Katherine clutched the script to her chest, keeping it covered with her cream cardigan as she rushed through the rain to her house. The sun wasn't down yet but the dark clouds above made it so it seemed dark. She tried to avoid puddles as she ran down the uneven sidewalk and avoided the street when cars passed by, hitting water that piled up in the gutter and spraying it everywhere.

By the time she made it home, the rain had soaked through her cardigan and got several of the script pages wet. She sighed and set the papers down on the kitchen table before peeling off the cardigan, hanging it on the back of one of the wooden, kitchen chairs. She kicked off her boots and peeled off her socks, letting them drop to the floor with a loud slop.

Her auburn hair stuck to her skin as she tried to pull it back behind her shoulders before grabbing the wet papers and spreading them out on the wooden floor. A circle made the most sense to her, then she could just sit in the middle to read them while they dried and not have to get up. So she laid them out in order in a circle before going to her bedroom.

Water had a way of making everything stick, making it hard to get undressed, especially when wearing leggings. Katherine peeled off her clothes and at first was tempted to leave them in a bunched up pile on the bathroom floor. She stared at the pile and scrunched up her face, knowing full well she'd be mad at herself later if she didn't at least lay them out flat.

She hung up the wet clothes and got in the shower shivering. It took a while for the hot water to soak in and take away the chill though it didn't seem to fully leave. Closing her eyes, she tried to rid herself of all the annoyances from the day. Having to run home in the rain was really the last annoying thing that happened.

Acting was always something she wanted to do but she'd always been incredibly shy. She longed to be like the people who had confidence enough to go on stage and she'd finally worked up the nerve to audition for something last semester. She only had a small part in the play but it was enough to encourage her to try again, for something bigger. Auditions were tomorrow and while others had gotten together to practice, her awkwardness had her being left out of the group running lines and going for pizza afterwards. In fact, Ashley made a point to say Katherine was not invited.

As if that wasn't bad enough, her year and a half crush on Jason Macker was still going strong and now Ashley had her eyes set on him. Katherine felt invisible most the time but especially so when Ashley walked in the room. Today, Jason hadn't even graced Katherine with a small smile that she often got although they rarely spoke to each other.

There was also the minor fact that Ashley was going for the same part Katherine was.

Katherine breathed in and out deeply, trying to let the heat from the shower calm her nerves before she went back to practicing her lines. She wanted to do well tomorrow, she'd been working very hard and wasn't about to give up just because of a bad day.

After the shower she worked in leave-in-conditioner to keep her curly hair as tamed as possible before putting on dry leggings and an oversized cable-knit sweater along with wool socks. That chill wasn't completely gone yet so she decided to stay bundled and make a hot drink.

The old wooden floor creaked under protest as she made her way past her circle of papers to the kitchen. It was an open floor plan, except for her closed off room. She started the tea kettle and grabbed her favorite mug, an oversized mug with the Oscar Wilde quote "With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?".

She opened the cupboard and stared at the contents, fully aware she should probably stick with an herbal tea of some sort to help her relax so she could sleep before auditions. But there was also hot chocolate. Hot chocolate had too much sugar and would probably keep her awake.

But, chocolate... She thought.

She grabbed a pack of hot chocolate. Self-control could wait a day, she was tired. She made the hot chocolate and piled on tiny marshmallows before sitting in the middle of her script-circle. Leaning forward, she started on the first page and sipped her cocoa. She hardly made it down the first page when thunder cracked so loud, the house shook.

Then the power went out.

Funny, it seemed perfectly quiet in the house before but as everything seemed to shut off in waves, all the background humming she'd filtered out was gone and now it was actually quiet, almost unsettling so. She sighed and sat there a moment, wondering if the universe was telling her to give up on this ridiculous idea of becoming a stage-actress.

After only a few moments dwelling on the existential crisis, she made herself get up and carefully maneuver towards a kitchen drawer she kept matches and flashlights in. She only half-stubbed her toe on the way over and whimpered, hopping on one foot and almost falling over before sucking it up and putting her foot down again.

She bit her lip and ignored the pain as she made it to the drawer and fumbled around until she found the flashlight. Turning it on, she found the matches and walked over to the bag she brought home from choir. The bag contained all sizes of white, scentless candles that they used during a Harvest Festival at church just a couple weeks ago. No one else wanted them but she figured if for nothing else she could use them for crafts so she brought them home.

She lined the candles around the outside of the script circle but that didn't light it up enough so she added ones along the inside as well and lit them until she could finally read the scripts again. Once she was all done she sat down in the circle but then her tummy rumbled.

"I just sat down," she grumbled. She frowned and set her hand on her stomach, glancing to the kitchen and trying to do a mental recap of what all she had.

