3.9k Words
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The Sound of a Door That Won't Open
There was a moment where the world stopped being loud.
Johan had always noticed sound first. A hospital corridor breathing through fluorescent lights. A church with its hollow hymns. The tiny click of a gun's safety switching off behind someone's trembling index finger.
Then, one day, the sounds thinned out. Like a room emptying while you still sat in the center of it. Like a stage after the curtain fell, and the actors forgot you were still watching.
He remembered white.
Not the clean white of a doctor's coat. Not the polite white of snow.
This was the white of a page before ink. The kind that made your eyes hurt if you stared too long, because it wasn't a color. It was an absence pretending to be bright.
He lay on his back without feeling a floor. His body was there, but the weight wasn't. He blinked, and the blink itself felt unnecessary.
There were voices.
Children.
Not screaming. Not crying. Just… talking, softly, like a story being read too close to your ear.
He turned his head and found the voices didn't belong anywhere. They came from the white itself, like the blank space was trying to remember a bedtime it had once heard.
"A monster lived in a town…"
Johan's lips parted. No breath fogged. No air moved.
He didn't ask where he was. That question had always been for other people, the ones who still believed location mattered.
Instead, he listened.
"…The monster wanted a name…"
The story pressed against him in fragments, pieces that felt familiar in the way an old scar feels familiar. Not pain, exactly. Just the memory of pain.
A thin line cut through the white, as if someone had taken a pencil and drawn a crack across the world.
Johan watched it, and the crack widened.
On the other side was darkness.
Not night. Not shadow. A darker kind of dark, like the inside of a closed eye when you're afraid to open it.
The line became a door.
It wasn't a door with hinges or a handle. It was an idea of a door: a rectangle carved out of nothing, waiting for someone to decide it could be opened.
Johan stared at it.
The children's voices became quieter, as if they sensed his attention.
The door remained shut.
He smiled, faintly, because of course it did.
A door that wouldn't open was honest. It didn't pretend.
He stood up. The motion should have made his joints complain. It didn't. His body moved with the smoothness of something that was no longer entirely human, like a puppet whose strings had been replaced with intention.
He stepped closer.
The door still didn't open.
And then, without him touching it, without him even leaning in—
It failed.
Not the door. The world around it.
The white page tore. The rectangle shuddered like a thought losing confidence. The darkness behind it spilled out, devouring the clean blankness like ink dumped into water.
Johan felt it in a way he couldn't explain. Not in his skin, not in his bones.
In the rules.
Something in the rules had slipped.
A failure. A small one. A tiny crack in certainty.
And cracks were enough.
The door opened.
Not because it chose to, but because it had no other option.
The darkness behind it wasn't empty. It was full.
Full of distant screams that sounded bored with themselves. Full of footsteps that never quite reached where they were going. Full of enormous shapes moving somewhere far away, the way whales move under ice.
Johan stepped through.
The white vanished behind him like it had never existed.
For a moment, he expected pain. Some punishment for crossing. Some toll.
Instead, he felt something else.
Recognition.
The darkness didn't welcome him. It didn't have that kind of warmth.
It *acknowledged* him, the way a knife acknowledges a hand that knows how to hold it.
Johan looked down at himself.
He wore the same clothes he remembered last wearing—neat, composed, almost too clean. A suit that belonged on a polite young man with gentle manners and dead eyes.
But his hands—
His hands were different.
Not monstrous. Not clawed.
Just… wrong in a subtle way.
The fingers were slightly too long, the joints a little too precise, like they'd been designed by someone who had studied human hands from a distance and decided to improve them.
He flexed them, watching the smooth movement.
A voice spoke from the darkness, low and amused.
"So you're the new one."
Johan turned.
Something stood at the edge of what he could perceive. Not fully visible, not fully hidden. A presence that refused to be described properly.
He didn't need to see it clearly to know what it was.
Devil.
The word arrived in his mind like a fact he'd always known.
Johan tilted his head. "New?"
A soft laugh. "Not new to fear. New to *here*."
Johan's gaze drifted. The darkness pulsed, and he realized it wasn't darkness at all.
