So, there I was, on my knees in a dirty alley in downtown Denver, being harangued by a demon. I wasn’t sure if my mother would be surprised or disappointed by this situation. Strange time to be thinking of her, maybe. Maybe it was the beginning of the reel of my life passing before me, or maybe just the usual highlights of embarrassment the brain likes to play when you need to be up early the next morning. (Or the same morning, oft enough.) The thought led to a wry quirk of the lips. The quiver of that muscle led to another, and then cascaded into an entire grin. The grin led to a chuckle.

“Oh, that’s how they did it,” I said aloud.

The creature frowned, more in a, “I don’t know if I understood that,” way if its facial expressions were similar to the ones I used.

“I always wondered how they did it. The wizard in Chicago. Peter Parker. Corwin of Amber, even if he was almost as stuffy as his brother Julian.” The confusion grew in the monster’s face. “How they were beat down,” I got up to my feet, “and then quip something like, ‘Hey, you forgot about that black pencil I borrowed from that girl in 3rd grade and never returned. Or that time I was caught peeing on the dog.’ That was fair though,” I said, defensively, “he peed on my leg first.” I took a breath. “You know, the whole tarnished moment awards that play in your head. They’re not just to torture you. They’re proof of your humanity. We’ve all said, ‘I love you,’ accidentally on the phone when ending a conversation with someone. Or when your server says, ‘Have a great meal,’ you’ve piped up, ‘You too!’ That’s what makes us human. Mistakes. If we were perfect, we’d be, I don’t know. Unreal.” I shrugged. “Not that the occasional seemingly entirely random divide by zero error doesn’t happen with a machine, but it’s just not likely. That hint of entropy in the system.”

That entropy was what I was listening for, the wildness that ran through the gut-wrenching putrescence. That wildness was clean. It was what it was supposed to be, not everything this thing, this “demon” wasn’t. I could understand now how Roberto’s people, clan, family, whatever, caught these things. How often could they come up? I couldn’t comprehend there being more than one, maybe two in the world at any one time. Roberto said they were becoming less common, and yet the number of exorcists were increasing.

“He had something inside him. A doorway to something else,” I repeated her words.

“Every door is made to be opened,” he said. He had been moving away, and yet, now he moved closer. At the same time, he had never changed his location. It was a presence, not a physical thing. Like I had gotten the attention of something I never wanted to see me, and yet, it was less than the attention Peredur demanded. It wasn’t personal, and yet it was still so hungry it didn’t care. It would devour the world if it could just find where to start to bite.

“I closed the wrong door. I closed it the wrong way. I left the evil inside and locked the human away.” That’s what she had said. I looked up at his eyes again, empty, draining, and yet still wanting out. “I don’t think she did.”

“You say to be human is to make mistakes. Then yes, of course, I am human,” his smile was somehow bigger than his mouth, his teeth more than the teeth he had.

“Just a normal, regular human. Doing human things,” I said, raising the shield of humor once more. “You want out. You’re trapped. That door didn’t open or close. You’re Erwin’s Entrance,” I dubbed him. “Schrödinger reference.” I took a step back, and didn’t care that it caught his attention again. He wasn’t important. The puzzle was. “Escher’s Egress,” I tried again. I liked it a little better.

I can’t say I’m the greatest at concentration, and meditation tends to bore me and put me to sleep. Give me a good, relevant enigma? I’m yer boi. I like to drive Dungeon Masters slightly off-edge with clever and creative options. This wasn’t a creature whose very presence stained my soul. This wasn’t a judgment. This was a magical conundrum. One I could solve, one I could conquer, and then sleep at night.

I felt a burst of power, and a flash of cold air. The scent, the taste of frost, somewhat metallic and cutting, like blood in your mouth. Rayya. And Roberto, a leather feeling, a man of stout will in a body of rag and bone. Trying to contact me. Distracting me.

“I feel your power,” the creature said. I wasn’t sure what it meant. That it was annoying? Ticklish? Purple? Didn’t matter. How did you close something that wasn’t open, and open something that wasn’t closed? The topography was twisted.

The bite it took of me nearly made me fall. Not a physical bite, but almost a physical fall as I lost balance, lost track of where and who I was for just long enough to drop the threads I had been weaving. “No,” I said, rising up from my stumble.

“You can’t just decide,” it said. “You don’t get a choice. No one gets a choice. Your magic can free me. I want my brothers. I want home inside me. Not this cold, closed world.”

“Yeah, well, keep messing with me, and I’ll put you in a box,” I said, not concentrating on the words so much. “Wrapped up like a present for something nastier.” Those words felt good in a way. Maybe Peredur would eat this one, too. Like Naul.

Wait, that wasn’t me. I mean, yes, I could think like that. I had thought like that. It wasn’t who I wanted to be. Who I chose to be. Thoughts are thoughts – I know there were Catholic philosophers who would disagree and put them in the box of actions, but that was the point of free will, right? To be able to make those choices. I wasn’t heavy on Freud, but sometimes the id whispered ill-considered thoughts. I had to focus. I had to make this happen. And I had to make it right.

That was the point. This was a mistake, yes, a lesson. A chance to change my direction. I could do this the wrong way. I could let Roberto commit his murder, for whatever it was, it would be a death. I could have the others help me – heck, Rayya and Nen seemed pretty ready to do it for the lulz. I could let my sister try the spell I could feel like a web stuck to her fingers and lips, ready only for a breath of will to let it fly.

Or I could be who I was. A closer. I kidded about the “Portal Doctor” title, but there was the part of me that hadn’t understood what had been meant when I was given this task. She said she ran a hospital of sorts. I was a doctor, yes, a physician, a healer of sorts. I didn’t have to close doors to save the world, just close doors to save a few souls.

Like this one in front of me. When I looked, really looked with magic and mind, I saw it. Whoever he was within did not want this. I could feel, hear threads of my life being pulled and examined and judged, and I didn’t care. I wasn’t the past. One cannot change that. It was who I was, but I could make another choice.

And another.

And another.

The power swelled within me. I understood, for just a golden moment, what Misko meant. What she had been warning me about, and promising me. In taking the token, she let me choose.

I hoped she wasn’t disappointed.
I hoped my mom wasn’t disappointed, either, but that ship may have sailed, and I wasn’t the only one navigating those depths.

A choice. I could close him in. Close him out. Take him in. Each choice had its consequences. Ones for me, ones that I could not predict, ones that would weigh upon others. I could set him free.

I could diminish and close the book on this chapter. Thanks, Galadriel. So noble and wise, but she had had centuries of great power. It wasn’t a ring of gold to bind them all. I could take the power and become not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night. Or I could remain E.

That wasn’t my test. I had already made my decision.