by Scott Colby
“I shall continue in my current capacity until a replacement is found. I pray that you will consider my suggestion, and that you are successful in dragging Master Billy free from the doldrums in which he is currently mired. He is a good boy, albeit a bit overly emotional. He needs a friend—and I believe you, at the very least, have already satisfied that requirement.
“Please note that your involvement in this program also releases you from any obligations to Evitankari or Tallisker. You would become a legal part of the world in which they and Billy operate, with all the privileges and protections that entails.
“Cordially Yours, Mr. Pemberton.”
A stupid smile spreading across his face, Kevin put the note down and examined the accompanying form: it was a job application, already cosigned by Mr. Pemberton.
Billy lunged across the bed, scooped up Nella in his arms, and kissed her more passionately than he’d ever kissed anyone in his entire life.
“What is it?” she asked when he finally came up for air a few minutes later.
“Mr. Pemberton just dust proofed me!”
Nella snatched up the two documents and read them carefully. Kevin scrambled over to his desk, grabbed a pen, then sat back down on the bed beside her.
“Shit,” she snapped as she handed the paperwork back to him. “You’re lucky you’re so fucking handsome, because your critical thinking and decision-making skills leave a lot to be desired.”
“It’ll work,” Kevin replied, busily filling out his personal information.
“My kind have a saying,” the water nymph continued. “Don’t poke the troll unless you want it to tear your fucking arms off.”
Kevin looked up at Nella in confusion. “Billy’s not a troll.”
“Right. He’s something much, much worse.”
He brushed her concerns aside and asked her assistance with the first question on the form. “What are my five strongest skills or qualities?”
“Drinking heavily, feeling sorry for yourself, getting punched in the face, and putting yourself into dangerous situations you should know better to put yourself into.” She paused for a moment and squinted, thinking. “And fucking.”
“Not bad, but we need to change the language a little: my strong work ethic, the ease with which I feel empathy for others, my strong resolve, my unflappable courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.” He mimicked Nella’s squinting pause. “And my attention to detail.”
The water nymph smiled that irresistible smile, setting his heart aflutter. “Fuck you, Kevin Felton,” she said with a sigh. “I’m glad someone finds all this funny.”
Setting the folder and the application aside, he leaned across the bed to take her hand in his. “If I take this position, Driff can’t dust me,” Kevin said softly. “This’ll buy us some time. Billy won’t be hung up on you forever.”
She sighed again, tears in her eyes. “I suppose. But working that closely with Billy is an even bigger risk than the one you’re taking now. I still think you should run, Kevin. Get the hell out of here and don’t come back. If anything happens to you…I missed you. While you were gone. But at least I knew you were all right.”
He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
— CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE —
Having gone to bed with a belly full of champagne, a satisfied libido, and the buoyancy of a man finally free of worry, Kevin Felton slept better than he had in months. He didn’t dream. He didn’t move. He didn’t wake until his alarm went off at nine the next morning. Nella was gone, as usual, the only evidence of her passing the twisted sheets she’d left on her side of the bed. With a mighty yawn, he sat up and stretched his arms wide. He couldn’t wait to get all the details from Billy. With any luck, the reaper’s romantic encounter had already healed his broken heart and put him back on the job.
The dining room was empty, the table set with the usual two places. Kevin helped himself to a seat and a cheese danish from the plate in the center of the table, then opened up the newspaper waiting on his mother’s usual chair. Skipping the national news, Kevin eagerly flipped to the local section to skim the headlines. He found what he was looking for in the bottom right corner of page fourteen, a tiny story shoved at the last minute into a spot reserved for a cheap advertisement: “R. Fredricks, Former Harksburg Councilman, Dead at 78.” Kevin joyously slammed his palm down onto the table, rattling the place settings. Everyone in town knew Fredricks had been confined to the Golden Dawn Rest Home on the far side of Plastic Hill. Billy was already back on the job!
“What’s all the fuss about?” a familiar voice asked from the kitchen.
