The wrong circle

The Wrong Circle

Act I – The Drifter

The Dodge Omni wheezed like a lifelong smoker, coughing up the last of its strength as it rattled down the two-lane highway. The hatchback was two-tone blue, though most of the paint had dulled into the color of wet cement. He’d patched the driver’s seat with duct tape three times over, but the stuffing still pressed through like weeds through a sidewalk crack.

He rubbed his thumb across the cracked plastic of the steering wheel and kept his eyes on the fading white line. He had no destination, not really. He never did. He just moved—town to town, gas station to gas station—like a ghost too stubborn to fade.

Up ahead, a sun-bleached Nova sat up on blocks in a weedy front yard. Canary yellow, or what was left of it under the rust. Its hood was half open, as if the car itself had given up mid-sigh.

He slowed just enough to look, a tired smile tugging at his mouth.

“I had one of those once,” he muttered. The Omni grumbled in protest and carried him onward.

The road bent through low hills and fields where barns slouched against the horizon. That’s where he saw her: a girl on the shoulder, backpack slung over one arm, her thumb sticking out like it might hold back the wind.

He considered driving past. Most days, he would have. But there was something in the way she leaned—exhausted, hopeful, like someone who’d been standing there too long. He downshifted and the Omni groaned to a stop.

“You headed somewhere?” His voice came out rough, gravel in the gears.

She flashed a smile, small but grateful. “Anywhere closer than here.”

She climbed in and set her backpack on her lap. The Omni sagged under the extra weight, as if resenting the effort. He pulled back onto the road. For a while, there was only the hum of tires and the rattle in the dash.

“You from around here?” she asked.

“No.”

“Passing through?”

“That’s the idea.”

She studied him, chewing her lip. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

“Not much to say.”

That seemed to satisfy her. She leaned back, let the wind through the crack in the window tangle her hair. For a few miles, it almost felt ordinary—like two strangers just sharing the road.

When the lights of a small town finally glimmered ahead, she stirred. “This is me,” she said, pointing toward the darkened storefronts.

He braked by the curb, and she opened the door. Before stepping out, she bent to the window, shirt slipping just enough to show a hint of cleavage. Her eyes caught his—soft, almost pitying.

“You’re really sweet,” she said. “I wish you the best of luck.”

Then she was gone, boots crunching on gravel, slipping between two shops until the night swallowed her whole.

He lingered in the Omni, the engine knocking softly like an old man’s cough. For a moment, he wondered if she’d meant it, or if it was just something she said to every driver foolish enough to stop.

By the time he looked back up, she was nowhere in sight.

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Act II – The Trap

The town’s main street was a seam of dim bulbs and hollow windows. A diner glowed at the far corner, the kind of place where the neon OPEN sign seemed more like a dare than an invitation. He parked, and the Omni, relieved, shuddered itself into silence.

Inside, the air smelled of coffee brewed past forgiveness. A bell above the door chimed. The waitress—gray hair in a loose bun, a paper hat she didn’t need—poured him a cup without being asked.

“Long road?” she said.

He nodded. She slid a menu across, but he didn’t touch it. The coffee was bitter enough to have opinions. He took a sip anyway.

At the counter, a man in a seed cap watched him in the reflection of the pie case. In a corner booth, two people pretended to look at their phones while whispering into their sleeves. The girl from the road wasn’t there.

“You seen a hitchhiker come through?” he asked the waitress. “Young. Backpack.”

The waitress blinked. “Can’t say that I have, hon.”

He let that sit. The coffee crept through him like old heat through a radiator, slow and stubborn. Somewhere deeper in the building, a door whispered open and shut.

The bell above the door chimed twice more. The same three men, in different arrangements of flannel, drifted in and took seats without looking directly at him. The waitress stopped offering refills and simply made sure his cup never dropped below half.

He set his fork down. “How late you open?”

The waitress smiled without softness. “Closes when it closes. That’s how it is here.”

He paid in cash, left the change, stepped back into the thin cold. The street was quieter than it had any right to be. The Omni waited under a streetlamp that buzzed like it had swallowed a bee.

