by Scott Colby
Kevin’s heart broke. He physically sagged in his friends’ grasp. Sweatpants Bob had been a friendly constant in town for as long as Kevin could remember. He couldn’t imagine Harksburg without him. To make matters worse, Oscar and Doorknob were about to use that poor old man’s fate as an excuse to sucker him into their dumb religion. The irony that Bob would only attempt the trip because he thought he was immortal when, in reality, leaving Billy’s fucked up district would mean his own death was too much for Kevin to bear.
Oscar stepped down from his perch and wrapped his arms around the big man. “Never fear, Brother Sweatpants. The Immortalist can get you to your granddaughters’ graduation…but there is a small processing fee. Fifty dollars.”
Bob fished around his pocket and pulled out a small wad of bills. “I’ve got twelve bucks and a Burg sandwich card,” he said hopefully. “Two more sandwiches and I get a free lunch.”
The melancholy generated by Bob’s sad story turned to boiling rage as Kevin watched Oscar doing the math in his head. “From a gentle soul such as yourself, Brother Sweatpants, that’ll be more than enough,” the Immortalist said softly, grabbing Bob’s offering and shoving it into his robe’s pocket. It wouldn’t do to let the crowd think their new prophet was only in it for the money, after all. Never had Kevin been so disgusted. Here was Oscar Spuddner, a certified dumbass who’d barely graduated after six years at Harksburg High, peddling hope to the hopeless.
And it was all Kevin’s fault.
He turned to Waltman. “Just let me go. I promise I won’t interfere. I just want to go home.”
Waltman shook his head. “You’re a smart one, city boy. You’re going to stay right here and watch so you can tell us how Spuddner’s trick works.”
That left Kevin with just one option. “Flanagan!” he shouted. “Officer! They’re breaking the law!” Calling for the police made him feel like a bit of pussy, but what other choice did he have? He just hoped Flanagan would leave the tear gas in the trunk.
Jim Jimeson kicked him in the shin. “Flanagan left as soon as you showed up. Now stop interrupting the Immortalist!”
Kevin swore under his breath. Of course Flanagan had left. Kevin had told the officer he’d take care of Oscar’s gathering, and in Flanagan’s mind that would’ve freed him to join the other members of the police department in the Works for an afternoon toke. Kevin couldn’t blame his friend. In Flanagan’s shoes, he probably would’ve done the same.
Doorknob bent down and unzipped the duffel bag, spreading it open so those closest could see inside. It was full of green and beige striped paper—computer printouts produced using the shitty old printer in the Harksburg Public Library. They hadn’t even bothered to tear away the edges. Doorknob grabbed one of the printouts and held it up high.
“In his hand, First Acolyte Knob holds the Scriptures of the Word,” Oscar explained. “The Immortallia!”
“The genitalia?” Jim Jimeson asked. Waltman snickered. Sweatpants Bob shot them a fiery scowl that made it clear he’d beat both of their skulls in with his bedpost if they kept it up.
“The Immortallia!” Oscar repeated. Doorknob lowered the printout and offered it to Sweatpants Bob, who took it gently in his gnarled hands as if he were afraid it might shatter.
Waltman leaned close to Bob to read the printout around the big man’s thick shoulder. “Is that a recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies?”
“The Immortalist’s favorite,” Doorknob replied haughtily.
Waltman frowned as he read further. “Cubs tickets, third base line. A carton of Marlboro Lights. Back rubs every day for a week. Miller High Life, bottles only. Red-headed virgins with a C-cup or better. Is this a holy book or Spuddner’s dumbass Christmas list?”
“If one wishes to receive, one must also be willing to give,” Oscar said warmly.
“You can have my granddaughter if it means I don’t die in that dirty fucking nursing home!” one of the old ladies hollered. A few others echoed her sentiments.
“I’ll bake you cookies every day!” Mrs. Robidas added.
“And I’ll do the back rubs!” Jerry Flynn shouted.
