by Dick Denny
“Bullshit.” My answer was unthought and instinctually reflexive.
He shrugged as much as you can duct-taped to a chair.
“You are fucking telling me,” I said slowly, making sure I didn’t make this sound more stupid than it already was, “that I took down the, I dunno, demonic A-Team?”
Again, and it was getting annoying, he shrugged.
“Where’s the cool van?” I asked, half-curious, half-playing along.
“Haha.” His mock laugh was so mocking it was drier than the Namib Desert.
“So why the A-Team?” I didn’t care for the apparent fact that the most formative live-action TV show had been co-opted by demons, and runty looking ones at that.
“Name me another easily remembered foursome,” he sardonically offered.
“The Beatles, Channel 4 News Crew, the Ghostbusters, the Four Musketeers…”
“Three Musketeers,” he interrupted.
“No, you started with three. Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. But they got joined by Dartanion, didn’t they? Asshole.”
He cocked his head sideways at a wholly unnatural angle. “What’s the name of the book?”
“The Three Musketeers.”
“And what’s the name of the movie?” He rolled his head to the same angle but the other way.
“Which one?”
“Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Raquel Welch, Charlton Heston, and Christopher Lee.” He licked his upper lip and I noticed his tongue was forked with a cartoonish absurdity. “You know, the good version.”
“The Three Musketeers, but there was The Four Musketeers.” The the little bitch demon think he was going to out-movie-trivia me?
“And the Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Oliver Platt, Chris O’Donnell version by Disney that Tim Curry couldn’t quite make live up to its predecessor?”
I sighed. “The Three Musketeers.”
“Want me to keep going?” He asked in a manner so off-handed it belayed the fact it was duct-taped to a chair.
“I want you to shut the fuck up unless you plan on giving me what I need without me having to resort to what we both know is coming if you keep this up.” I felt the Wrath bubbling in me. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the recent fight, or just the time and proximity to the demon. I didn’t know, and I honestly didn’t care right then and there.
“You haven’t asked a substantial question yet.” He spoke slowly with what sounded like an oink for punctuation.
I looked into his beady demon eyes. “What the fuck were you after at my office?”
“The Sword.” It was an easy answer to give but the little bastard gave it pretty bluntly.
“What about Lucifer?” I asked quietly. I knew Uncle Lew didn’t want the Sword, he wanted balance.
“What about him?” He was trying to be a Gretchen-level of coy and failing miserably.
“Don’t toy with me, cock bag.” I felt the Wrath trying to bubble up in my gut.
He smiled. “Beelzebub wasn’t exactly following the party line.”
“And why’s that?”
The imp tried to shrug. “Who says Heaven has to win?”
I smirked and leaned back and crossed my arms. “Well, seems they got numbers, quality, and you know… The capital-F Father on their side.”
“The last Throne sanction was Sodom and Gamora. Since then, what’s he done since then besides the 2004 World Series.”
“What about the plagues of Egypt?” I arched my eyebrows, trying to antagonize him into talking more.
“That was our first try and jackasses didn’t give credit where credit was due.”
“Huh?”
The imp sighed. “So the Father, through Gabrielle anyway, sure did go tell Moses to free his people. But that’s it.” He smiled, and it seemed to legitimately be pleasure-filled. “But water to blood, frogs, lice, flies, livestock plague, boils, hail and fire, locusts, three days of darknesss…” He smiled like he was removing the most succulent dish he ever tasted. “Murder of the firstborn.” He leaned in as much as he could, strapped to the chair. “Do those sound like the acts of your omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omnipresent Father?”
“As opposed to what?”
He licked his lips with that forked tongue with a wet sucking sound. “A bunch of demons trying to help His People get home because they want to as well…”
“Bullshit.”
“Some of us wanted to go home. You think Hell belongs to us? It’s OUR prison. Doesn’t make it any better to be the spiritual overflow for you meat bags who don’t make the divine cut. But when the door slams we’re trapped forever.” He sounded almost plaintiff like. “We wanted to go home so we tried to help Moses on the mission given him by the Father because we wanted to go home.”
