If you were going to call upon demons and hell and whatnot, you probably weren't a great person to begin with. But, I figured, you at least had to be practical. You had to have some kind of backdoor to escape, and after reading all kinds of nonsense from "getting rid of pustules by wishing them on another wretched soul" to "making the soles thy enemy's feet itch day and night for seven years", I finally found something promising.

It was the very last spell in the book, simply titled "escape".

I flipped to the page, expecting further explanation on what this escape might look like, but there was nothing, just a list of ingredients and steps to perform. Plus, a scribbled note at the bottom, reading "use with caution".

Great, why hadn't there been a note like that on the "send wretches to hell" spell? Maybe that would have stopped me. It wouldn't have, of course, but for a second I wanted to pretend I was that kind of person. Someone smarter, less inclined to run with their first impulse. Someone in control of their finances and dietary choices and all that other stuff. Someone who wasn't summed up perfectly by the phrase "messy bitch".

Aka not me.

I closed my eyes against this new wave of self-hatred, self-pity and regret. I was the captain of my own ship; I had no one to blame for crashing into that iceberg but myself.

Anyway, I had things to do.

I would do this spell and maybe it would save me or maybe I was just going nuts in which case it might still soothe my nerves a little. Either way, it was something.

Scanning the ingredients, I felt relief flooding my system. There weren't any eyes of newt or obscure herbs on it, just your garden variety dill and pickled onions. Some flour, wax from a black candle and weirdly toenail clippings. Honestly, it sounded like a salad from hell.

As time passed and I collected my ingredients, the encounter with the goat-man receded into the darker recesses of my mind. Perhaps I had dreamed the whole thing up after all. What exactly did that puddle of vomit and the crushed santa candle really prove?

Only that I'd been sick, not in any kind of normal headspace, and pretty desperate to boot. Resolved to put an end to this madness, I got some cleaning supplies and took care of the mess on the bathroom floor. I felt a little better right away, once my tiles were shiny again.

There, I thought, like nothing ever happened.

But it only took a second for that pit in my stomach to return. I checked my phone. It was half past three. I'd wasted so much time already.

"Okay," I muttered. I'd made a shopping list; I was certain I could get everything within the hour, but the instructions for the spell called for it to be performed at midnight. Why did witches and warlocks have to be so dramatic, I wondered. Why not just do a nice early evening spell? You could have dinner after and maybe watch a movie.

But nope, I wasn't going to take any risks here. I'd wait.

Waiting was filled with more googling. I was still trying to find out what exactly that goat guy had been. Surely someone else must have run into him at some point. And if hell was an actual place one could end up in, then how was I the first to see it? Hadn't there been much worse people than me around throughout world history?

Plus, there was the book. It looked incredibly old and while there wasn't a traditional impressum, and also no author anywhere to be found, someone must have stumbled across it before. People left reviews for everything these days. Where was the little Amazon blurb saying something along the lines of actually opens a portal to hell, one star. Or maybe that would be five stars, if that was what you'd been looking for. No records of the book, anywhere. For a moment, I contemplated going back to the library and checking the old filing cards, but then I dismissed the idea. No time.

I sighed and went back to searching for my unpleasant visitor. "Goat-headed demon" I typed in and instantly got entries for "Baphomet". Huh. It seemed this thing had a long ass wikipedia entry, which mentioned Aleister Crowley, witches and Satan. All the hellish greats. However, it distinctly lacked a subsection titled "how to get rid of". Or, alternatively, "how to become besties with".

Even though I was terrified of him, I still looked at that wall of text and thought, Nah, I need a cliff notes version. I skimmed and skimmed. There wasn't anything helpful, mostly because the people who'd written his entry clearly thought they were talking about a mythological creature. They hadn't met him and didn't think he was real. Which in turn meant that pretty much all they had were stories and a huge chunk of those probably were made up.

*

By the time the hour of my spell was approaching, I felt frazzled and foolish. It was dark outside and I'd drawn the blinds against the city lights as the instructions demanded pitch blackness, illuminated only by the flame of a single candle.

I was in my bedroom, cross-legged on the floor, waiting for the clock to strike twelve. Or, you know, the digits on my phone screen to change.

As per instructions, I had set up the aforementioned single candle - one of the ones that had survived my first spell, vanilla-scented and uncrushed. Its flame cast a flickering light across the book I held in my lap.

Hours earlier, I had typed the words of the first spell into google translate and had come up with nothing. It really was gibberish. Google had not recognized the language at all. This one, the escape one I was about to try right now, however, was Latin. Even I could recognize that.

Absconde me, absconde me, esto fuga mea.

Just that, over and over again. I could do that. I took a deep breath, steeling myself as I started to mash up all the herbs. They really did smell like some sort of salad. I added my toenail clippings last and threw in the burning match while I chanted the words, feeling mighty stupid the whole time.

A part of me was convinced nothing would happen, that I had imagined the whole goat-man thing and that this was only further proof of my insanity. Simultaneously, though, some other part of me was breaking a sweat, my hands trembling with nerves, my heart pounding, making my tongue trip over the words.

"Absconde me, absconde me, esto fuga mea," I muttered again and again, allowing my voice to rise a little with each new repetition.

Here I was, lighting a fire in a salad bowl and sprinkling flour and gross toenails on top, whispering some Latin incantation. I sniffed the air. There was something about this atmosphere that was beyond creepy.

And the thing was, I was actually pretty damn scared.

In my dark bedroom, my voice was spooky to my own ears and when the time on my phone read 00:00, the temperature seemed to rise by several degrees. I felt a gush of hot air rush at me, as though I'd unknowingly opened the front door of a house on fire.

"And what is it you think you are doing here, human?"

Everything inside me wanted to crumble in terror.

It had appeared out of nowhere and it was towering over my candle, the small, flickering flame lighting its horrifying goat-face from below. Shadows danced across the wall behind it, horned, twisted darkness. I stared up at it in complete shock, certain that my heart had stopped beating.

"Breaking our agreement? You must know that this kind of behavior is unacceptable." It narrowed its eyes at me, and kicked over my candle. With a whoosh, my polyester carpet caught fire. I heard myself scream before my brain even registered that I'd opened my mouth to do so. I was scrambling to get away from the heat and the demon.

It was shaking its head sadly, almost pityingly, like a funeral director offering routine condolences.

"We are very disappointed in you."

Now it sounded like the collective voices of all math teachers I'd ever had. I scrambled to get away, but couldn't find my feet.

I'd known it was real. Deep down I'd known. I'd just been trying to tell myself it wasn't. I'd wasted my time futzing about with stupid little things and now I had run out. I hadn't actually said goodbye to anyone. I hadn't even called my mom. Tears sprang into my eyes as I tried to crawl for the door.

"Pathetic," Baphomet - if that was indeed its name - sighed behind me. Even as I was attempting to run for my life, I couldn't help but agree.

Everything I'd done, everything I was, it all boiled down to this one word.

Pathetic.