Martin placed a gentle hand on Jill’s shoulder. “No insults,” their stepfather said. “That won’t get us anywhere.”
“You’re right.” As far as Tony could recall, Jill had never previously agreed with Martin. As a matter of fact, it was odd that she didn’t shrug his comforting hand off her shoulder.
Dr. Maddox stepped forward, his arms raised toward the living room ceiling. “Walk into the light.”
There wasn’t an overhead light in the living room, so Tony didn’t know how to respond.
“Oh God,” Jill said. “I don’t think he knows.”
She looked ready to cry. Tony suddenly wanted to hug her, but his sister’s body language told him the affection wouldn’t be welcomed.
They all kept their distance.
Even Barker. He could see that now, the way his dog jumped up at Kevin, delighting at a simple scratch behind the ear, licking his coworker’s hand, then sniffing at his crotch. Barker hadn’t acted like that in quite a while. Lately, the dog stayed in separate rooms; he pulled to the farthest end of the leash when they went for their evening walks.
“Of course I know,” Tony said. “I’m not blind.” He thought about how he’d dressed each morning. He would pat his hair gently with his hand, afraid a comb would pull out clumps of hair or wet scalp. When he checked his appearance in the bathroom mirror he focused mostly on one shoulder or another, as Jill had when he visited on Sunday.
Tony always knew this would happen eventually, but he was only thirty-five. It should have waited until he was in his seventies, in a nursing home bed. His loved ones would gently ask to unplug the machines. He’d let them.
“So why didn’t you . . . ?” Jill couldn’t quite bring herself to say it.
Tony shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve just been . . . busy.”
Jill snorted. “Busy? Doing what?”
How could he respond? His sister ran her own catering business, raised two kids, kept the home spotless for her whole family. What could he say that would satisfy her: Walking the dog? Watching television? Waiting for chocolate-glazed doughnuts?
“It’s hard to find the time,” he said.
“Oh, listen to you.” His sister raised her voice; he didn’t want to hug her anymore. “It’s like you couldn’t be bothered.”
“No, it’s not that.” He had work to finish. He wanted to date someone from the Match-up website. He wanted to plan a vacation cruise for next summer.
“What is it then?”
“It kind of snuck up on me.” He looked at each of them in turn. “When should it have happened? About two weeks ago?”
Rachel nodded her head. “That sounds about right.”
“Earlier than that,” Kevin said. “A lot earlier. Trust me: I’m right next to you every day. I notice stuff.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Jill said. Something about the concern in her voice struck him, made him feel unbearably sad. He raised a finger to his eye to wipe away a tear. His hand smelled like burnt provolone cheese.
“I hadn’t realized how much I was hurting all of you,” he said finally, giving in. “All the people I care about.” He felt strangely charitable, as if he loved everyone in the room—even his physical trainer.
Jill’s eyes lit up. “So you’ll do it?”
“Yes. Yes, I’ll try.”
His stepfather scolded him. “You need to do more than try, son.”
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
Soon. He really meant it.
This had been a difficult intervention for him, and he realized it was tough on them as well. Especially Jill. She’d planned the whole event, must have agonized over how things would play out. She’d done it all out of love.
As the gathering dispersed, she was the last to leave. Before she stepped outside, she turned and looked directly into his eyes.
“Thank you,” Tony said, and she responded with a weak smile.
He closed the door behind her, exhausted. This would be the perfect time to let things take their natural course.
He wandered into the front room. His dog whimpered from the kitchen, and Tony sank into the couch. He lifted the remote and aimed it at the television, surfing the channels one last time. Maybe there’d be news about the trapped miners.
He stopped on channel 13. No harm in watching for a few minutes. The first episode of the latest Survivor had already started.
He wondered who’d make it to the end of the season.
