by D. M. Guay
“Hey, new guy,” DeeDee called across the store. “Looks like there's actually some beer for you to stock tonight. Lucky you.”
Sigh. Fine. I mean, I couldn't complain. At least it wasn't another snake dude. I wheeled the dolly over to the beer cave. Man, how did that guy move so fast? This thing was heavy! I hated to admit it, but I huffed and puffed while wheeling it to the beer cave. DeeDee opened the door for me, and I was halfway through it when she put her hand on my arm. “Hey, new guy,” she said. “Whatever you do, don't touch it. Don't even go near it. Promise?”
She looked genuinely concerned.
“Promise.” I smiled at her and nearly melted when she smiled back. Of course, I didn't know what she was talking about. Touch what? It's beer.
I wheeled the dolly in, and the door closed behind me. The beer cave was a dim, large rectangle with stainless steel walls. It was so cold I could see my breath, and my body instantly broke out in goosebumps. The only light came from a single flickering fluorescent strip light running down the center of the ceiling, and the weak beams that filtered in through the glass-front, reach-in self-serve doors facing the storefront.
No one was in the cave but me. No mystery people. No snake guys. No tentacles. That made me feel a bit better, although I was still stumped about who those people were and how they got in here.
Beer stocking was self-explanatory, hard to screw up, so I kinda liked it. I slid forties into the slots behind the self-serve doors. The twelve and twenty-four packs were easy too because each beer brand had its own section. I'd just plunked down my first case when the cave suddenly lit up bright blue. I heard a whirrrr whirrr noise behind me. Jesus fucking Christ. Snakes! Attack!
I jumped, twisting around in mid-air, landing in a bad Elvis Kenpo Karate stance. Seriously. Just like a fat Elvis. My paunch jiggled, but without as much pizzazz. I didn't believe what I saw in front of me, so I blinked hard. What. The. Fuck. One wall of the beer cave was....gone. No, not gone, open, transformed into a swirling neon blue vortex of thick misty clouds, like a bigger bluer version of the thing inside the Michael Bolton CD case.
A black blob appeared in the middle, small and round like a bowling ball. Okay, it started out like a bowling ball but morphed and changed as if something was moving closer to me, through the mist, out of the mist. Oh fuck. Here it comes. It was the outline of a...man? A human man stepped out of the swirling vortex. I fell backward, toppling a stack of Pabst Blue Ribbon cases. I rubbed my eyes. He can't be real. I opened them. Oh shit. He's real.
The man standing before me was delightfully tentacle and snake-free, although he was outrageously tacky and reeked of Aqua Velva. Dude. That was my great grandpa's aftershave. Do they even still make that stuff?
The man pulled a comb out of his back pocket and ran it through his pomaded hair, sprucing up his black pompadour. He wore a powder blue polyester leisure suit—no joke. His shirt had a butterfly collar and was open nearly down to his belly button. Oh my Jesus Lord, deliver me from 1972.
He strutted toward me as if the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was pulsing disco through his veins. I started to get up, but he put his hand on my chest to stop me. “Move aside, Champ,” he said. He sniffed the air like a hound dog. “You smell that? Mmmm. Mmmmm. There are at least a dozen sad, lonely women at the Temptations Tavern tonight, and their panties aren't gonna take themselves off. Yeah. That's right, ladies. I'm coming.”
He looked at me. “Well, son. It's time to make some lucky lady's fantasy a reality.”
He readjusted his package (ahem, that one. Downstairs.) with one hand. “Let me show you how it's done. Watch the master work.”
Then he scratched his ass and headed for the exit where DeeDee was waiting for him. “You're late, Morty,” she said. “It's not like you to leave a bar full of lonely women waiting.”
“Mmmm. Mmmm. Mmmmmm. You're looking good tonight, sweetheart. I've got a few minutes free if you're itching for a taste of real man.” Morty sidled up to DeeDee and leaned in real close to talk to her, one arm on the wall, the other curling a strand of her blue hair. “Whadaya say?”
I wanted to keep staring at this man, Morty. I mean his moves were so disco porn, he was hard not to watch. But the blue, the swirling whatever, that stood where the wall used to be, I felt it...calling to me? Voices whispered, sweet and soft, even sweeter than Dolly's doughnuts.
