by R. M. Ridley
“How about I give you another payment plan?”
The weasel in the blue suit raised a single eyebrow, a maneuver Jonathan firmly believed this particular individual actively practiced in the mirror, over and over.
“I pay you nothing, until the day I die, and then, as my last act of generosity, I’ll leave you double the amount in my will?”
The weasel wrinkled his lips. “I am getting bored with this, Mr. Alvey. Perhaps I need to make myself more clear.”
The evangelist suit-stealer stood up, took a small, black quartz orb from his pocket, and began to roll it in the palm of this hand. He spoke evenly and concisely, pronouncing each word with perfection. Dark yellow tendrils squirmed around the practitioner’s hand and the orb.
Jonathan assumed the drawn out nature of the performance had been to give him time to squirm in trepidation of the invoked spell. He thought it only fair to warn the man against casting that particular spell on him, but again his words were cut short as an undead thug rammed his hand into Jonathan’s stomach. At least these two ‘second life’ employees moved slow enough to allow Jonathan to tense his muscles before the battering ram connected.
His middle management guest finished the spell and released it.
The blue-suited weasel wasn’t worried about it hitting the zombies, as the undead were immune to the spell, especially with pain as its main feature. Even if they weren’t immune, Jonathan bet the man still wouldn’t have worried.
The wave of energy hit Jonathan and shook his bones like they were the dice of unspeakably ugly gambling gods. It caused his tendons to tighten until he feared they would snap and fray.
Jonathan ground his teeth together for the split second the spell washed over him. Then, the inked ring of wards and protective sigils inlaid under his skin did their job and repulsed the spell.
Jonathan watched the practitioner’s eyes grow wide as he realized his mistake. The next second, the rebounded spell pounded the man’s body.
His head snapped back first. Then he flopped to the floor with all the grace of a beanbag doll where he thumped about as though filled with beans of the Mexican jumping variety.
It always confused Jonathan why so few people thought to bother with permanent protection. A few hours putting up with a needle made a world of difference when it came to this game. At the very least, the man could have had wards woven into the pattern of his awful tie.
However, most practitioners couldn’t be bothered to slip a knotted cord with a sprig of Wormwood tied to it around their neck. They all acted like to take such measures equated to cheating, or being a bad sport.
Witches, on the whole, approached these things with some sensibility and he admired them for it.
Jonathan liked to take a drop or two of distilled Wormwood every couple days, just to be sure. The green fairy had helped him out on more than one occasion.
“I think your boss needs some help,” he pointed out to the two brutes holding him.
A long moment passed when the two barely living things on either side of him tried to figure out what to do. At least Jonathan assumed so but, as he feared, they ended up doing nothing.
Barely self-automated, these sorts were cheaply animated beings designed only for muscle. Their command spells didn’t include making decisions. Because of this, they remained as they had last been instructed, holding Jonathan a couple inches off the floor, his arms starting to go numb.
Their master lay sprawled on the floor, out cold for the moment. The spell he’d cast had warped and twisted when it reacted to the protection Jonathan had around his neck. The outcome had morphed from a long painful torment into something more like being hit by a series of blast waves.
With a sigh, Jonathan hung in the air, wishing he could at least be using the time to enjoy a smoke. He really did have better things to do.
The realization came to him that maybe he didn’t have to wait.
Neither of the thugs had hit him last time he spoke. He figured, in all likelihood, the zombies only hit people on some cue from their handler. That guy was out cold on his floor.
Jonathan smiled.
He took the chance his brain was somewhat functional . . . even without his first shot of bourbon. Jonathan began to rub his fingers together. Speaking the spell softly, he conjured an eerie green flame on his fingers and with the influx of magic, he felt the dairy-gone-bad condition he had woke with slide off him.
As soon as the flame had gained enough substance, he tossed it into the air with a flick of his wrist. The next part would be tricky, but he felt the familiar tug inside commanding him to use.
His body responded to the flow of energy through him. It fed him adrenaline and gave him the rush to carry on.
Drawing from deep inside, Jonathan fed the eerie flame with his own energy. With the complexity of the incantation and of the finger manipulations, he worried about making an error due to his current situation.
From the place only practitioners dare ever tap, the deepest core buried not only in the heart, not only in the head, but behind, between, and beyond the body itself came the answer to his call.
He felt the change in the molecules in his brain. Minuscule explosions within his bones triggered endorphins even as the power ate the source.
And almost too soon, the spell fire had grown large enough. A wavering sheet of flickering green crackled in the air before him.
He had all but mumbled the incantation, yet it had worked. Jonathan pulled the energy pulsing out of him back, and with it came a wall of flame.
It touched him and felt like his psyche had licked the top of a nine-volt battery, a tingling in the depths of his very being.
The spell engulfed him and the two creatures on either side. A defibrillator discharged against his soul and he was thrown back with the force of a troll’s fist.
It took a second for his vision to stop blurring. When it did, Jonathan witnessed his own unconscious body tumble to the ground before him, entangled with the limbs of the corpses on either side.
