Somewhere in a residential neighborhood, a family gathered in the living room stared at the ceiling with the expression of people who no longer knew what to do with their lives.
The noise was coming from upstairs. It had been coming from upstairs for days.
"Shut the hell up already!!"
The mother squeezed her eyes shut while the father checked his watch.
A knock at the door interrupted the family ritual, nearly making the mother cry with relief.
When they opened it, they found someone who didn't exactly inspire confidence. He wore a trench coat that had seen better days and carried a leather suitcase that presumably held the tools of his trade.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Jake and I'm here about a supernatural issue."
The father complained.
"They said you'd be here at seven and it's 8:15."
"Traffic's been a nightmare lately."
A scream interrupted the conversation.
"Shut up!!"
"I guess that's the client."
Jake said, and the parents nodded.
They let him in and started talking.
It had all started two weeks earlier. Their son had begun acting strangely. He muttered to himself, locked himself in his room for hours, and then, after a few days, the desperate screams began because the boy claimed a cartoon wouldn't stop yelling at him.
"What's the cartoon's name?"
"Periodot."
Jake looked at them.
"Periodot?"
"Yeah."
"I see. Does the kid have a weight problem?"
"Yes."
The mother said, cautiously.
"Is that relevant to the case?"
Jake wrote something in his notebook, and when he finished, his face showed great surprise.
"Oh, shit, this is really bad!"
The parents got scared.
"What did you find!?"
"Dear parents…"
Jake showed them his notebook.
"I messed up a number in this Sudoku! Damn it, now I have to erase all my progress."
The parents looked at each other and Jake put his notebook away.
"All right. Take me to him."
The room smelled of confinement and something Jake preferred not to identify. In the center, on a bed that creaked just by looking at it, was the son. Jake assessed him.
'That bed is holding up surprisingly well.'
"I need a moment alone with him."
The parents nodded and closed the door.
Jake turned to the boy.
"First question."
"Yeah?"
"How do you even find clothes in that size? I can't imagine anyone thought a living being could stretch that wide."
The boy blinked.
"Aren't you here about the spirit that's tormenting me?"
"Yeah, yeah, my bad. You're right."
Jake waved his hand.
"Second question. Is it true that people of your kind have burgers for breakfast?"
"Can we move on to the important questions?"
The exorcist sighed. He sat down in the desk chair, crossed his legs, and took out his notebook.
"When did it start?"
"About five days ago."
"Did you manifest it yourself or did it come on its own?"
The boy hesitated and Jake noticed.
"That's a 'yeah, I fucked up.' Good. Was anyone else involved in the ritual or was it just you and your free time?"
"It was just me."
"How?"
The boy explained that he had read online how to create a tulpa. He had tried to make his own in the shape of Periodot, but it came out without limbs and ever since then it wouldn't stop screaming.
"Has there been any other kind of interaction with the entity?"
The boy looked away.
"Well… I might have done something that wasn't right."
Then the boy added details about what he had done with the tulpa before it started screaming.
Very specific details.
Jake raised a hand.
"That's enough. I don't need to know more."
'I need a raise.'
He took out the talisman and began searching. The needle spun, trembled, and stopped, pointing toward a corner of the room that appeared empty.
Jake looked at the corner and then at the boy.
"Is that your tulpa?"
"Yes."
Jake looked back at the corner, now clearly seeing the outline of the being.
'It's a bean with a head.'
"Jesus."
He looked at the boy.
"And this turned you on?"
The boy didn't know what to say.
"Well."
Jake put away the talisman and pulled out his gun.
"Time to work."
The first shot put a hole where the bean's head should have been.
Jake started emptying the magazine, but the tulpa absorbed the shots with the indifference of something that technically had no nervous system.
"Damn."
Jake reloaded.
"This bitch is stubborn."
The boy started screaming.
"Please, don't hurt it!"
"Quiet, enemy of staircases, I'm working!"
The tulpa lunged at Jake, slamming him against the wall.
The door burst open.
"What the hell is going on in here!?"
Jake raised a hand from the floor.
"Easy, ma'am. I've got everything under control."
The tulpa hurled him into the hallway with a strength that didn't match any limbless being.
The tulpa and Jake fought all the way to the stairs.
They tumbled down them in what could only be described as a bar fight starring one person and a formless psychic entity. Jake got to his feet and punched the tulpa, sending it crashing into the ceiling, but it began to float.
"The bean can fly!"
The tulpa started moving all over the house at a speed that didn't match its form. Jake followed, dodging furniture, but a final charge from the tulpa sent him crashing through the window.
He landed in the front yard, where the neighbors were already out on the street because the commotion had been impossible to ignore.
Jake stood up and raised his hands in a calming gesture.
"Good evening. I'm a licensed exorcist. Nothing to worry about. The situation is under control."
A tentacle pierced through the head of the neighbor from number seventeen.
The tulpa had changed shape and was now a mass of pale flesh with tentacles floating above the street, lit by the streetlights, along with an energy that made every dog in the neighborhood start howling at once.
A tentacle grabbed the exorcist and hurled him toward the second floor of the house across the street.
He crashed through the window and landed on the floor of a bedroom, interrupting a couple in the middle of intercourse.
Jake pointed at them.
"Keep going, keep going."
He stood up.
"I was never here."
He jumped out the same window for the second confrontation, which took place in the street.
His phone vibrated just as a tentacle grazed his ear.
'Who the hell is calling me at the worst possible moment?'
While dodging, Jake pulled out his phone and answered without stopping.
"Hello… Yes, it's me… No, everything's fine, just a minor setback… No, it's not like last time… Listen, with all due respect, that kind of language isn't… How much…? You're gonna deduct how much?"
The tentacle slammed him against a parked car.
"That seems excessive considering the client is still alive… Yeah, I know he ended up paraplegic, but… Technically that wasn't in the contract… Fine. Fine. We'll talk later."
He hung up.
'I should've become a firefighter.'
Jake got to his feet and looked at the tulpa, who stared back at him. He reached into his trench coat and his fingers found the grip of the katana. He held it for a moment, but when he saw all the people nearby, he changed his mind.
He drew the knife instead, and with one clean motion, the tulpa fell silent. Its head dropped to one side and its body to the other.
Jake sheathed the knife and watched as the blue and red lights of the patrol cars appeared at the end of the street.
"And here we go again."
Jake pulled out his identification before the officers even got out of the car.
"How you doing, officers?"
He pointed at the disaster around him.
"As you can see, I had a little mishap."
The officers looked at the mess Jake had made.
"Don't worry, I'm fine."
Jake put away his identification.
"There might be one or two dead people around here, but all things considered, the exorcism was a success. The client is still alive and the entity has been neutralized."
One officer asked.
"So you did all this?"
"Correct."
The officers looked at each other.
Jake was arrested at 8:57 p.m. on a Tuesday on charges of discharging a firearm in a residential area, property damage, trespassing, and disturbing the peace.