The Devil got a job tending bar at Mike's Place. You'd think he'd be bitter about his change of fortune, but he just shrugs it off. He says a lot of big corporations have failed, and Hell, Inc. was no different, when you get down to it. As for exchanging seven figures annually for five an hour plus tips, he just laughs and says there aren't a lot of places that will hire a guy with horns.
For his part, the Devil doesn't discriminate. Used to be you just had to be sinful; now you just have to be thirsty. He says the only difference is that now the really bad ones get tossed out instead of in.
Not that a lot of people are eighty-sixed from Mike's. It happens, of course—Mike doesn't put up with fighting, for example. But he puts up with a lot. Too much, some of the waitresses might say. Like Ashes, who never lets a woman enter or leave the bar without putting his hands on her in some way. Or Little Tony, who sits in the corner talking to himself and never tips for his Diet Cokes. Or Beezle.
Beezle used to work with the Devil. I think we've all figured out his real name by now, but nobody cares to say it out loud. The Devil insists they aren't friends, and talks to him as little as possible. Nobody talks to Beezle if they can avoid it. You see, Beezle takes the form of a giant fly, four feet high not counting the legs. On his barstool he looks like sort of a big hairy throw pillow with wings. He only drinks those blended frou-frou drinks, which the Devil hates making. Strawberry daiquiris, mostly. Beezle doesn't have any fingers, so he picks up the glass with both of his front legs, takes a long sip from the straw, and sets the glass back down again. Twenty minutes later he's ready for another.
On the surface, though, the waitresses have no reason to get so upset about Beezle hanging around. He always sits at the bar (at the same stool, in fact, and no one else ever sits there), and he never talks to anyone but the Devil—he doesn't even come in on Mondays, when the Devil takes off and Mike's pal Gabe fills in. He doesn't smell any worse than anyone else in the place, and better than some. He doesn't grab the girls and he doesn't try to brush up against them when the place is crowded. He also doesn't attract a lot of smaller flies, surprisingly.
But Beezle makes everyone nervous. For one thing, he sees everything with those multi-faceted eyes, and for all we know he hears everything too, so you either have to learn to ignore him or resign yourself to quietly getting drunk. Which, to be fair, plenty of the regulars are happy to do. Most of them don't have anywhere else to be, since the Crisis.
Things were bad even before Heaven went out of business. Most people still refer to it as Heaven, or Heavenly Ventures, even though they changed the name to Heaventure when they spun the angels off into their own corporation. It's hard to say which was a worse mistake.
Heaventure. What kind of a word is that? The Devil says it sounds like Paradise with a sneeze attached. Heaventure. They claimed to have vetted it up and down, fed it to focus groups all across the mortal realm, but you know how that is. You give people fifty bucks, they tend to tell you what they think you want to hear. And the angels—I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how getting rid of your most visible, most profitable product line is a good idea. The whole time Heaventure was “focusing on the aftercare of exceptional mortal souls,” as they put it, the Seraphim Company was making money hand over wingtip. Angels were big business: porcelain figurines, inspirational posters, bumper stickers, plush toys, recordings of the heavenly chorus, branded school supplies, protection services ... that last was a bit controversial. Apparently there was a big shakeup in the boardroom before that went into effect, but that was just a picketer in the path of a juggernaut, if you get my meaning.
Meanwhile, by this time the guys upstairs were about to lose their halos. They managed to keep it quiet until Friday came around, but when there were no paychecks every cubicle-dweller in the Eternal City emailed everyone they knew. The Big Guy called a company-wide meeting to ask people to remain calm and not to release confidential company information, but that was like throwing a deck chair off the Titanic. The ship was already sinking.
The twenty-four hour cable channels were on the story all weekend, but most people stayed pretty calm, because no one really understood the implications. Religious services were pretty well attended, but the clergy didn't have much in the way of answers.
Monday morning three things happened. The first thing most people noticed was that the streets, the cafés and the unemployment offices were clogged with all the blessed who had thought their needs would be taken care of for all eternity. They'd been kicked out of Paradise because of the second thing, which was that Heaventure filed for bankruptcy and announced that it was liquidating assets, beginning with real estate. The third thing was that The Wall Street Journal broke the story that Hell, Inc. was heavily invested in Heaventure, and stood to lose half a billion dollars.