I looked back at DeeDee. She wasn't watching. The voices. They were so close, right on the other side of the swirl. I couldn't resist. One look couldn't hurt. The whispers were too tempting, the mist too beautiful. I crawled closer, my knees freezing on the cold steel floor, entranced by the blue. The colors were so vibrant, so thick, they looked like the splurps of color in the opening credits of Barbarella. Neon. Teal, cerulean and navy blues moved in a circle like a slow, gentle hurricane. I had to touch them, see if they felt as amazing as they looked.
“Aw, Morty. Always such a charmer,” DeeDee said behind me. Her voice sounded far away. “You know the rules. Besides, you know I don't mix work with pleasure.”
“Rules. Ha. More like guidelines, sweetheart. But, suit yourself.” Morty shrugged. “Someday you'll get a whiff of what you're missing. When you're ready, I won't let you down.”
There were whispers in the mist. I had to know what they were saying. I'm almost there, voices. Wait for me.
“Got your papers?” DeeDee said to Morty. I heard rustling. “All right. Have fun tonight. Be back by dawn. No afternoon delight like last time, okay? You know your face doesn't stick as well in the daylight.”
“Or does it?” Morty blew her a kiss and whisked out of the beer cave. “Maybe my real face is even better.”
I was so close to the swirling beautiful blue. I reached out to it. The mist twirled faster. I'm coming. Don't leave. The mist lapped at the tips of my fingers.
Smack. Suddenly, I was butt-sliding backward across the freezing metal floor. My back hit a wall of beer. A case crunched open, raining cans down on top of my head. “Ow!”
DeeDee stood between me and the beautiful swirling blue, which was shrinking, undulating, swirling smaller and smaller behind her, until it completely disappeared, leaving only an ordinary steel wall where it once stood.
“No!” I shrieked. My soul felt like it was sinking. I was so close. I was dizzy, a little disoriented, the ghosts of those secret whispers still in my head.
“I totally get it.” She pulled me up off the floor. “It put me under its spell the first time I saw it, too. It's beautiful, isn't it? And the voices. You want to know what they're saying, don't you? And who's saying them.”
I nodded.
“Okay. But don't. Not ever. Do you understand? Put it out of your mind. The voices, all of it, is bad news. There's nothing good in there for you and me. It's not for us, for humans, for mortals, okay? This is for other things, other creatures. We're not equipped for whatever is on the other side. We can't survive over there. Do you understand?”
I shook off the haze. “Wait. What? Mortals? Other creatures? But the wall. The tacky guy...”
I'd like to say I pieced this together like Tetris, but no. I didn't.
DeeDee walked me over to the cold steel wall and touched it gently with her fingertips. “Welcome to Transmundane Gate Twenty Three, Celestial Sector Seventeen,” DeeDee said. “The blue swirl? That, new guy, is the portal.”
“The portal to where?”
“Do you want the long, nuanced answer or the short, easy-to-understand answer?”
“The easy one,” I said. Duh. Always choosing the easy way was kinda my thing.
“That's the gate to hell,” she said. “Welcome to celestial homeland security. We're the border patrol between hell and earth.”
Chapter 5
I didn't sleep at all that night. Okay, technically day, since my shift ended when the sun came up, and no it wasn't the blinding bright sunlight burning through the curtain cracks that was keeping me awake.
I rolled over and checked the
clock. Gah. Ten a.m. I was exhausted but too wound up to sleep. My mind reeled. The blue swirl. The Michael Bolton CD. The snake guy. A gateway to hell in a beer cave in Columbus, Ohio? The single yellow eyeball surrounded by barbed tentacles. It couldn't possibly be real, but it sure felt real.
I pinched myself a zillion times. I tossed and turned. At one point, I smacked my own face, hard, convinced I was actually asleep and all of this had been an insane crazy-go-nuts dream. But no. I was awake. Like, awake awake, not in a dream where I just thought I was awake. Which meant I was either clinically insane, or I had to come to grips with the fact that there was a portal to actual hell in the back of the beer cave at the 24/7 Dairy Mart. Or was it the 24/7 Demon Mart? The memory of the glowing red neon sign rolled over me. If the portal was real, the sign must be, too.
