Mercury Falls

by Robert Kroese

  Nisroc walked into the apartment and began systematically tossing items – candle holders, paperback books, Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons – from shelves and end tables onto the floor. He had never vandalized anything before, but he figured that disrupting the condo’s organizational system was a good start. He realized, though, after getting rather far along in this task, that Christine’s condo had no organizational system. In fact, it seemed to him that he had rather improved things by clearing several shelves and end tables of random detritus.

  This was a demoralizing setback to Nisroc, who didn’t particularly want to be vandalizing a condo in Glendale in the first place. He had recently converted to demonhood after a long and reasonably successful career as a courier angel, and he had protested that the commission of petty crimes was beneath him. His new superiors had insisted, however, that he prove himself with a simple task before advancing to higher functions. And now he was in danger of screwing it up.

  Trying to remember which items he had just put on the floor, Nisroc began to pick up objects from the floor and place them on the shelves and end tables. When it seemed like there was too much stuff on the shelves, he would move a few items back to the floor. He realized, however, that he was subconsciously aiming for a more-or-less even distribution of items, which was a sort of order. What he wanted was complete chaos, but his angelic sense of order insisted on asserting itself, despite his worst intentions. Nisroc cursed to himself. Enough of this nonsense, he thought. Time to get to the main event.

  He regarded Christine’s breakfast nook, which consisted of a small table and two chairs resting on low-nap tan carpet. Nisroc shook his head. Who puts carpet in a breakfast nook? He told himself he’d be doing the owner a favor by ruining the carpet. Probably even improving the resale value, not that anybody was buying condos in Glendale these days.

  Right, ruining the carpet. How does one go about ruining carpet? A can of spray paint would come in handy, but Nisroc hadn’t thought to bring any. He meticulously ransacked the kitchen, looking for something capable of causing permanent damage to the carpet. In the fridge, behind a block of cheddar cheese and a Tupperware container of something blue and fuzzy, he found a ketchup bottle. Bingo.

  He carried the ketchup bottle to the breakfast nook and popped open the lid. Time to do some serious damage, he thought. But there was only about half a bottle of ketchup, and he wanted to make it count. He didn’t want to just make random blotches of ketchup. It should be something meaningful, something offensive. Something that would make the owner really want to get rid of the carpet. A satanic symbol, he though. Yes, that’s it.

  Unfortunately, Nisroc didn’t know any satanic symbols. That is, he knew the official logo that Lucifer’s marketing people had come up with – a vertical ellipse with horns protruding from it, encircled by a horizontal ellipse – but that logo never really took off and was rarely used any more because people tended to confuse it with the Toyota emblem.

  As a result, demons working on earth who wanted to leave a Satanic calling card were left with the symbols that had been devised by humans, such as goat heads, hexagrams and the evil eye. As a new transfer, however, Nisroc hadn’t yet attended Lucifer’s seminar on Branding for the New Millennium, and was thus starting from scratch.

  He had heard that an upside down cross was sometimes used, so he started with that, carefully drawing perpendicular ketchup lines on the carpet. He was rather satisfied with the result until he realized that he had drawn it upside down from the perspective of someone in the kitchen – when viewed from the front door, it was a normally oriented cross. Nisroc cursed again. He didn’t have much ketchup left. Now what?

  Nisroc started to feel hungry. Angels technically have no need to eat, but Nisroc, like many agents of Heaven who have spent altogether too much time on the Mundane Plane, had developed some bad habits. One of these habits was eating when he was nervous. He eyed Christine’s sandwich grill and remembered the block of cheddar in the fridge. A grilled cheese sandwich might be just the thing to calm his nerves.

  He had to plug the grill in to make it work; someone, it seemed, had carelessly left it unplugged. As he set about making a grilled cheese sandwich with the defective sandwich grill, it occurred to him that the cross could rather easily be made into a swastika, which he vaguely remembered was the emblem of some very evil group of people, like the Nazis or ABBA.

