"The number eleven" i mumbled to myself ,kind of chuckling because it's the eleventh day in a row a saw this number. Day 1-10 where pretty normal but on day eleven a bunch of crazy stuff happened, my alarm got of at 11:11am in stead of 9am. I got in the tram and it was like everyone was blurry accept for this one man, it was like he was in focus .

He got closer, step for step, i feelt sureal because this whole situation was not scary at all, i felt like i have seen this man with a black suit and leather shoes, every single day of my life .

He hands me this ticket with the number 11 on it, it felt like a handshake from a friend i haven't seen in years , somehow known but also like it hasn't happened in years .

Money is thight since I've moved here so I tried to discard it but it return in my pocket, i never forgot the smug on that lady's face when I tried handing her my ticket over and over again but the only thing she sees is my empty hand for a moment i though she smuggled because she thinks i am poor, i tried it on last time and while opening my hand the ticket disappears again .

She closes my hand softly and says with an even bigger smug :"if the ticket decides i am not meant to see it, it sure is right" i was never this confused but then she points to her right and there's a tram arriving , the doors open and i have never seen a tram this full of what seems to be cosplayers , no people get in ,wich i have never seen before, some guy that looks like a wizard winks me in , get in and ask :"is this real ? Are those magic animals , are you a wizard ?" He nods , raises his finger and says :"but , you need to let me see your ticket " i pull it out knowing it's impossible to get destroyed

He hits his giant wooden magic wand on the ground and there's now a little whole is in the ticket , the wizard says :"you have 99 rides left , try to learn as much as possible and you can be a wizard too" And that's how I discovered a for me new world

-sorry for bad grammatics, English is not my first language

The muted patter of rain on the roof filled the vacant house. Its sprawling emptiness amplified the sounds of the storm, sending deep rumbles of thunder along the corridors. A gust of wind fluttered through shreds of the front curtains – once vibrant green, now mothy yellow – as I stepped across the threshold.

The stranger’s words echoed in my head, dulled but not demystified by time. I shook the rain off my shoulders and surveyed the front room, tired eyes scanning over the worn furniture. Broken glass from the chandelier crunched beneath my feet, its majesty now reduced to a tarnished cross of bent metal. Tattered remnants of books littered the floor of the library, its great mahogany shelves waterlogged and broken, rotting into the ruddy maroon carpet. I craned my neck skyward, droplets pooling on my glasses as they fell from the jagged, open ceiling.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, the unmistakable sour smell of mold filling my nostrils as I thought back to that peculiar man in the subway so many years before. The suit wasn’t the peculiar part – most of my days back then were spent dealing with suits – no, it was the shoes. I’d never seen leather polished to quite that shine before, nor had I encountered that level of specific perfection since. The gruff, hurried nature of the words clings vigorously to my mind even now, thirty years removed from their speaker.

“Good luck, kid.”

I remember the feeling of his rough hands on mine as he reached out, hands which had seen far more wear than anyone’s ever should. I remember the weight of his shoulder as he pushed past me into the crowd beyond. I remember the deafening screech of the train And the screams And the thud

The far-off thunder echoed through the house, breaking the silence beneath. I pulled my hand out of my pocket, the worn ticket stub clenched tightly in my fist. It looked the same as it had on that first day – edges faded as if by repeated use, the number eleven written just off-center in neat script – the same as it had looked when the subway crew began to pick up what was left from the tracks. It looked the same as it had when I handed it to the investigating officer as evidence. It looked the same as it had when I awoke the next morning to find Eleven in my jacket pocket. It looked the same as it had when I tried to explain to the sergeant I didn’t know how Eleven ended up in my possession, and when I told the judge that, yes, I did understand that tampering with evidence was a crime but I didn’t know how eleven kept finding its way back to me, and when i tried to burn it but nothing happened and when i hurled it off the bridge strapped to a chuck of concrete and when i was questioned by the men from washington who couldn’t believe that eleven just kept ending up in my pocket and i genuinely didn’t have a clue how eleven happened and no im not crazy and when the nurses held me down to administer another sedative because eleven wasn’t working and when the eleven, coushioned walls soaked up the sounds of my pleas begging for eleven will anyone listen what does it mean eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven eleven

I opened my eyes and cast one last look at my empty house before turning and walking back out the broken front door. There was nothing here for me, not anymore. Eleven had seen to that.