Okay. Okay. Suppose I believed this was all real. If the beer cave was a portal to hell, what did that make Faust? Was he the devil? Like, the devil devil? Lord of hell, fallen angel, source of evil in the world yada yada all that Bible crap? Holy shit, I didn't eat an apple there did I? Think. Think. Chef. Tuna, yes. Apple, no. And if I worked for the devil, did that mean I had a soul and that he now owned that soul? OhmiGod. If hell was real, was it all lake of fire and eternal torment a la Dante's Inferno? And wouldn't this mean heaven was real, too? And if it was, was sin an actual thing I needed to start worrying about? Was Saint Peter up there at the Pearly Gates, keeping tabs on us all like a creepy Santa Claus?
What if Pastor Woodruff wasn't a nut job? So. Much. Masturbating. I'd jerked it so much I could be doomed to eternal hellfire on that charge alone. Add in lying to Simone and my parents, plus Lee's booger sandwich... Jesus. I'm fucked. Shit. Wait. Was that using the Lord's name in vain? That's a sin, too, right?
I'll be frank. My brain was not set up for this much analysis. So. Much. Reeling. I couldn't even keep that whole assassination of Arch Duke what's-his-name / start of World War One stuff straight in history class, and that was laid out in a neat little timeline. (Look. There was a reason I was a community college dropout.) I was not qualified to tackle this level of ambiguity or existential crisis. I hadn't even taken Philosophy 101 yet.
But the money, Lloyd. You NEED the money! Sixty-six bucks an hour. At thirty-five hours a week, count on fingers, carry the one, holy crap, that was north of two grand a paycheck. I couldn't make more than minimum wage anywhere else. I couldn't even finish an associate's degree. I had no skills. I couldn't plumb, weld or wire. Minimum wage was it for me, and that would get me max three hundred bucks a week. Before taxes. I was in debt. I worked for the devil. I was doomed.
Can't deal. I pulled my sheet up tight around my head. Ew. What's that smell? Armpits and feet. Gross. Note to self: Wash sheets ASAP.
I tossed and turned, trying to put it out of my mind. I could talk myself out of believing in devils and hell gates, but I couldn't talk myself out of debt. It was there whether I believed it or not. Stupid money. It always got me into trouble, because I didn't actually have any of it. I owed Simone two grand in back rent. Plus, the unpaid cable bills from our apartment, all in my name, and all sent to collections. I needed a thousand bucks to fix my car, plus however much to insure it. I had four grand in student loans with payments set to start any day now because I wasn't in school anymore. Then there was the six hundred bucks my parents paid for the exterminator. Plus, if I were a decent son, I'd pay them the twenty-five hundred bucks for the semester of community college I blew by “forgetting” to drop out. I did some more math on my fingers. Six plus five, carry the one. Plus two, plus...Crap. Whatever. I was no math whiz, but any idiot could see I had ten grand in debt, easy.
I was in a hole so deep I couldn't see the sun. That wasn't even counting money to get my own apartment or buy food. My brokeness sat like a two-ton boulder of adulting-is-too-hard on my chest. I'd have to work forever just to break even. It's official: Lloyd, you are a loser, and you're massively up a creek of shit so high it's beyond flood stage.
But Faust already knew that, didn't he? He'd said I had ten grand in debt before I'd even added it all up. That's how the devil got you, wasn't it? With money. Because you're desperate. Riches now for damnation later. Man. I was easy pickings.
Come on, God! I don't deserve this! It wasn't me. It was the system. Hear me out. Jobs didn't pay squat, so you went into debt for an education for the promise of a good job. If you messed up and didn't make it, you were even more screwed than if you'd never tried at all. Everyone in the world was fighting for a chance at a Kardashian life, but most of us fail. I had failed. And now here I was. I went down in flames, and the devil scooped me up. I should have turned tail and run the second I saw that yellow eye pop out of the beer cave.
All right. Decision made. Work for the devil? Nope. I can't. I quit. I'm not the best guy who ever walked the earth, but I'm not bad enough to burn in a pit of fire for all eternity. No job was worth that. I'd find another way to make ten grand. Can you legally sell a kidney? I didn't need two, did I?
Apparently, deciding to quit was all I needed to do to fall asleep. I zonked out hard. Sure, I had a vivid dream about the mist swirling. In my version, the voices belonged to a handful of super-duper hot chicks with horns who wanted to do me. I'm gonna stop there because it got pretty graphic, and I had to do a five-finger sin on myself for a hot second when I woke up. The chicks in my dream were sexy. I had no choice. Morning wood would have been all-day wood, ya feel me? But I swear, that was the last time.
