POIMANDRÉSH charges up the stairwell two steps at a time.
The light is wrong.
It has no business being here. The stairwell, a place of darkness and regret only hours ago, is now suffused with a pale, forgiving glow. The now visible architecture suggests that the building was once grand. Columns hinted at beneath chipped plaster. Banisters worn smooth by hands that once believed in continuity. Now it smells of faint mildew, incense, and expired intention.
POIMANDRÉSH grips the railing as he ascends. His hands tighten out of reflex. His sternum aches with a warmth he does not yet recognize. His thoughts splinter-circling to red-black hair, gold light. The certainty that something essential has already begun slipping out of sequence.
Halfway up the stairs, he sidesteps THE DEVIL with a tweaker’s impossible grace.
THE DEVIL enters the stairwell the way royalty enters a kingdom they own, but no longer bother to rule.
He is hazy at the edges, smoke-limned, as though reality has not yet finished committing to him. One hand holds a drink. The other holds the bottle from which that drink was recently poured.
His cane threads with gold, broken in three elegant pieces. It floats at his side, all segments aligned in mild defiance of gravity.
His horns glow a dull red in the stairlight. The cracked cavity in his forehead looks older than architecture.
Without haste, without greeting, he says: “We’ve run out of drink.”
POIMANDRÉSH refuses to register him.
“I shouldn’t have gone outside,” POIMANDRÉSH shrills, rushing past. One black- tipped hand pressed to his chest, the other scraping the wall hard enough to wake the plaster. “That was a mistake. Things were unfolding in public. Terrible things.”
THE DEVIL watches him go with mild irritation.
“We’ve run out of drink,” he repeats, louder, as if addressing a stubborn universe. “This is a problem. What are we going to do about it?”
POIMANDRÉSH is already at the top of the stairs.
THE DEVIL follows at his own pace.
He takes a sip. He swallows. He pauses, as though savoring the concept of swallowing.
Each step measured. Catlike. Regal. The stairwell corrects its posture to accommodate him. He does not hurry. He has never hurried.
By the time THE DEVIL reaches the apartment, POIMANDRÉSH is already inside. The dead man is bracing himself against the furniture. Testing which objects still believe in solidity. Gravity is no longer deserving of trust. The living room remains exactly as they left it: bottles, spirits, overturned meaning. The kettle screams from the kitchen, venting its fury in volcanic steam.
“We’re out of drink,” THE DEVIL says again, now with authority.
POIMANDRÉSH bends forward, hands on his knees, breath coming too fast. Along his ribs, flowers darken, re-bloom, then retract as if embarrassed.
“This body’s started freelancing,” he says. “It’s not waiting for instructions anymore.”
He straightens without warning and stares at his arm.
“No. No no no no no. Unacceptable.”
Vines braid outward along his right forearm, tighter now, architectural. His fingers elongate, joints sharpening. The hand growing clawed and bestial, nails darkening to horn. From beneath the skin at the pit of his elbow, three piano strings emerge in parallel. The strings are taut and cast a faint hum, a chord plucked by no visible hand.
A series of small golden orbs bud along the arm and shoulder, metallic, luminous. One lifts free. Then another. Then several more, floating upward to the ceiling in slow defiance of gravity. The orbs rearrange the air around them into glassy chimes.
POIMANDRÉSH turns the arm, appalled.
“My arm’s joined an orchestra!” he yells.
THE DEVIL pauses. He looks at the arm. He looks at the orbs drifting toward the ceiling.
“Yes,” he says with mild interest. “That is happening.”
He turns away and lights something. The smoke coils around his horns like a crown. It lifts to the ceiling, avoiding the orbs with disdain.
“You’re imagining the significance.”
“I’m not imagining the arm,” POIMANDRÉSH snaps.
THE DEVIL exhales.
POIMANDRÉSH staggers toward the mirror. He redistributes his weight to accommodate his monstrous right arm. He catches his reflection, recoils.