The spell was meant to knock a bound spirit from the flesh. Looking down at his own form, inert on the floor, he guessed he’d made it a bit too strong. He hadn’t even known such a possible outcome could occur.
Where the souls of the zombie went, he couldn’t see, but then only wisps of the spirit were used in the process. Jonathan hated astral form. There were many dangers inherent in the non-corporeal state. Plus, his unoccupied body lying on the floor could be filled by a number of greedy spirits.
He thought about the chances of a revenant, also known as a ‘hungry ghost,’ being in the area. Revenants all too often didn’t even come from the lingering spirits of people but the spirits of other less savory things. Either way, they remained vicious, hedonistic, starving spirits. Once given flesh, they caused only pain and chaos.
Jonathan didn’t like the idea of another in his body and focused on getting back to it.
Being far from the first time he’d found himself outside his body, Jonathan knew the way to return. He filled his thoughts with those experiences of the living. He focused on the sound of the heart, the double beat that drives the body.
When the rhythm remained constant in his mind, an underlying sound he no longer needed to focus on, he imagined the sensation of air being drawn into the lungs and expelled again.
From there, he moved on to the sense of smell, remembering the scents which lingered in the room. Luckily, he had separated from his body in his own space where the olfactory experience was ingrained.
Last, he thought about the feeling of the floor against his back, the fresh pain in his abdomen from where the punches had landed.
Suddenly, it slid from remembered sensation to actual experience.
Jonathan flexed his fingers, twisted his neck, and curled his toes as much as he could in his shoes. He seemed to be whole, which meant time to move.
Freeing himself from the appendages of the two bodies whose souls he’d just swept out into th
e hall, Jonathan rose to his feet.
However, he had just proved the effect of the spell failed to be a permanent one. The spirits would be able to find their way back to their bodies. Although, Jonathan suspected the binding spell had been second-rate at best and now easily ignored.
The souls would go on their way to do whatever amused them: haunting a lost loved one, wandering the halls of the building, or battering themselves against every bright light looking for a tunnel.
He wondered if his physical contact to the zombies had any connection to his own out-of-body experience.
“Still,” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck, “might be time for a new tattoo.”
Jonathan lit the cigarette he’d been craving. The nicotine helped to wrestle the stronger addiction back into the cage he carried around inside himself. Dragging deep on it, he contemplated the three bodies in his room.
Clearly, Apatedyne just hadn’t gotten the hint Jonathan had tried to send their way. He decided to stop being subtle. The time had come to find the right stone for his sling.
The two bodies by the door had become nothing but waste material. Disposing of the corpses was one thing—he’d already done it once this week— but the third of the trio remained something of an issue.
With a sigh, Jonathan crouched down, grabbed the legs of the first body, and dragged it down the hall to the public washroom.
Years ago, he had converted the last two stalls into a disposal site. It hadn’t been a problem, and no one had complained, since the other offices hardly ever saw any use.
Oddly, no one seemed to want to rent a space anywhere near Jonathan’s place of business for very long. Most people who passed the building assumed it a derelict, which suited Jonathan just fine.
Until the day came where he got trapped under a fallen bookshelf and no one could hear him calling for help, the emptier the better as far as he was concerned.
When he’d gotten the second corpse safely stowed away in the washroom, Jonathan turned his attention to the creep in the suit. He needed to send a message to the company. He needed to make sure the Apatedyne fools who ranked higher than this one understood it wasn’t profitable to keep interfering with his life.
Jonathan secured the man to a chair by tying his feet to the chair legs and his wrists to the arm rests. That was when he noticed the cufflinks. It was the practitioner’s symbol, but in white and red, not black. It was a bastardization that was supposed to mark the wearer as a direct descendant of Merlin. Jonathan thought it likely that if such a character had existed, he’d be spinning and gagging in his tree at the thought of this man being a descendant.
Under a pink fluffy coat, he found a scarf laying on the floor, which he promptly shoved into the man’s mouth. As the final act of securing his assailant, Jonathan wound a bunch of Scotch tape around his captive’s hands so he would not be able to move his fingers.
Having eliminated any worry about the Apatedyne’s agent, Jonathan got on with his plans.
Sitting down at his desk, Jonathan placed the call to his client. The short conversation quickly turned depressing.
Apparently, Wendell had taken his advice and brought home a bottle of wine, which he had drunk rather quickly. Jonathan found his client, Wendell Courtney, on the wrong side of hung-over.
Wendell had awoken feeling miserable, and his condition had only degraded after reading his horoscope in the morning’s paper.
Jonathan hadn’t seen a Tribune at the bus stop on his way in, so he didn’t know what might have been printed in it. He really didn’t feel he needed to know the exact wording to know its message, however. Wendell read it to him just the same.
It said some vague thing about old friends, then went on to advise taking calculated risks and ended by saying those born on Wendell’s birthday should make sure their affairs were in order—as they would not see the week’s end.
Jonathan made his excuses. He told Wendell not to give up hope. He assured him they were bound to make a break in this yet. Then, feeling like a real louse, he hung up.