"Alright...this is definitely strange..." Max muttered while scratching the back of his head.

He was sitting alone in his bedroom, at his desk. It was the middle of the night, so his parents and siblings were asleep. The only source of light was his desk lamp. Th light is shining down on the ticket stub, with the only numbers being 11.

"Thought it was a scam, so I threw it away. It came back. Thought my mind was playing tricks on me, only to find it in my pocket again. I threw it into the river and watched it drift away. Damn thing was in my pocket, strangely dry. Tried burning it, but it defies logic and doesn't burn..." Max muttered, before he palmed his face.

"Either I'm going crazy, or this ticket is just way too strange..." Max muttered with exasperation and frustration. He leaned back on his chair while narrowing his eyes.

"...Just who the hell was that old man? What's his relation with the tickets..." Max muttered to himself. He sighed once more. "Clearly, asking myself 20 questions and not knowing any of the answers is going to get me somewhere..."

Max stood up from his chair. "Screw it, I'll think about it tommorow-"

He was cut off when he heard some kind of space-like distortion behind him, and a bright red light emerging as well.

He quickly turned around and saw some kind of red colored portal you see from those sci-fi movies. And from the portal emerged a figure.

And the figure wore similar clothes to the old man that gave you a ticket. Only this figure appeared to be in his mid-20s, and had slicked back black hair.

Max could only stand there in shock and alarm upon seeing all of this happen, while the well-dressed young man hummed while looking around his surroundings, and fell back onto him.

"Interesting...so you're my contractor..." the young man muttered.

Silence was made.

"...I'm sorry, what?" Max responded with a dumbfounded look.

Hearing this made the young man go into an "oh" expression upon realizing something.

"Oh, right right, my apologies. Quite rude of my to not introduce myself." the young man responded, before he took off his fedora and bowed.

"The name is Guison, a member of the 72 Demons of Ars Goetia. I'm designated as demon #11. And now that you know my name, we can truly get down to business...which is to say, you'll be helping me in the battles against the Zealots."

Silence was made in the room.

Max could only stare at the person before him in silence, his mind trying to process on what the hell is happening.

And in the end, he could only utter out this one word.

"...What?"

[removed]

I felt like a backstabber. A snitch, a treasonist, Benedict Arnold defecting on the outskirts of New York. But I see no 'American side' as an alternative to passing on the mysterious ticket to a victim-to-be. Passing it on to the gods of nature or Oscar the Grouch hasn't worked out. I even went as far as doing the trash collector's job in emptying a garbage bin to make sure it wasn't there, to ensure my mind wasn't playing tricks on me. That, or the trash collector was very fast that day.

All I know about the previous victim is that the mysterious ticket too has preoccupied his mind in his final days. Their spouse described to us a sudden thunk happening behind her back when we came to investigate the death scene. At that time, the note seemed trivial, something the victim simply liked carrying with him, as a sort of lucky number. It definitely was not a lucky number, that's for sure. When I found the ticket back in my coat pocket after returning home from the job, thinking I had left it at the forensic lab under the 'miscellaneous belongings' category, is where I started to contemplate whether the death may not have been so sudden after all. Especially when their spouse told us the next day how the victim had told them on occasion about this ticket.

Passing it on, based on the suspicions I have, feels evil. But no person would ever sensibly and willingly keep it to themselves with the information that I have - at least, that's what I like to make myself believe in order not to feel guilt when situations evolve the way I think they will. The mystery surrounding the inextinguishability of the note will likely concern this new, unsuspecting 'person of interest' as much as it had concerned me, or the previous victim.

I can't recall exactly why I picked him, but I remember that I was looking for someone who was either too superstitious to see this as a sign of prosperity and keep it, or who was too foolish to make any connections between not being able to get rid of the ticket, and coming to the conclusion that their best option is to pass it on to someone else. I want them to keep the ticket in order to have the utmost certainty this note is causing something. At least if it is, it likely won't affect me. Until I'm asked to investigate a new death scene, of course.

​

Note: This is my first time writing a story prompt here. English is not my main language, and I know no theory about the processes of writing a story. Please let me know what you think.

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