“Bullshit.”
He sighed. “Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to. Mister Found Family, Mister Walked Away From Home and Never Looked Back, Mister Sociopath Doesn’t Give a Shit, Mister Wanna be My-Life-Moves-In-One-Direction-Don-Freaking-Forward-Draper. News flash, meat bag, some people wish they could go home. Some people long for it. Some of us, as the phrase goes, would give our left nut to go back home. To be welcomed with the open arms the Father offers you rotting bags of flesh.” A literal tear rolled from his eye. “You meat bags get to go… and I—we—never get to go back. Go home.”
I chewed on it a second. Mainly because it hadn’t dawned on me how much pretty much any demon in Hell probably knew about me. One shape form or fashion all of them would have known my mom. All of them would have gotten the boot the same as her back in the beginning. Maybe because I’m just the fucked-up guy I am because deep down I’m just an unwitting celebrity kid.
Then the idea quickly evaporated. I became the asshole I chose to be. Not because fate or the genetic fucking lottery. Fuck that little imp motherfucker.
“Boo fucking hoo.” I leaned in on my elbows. “I got permanently banned from a Walmart, want to know why? Because of something I did—that ban’s on me.”
That tear lingered at his cheek just at the corner of his mouth. “How do you get banned from a Walmart?”
“Doesn’t fucking matter. Lucifer himself said your side can’t win. So why make a play for the Sword?”
“You didn’t know she was alive when you took down the Heaven’s Hotdogs. You didn’t know you’d win when you fought the Bearer. You did it because you hoped.”
“So you’re telling me hope’s a hell of a drug?”
He nodded.
I sighed. “There anything useful you can tell me?”
“Not that I’m willing to,” he said with an odd resignation. Like he knew what was coming, what had always been coming since the moment we strapped him to the chair, the moment he showed up in my hall, the moment he was created.
“Torturing you wouldn’t do a goddamned bit of good, would it?”
He shook his head.
I sighed and got up. I walked around behind him and he didn’t turn his head to watch. I grabbed him by the horns and started twisting. I wrenched his head around a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, then another one-eighty. Giving him a full five hundred and forty degrees of rotation. His chin sat between his diminutive shoulder blades. I let go of the horns and stepped back.
He looked up. “Did you really expect that to work? I mean, you’ve seen Linda Blair in The Exorcist, right?”
“Are you going to vomit pea soup all over me?” I asked, suddenly concerned about my black suit. I didn’t want to have to change clothes again today.
“Would it help you finish this?” He cocked his head and it looked jacked up doing that backward.
Curiosity hit me like a Mack truck. “Why do you want it?”
“Want what?” His tongue snaked out and dragged along that tear stain.
“To kill you.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets like I was looking for something but I knew I’d never find the answers I needed there. “What happens to a demon or an angel when they die?”
> “Nothing.” It was said flat and emotionless as the word itself.
“So, there’s no real ramification?” That seemed like a letdown.
“No,” he smiled wistfully. “You meat bags get Heaven or Hell. Us…we cease to be. Oblivion.”
“Why would you want that?” Even shitty existence seemed better than the alternative of None.
“Because it’s better than Hell, and once Armageddon kicks off that’s all we’re going to have left if we lose.” For the first time, I heard a tinge of panic behind Murdock’s voice.
“So Oblivion is the lesser evil?” That was a shitty realization to have dawn on you.
He nodded.
I walked over and started unrolling the duct tape around his arms. I could have cut it off his wrists, but that would have been quicker and less painful and I didn’t see any reason to give any courtesy to the imp.
“What are you doing?” he asked as I got one wrist free.
“I’m letting you go.” It seemed obvious, but apparently he needed it said.
“Why?” If confusion were coins that imp bastard would have been rich.
“Because the alternative is giving you what you want, and frankly I don’t think you’ve earned it, and it ain’t my job to give it to you.”