The crowd erupted then, promising Oscar the world: drugs, sex, money, food, shelter. Whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it, as long as he would protect them all from death. The Immortalist spread his arms wide and turned his face skyward, basking in the attention. Kevin could sympathize with his friend; mere hours ago, none of the people attempting to curry Oscar’s favor would’ve given him the time of day, even though he was one of the friendliest individuals in all of Harksburg. Oscar’s life as a loser was over. He was in demand. He was important. He was one of the cool kids for the first time in his life and he was enjoying it thoroughly.
But that didn’t make his methods any less wrong. No one deserved to have their fear of mortality taken advantage of that way, regardless of how poorly they’d treated Oscar in the past. Kevin didn’t like this twisted version of his friend. He had to stop him—and he finally had an idea of how to do it.
He turned to Waltman. “I know what they’re up to.”
“Oh yeah? Spill it.”
“Let me go and I’ll show you,” Kevin replied mischievously. “Everybody here will see it. Just think how long you’ll be able to hold that over Spuddner’s head.”
“Hmm,” Waltman replied. “Not bad, Felton. Show us what you’ve got.”
Finally free, Kevin stepped forward and grabbed the pitchfork in Doorknob’s hands. His scrawny friend gritted his teeth and dug his heels into the grass and dirt, his knuckles turning white around the wooden handle as he fought to hold on.
“Give me the fucking pitchfork!” Kevin snarled.
“Fight him, First Acolyte!” Oscar shouted. “The power of the Immortalist will ensure your victory!”
Kevin rolled his eyes and sighed. He’d had enough of this shit. A heavy stomp on Doorknob’s foot weakened the smaller man’s grip just enough for Kevin to tear the pitchfork out of his grasp. Doorknob collapsed to the grass, whimpering and rubbing his toes.
“Watch this!” Kevin commanded, swinging the pitchfork high and aiming its tines for his own chest. He couldn’t believe he was about to do this. “Spuddner, you’re a fucking idiot! I’m not going to give you any money, any booze, or anything else—but I’m still going to get right back up after I—”
A familiar shriek interrupted Kevin’s speech. “All right, heathens! You had your chance to leave peacefully! Now the wrath of God has come to wash Harksburg’s common clean once again!”
A powerful burst of water struck Oscar in the face and sent him sprawling. Sweatpants Bob caught one next, then Waltman and Jim Jimeson, and all hell broke loose as the members of the crowd ran screaming in various directions.
Defeated, Kevin twirled the pitchfork around and plunged its tines into the earth at his feet. His mother rushed to his side, Super Soaker in hand, protecting him like the holy warrior she’d always pictured herself to be. The plastic tank on her back sloshed loudly with holy water as she moved. Kevin had forgotten how powerful that thing could be.
“I’m here, son!” Mrs. Felton said bravely as she turned her fire upon Jerry Flynn and sent the poor man stumbling for cover. “I’ve got Jesus as my wingman!”
Biting back a sarcastic response, Kevin gave his mother’s shoulder a loving squeeze. Even though he was never, ever going to live this down, even though Harksburg would have one more tale of crazy Mrs. Felton to laugh about, even though he was disappointed that he hadn’t been able to talk Oscar down on his own—he was damn sure glad that he hadn’t been forced to pitchfork himself.
— CHAPTER TWELVE —
Leaving his mother behind to attend to her holy war, Kevin headed for home. He needed a shower and a drink. He and the bottle of whiskey hidden behind his bed were about to become very, very good friends.
His trip was interrupted, of course, by the last man he wanted to see. He’d almost reached the street when Driff materialized on a bench to Kevin’s
left. The elf smiled and offered Kevin a slow, sarcastic clap.
“Good show!” Driff called out. “You’re lucky your mother’s an excellent shot.”
Annoyed, Kevin turned on his heel to confront the smug elf. “She’s had a lot of practice. You saw all that?”
Driff stopped clapping. “Why do you continue to assume that the man who can turn invisible isn’t secretly watching your every move?”
“It’s taking some getting used to. Can’t say I like it.”
“Can’t say I blame you.” The elf patted the empty part of the bench to his left. “Sit. Take a load off. Watch the grand finale with me.”
Making sure to keep his distance, Kevin did as Driff suggested. Harksburg’s public benches were just as hard and unforgiving as he remembered. He sat gingerly on the edge, afraid that he’d need to see a chiropractor if he leaned back into the wooden torture chamber’s vicious grasp. Driff slouched comfortably, his ass and spine apparently made of tougher stuff than Kevin’s.
