NaNoWriMo 2019, Day 28

[smeddley]

Daily wordcount: 2,608
Total wordcount: 41,498
On/off target: -5,178

Two more days. 4,251 words per day for two days. I'm not optimistic, I admit. I have a bit going on both days, more than I had to do today and look how little I wrote! We will have to see, it might be down to the wire... I should keep going tonight, but I'm tired and I still need to make the bed. I'm not going to finish, am I? *sigh*

Turns out, the answer to that question was: not a whole lot of anything. I was, once again, paralyzed by overwhelming circumstances into doing nothing. And I decided to be okay with that. I did casually look about the room, wondering what would happen to my belongings when Steve came back and eviscerated me, but decided I didn't really care. My crafty friends could come take what they wanted, and it's not like I was leaving so much as a pet behind. Maybe if I survived this, I should get a pet. At least then someone would really mourn my death by demon, should it ever come up again. I mean, yes, my friends would be sad, but not pet pining for its lost owner levels of sad.

Then I decided that train of thought was monumentally depressing, somewhat more depressing than thinking about the actual human being I knew that was just killed, which raised some uncomfortable emotional questions I was not up to unpacking. But I was still considering the pet idea, even if it was just a guinea pig. Maybe a cat. Was I home enough for a dog? A dog seemed so much more high maintenance, and I'd feel guilty leaving it alone too often. Then again, how often was I gone? I really was, despite what people thought, a huge introvert.

I'd read that introvert and extrovert weren't what people thought, they weren't synonymous with shy and outgoing. I just happened to be a very outgoing introvert, because the truth was, people exhausted me, and I would probably rather stay home with a pet. And maybe I could even use the pet as an excuse to stay home more often. Hermit level eleven, here I come! As soon as I dealt with Steve. Then again, I did enjoy his company, so... Maybe I was overanalyzing this whole situation as a was to avoid thinking about the real matter at hand. To banish, or not to banish? It's possible that if it was Steve and he went ahead and killed Evan, he might not see a reason to kill anyone else for... well, ever? Do demons just kill indiscriminately? Conventional wisdom would say yes, but I really hadn't seen it in him.

Even so, it would be good to have everything ready, just in case. Just because I had everything set up for a banishment, didn't mean I ever had to perform said banishment. I decided to get a good night's sleep, and get everything ready tomorrow. Because, I reasoned, it was possible for him to pop in at any moment and catch me, so it wasn't really procrastination, it was being prudent and careful. Nothing would spill the beans like him popping in when I had the carpet rolled back and I was carving a salt circle in the subfloor. though, was that really the best option? I don't know that I could re-stretch the carpet to make it look undisturbed. But anything laying on top of the carpet would be noticeable, and too easy to displace. I went to bed pondering that, and came up with a (in my mind) brilliant solution at about 3 am, though it would be hard to pull off. It had the up side of the fact that I absolutely loathed the carpet that was there, so replacing it wouldn't bother me. It would just be a lot of work.

I got up, again, at the crack of dawn. There was no sign that Steve had been there at all that evening, so I thought that if he hadn't shown up at all, it would be more plausible that I had destroyed my carpet the night before, and had replaced it on the spur of the moment the next day. It was going to be pretty hard work to get a floor laid in a single day, but it was necessary to sell the story. I packed the car with the cheapest wood flooring I could, and a really nice area rug, and raced home to unload it. I then made a quick trip to the grocery store for the items on the list as well as a few containers of salt, then home to get to work.

Moving all the furniture was exhausting enough, and I almost gave up right then. But I put on some music and tried to psyche myself up for the task. First up: operation ruin carpet. I thought of a few options, including setting a part of it on fire, but then figured that would make my desire to light candles seem very stupid. I finally came up with a plan the utilized a feature of berber carpeting, a feature that I do truly hate - it will run. If a thread gets loose, you can pull it and it unravels. I'd had it happen elsewhere in the house, though it was in a closet and I could live with it. But if it were in the middle of the living room, and happened as I was vacuuming, I could legitimately say there was no way I could live with that. And, bonus, if there had been a wood floor underneath it, well, I could express my disgust with living with carpeting I hated for so long.