It was a place built out of fear, layered and heavy, like wet cloth thrown over the world.
Hell.
The devil's presence shifted, circling him without moving. "What do they call you?"
Johan considered the question.
Names were dangerous things. Names made people real. Names gave others a handle.
But he felt something inside him now that wasn't just memory.
A title, stamped into him like a brand.
A concept.
A fear.
He opened his mouth, and the darkness seemed to lean in, curious.
"Failure," he said.
The word didn't echo.
It *landed*.
The air—if you could call it air—tightened. The distant shapes paused. Somewhere far away, something huge exhaled, as if it had been listening.
The devil near him went quiet for a beat too long.
Then, more carefully: "A primal."
Johan didn't ask what that meant. He could taste the meaning from the way the other presence spoke it: reverence, irritation, a bit of dread.
Primal devils were not born from a new fear. They were born from fears that had always existed, the ones humanity carried like organs.
Johan stared into the endless dark.
Fear of failing.
It made sense, in a cold, tidy way.
People feared death, yes. Darkness, yes. Pain, yes.
But failure was everywhere. Failure was the quiet panic in a student's throat. Failure was the sweat under a businessman's collar. Failure was the way parents looked at their sleeping children and wondered if they were ruining them without meaning to.
Failure was… intimate.
Failure was a monster that lived inside you.
Johan's smile returned, small and almost affectionate.
"Where is the door?" he asked.
The presence chuckled, uneasy now. "You're not even going to pretend you're lost."
"I've been lost before," Johan said softly. "This doesn't feel like that."
A pause.
Then the darkness rippled.
A door appeared.
Not the same one as before. This one was older, heavier, as if it had been carved out of regret.
It stood upright in nothingness, waiting.
Johan stepped toward it, and as he did, he felt the world resist.
Like a hand grabbing his wrist.
Like the rules of Hell tightening their grip.
Primal devils didn't leave easily.
He didn't stop.
The door did not open.
He watched it, patient.
Seconds passed.
He didn't touch it.
He simply… existed near it.
And then the resistance failed.
A tiny, humiliating slip in the law of the place.
The door popped open like a lock giving up.
The devil behind him hissed, shocked. "That's—"
Johan stepped through before it could finish.
—
The first thing he heard was a chant.
Not a holy chant. Not something sincere.
A chant that sounded like desperation dressed up as ritual.
"Make him fail. Make him fail. Make him fail—"
The air on the other side was warm and smelled like incense trying to hide sweat and mildew.
Johan opened his eyes.
He was standing in the center of a circle drawn in salt and something darker. Candles ringed the circle, their flames trembling as if they were afraid of being noticed.
Around him were people in cheap robes and expensive shoes. Their faces were half-hidden by hoods, but he could see the nervousness in their mouths, the way they swallowed too often.
A basement, then. Concrete walls. A single flickering bulb overhead that made everything look sick.
The chant stuttered and died as soon as they saw him.
They had expected something else. Something loud. Something obviously monstrous.
They got a polite young man with blond hair and eyes that didn't care.
One of them—a man with a ring too large for his finger—took a hesitant step forward. His voice shook with forced confidence.
"Are you… the devil?"
Johan looked at him. Looked through him.
The man's shoulders twitched, like his body wanted to step back but his pride wouldn't allow it.
"Yes," Johan said.
The word was simple.
The room *reacted* to it anyway. The candle flames leaned away from him. The salt line around the circle dulled, as if it had suddenly lost meaning.
The ringed man swallowed. "We summoned you to curse someone. A competitor. A man who needs to lose. We can pay."
Johan's eyes drifted to the circle.
The salt line was supposed to contain him.
It didn't.
Not because he broke it.
Because containment was an attempt, and attempts could fail.
A crack appeared in the salt line, thin as a hair.
Then another.
Then, with an embarrassed little cascade, the line collapsed into scattered grains, like it had always been pointless.
The cultists stepped back as one.
Someone whispered, "That's not— that's not supposed to happen—"
Johan stepped forward.
Nobody stopped him.