Halfway across the common, most of those who’d gathered to watch Oscar’s presentation had fled the scene, leaving trampled grass, wheelchair ruts, and a swirl of lost computer printouts in their wake. Alone in the center of the swath of green, Sweatpants Bob hobbled pathetically away from Kevin’s rampaging mother like a wounded buffalo abandoned by the herd as it attempted to flee a hungry predator. A precision shot from the water cannon knocked Bob’s bedpost out of his hand and sent him face first to the ground. Mrs. Felton pounced, raining holy water down upon Bob’s copy of the Immortallia before the big man could protect it. Her work done, Kevin’s mother turned to chase down Oscar and Doorknob, who were busy fleeing for the safety of the Immortalist’s old Chevy pickup.
Driff chuckled. “Not a bad way to spend an afternoon, wouldn’t you say?”
Kevin shifted uncomfortably, sliding away from a wooden shard he suspected of trying to take a chunk out of his right thigh. “Harksburg’s fucking nuts. Something about living in a small town makes everybody freak out.”
The elf snorted. “You really think if the reapers responsible for Chicago stopped doing their jobs that all those high hifalutin city folks would react any differently?”
Kevin’s mind drifted, then, to Kylie and her friends and co-workers. She belonged to a social group based on one-upmanship and games of power and influence. If one of them suddenly could prove his immortality, he’d certainly use it to extort whatever he wanted from the rest. Especially Kylie, who Kevin suspected would use her newfound immortality to somehow bang every executive vice president in Illinois.
“People are the same everywhere, I guess,” Kevin mused. “Selfish.”
“Humans are selfish everywhere,” Driff corrected. “Selfish and desperate to prove that they matter. What is a human’s ultimate purpose? An elf knows his: to keep the peace, to safeguard the helpless. A demon is created to destroy. Nymphs tend their forests, lakes, or rivers—”
“Gnomes fuck around,” Kevin added, thinking back to his tangled cords.
“Now you’re getting it. But what does a human exist for? What’s his lot in life? What’s he supposed to be doing? Some say humanity’s inability to answer that question is ultimately what keeps you from joining the greater community of races.”
The elf’s words struck something personal within Kevin, something he’d been wondering about himself since his return to Harksburg. Six years of college learning how to be a financial analyst had eventually led him to three years of actually being a financial analyst—and then all of the work and stress and sleepless nights and studying and schmoozing had been rendered worthless with a single pink slip. Without that job—without the desk and the suits and the business cards and the lunch meetings and the number crunching and the paycheck—he didn’t feel like himself. But who was Kevin Felton, really? Was he the starry-eyed boy who’d left Harksburg for the glitz and glamour of the big city? Was he the stylish, smooth-talking analyst with the chic loft in the trendy gentrified neighborhood? Or was he the jaded, listless wreck stuck in Harksburg once again? The question made him squirm, the possible answers even more so.
All of which, he supposed, proved the elf’s point and made it time to change the subject.
“What about all this stuff with Oscar?” he asked. “He’s taking Harksburg’s little death problem and putting it all out in the open. I thought you’d be mad.”
“Mad?” Driff asked. “This ridiculousness is the perfect smoke screen. Rumors about people in the area not being able to die are bound to spread. If they’re tied to your idiot friend, no one will think those rumors are worth a damn, now will they?”
“Maybe,” Kevin said, feeling a bit foolish. He felt his cheeks warm with a blush and looked away. “But if you don’t want word to get out, why not just use that dust stuff you put in the water supply?”
Driff’s voice hardened. “How do you know about that?”
“Nella told me,” Kevin replied sheepishly.
“Hmm. I knew I should’ve caught up to the two of you in the woods sooner. Your girlfriend’s got a big mouth. For now, we’ve canceled the broadcasts that trigger that dust—in Billy’s territory, that is. If anything happens that I need to know about, I want to find out about it before the television or the radio wipes it out of everybody’s head.”