  Munching on his sandwich, Nisroc lengthened the shorter legs of the cross and then drew new lines extending them at right angles to the left. Perfect! Or… bloody hell, did the swastika spin to the right or the left? Jiminy Crickets, this was turning out to be a huge pain in the ass. It spun right, didn’t it? Yes, he thought it did. And anyway, the carpet’s owner would still want to replace it, even if the swastika were facing the wrong way, wouldn’t they? And what the hell was that smell?

  Nisroc gasped as he turned to face the kitchen. Flames were licking up the curtains beside the kitchen window. Now what? Pangs of guilt and fear struck his heart. Had Heaven found him out? Was this the fire of divine retribution? As he watched it slowly begin to tickle the cabinets, he reflected that if Heaven were punishing him, they were taking their sweet time about it. No, this was not the terrifying Fire of Divine Justice; it was the less frightening but still dangerous Fire of Defective Kitchen Appliances. Still, it would behoove him to leave quickly. He had to assume that if the possibly mis-oriented swastika didn’t do the trick, the fire certainly would.

  Nisroc finished off his sandwich and left.

  FOUR

  There is never a good time to find out that your condo has been vandalized and nearly burned down by a demon, but immediately after Mild Disappointment Number Eighteen is a particularly bad time.

  The first indication Christine had that something was wrong was the smashed door frame: someone had forced their way into her condo. Christine pushed open the door and walked inside. The condo smelled like burnt plastic and one wall of the kitchen was badly scorched. A backwards swastika, drawn in what looked like blood, graced the floor of her breakfast nook.

  “Damn it,” Christine sighed, feeling completely defeated. “Now what?”

  There was a note on the kitchen table from the fire department apologizing for smashing her door frame. Below this was a disclaimer that indicated that the fire department was not responsible for any damage done to the property caused by their efforts to put out the fire. Below this someone had scrawled “Sorry!” as an apology for the disclaimer. Below this was a section labeled CAUSE OF FIRE. “DEFECTIVE ELECTRICAL APPLIANCE” was checked. Below this, written in very small print, was a notice that she would most likely be receiving an invoice for the cost of the fire department’s services. The sandwich grill, now a blackened mass of warped metal and charred plastic, its cord snipped off, sat sheepishly next to the note.

  Having satisfied herself that nothing had been stolen and that the damage was limited to the scorching of her cabinets and defacing of her carpet, Christine collapsed into one of the chairs that had been moved aside to make room for the ketchup drawing and regarded the inverted symbol. She noticed an empty ketchup bottle that appeared to have been precisely placed in the corner of the breakfast nook with studied carelessness. So, she thought. At least it’s not blood. Bloody waste of ketchup though.

  She wondered who might have wanted to do this to her condo. Presumably a member of one of the cults she had covered over the past three years, someone who wasn’t happy with the coverage they had gotten. She racked her brain trying to think of which group might be using a backwards swastika as a calling card, but came up with nothing. Maybe it was just bored kids, or a disgruntled neighbor who had found out that she was a sixteenth Jewish on her mother’s side? But the note said that the fire department had forced the door open, which meant that it had been locked when they showed up. So… someone who had a key to her condo? That made no sense either. And what was up with the sandwich grill fire? Had the vandals intentionally seized upon the damaged appli
ance to create a fire? Or had they gotten hungry partway through their vandalizing? That seemed like a stunning lack of commitment even for your typical street hoodlums.

  She called the police to report the crime, making the mistake of referring to the ketchup drawing as an “inverted swastika.”

  “A swastika?” asked the young woman who had answered the phone, suddenly very concerned.

  “Well, it’s inverted,” said Christine. “Backwards.”

  “Oh, it’s a backwards swastika?” said the woman, a bit let down.

  “Yes,” said Christine. She went on, determined to regain some momentum, “They used nearly a whole bottle of ketchup. It’s all over my breakfast nook.”

  “But it’s not an actual swastika.”

  “No,” Christine admitted.

  “So this wasn’t a hate crime.”

  “A hate crime?”

