The apartment is quieter after the walkabout.
Not cleaner. Not calmer. Quieter, the way a mouth becomes quiet after it has said something irreversible.
Light comes in wrong through the kitchen window. It isn’t fog-light or winter-light. It’s valleylight, bright enough to make shame visible. It throws hard, clean shapes across the counter. Bottle necks, cigarette spirals, the chipped lip of the sink. Even the dust looks judgmental.
Outside, across the street, the city is being revised.
Not demolished. Edited.
A row of bone-cranes stands over an empty lot, their long arms jointed like pale vertebrae.
They do not move. They have finished whatever ritual they performed. Hired guns. Now they wait, patient as herons, for someone to decide what a “new beginning” looks like.
The vacant lot itself looks recently digested.
POIMANDRÉSH sits on the couch with a notebook balanced on his thigh. He tries to write, but the words do not hold still. His hand drags a sentence across the page. The ink immediately begins to sprout thin red filaments. Little loops of vinework, as if the language wants to become architecture again.
He presses harder. The sentence turns into a trellis.
He sighs.
Behind him, in the kitchen, THE DEVIL is searching for a solution the way a monarch searches for a servant.
He is half-dressed. Not in a way that suggests seduction, but in a way that suggests impatience with fabric. The coat is still on. The sleeves rolled up. Limbs unfurling like smoke. His horns look dull, as if even they’re nursing a headache.
He opens cupboards, closes them in offense.
He opens the fridge and stares into it like its betrayed him.
Then, with a small sound of satisfaction, he finds a jar.
A jar unlabeled, except for a faint stamped seal on the lid: a circle, bisected, with a tiny crown on the lower half.
Inside: a fine white powder. Not flour. Not salt. Something older than both. It has the dry, clean smell of burnt marble.
THE DEVIL unscrews the lid and pinches some between two fingers. He rubs it, thoughtful in his motion, along the inside of his wrist.
Where it touches, the skin pales. Not whitening, the skin is like pale marble. But simplifying. As though complexity is being asked to leave.
POIMANDRÉSH looks over his shoulder.
“Is that… what I think it is?”THE DEVIL glances at him, an expression of one insulted at perception.
“It’s not for you,” he says. “Don’t develop opinions.”
POIMANDRÉSH squints.
“You’re using annulment ash as -”
“As what,” THE DEVIL interrupts, already bored of the conversation. “As relief.”
He drags the powder along his throat. The air around his mouth clears by instinct. Even the cigarette smoke, what little remains, edges away. As though terrified of erasure mid-coil.
POIMANDRÉSH returns to his notebook, trying again.
The vines in the ink twitch, listening.
“It’s strange,” he says to himself. “How everything wants to conclude.”
THE DEVIL makes a sound that could be agreement or indigestion.
“This morning,” POIMANDRÉSH continues, “I felt something. Like a hinge. Like the world was about to open. And then you -”
“And then I did what?” THE DEVIL asks without looking up.
POIMANDRÉSH hesitates.
“You stabilized it,” he says finally. “Or… you stopped it.”
THE DEVIL laughs, once.
“Stabilize is a peasant word,” he says. “I refused it.”
He pinches more of the ash and dusts it across his sternum. The powder does not fall. It clings in a thin halo, as if gravity has decided on chivalry.
POIMANDRÉSH watches, unsettled.
“What happens if you use too much?”
THE DEVIL pauses.
His eyes narrow with the pleased irritation of someone asked a question he enjoys.
“You don’t want to know what happens if I use too much,” he says.
POIMANDRÉSH goes back to the notebook. He writes: ONGOING.
The word sprouts a small flower at the bottom of the O. It wilts in embarrassment. He rips the page out and crumples it. The paper crumple makes a sound like a tiny confession.
A minute passes.
The kettle, dormant, gives a faint, anticipatory tick.
THE DEVIL’s hand stops mid-air.
He gives a sharp look toward the kitchen sink.
POIMANDRÉSH feels it too: a subtle tightening in the room, the way breath tightens before a sob.
THE DEVIL speaks in soft tones, almost conversational.
“It’s waking again.”
POIMANDRÉSH’s stomach sinks.
“The sink?”
“No,” THE DEVIL says. “The apartment.”As if on cue, the empty lot outside shifts color. Not in a dramatic way. More like a thought turning over. The cranes remain still. But the emptiness beyond them seems to lean closer to the glass.
POIMANDRÉSH stands, notebook forgotten.
“We should leave,” he says.
THE DEVIL’s gaze flicks toward him, almost tender with contempt.
“Leave where,” he asks. “To the street? To the park? To the mountains that eat memory for breakfast?”
POIMANDRÉSH opens his mouth, searching. A flash of golden skin. Red black hair. He reaches as far into himself as he can. He fails.
“Maybe we could find -”
THE DEVIL’s cane segments slide closer together without him touching them. The three pieces align at his side like a sentence deciding it has teeth.
“No,” he says.
The word is small, but it lands with weight.
POIMANDRÉSH swallows.
“Then we need something,” he says. “To get through the next three hours. You said yourself.
Too early for food. Too early for absolution. Too early for -”
“Too early for you to lecture me,” THE DEVIL finishes.
He sets the ash jar down with care, like a dangerous pet. Then he opens a lower cabinet POIMANDRÉSH has avoided for days.
Inside: cleaning agents, old offerings, ritual scraps, a small tin of iron nails. And nested at the back like contraband:an opaque bottle with a wax-dipped neck.
