I get up, wiping the debris from my legs and butt.  Shaking a little while I got up probably due to the soul magic I was exposed to.  This fairy, Ifrit is a bit crazy but she’s my kind of crazy.  This is a highly intelligent being whose title is “The Eternal Flame”.  I think it would be best to stay on her good side, seeing as I’m utterly powerless.  I’ll just take this one step at a time.  Plus, I’m kind of curious about this other world, and I think she intends to take me there.

We turn the corner. “It’s right here, we weren’t far…. Because you know.” “…” Giving her a look that says, “You melted my damn car!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry ok, I needed to stop you, and I didn’t know what that thing was, so I did the first thing I could think of.  You didn’t get hurt right? I made sure you didn’t.” “I couldn’t just let you leave” She pretests.

Well, that’s about as good as I’ll get from ifrit I think.  I didn’t get hurt, that is true and it’s just a car, that frankly; I feel like I wouldn’t have much use for even if it didn’t get destroyed.  I don’t think I’ll be able to stay here for much longer, she came for a reason, and to come so far.  She must intend to take me with her.

We turn the corner, the roadway; still empty of all life, how is this even possible, where is everyone?  Gesturing over to the right of the sidewalk, I point to the bottom floor of the high-rise apartment buildings. They stand, old and decrepite, speaking to the life i have lived until now.  

“This is it.” I say, “It’s nothing special, cheap, but cozy enough to call a home.  I say, standing in front of my unit looking at the green and brass door.  “I gotta find my keys” I say turning to her behind my shoulder.  Patting my pockets, I rustle around looking for the key, hoping it’s not melted along with the car.  Then, unprompted, and unwarned, a bright light enveloped us.  In an instant I found myself inside my home. 

“Ifrit! What was that?” I yelled, sort of panicked.

“That was a simple transfer spell” “I was running low on patience for you to find the stupid little key”

“So, you used magic to transport us three feet?” “How did you even do that; logic would dictate that you would need to know where to go? Right? Like in the comics? You had to have been there, to go there?” How could she have done that? I know comics are as far as you can get from common sense in some cases, but, how did she know what was on the other side? What if she transported us into a wall? Would we have died within the concrete? 

“What logic is that?” she says smug, the look on her face asks if I’m an idiot. 

“I can do whatever I want, I don’t know where this logic of yours comes from, or what a comic book is, but I don’t have to have been there to go three feet, it’s just a door.” “You were taking forever; besides, it didn’t hurt right, and now you don’t have to lock the door again.”

Exasperated, and frankly way out of my element, I can’t think of anything in retort.  Just go along with it me, become a river and go with the flow.  You’ll tire yourself out, more than you already are, trying to figure this out.  Honestly it was cool, plus I don’t want to ask so many questions that it make's her agitated with me, she could kill me in a second.  I don’t even think she would break a sweat, and with no magic to speak of, i would be unable to defend myself.

“Welcome to my home.” I gestured to the small apartment. 

“Not bad for a closet, where’s the door to the rest of it?” She says, honestly.  “How rude! This is it, this is the whole place, the closet is over there in the corner, see?”

“Ah! Right! I knew that, just a joke! I was just joking.” She says hesitantly, trying to cover up the fact she wasn’t, in fact, joking.

I let out a sigh of exhaustion and slight embarrassment, sure its small, but this is relatively normal for someone on a fixed income.  The room seems to shrink even smaller after her "joke", seemed to make me self conscious.

“So important question Ifrit, do you see anything?” “Anything that could be, not of this world?” I say hesitantly, I, quite frankly, don’t want the answer.  Ignorance is bliss as they say.

“You mean like those things you spoke about earlier? No, not at first glance.”

Ifrit leaves my side, and starts going through my apartment, drawers and closets fling themselves open, as if I had a poltergeist, clothes flow from one side of the room to the next.  Profanities can be heard through the rubble; Ifrit was tossing my apartment, looking at everything.  I don’t want to question her, but could they really be in the drawers and the small spaces? Does she really need to mess it all up just to look?

I don’t know anything about her world, the only thing I know is something was in here with the intent to kill me, the sky shattered, my car melted, and I’m “friends” with a fairy called “Ifrit”.

“Have you found anything?” I asked hesitantly.

“No, and I didn’t think I would, they probably felt my presence.  All creatures give off a distinct vibrational frequency, or aura, you, me, beasts.  However, there’s no way to tell if there was something here that left.”  “Frankly, you’re lucky they didn’t eat you, It’s a surprise they didn’t.” 

“They came here to eat me?!” I yell.

“Obviously not, otherwise I would’ve never found you, you would have ceased to exist right there in your apartment” “So they clearly came for another reason, frankly, it’s weird they were even here, how did they get through the veil?”

“So, they weren’t trying to eat me? Could they have been the reason the veil broke?”

“No, if anything they were probably just getting a look at you” “Don’t get me wrong, you see another, you run, you understand? You were very lucky.” “The veil broke after you left right? When you got to your car you saw it shatter, the timing doesn’t match.”

I look at my once nice apartment.  My room looks as if a tornado has gone through, clothes hanging from the ceiling fan, furniture overturned.  She was extremely thorough.  Looking at the destruction fills me with agony, now I'll have to spend a whole day cleaning, will I even have the chance too?

I don't hear anything from Ifrit for a while, from what i know of her, she does stop talking.  She's over by the bathroom looking down.  “Ifrit? What is it?”

I walk over to the counter where ifrit’s looking intently at the bathroom sink, saying nothing in response, which of course has me worried, “Um, Ifrit, everything ok?” I say cautiously.

As I carefully move over to the sink, Ifrit shoots her arm across my path, as if to stop me.  I stop, almost tripping over myself, “What is it” I sheepishly say. 

“Nothing good Thomas, it seems to be goo, the goo is probably from the other world, my world” “Only thing is, I’ve never seen anything like it” Just then a bloodshot eyeball floated to the surface, shooting looks at us frantically.

“What the ****!” I yell, shooting back. “Ifrit! is that an eyeball? What the **** is an eyeball doing in my sink?! Why is it looking at us?! How is it looking at us!?

While I walk back, Ifrit is visibly shaking, as if she’d seen a ghost.  Unmoving from her spot in the air.  I’m getting exceedingly worried at this point.

What the hell is in the sink?  I mean it could be anything at this point, seeing as how gods and imps are real, so this could be a dragon for all I know.  No, not a dragon, couldn’t be, what is it, why is she frozen in fear, it’s just goo, right?

“Ifrit?” Silence, she doesn’t say a word, she just floats there, frozen.

Say something! The anticipation was devouring my mind causing me to panic again. It’s still no use, as I exhale; the ground begins to shake again, except this time it’s different, like a humming, a penetrating humming, burrowing into my brain.  The sink, that until now, had been filled with black goo, begins to move as it overflows the sink.  The instinct within me tells me I’m going to die as tendrils begin to move out of the flowing goo.  As if possessed by a spirit or some other worldly force, something within me forces my body to move, was it bravery? Fear? I have no way of telling. 

My body shoots forward reaching out to Ifrit, and as if anticipating my actions; the tendrils reach out, engulfing us both in a thick blanket of black goo, all light, even sound, is cut off, as if we had reached the event horizon of a blackhole.

Ifrit!