He had no idea what to do about his client’s problem. Hell, Jonathan admitted to himself, I don’t even know what the problem is.
Nothing had changed and he still had nothing to go on.
Putting aside that quandary for the moment, Jonathan decided to deal with the job of disposing of the two bodies.
He gathered up a box of salt, a bottle of lighter fluid, his flask of holy water, and a half empty propane torch and brought them to the washroom.
Jonathan saw no point in not being civil about the thing, even if the people had signed up for the job of being employees post expiration. From the actions and behavior of the living employees, Jonathan didn’t doubt most of Apatedyne workforce had signed such a contract. Still, he told himself, it shouldn’t stop him from giving them a touch of decency in their final demise.
Standing over the two corpses, laid out side by side, Jonathan sprinkled them with holy water and said the same prayer he had heard his father say so many times during his life.
The last memories of his father could only be called dreadful and they still caused him pain, but Jonathan had fonder ones from his childhood to call on.
He sprinkled the bodies with salt, to be sure their spirits wouldn’t try to get back in at the last second, and then squirted them both with a quarter of the bottle of lighter fluid.
He wanted to use magic to ignite the lighter fluid but gritted his teeth and suppressed the urge.
When his half-smoked cigarette hit the accelerant, there was the tell-tale whomp of the fuel catching before flame consumed the two bodies.
A few minutes later, Jonathan watched the last glowing embers die in the vaguely human drifts of dark ash. He hadn’t thought he would need the heat produced by the propane torch for these two, but it was better to have it and not need it than the other way around.
Jonathan turned on the tap and, with the attached short hose, washed the remains down the drain that had once housed a porcelain seat. A wet floor became the only evidence something had happened in the room.
Jonathan turned off the water, coiled up the hose, and went back down the hall to his office.
Don’t bother,” Jonathan said when he found his uninvited guest straining against his bonds. “I may not have been a Boy Scout, but I always loved knots.”
The man stiffened at the sound of his voice.
“Still do,” Jonathan said, coming around to stand in front of him, “which is why I was thinking about tying your intestines into a Celtic curse knot while they were still inside your body.”
The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed. His eyes bulged in his sweat-slicked face, transforming him from weasel to toad. Under his ugly tie, his shirt was plastered to his chest.
Jonathan thought it was partly due to fear, but some of it had to be from working so hard to free himself.
“. . . But then I thought,” Jonathan continued and placed another chair in front of his captive. He sat down, leaning his arms on the top of the seat back. “Someone might just open you up.”
He made a slicing motion. “And untie those knots.” He sighed dramatically.
“Which would leave you either dead or pissed.” He seesawed his hand. “If the latter, you’d probably come back looking for revenge. Well, I mean after all of those agonizing moments you endured as the curse radiated out from your own guts . . .” He shrugged.
The man relaxed slightly against the chair.
“That led me to think I should make sure you can’t come back and enact any sort of revenge.”
The man started to freak out. The chair bounced as he strained his bonds. Jonathan reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“But don’t worry; I won’t kill you.”
The man’s shoulders slumped.
“No, because you see, I need you to go back to your people. It’s your job now to make it abundantly clear how unprofitable it would be to keep wasting their property, and personnel, on tryin
g to prove a point with me.”
Jonathan took out his flask and wet his mouth, the bourbon burning away some of the bite of his withdrawal from the magic.
“See, I want there to be no doubt in your company’s mind that the most cost-productive thing to do about this whole thing would be to pull out. Take your people, close the branch, get out of New Hades, and then forget about me entirely.”
The man nodded his head vigorously.
“Great!” Jonathan said. “I’m glad we’re on the same page here.”
He got up and went into his room, continuing to talk to his guest. “You go back to the head honchos at Apatedyne . . .” He got a glass container filled with red flakes, a container of gunpowder, and an ivory box from the closet. “Explain how it’s best to move on and not to bother incurring any more losses.”
He grabbed the last item he’d need and came back into the room. “And I make sure you can’t come back with revenge on your mind.”
The man’s eyes were glued to the knife in Jonathan’s hands. Once more, he started to shake his head and twist his body. From behind the scarf came the muffled sounds of the man pleading.
“Come now, I thought we were on the same page.” Jonathan said calmly.
The man’s panic had filled the room with the stench of sweat.
“We have to show the company how unprofitable it is, right? Wasting a talented man like yourself,” Jonathan placed the items on the desk, “over what I did to the company. That will really drive home the point. I think you’ll agree.”
He grabbed the back of the chair and dragged the man beside the secretary’s desk.
“Let’s begin, shall we?”
He picked up the knife and looked solemnly at the man.
“You don’t have to . . . you know . . . ‘be a man’ for my sake. Feel free to scream just as much as you wanted to make me scream. No one’s in the building but you and me, so you won’t be disrupting anyone’s work.”
Taking the left hand first, Jonathan dug the tip of the blade into the man’s flesh, between the knuckles of his pinkie. He carved through the tape and, ignoring the welling blood and muffled shrieks, cut a powerful sigil representing two bull heads butting.