A red kickball sits in the driveway of a brick home. A plain house on a typical street. A neighborhood, simple and safe.

  But this place is anything but.

  Next to the ball, a large prism begins to form. It grows taller, wider. At first glance it doesn’t seem real, but eventually it takes true shape and opens like a door. From inside, sounds can be heard. A sizzle of electricity, strange chimes and faint voices. And then, out steps a red-cloaked figure, nearly eight feet tall. The figure scans the street, studying the false suburban setting. It is Abaddon of the Fallen who has come. And his face is clouded with suspicion and... fear.

  There are sounds all around. “Neighborhood” sounds: lawnmowers, birds, children playing, and neighbors talking in the distance. But the old demon sees none of these things. It is all simply illusion, manifested, for reasons known only to the mad host of this realm.

  “Baal!” Abaddon’s voice booms from the driveway, its force masking his anxiety. “Baal Nightmare! Baal Thread-eater! Abaddon calls you!”

  He is answered only with silence. Even the ambient noise of the neighborhood falls suddenly quiet. But then, a shudder, rippling throughout the stillness of the setting. Abaddon feels it vibrating in his bones. The ripple becomes a thunder that rumbles off into eery silence.

  “She’s here.” The Fallen prince grips his hammer, tight. Preparing himself.

  “Anything is possible now.”

  The silence breaks, and from behind the simple house, a child’s voice can be heard, shouting, “Kick the ball! It's your turn!”

  Abaddon's eyes stay fixed on the porch, awaiting further instruction. There is none. He looks down at the red ball, his face twisting into a look of disgust. “Games?” he says, angrily. “Games, still?” He nudges the red rubber sphere with a tarnished silver boot.

  “Come on!” the voice calls out. “Come on and play!”

  Abaddon remains indignant, giving no reply.

  “If you don’t want to play, then I can’t let you stay!” The voice laughs. A distorted, menacing laughter that is then joined by disembodied voices all around.

  “Kick it!” says one. “It’s your turn!” says another. The voices multiply, all speaking at once. Their volume growing louder and louder to the point where Abaddon can take it no longer.

  “Damn you, Baal!” He shouts, kicking the object with great anger.

  He looks like a fool, which of course, is the point. Abaddon knows it. There’s nothing normal about an audience here. And there will be no assistance if he doesn’t debase himself for Baal’s amusement.

  “There!” he shouts, watching the orb fly over the roof of the house. “It’s done!”

  The voices stop, and all goes quiet again. Then the mysterious child’s words, from behind the house return. “Great job!” It says, “You’re strong! Now, come get your ball!”

  Abaddon sighs in frustration, starting around the side toward the backyard.

  “Come get your ball!” The voice repeats.

  “Come get the ball!” Once again, louder.

  Then, as Abaddon turns the corner, setting eyes on a child’s playhouse, the pitch of the voice drops to a low rumble that falls deeper and louder with each word spoken. Like the sound of wood cracking and creaking from the hull of an old ship. All things to be drowned by its force.

  “Come!

  “Find!”

  “Baaaaaaaaaaal!!”

  Light dies all around as the sky darkens under eclipse. Shadows grow from the corners of the yard, and a chill runs down the assassin’s spine.

  And then… he sees.

  On the swing hanging from the playhouse sits a curious thing. A little blonde-haired girl, wearing jean bib overalls with a yellow t-shirt underneath. She has mismatched green and blue socks. Her tennis shoes decorated like unicorns, complete with crooked felt horns sticking from the fronts and short rainbow tails attached to the backs. She swings, looking at Abaddon, smiling.

  “Hi!” she says, cheerily. “What do you need, Mister? Nails for your hammer?”

  She looks so much like a human child, save for one failing. Her swinging is always unnatural. Halting, almost “glitching” in its motion.

  It’s been eons since they’ve spoken. Not since those first days after The Fall. But Abaddon still knows her. Knows her well. And here in her own realm, he can sense her powerful chaos.

  But showing fear would mean death. And there’s work that needs doing. “I didn’t come here to play games, Baal. I need your help.”

