by Scott Colby
Kevin took a long swig of IPA and watched them disappear in the crowd between their table and the stage. His mind spun, evaluating his options. He needed to find some means of encouraging Billy to come out of his shell—easier said than done, especially considering that the reaper still hadn’t touched his beer. Nella never would’ve put up with him if he was all doom and gloom all the time. There was a spark in there somewhere. Kevin just had to find it.
“She’s very…open,” Billy muttered under his breath.
“Jenny’s always been friendly,” Kevin replied. “She likes to make sure everyone has a good time.”
“Ah. One of those.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean? Kevin ignored it. “She was the valedictorian of our graduating class. She’s smarter than she lets on.”
Billy chuckled and sniffed his beer. “Ha. So what happened?”
Kevin shrugged. “Life, I guess.”
“Life does have a way of fucking up everybody’s plans.”
“I couldn’t have said it any better myself.” Kevin took another drink. Noticing Ren looking his way from a spot at the edge of the crowd, he shook his head once as slightly as possible to warn his friend away. If this was going to work, someone needed to get Billy talking in sentences consisting of more than two words. That someone was going to have to be Kevin Felton. “Life. Plans. You sound like you speak from experience.”
The reaper’s demeanor darkened and his gaze dropped to the table. His finger traced the rough edges of one of the names carved into the wood. “Don’t we all?”
Come on, fucker. Open up. “Some more than others. Tell me, Billy: before you became—you know—what did you want to be when you grew up? A musician? A video game designer?” A rich hermit with a manservant tending to his every need and an entire housing development to himself?
Billy thought for a second. “Dead,” he replied. Kevin blanched. “Before that, believe it or not, I wanted to help people. Social work seemed okay.”
Dead. Social work. Oddly, Kevin mused, his job as a reaper gave him a mixture of both.
“And you?” Billy asked. “What did you want to be?”
“Race car,” he said dismissively. “What kind of social work were you interested in?”
“I wanted to work with kids.”
“That’ll get you more attention from the ladies than a puppy,” Kevin said happily.
Billy glanced anxiously toward the stage. Ren and Jenny stood to its left, flipping through the ratty, unbound stack of pages that constituted DJ Oberon’s karaoke book. “Can I get that attention from someone a little less…intimidating?”
“Jenny’s a great girl once you get to know her.”
“I think she’s a little too much for me.”
Kevin scratched his chin. This reaper was proving to be a much more complex individual than he’d expected based on their limited interaction in Lordly Estates. Was he really a prude, or was there more to his dislike of Jenny? Kevin suspected the latter. Something about Billy wasn’t quite right—beyond the obvious magical crap—and Kevin couldn’t put his finger on it. Discovering and exploiting the cause of Billy’s reluctance to interact with most people would be key to hooking him up with a new woman—and keeping Kevin’s soul safely up his nose where it belonged.
He needed time to think and to send Ren a clandestine text. They had to get rid of Jenny before she did something Billy really didn’t like. “Pardon me for a moment. Piss break.”
The reaper frowned slightly but didn’t protest as Kevin drained the rest of his beer and stood. Quickly skirting the trio of older women lingering behind their table, he made a beeline for the Burg’s men’s room. He’d always preferred to do his business inside, regardless of the facility’s condition. Town gossip told of one too many people who’d literally been caught in the woods with their pants down.
Harsh fluorescent light streamed out through the open door of the men’s room. Single occupancy, it was a tight space with little room to maneuver—but that hadn’t stopped all manner of stupidity from occurring inside. A chunk was missing from the cover of the toilet’s tank where Bobby Harman head-butted it in a fit of drunken rage in the eighties. Long scratch marks in the walls an outsider would’ve suspected were caused by some sort of wild animal were actually the result of a threesome involving Joe Marvick and a pair of Norton girls seven or eight years prior. The battered old vanity sank forward at a scary angle because Sweatpants Bob once decided to take a dump in the sink while the toilet was clogged. The Burg pulled in more than enough money to pay for repairs, but Fran Kesky claimed the damage gave the men’s room a bit of character not found in most modern sanitary facilities. Word on the street was that he preferred to spend his profits on hookers and blow. Kevin figured the truth was somewhere in between.