“My eye sockets are - no, that’s wrong. They’re too empty. They weren’t this empty before.” He takes a moment, cocking his head like a fevered dog, “There’s too much space in there. That’s a draft. I’ve got a draft.”
He looks up at THE DEVIL, desperation in his fevered gaze.
“Something’s wrong with me.”
THE DEVIL finally turns to face him.
“Of course something’s wrong with you. Something’s wrong with me too. Something’s wrong with everyone,” he says. “Your agony isn’t some localized phenomena.”
He glances again at the floating orbs.
“Untidy, though.”
THE DEVIL steps toward the mirror himself and peers at his own reflection, critical. He tilts his head. The crack in his forehead widens to a slight degree, then settles.
“My tongue,” he says, lost in thought. “Looks like something left out in the rain.”He flicks a layer of encrusted lichen from his forked black tongue, dissatisfied.
“Disgraceful.”
POIMANDRÉSH sinks onto a chair, shaking.
“This is awful,” he says. “None of me is on my side.”
THE DEVIL waves this away.
“It’s the same for me” he says. “It’s the same for everyone. It will pass. Or it won’t. Either way, we’re out of drink.”
THE DEVIL sits, crossing his legs with imperial ease. He retrieves one of the reality-tear newspapers from the pile. It obliges by opening itself.
“You need sustenance,” he adds, reading. “Grease. Salt. Something reprehensible.”
He clears his throat and reads aloud:
LOCAL DYBBUK MISTAKES BODILY PANIC FOR SPIRITUAL AWAKENING AGAIN POIMANDRÉSH groans and stumbles toward the kitchen.
Steam fills the room, thick and animate. Faces bloom and dissolve within it, whispering contradictory advice. The kettle screams. The walls sweat.
POIMANDRÉSH grips the counter, empty sockets performing a pantomime of eyes squeezing shut.
“I’m going to die,” he announces.
THE DEVIL does not look up.
“Well,” he says with a slithering calm. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
The steam does not vanish. It simply loses its urgency.
It beads along the cupboards, sweats from the grout. It condenses into slow, breathing curtains. It parts only when POIMANDRÉSH pushes through. The kettle’s scream has softened into a wounded animal’s whine. The air tastes of iron, citrus peel, and regret.
“Where’s the coffee,” POIMANDRÉSH mutters, pawing through the wreckage. “I made it real. I watched it happen.”
A ladle twitches. A cupboard door exhales. Something fungal blooms along the backsplash. It realizes it has made a mistake, and retreats.
Behind him: the sound of paper.
Not hurried. Not loud. The sound of unfolded inevitability.
THE DEVIL stands inside the kitchen threshold. Steam avoids him by instinct. It arranges itself into arches and aisles around his silhouette. As though the room has decided, without discussion, that he is an altar.
“Oh this is excellent,” THE DEVIL says, delighted. “You’ll like this one.”
POIMANDRÉSH leans forward, bracing himself against the counter. The surface dimples under his palms. The wood begins to remember forests it never belonged to.
“Please,” he says. “If this is another improvement story, I’m not cleared for it.”
THE DEVIL clears his throat. This is not for attention. This is for rhythm.
“SOUL ACHIEVES PERFECT INTEGRATION,” he reads. “SUBJECT SUCCESSFULLY BALANCED
MASCULINE ASSERTION, FEMININE RECEPTIVITY, AND MORAL VIRTUE.”
POIMANDRÉSH winces.
“SUBJECT REPORTED COMPLETE INNER HARMONY.” “SUBJECT THEN CEASED TO EXIST.”
A soft crack answers the sentence.
Not from POIMANDRÉSH’s body this time.
From the wall.
A thin lattice of vinework pushes through the plaster beside him. Delicate, cathedral-like tracery. It flowers into impossible arches that echo the geometry of a nave. Tiny bells bloom where flowers should be. They do not ring. They wait.
POIMANDRÉSH turns.
“…ceased how.”
THE DEVIL scans down the page.
“No violence. No ascension. No witnesses. One moment present. Next moment resolved.”