  She kicks her feet back and forth on the glitching swing. “My help, huh?”, she asks. And then mocks him with a voice of false importance. “Big, strong Mind Breaker!” She jabs. “Superior to all the Princes of Hell! Hammer Wielder!” She throws her head back, laughing. “You must be pretty lost if you came here.”

  Abaddon looks away embarrassed. Of course, she’s right. To seek her help is an obvious last resort. He rages inside. “Demeaning myself for the amusement of this ridiculous…”

  “Why must you do this!?” Abaddon shouts, unable to contain himself. “Why must you always put on this bizarre show? I don’t understand any of this!” He gestures across the yard and around the neighborhood. “What is the point? Why the house? Why the yard? Why… you? Can you not just be focused for a single second? I am here on a matter of great importance. Something that concerns all of us!”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “All of us?” Baal suddenly disappears from the swing reappearing instantly upon the playhouse platform. It disorients Abaddon. “What’s ‘all of us’?” She smiles, looking at a purple ring pop on her finger. “There is no ‘all of us.’ There hasn’t been for a long, long, time!”

  She takes a taste of the candy, grinning. “Ooohh.” She goes on sarcastically. “You mean we? We princes of Hell? All power with no real strength? We who are kept separate by decree! And why? Why do you think that is?”

  Her question confuses him, but he recognizes that it’s safer to simply let her finish her rant. “I surrender, Baal,” he relents.

  In the blink of an eye, she’s in front of him, now. Dark circled eyes staring fiercely into his. She grabs his wrists. Too fast to react to, much less pull away from.

  The red-cloaked demon drops his war-hammer. It lands with a “thud” in the grass. “My God, she’s dangerous,” Abaddon realizes. “I have to leave this place.”

  “We’re separate,” she whispers, “to keep us weak. Too weak for the war we’ve been promised.”

  An impasse locks ancient eyes. Eyes searching motive and memory and mutual trauma. After which…

  “That makes no—“, but Abaddon catches himself unwilling to entertain her distractions. “I think,” he manages, “you’ve finally re-constituted yourself so many times that you’ve actually broken your…”

  “My mind?!” Baal screams, appearing suddenly behind his left ear, nearly knocking him over in shock. “You would know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

  She cackles, an unnatural sound from a child. “But you don’t know the secrets that I do!” She teases, and then blinks back to her swing.

  But Abaddon, in growing fear and frustration continues to resist her attempts to bait him.

  “It doesn’t matter!” He yells. “We do the work that our Lord commands. Do you not love the work, Baal? It has been long said that you love it more than most.”

  “Oh, I do love my work,” Baal admits, sliding down the fire pole of the playhouse. “I am ‘Nightmare’!” she boasts. “I am ‘Thread-eater’!” (Now from the ladder)

  “I have need of your nightmares, Baal,” Abaddon interrupts her, “I have threads for you.”

  At that the little girl stops.

  “Whose?” she questions, as even her unicorn shoes seem to come alive mimicking her look of curiosity. “And why?”

  “A man,” Abaddon answers her. “A man in Ohio.”

  “Aaand… whyyyyyyy?” Baal repeats, probing.

  Now, Abaddon looks away, exhausted. The moment has come. “Forced to admit my failings to this lunatic.”

  But there’s no going back. It’s already too late.

  “I broke this man’s mind several weeks ago, Baal. I found his door. I smashed his Light. I watched it shatter.” He turns back toward her. “But the man is alive, and his Wreath still spins.”

  Baal halts at the bottom of her slide. Her mischievous grin, suddenly evaporating. The childish aura dissipating as though flipped by switch. For once, she looks focused.

  “His Light is… gone?” She ponders under her breath “But how can that be?”

  “Do you see now?” Abaddon adds. “This is what I’ve been trying to…”

  “Not talking to you, dumb dumb!” Baal cuts him off, the reason leaving her eyes, replaced again by childish mania. “Smart people need to think right now. So… quiet please!”

  And then, instantly, she’s gone like a ghost, and Abaddon is alone in the yard.