Long story short, things went from bad to worse to the nether regions in a matter of days. Hell, Inc. followed Heaventure into insolvency, and the damned joined the blessed in the bread lines and the shelters. Congress made a lot of speeches about corporate accountability but stopped short of scheduling hearings; I guess none of them wanted to cross the Big Guy. The Dow took daily plunges, often only open for thirty minutes or less before the circuit-breaker safeguards shut it down. Massive layoffs were announced in every sector of the economy. Some wag at NBC, asked if this was a second Great Depression, said it was more like an Existential Crisis, and the name stuck.
After a week in hiding, the Big Guy turned up on—of course—Larry King. He said that Heaventure was conducting an internal investigation into what appeared to be some misreportage of funds. He said he deeply regretted that Heaventure was no longer able to provide services for the blessed, but financial realities necessitated a shutdown of operations. He had no comment on most of the softball questions Larry lobbed at him, and he cut the interview short when he was pressed on the question of the Covenant.
That was the Devil's first night at Mike's, and he shook his head at his ex-boss's performance. “He's really not good at doing his own talking,” he said, and twisted open another bottle of Bud.
Everybody likes the Devil. He's unpretentious, he's funny, and he tells it like it is. It's a funny thing about life after the Crisis. The damned, in general, are a lot easier to get along with than the blessed. Even the ones who were only suffering eternal torment for a few days are pretty well-behaved, when all is said and done, and they don't act like they're entitled to everything. I can't tell you how many times in the first few days a blessed walked up to me on the street and said “I'm hungry.” As if not only was this the most unbelievable thing in the world, but they expected that once having realized it I would immediately fetch them a glass of sweet nectar or something. Nowadays they don't so much tell people their problems. Mostly they stand around in their beautiful white clothes, staring at their smooth, lazy hands and sulking.
The damned, on the other hand, are grateful for what they've got. There was no beer in hell, the Devil says, unless you were an alcoholic. He says the rule was nobody got anything unless they got too much of it. You'd think the damned who walked into Mike's would leave as soon as they saw the Devil, but most of them talk to him like an old friend. They steer clear of Beezle, though.
People—living, damned or blessed—come to Mike's because he lets them run a tab for weeks, sometimes months. The rumor is that Mike got a big severance package from some big company, so he can afford to extend credit to people who might not be able to pay for a while, or at all. Thing is, people do pay when they can. I don't know that the bar is making any money, but it's still open, which is more than you can say for a lot of places nowadays.
There's this couple that comes in to Mike's all the time—regulars. He's a Jack Coke and she's a naked dirty Absolut martini, but that's not the only difference between them. He was blessed, see, and she was damned. Before that, who knows? Maybe they didn't meet until the Crisis. It doesn't seem polite to ask about it.
They were there the night th
at Christ showed up. It was a Tuesday, and there weren't a lot of people in the place—the Seraphim Company was having a job fair the next morning. Anyway, Christ came in, announced he was back, and right away everybody had questions.
"Is everyone going to be saved?” asked the blessed man, holding hands with the damned woman.
"It's in negotiations,” said Christ.
"Is it the Rapture?” asked Ashes, who is a born-again Christian.
"We're workshopping the campaign,” Christ said. “We'll have the nomenclature in a month or two."
"What about ze Zcripturez?” This from Beezle, who had left his Brandy Alexander at the bar and was flying drunkenly towards Christ. “What about ze way zings were zuppozed to happen?"
"Those were just projections,” said Christ. “Admittedly we've fallen a bit short, but we really feel that things are going to keep getting better. We've made a lot of positive changes at Heaventure. It's not just business as usual."
He kept talking, but by that time we had figured out that it was just a PR stunt. Everyone turned back to their drinks, except for Beezle, who passed out in the hall next to the men's room. After a while the Devil asked Christ what he was drinking. They chatted until he finished his Cutty and water, and then Christ left, saying he had a lot of stops to make.
"Asshole,” Little Tony shouted from his corner.