Kevin froze, every muscle in his body arrested in shock. He bit back a curse, hoping he was just hearing things.
Billy strolled into the dining room with a big smile on his young face, a heaping plate of scrambled eggs and fried potatoes balanced precariously in his hands. The reaper looked downright ridiculous in Mrs. Felton’s pink bathrobe, but he didn’t seem to care.
Oh, that fucking figures, Kevin thought as he tried to force his lips to make a friendly smile. His heart raced as he carefully closed the newspaper, folded it, and set it aside.
“Are you all right?” Billy asked as he sat down opposite Kevin, setting the plate in between them.
“Fine,” Kevin stammered. Honesty, he decided, would probably be the best policy—and the best way to keep his soul in his body where it belonged. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
The reaper blushed. “Well, your mother’s a wonderful woman. We started talking in the Burg last night and sort of hit it off.”
“Good. Good.” Not good. Not good at all.
“Don’t worry,” Billy said casually as he shoveled a pile of eggs onto his plate. “I’ll treat her right. And when we get married, I won’t make you call me Papa or Father or anything like that. Sir will do.”
Although Kevin felt like he was about to vomit, he managed an awkward laugh. “Thanks.”
“Thanks…who?”
“Don’t fucking push it, sir.”
They shared a genuine laugh and Kevin relaxed. He began to think that maybe this could work. Maybe this was a one-time thing, a means of blowing off steam. Maybe, if it turned out to be something more, Billy and Abelia would find what they needed from each other and move on without any drama. Stranger things had happened—many of them in the last couple of days—and the reaper was certainly a step up from Mrs. Felton’s other conquests. He’d actually give a shit about her, unlike Kevin’s other scumbag friends. Things could get difficult, though, if “giving a shit” turned into “clinging mightily to Abelia’s leg like she’s the last woman on earth.” For now, though, Billy was content with his life and back to fulfilling his reaper duties—and that, Kevin decided, made the situation worth the risk.
Abelia whirled into the kitchen wearing nothing but a Styx T-shirt that barely covered her thighs. “Who wants hash?” she chirped merrily as she dropped a steaming plate of the stuff on the table. “The meaty kind, not the green kind. At least not before noon.”
“Thanks, Ma,” Kevin said. Abelia Felton’s pork hash was renowned throughout Harksburg. There had been a month back in eighth grade where Doorknob stopped by every morning to pick up a plastic container of it for lunch. That habit came to a screeching halt one day when Jim Jimeson dumped the entire container down the back of Doorknob’s pants.
As the two young men eagerly shoveled food onto their plates, Abelia lit a cigarette. “That reminds me, Kevin. I got you a present. I’ll be right back, boys!” She stormed into the kitchen, leaving a wispy trail of smoke swirling behind her.
“Your mother’s so nice,” Billy said in between mouthfuls of hash. “You’re lucky to have her.”
Kevin nodded and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He wasn’t one to talk about such things so openly. “What’s your mother like?”
It was Billy’s turn to look awkward. “Not like that,” he said softly.
&
nbsp; “Here we go!” Abelia returned from the kitchen carrying a plastic shopping bag stuffed with some sort of blue clothing. She quickly rounded the table to stand behind Kevin. “I had this made special when you still had a fucking job. They wouldn’t let me return it.”
Kevin continued to eat, ignoring the sounds of the crackling bag and unfolding fabric behind him. If whatever his mother was up to was going to make her happy, he could bear it. Probably.
“Stop eating so I can get this over your head properly!”
He set his fork and knife down on his plate and leaned back in his chair to let Abelia work. Something long and blue swooped down over his face and came to rest on his chest, held loosely against his body by a string that looped around the back of his neck. An apron.
“There!” Abelia declared, giggling to herself. “Everybody at the Burg would’ve loved it!”
Across the table, Billy froze. His eyes narrowed to mere slits, the very air around him seeming to grow heavy with malice. “Poofy,” he snarled, spitting the word like a vile curse.