He met surprising resistance when he tried to close the door behind him. Kevin pushed harder, but a small, feminine shape squeezed inside between the door and the jamb. Almost too pretty for words, she looked up at him with big doe eyes between locks of long raven hair. A wispy white sun dress hung off her shapely frame like gauze, leaving little to the imagination. She was barefoot—not a good choice in the Burg. Kevin’s eyes were drawn to the pendant hanging just above her pale breasts, a silver crescent moon that glittered brightly in the fluorescent light.
Before he could protest, she smiled at him. Her mouth skewed slightly to the left, her two front teeth grazing her firm lower lip mischievously. Kevin knew that smile. He reached over her shoulder and slammed the door violently shut.
“Nella?”
In one lightning-quick motion she grabbed Kevin’s hand and planted a heavy kiss on his lips. No doubt about it. That was definitely Nella.
“How? Why?” Kevin stammered, stunned by both her appearance and her welcome.
“I wanted to see you,” she said gently, kissing his neck. “And I love karaoke.”
“But…why aren’t you blue?”
She rolled her eyes and fingered her pendant. “You don’t think I’m wearing this thing because I think it looks pretty, do you? I don’t know how you humans can bare to drape so much crap all over yourselves.”
Nella lifted herself up onto her toes, grabbed the back of Kevin’s head, and pulled his lips into hers. For a moment, all was right with the world. He wasn’t stuck in Harksburg, wasting a Friday night in Fran Kesky’s dirty old bathroom; he was wrapped in the warm embrace of a beautiful woman who smelled like lilacs and tasted like the crispest, cleanest spring water. The only magic that existed in the world was the warm feeling that started between his legs and raced outward through his veins. He didn’t care about elves or nymphs or immortality or best friends with secrets. He didn’t care about the personification of death waiting in the next room who would kill him if he could see what he was about to do to the woman who had left the reaper high and dry at the altar.
Actually, he did care about that last part. Taking Nella firmly by her soft shoulders, he put some space between the two of them so they could talk.
“If Billy catches us…”
“Don’t worry,” she cooed, leaning heavily against his grasp. “Reapers can’t see through walls, silly.”
“What about magic pendants?”
She shook her head. “I walked right past your idiot friend with the car and he didn’t recognize me. No one will suspect a thing.”
“Billy’s not an idiot, and he’s spent a hell of a lot more time with you than Ren has.”
Nella frowned. “Billy’s a juvenile little twit who never grew up.”
Alarms going off in his head, Kevin froze. A juvenile little twit who never grew up. That was Billy’s problem; that was why he looked so young, why he didn’t touch his beer, why he was so afraid of Jenny’s advances. He looked and acted sixteen because he was physically stuck that way. Becoming a hermit hadn’t helped. All those experiences that turned boys into men—graduating high school, getting a job or going to college, starting to drink, moving off on th
eir own, learning how to be comfortable around women—were things you couldn’t get sitting in front of a computer screen.
Kevin took Nella’s head in his hands and planted a wet, sloppy kiss on her forehead. “Nella, you’re fucking brilliant!”
“No shit.”
He yanked his phone out of his pocket and texted Ren: Billy’s still a teenager.
“Tell me what made Billy like you.”
Nella rolled her eyes again, then pouted her lip and put her left hand on her curvy hip. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Billy’s afraid of women,” Kevin said firmly. “That probably scared the shit out of him.”
“Hmm. Explains why he never really put a move on me.”
“Never?”
“Never. Boy’s pure as the driven snow.”
Kevin’s smartphone vibrated with Ren’s reply. So what? We take him to Chuck E. Cheese?
Find someone inexperienced and unassuming, Kevin typed. He looked up at Nella, thinking. The water nymph had bonded with the reaper because she missed Kevin.
And maybe a little sad, Kevin added in another text. No shots, no dancing, and give Jenny $20 to go home.
