Angel Trouble: A grim reaper horror comedy (24/7 Demon Mart Book 3)

by D. M. Guay

  “Oh no. Don't—”

  He sunk that bone tip into his mouth.

  “—eat that.”

  Too late.

  He groaned. “Mmmm. Hexed Huckleberry. Can you believe it still tastes good?”

  Ew.

  “Mushroom Car Race Man. Yay!” Zack was amped. “Keegan said when you get good, you can unlock a character called the Snot Father.”

  “Never heard of him.” Okay, then. Things were looking up.

  Zack plopped down on the other side of Keegan, the ghost of the dead pizza guy. The screen flickered. A sky view of a cheap 16-bit race track popped up on the screen. “You pick first,” Zack said. “Only fair.”

  Gulp. Here goes nothing. And everything. No pressure. We chose our racers. I picked a weird, buff worm guy in a green unitard. Zack didn't hesitate. He immediately chose a purple ghost with a jack-o'-lantern head.

  He said, “He kinda looks like me, don't you think? Cooler robes, though. I wish they'd let us do purple. I thought maybe after we'd reaped Prince, but no.”

  “Wait. Prince? Prince Prince?”

  “Now that was one stylish dude. Sang all the way to heaven. Anyway, are you ready?”

  “As I'll ever be.”

  He pressed start. The screen went dark, and for a second, I thought the console had given up the ghost. It probably wasn't designed to endure a full week of gameplay. Then, 16-bit lightning flashed, and a cartoon race track crackled onto the screen. One weird worm and one jack-o'-lantern—I assume. The graphics were small and fuzzy—revved at the starting line.

  Dude. I should have given him my Xbox.

  But too late now. This was it: The moment my whole life had led up to and depended on. My hands squeezed the controller so tight the plastic should have cracked.

  A countdown appeared on the top of the screen. Ninety seconds of knock off 16-bit glitchy joy to determine if DeeDee, Kevin, and I live or die. No pressure.

  I steadied the controller in my hand, my thumb hovering over the buttons. Waiting. Deep breaths.

  Go time.

  Click. Click. Click. Click.

  I mashed those buttons like my life depended on it. Literally. My worm car rumbled to life, kicking up pixel dust all over Zack's pumpkin, who hadn't rolled a virtual inch. “Ha. Take that!”

  He examined his controller. “Aw. Man. Wire's loose.”

  I raced forward while he fiddled with the wire. Eat worm dust!

  “Got it.” Zack pushed the wire in and suddenly his car shot forward. And caught up. And passed me.

  Shit! Click. Click. Turn. Click. Turn! Spray!

  Zack huffed. “Come on, man! You hit me with spore dust. I can't see.”

  “Good.” Click. Click. Click. Click. I mashed. I turned. My car vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrred. Then my button stuck, and I spun out. I shook the controller. “Stupid thing!”

  “Geesh. I thought you'd be more fun to play with,” Zack said. “But you're kind of angry.”

  Click. Click. Click. Click. Vrrrrrrrrrr.

  “I'm fighting for my life here!” Click. Click. Click. Click. “Eat my spores!”

  Ha! Pumpkin spins out. YES!

  “Oh, yeah. Right. I guess that is kind of a big deal. Nothing personal, bud. Rules are rules.” Zack's bony hands bopped that controller hard. He nearly rammed my worm off the track.

  Shit! Shit! Shit!

  Zack's bony fingers hit the buttons fast, like the pop of a machine gun. Boy, those bones sure could move. The pumpkin hit me at turn three. My car stopped. “Nooooooo!”

  Click. Click. Click. Click. I tried to hit some sort of combo. My car turned to static for a second, like it was about to disappear. “No!” Then it materialized in front of Zack's. “Yes!”

  Click. Click. Click. Click. I'd show you. All I needed to save the day was a 16-bit worm car and my thumbs. I'll save you, DeeDee!

  Click. Click. Click. Click.

  Click. Click. Click. Click. YES YES YES!

  Uh oh. That pumpkin was not out yet. It sped up. Vurrrrr. Whirrrrrrr.

  Click. Click. Click. Click. “Ooh, yeah! Got you there!” Zack shrieked.

  Shit! Thirty seconds to go, cars? Tied.

  Click. Click. Click. Click. We leaned into the turn. “Come on, little worm. Drive!”

  I mashed. Seriously. So hard and so fast my thumbs ached. I gripped the controller tighter, my butt on the very edge of the bed. My worm car sputtered and swerved.

  Zack's pumpkin? It teleported. Shit! He's ahead!

  “How did you do that?”

  “I'm not telling you!” Zack jumped and grunted as he clicked, nearly bouncing me off the bed.

  I held tight to that controller and mashed. Circle circle left left left. Mash. Mash MASH!