The Last Demon
DON D’AMMASSA
On his 666th birthday, Ogerak the Off-putting escaped from hell into the world of humans. It wasn’t really his birthday since demons aren’t actually born, but transmogrificationday is a far less satisfying term. When he noticed that the Portal had been momentarily left unguarded while an influx of newly lost souls was arriving to begin their eternal penance, he acted on impulse, hunching his shoulders so as not to be noticed among the throng as he made his way back against the tide of damned humanity and so crossed over, determined to find his destiny, or at least enjoy a break from his tedious existence.
It is not easy being the very last of the one hundred thousand demons to be created. For one thing all of the really nifty names were gone, along with most of the formidable body enhancements. Ogerak didn’t even have claws, his tail was vestigial, and his horns were invisible under his unruly hair. He was tall and broad-shouldered and spectacularly ugly, but even without a magical enchantment, he could quite easily pass for human.
Ogerak hesitated when he stepped out of the Portal, wondering if this had perhaps been a mistake. He had never been to the human world before and the stories he had heard over the centuries from more senior demons—and all of them were more senior—were contradictory and no doubt distorted by memory, or more likely caprice. Demons lived only to inflict torment and confusion, even upon one another. But if Ogerak was having second thoughts, it was too late to act upon them. The Portal closed behind him and he hadn’t the slightest idea how to open a new one.
It was very dark, but Ogerak was used to the absence of light. He was standing in an empty lot flanked by tall buildings in every direction. He could hear faint traffic noises in the distance, which he mistakenly interpreted as the muted roars of predators. Since his immediate surroundings appeared to be deserted, he set off toward a cluster of lights he could barely discern in the distance.
Moments later he encountered his first humans, or to be more precise, his first living humans. He was traversing a narrow, cluttered passage between two buildings when three figures separated themselves from the shadows and barred his way just as he stepped into a pool of light cast from a fixture above one of the doors. Ogerak stopped and blinked, wondering what this portended. “I am Ogerak,” he announced. “Tremble in the presence of my puissant evilness.” All of the really good personal catch phrases had also been taken by the other demons.
There was a muted sound that might have been suppressed laughter but that Ogerak chose to interpret as panicky obeisance. One of the figures stepped into the light. “Hey, dude, this is Troll territory and you have to pay to use our alley. It’s sort of a Troll road, get it?”
Ogerak blinked and examined the figure more closely. “I have worked with trolls, I know trolls, some of my friends are trolls. Imposter, you are no troll.”
He took a menacing step forward into the light and the one who had spoken took a balancing step backward. “Hey, you’re a big fellow, aren’t you? I like the tattoos on your cheeks. They’re classy. And the leather outfit isn’t bad either.”
Ogerak blinked in confusion. “Tattoos? Are you referring to the Cicatrices of Coryphon, inscribed on my face to honor my service to the Nether Realms?”
“Nether Realms? Who are they? I know every gang in the city and I never heard of them. Hey, you must be from out of town.”
Ogerak nodded. “I am a visitor here as you surmise. Could you perhaps direct me to the master of the city so that I might pay my respects?”
“W
ell, just at the moment, you might say that I was master of the city, at least as far as you’re concerned. And you’ll pay all right, but not just your respects.”
Ogerak frowned and his face became even more off-putting. “I detect insolence in your tone. Do you venture to challenge me?”
The human moved his arm and there was the flash of light on metal. “If you’re looking for a fair fight, dude, then you’ve come to the wrong place. Now, let’s see some money or I’m gonna have to cut you.”
Ogerak had never been in this situation before. As the most junior demon, it was he who issued challenges, all of which had to date failed. But he knew the proper response. The human’s soul was hopelessly lost so he lunged forward with surprising quickness for one with such a large body, his jaws already dislocating to accommodate their distension, and he bit off the human’s head before the latter had time to react. The body remained erect for a second, then fell quietly to the ground. Ogerak swallowed the head—it was rather too salty for his taste and he wasn’t really hungry—and looked around for the other two humans, who were running at full speed toward the far end of the alley rather than proffering their obeisance. He considered this a shocking lapse of manners.