Tapping his phone against his chin, Kevin considered the situation further. He didn’t know anyone in town who fit the criteria he’d given Ren. This place had a way of squeezing the innocence right out of people, of taking the most extreme traits of their personalities and twisting them into grotesque caricatures. Everyone in Harksburg was trying to be someone: the crusading avenger for the church, the lovable-but-shrewd bartender, the rich kid who claimed he was too cultured for everything around him, the party girl who was up for any and every vice. They were all putting on a show. That shit wasn’t going to fly with Billy. Maybe there was a newcomer living on Plastic Hill who hadn’t been twisted by the place, or maybe there was a local who had escaped the Harksburg personality grist mill unscathed. Hopefully Ren knew.
Kevin wondered if maybe his judgment of the community was unfair. Maybe his innate knowledge of the way everyone was before clouded his vision; maybe this slow degradation was just the way things proceeded, regardless of location. Maybe—
A heavy knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. “What the fuck is takin’ so long in there?” a voice bellowed. It belonged to Mr. Yeardley, the town groundskeeper. “I’ve got a kid to drop off at the pool, and he’s a fucking big mother!”
Kevin looked from Nella to the narrow window. She’d fit if he could jimmy it open.
“Oh no,” she said, crossing her arms and glaring. “I’ll be damned if I’m going out that way.”
He took her shoulder gently in his hand. “I’m sorry. I have to get back out there and deal with Billy.”
Then she did something Kevin never would’ve expected. Something he would not have recommended. Something that almost made him gag.
Nella stepped into the toilet. “Flush me.”
“Um…what?”
“Water nymph, remember? This dump’s septic system leaks into the nearby swamp. I’ll be fine.”
He wrinkled his nose and looked to the vanity. “Why not use the sink?”
“They both go to the same place,” she replied mischievously. “Think of this as the express train.”
“That’s gross. You didn’t like it when Driff filled your lagoon with garbage, but you’re fine with swimming through a big tank of shit?”
“You might not mind walking through the dirt, but you aren’t going to fill your house with it.”
“Huh?”
With a sigh she reached back and pushed the lever down. Kevin watched, aghast, as her solid form turned liquid and merged with the flushing water.
“Good luck!” she chirped, offering a little wave as the rest of her melted quickly into her base element and was sucked down the drain.
Kevin shook his head, in dire need of another drink. Before leaving the bathroom, he unwound an entire roll of toilet paper and tried to flush it, hopelessly clogging the drain. He didn’t like the idea of Mr. Yeardley’s giant turd chasing Nella through the pipes, even though she was taking a one-way trip to the Burg’s septic system. He hoped she planned on taking a shower or mixing a can of disinfectant into herself.
After taking a deep breath in preparation for dealing with Billy once more, Kevin slowly pulled the door open and stepped out. He found Sweatpants Bob waiting to use the bathroom. When he recognized Kevin, Bob’s face twisted into a snarl reminiscent of an angry, rabid bear.
“You.” The stench of gin rose off the old man in waves like heat from a sidewalk on a hot day. The big man’s eyes, blurry and unfocused, boiled with rage.
“Hi.” Kevin glanced left and right, but Sweatpants Bob was so big that there was no squeezing around him. He’d have to talk his way out of this—if Sweatpants started swinging, there wouldn’t be much Kevin could do to defend himself. “I thought Mr. Yeardley was next.”
“He decided to go in the woods.”
“Oh. I think I saw the Immortalist over at the bar.”
“I’ve got a present for your mother,” Sweatpants Bob slurred. “A thank you of sorts. Make sure you give it to her.”
Sweatpants was a lot quicker than his size or blood alcohol content should’ve allowed. Kevin dodged left, but he was too late. The big man’s knuckles drilled Kevin in the chin and drove the back of his head into and then through the door behind him. The world went black. Kevin’s evening ended on the bathroom floor, unconscious in a pool of water from the overflowing toilet.
