It felt as if the world fractured, that something had ripped apart the fabric of reality. Through this tear stepped forth a creature of the void. The creature had no name that had been spoken since it had first been called into existence. It had the face of distortion, a visage that could never be fully focused upon, and that would leave a weak-minded soul a pitiless, quivering shell if it had the unfortunate chance of hearing the words brought forth from the creature’s razor-toothed maw.

Steve called him Billy.

“Hey, Billy, nice to see you again,” Steve said to the demon as the black void from which he’d arrived blinked into nonexistence.

“I am not of this Billy which you call me, He who is known as Steve,” not-Billy the demon replied.

“Right.”

“I have been called to this mortal plane to usher in the rise of our dawn.”

Steve checked his watch. “It’s noon.”

“Mark the time then, He who is known as Steve, for this is the beginning of your greatest accomplishment, and our final victory.”

Steve blinked, wondering if he should ask again if they could do whatever it was Billy wanted after lunch.

“Be of merriment, Watcher,” Billy said, and placed a gnarled hand on Steve’s shoulder. The hand was cold, and sent a chill from Steve’s shoulder to his toes. Billy’s skin looked like fossilized wood, save that it flowed about his body as if Billy was made of both stone and liquid simultaneously. “Where is he?”

“Oh. Oh!” Steve said, and stepped away from Billy’s grasp. “Oh, you mean the thing. The thing is happening. Now. Like right now?”

“Yes. You were tasked with watching He who Shall Lead the Battle that Must be Fought.”

“Wow, okay. I, well, he’s over here.” Steve walked away from his cubicle, half-hoping Billy would not follow. “Here he is. Hey Damien, you got a second?”

Damien did not turn away from his computer screen. Even when the unholy sight of Billy the demon approached, his immaterial appearance a shadowy reflection in Damien’s LED computer screen, Damien merely glanced at the demon a moment before turning back to the legion of soldiers his video game character was currently slaughtering.

“Uh, Damien, this is… well I call him Billy,” Steve said as way of introduction.

Damien tilted his head back a moment, a gesture that was simultaneously a greeting and an offer to kindly go away.

Billy bent to one knee before Damien’s enormous backside as he said, “Great Dragon, the time has come. The world is ready. Your armies are prepared. I am here to bring you before those who will carry the banners of the False Prophet. Man of sin, your servants have arrived to claim the world you will conquer!”

Billy’s black words seemed to stretch the bounds of Damien’s cubicle. Damien, however, waved away the sound as if it were a buzzing fly.

Billy paused, waiting for a reply. Fearful of upsetting the man who would bring about the ultimate evil upon the planet, Billy kept still.

“Um,” Steve said, “did you want me to tap him on the shoulder or something? When he gets zoned in like this it’s kinda hard to break him out of it.”

“Silence before the Dragon, imp!” Billy replied, once more bowing his head. “But… yes.”

Steve tapped Damien on the shoulder. The motion accomplished nothing more than to make Damien glare at the computer screen.

“Yeah, he’s locked in,” Steve said, pointing out the destruction Damien’s pixilated character was currently wreaking upon the pixilated World. “Maybe we can come back in an hour, you know, after lunch?”

“Locked into what?” Billy asked, and rose to his terrible feet. “What has him locked? Break him free immediately!”

“He’s not locked in literally. He’s just really focused on the game.”

“This is no game, man of sin. Your servants await your arrival. The armies are assembled and wait only on your word.”

Billy paused a moment.

After Damien failed to move, Billy turned to Steve and said, “He’s not listening!”

“I told you,” Steve said.

“Dragon. Man of sin. False prophet?” Billy waved his hand in front of Damien’s face. This accomplished nothing more than to make Damien grunt in disapproval. “We must hasten. The time is now! Assist me in telling him, He who is known as Steve.”

“He hears you just fine. He just doesn’t care.”

“How could he not care? This is the time of his ultimate victory! Dragon!” Billy waved his hand once more in front of Damien’s face. “Caller of the beast, we — gah!”

In the time between two clicks of his mouse, Damien grabbed Billy’s arm, slammed it down, and stapled it to the desk with a heavy stapler. He then went back to slaughtering pixilated armies.