"Hey, none of that,” said the Devil. “We all got to make a living.” He cleared Christ's glass, set it in the washer, and wiped the counter down with a towel.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * * *
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
The Camera & the Octopus
Jeremie McKnight
It was true. The camera was in love with an octopus. As tragic, star-crossed loves went, this one was worth mentioning. And people did; they almost couldn't seem to help themselves. You could practically see it dangling from everybody's bottom lip when you walked around town. But no one spoke of it more than the camera's friend, the toaster. The toaster could be counted as one of those self-described authorities on the broken heart, his own first and foremost. There were many and varied stories, meticulously recounted. Recounted, remembered, broken down, built-up; the angles of it all were near-infinite.
"It will only end in tears,” the toaster counseled for the millionth time. “I don't know what you're thinking. How you could see this ending in any other way than in despair is beyond me."
The camera would absently agree, all the while thinking of those late-night rendezvous, the water shining blackly as it rolled across the octopus's cold, curling tentacles. It was as if she brought those lightless, smothering waters with her, up from those silent depths.
To be fair, the toaster wasn't the only friend to feel this way about the camera's romance. He just happened to be the one who believed the least in minding one's own business and letting his friends live in quiet privacy. Besides, it was just this type of situation that most easily allowed the toaster to segue into yet another recounting of the myriad ways in which the heart can be shattered.
"Do you understand that even in the best of situations, it is impossible to completely protect yourself from the destructive nature of your love? It's inevitable! You open yourself up to her, telling yourself that this time it will be different. You forget that, in every relationship, one of you has to be destroyed, so that you can be remade in the relationship. Love always demands a blood sacrifice.
"Look at my relationship with toast! Dear, sweet toast ... who will rot in hell one day, mark my words. I gave him everything! I made toast what he is today! Before I took him in he was nothing but a lousy foreigner piece of bread, fresh off the boat!"
This being the toaster's most recent bit of personal tragedy, everything in everybody's life seemed to correspond to some aspect of the failed relationship. Synchronicity was suddenly hiding around every corner.
Of course, some aspects seemed to correspond more directly than others.
"I know all about this ... octopus and those like her. For example, a cousin of toast had a run-in with one a couple years ago, on his boat-trip from Italy. It seems that on the way over, a curlicued hussy wrapped herself around the hull of the ship. Almost took the entire thing down to the bottom of the ocean ... passengers and all! I tell you, all those salt-water sluts are the same!"
The camera certainly hoped so.
"I'm certainly not one to tell anyone how to live their life,” the toaster said, his message becoming hushed with the weight of itsinsistence, “but these types have no future. They only drag others down with them. I'm sure that there's some cheap thrill to be had in slumming like this, but don't go doing something you'll regret. This is going to end with you in pieces. Get out now, before things get too messy!"
But the toaster didn't get it; he was already talking to a ghost.
* * * *
It was nighttime on that scabrous outcropping, when the camera watched his lover emerge from those choppy, darkly flashing waters. The octopus silently revealed herself to him, frankly, wantonly. The seafell away from her like a sheerslip as she reached for him. She pulled him into her embrace and they tumbled backwards, into the depths. In the wavy, fading, underwater light the camera admired his beloved. Her inscrutable, alien stare, from which no intentions could be gleaned. Her sleek and delicate head, whose colors now looked like dark, anemic marble. She seemed impenetrable, unforgiving. He thought of the rocks that now lay above them, resting at high tide. They offered no invitation to warmth, only obliteration. “Dash yourselves upon us, all you without abandon."
They descended to murkier depths, the octopus's coiling grip only matched by the mounting pressuresurrounding them. The camera could feel a tension building within him: a panic, or the prelude to an oncoming release.
A sudden rock-shelf. They collided against it, and tumbled further down. The camera's glass eye cracked, shattered with the jolt of it. His unblinking gaze, his even, ceaseless stare gone blind. That was fine with him. He had seen enough. He was finally ready to let go.
The near-absolute black was suddenly thrown into a second's worth ofstark daylight as the camera's flash began to stutter. The octopus jumped in startlement. Jarred, it almost seemed, for a second, as if she would let him slip away. She also began to shudder. Then, her all-consuming grip increased ten-fold. The flash popped rapid fire. Everything was a string of hard-edged and frozen white images. But the corners of those still lifes beganto fill with a smudged India ink as the camera's lover spasmed silent, clouded curtains around them.
It seemed that he had never truly known her.