  It didn't work. That pumpkin could really drive. He had the lead. The screen lit up in bursts of purple.

  We closed in on the finish line. I pressed every button, but couldn't tell what did what, or if the buttons did anything at all. This was bad. Really bad.

  The screen flashed. The track changed colors. Countdown. Ten seconds to go.

  Click. Click. Click. Go, worm. GO!

  My worm sped up. The clock ticked down.

  Still tied.

  Click. Click. Click. Click. Vurrrrrrr.

  Huge blast. Pumpkin car shoots spores. I swerve. I spin out. SHIT!

  Click. Click. Click. Click.

  Seven.

  Drive, worm! DRIVE! Zack's ahead. Way ahead. I pull my car back onto the track. My palms sweat. My hands shook. I mashed buttons, but the controller barely responded.

  Six.

  Suddenly, a pair of bright red cherries floated onto the screen. YES! Power up! I watched the cherries zig and zag as I puttered down the track. But they moved randomly, like a glitch. If I chased after them, I'd be even farther behind, and DeeDee's life was on the line. Then again, if I got them? I pressed the buttons in and held, following behind Zack, barely catching up. The clock was ticking.

  Five.

  Fuck it. I'm going for the cherries. They're my best chance. So I followed the cherries. I pulled off the track into pit row. I pushed my stick all the way forward. My engine revved. The car jumped ahead. The cherries zagged. I pressed into that X button like my life depended on it. My car jumped, flying, I steered toward the bouncing cherries. Shit. They're bouncing away. I turned again. Get 'em, Lloyd. Get 'em!

  Three.

  Click. Click. Click.

  YES! Got 'em! Suddenly, the screen flashed, like Pac-Man ghosts after he eats a power pellet. My car spun and lit up like a disco ball.

  Click. Click. Mash. Go, worm. GO!

  A rainbow shot out of my 16-bit tailpipe, and that worm took off like a rocket.

  Two.

  This was my last chance. I had to save DeeDee. So I punched those buttons as hard as I could. All of them. Hoping maybe, just maybe, I could super charge that rainbow. Because this was Lloyd's Last Stand. Eternal damnation hung on the line. My worm flew. Rainbows sparked and whizzed across the screen.

  But Zack pressed into his controller so hard. His pumpkin sped up. We were neck and neck, still so close, it could go either way. I needed more. I swerved. My car inched ahead of him. My tailpipe showered Zack in rainbow. YES!

  One.

  The worm flew forward. Zack's pumpkin car was completely swallowed up by a cloud of 16-bit red, yellow, and blue. YES!

  A cheesy, tinking voice said, “Game over.”

  The screen flashed. Oh my God. I did it! I couldn't even see Zack's car. It was still wrapped in my rainbow exhaust. I DID IT! “Eat rainbow, reaper!”

  Zack sighed and patted me on the back. “Good game, bro.”

  My hands, my whole body, shook. I did it. I won! All those hours of video games had paid off. Then, thunk. The controller dropped clean out of my hands. Or fell through my hands. Because they were blue and see-through. My body was gone.

  No way. Did I lose? I must have lost! I felt tears welling in my eyes. Okay, I didn't. No tears for disembodied souls.
But I sure was crying on the inside. How did this happen? How could I possibly lose? Wait. Do not even tell me that the power ups don't count. I mean, that's like the No. 1 move in racing games! Then again, this was a cheap knockoff. Kevin was right. I should have given Zack my Xbox.

  “Man. Sucks!” Zack tossed his controller. “I mean, I'm happy you might not go to hell, but geesh.”

  “What?” I looked at the screen. The rainbow fizzled away. My worm sat in a 16-bit winners' circle. “Holy shit. I did it. I won!”

  I floated right up to the ceiling, riding on a cloud. Like, for real. Not even a joke. “I get to live! We all get to live!”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, technically you get to live. But boy. I don't know how you're gonna get out of this one.”

  I looked back down at Zack, still on the bed, reading Faust's directions and fiddling with his hourglass watch. “What do you mean, I 'technically' get to live?”

  Chapter 22

  I should have known. There's always a catch, isn't there? A chance to live again. A chance. That's it. No guarantee. No magic wiping away all the tragic events leading up to our deaths. No backing up to a safe point in time. A time when there was no shit rocketing straight at a fan. Nope. Only a chance.

  The gravity of what that meant was sinking in, deep. My ghostly blue body floated in the store, staring down the carnage before me, trying to come up with a plan before the world unfroze, and I was thrust back into it.

  Apparently, I had won the chance to be placed back in my body exactly two minutes before I died. Two measly minutes. Because that was what constituted a “Do Over” in the celestial fine print. And a do over was exactly what I asked for, in my head, when the blank check appeared.

