in his earpiece, warm and reassuring despite the three hundred kilometres between them. "How's our boy?"

Robb glanced over at Bart. "Panicked. But he's staying put. You were right, the threat of a non-refundable invoice is a powerful motivator." He stood up, brushing salt dust from the knees of his canvas work trousers. "Okay, Mr. Bart. Talk me through it again. What, exactly, were you trying to summon?"

Bart stammered, his eyes wide and fixed on the centre of the room, where the air seemed to shimmer and distort, like a heat haze on asphalt. "A creature of commerce. A... a market spirit. From a pre-Babylonian text I bought online. It was supposed to give me an edge in the futures market."

"A pre-Babylonian text you bought online," Penny repeated in Robb's ear, her tone dripping with professional disdain. "Amateur hour. Robb, this isn't a market spirit. The ambient ontological decay is way too high. I'm reading significant reality slippage. This is a glitch-fiend. A Class Four Entropy Mite at minimum."

Robb's blood ran cold. Class Four. They had prepped for a Class Two, a simple binding and banishment job. Class Fours ate reality for breakfast. "Okay," he said, keeping his voice level for the client's sake. "Okay, that changes the approach. Penny, talk to me. What's the protocol?"

"Iron. Lots of it," she said immediately. "The old rules are the best rules. It can't process raw, unworked iron. It disrupts their connection to the plane. You have the filings?"

"Affirmative," Robb said, pulling a heavy leather pouch from his bag. He began to walk the inner circle, laying a thin, dark line of iron filings a foot inside the salt perimeter. As he worked, the shimmering in the centre of the room intensified. The geometry of the concrete walls seemed to bend and warp in his peripheral vision.

"It's manifesting," Robb reported, his heart starting to pound. The air grew cold, and the sweet, burnt-sugar smell intensified, becoming nauseating.

From within the shimmering distortion, something began to take shape. It wasn't a creature of flesh and bone. It was a thing of impossible angles, of flickering static, like a corrupted video file given three-dimensional form. It had limbs that phased in and out of existence, and it made a sound like a dial-up modem screaming.

"Don't look directly at it," Penny warned. "Focus on the anchor points. The circles are your reality. Everything inside them is stable. Everything else is a lie."

Robb took a deep breath, focusing on the pure white of the salt and the stark black of the iron. He pulled out the final piece of the puzzle: a small, heavy charm made of unrefined iron ore, cool and solid in his palm. "Okay. I'm going to try the Luring Canticle. Pull it to the centre of the circle, then hit it with the banishment."

"Be careful, Robb. It's strong."

The Price of a Closed Account

He began to chant in a low monotone, the ancient words feeling heavy and strange in the modern, concrete room. The glitch-fiend reacted. It screeched, the sound vibrating in Robb's bones, and surged against the inner circle of iron filings. The dark line flared with blue sparks where the creature touched it, but it held.

Slowly, Robb moved towards the centre of the containment area, holding the iron charm out like a shield. The creature recoiled from it, its form flickering violently. The air around him felt like sandpaper against his skin.

He was almost there. Just a few more words of the banishment incantation.

But then Bart, the client, gasped. "My briefcase!"

Robb risked a glance. Bart was pointing a trembling finger. The briefcase, which had been sitting safely by the elevators, was now inside the containment area, its form flickering and distorting. The fiend had pulled it through.

Driven by some idiotic, panicked instinct, Bart broke from his safe spot and ran towards the circle. "The contracts! I need them!"

"Get back!" Robb yelled, but it was too late. Bart's Gucci loafers broke the outer salt line.

The effect was instantaneous. The containment field collapsed with a sound like shattering glass. The glitch-fiend, freed, shrieked in triumph and lunged, not at Robb, but at the fool who had broken the circle.

Robb didn't think. He reacted. He threw himself at Bart, shoving the man with all his strength. Bart tumbled backward, out of the fiend's path, landing in a heap by the far wall.

Robb was left standing directly in the creature's way. He had just enough time to raise the iron charm, to see the creature's form—a swirling vortex of television static and broken physics—blot out the world.

It hit him. There was no pain. Just an overwhelming sense of dissolution. Of being unwritten. He felt his atoms coming undone, his memories fraying, his entire existence being cancelled out. His last sensation was Penny's voice in his ear, screaming his name. His body pixelated, unraveling into a cloud of static and dust that was then sucked into the void. And then he died.