A woman in the back fumbled in her robe. A gun appeared, shaking in her hands. She raised it at him with wide eyes, an animal cornered by its own decision.
Johan kept walking.
The woman pulled the trigger.
The gun clicked.
Nothing.
She blinked at it, confused. She pulled again.
Click.
Again.
Click.
Her face twisted, panic flooding in, because it wasn't the gun's fault. She could feel it. She could feel the way reality itself was betraying her.
The ringed man turned white. "Wait. Wait, don't— we didn't mean—"
Johan stopped in front of him.
Close enough to smell the man's cologne. Close enough to see the little burst blood vessels in his eyes from stress.
"You want someone to fail," Johan said.
The man nodded too fast. "Yes. Yes. Curse him. Make him collapse. Make his company burn. Make everyone see he's nothing. We'll give you anything. Money. Bodies. Contracts—"
Johan's gaze softened, almost kindly.
"You're already failing," he said.
The ringed man froze. "What?"
Johan reached out and lightly touched the man's forehead with two fingers.
A gesture that could have been affectionate, in a different story.
"I'll show you what you asked for."
The room went still.
The candles stopped trembling.
For a breathless second, nothing happened.
Then—
The ringed man's phone buzzed in his pocket.
He fumbled it out, hands suddenly clumsy. The screen lit up with an email notification.
His lips moved as he read.
The color drained from his face so fast it looked like someone had pulled a sheet over him.
"No," he whispered.
Another buzz. Another notification. Another.
His breathing hitched. His fingers shook harder. His phone slipped and bounced off the concrete floor, screen cracking.
He dropped to his knees.
One of the cultists took a step forward. "What is it? What—"
The ringed man looked up, eyes wet and wild.
"They found out," he rasped. "They found out about the accounts. The transfers. The—"
His voice broke.
"My wife— she— she filed—"
He made a sound like a laugh and a sob collided.
"I'm finished."
Johan watched him with mild interest.
Not joy. Not cruelty.
Just observation, like watching a candle burn down.
The ringed man grabbed at his own hair, fingers clawing uselessly. "No, no, no, this can't be happening. Not now. Not today. I was *so close*—"
Around the room, the others began checking their own phones, their own pockets, their own lives.
A woman gasped. "My sister— she's in the hospital— what do you mean the car—"
A man stared at his screen, then vomited onto the floor.
The bulb overhead flickered once… twice… and went out.
Darkness fell.
Someone screamed.
Johan could see anyway. Not with his eyes, exactly. With the fear.
Fear lit people up more clearly than light ever could.
He stepped back, letting them collapse into their own chaos.
The chant they'd started with returned, but now it was fractured, panicked.
"Stop— stop it— please— I didn't mean—"
Another cultist lunged toward him with a knife, face twisted with desperation.
The knife slipped from sweaty fingers, spun, and landed point-first into the cultist's own foot.
He shrieked and fell, smashing his face into the concrete.
Johan didn't move.
Failure pooled around him like a scent.
Automatic.
Unpredictable.
Thousands of ways for reality to humiliate anyone who tried to touch him.
He hadn't even needed to *decide*.
The basement door at the top of the stairs rattled.
Then banged open with a force that made the frame groan.
Footsteps thundered down.
Flashlights cut through the dark, harsh beams slicing across screaming bodies and spilled wax and broken salt.
Voices shouted.
"Public Safety! Hands where we can see them!"
"Devil presence confirmed!"
"Don't engage directly— keep distance!"
Johan turned his head slightly.
Public Safety Devil Hunters came into view: suited figures with guns, a couple with visible scars and tired eyes. Their movements were practiced, but their fear wasn't hidden well.
They'd come expecting a normal devil.
They'd found something that made their instincts scream.
One hunter leveled his pistol at Johan. His finger tightened.
The pistol jammed.
The hunter cursed, yanking the slide. It wouldn't move.
Another hunter raised a spear-like weapon and stepped forward.
His boot caught on nothing.
He went down hard, shoulder slamming into the stairs, and the weapon clattered away.
A third hunter lifted his hand, preparing to activate a contract.
