“Sorry, boss,” Sen’Xul hung his head low to apologize to Claire. He was supposed to stay out of sight; and, he managed that for the first couple of weeks after the new roommate moved in. Unfortunately, Sen’Xul was new, and quickly grew careless. That’s when Dottie spotted the short, stocky demon. Her screams of terror quickly pulled Claire into the kitchen who managed to calm them down. For a moment.
“BOSS!?” Dottie said in surprise, she took a step back. “Who or what are you!?” Claire shook her head and sighed at the squat demon. She was only 5’7″, but he was noticeably shorter than her, even taking his dark twisting horns into account.
“It’s alright, Sen. Can we reschedule?” she asked. Sen’Xul nodded. Then, he was shrouded by a sudden plume of yellow sulfur. It began to dissipate as quickly as it appeared, and he was gone with the silent smoke. Claire turned her attention to a, thankfully, still present Dottie. “I can explain…,” she said.
“What is there to explain?!? I just found out my roommate summons demons to do her chores around the house!” Claire nodded, smiled, and sat down at their small round table. She encouraged Dottie to sit down also. The young woman seemed to relax slightly, but she did not move any closer.
“First off, pretty much everything you said there is wrong,” she said. “I mean, it’s technically correct, but you’re looking at it all wrong.”
“Uhuh,” Dottie replied.
“Summon?” Claire asked. “More like, I called an agent. DemonSSS?” Claire dragged out the ‘s’ to clarify she meant a plural, then added a half-shrug. “Sen’Xul is just who they sent.”
“You called a demon-summoning hotline?” Dottie asked. “For what?” Claire giggled but shook her head.
“Well you got the ‘for what’ part right,” she said, still chuckling. “It wasn’t a demon-summoning hotline. It’s a maid-service that happens to have demons working there too.”
“A cleaning service?” Dottie asked. “A real, red-skinned, horned, demon is working at a cleaning service? Why?” she asked. Dottie seemed to accept Claire’s answer and moved to the table.
“Well, think about it. If the economy is as bad as it is up here, how bad do you think it is down there?”