“How do you know I won’t try to kill you?” He stayed in the chair but rubbed his wrists.
I shrugged. “I don’t, but I don’t really care. The world’s ending, right?”
He slowly hopped up and stepped toward the door. He paused and looked back. “Just after sunset tonight, at least that’s what Beelzebub thought.”
I nodded. “See ya then, Murdock.” He stepped out and was gone. I pulled out my phone and called Gretchen. “Hey, yeah, we’re done here so don’t worry about the stuff. Where do you want to meet?”
I looked at the clock on my phone: 0934.
We had about nine hours to save the world and not a damn clue how to do it.
Chapter Twenty
Astra-Mugs: Where Dreamers Come To Fuel
“Creep” originally by Radiohead but preformed by Vega Choir
Had I had my way we’d have gone to Waffle House.
I hate coffee shops. I know hate is a strong word, but it seems more polite than fucking loath from the depths of my very soul. Oddly the places themselves are fine, most of the time. Coffee shops as locations are places that I wouldn’t say I felt fine about, but as locations, they didn’t make me feel anything. Where was I in my life that sociopathic ambivalence as preferable to any feeling?
So maybe the more acceptable statement wouldn't be I hate coffee shops but I hate coffee shop P-fucking-eople. Coffee shop people shared the trait I hated most in fringe political assholes, creative douches, evangelical pricks, and your average parent: they were vocal about things. I don’t care what your definition of “free speech,” your thoughts on GITMO, gun control, abortion, or Article One Section Seven of the Constitution happen to be. I don’t give a shit about your Zine. I’m literally the nephew of Lucifer so go peddle the wares of your gospel shop somewhere else. No honest person cares that your kid’s special according to his underfunded and over-worked teachers, who really want you to shut the fuck up and get out of their office. The older I get the more I find common cause with my Old Man in his struggle throughout my childhood: for things to just be quiet. Coffee shops are like magnets for assholes who lack the ability to shut the fuck up and keep it to themselves.
I was already tired. Thus the fact I found myself sitting at a small round table in Astra-Mugs: Where Dreams Come To Fuel did absolutely zilch to improve my mood. Everything about the place seemed specifically designed to piss me off and make the Fiery Sword unleash from me and start the burning of the world right there and then. The walls were covered in a nonsensical mismatch of “art” by local artists who, by dint of talent and Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” would forever be struggling. There was a framed print out of an article from the internet about the overdose and death of Shannon Moon, even though I was willing to let anyone in there kick me in the nuts if they could name a Blind Melon song that wasn’t No Rain. The fact that that thing was printed and framed, coupled with the complete lack of any mention of the loss of Malcolm Young, did nothing to quell the Wrath bubbling in my guts like an Italian sub whose salami had been way past its prime and sell-by date. There was a sign on the door reading No Shirt, No Shoes, No Fascism, No Service, which made me wonder if Fascists were welcome here, if not outright required? There was a sign reading CAPITALISM under a big red bar sinister, ironically—God, I fucking hope it was ironically—placed right next to the equally absurdly priced price list.
I gazed over the undulating sea of man buns and white-girl dreadlocks. I just wanted to give my barber and my straight razor a hug and tell them how much I valued their presence in my life.
I wish we’d gone to Waffle House
Switch laughed at my obvious discomfort. “You’re dying inside, aren’t you?”
“I want to so open my veins in the bathroom so one of these shitheads would have to find me and clean it up.”
Switch grimaced. “Nick, just don’t ask anyone in here about the bathroom.”
Well, that was the verbal challenge that stood as the equivalent of “don’t look down.” Anyone worth their salt should have figured what was going to happen next.
The place was cramped and crowded to the point that there wasn’t any trouble or going out of anyone’s way to nudge someone. So, I did. “Hey, where’s the men’s room?”
I not only stopped paying attention but actively started ignoring the hippy after the phrase “doesn’t conform to the fascist binary gender-conformative, hetero-normative paradigm.”