POIMANDRÉSH’s heart-hollow tightens.
“No,” he says immediately. “That one’s not a drink.”
THE DEVIL lifts the bottle and turns it in his hand. The wax seal bears no label, only a carved symbol: a mouth stitched shut.
He gives a faint smile.
“Of course it’s a drink,” he says. “But it’s not meant for talkers.”
POIMANDRÉSH steps forward.
“That’s -”
“Lethic solvent,” THE DEVIL says in a pleasant tone. “Yes. I know what it is.”
POIMANDRÉSH stares.
“You keep solvent for names in our kitchen cabinet.”
THE DEVIL’s smile becomes more pronounced, as if this has finally become entertaining.
“You take your coffee in a bowl these days,” he says. “We all have our methods and our means.”
POIMANDRÉSH reaches for the jar.
THE DEVIL shifts one step back. No haste, no threat. Only the effortless assumption that nothing will touch him.
“Don’t,” POIMANDRÉSH says, voice cracking. “If you drink that, you’ll… you’ll strip something you can’t reattach.”
THE DEVIL considers him for a long moment.
Then, softer: “I’m already congealing,” he says. “Do you understand what that means for me?”
POIMANDRÉSH does understand. That’s the problem.
THE DEVIL breaks the wax with his thumbnail. The seal cracks like a small bone.
The smell that escapes is not chemical. It is an essence of forgetting.
POIMANDRÉSH’s sockets water in an instant. Not from pain. From recognition. The scent is the same as the moment before a dream collapses.
THE DEVIL raises the bottle. POIMANDRÉSH takes a step forward. THE DEVIL pauses, almost generous.
“You want me coherent,” he says. “You want me present. You want me charming enough to tolerate.”
He lifts the bottle a little higher.
“This is the price.”
And drinks. Not much. A mouthful. That’s all it takes.
THE DEVIL’s posture changes.
At first: relief. His shoulders lower. His horns brighten, a slight crimson glow, as though someone has turned the current back on.
Then: laughter. Not manic. Not doomed-laughter. Not crashing-out.
A quiet, delighted laugh. As though he has just heard the simplest joke in existence.
POIMANDRÉSH frowns, uneasy.
“What -”
THE DEVIL holds up a finger.
He swallows, like a man tasting wine. His eyes widen with mild wonder.
“Oh,” he says.
“What?” POIMANDRÉSH insists.
THE DEVIL looks at him as if seeing him for the first time. Then he says, with a sinister calm: “I can’t remember why you’re upset.”
Silence. The kettle ticks, once, thrilled. POIMANDRÉSH goes cold.
“That’s not funny,” he says.
THE DEVIL laughs again, still gentle, still pleased.
“But it is,” he replies. “It’s perfect.”
He takes another swallow. POIMANDRÉSH lunges. The cane taps the floor once.
Not hard. Not a violent tap.
A simple thump.
POIMANDRÉSH stops mid-step because the room does. Momentum suddenly uncertain what and where it’s allowed to be.
His own ribs creak, rearranging themselves in response to his concern for his friend. A small mushroom blooms near his collarbone and immediately tries to hide.
THE DEVIL lowers the bottle, head tilted, listening to the room. The apartment, offended, tries to tighten around them.
THE DEVIL taps again. The tightening stops. Even the empty lot outside seems to look away.
THE DEVIL sighs. He sets the bottle down. Then, without warning, his face twists. Not into horror, not into fear. Into irritation.
His mouth opens.
And what comes out is not vomit.
It is a small, wet bundle of letters.
Ink-soaked shapes. Half-formed words, fragments of names, scraps of sigils. They spill onto the floor with a sound like a drowned novel.
They twitch. They attempt to spell themselves. Then they dissolve, ashamed, into ordinary filth.
THE DEVIL wipes his mouth.
POIMANDRÉSH stands frozen, breathing too fast, eye sockets wet.
THE DEVIL exhales.
His voice is quieter now. Hungover again. Almost human, in the worst way.
“Well,” he says, staring at the sink as if its caused him personal disappointment. “That was revolting.”
POIMANDRÉSH finally finds his voice.
“Are you -”
THE DEVIL lifts a hand, stopping the question. He presses two fingers to his temple.
“I feel…” he begins, searching for the word with genuine annoyance. Not poetic. Not weird for weirdness’ sake. Only truth.
“I feel thin,” he says. “And loud. Like a bell with no temple to ring it.”
He turns his head toward the window. Toward the cranes. Toward the attentive absence of the lot.
Then he looks back at POIMANDRÉSH, and for a moment the charm drops away in its entirety.
Cosmic royalty exposed as a creature that can be capable of experiencing pain.
“We are going to sit down,” he says. “And we are going to wait for the hour to improve.”
A beat.
“And if the apartment tries to learn us again,” he adds, softer, “I will kill the mood so completely it never returns.”
POIMANDRÉSH swallows. He nods.
THE DEVIL gathers his cane pieces with a small impatient gesture. They align beside him like a spine remembering itself.
He walks toward the couch. Then pauses, as if remembering something unpleasant.
He looks over his shoulder. “And wipe that look off your face,” he says.
POIMANDRÉSH blinks.
“What look?”
THE DEVIL sits.
“The one that suggests you think this is the lowest we’ll go,” he says, smiling. “It isn’t.”
Outside, the cranes remain motionless.
The empty lot watches.
Inside, the kettle gives one small tick. Like applause held back at the last second.