I really like this one. I would love to expand the idea if I have the time – just everyday dudes having to fight demons and the forces of evil.

This prompt (in brackets) is taken from Complete the Story by Piccadilly Inc., which I got from the Scribbler box.

[He sprinted away, not daring to look back, his footsteps echoing down the hallway like distant gunshots. He just had to get to the back stairway and up to his office on the second floor, where] the grimoire was tucked away on his bookshelf, between a textbook of symbols and copies of Religious Archaeology Monthly. The demons were hot on his heels, crude sickening creatures that were hunting down every man woman and child in the city. Maybe the dogs too, who knew. He certainly wouldn’t if he didn’t reach the grimoire.

He had obtained the book on a visit to Jordan, from an old bookseller. He had found the thing interesting, but of little practical use. Until now. He had read the Enochian script in it, and understood that it was a sort of spellbook for dispelling demons and other terrible monsters, and he had chuckled and placed it on his shelf.

But now, with the demons saturating the city, he couldn’t ignore the similarities between what was happening and the words in the grimoire. The symbols burning in the sky, the shape of the portals on the news. And the demons themselves, brought up from Hell.

He reached his office, and slammed the door shut as a crooked and blackened hand reached in. The creature attached to it screamed a hideous grating sound, and he had to slam the door on the hand again before the thing retreated.

Locking the door, he took two shaky breaths. The rest were there, pounding on the other side, shaking the frame. He turned and dove for the bookcase, grabbing the grimoire and rifling through its pages. Would he be able to find the spell in time? Would it even work? The glass window in the door shattered, and hands reached through, grasping, feeling for the lock. He turned the pages feverishly, but he couldn’t find it, he couldn’t think. There were so many words, too many. How would he find the spell for these demons, for this conjuration? What had the symbols around the portals looked like?

There. There it was, the spell to send these demons back to where they came from. He began to read the words as the door broke open and the demons spilled in like a flood.

Then they were screaming and grasping their misshapen heads, and they were gone in a burst of light as he finished.

He stood, shocked, deafened by the silence.

He couldn’t stop now.

He walked back the way he had come, book in hand, chanting the words. Down the hall, down the stairwell, out into the street. All around him demons screamed and vanished. He got a good look now at the devastation they were causing, the dead bodies and the smoke and fires. Maybe if he got a bullhorn, or access to a news station…

A voice came to him, dark and rumbling. “I thought I sensed something.”

He looked to where it came from, which was up. A dark robed and hooded figure was descending from the burning sky, its hands filled with sparks. It stopped, hovering a few feet in the air before him, and spoke again.

“So you are the one who opposes me.”

He gripped the book to his chest, suppressing a scream. Why was he the person who had to do this? He was just a small-town college professor.