At first, the word didn’t register with Kevin. Poofy? What the hell was a Poofy, and why was Billy so angry about it? The scene didn’t seem real, it couldn’t be real, because then the worst-case scenario for Kevin’s future had come to its horrifying fruition despite everything he’d done to avoid it—and Abelia, who was still giggling, obviously found the whole thing very funny. He risked a look down at the front of the apron. “Hi!” it declared in big red letters. “My name is Poofy!”
Kevin reached up to cover his nose, but the reaper was inhumanly fast. Billy leapt across the table and jammed his fingers into Kevin’s face, narrowly missing his target. Mrs. Felton cursed as the two of them crashed to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. “I swear I didn’t know she was your fiancée!” Kevin shouted as he deflected one of Billy’s hands with his forearm. He assumed something akin to the fetal position, pulling his legs up to his chest and guarding his face with his fists and arms like a boxer. Billy responded by driving his knee between Kevin’s legs and right into his balls. A high-pitched gasp signaled the end of Kevin’s defense.
“What the hell was that?” Abelia demanded. “Fight like a man, you asshole!”
And then Billy’s fingers shot up Kevin’s nose and violently yanked out something important. Pain wasn’t the word for the sensation that tore through his body; it felt more like his nerves were panicking because they didn’t know how to deal with the information coursing from neuron to neuron. Once the reaper had firm grip on Kevin’s soul, Billy threw himself backward with all his might. The straining threads that held Kevin’s life inside his body snapped viciously. His perspective suddenly shifted a few feet forward so he was staring Billy square in the face. All sense of weight disappeared, as did the tearing sensation. He felt free, unbridled by the physical world. On one level, he realized that this was the sort of profound trip shamans and mystics of all sorts had pursued since the dawn of man, that he’d been granted a unique chance to experience an altered state of consciousness through which he might come to understand many of the world’s mysteries. Those thoughts, however, were soon drowned out by a much louder chorus of overwhelming dread. His soul was no longer attached to his physical form—and that just plain wasn’t right. Kevin lurched against the reaper’s grip, desperately straining to return to his body, but Billy’s grasp was impossible to break.
Abelia slapped Billy in the back of the head. “Put that back!” she snapped.
“I don’t think so,” he said angrily. “Poofy and I are going to have some fun.”
— CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX —
Abelia Felton knelt beside Kevin’s lifeless body on the dining room floor and glared up at the man responsible for her son’s fate. “I mean it, you piece of shit. Put it back.” Billy shrugged, his attention locked on the disembodied soul wriggling desperately between the fingers of his left hand. “After everything my new best friend has done for me? I don’t think so. Would you happen to have a Thermos or some sort of travel mug?”
“In the cabinet above the toaster.”
“Thank you.”
He left Abelia with Kevin’s corpse and strolled purposefully into the kitchen. Kevin could feel the blood pumping wildly through Billy’s hand and fingers, the heat of the reaper’s anger seeping into whatever the hell his detached soul was made of. Ectoplasm, maybe? When Billy had pulled Ren’s soul most of the way out of his nose upon their first meeting, what came out was a glowing, ethereal reproduction of Ren himself. Remembering that, he decided the word ectoplasm sounded far too sticky for what he’d seen and the way he now felt. His very being felt loose and transient, as if he were held together with strands of loose dental floss where once there’d been muscle and sinew. Weight held no meaning, but his sense of gravity had shifted drastically so that “down” had become the direction toward his soulless body. Although Kevin had more important things to worry about, focusing on and examining such minutiae helped ground his mind and stave off the desperate fear threatening to overwhelm him.
“Be afraid, you lying piece of shit,” Billy muttered as he passed the old white refrigerator on his way to the cabinets on the opposite wall. He swung his hands as he walked, alternately giving Kevin a view of his surroundings and of his own hip. The odd angle gave him a great view of the underside of the kitchen’s upper cabinets. Some sort of tiny gray spider had started spinning a web in the corner.
The reaper sighed. “You’ve got more important things to worry about.”
So you can read my mind? Kevin thought.