“I told you we should just go to lunch,” Steve said, his stomach still rumbling.

“This is unacceptable,” Billy said while trying to pull his arm free of its stapled position on the desk. When he finally did, he took a bit of the plastic desk with him. He glared hard at Steve then, and acted like he did not have a piece of desk stapled to his arm. “You will assist me in breaking the man of sin from this delusion of the lighted screen, He who is known as Steve.”

“That’s a bad idea.”

“Come, Dragon,” Billy said, and tried to turn Damien’s chair around. “We desire only to see you—”

Before the chair could fully twist, Damien leapt up and stapled Billy to the cubicle wall from head to toe before pulling it down on top of him. This took half a second, and Damien was once more back into his gaming position, while Billy was face-first beneath a broken cubicle.

“He’s wicked with that stapler. I tried to warn you,” Steve said.

The plastic cubicle wall melted with the fury that was Billy’s muffled words.

“Right, so… you look a little busy. I’m going to go get some lunch. I’ll come back when you’re feeling better,” Steve said. Before he could turn to walk away, however, Billy melted through the cubicle wall and grabbed Steve by the neck.

Lifting Steve high off the ground, Billy roared through a rasping mouth of jagged teeth, “What have you done to him?”

A few gasping excuses was all Steve could mutter in response.

“This is not the man who will lead us to victory over the heavens!” Billy continued. “You were tasked with watching over him. He was supposed to take over the world!”

“He… kinda… has,” Steve muttered while struggling against the hand that clenched his throat.

“Explain.”

“It’s called… The World.”

“The world is ours. Or it will be if this man would but take up his prophesied task.”

“The game… the game!”

“What?” Billy asked, and lowered a now coughing Steve.

“The game,” Steve explained, gasping for breath. “Man, I did not need this today.”

“What about the game?”

“It’s called The World. And Damien’s taken over it.”

“A game?”

“A video game. It’s… sort of like a simulation. It’s played over the internet, got millions of players.”

“And why does this matter to him?”

“Probably because he’s really good at it. Even the programmers who made the game can’t stop him from running things. He’s got every player paying homage to him or he slaughters them. Last I heard, the people who made the game are trying to kill off his character so they can delete it and restart the game. They’ve been programming in all sorts of things to specifically hit him, missiles from the sky, boiling all water around him, even programmed the sun to go away. But I guess Damien figured out a way to outsmart even all that and keep in control of the game and everyone who plays it.”

Billy was about to say something, but paused to turn and see what Damien was doing. He saw a digital representation of a five-mile tall, golden and winged creature tilting the contents of an enormous bowl on top of the little character Damien controlled. The contents of the bowl spilled onto the pixilated surface, and all the sudden thousands of meteorites and balls of fire were hurtling at Damien’s character. After dodging them all, Damien actually deflected a few of the flaming missiles and sent them toward the pixilated cities and assembled armies of those who were trying to assault him. It was all very colorful and flashy on Damien’s computer screen.

“He has taken over The World… the game?” Billy said, his demonic mind still trying to grasp the concept.

“Yeah,” Steve said.

“Then break him out of it. Make him take over the world… the world!”

“You try.”

Billy looked at Damien, who was currently fighting the armies of the creators of the video game. Then he looked at Damien’s stapler, and took a step away.

“I am not the one tasked with preparing the false prophet for his rise,” Billy said, and glared at Steve. “That was your role. And you have failed.”

“Not… technically. Look, as long as it’s all the same to you, I’d really like to get this whole end of the world thing started after I get some lunch, so…”

“You will force the man of sin to depart this foolishness. It is the only reason you are allowed to remain on this plane!”

“He seems happy. Damien, you happy?”

Damien collapsed a pixelated mountain into a river of pixelated blood that killed millions of pixelated non-player-characters.

“See. That lack of a response means he’s perfectly happy,” Steve said.

“Happiness is not what I seek. I seek the Antichrist!” Billy roared.

Steve’s stomach grumbled as he fought for the words that would make Billy go away. He was just as scared of Damien’s stapler as Billy was, and Damien had a couple battery back-ups, so it wasn’t like he could just turn off the building’s power or anything. He needed to do something. But he needed to do it with a full stomach.

