“What’s it like, accepting the demonheart?” I finished laying out the ‘log cabin’ in the fireplace, set a match to it, and returned to my seat on the couch. Ana to my left, Josefina to my right.

“First, you will, ahem, be questioned by the hierarchs. If they concur, one of the assembly will, grant, you a piece of their heart. Sort of a black stone thing. It hurts. So we have heard.”

The tinder went up, and flames licked at the kindling. They chewed at it, centimeter by centimeter, and the fire began to climb up the walls of its little house, warming the logs, coaxing them to release their volatile essence. It was chaotic in its ever-changing shape, yet unlike these demons, it ultimately followed the laws of understood physics, allowing us to derive comfort from its well-contained violence.

I frowned. “What then?”

“Then, you pay.”

“What kind of payment?”

“You know what kind, Sheldon human.”

At Ana’s insistence, we ate a large meal, drank plenty of water, and packed a few things in my shoulder bag.

“You know,” they said, casually dipping a finger into the scalding pot of homemade puttanesca sauce, “when Sheldon has, ascended to demi-demon, he will not need the transformer. I do not want it back. But perhaps it could help someone else.” They were looking pointedly at Josefina.

“I’m pretty happy with my default hardware,” she said without missing a beat. “But I’m glad you are so confident in Sheldon that you say when and not if.”

She and I retired to bed early, with a hand-rolled joint of home grown Suzy Q. No monsterfuck marathon tonight. Sleep was vital. I was going to need all my stamina to survive a demon gangbang.

We awoke the next morning, well before dawn; Ana and I still needed to sneak into the lab building to get close enough to that ‘butthole’ in spacetime. Josefina found my stash of nuts and grains, and made me a delicious trail mix. I had no idea if this would be of use where I was going, but I kissed her fiercely to show my appreciation. I shouldered my bag and hung my little cantine from the strap. It was now or never.

Ten minutes later, we’d reached the barbed wire fence around the perimeter of the now-rebuilt east wing of the Cornell high energy sciences lab. We stood among the hedges about 20 yards back, considering our next move. It dawned on me I had zero B&E experience and had come under-prepared. I was just about to point this out, when Ana let out a slight hum.

Up on the cornice, sparks flew as a fatal dose of direct current surged through the perimeter cameras. A roughly human-shaped section of the chain-link fence quietly evaporated, leaving a dull glow on the sharp points of the surviving links.

“That door, straight ahead,” they said. I gave Josefina a quick hug.

“Promise me you’ll be careful, Shel. Remember, you owe me one after our little tryst in the barn.”

“I can only say I’ll do my best,” I said.

“And you, Anomaly! Whatever happens, you are to get him home in one piece, and with all due haste.”

<Understood. Let’s go.>

Then I was off at a jog, crossing the fence, throwing myself up against the rough stone walls of the lab. Adrenaline gushed into my system.

The Anomaly floated across the lawn, ghastly glow still faintly visible in the pre-dawn. When they reached the door, they began to, for lack of a word, melt: their body pressed close to the paved step, a single paper-thin digit slid under the door, and immaterial essence poured from them into the gap, causing their form to slowly deflate. I’d seen this trick once before at the farmhouse. Terrifying. Of course, I hadn’t known back then that Ana meant no harm. And I certainly hadn’t known that slipping under a door was their respectful alternative to simply burning a them-shaped hole right through it.

Once the little mess of Ana-ness had fully liquified and flowed under the security door, it nonchalantly opened from the inside. I grabbed the handle and entered, and waited for my companion to finish taking shape. Our objective was now immediately overhead, four flights up. Already I could feel something different in the air of the stairwell, something that set my teeth chattering.

Those four flights might as well have been twenty. But at last we reached the second floor landing, where, just before the key-coded door to the lab, something seemed to glisten in the air. An outline of bright, sparkling blackness.

I scratched my head. “How does the university not know this is here?”

