I BOUGHT THE DEMON KING AT A YARD SALE

The apocalypse began, as all things truly awful do, with a notification from the Laurel Creek Homeowners Association. BWOOP. BWOOP. Elara, covered in a fine dusting of flour and cinnamon sugar, fumbled for her phone with a sticky hand. She silenced the alarm she’d set for the Thompson’s yard sale and saw the banner headline beneath it. LAUREL CREEK EMERGENCY ALERT: CEASE ALL OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES. SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. UNIDENTIFIED ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENON. She wiped her hands on her apron, decorated with cartoon croissants, and peered out the bakery’s front window. The sky, which had been a perfect, placid blue an hour ago, was now the color of a day-old bruise. A low, ominous rumble vibrated through the floorboards. Not thunder. Something deeper, as if the earth itself were groaning. “Atmospheric phenomenon,” she muttered, untying her apron. “Right.” A flash of actinic light lit up the street, followed by a sound like a thousand sheets of parchment being torn in half. A ball of green fire slammed into the roof of the Miller’s house three doors down. Shingles and splintered wood erupted into the air, followed by a chorus of screams. Elara’s heart hammered against her ribs. This was not in the HOA bylaws. This was it. The end of the world. Panic, cold and sharp, clawed at her throat. She should hide in the walk-in freezer. She should pray. She should… what? What did one do? Her eyes landed on the clock. 8:55 AM. The Thompsons’ yard sale started at nine. They were moving to Florida, and old man Thompson had been a collector of… well, everything. He’d bragged just last week about a set of “genuine pre-Columbian” clay pots that were almost certainly fakes, but still. A good baker always sources unique ingredients. And containers. The most sensible thing to do when the world was ending, Elara decided, was to get a good deal. She grabbed her wallet and her most durable tote bag—the one that said “Knead the Dough, Fear the Dough”—and slipped out the back door. The five-block walk to the Thompson’s was a journey through a Bosch painting. A winged creature with seven squawking heads was perched on the stop sign at the corner of Maple and Pine, pecking disconsolately at the metal. A shimmering, translucent knight on a horse made of light galloped down the center of the road, shouting about purification. Most of the neighbors were hiding, but a few, like Elara, seemed to have decided that errands were the only sane response. Mr. Henderson was defiantly mowing his lawn, his face a mask of grim determination. The Thompsons’ yard was a chaotic oasis of normalcy. Card tables groaned under the weight of chipped china, stacks of old National Geographics, and a startling number of ceramic frogs. Mrs. Thompson, a woman in a wide-brimmed sun hat, was calmly sticking price tags on a box of mismatched cutlery as embers drifted down from the sky. “Elara, dear! I was afraid you wouldn’t make it,” she trilled. “The traffic is just dreadful.” “You have no idea,” Elara said, her voice a little strangled. Her eyes scanned the tables. A set of copper bowls. A slightly cracked marble pastry slab. Her baker’s brain was cataloging, assessing. And then she saw it. Tucked away in a shadowy corner of the porch, behind a rack of moth-eaten suits, was a birdcage. It was large, about the size of a barstool, and wrought from black, rust-flecked iron. Inside, a man was hunched over, his knees tucked against his chest. He was, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing Elara had ever seen. His skin was the pale, perfect white of unbleached parchment, his hair a cascade of obsidian waves that fell over shoulders corded with muscle. He was dressed in remnants of what might have once been regal black and silver armor, now tattered and scorched. As she approached, he lifted his head. His eyes were the color of molten gold, and they burned with a fury so ancient and profound it made the seven-headed beast down the street seem like a startled chicken. A small, handwritten tag was tied to the cage with a piece of twine. $5 or Best Offer. Elara blinked. “What’s the story with this?” she asked, pointing. Mrs. Thompson waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, that? Frank picked it up at an estate sale years ago. Some sort of movie prop, he said. Very heavy. You can have it for three dollars.” A low growl emanated from the cage. It wasn’t a human sound. It was the sound of mountains grinding together, of continents shifting. “Mortal,” the creature inside hissed, his voice echoing strangely in her mind. “I am Asmodeus, the Serpent of Ruin, the King of the Nine Infernal Rings. Free me from this prison, and I shall grant you a boon before I reduce this pathetic world to cinders.” Elara leaned closer, ignoring the way the air crackled around the bars. She was examining the craftsmanship. The metal was cold, even in the humid morning air, and tiny, intricate runes were carved into every surface. They pulsed with a faint, silvery light. She recognized them, vaguely, from a book on folklore. Fae. Binding magic. The real deal. “A boon?” she said, her tone practical. “What kind of boon?” Asmodeus stared, his golden eyes wide with disbelief. “Wealth beyond imagining. Power to command legions! The eternal devotion of a thousand souls!” Elara frowned. “I have a business loan. The power I want is over my sourdough starter. And the last thing I need is a thousand souls underfoot; the health inspector would have a field day.” She tapped the price tag. “I’ll give you two-fifty for it.” Mrs. Thompson beamed. “Sold!” Elara counted out two crumpled dollar bills and fifty cents in loose change into the old woman’s hand. The transaction felt… final. As the last coin left her palm, the runes on the cage flared brightly for a moment, then settled into a steady, satisfied glow. Asmodeus let out a roar of pure, undiluted rage that made the ceramic frogs rattle. “Fool! You think you can purchase me?” Elara picked up the cage. It was incredibly heavy, but she was used to hauling fifty-pound bags of flour. She grunted, hefting it. “According to the law of purchased and paid-for, etched right here on these bars,” she said, her voice calm despite the adrenaline singing in her veins, “I absolutely can. Now, hold on. We’re going to have to take the alley. The main road is a mess.” She turned to Mrs. Thompson. “Lovely sale. Good luck in Florida.” And with that, Elara, a simple baker, walked back into the apocalypse, carrying her new, five-dollar Demon King in a rusty birdcage.