POIMANDRÉSH laughs, sharp and involuntary.
“That’s not enlightenment,” he says. “That’s an accounting error.”
The floor under his feet stirs.
Woodgrain rearranges itself into ribs. Mushrooms pearl up between the tiles, pale and translucent, breathing, animated. One splits open to reveal a polished brass hinge inside, clicking in deep thought.
THE DEVIL nods, pleased.
“They’ve flagged it as a success.”
He steps further into the kitchen, unhurried. His cane aligning itself beside him like punctuation.
“The soul ‘resolved its contradictions with such thoroughness that narrative tension collapsed.’”
POIMANDRÉSH grips the counter harder.
“That’s obscene,” he says. “You can’t just… solve yourself.”
“Ah,” THE DEVIL replies, correcting him, “but that’s exactly what it did.”
POIMANDRÉSH turns, wild-eyed.
“And what happened to its body?”
THE DEVIL checks.
“No complaints filed.”
A beat.
POIMANDRÉSH laughs again, louder this time. He presses a hand to his chest.
Instead of pain, a structure answers.
From his sternum, a small ribbed dome pushes outward. Bone, vine, and lacquered wood interlaced. Like the beginning of a chapel trying to remember its blueprint. Light filters through it from nowhere in particular. Dust motes orbit the new structure with devotional seriousness.
“I don’t want to be a conclusion,” he says. “I want to be… ongoing.”
THE DEVIL folds the paper once.
“The soul interviewed with a great calm,” he says. “‘Once I wanted nothing, there was nothing left to want me.’”
The dome in POIMANDRÉSH’s chest shutters.
“So you’re saying,” he says, “if I get my shit together, I vanish.”
“I wouldn’t rush it,” he says. “Most don’t manage it. It requires discipline. Balance. A tragic lack of imagination.”
Behind POIMANDRÉSH, a cluster of piano hammers extrudes from the cabinet doors. They click against one another in an idle rhythm, waiting for keys that do not exist. A loose string snakes across the ceiling, weaving itself into the latticework. Turning architecture into instrument.
THE DEVIL steps forward. His cane reassembles itself beside him with a mild, irritated clink.
“I wouldn’t recommend it anyway,” he says. “Balance is terminal.”
POIMANDRÉSH turns, empty sockets blooming with fast-growing night flowers. These immediately begin to wilt.
“I fix myself,” he says, “I disappear.”
THE DEVIL considers this.
“Yes,” he says. “But you’d feel marvelous for a moment.”
Golden orbs push themselves from POIMANDRÉSH’s shoulders and drift upward. They are flatter than the earlier ones, stamped like coins. They arrange themselves into a slow, revolving halo. One that keeps losing confidence and re-forming.
“This is me not managing it,” POIMANDRÉSH says, gesturing at the impossible garden he’s becoming. “Just so we’re clear.”
THE DEVIL considers him.
“Yes,” he says. “You’re doing a splendid job of it.”
POIMANDRÉSH slides down the cabinet until he’s sitting on the floor. The mushrooms flatten to make space. He clutches a bowl he doesn’t remember retrieving and spoons coffee into his mouth, grimacing.
THE DEVIL finally notices.
“…is that coffee.”
POIMANDRÉSH sniffs.
“I couldn’t find a cup.”
THE DEVIL stares at him as though this explains everything.
“Well there it is,” he says. “No wonder you’re unraveling.”POIMANDRÉSH laughs again, weaker now.
“Nothing in me is cooperating.”
THE DEVIL flicks the paper shut.
“That’s fine,” he says. “Cooperation is an overrated thing. It leads to outcomes.”
The lattice along the wall completes itself with a soft, satisfied sound. The kettle resumes screaming, thrilled to be relevant again. Outside the kitchen, something small and unseen applauds.
The steam hasn’t cleared.
But it has organized itself.
It hangs in layers now, stratified, as if the kitchen has developed its own weather system.
Beneath it, the sink waits. Full. Quiet. Wrong in the way still water is wrong.