“You don’t really have a mind anymore,” Billy replied as he opened the cabinet above the dishwasher.
On the counter below, a pile of neglected pancakes drew Kevin’s attention. Funny how he already missed having a mouth that would water at the sight of his mother’s cooking.
I’m sorry, Kevin tried, knowing it was his only chance—and that he meant it.
Billy hesitated, wobbling on his feet for a moment as he examined the cabinet’s contents. “Whatever.”
It was that or let you have my soul. Do you really blame me for the choice I made?
Blinking back tears, the reaper stood on his toes and reached for something on the top shelf. “Yes. Especially because you automatically assumed the worst.”
You yanked Ren’s soul out through his fucking nose!
“He was bothering me. I put it back,” Billy replied defensively. There was no mistaking the mix of confusion and malice in his voice; the reaper’s emotions were a mess, and so he erred on the side of malevolence.
Kevin worked quickly, hoping to mask the thought that he might be able to take advantage of the reaper’s indecisiveness. Ren can be an annoying shit, but let’s focus here. I had no clue you were engaged to Nella. She came to me.
Billy withdrew a Blackhawks travel mug from the cupboard and set it down on the counter beside the pancakes. “How many cups do you think this holds?” he asked, his voice quivering. “Two? Maybe three?”
Seriously, Kevin continued, pouring fear and regret into his thoughts. What did you expect me to do, turn myself in so you’d do this to me?
A low growl rumbled in the reaper’s chest. “You never even gave me a chance. You presumed I’d hurt you and started lying.”
Kevin couldn’t believe whatever he had that still functioned as ears. Billy obviously didn’t get it; his reaper powers made him so much more dangerous and unpredictable than the average spurned lover that dealing with him simply as such would’ve been impossible. Had he been dealing with a normal person without magic powers, Kevin would’ve manned up and taken whatever licks he’d had to take. A good right hook, however, was nothing compared to having his spirit violently exorcised from its own body.
“Well aren’t you just a stand-up fucking guy,” the reaper muttered as he unscrewed the travel mug’s cap and sniffed its interior. “And Abelia, trust me when I tell you that you really, really don’t want to do that.”
Billy t
urned to face Kevin’s mother, who’d decided to sneak up behind them. She’d unscrewed one of the wooden legs from a dining room chair and now brandished it like a club, her determined scowl making it very clear that she planned to bash the reaper’s brains in.
“Give me back my son and I won’t have to hurt you.”
Yes! Kevin thought, mentally cheering his mother on. She never would’ve threatened someone with a weapon prior to her mental rewiring. Old Abelia would’ve appealed to Billy’s inner goodness, citing scripture and insisting that the reaper’s current circumstances were all a part of God’s plan, another in a long set of challenges built to test his soul’s mettle and prove the quality of his spirit. When that inevitably failed, she would’ve flipped the switch and triggered what he’d come to think of as Old Testament Mode, replacing her useless platitudes with an equally ineffective downpour of hellfire and brimstone. New Abelia, however, wasn’t going to waste her time with any of that shit. She was going to kick some ass and take some names and then go smoke a cigarette, and then Kevin was going to go find Driff and plant a big wet kiss on the elf’s meddling face.
“Don’t worry,” Billy said. “You’ll get your precious Poofy back. He and I have some business to attend to first. Man stuff. You wouldn’t understand.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Try me.”
Billy hesitated for a moment, considering. “My bride-to-be left me for this jerk when he came back to Harksburg. Rather than do the honorable thing and admit his involvement, he befriended me in a misguided attempt to save his own putrid skin by lying his stupid fucking head off.”
“Sounds like something he would do,” Abelia muttered, rolling her eyes.
Thanks, Ma! Kevin screamed. You’re a real pal. Just club the son of a bitch already!
“And now he really, really wants you to hit me,” Billy added. “Your son’s an asshole.”
Mrs. Felton nodded. “Yeah, but he’s my favorite asshole, so you see where you and I have a teensy little problem.”