“YA ALLAH…” I SHOOK MY HEAD, HOPING FOR A REALITY reboot, but the giant fly guy in the cloak just continued to…exist.

The whining of the millions of insects intensified, rattling the windows overlooking the alley. Any louder and I thought my ears would start bleeding.

I still had my wok. I had to do something.

So I ran.

Straight through the kitchen door, slamming it behind me.

“Who’s…What’s out there?” asked Daoud, his face ashen.

“Now you show up?” I shoved the dead bolts into place. “Grab the biggest knife you can find.” I backed away as Idiptu charged the door, shaking the hinges. “We’ve got to stop them—”

“What?! No, we’ve got to call the police!”

“A little late for that now!” I snapped. “Arm yourself—hurry!”

“Just let them take whatever they want!” Daoud cried. “We can hide in our rooms upstairs.” He tried to pull me through the swinging door to the seating area.

“Leave the deli to them? No way!” I snapped, wrenching myself out of his grasp. “I’m not abandoning Mo’s. This is your chance to be a hero, Daoud. A real one.”

He stared at me as if I were insane. “I can’t be a hero, especially not a real one!”

“What’s the point of all those muscles if you aren’t going to use them to smash bad guys?” I needed to get him on board before the back door was destroyed. So I spoke in a language he understood: “Think of this as a movie, Daoud. The good guys always win, right?”

“A movie?” Daoud kept retreating. “That makes me the token sidekick! We always die in act two, right after the jock!”

The back door jumped in its frame under another charge from the hulking Idiptu. It wouldn’t hold for long. We needed to block it with something stronger.

Daoud glared at me. “This isn’t about the deli.”

“You in or not?”

The metal door bulged under the latest assault.

“Come on, Sik!” Daoud fled into the seating area, and I heard him leave to go toward the upstairs apartment, slamming the security door behind him. That door was three inches of solid oak with an auto lock; you’d need a chain saw to get through it. Then again, I’d thought the metal door was impenetrable.…

I grabbed the landline in the kitchen and punched in three numbers.

Ring…ring…ring…

“Yallah, pick up!” I yelled as Idiptu continued his battering.

“Which service, please?” the dispatcher asked.

“Police,” I replied. “Right now. Sooner.”

“Please hold while I transfer you.…”

“Tut-tut, that won’t do at all.” Sidana peered through a newly created space between the warped metal and the doorframe. “I think it best to end that call.”

The phone receiver squirmed in my hand. Something tickled my lips. Something slimy.

Fat white worms wriggled out of the mouthpiece. Maggots. I dropped the phone and spat furiously. How was this even happening?

“I do hope you didn’t swallow any,” said Sidana. “They might—”

“Just shut up!” Who were these guys? What were they? I didn’t want to admit it, but the word demon was beginning to sound…right.

My heart raced as a hundred panicky thoughts battled for the top spot. The security gates were down in front, so I couldn’t run. Scream for help? Beg them to stop? Let them take whatever it is they want and hope they’ll leave? Hide under the counter? Fight them for all you’re worth?

I had options, but they were all just different levels of bad.

The best choice was to keep them out, but the door wasn’t going to last much longer.

I wedged my spine against the wall, pressed both feet against the big refrigerator, and pushed. Seven feet by four and made of stainless steel, it would be the perfect blockade. “Come on,” I snarled. My legs trembled as I forced out every ounce of power I had. The refrigerator tilted slightly.

The middle hinge came off the back door. Idiptu stuck his head through the bigger opening and his tongue rolled out, searching for the dead bolts.

“Move!” I roared as I gave the refrigerator one final, desperate push. The thing had sat in the same place ever since we’d bought it, and it wasn’t ready to budge even an inch, but…but it groaned as it leaned sideways across the back door and then fell, crashing with thunderous impact, rattling all the pots and pans. The refrigerator door swung open and out poured tubs of hummus and tzatziki sauce. Lemons and oranges rolled away in all directions.

There, that would hold them. I snatched up my wok as I ran into the seating area and scrambled over to the door that led to the apartment. “Daoud? Are you there?”

“I’ve got the police on my cell!”

“When are they coming?”

“Er…I’m third in line.”

Great, just great. With any luck they’d make it over by lunchtime.

I heard scraping from the kitchen. Like the sound a heavy metal object, say a refrigerator, might make if it were slowly being pushed across ceramic tile.

“Sik? What’s going on down there?” It was Baba. He shook the handle of the security door. “Where are the keys?”

I glanced over to them, lying on the countertop. “Er…here?”

“Mina, get the spare set!” Baba yelled, not giving up on the handle. “Get out of there, Sik!”

I know it was crazy to stay. The deli wasn’t much, but it was all we had.

“Sik…habibi. Please, please run.”

I wiped the sweat off my hands and took a fresh grip on the wok.

The kitchen had fallen eerily quiet.

Had they given up? Please, ya Allah, please, I prayed.

A sudden blue flash illuminated the seating area for a second as the fly zapper on the ceiling took out a bug. The electric hum lingered, then it flashed again as another fly went straight into it.