  “A crime committed against you because of your ethnic, religious or gender identity. A hate crime.”

  “How would I know that?” Christine asked. “How could I know the emotional state of whoever did this? I don’t even know who did it.”

  “Ma’am, what I’m saying,” the woman said impatiently, “is that you have no reason to believe that this vandalism was an act of hate directed against you because of your ethnic background, religious affiliation or sexual orientation.”

  “Well,” replied Christine, “I’ve got a pretty good idea they didn’t care for my carpet.”

  There was a pause as the woman took in this new information. “Carpet?” she asked. “I thought you said the vandalism was on the floor of your breakfast nook.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Ma’am, are you saying that you have carpet in your breakfast nook?”

  Sure, thought Christine. Blame the victim. The carpet was asking to have ketchup spilled on it, right?

  “Look,” said Christine. “I didn’t put in the carpet. It was there when I bought the place. I was going to replace it eventually….”

  “You were going to replace the carpet?”

  Damn it, thought Christine. “Eventually,” she said. “Are you going to send someone out?”

  “Because someone walked into your unlocked condo…”

  “It was locked,” Christine said.

  “…squirted ketchup on your carpet, and made themselves a sandwich?”

  “Nearly burning down my condo.”

  “With your own defective appliance. Ma’am, you’re going to have to come down to the station and fill out a report.”

  “A report, right,” sighed Christine. “I’ll get right on that.” She hung up.

  What was the point of filling out a report? If the police couldn’t be bothered to even visit the scene of the crime, it seemed highly unlikely that they would put much effort into locating the vandals. Failing the perpetrators doing their part by also showing up at the police station to fill out a report, the odds of them being apprehended seemed small. Presumably the insurance company would require her to report the incident before reimbursing her, but she wondered if it was even worth it to file a claim. Her experience with making insurance claims was that the expense of the repair was generally about $1.46 more than her deductible – and that three months later her premium would go up by $38.00.

  She made a call to a locksmith, who promised to be out within the next two hours, and then started to clean up her apartment. I say that she started to clean up because about five minutes into the project she realized that she rather liked the vandals’ creative use of the condo’s space, and decided to leave things more-or-less as they were. Whoever the vandals were, they possessed, in addition to a facility with locks, a rather sublime aesthetic sensibility. She imagined a gang of white supremacist interior decorators who, frustrated with their clients’ bourgeois tastes, had turned to a life of vandalism and illicit sandwich-making.

  As she was mulling this, there was a knock on the door. The door, not being what it used to be, swung wide open to reveal a great grayish-skinned hulking man standing in the hallway. He was wearing a navy blue jumpsuit with a nametag that read: Don.

  Now the thing about jumpsuits is that they are specifically designed to subdue and emasculate their wearers. A jumpsuit is not something that a street punk throws on before going on a crime spree. No one wears a jumpsuit unless they’ve been instructed to by someone wearing a tie.[4] Ordinarily, if Christine had seen this man in her doorway mere minutes after discovering that her condo had been broken into and vandalized, she would have been terrified. But as it was, a split-second of fear gave way to a sub-conscious thought process that amounted to “Oh, he’s wearing a jumpsuit. Thank God.”

  “Hello,” said the great gray man in a gruff voice. “I’m Don, from Don’s Discount Flooring. I’m looking for the Frobischer residence. I’ve got an address here, but it got all smudged.” He held a wrinkled sheet of paper in his hand.

  “Oh,” said Christine. “Ah, Mrs. Frobischer is – was – across the hall, in 1609.”

  “Was?” asked Don. “She moved?”

  “Uh, no,” said Christine. “She died. Last Thursday. Slipped and fell in the shower.”

  “Shit,” mumbled Don, staring blankly at the paper. “Pardon my French. I guess she won’t want her linoleum installed then.”

  “I’d say that’s a safe bet,” said Christine. “I would hope that wherever she is, she’s beyond concerns about linoleum.”

  “Uh,” Don grunted in assent. “I was supposed to install it on Thursday, but I had a conflict with another job. If I’da done her installation instead of that one….”