For the next few minutes, he waited for the body to produce a new head so that he could interrogate the former master of the city about the attributes of his domain, but nothing happened. This puzzled and upset Ogerak. The losers in a challenge always regenerated promptly back in hell, at which point they graciously acknowledged their defeat. Perhaps the process took longer in the human world. Impatient, he decided to dispense with a formal capitulation and set off once more, this time confident with the knowledge that he, Ogerak, was now master of the city.
Moments later three demons materialized at the exact spot where Ogerak had earlier stepped out of the Portal. For a split second, a theoretical observer might have noticed claws and fangs and prehensile tails, but then the masking charm took effect and the threesome appeared only as vaguely disreputable humans with no fashion sense.
The threesome had been sent to reclaim Ogerak. Murmural the Maleficent was the team leader, with Nuramor the Noxious and Inkarion the Irritating as backup. Murmural had been to the human world before, though not since the fourteenth century, while his companions were on their first visit. Murmural expected that it would be a very brief excursion. A demon as inexperienced as Ogerak must have drawn attention to himself almost immediately upon arriving. Onorus the Overbearing—currently in charge of the Office for Suppression of Forbidden Awareness—would be very unhappy if Ogerak had revealed his true nature to any humans. The demonic truant would be in very big trouble if that was the case.
“Follow,” Murmural commanded, and set off, trying unsuccessfully to detect Ogerak’s scent.
Ogerak had proceeded only a few more blocks before the hair on his back bristled under his leather vest. Trusting his demonic instincts, he paused and carefully examined his surroundings. On the opposite side of the street, a dim light showed inside an otherwise darkened building. In the window facing him he perceived a fearsome array of beasts.
Undaunted—he was after all master of the city—Ogerak crossed to confront the danger directly. “I am Ogerak. Tremble in the presence of my puissant evilness.” Most of the creatures remained quiescent but one rose onto its hindquarters and pressed its nose against the glass, wagging a not-at-all-vestigial tail furiously back and forth. Ogerak was momentarily nonplussed, not having expected such a direct challenge, but he was prepared to defend his prerogatives against all comers.
Something growled softly behind him and Ogerak spun—or turned at least—to see a much larger creature approaching. Indeed the newcomer was considerably bigger than Ogerak himself. It had two large glowing eyes and a crest that cycled between red and blue in a hypnotic rhythm as it advanced. Ogerak was perplexed by its manner of locomotion since there are no wheels in hell. Wheels might make some tasks easier for the damned, after all.
The creature addressed him in a booming voice. “YOU THERE! STEP AWAY FROM THE BUILDING AND LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS!”
The tone was so peremptory that Ogerak obeyed without thinking. The voice very much resembled that of Astoriak the Appalling, his immediate supervisor back in hell. If he had responded to the instructions in the correct order, all might have been well, but he extended his arms before stepping clear and one of them crashed through the window. The diminutive monsters began emitting a variety of upsetting noises and two of them jumped down onto the sidewalk. One had the temerity to sniff his ankle.
“ALL RIGHT, STOP WHERE YOU ARE! RAISE YOUR HANDS AND PLACE THEM ON THE WALL!” The larger creature began to wail and it moved suddenly forward. Ogerak found himself beset by danger from front and rear and he panicked, although he later characterized his action as swift and prudent withdrawal.
Although he was a bit overweight and definitely out of condition, he managed a quite acceptable sprint to the nearest corner and turned to his right, eyes darting about in search of sanctuary. The wailing increased in pitch and volume and Ogerak slipped into the first alleyway he encountered, confident that his pursuer was too large to follow. Three blocks later he crouched concealed in a Dumpster as the wailing creature, which was silent now, moved slowly past.