The skin on his palm suddenly split with a shallow cut, like a paper cut from the air itself. He flinched, concentration breaking.
The whole team hesitated, the way animals hesitate at the edge of a cliff.
They could feel it now.
Every attempt to act against him was… losing.
A woman stepped down last.
She didn't rush.
She didn't shout.
She moved like she'd already decided the outcome and was simply walking toward it.
Her hair was a calm red. Her eyes were the color of old amber, steady and watchful, like a dog trained not to blink.
Makima.
Johan recognized her name the way he recognized "devil" and "Hell." It rose inside him as a fact stamped into this world's hierarchy.
Control Devil.
He felt something in the room tighten when she arrived, like the air itself straightened its posture.
The hunters behind her looked relieved just to have her there, as if her presence promised the universe would behave again.
Makima's gaze swept the basement: the cultists collapsing, the failed weapons, the darkness, the cracked salt, the way probability itself had started to stumble.
Then her eyes settled on Johan.
They didn't widen.
They didn't flinch.
They simply… focused, the way someone focuses on a rare animal behind glass.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The basement was full of sound, but it felt distant now, muffled by the gravity between them.
Makima smiled, just a little.
"Hello," she said.
Johan watched her. "Hello."
Makima's eyes flicked to the ringed man, who was still on his knees, sobbing into his hands like a child who'd dropped something precious and realized it was irreparable.
"You caused this," Makima said. Not accusing. Stating.
Johan shrugged faintly. "They asked."
Makima took another step closer.
None of the hunters stopped her.
They couldn't.
The idea of stopping her probably didn't exist in their minds.
"You're not a normal devil," she said.
"No."
"What are you?"
Johan tilted his head, studying her expression. Calm interest. Hunger disguised as professionalism. The certainty of someone who believed everything had a leash somewhere.
He spoke the title again, and the basement seemed to listen.
"Failure."
Makima's smile deepened by a fraction.
The hunters behind her reacted, subtle but obvious: a collective tightening, like the word had pulled on their nerves.
Makima didn't look away from Johan. "A primal fear."
Johan didn't confirm or deny it. He simply watched her, waiting to see how she would frame him.
Makima crouched beside the ringed man and gently lifted his chin with two fingers.
He flinched like she was a blade.
Makima's voice softened, almost tender. "Tell me. Why did you summon a devil?"
The ringed man's mouth trembled. "I— I—"
Makima smiled at him.
And the man's eyes went blank, the way a puppet's eyes go blank when the puppeteer tightens the strings.
"To curse someone," he said obediently.
Makima nodded, as if she'd expected that. Then she looked back at Johan, still crouched, still holding the man like he was nothing more than a prop.
"You can curse people," Makima said.
Johan's eyes flicked to the man's forehead, where his fingers had touched earlier.
A faint mark had appeared there, barely visible. Like a small bruise shaped like a question mark.
"A single target," Johan said. "If I choose."
Makima's gaze sharpened. "And what happens to them?"
Johan answered simply. "They fail."
Makima let go of the ringed man. He collapsed to the side, still obedient, still ruined.
Makima stood, smoothing her coat as if this were a casual meeting in an office rather than a basement full of panic and broken rules.
"I'd like you to come with me," she said.
Johan's smile returned, thin. "Is that a request?"
Makima met his eyes without blinking.
"It's an offer," she said. "You'll be safer under Public Safety supervision."
"Safer," Johan repeated, tasting the word.
Makima's voice remained gentle. "And you'll have… purpose."
Purpose.
Johan had heard that word used like a leash before.
Makima stepped closer until they were only a few feet apart.
Up close, Johan could see it: her control wasn't just power. It was a worldview. A faith.
She looked at living beings and saw ownership.
She looked at fear and saw a tool.
Johan looked at her and saw something that didn't fear failure the way humans did.
Makima didn't fail often. She simply made other people fail for her.
That alone made her interesting.
Makima tilted her head slightly, as if listening to something only she could hear. Then she smiled again.
"You're wearing a human shape," she said. "Do you have a human name?"
Johan paused.
Names were dangerous.
Names gave people handles.