  “I know what you mean,” said Christine. “I almost went over to borrow a cup of skim milk that afternoon. I keep thinking….”

  “…I’da done the installation and got stuck with the bill. Good thing I canceled.”

  “Er,” said Christine. “Yes, I suppose from that angle….”

  “Sometimes things just work out, you know?” said Don. “Gives you goosebumps.”

  Christine smiled weakly. It didn’t look like Don had goosebumps. Don didn’t strike her as the sort of person who knew how to get goosebumps. Just his mention of the word goosebumps gave her, well, goosebumps.

  “Speaking of which,” said Don, “what happened to your floor?”

  “Oh, uh…” Christine began. “Someone broke in… that is, came in and…”

  “Can I take a look?”

  Sensing a shiver coming on, Christine shrugged her shoulders to conceal it. This was taken by the hulking Don as a gesture of assent, and he walked past her into the condo.

  “Is that a swastika?” he asked.

  “Technically, no,” said Christine. “I’m calling it an akitsaws.”

  Don stared at her.

  “It’s an ancient Celtic symbol that means, ‘I have a learning disability.’”

  Don’s brow furrowed. “You do?”

  “No,” said Christine. “I was saying… anyway, it’s ketchup. I was thinking I’d pour a bottle of club soda on it and see if that helps.”

  “Naw,” said Don. “You’ll never get that out.”

  “Oh well,” said Christine, hoping to wrap things up. Don was giving her the creeps, jumpsuit notwithstanding.

  “This looks like the same layout as Mrs. Frobischer’s condo,” he said.

  “Yeah, I suppose it is,” said Christine. “Anyway, I should probably….”

  “I’ve got the exact amount of linoleum you need for this space in my van. I’d give you a great deal, since I’m already here and the linoleum is already cut to size. Fifty percent off installation.”

  “I doubt Mrs. Frobisher and I have the same taste in flooring,” said Christine.

  “It’s a very nice pattern,” said Don, pushing her to the verge of goosebumps again. “Very universal. It’s a welcoming sort of pattern. Let me just go get it from the van. You’ll see what I mean.” He walked to the door.

  Christine tried to object, but couldn’t come up with the words.
Don returned a few minutes later with a roll of what she had to admit was perfectly nice breakfast nook flooring. Better than her carpet certainly, even without the ketchup stains. Don was right: it was a very welcoming pattern. He offered to install it for $400 – far less than her deductible.

  What the hell, Christine thought. That’s one problem out of the way, with minimal expense and effort. She had the man’s name if anything went wrong: Don, from Don’s Discount Flooring. And after all, he was wearing a jumpsuit.

  FIVE

  Harry Giddings sat in his office on the fifth and top floor of the Banner’s headquarters and fretted. Harry had spent his life preparing, and now that he had done everything he could think of to prepare, he wasn’t sure what to do. He would have paced, but he had noticed that pacing tended to have a disquieting effect on the Banner’s staff, who could see his movements at the bottom of the horizontal shutters covering the plate glass windows on either side of his office door. He could have lowered the shutters all the way, but that would have tipped off the staff that he was pacing. So he fretted quietly in his office, unaware that what the staff feared most was the idea of Harry Giddings fretting quietly in his office.

  Harry Giddings was a man of convictions – formidable, impregnable, inspirational and often contradictory convictions. Harry believed so many ridiculous and unjustified notions that the sheer weight of probability dictated that at least a few of them would end up being true. Thus it was that Harry’s belief that he would play a pivotal role in the impending Apocalypse was misguided, completely absurd, and entirely accurate.

  The Apocalypse was not, for Harry, a matter of faith or conjecture, but rather a certain, if somewhat imprecisely defined, event. It was, in his mind, somewhat like an earthquake or a surprise visit from one’s in-laws: something for which one could never be fully prepared, but which was destined to occur sooner or later. Harry knew with certainty that the Apocalypse would occur during his lifetime and that he would play some significant part in it.