He was almost to the car when he noticed the freckled girl had left something in the passenger footwell: a red thread, snagged on the seat frame. He touched it. The thread clung to his fingertip like a vein.

“Hey,” someone said behind him. A man from the diner. The seed cap. “You got the time?”

He didn’t turn. “Time to go,” he said, and reached for the door handle.

The first hit glanced off the back of his skull. The second didn’t miss. The world tilted; the streetlamp smeared into a comet. He slid down the door to the curb. Boots bracketed his vision. The last thing he saw was the Omni’s hood emblem shaking with the engine’s heat. The last thing he heard was the bell over the diner door, chiming one more time like a prayer that had never worked.

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Act III – The Ritual

He woke to cold and grit. The air carried that old-stone damp, like the inside of a well. Candle smoke moved like breath. Chanting—soft at first, then sharp—as if someone kept turning the dial up on a broken radio.

Chains ran from his wrists to a ring hammered into the floor. The floor itself was chalked into circles and sigils, drawn with an unsteady hand and red pigment that had a smell he recognized and ignored.

Figures hooded in burlap moved at the edges of the light. The seed-cap man from the diner held a knife like an argument. The hitchhiker stood behind them all, hair braided now, face calm, the backpack gone.

“Tonight,” Knife-Man said, “we bring forth the Morning Star. Tonight the Lord of Darkness shall rise from Hell and walk this Earth in the vessel we have prepared.”

The chanting swelled. A blade nicked his arm. Sparks crawled along the chalk lines.

He sighed. “Don’t embarrass yourselves.”

The words halted them, just for a heartbeat. But faith pressed them forward. The knife came again. The air grew heavy. Thunder rolled somewhere distant.

And then he stood.

Chains slacked and fell like dogs who knew they weren’t needed. Wings unfurled. Not bright, not glorious—ragged gray, feathers frayed, the glow of embers rather than dawn.

Hoods staggered backward. The hitchhiker gasped.

“I was never in Hell,” he said, voice carrying without effort. “Heaven cast me aside. Hell refused me. I’ve always been here, walking your roads, watching you blame me for what you do to yourselves.”

Knife-Man raised his blade. “You’re a liar. You’re—”

“I’m tired,” he said flatly.

The room froze. The cult looked at him not as a monster, but as something worse—an exile who’d endured far too long.

“You wanted a demon?” His mouth crooked, weary. “Fine. Let me help with that.”

He snapped his fingers.

The air split. The real thing stepped through—horns, claws, fire, everything they had begged for.

He didn’t watch long. He pulled his jacket back on, wings folding away with a sound like pages closing.

The first screams followed him up the stairwell.

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Act IV – The Outcast

The community hall above smelled of potlucks and lemon cleanser. A bulletin board offered a bake sale and a flier for a lost dog. He touched the tack, then let it be.

Outside, the Omni slouched under the same buzzing lamp. It started on the third try.

At the edge of town, the hitchhiker appeared under a dying bulb. He braked, rolled the window down.

“You could have left,” he said.

“I know,” she whispered. “I’m leaving now.”

She hesitated. “What are you?”

“An outcast,” he said. “Grizzled. Tired. Not what you wanted.”

“Are you Lucifer?”

“That’s one of the names,” he said. “It’ll do.”

She swallowed. “Where will you go?”

“Where I always go. Forward.”

She hugged herself. “I don’t pray anymore.”

“Smart,” he said, and meant it.

He rolled the window up. The Omni coughed into gear. In the mirror, she became smaller, then not at all.

A mile down, his headlights found the shape of a dog by the roadside—muddy, thin, ears half-pricked. He slowed. The dog didn’t run.

He sighed, popped the passenger door. The mutt leapt in, shook itself, and licked his face once before curling onto the torn vinyl seat.

Lucifer studied it. “You’re not going to lead me into a trap, are you?”

The dog thumped its tail.

He nodded. “Good enough.”

The Omni grumbled forward into the dark, and for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t alone.