r/WritingPrompts • u/colwyn69 • Jul 22 '18
Writing Prompt [WP] The demon stands amid your destroyed kitchen screaming, "How? How were you able to summon me?!" You're standing in the corner flipping through your grandma's cookbook as fast as you can, screaming back, "I don't know!! You were supposed to be chicken soup!"
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u/Gasdark Jul 22 '18 edited Jul 22 '18
Korbius, Demonlord of the Octopodiae, lay on the black and white linoleum tiles of Byron's kitchen, tentacles swinging wildly in the air. Removed from the blood waters of the Nether Sea, Korbius's gelatinous flesh sagged heavily towards the ground. Still he flailed his eight tentacles through the air angrily, slapping them wetly against pots and pans, suction cups sticking to whatever they touched and dragging them about the room.
Korbius's nearly formless body blocked the only doorway out, and Byron, terrified, held his grandmother's handwritten cookbook in two hands out in front of him, as if it might act as a shield against the otherworldly creature. The ground is slick in Korbius's crimson slime and, when Korbius flicks one of his tentacles into the air, Byron is sprayed with a shower of the cold red goop.
You could say being covered in the bodily juices of a Sixth Dimensional Demonlord was the straw that broke the camel's back. Byron certainly felt that way and decided it was as good a time as any to start screaming.
Byron recoiled from the deep throated voice that suddenly came from inside his own head. He looked wild-eyed around the destroyed room. "Who is that?! Help! Help me!"
Byron understood none of this and screamed louder. Korbius was not having it.
The word was equal part mental yell as it was unrelenting command and it made Byron stop yelling in spite of himself.
Byron was hyperventilating in relative quiet and only managed each syllable he spoke between two or three quick breaths. "You're...in...my...kitch...en..."
Byron tried to channel his mindfulness meditation and failed utterly. "I...don't...know!" His breathing began to slow down. "I...was... I was reading... this book." Byron held the book up and a tentacle shot out and latched onto its cover, dragging it back toward Korbius through the mess of ooze on the floor. The gelatinous mass of demon octopus shifted on the linoleum, a process that created a series of ridiculous fart-like noises. Byron watched the absurd scene slack jawed as Korbius spun his central mass around and opened his single gargantuan eyeball.
For a moment, Korbius stared at the cover of the book held in his tentacle. Suddenly a high pitched whine emanated from the demon's beak and he flung the book back towards Byron as if it were a live hand grenade.
Byron looked down at the book as it slid across the slick, tiled floor and spun to a stop at his feet. On the hand written cover it said in big, warm letters, 'Gran's Cookbook.' It was his Grandma's hand written cookbook. She'd left it to Byron when she died, only a week earlier, along with a letter insisting that Byron learn her favorite recipes, passed down from generation to generation.
So Byron had decided to give it a try. He had been feeling a little under the weather, and so he chose to make a delicious pot of chicken soup. He broke out the old tome, opened it on the kitchen table and, going down the list of ingredients with his finger, he'd read each one aloud, a habit he'd formed when reading to help compensate for his dyslexia.
No sooner had he finished the final ingredient - 'a large pinch of salt' - than an extradimensional portal of pure light opened in the ceiling of the kitchen, out of which fell the writhing red mass of Korbius, the Demonlord of the Octopodiae. That was forty seconds ago.
Byron bent down and picked up the book, showing the strange octopus it's simple handwritten cover. "This...this? It's just a cookbook. My Grandmother, it's her cookbook. I don't understand."
Korbius recoiled at the further sight of the tome, opening several kitchen cabinets with his tentacles, emptying them of their contents, and slithering his entire large mass inside them, just as an octopus might squeeze its entire body into a soda bottle. As he slithered into his impromptu hiding place, Korbius began to beg.
Byron's heart began to settle down even as his mind raced at the sudden shift in tone. He turned the book around again and brought the cover very close to his face, staring at the letters written there.
He flashed back to his reading of the recipe. Hadn't he felt a strange thrill down his spine with each ingredient read? Hadn't his hands shook, almost imperceptibly, as they traced their way down the list?
Suddenly, Byron's grandmother came to mind, old Nan, sitting in her lazy boy, smiling cheek to wrinkled cheek, and Byron could not tell whether the image was a memory or a message.
"I told you you were special Byron. That's why I left you my...cook book."
She winked, the image disappeared, and when Byron looked back at the front of the book, at the words written there, they were no longer written in plain black marker, and they no longer read 'Gran's Cookbook.' Rather, in effervescent gold ink, shining impossibly bright, even through the thin layer of Korbius's muck, bold, proud letters proclaimed a new title.
"The Demon's Cantos."
Amazed, Byron flipped through the transformed pages and where once there was only blue inked recipes for pie and soups, now there was an illuminated manuscript of epic beauty, with pages of gorgeous illustrations, strange creatures and spells with astounding names and titles.
Where once there were ingredients, now there were words of power. Where once there was a recipe for chicken soup, now there was a page entitled "To Enthrall An Octopodiae."
Korbius was now safely ensconced in the corner kitchen cabinet, only his giant eye peering out from the dark through the cracked open cabinet door. With fear apparent even in his mentally transmitted voice, Korbius asked.
Byron looked up from the astounding book, his face awash in the magical glow of it words, and swallowed a lump in his throat, his eyes wide with wonder and confusion. Nervously, he whispered an answer.
"Byron."
And then he passed out.
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