“They are, aware, of a nanoscopic discontinuity,” Ana said. They were running the tip of their octopoid arm around the edges of the portal. “However, it is only in our presence, that it’s visible to the, naked eye.”

No sooner had they finished tracing its outline, than reality began to flicker before my eyes. For a moment, the railing behind the portal was still visible, but stretched out like taffy; then it seemed to spin and rush away into the distance leaving only blackness.

I leaned left. The railing was definitely still there, still pristine and shining under the fluorescent lights. I straightened myself out and looked at the portal again. I saw a thick field of stars and dust and faraway galaxies. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

I cleared my throat. “So, uh, what now?”

Ana smiled. “We go. You first.” Four misshapen arms surged toward me, picked me up off the ground, and tossed me headlong into the portal.

Immediately I could see the butthole analogy was partly literal: I got stuck a moment, with my head, arms and upper torso protruding forward into that glistening starry space. Then there was an unsettling feeling of being pulled through the gap, as though by peristalsis, and abruptly I was free, tumbling forwards. I threw my arms up as a sun-like star reared up directly ahead, so large in my field of view that I was sure I’d be consumed in its searing corona, but at the last moment it slid to one side and raced away behind me. Then another star sailed by, larger and white hot, and this time I could swear I dipped into the photosphere. Blue-white light drowned my senses for a moment. Still I felt no heat. Stellar bodies began to sail past like snowflakes in a flurry, and then just as abruptly as it had begun, the ride was over. I smacked into the dimensional membrane. It held me in place for several moments; ahead, I could see directionless pink light, and a glossy surface like polished marble floor.

I tried to look around me as my head came free of the portal, as far as I could crane my neck in any direction was sameness.

<Welcome, Petitioner,> boomed another voice in my head. It was much like Ana’s, and yet unmistakably was not Ana. The walls of the portal began to pucker outward, thrusting me into the gentle light; I flung out my hands as I rushed toward the glossy surface, and somersaulted, landing on my butt.

“I’ve just arrived,” I said to no one in particular, “and already this dimension is doing a number on my poor little ass.”

<Ha ha ha. We relish visits from you mortals, such wonderful humor you have.>

“Hello? Are you a hierarch of the realm? I’d be honored to look upon your form.” Ana had warned me that I should show deference to those I met here.

<Yes, we are known to mortals as Asthenar, Prince of Morai-sa, He who Judges.>

The smooth, glossy surfaces of this place seemed not to move at all, but somehow, the form of Asthenar swung into view as though everything had spun around me. My breath caught at the sight of him.

He seemed to have a humanoid torso with mostly superficial mutations, on an atrophied lower body pressed prone to the floor, with strange vestigial appendages. Then he reared up, and I realized my error: Asthenar was a spider crab, a supreme example of carcinization. His spindly pink legs were two meters long, the thumbs on his one pair of humanoid arms were claw-like, and hand-sized mandibles projected just below his chin.

As he approached, I was faintly aware that Ana had appeared to my right. They seemed pleased to hang back and let me navigate this myself, however. Asthenar now loomed over me. From here, I could see the fleshy torso packed with rippling musculature, and a strange chitinous sheath hanging from the abdomen that corresponded to no part of an earth crab.

<Well, earthman? Are you ready to make your petition to the assembly?>

In truth, my human brain was overwhelmed by colliding sensations and emotions. The cool, soothing, viscous atmosphere of the room; the disorienting, subtly non-Euclidean geometry of this place; the reflexive human terror of facing Asthenar, and whatever others who lay in wait; the anticipation of a painful grafting process, and of an orgy of unknown pleasures and corporeal abuse that was to follow.

I shut my eyes and took several deep breaths. I tried to picture myself back on the farm, sitting by the fire with Josefina. A room filled with friends and loved ones. A little kid playing with a dog. You can do it, Sheldon. You know who, and what, you’re doing this for.

I looked up at the Prince. “I am ready.”