Jo stood in front of Harmony Café’s ancient printer-slash-portal conduit, watching it wheeze, spark, and exhale tiny puffs of sulfur.

Baristopheles tapped it gently. “She only jams when she’s nervous.”

“She?” Jo asked.

“The printer. Her name is Cannon of the Condemned.”

Jo sighed. Of course it was, she thought to herself.

The form emerging from Cannon’s clunky depths was thirteen pages long, smelled like singed bureaucracy, and was printed in ink that shimmered uncomfortably between maroon and deep regrets.

At the top, it read in bold, doom laced font: Form 999-WTF: Request for Demonic Loop Termination, Subsection: Customer Service Curses & Beverage-Based Interdimensional Riffs.

Jeff stood nearby, nervously fiddling with his clipboard. “Once it’s signed by a licensed mediator, a chaos entity, a mortal with mop authority, and a reluctant barista, we can initiate the reversal ceremony.”

“I’m all four,” Jo muttered, grabbing a pen.

“Technically, you need a different reluctant barista to co-sign,” Jeff said.

“Matteo!” Jo shouted into the café.

He stuck his head out from behind the espresso machine, half-covered in latte art stencils. “Is this about the humming croissants again?”

“No, it’s worse. Bureaucracy,” Jo answered.

Matteo groaned and signed without reading. “If I turn into a cursed biscotti again, I’m quitting.”

As the form passed from hand to claw to spectral signature, the air around the café shifted. The lights flickered, Clorvex’s clipboard burst into harmless glitter, and a nearby plant whispered a warning in French.

Sev entered just as the final sigil was being affixed. “You know the Void called me this morning to say we’d breached their silence clause?”

“We breached it?” Jo asked.

Sev nodded. “Apparently someone screamed into the abyss. Repeatedly. It filed a complaint.”

Jeff looked sheepish. “That may have been me. I got frustrated with our hold music.”

“What is your hold music?” Mira asked.

Jeff pulled out his phone. The café was instantly filled with the sound of off-key kazoo renditions of funeral marches.

Plugging his ears, Clorvex said, “Okay, that’s actually cursed.”

Jo handed the finished form to Jeff. “Now what?”

Jeff grinned nervously. “Now we fax it to Infernal Human Resources.”

Silence.

“You have a fax machine?” Jo asked.

“Of course not,” Jeff said. “That’d be ridiculous. We have to feed it into the Mail Slot of Mundane Suffering.”

Jo turned to the back wall, where a mysterious mail slot had just appeared and was oozing regret. “I hate this place,” she muttered, sliding the form in.

There was a loud ding, followed by a tiny infernal voice saying, “Thank you for contacting Ritual Support. Your suffering has been noted. Have a cursed day.”

A vortex opened in the ceiling and immediately shut again.

“Well?” Matteo asked.

Jo looked up at the swirling tea board, which now read, PENDING LOOP CLOSURE. ERROR 666 STATUS: DEESCALATING

Jeff beamed. “We’re in the review queue!”

“How long’s the wait?” Clorvex asked.

Jeff checked his watch. “Somewhere between two minutes and three business eternities.”

Jo sighed. “That’s fine. As long as it’s before the weekend rush.”

From somewhere deep in the café walls, a faint voice whispered, “Press nine for Eternal Torment…”