I glowered at Switch, who just laughed and slapped the table. “Told you so.”
I sat back as far as I could and crossed my arms across my chest. “Why the fuck are we here?”
“It’s the highest-rated coffee shop in town,” Switch offered as if that was a consolation.
“That’s because regular people don’t rate things. They're too busy having fucking jobs and lives and shit.” I gestured at the hippy hipster purgatory I was stuck in. “These fuck heads rate things because they’re narcissistic enough to think they fucking matter.”
It was at this point black-and pink-striped hair nose-ring girl at the next table decided to interject leaning in between me and Switch. She spoke with the lolling languidity of the pseudo-intellectual and self-important. “I would appreciate it…”
I couldn’t take it so I just interrupted. “Yeah, well, I would appreciate it if you’d shut your suck and mind your own goddamn business. If I wanted your opinion I’d cram my hand up your ass and work your jaw like a puppet, you Fraggle-haired nosy piece of shit.”
“Why, I never…” she gasped.
“Had a job where you paid taxes?” Switch offered with a smile.
“Had an enema that wasn’t farm-to-table fresh organic quinoa?” I leaned close enough to her that she could feel my toothpaste brush across her skin on my breath. “Turn back to your fucking table or I’m going to take your lunch money.”
As she turned back to her table Switch and I looked back to ours and saw a lady in a pseudo-vintage-looking hat and some pro-vegetarian T-shirt that didn’t warrant reading had sat in our empty chair and pulled out a Steno pad and a pen, like we were about to be interviewed.
“Hello,” she said so cheerfully at that time of morning that I wanted her to spontaneously combust.
“Sorry, ma’am.” I tried honey this time. “We’re saving that seat for our friend.”
She pouted annoyingly and pointed to a sign. I looked and read, NO SAVING SEATS, ENJOY EXPANDING YOUR AND OUR COMMUNITIES. “Sorry,” she said, obviously not sorry at all.
“Young lady…” She was somewhere in her early twenties so Switch wasn’t inaccurate in that. “Can you just take my word for it that my friend here—” Switch gestured to me, “and myself if I had to could get rude and vulgar
enough that you wouldn’t want to sit here? Our friend is getting our coffee and she’ll be here any second.”
The young lady frowned and said in a lecturing tone. “The spirit of Astra-Mugs is about expanding horizons and making new friends.” She sat her pen down and held out her hand. “I’m Charlotte.”
“Charlotte, it’s a pleasure, really. But seriously, we really need that seat for our friend.”
Charlotte made no move to budge. She smiled insipidly. “Tell me about yourselves.”
I sighed and looked to Switch. With a resigned nod, he half-whispered, half-moaned, “Go ahead.”
I reached over and grabbed Charlotte’s hand squeezing it harder than she was probably used to as I shook it, not letting go. “Charlotte, if you could have a sound effect happen when a man orgasms, what would it be?”
She tried to pull her hand away but I wouldn’t let her and just kept shaking it up and down. Her eyes wide with confusion. “What?”
“See for me,” I smiled inanely, “I’d kinda want a comically wet fart sound.” I pushed air into my cheek and let it slowly bubble out my tight held upper lip. “What about you Switch?”
Without missing a step Switch leaned into the table almost close enough for his beard to brush it, incidentally putting his face at level with the intrusive Charlotte’s chest. “I think I’d rather just have an explosion of glitter.”
“Lights or physical glitter?” I smiled, eyes locked on Charlotte’s shocked face.
“Real glitter that would have to be cleaned up.”
I got closer to Charlotte’s face, still squeezing her hand. “Don’t you think it’d be great if in porn, every time there’s a money shot you heard…” I ripped the wet fart sound from my upper lip.
“Nick, I’m not sure she knows what a money shot is,” Switch suggested.
My jaw dropped aghast. “Charlotte, do you not know what the money shot is? It’s in an erotic film when the man completes. Usually on a face.” I stared intently at the bridge of her nose and made the wet fart sound again as I rolled my eyes up then sighed.