The swinging door between the deli and the kitchen creaked as if something were gently, ever so gently, pressing against it, testing it.

Cockroaches poured from under the door, spreading over the floor like an oil spill.

Then the door was blown apart and a shock wave hurled me over, forcing all the air out of my lungs. The wok spun out of my hands and clanged against the far wall.

A screaming tornado of insects swirled around the room, coating the walls in glistening black, purple, and green. They curtained the windows and crawled over me, trying to enter my mouth and ears even as they stung me.

“Where is it, boy? Where is it?” roared the giant “boss” creature, his hulking, fly-infested body bent over so his head wouldn’t scrape the ceiling. He snatched up an empty vase on one of the tables, sniffed at it, and then threw it on the floor. He opened cabinets and flung their contents left and right like a dog digging for a bone. Next he ripped down one of Mo’s pressed flowers and broke the frame into splinters. He plucked out the plant and held it between his finger and thumb before grinding it into dust. Then he yanked down another, and another, his fury rising with each one. “It has to be here!”

No, no, no! In that awful moment, I didn’t care that he was twice my height and had ten times my strength—I had to save those pictures. The wok had rolled to the opposite side of the room, too far for me to reach. With teeth clamped and fists tight, I hurled myself at his back.

The giant spun around—lightning fast—and grabbed me in midair. His fingers locked around my neck like an iron collar. He drew me nearer. “Tell me where it is, boy.”

Leathery patches of skin hung off his face, among patches of raw red flesh seeping with pus and crawling with flies. Gaping holes in his cheeks exposed the sinews of his jaw, and his nose was a pair of rotten holes. But nothing matched the darkness of his eyes—pure black and overflowing with hate. I shivered, unable to escape their drowning, endless depths. He squeezed my throat. “Where is it?” he hissed, his stench poisoning what little oxygen I had left.

What is he talking about? I kicked out feebly, my strength all but gone, like the air in my lungs. Blackness crawled in from the edges of my vision.

“Let him go,” said a voice from behind me.

Through the haze of semiconsciousness, I was expecting a cop, but instead I got…

A ninja?

Sure, why not? Things were crazy enough, so why not a ninja? She stood in the doorway, dressed in midnight black with her face hidden by a ski mask, carrying a gleaming scimitar.

The sword’s single edge shimmered with exceeding sharpness, but I wished she’d brought a bazooka. She raised her blade. “I said, let him go.”

The giant dropped me with a hard thud. He gestured at his two minions. “Deal with her.”

Idiptu was crouched on a dining table, grinning. “My pleasure, Boss.” His thick legs catapulted him at the girl.

The ninja threw her whole body into a blinding spin, swinging her right foot up in a high arc. Her boot heel smashed Idiptu in the side of the jaw like a wrecking ball. Teeth burst from his mouth as he sailed into our shelf of syrup jars. His bowler hat spun over the countertop.

The ninja paused, her foot poised in the air. Then she lowered it back to the floor as lightly as a ballet dancer. She turned to Sidana and, I swear, arched her eyebrow. “You next?”

Maybe she didn’t need a bazooka after all.

Sidana scurried over to his unconscious, toothless friend. “T’would be unwise after that performance,” he said ingratiatingly to the ninja. “Not to mention your mother’s importance.”

Mother? Wait…they know each other?

The ninja gripped her sword in both hands and turned back to the boss. Things were about to go epic.

The giant scowled. “Do you really think you have a chance against me? Even with Kasusu?”

The ninja pointed her scimitar at him. “Let’s find out, Uncle.”

Uncle? Uncle?!

“Just hang on, habibi!” Baba began smashing at the security door lock from the other side with what sounded like a fire extinguisher.

“No!” I cried. “It’s not safe!”

The giant exploded into a roaring hurricane of insects and rammed the front windows. The glass shattered, and the security gates were torn clean out of their frames. The steel clattered on the sidewalk as the whirlwind rose into the night sky.

“I’m coming!” yelled Baba.

Sidana heaved Idiptu out the now-demolished windows, leaving only my sword-wielding savior. She flicked the blade into a round leather sheath and headed for the back door.

“Wait…” I said.

She paused.

“You have to tell me—” Sirens wailed nearby. I turned my head to see blue-and-red police lights illuminating the street and a crowd gathering outside. “What’s going on? He…He was looking for something.…”

But when I turned back to hear her answer, no one was there.

The apartment door crashed open, and Baba barged in, wild-eyed and waving the fire extinguisher, with Mama beside him. Cowering behind them was Daoud.

“They’re gone,” I said, collapsing to my knees. Without adrenaline to keep me going, all my terror turned to pure exhaustion.

Baba froze, gaping at the devastation, while Mama said, “Habibi, oh, habibi…” and wrapped her arms around me.

Baba stumbled over the wreckage and knelt down beside me. “What were you thinking, facing them all by yourself?”

Why did he even need to ask? “The deli, Baba…”

Mama squeezed me tighter. “The deli, Sik? The deli doesn’t matter!”

They didn’t get it. They just didn’t.

“Look at what they’ve done.…” Daoud picked up one of the broken frames and tried to gently lift the flower out. It crumbled in his hands.