— CHAPTER FOURTEEN —
Kevin woke with a groan. His jaw ached where Sweatpants Bob had tried to cave his face in and the back of his head burned from its collision with the Burg’s bathroom door. Physics had not been his friend. He rolled onto his side and cursed Isaac Newton, gravity, inertia, and Kylie, who hadn’t been there to catch him or talk him out of his dumb plan in the first place. He knew where he was without opening his eyes, He would’ve recognized that lumpy mattress and those scratchy flannel sheets anywhere. Being laid up at home was better than being stuck in a hospital, he supposed.
Try as he might, Kevin couldn’t convince sleep to reclaim him. His mind whirled a mile a minute. How long had he been out? What happened with Billy? Did Nella manage to escape the septic tank, or was she still stuck in the Burg’s pipes? Had any of Kevin’s friends exacted upon Sweatpants Bob the revenge he’d been too unconscious to deliver himself? And, perhaps most importantly, when was life in Harksburg going to stop being so fucking ridiculous?
Half an hour later he gave up. Ignoring the waves of dull pain echoing through his skull, he sat up, swung himself out of bed, and stood on wobbling legs. A wave of nausea threatened to knock him right back down, but he swallowed and breathed deeply and fought through it. The last thing Kevin needed was a fucking concussion, so of course the universe—via Sweatpants Bob—had obliged. He supposed he was lucky not to have died in his sleep. Not that it would’ve been permanent. For all Kevin knew, he’d died seven or eight times and the delinquent reaper hadn’t come to claim him.
A hearty breakfast and a cup of coffee would put him right back on track. His mother cooked up a feast every morning—pancakes or waffles, an entire henhouse worth of eggs, bacon and sausage and sometimes a pan of corned beef hash. Abelia took her cooking almost as seriously as she did her religion and she was damn good at it. The neighbors actually looked forward to the fruitcakes she dropped off during the holidays. Every funeral reception starred a Mrs. Felton truffle bowl, every wedding or first communion one of her famous pound cakes. Kevin often tried to convince his mother to go into business for herself, but Abelia was too humble and too focused on her work for the church to give his suggestions even a moment’s consideration.
Climbing the stairs felt like scaling Everest. Kevin’s knees didn’t want to bend. Convincing his weak legs to push him up to the next step took a concerted force of will. The motion made his head spin, and he stopped every few steps to lean heavily on the thin railing and wait f
or the dizziness to subside. He wondered if Driff had any magic that could alleviate a concussion, then dismissed the thought when he realized it would probably involve rewiring his brain—or perhaps just shooting him, given what yesterday’s should-have-been-mortal wound had done for his hangover.
Kevin paused when he reached the top of the stairs, catching his breath and letting his head and vision settle down. Maybe getting dusted when this was all over wouldn’t be so bad. He didn’t want to remember finding Oscar and Doorknob dead in the Works, or watching his mother chase people around the town common with a Super Soaker loaded with holy water, or the look of pain and terror on Ren’s face when Billy pulled his soul out through his nose. He certainly wouldn’t mind forgetting that time Driff shot him or the sensation of Sweatpants Bob’s meaty fist impacting his face. All told, he pretty much wished the last week had never fucking happened.
But then there was Nella. Kevin probably never would’ve learned she was real if it hadn’t been for Driff’s intervention in the local drama. Suddenly more than just a recurring dream, he’d realized the water nymph was the real love of his life. Surely that would be the first thing the elf yanked from his memories.
Maybe that would be a fair trade. He wasn’t sure.
Kevin dismissed the thought and stumbled down the hallway to the dining room. The good green china Abelia always used for Saturday morning brunch waited for him on the table, piled high with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and home fries. Unfortunately, one of the seats at the table was occupied.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Kevin grumbled as he dropped into a seat opposite the unwanted guest.
Oscar Spuddner smiled meekly and buttered an English muffin. “I…ummm…” He wouldn’t meet Kevin’s eye, staring down at the pile of scrambled eggs and home fries on his plate instead. For some reason, Spuddner wore the pink bathrobe Abelia usually favored in the mornings. His red hair stuck out from his head in random tufts and his eyes were caked with sleep.