A Demonic Error

Halloween is the time traditionally given to witches, ghosts, zombies and assorted other spiritual entities. Demons often feel forgotten at this time of year, and it's fair to say they don't like it. This is not the case at Number 23, Avenue B: for this was the residence of Earnest CrabApple, demonologist. Well I say demonologist, but truth be told, he has ambitions of becoming a demonologist but lies to himself about it. A lot.

His attempts at summoning demons have resulted in numerous amphibians and a vaguely hellish lizard that wasn't very impressed. His most successful attempt to date involved a demonic hand coming through the Portal to Hell and dropping off some demonic trash. He almost gave up, but a surge of manic determination made him re-evaluate his work and try to rectify whatever problems existed in his summoning rituals and paraphernalia.

His investigations turned up the following problems: The ram's skull turned out to be that of a nanny goat with some horns glued on the sides, the runic octagon on the floor had uneven sides and a couple of misspelled runes as well, the sacrificial virgins had a habit about lying about their sexual history, his book of incantations was a cheap and badly made copy and consequently contained numerous errors and typos, the presence of holier-than-thou snobbish Christians next door gave off some pretty bad occult vibes so they had to be chased off(murdered) and his lisp made pronouncing some of the critical phrases and chants awkward and difficult.

He had worked hard for many weeks trying to remove, repair and generally kick the arse out of any errors that he could find until on October the 31st he was ready. This time he was going to do it, Satan Damn it, this time would see a demon appear in his...he looked around and despaired. If only this house had a basement or a crypt or a dungeon or something. The garage just didn't have that frankensteinian air about it. Never mind he thought: let the summoning commence.

He opened the book on the lectern and pronounced the summoning spell very carefully, deliberately sounding each phrase and intonation.

There was a crackle of energy in the air and a small column of light appeared in the centre of the octagon. The column widened and gave of a low hum.

Unbeknown to Earnest, inside his lovely new ram's skull lurked a rather creative spider. It had just made a web in the form of a pentagram and had just stood back to admire its handiwork. If it had been geometrically correct all would have been fine, but alas it wasn't symmetrical and consequently caused the summoning to go awry.

The column of light was flashing through all the colours of the rainbow in rapid succession and making an ear-shattering screech. When the madness of it seems to fill the room, it stopped and where that light was stood two small fuzzy demonic entities. One was blue and the other yellow. They quizzically looked around at their new surroundings.

"W...w...what are you?" asked Earnest.

The blue one focussed on him "I'm Fuzzie!" it yelled in a high-pitched voice.

"And I'm Fizzie!" cried the yellow one in a similarly high-pitched voice. "We're demons! Yaaaaaaaaay!"

"Yeeehaaawww!" Earnest yelled, "I've summoned demons! I've done it!"

"You should have a bottle of wine to celebrate!" yelled an excited Fizzie.

"An entire bottle!" Fuzzie joined in.

"How about a whole case?" suggested Fizzie.

"You need to go on a bender!" Fuzzie cried loudly.

"Not a bad idea!" Earnest said to himself. "Magic me up some wine, demons. Do it now."

"You have to buy it. Magic is cheating." Fuzzie said.

"Cheating is so boring." concurred Fizzie. "I hate cheaters."

"So do I! Cheaters must be punished!" Fuzzie cried in an over-happy way.

"I like punishing cheaters!" yelled Fizzie, who then pulled out a large sword from seemingly nowhere. "We're going to punish you and then we're going to find some fun! Yaaaaaaaaay!"

Earnest may have been a useless demonologist, but he wasn't daft. He was prepared for something along these lines. He had a quick-fire banishment spell prepared, so he quickly barked out the 3-word spell, which due to the presence of the wonky webby pentagram didn't work entirely correctly.

Before they could react, Fuzzie and Fizzie were enveloped in a large cylinder of orange sparkly light, which contracted to nothing, spiriting them away.

They awoke two days later in a dark space. Fuzzie peered around. Something was different: for one, he couldn't remember who he was. He knew he had a friend though, who appeared to be in a similar daze not too far away. He knew he liked fun and chaos. Chaos WAS fun. Further examination of the space they were in revealed a curtained window. He crawled over and peeked out: there was a street below with people wandering about. They looked like they needed some fun in their lives.

"You ok?" he asked Fizzie.

"Yeah. I'm good. I think." she replied uncertainly.

"I think we're in an attic. Not sure where though." he scanned the street below, looking for a hint or a clue. He spotted a road sign at the end of the street and squinted at it. "Avenue Q by the looks of it. This place looks like it needs cheering up: shall we have some fun?"

Fizzie perked up. "That sounds like a great idea."

With that they hunted for a door so they could 'cheer up' the residents of Avenue Q. And cause mayhem, because mayhem was fun.