“Explain yourself, He who is known as Steve, or explain to the powers beneath,” Billy said.

Steve was thinking, but he couldn’t stop thinking about stupid soybean paste. He couldn’t stop thinking about his stupid apartment, and Burney destroying another restaurant. The thought of the burning restaurant and its sandwich, as bad a sandwich as it was, made Steve’s stomach growl as loud as Billy’s rumbling fury.

“You know what I could use now? A good sandwich,” Steve said, unable to think of anything else.

“What?” Billy replied.

“Yeah. A really, really good sandwich.”

“A sandwich. You need a sandwich?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, thinking a moment. Then he threw his hands up and said, “Yeah! Yeah, I do need a good sandwich.”

“Your sustenance is not of my concern.”

“No-no, see, what can you get in the real world that you can’t get in the video game The World?”

“Everything,” Billy replied.

“No-no, see, power, glory, death of your enemies and all that jazz, Damien gets all that with the video game,” Steve said, and turned Billy so he could see the chaos raining around Damien’s near-omnipotent digital persona. “But you know what he can’t get? A sandwich.”

“A sandwich.”

“Yes.”

“So… get him a sandwich.”

“Nah, see he can get a sandwich.”

“You just said he can’t.”

“A really good sandwich, that’s what he can’t get,” Steve explained. “He can get food — he has to get food. Cheap sandwiches and that sort of thing. He can get bad sandwiches delivered right to his desk. But you can’t get a really good sandwich delivered. You have to go find it.”

“What about Grub-hub?”

“Nah, they’re too corporate. I should know. The really good sandwich places make you come to them.”

Billy rubbed his chin, the sound as unsettling as sandpaper scraping across a xylophone. “I see not where meat and bread will break him of this digital trance.”

“It’s perfect for that! He can get everything he wants from the game. Everything but a really good sandwich. And once he has that, he’s gonna want more really good sandwiches. Lots more! He’s gonna want all the really good sandwiches in the world! And then he’s going to break out of the game The World and go conquer the real world so he can get as many delicious sandwiches as he wants!”

Damien had his digital character fire a digital missile, causing an explosion that ushered in the maddened comments of several thousand Reddit threads.

“Perhaps there is wisdom in your words, He who is known as Steve,” Billy said, and once more scratched his jagged chin.

“There is?” Steve asked. He was too hungry to really pay attention to half of what he was saying, and honestly just wanted a sandwich.

“Yes. Yes, you will get this sandwich.”

“I will?”

“You will retrieve this sandwich, this sandwich of ultimate tastefulness. And you will bring it to the Antichrist. And you will do it immediately.”

“Well, see…” Steve said, thinking about how he could put off talking to Billy longer. “This kind of sandwich… you can’t get it here.”

“You can’t?”

“No, not in St. Louis. Burney burnt down the last place that had a good sandwich. Ah, sorry, too bad. Wish I could help though.”

“Then you will find another sandwich that is equally suitable.”

“Uh, well, that might be hard.”

“It is a sandwich. How hard can it be to collect?”

“You’re talking about a sandwich that’s so good it’ll break Damien out of a game he’s played without stop for months. A sandwich so good you’ll take over the world to get more of it. A sandwich so good… man, I’m hungry,” Steve said.

“Where will this sandwich be located?”

“At least… five, ten, hundred… miles. Give or take.”

Billy got up real close to Steve then, so close, so uncomfortably close, that Steve saw the chasms of madness hidden in the pores of Billy’s nose, and smelled his breath, which smelled of onions. “You will journey, then, to seek out this sandwich of legend of which you speak. You will find it, and return it to me that I may break the Antichrist free. You will present it to me at sunset from the third day of this meeting.”

“I… uh.”

“You will find this sandwich. You will find it, or you shall suffer the wrath of all that exists in damnation.”

“Right. One sandwich coming up.”

“Three days, He who is known as Steve.”

With those words, reality tore once more and the black miasma reappeared. It swirled in silence for a moment before enveloping Billy and collapsing in on itself, leaving nothing but cold fear in its wake.

“Okay,” Steve said, and glanced at his watch, “I need some lunch.”