When that was finished, I vowed right then and there that I was gonna be a model citizen. Heaven, here I come. I was gonna find a job that wouldn't imperil my immortal soul. Work hard. Finish college. Keep my hands out of my pants. (Hardest part, frankly.) Go to church on Sundays. (Snooze, but pretty sure that was required.) I was going full polo-shirt and khakis, respectable-haircut, shark-white Joel-Osteen-teeth Christian. The “Hell is Real” billboard on the highway between here and Cincinnati? Yeah. I feel you dude. I get it. I was gonna rock the fuck out of the Ten Commandments, starting right now. Except that I just said fuck. Was cursing a sin? If so, sorry God. Honest mistake.
I crawled out of bed. The clock said it was nearly eight at night. My red leather-bound employee manual sat on my nightstand. Nope. Nope. Nope. I dropped it into my trash can, then covered it with the dozen or so Monster Burger wrappers I suddenly felt compelled to clean off of my desk. Cleanliness and Godliness, and all.
Crap. If I was gonna make it into heaven, I better wash the stink off of my sheets. I yanked them off the bed by the corners, gathering it all up into a dirty ball to carry down to the washer. I immediately tripped over a pile of filthy laundry on the floor, landing face-first on the rug. I had crumbs stuck to my face when I peeled myself up. Clearly, cleaning was gonna be the second hardest part of making it as a Christian, behind not touching myself. Dude. No wonder so many evangelicals were angry all the time. It was hard work vacuuming up floor crumbs and washing clothes after a maximum of two wearings. I'd seen those Christian Mommy Blogs. Their houses were spotless. Maybe they thought Jesus might drop in any second. Was that how the Rapture worked? Ugh. This new leaf I'd turned over already kinda sucked. So. Much. Work.
But, if the alternative was eternal torment...All right. Decisions made. Step one. Quit job. Then, clean room and do laundry. Tomorrow: Sell some plasma, apply for a job at Monster Burger, research black market kidney prices. Flipping burgers and dipping fry baskets would keep Mom happy while I sought my riches via a Mexican organ transplant racket, right? I stumbled down the stairs, dirty sheet ball in arms, swelling with the confidence that came with having a plan.
Mmmm. A delicious honey-barbecue-scented cloud wafted down the hallway. My tummy rumbled.
The laundry room was a cubby in the main hall leading between the front door and the kitchen. There was only enough space to jam a washer and dryer, and all Mom's other cleaning tools that I had never touched once in the twenty years we'd lived here. I pushed the Swiffer out of the way and put the
sheets in the top-loader, poured in the detergent, and turned it on. The machine filled with water and started vibrating. I accidentally brushed against it when I yawned, so you know how this story was about to go. The vibrations sent my mind and my nether region right back to those misty dream sirens. Yep. New wood.
“Good evening, honey.” My Mom stepped in and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me from behind.
My hands moved lightning fast to cover my crotch, by instinct. There were some things moms didn't need to see and hard-ons were number one on the list.
“How was your first day—um, night—at your new job? Come into the kitchen and tell me all about it. I want details!” Her voice was sing-song happy. She spun me around and as soon as we were facing each other, she said: “Are you all right?”
I adjusted my pants. “Yeah. Fine. Do you need something? I gotta vacuum my room.”
Her jaw dropped for a split second, and she mouthed “vacuum?” When the shock wore off, she said, “Well, honey, I like this new industrious employed you. It suits you.”
Oh, man. That wasn't good. Cue painful Mom lecture about quitting after one shift.
“Tell you what,” she said. “The vacuum can wait. Come eat dinner. I made your favorite. Pulled pork and cheesy potatoes!”
She pinched my cheek, smiled, then cheek-yanked me into the kitchen. Dad sat at the table itching to dig into his plate, but resisting because Mom clearly had told him not to touch a thing until we were all ready. I saw the pain in his smile/grimace. Dude. I feel ya. A mound of pulled pork slathered in barbecue sauce blooped out of his overstuffed burger bun. His plate was piled high with canned green beans and a steaming yellow mountain of sliced potatoes, smothered in melted American cheese and onions. It smelled so so good. This was five-star Ohio Mom cuisine.