A spiralling, restless knot inside a blooming flower of jet, gently floating towards the bottom of the ocean. The camera could feel a single, mute dot of oblivion tugging at him from his very center. He serenely folded in towards it, his thoughts quiet and empty.
—
Quiet, quiet, hush my child. All flash andno sound is that thick and heavy cloud of a summer storm, shot through with continuous and unceasing bolts of light. See as it slips away, slips across that ever-darkening, vertical horizon.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Escape
Cara Spindler
Later reports: strolling in downtown St. Paul; once at a winter logging camp up by St. Croix; three years ago on a Sunday afternoon on the arm of a girl who looked like May Jenkins's niece, do you remember her, from over by Duluth; heard tell that he was caught up in a mine explosion out Mohawk way, but really no one, no one could confirm that wavy brown hair, the half-dimple was ever seen again, that whoop of a laugh was really his, that the singed gilt fan in my Great-Aunt Vivian's attic really was the one that had been found in the cannon barrel.
The end: The crowd stares upward, shocked. Popcorn and roasted peanuts forgotten in palms, mouths slightly open like front doors of abandoned farm houses. Archie has taken flight. Through the star-shaped puncture in the canvas, night's candles glitter in the inky black.
Five minutes before: A red flash, the ringleader. “Any volunteers?"
And Archie, who everyone knows is drunk, although not everyone, not yet, thinks just like his dad, just like his uncles, just like his kid brother, because he is a nice kid, Archie stumbles from his third row bench, stomping accidentally and firmly on the parson's new wife's delicate white boot. How would you expect a young man to act when his fiancée had recently and publicly broken their engagement; everyone in town had seen or at least claimed to have seen Philomena throwing his sapphire ring into the road from a moving carriage. These are the thoughts rippling through the crowd, that and their own little thoughts: is she really going to the outhouse or is she sneaking off again with that Judas?; mothers wiping sticky hands and worrying about tomorrow's wash; children fingering the coins left in their pocket and counting off how many more cotton candies, how many throws into the goldfish bowl; while the old men figure next week's grocery money and wonder how much it would take to get into that side show tent with the pretty dancing girl with the Egyptian make-up on her eyes, and Archie pushes his way into the sawdust and lights.
"I don't believe man can fly!” Archie proclaims, his eyes bright under the gaslights, and crawls into the cannon.
Ten minutes before: The animals are returned to their menageries, their metal-barred crates, where for a nickel the crowds have been filing past the dozen cages for three days and nights. The families, city-clothed or barefoot, hold hands and peer into the boxes, shading their eyes from the hard sunlight, mostly quiet but for occasional outbursts, like at the size of the elephant's dung pile. At night, drunken groups of men and boys clump in front of the crates and dare each other to dangle soup bones. Reverent silence is found only in the first moments of the Persian girl's tent, or someone's first sip from a flask behind canvas walls. Tonight, the animals crouch in their corners, waiting for the loud laughter that does not come, tonight, blinking in the yellow lights that do not go off. The Asian elephant, unloved by her trainer who she will ultimately stomp to death in front of a screaming and terrified crowd, years from now, is leaning her forehead against the bars; an Amazonian jaguar crouches, still petrified by the wet eyes, wishing only for green; two camels from the Bible-lands contentedly munch oats; a sad fat bear who is not dancing, too old, hears the familiar sound and salivates for day-old pastries; green and red parrots, to the delight of no one, swear clearly and sing incomprehensible sea chanteys in French, Caribe, and Spanish patois; the alligator half-hangs out of a metal washtub and sighs. There are empty cages, pushed to the back with less flash. Their inhabitants don't pull in money by oddity, but by skill: a pack of well-trained poodles and a herd of poorly-trained ponies; two pigs, one that rides in the cart and the other that pulls it; geese who dance in formation and honk the William Tell Overture. On the other side is a boring llama, which is intractable and bites anything or anyone who gets within five feet, but was purchased for a song; and behind the chicken wire, a boa that seems more and more intent on constricting the Middle Eastern dancing girl, who is actually from Wisconsin, who wonders about adding a scene to the night show where two muscled men pry the snake from her body, carelessly revealing bits of leg and torso while she thinks, godammit I bet every last one of you wishes you were this here goddamned snake, and dreams alternately of opening a millinery or acquiring tattoos.
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 22 Page 5