  He looks around in bewilderment. “Always damned games,” he mutters, and starts back toward the front of the house, still trying to make his case.

  “The man must fall,” he calls out to Baal’s realm, turning the corner, eyes scanning back and forth. “Lucifer will wear both our skins as hides if he finds I’ve failed and decides we’re all useless.”

  And back in the front yard, he spies the demon girl, sitting on the porch steps. Feet crossed, with a look of concentration, appearing alien on her child’s face.

  The faces of her unicorn shoes twitch and contort.

  “It can’t be,” Baal says flatly.

  “His Light is gone, Baal,” Abaddon repeats. “You can look through the Kaleidoscope yourself.”

  “But if it is gone, then he has no more connection to the One. It’s not possible to hold a Wreath together without a Light to anchor it. If any human being could even do that, then it would mean…” but she trails off, looking into the distance.

  “Mean what?” Abaddon pleads, desperate for answers.

  But Baal doesn’t finish. She simply changes expression again and smiles.

  “Ha!” She laughs. “Well, you old pile of rot! I guess I’ll just have to come see for myself.” And at that, she hops off the porch.

  “You’re coming with me?” Abaddon asks.

  “I have to,” she answers, her voice filled with childish glee. “After all, if we can’t strip humans down to a single screaming neuron while their loved ones beg a heartless God for mercy… what’s the point? Just give me a minute to get my friends.”

  Abaddon looks suspiciously at the little girl. “Friends?”

  Baal steps from the yard and out into the street. Surveying the “neighborhood”, she lowers her head, giving her eyes a frightening appearance. Then, raising her little arms, she speaks.

  It’s only a whisper, but it fills the entire realm with sound. Words of ancient tongue, laden with time and power, and terrible purpose.

  Abaddon, for his part, instantly recognizes what is happening.

  “She’s summoning her damned.”

  The light of the false sky darkens again. And in the next moment, the sound of many locks being undone, rattle and clang up and down the street. A strange metallic symphony.

  The Mind Breaker tightens his hold on his hammer. Waiting.

  The doors of the false homes fly open in unison. An icy gust blowing through the street. There is silence as the demon girl watches on expectantly.

  Abaddon squints trying to peer into the blackness of the doorways. And then . . . movement.

  Slight at first. Shadowy. Ethereal.

  Figures slowly ambling from each of the homes. One after another, after another.

  It is a picture of Baal’s insanity. Misshapen eyes, horribly offset. Patches of fur. Claws. Sharp fangs. Some with no mouths. Others with many. They pour out by the hundreds, hunched. Walking on two legs. Crawling on four.

  Or eight…

  The sounds of claws grating asphalt and the heat of a thousand labored breaths sickens the air. A cornucopia of mutation and monstrosity.

  Out of one house, Abaddon sees an old woman with strings of thin hair. She has no eyes. She crawls awkwardly toward them, naked and scarred.

  Another looks like a wild hog, but with a man’s face. Sullen eyes behind blood stained tusks.

  “Baal,” Abaddon says quietly, standing beside the little girl. “What malice could possess you to do this to them?”

  Baal smiles slyly. “The same that moves you to murder the minds of well-adjusted fathers who jerk the wheel and drive the family van off a cliff.”

  Abaddon goes stone-faced as his crimes are recalled with such flippancy. He can’t tell if Baal toys with him out of cruelty, or perhaps because she is simply unable to control her own madness after all these years.

  He decides it’s probably both.

  Next, Baal brings two fingers (one still wearing the ring pop) to her forehead, as the Kaleidoscope appears all around them.

  The little demon skips playfully toward a single lens that is growing large enough for all her legion to move through.

  And right before leading them in, she looks back at Abaddon. “Let’s be honest.” She says. “Neither you nor I will ever reconcile being cast out for the sake of these beasts. The very least we can do is ruin them.”

  She takes one final look at her mass of monsters, as the red ball re-manifests under her arm. Then, Baal Nightmare sighs in satisfaction.

  “I do love this game.”