It wasn't much. Today was Friday and it was payday but she'd been busy all day and didn't make it to get groceries before the rain. Leaving now when she was all warm and bundled sounded like a terrible idea. Saturdays were always busy at the stores but she'd have to at least brave one tomorrow so she could eat normally. She checked the date on her phone. The thirteenth. Tomorrow was the fourteenth. The day she'd been preparing for over the last several weeks. It was strange it was finally time.

"You'd think my stomach would be too full of nerves to be hungry," she muttered, setting her cocoa down

Kat sighed and got up, carefully stepping over her papers and candles and shuffling over to the kitchen cupboard. She opened it up and it was mostly tea and baking stuff, nothing easy to fix.

Except there was a microwavable brownie. The power was out but the brownie just called for hot water and the kettle was still hot. She grabbed it and poured the powder into a mug before pouring in the hot water from the kettle. She grabbed a spoon and returned to her circle, stirring it until it thickened while she read over the script.

It was a silly play and if she got the part, she couldn't let anyone from church know about it. The story was a dark comedy about a woman who discovered her husband was cheating on her and summoned a demon to torture and kill him. She ends up summoning the wrong kind of demon and hilarity ensues. Kat was going after the part of the betrayed wife, Constance, who follows the demon around and tries to discover how to send it back to hell.

Kat skimmed through lines that weren't hers and spoke as loud and clear as she could for her own lines. It got to the part where the demon would be summoned. Suddenly it wasn't as dark. She looked to the window and saw somehow the full moon found a break in the clouds and was shining through her giant living room window right on her. She smiled and took a bite of her brownie, feeling like it was a sign to keep going since she could see better now.

She returned her attention to the script. The papers finally seemed dry, thanks to the added heat of the candles. She picked it up and it felt more brittle than before, she'd have to be careful with it. She read the Latin words used to summon Constance's demon in her head before speaking them. She'd been carefully practicing the pronunciation so she would impress the director; she noticed Ashley's pronunciation wasn't quite right so she hoped getting this right would mean something.

"Hoc est actu fascicu- ow!" She said, pulling her finger back.

Nervously running her fingers down the edges of the paper caused a deep paper cut. Kat sighed as the blood pooled and dripped down onto one of the candles. She stuck her finger in her mouth and rolled her eyes at herself. She waited until the bleeding seemed to mostly stop before she tried again.

"Hoc est actu fasciculum ineptias ego typed in interpretari do vobis, sed ut agnoscamus," she said loudly. Actually, she was supposed to yell this part. She considered moving on but it seemed pertinent to get it right so she said it again. At the end of the last one she shuddered as thunder crackled again. She shook her head at allowing the sound to scare her, it's just thunder. She repeated the phrase a third and final time: "Hoc est actu fasciculum ineptias ego typed in interpretari do vobis, sed ut agnoscamus!" She yelled.

The thunder this time was much louder, so much louder it shook the house to the point that her shelves shook and some of the contents fell over. Not only that, a gust came through and sent her papers flying, blowing out the candles and leaving her in darkness as the moon was covered once again.

Kat sat there shaking and glancing around the darkness. "That was weird," she muttered, looking around to try to see if she could find the open window that sent everything flying. The chill she'd almost gotten rid of returned with a vengeance when she saw a figure standing by the window, inside her house.

She clambered away, knocking into the blown out candles and spilling wax on the floor. "Who are you?" She demanded, fumbling around for the flashlight.

The figure moved away from the window and she blinked. It seemed inhuman, the way it moved. It must be the shadows playing tricks on her. She looked around but it was dark. Creaking from her left had her snapping her head to the sound.

"Stay away!" She said, finding the flashlight and shining it towards the person as she stood shakily. It moved again, almost seeming to leave a dark mist behind it. "Who are you?" She repeated, backing away and shining her flashlight around, trying to find the stranger.

"I am that which you called for, the spirit you summoned with your own blood," he said, seeming to be in several places at once, leaving Kat jolting the flashlight around with his quick movement. "Death-bringer, shadow of violence, blood fiend, slayer and torturer of souls. The name you call me by does not matter. The only question I have for you is," he paused in front of her, finally in the light.

He had incredibly pale skin, teeth that seemed just a little too sharp, eyes red as blood, hair blacker than night. His clothes seemed to be from another time, a doublet colored black and red. Kat froze, swallowing hard as he leaned in close to her before speaking:

"Who is it you want killed?"

It was silent as she stared at him with wide eyes and he waited for an answer. She reached behind her and grabbed hold of the first thing she could find.

Then she hit him on the head with a polka-dot umbrella.