Accidental Demon Summoning

Chapter one - the summoning

"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on." The man on the TV cliched to sensuous music.

His near naked, skinny, white, companion whimpered his arms, tilting her head up for a snog. Daisy dropped her bowl of popcorn on the ground, making her family cat leap into the air with a yowl. Her brother reached over to hit her arm, and her mother tutted. The oblivious couple on the TV embraced under the pouring rain.

For her family, it was a beautiful and dramatic love story. For Daisy, it was a reminder of everything that was wrong with her.

She scowled and spun on her heel, marching out of the room. Her big brother draped his arm over the couch to watch her leave. She could hear him crunching popcorn.

She stomped up the stairs of her terrace house, not caring if she woke the sleeping baby sister in the room below her. Her family knew that she didn't like romance movies, and they made sure that she knew she was wrong for being aroace. She didn't feel romantic love. She didn't think that the generic, white, flat-assed, guy that the magazines told her to like was hot. She'd never had one of those crushes that her friends obsessed over, she'd never had sex or kissed someone.

If they came to look for her, they'd check her room first. She couldn't mope in there.

There was her sister's room, but the toddler was sleeping. Her big brother's room was a den of stench and posters of skimpy female singers. It was a scientific fact that prolonged exposure to that room could send someone mad. Her mum's room was warm and soft a smelled good. But she was mad at her mum, she had to remember.  There was the bathroom, but that was cold and the mirrors weren't the best thing when you wanted to feel better. Also. You know. People sat and shat and pissed and got naked in there. Her brother coated himself in his newest finding - axe body spray - and the entire room was rancid.

She arrived on the landing and looked around. It was so boring and normal. The classic setting. White walls, vanilla paintings and pictures of the family, a row of doors. Ugh.

She marched along the hall, ignoring all the bedrooms, and around the corner. With her jaw set in stone, she marched through the second TV room and up the set of small steps.

When a kindergartener had scraped the tiny house up, there'd been carpet and white walls. Now the carpet was grey and worn down to smooth black, and the walls covered in strange filth and peeling paint. Hidden behind a door in the most disused room of the house was the horror movie scene. As she stormed up, they moaned under feet.

She was sixteen, and big for her age. Not huge, but definitely not skinny. She had to shop in the plus size section of all the shops and the popular girls had teased her for not looking like them. (Oh, sorry Britanny, I do like hamburgers. Have fun with the wilted kale your personal chef packed you). That 'health' teasing had - oh, so healthy - led to an eating disorder. Now she didn't care what those assholes said. But the stairs held, and she marched up them into the storage room.

As she pushed open the door, the sound of the TV seemed to fade away. She took a deep breath and stepped in.

It was warm, at the top of the house, and smelled like dust and boxes and old perfumes. It was a good smell, almost like the smell of her gran. Boxes piled everywhere, on seats and on the ground and making war trenches up the walls. She pushed away two beside the door, marked CLOTHES and ANTIQUES, and into the middle of the floor. The planks below her creaked with every step, and she clenched her fists.

There was a garden chair with an overflowing box of books on top of it, and Daisy shoved them. Her palms came off three shades darker. She stepped back and slammed it with the knee of her ripped jeans. The pile shot away, collapsing on the ground in a cloud of dust and a thud. She leapt back from it, and thunked onto the sticky, old, chair.Daisy pulled her phone out of her pocket a flicked onto Tumblr. She scrolled through crusty memes and shitposts for a few minutes and opened her message app. The conversation titled Ash was already up, and she typed a message.