But he also understood the value of giving someone the handle you wanted them to grab.
"Johan," he said.
Makima repeated it quietly. "Johan."
The way she said it made it sound like she was placing the name into a file cabinet in her mind, labeling it neatly, deciding where it belonged.
Then she added, almost casually: "If you refuse, my hunters will attempt to restrain you."
Behind her, the hunters stiffened, as if bracing for impact.
Johan glanced at them.
He could already see the failures lined up like dominoes. Guns misfiring. Contracts backfiring. A ceiling beam snapping at the wrong moment. A hunter tripping into another hunter's line of fire.
The world would protect him simply by betraying anyone who tried.
It would be messy.
It would be effortless.
Johan looked back at Makima.
Makima's smile didn't waver.
She wasn't ignorant of what he was. She was simply… confident the universe would bend for her anyway.
That confidence was either arrogance or something earned.
Johan found himself curious which.
He took a step toward her.
The hunters tensed.
Makima's eyes narrowed a fraction, as if pleased.
Johan stopped just short of her personal space and said softly, "What do you want from me?"
Makima's voice stayed warm. "I want to understand you."
"That's a lie," Johan said gently.
Makima's smile widened, and for the first time, something like irritation flickered behind it.
A tiny crack.
A tiny imperfection.
Johan felt that crack and, instinctively, the air around them shifted. Not a big change. Just a subtle tilt in probability, like a coin deciding which way it wanted to land.
Makima's eyelid twitched.
She noticed.
Of course she noticed.
Her voice remained calm, but the sweetness sharpened. "I want you to work for me, Johan. Under my direction."
"And if I don't?"
Makima leaned in slightly, speaking as if sharing a secret.
"Then I'll make you," she said.
There it was.
Not a threat.
A promise.
The basement felt smaller with that sentence inside it.
Johan stared into her eyes and saw the same thing he'd seen in so many people, but purified into something almost holy.
A belief that other lives were pieces on a board.
Only Makima didn't play to win.
Makima played to *own the game*.
Johan's smile didn't reach his eyes.
He nodded once.
"Alright," he said.
Makima's expression softened again, satisfied.
"Good," she said. "Come."
Johan turned toward the stairs.
As he walked, the chaos behind him continued to unravel. Phones buzzing, bodies shaking, cries rising and falling like waves.
But none of it touched him.
Failure flowed around him like a private weather system.
Makima followed beside him, unhurried, and Johan could feel the hunters behind them relaxing with every step, like children reassured by a parent's presence.
At the top of the stairs, Makima paused.
She looked at Johan as if assessing how tightly she could hold a chain without it snapping.
"You're going to meet someone soon," she said. "Someone special."
Johan glanced at her. "Special?"
Makima's smile turned almost fond, the way someone smiles at a pet they've trained well.
"The Chainsaw Devil," she said.
Johan's eyes narrowed slightly.
Makima watched his reaction with interest, like she was already planning where to place him in relation to that other monster.
Johan said quietly, "Do you think you can control me?"
Makima didn't answer right away.
Instead, she reached out and brushed a speck of dust from Johan's shoulder, an intimate gesture that pretended to be casual.
Her fingers were warm.
Her touch felt like ownership.
Makima looked into his eyes and said, softly, "I control what I need to control."
Johan felt the urge to laugh.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was honest.
They stepped out into the night air.
The city above was alive with lights and noise and people trying not to think about how fragile their plans were.
A siren wailed somewhere far away.
Makima walked beside Johan like she'd brought home something dangerous and beautiful.
Johan walked beside Makima like he'd found a door that claimed it would never open.
And in the space between them, something began to form.
Not trust.
Not love.
A kind of tension that tasted like poison and possibility.
Johan glanced at Makima one last time before they reached the waiting cars.
"Makima," he said.
She looked at him.
Johan smiled faintly. "Try not to fail."
Makima's eyes held his.
Her smile didn't change.
But somewhere in the invisible machinery of the world, a tiny gear slipped.
A tiny, humiliating stutter in certainty.
Makima blinked once.
And Johan knew, with calm satisfaction, that the game had already started.