Spell… H-A-L-L-O-W-E-E-N returns in 2025! It’s another month of supernatural content waiting for you.

We have a piece of flash fiction today. A bored woman summons a demon. What could possibly go wrong?

You’ll Never Be Bored Again

Martha sat in her worn armchair, staring blankly at the walls of her small apartment. The paint was chipped and peeling, and the wallpaper was curling at the edges. She had tried every possible distraction – reading, cleaning, even online shopping – but nothing could shake the ennui that had consumed her.

In a fit of desperation, Martha pulled out an old book she had found at a garage sale. It was bound in leather, with strange symbols etched into the cover. She flipped through the pages, her eyes scanning the foreign language. One passage caught her eye – a summoning spell, it seemed. On a whim, Martha decided to give it a try.

She spoke the words aloud, her voice trembling with fear and excitement. A rush of wind blew through the room, extinguishing the candles and leaving Martha in darkness. Suddenly, a bright light filled the room, and a figure appeared before her.

The demon stood seven feet tall, with fiery red skin that rippled like molten lava beneath a thin crust of ash. Jagged obsidian horns curved from her temples, catching the light in wicked gleams. Her piercing yellow eyes had vertical pupils that expanded and contracted like a cat’s as they surveyed the room. She wore a long, flowing robe of midnight silk that seemed to absorb rather than reflect light, adorned with symbols that writhed and changed shape as Martha tried to focus on them. A necklace of tiny bones clinked softly against her chest as the demon looked around the room.

“Why have you summoned me, mortal?” she said, her voice like gravel. “What is it that you want?”

Martha hesitated, suddenly feeling foolish for her impulsive decision. But the boredom she had felt only moments before was gone, replaced by a sense of awe and curiosity.

“I’m…I’m just so bored,” she admitted. “I was hoping you could show me something…anything…to make me feel alive again.”

The demon looked at her for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then, she let out a deep, rumbling laugh.

“Very well,” she said. “I will grant your wish, mortal. But be warned – it will come at a price.”

The demon smiled, baring jagged teeth, and reached into the folds of her midnight robe. From within, she produced a collar of blackened metal, inscribed with the same ever-shifting runes that adorned her own raiment. The collar was heavy, ancient, and cold to the touch, even from across the room—a relic forged for the singular purpose of subjugation. With a flicker of her wrist, the demon allowed it to float in the air for a moment, suspended by nothing but the force of her malevolence. And then it snapped shut around Martha’s neck, the lock sealing with a hiss that sounded both mechanical and alive.

Martha gasped. The metal was icy at first, biting into her skin, but then she felt it pulse with a living warmth, as if the collar itself drew energy from her pulse. Her mind recoiled, registering the sensation of invisible hands clutching at her every nerve. It was as if part of her was being siphoned away, sucked into the collar and, by extension, into the demon herself. Her vision blurred with the force of it; she closed her eyes, but that only made it worse. In the darkness behind her eyelids, she saw the runes from the collar dancing, shifting into shapes and forms that both beckoned and repulsed her.

The demon watched her intently, arms folded, her eyes flickering with delight. “There,” she said, almost tenderly, “now you are marked. Now you are bound.” Her lips curled upward in a mimicry of affection. “You should feel proud. Not many mortals are worthy of such a bond.”

“What… what will you do with me?” Martha asked.

The demon leaned close, the scent of sulfur and burnt cedar enveloping Martha. “You summoned me for a reason, did you not?” Her fingers traced the air, and suddenly Martha found herself sitting in the center of her apartment, arms at her sides, muscles locked in place. “You wanted to feel alive. You wanted to banish the grayness from your days. I am here to oblige, but I am no mere entertainer. I am a force, a crucible.”

The world shifted. The walls of the apartment, already fragile and peeling, melted away like wax under a blowtorch. In their place erupted a landscape of impossible geometry and color. The floor beneath Martha’s bare feet became molten glass, shifting and swirling with every heartbeat. The air was filled with sounds she could not name: the cries of distant animals, the grinding of tectonic plates, the soft, ceaseless hum of existence.

Martha realized that her senses were stretching and straining at the boundaries of possibility. She could taste the color red, feel the weight of every photon that struck her skin, and hear the sighs of dust motes as they collided in the air. The collar tightened slightly, and with it came a rush of information and sensation, too much for a normal mind to bear. But she was not normal anymore; the binding had seen to that.

The demon circled her, gauging her reaction. “You are overwhelmed,” she observed, almost sympathetically. “This is to be expected. Mortals cling to limitation like a child clings to a blanket. I have taken yours away.”

Martha tried to remember her own name, her own history, but it all seemed distant—like scraps of paper in a windstorm. She staggered, clutching at her head, and images tumbled through her mind in rapid succession: her childhood dog, the taste of black coffee, the cold tile of her high school bathroom floor beneath her feet. Each time she tried to hold onto a memory, it slipped away, replaced by something alien and terrifyingly vast.

“You will serve me,” the demon continued, voice metallic and echoing in the open space. “You will be my eyes, my hands, my instrument in this world and others. In return, I will grant you what you sought—relief from the tedium of mortal existence. Every day will be different. Every moment, an adventure.”

The promise should have sounded like a gift. Instead, it felt like a death sentence. Martha understood now: she had not only summoned the demon, she had become part of her, and there was no going back.