I picked at a loop of the berber, and to my delight, it really did yank right out. To be fair, it wasn't that obvious where it had pulled out, but I could always say I knew more would follow, and to test that theory I pulled on the one next to it and it came out even more easily, as did the one next to that. I realized I would have to really sell it, so as much as I didn't want to do it, I turned on my vacuum cleaner and let one of the strings wind around the beater bar. I set the vacuum in the hallway, I could make a show of cutting the last piece of it off while Steve was here.

Then I ripped up the carpet, folding it and dragging it out to the back yard. I would have to call for large item pickup for that, I wasn't sure if, even if I cut it up, I could fit it in my trash bin. Then again, I was in no hurry, I could do it over multiple weeks, so long as my neighbors didn't call in a blight complaint on me, like that had the poor guy down the bock about the chunks of drywall. I mean, yes, it was a little unsightly, but he was getting rid of it as quickly as he could in the trash. I think that was more of a vendetta because most people think he's the one who complained about the people painting their house that putrid shade of puce. I don't actually know who it was that had complained, but it was obvious the city wasn't going to do anything and since we don't have a homes association, there was no rule against the color. I think the only reason the city came out was to see how bad it could really be, and to see if they could appease the complainant by issuing a citation for disrepair or some other infraction. But of course one of the older, stay-at-home neighbors had seen the official city car and had asked what was going on, and the story got out. They couldn't - or wouldn't - say who it was that had called in the complaint, and if they hadn't been spotted, it probably would have never come to light. Because while their paint color choice was abysmal, the owners of the puce house took meticulous care of it.

But I digress, again. I dragged the carpet out back to be dealt with however later on, and went back inside and used a router to score a deep enough circle in the subfloor to hold a continuous ring of salt. The research told me that the circle had to visible unless it was salt. Salt could be hidden, but you couldn't chalk a line on a floor and then toss a rug over it. This wasn't usually a bit deal, to have the entire set-up obvious, because most people summoned demons into a circle. They knew they were stuck the minute they were there. But to trap a loose demon, you had to be more cunning, hence, a buried circle. I wondered how much trial and error it took to realize salt would work? And how many other things might work? I was going to go with the tried and true, at least, as much as anything occult is either tried or true. A week ago I would have sworn it was all utter bollocks, and now look at me. Tearing my house apart because of a demon. Who would have guessed?

Once the salt was very much in the circle, I ran a quick bead of hot glue all the way around, to make sure it stayed in place. I was not taking any chances, and while I usually disdained the ubiquitous glue gun, in this case, it was a blessing. I scrapped the top surface flat as I went, watching carefully to ensure I did not have any gaps in the salt. I'd put a pretty deep and fairly wide groove in it, so much so that I'd gone through almost all four of the large containers of slat I bought. Luckily, I had been about out of salt, so I combined what I had left from the ring with the container in my pantry, then put all four salt containers in the super secret must dispose of before sundown trash pile.

I pulled the tack strips up and also set them in the trash pile after breaking them into short, manageable pieces. Then I pulled the baseboards off carefully so I could reset them. And then it was time to lay the floor. I admit it went faster than I thought it would, and was fairly easy. But maybe that was the adrenaline in my system. It was, however, exhausting. By the time I had nailed the last baseboard back in place, my hamstrings and arms were screaming in pain, and I still had to get rid of the evidence. I hid the extra flooring in the basement alongside some of the tiles and paint the previous owners had left, figuring that would make sense and I could claim they'd been there the whole time. Though why I would not know there had been wood flooring? Maybe I assumed it was several owners previous and they'd pulled up the wood floor in favor of terrible berber carpeting? I don't know, my brain wasn't working and maybe it wouldn't come up, anyway.