POIMANDRÉSH peers into it.
The surface isn’t water anymore. Its various parts have achieved some heterogeneous agreement.
Plates overlap at odd angles, bonded by grease and memory. A broken wine glass hums, trying to remember a mouth. Cigarette butts float upright like drowned saints. Tea leaves cling together, spelling nothing, insisting anyway.
Something underneath shifts.
Not rising. Coordinating.
POIMANDRÉSH recoils.
“That wasn’t here yesterday.”
The drain makes a sound like swallowing.
Behind him, a cupboard opens itself a fraction. It exhales, then closes again in embarrassment.
THE DEVIL stands in the doorway.
The steam does not freeze for him.
It thins, as if embarrassed of its own pantomime.
He looks into the sink.
He sighs.
“Well,” he says. “We have been feeding it.”
The surface tightens.
A fork twitches. A plate slides forward a centimeter, testing weight. The saturated smell of it deepens. Not rot, but repetition.
POIMANDRÉSH grabs the first thing within reach.
A corkscrew.
He stares at it.
“No,” he mutters. “That’s not right.”
The sink ripples.
A cluster of cigarette butts bind together, fibrous, hairlike. The water level rises, almost imperceptible, but intentional.
POIMANDRÉSH reaches again.
A spatula. Bent. Sticky.
His hands shake.
“I just need to. Move. Something…”
THE DEVIL watches this with faint interest.
“Watch yourself,” he says. “You’ll encourage it.”
THE DEVIL reaches into a drawer and withdraws a pair of dishwashing gloves.
They are yellow. Ancient. Covered in sigils drawn in permanent ink. A slight dampness in the fingertips.
He tosses them.
POIMANDRÉSH fumbles, catches them, stares.
“These feel - ”
“Yes,” THE DEVIL says. “Don’t think about that.”
POIMANDRÉSH pulls them on.
The sink responds immediately.
The surface bulges.
Not in a dramatic way. In an offensive way. As if it has decided to stop pretending to be domestic. Plates slide together. Food matter knits. A wet, collective sound issues from the drain. A snarl.
Something in the sink has achieved elbow. An arm, tentacular, reeking of decay and stale wine, grabs POIMANDRÉSH by the wrist and pulls.
POIMANDRÉSH yelps.
“That’s an arm,” he says. “That’s absolutely an arm.”
The kettle ticks behind them.
THE DEVIL lifts his cane.
Not raised. Not brandished.
He taps it once against the porcelain edge of the sink.
The sound is small.
Everything in the basin stops.
The water does not drain. The arm does not retract.
But the intention collapses.
The ecosystem loses confidence.
THE DEVIL leans in, displeased.
“This isn’t yours,” he says into the churning sink matter.
He taps again.
The drain opens.
Not with violence. Not with cleanliness. With resignation.
The mass loosens. Plates slide apart. Cigarette butts surrender. The arm forgets it ever wanted to exist in the first place.
The water recedes.
What remains is filth. Ordinary. Ashamed.
POIMANDRÉSH slumps against the counter, breathing hard. One gloved hand still hovers over the basin. Uncertain what to do with itself now that the emergency has ended.
He swallows.
“I thought you were on dish duty this week,” he says.
THE DEVIL lowers his cane.
“Well,” he replies. “I thought you’d been joking.”
A pause.
The kettle ticks behind them. Once. Twice.
THE DEVIL rubs at his temple with the back of his fingers. His posture shifts to a slight degree.
Not weakness. Aftershock.
He looks around the kitchen.
At the sink. At the steam. At the dishes. At the evidence of several very poor decisions.
Then, in a quiet voice: “I don’t feel right.”
POIMANDRÉSH looks up.
THE DEVIL clears his throat, annoyed that he had to say it at all.
“We’ve been in here too long,” he adds. “Everything’s starting to… take part in things.”
The kettle lets out a small, eager sound.
THE DEVIL turns toward the door, eyes unfocused.
“It’s time to go outside,” he says.
“We need some air.”