Ogerak was extremely uncomfortable. The temperature had dropped into the upper eighties and he shivered with the cold. It began to rain and he hated getting wet. And as the minutes slid past, he began to feel hungry. When the rain finally died away shortly before dawn, he slipped out of his hiding place and set off in search of food. He tried some of the debris from the Dumpster and was surprised to find it completely inedible. Although he usually fed on the damned—the supply was inexhaustible since they always regenerated—Ogerak often dined otherwise for the sake of variety. In hell, even rocks were magically transformed when ingested by a demon, but here, he realized, they remained just rocks. So he set off to find real food. Something fresh.
The buildings remained dark but once he reached a better-lit street, he saw a single human standing next to some enigmatic contrivance at an intersection. He approached cautiously, having decided to keep a low profile until he understood the rules of this world.
The human spun around as he drew near. “Hey there, big fellow. Shouldn’t sneak up on a guy like that.”
“I am Ogerak. Tremble in the presence of my puissant evilness.” He paused for effect. “And tell me where I might find sustenance.”
The human seemed to relax. “What are you? A street artist or just a homeless crazy?”
Ogerak had no idea what those terms referred to so he ignored the question. “I hunger. Can you help me in my quest?”
The human turned back to the artifact he’d been tending. “I’m not set up yet but I can manage a cold bagel and some cream cheese. It’ll cost you though. Got any money?”
“What is this money of which you speak?”
“Cash. Moolah. Dinero. Bucks. Greenbacks. Coin of the realm. And I don’t take plastic.”
Ogerak shook his head. Demons were supposed to be able to understand and speak any conceivable human language but once again he had no idea what the human was talking about. “I have no knowledge of these things about which you speak.”
“Foreigner, eh? Probably illegal. You got papers? A green card?”
Ogerak spread his hands eloquently. “I have nothing but what you see.”
The human shook his head and turned away, then drew something out of a bag and extended it toward Ogerak. “Here, take this. The raisin ones never sell anyway. But you’d better find yourself a job, under the table obviously, if you want to stay around here.”
He sniffed the proffered item. “What manner of flesh is this?”
“It’s not meat, loony. It’s a bagel. Baked in ovens.”
Ogerak smiled, which actually made him look more fearsome. “My first duty was tending the ovens. But I desire more hearty fare. I am, after all, master of the city.”
The
human sighed. “Yeah, you and the mayor are good buddies, I imagine. Look, this city chews up innocents like you and spits them out. You’d better wise up or hit the road.”
Ogerak pondered what profit might be derived from striking the pavement as he sniffed the bagel. He had been considering devouring the human, but the latter’s sudden act of charity meant that he was not irretrievably damned after all and was therefore beyond Ogerak’s power.
Those last few words had also given him pause. Obviously there was not the clear hierarchy in the human world that existed in hell. Was this mayor superior to the master of the city or just a coequal? And was the city itself an entity that could swallow him and expel him at any moment? He did not relish being chewed up. Regeneration always gave him a headache.
He swallowed the bagel, which was refreshingly stale, but it failed to appease the grumbling in his belly. With a last regretful look, he turned and stalked off, while the human muttered under his breath and turned back to his wares.
Ogerak wandered the city throughout the morning, gathering a few odd looks but far fewer than he might have expected. He saw little that was familiar, but he did manage to make friends with a colony of rats—there are rats in hell—and he eavesdropped on humans in order to learn what this money thing was and where he might find some. At first he stopped people at random and asked, but they either ran from him with a scream, which was a moderately comforting reminder of home, or shouted imprecations. One or two even threatened to assault him and it was only his growing sense of discretion that prevented Ogerak from dispatching them on the spot. All but one had been fair game.
Money, he learned, consisted of small pieces of green parchment that could be exchanged for goods. There were mystical symbols inscribed on them—a key, a pyramid, an all-seeing eye—but he was unable to determine the nature of the magical spells they denoted. Ogerak was also at a loss to discover from whence came this scrip until he happened to notice a man emerging from a building with a handful of the parchment and inquired as politely as he could manage about where he had acquired it.
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