I drove the cardboard to a recycling drop-off, then, admittedly, I did something terrible and threw the trash in a dumpster at a nearby school. I normally wouldn't 'steal' trash pick-up, but time was short and I was desperate and needed to dispose of the evidence. Pulling up a carpet in a day I could explain, laying an entire wood floor would look far, far more suspicious. I rushed how, rolled out the area rug, which, to be fair, took up almost the entire room as it was, and was just falling into the chair when Steve showed up.

"Sorry I wasn't here to make dinner last night," he said breezily. "I hope you didn't starve."

"I'm a grown woman, I can take care of myself," I said with fake huffiness. "And it's not like there weren't Pop-Tarts in the pantry."

"I want to believe you're saying that as a joke, but I can totally believe you'd eat Pop-Tarts for dinner. Did you even cook them, or did you just eat them raw like a heathen?"

"I did actually toast them, in a toaster, even!" I said. "Did you know they give instructions for the microwave? Can you imagine, microwaving Pop-Tarts?!"

He shook his head, then began bustling around the kitchen, humming softly. He was in an amazingly good mood, I thought, and he hasn't even mentioned the carpet. Should I? Would it be more or less suspicious if I didn't mention it? What if he really just didn't notice? Part of me, the ridiculous part, would be upset if he didn't notice, because, hello, the amount of work I put into it demanded some recognition. On the other hand, if he didn't notice, that was really, really good for my plan. The rational side of me was pleased he wasn't saying anything. I leaned back and wasn't even aware I'd fallen asleep until I heard him calling me. I snorted awake.

"Wha... what?" I yawned.

"Did you doze off? Dinner's ready!"

"Yeah, sorry, I just... I'm just tired, I did a lot today," I said, seeing if he'd say anything.

"Ah, yes, I noticed how much cleaning you'd done, the place looks fabulous," he beamed. I tried not to let my slight annoyance at that remark show. "Though you didn't bother to put away the vacuum cleaner, I see."

He gestured to the hallway, and suddenly every reservation I had about banishing him fled my mind. I got up, trying not to look too stiff, and lit the fireplace. I'd already lit the three candles, placed strategically about the room, so this left one point to light. And that would come right after dinner... I casually placed my knitting in just the right spot, checking to make sure the art, the embroidery, and the bunting I'd just finished were perfectly aligned. The last and simplest symbol would be done on the fly, right before I lit the last flame.

I softened on my stance as we ate a delicious dinner and watched another absurd movie, but I kept getting weird vibes, just now and then, from him. And the pendant I wore kept getting very, very warm. A few times I had to manufacture a reason to lean forward, just so it would fall away from my skin it was so hot. And every time after it got hot, Steve looked a little perplexed and increasingly frustrated. Maybe that thing wasn't useless, after all. Hopefully everything else wasn't, either.

"I'm gonna make some tea, do you want some?" I asked casually.

"I can get it," he said automatically, but his eyes were back on the screen. It was a fairly action-packed part of the movie, and I could tell he really didn't want to leave it, even just to walk over to the kitchen.

"Don't be silly, you made dinner, enjoy the movie. So you want a cup?" I picked up the plates and tried to walk to the kitchen as smoothly as I could, though I felt jumpy and like I had to be moving very suspiciously. Fly casual, I thought to myself.

"No, no, I'm fine," he said.

I went into the kitchen and pulled out a tea cup and a tin of loose leaf tea. I rummaged in the drawer for a diffuser, because I did actually intend to make some tea, as well. Plus, if nothing happened, I could legitimately have made tea. All about the pretense, I thought. I formed the last symbol in loose-leaf tea on the counter, then, holding my breath, lit the gas burner.

I didn't have to wonder for more than a split second if it was going to work. The air shimmered and Steve let out a shriek of outrage, his face contorting in anger.