That explained why Kevin still remembered everything from the last few days—Nella, the reaper, dying and coming back to life, Oscar’s first performance back in the Works. He’d temporarily forgotten about Nella’s warning and watched a few soap operas with his mother the day after. At first, he’d thought Driff had done something to keep Kevin’s mind intact while he was in the elf’s employ—the thought had given him hope. If Driff had made him temporarily immune to the dust, it stood to reason that Kevin could find a long-term solution so he could be with Nella. Sadly, that wasn’t the case.
“And when this is over? When things go back to normal?”
“The broadcasts are turned back on and all this foolishness never happened.”
“No one will remember? No one at all?”
“Nella. Your neighbor, the pixie. Any other nonhumans in the area.” Driff’s eyes narrowed, as if he’d just realized something. “I can’t make you an exception to the rule, Kevin. That’s not how it works. Rest assured that you will be well-compensated—as promised—even though you’ll have no memory of our bargain. We elves pay our debts.”
Kevin hadn’t been thinking about the money. He’d been thinking about Nella, about how she’d turned out to be a real, live woman and not just a dream induced by some strange byproduct in Harksburg’s air. Losing that connection they’d made in the forest by Fornication Point would be worse than losing any amount of money. She’d be a dream again, nothing more—and that hurt. Kevin couldn’t tell that to Driff; he doubted the icy son of a bitch had a heart to which he could appeal, and he couldn’t risk the elf taking decisive action to keep them apart. Once again, Ren seemed to be the only one who might be able to help Kevin beat the dust and the broadcasts so that he could retain his memories of Nella.
“Why drag Ren into all this?” Kevin asked. “I get why you needed me. I don’t get why you went to Ren first.”
“That is a private matter I’m not at liberty to discuss.”
“Oh, come on!” Kevin said mischievously, smiling and leaning closer. The bench protested by jamming the head of an exposed nail into his hip. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be wiped from my memory in a few days. Same deal for anyone I tell.”
“It’s neither my privacy nor that of my superiors which concerns me.”
Which made it a matter of Ren’s privacy, confirming to Kevin that there was more to his friend than he knew. But what the hell could it be? How had he gotten mixed up with Driff and his ilk, and why hadn’t he told his best friend about it?
“Professor Driff!” Kevin’s mother called from behind their bench. Kevin had no idea how she’d managed to sneak up on them. “Fancy meeting you here.”
> The two men turned as one to face Mrs. Felton. Makeup streaked from the exertion of her holy war, she leered at them over the barrel of the giant water gun strapped to her back, a crusader appraising a potential heathen threat.
Kevin tried to shoot her a warning look. Don’t do it, he pleaded. Please don’t do it…
“Mrs. Felton,” Driff said coolly.
“Inquiring minds want to know what, if any, association you have with the Satanic gathering I just dispersed.”
Kevin hated that tone of voice. He thought of it as her Inquisition mode; wrongs had been perpetrated upon Abelia Felton or someone or something she cared about and she wasn’t going to end her search for justice until she’d punished every last party responsible—even if it meant blasting a pistol-packing elf in the face with a Super Soaker full of holy water.
Kevin couldn’t allow that to happen. “Professor Driff’s interest in today’s proceedings was purely academic,” he countered.
Abelia cocked her left eyebrow, a slender line of short, blond hair that had asked Kevin many a pressing question throughout the years. Is that alcohol I smell on your breath? Did you really vacuum your room or am I going to find a pile of crud you swept under the bed? You and that girl were studying, huh? So that flaming bag of dog shit on Mr. Warren’s porch put itself there of its own accord? The gesture was a paralyzing, debilitating exclamation that Abelia wasn’t buying his bullshit.
“Such spectacles are rare where I’m from,” Driff said, returning Mrs. Felton’s scowl—and daring her to call his bluff. “Luckily you arrived to put an end to it.”
“So you simply watched? From right here? The entire time?”
“Yes.”
Abelia’s eyes narrowed. “And you didn’t try to stop it?”
Driff shrugged. “I didn’t think it was my place.”
The blast of holy water leapt forth from the Super Soaker like a cobra striking its prey, drilling Driff square in the face. His head jerked back violently and sent his spectacles tumbling away. Water ricocheted off the elf’s face like shrapnel raining down upon his clothing, the bench, the lawn, and the petrified, pale-faced young man seated beside him.