  So yeah. Stupid me. I had exactly one hundred twenty seconds to prevent two people from dying again or my blank check was wasted, and all of this was for nothing. Because rules are rules, and the rules suck.

  “Okay. Times up!” Zack ushered me closer to my physical body, positioning me just so. Then, he floated back next to his, waved his bony finger, and the scene slowly reversed. In super slow motion.

  Except for my employee manual, which was on the end cap, shaking a bag of Zapp's Evil Eye chips at me, very adamantly. Dude. How can it possibly be hungry at a time like this?

  And except for Faust and the cleaning crew, who inexplicably moved in real time through all of this. They were sorting through that cardboard box of weird junk, deciding which of the trinkets to hang up next. Apparently, Faust took this ward thing very seriously. As was obvious from the three hundred portraits of his ex-girlfriend burning at the stake staring at me right now.

  Anyway. I turned back to my body. Okay. Deep breath. You can do this, Lloyd. Probably? I think. Hopefully. Maybe. Either way, I was out of time. I didn't really have a choice. I had to do this. I had to save us. Somehow. I just had to figure it out.

  I watched as Hunter's spiky claw paw reversed, rising over me. My neck knitted back together, and the blood sucked out of my shirt, back into my body where it should be. Kevin's thick sharp leg splurped out of DeeDee's chest, out of the ghost of the hipster. The pool of blood on her T-shirt sucked back inside of her, and her head lifted. Alive. I looked in her slow motion-reverse blue eyes, and the pressure increased. No matter what happened, I couldn't let her die. Not for my mistakes. No way.

  The scene rewound to just before the moment it all went south. Horribly, awfully, epically, holy shit, I'm going to die, south.

  “This is it. Are you ready?” Zack asked.

  “Uh. Can you back it up just a little bit more?” I wasn't sure I could prevent such a massive disaster from this close to the finish line. My blue ghost body was quaking.

  “Sorry, dude.” Zack showed me his watch. The sand in the little hourglass glowed green, a cosmic go signal. “This is exactly two minutes. Unless you can rewrite the celestial rules that govern time and space and do overs, it's time. This is your moment. Your one chance to get the girl and save everyone's lives. Wow. Now that I'm thinking about it. That's heavy. That's a lot of pressure. Good luck. I'm rooting for you.”

  “Tell me about it.” I stared at Hunter. At DeeDee. At Kevin. At the demonic Cookie Scout hanging upside down in Bubby's claw tipped leg. Come on, brain! I need a grand plan. Now.

  “And three...”

  Think. Think. Think!

  “Two...”

  Dear Baby Jesus, if you're listening, I'm open to any sort of divine inspiration or intervention. Literally anything. Thanks in advance. Oh, if you're out there, it'd be super amazing if you could call the Office of Efficient Eternal Soul Transference. We need reapers. Seriously. Lots of them. We've got a heap of unreaped souls here. They deserve to go to heaven. Amen.

  My brain was blank.

  Huh. Really? Nothing?

  What if I promise to go to church on Sundays?

  Still blank. So much for divine inspiration.

  “One.”

  Well, I was just gonna have to wing it. I shook out, which wasn't super helpful, because I didn't really have a body, so I only had mental muscles to loosen. Still, a pep talk never hurt. I will do this. I don't know how, but I will. For DeeDee. For all of them.

  “Go!”

  Shloooooooooooooop.

  That was the sound of me being sucked back into my body. And let me tell you. It was not easy, and it was not fun. I felt like Lloyd toothpaste being sucked back into a tube with an indescribably strong suction.

  “Uuuuuuuh!” I gasped. Holy shit. Real air sucked into my lungs, because I'm breathing! I ran my hand over my chest. Heart beat, no gaping hole in my neck. Pink, fleshy skin! Yay! I'm alive! I had never been so happy to feel my love handles in all my life. Mwa! I love you, pudge!

  I felt a little disoriented as everything moved in real time. The demon scout flailed in Bubby's grasp. My employee manual tugged on my sock. A shadow closed in over me.

  Hunter. Big. Wide. Mean. Angry. Clawing at the air, desperate for his red squeaky bone. Again. It floated up over his head and straight toward me. Hunter raised his giant white hand, transformed into a clawed paw, ready to snatch it out of the air, to slice my neck clean off.

  Oh shit. It's happening again! It's moving too fast. Think, Lloyd. DO SOMETHING!

  I jumped up and grabbed that red bone as it passed above me. Or tried to, because some invisible force tugged against the other end and wouldn't let go. My employee manual crawled up onto the counter, looked right at me, and spit out a slip of plastic. “EDVIN.”

  The fake out. Yes!

  I let go of the bone. It snapped back, then I reached up and grabbed it again, really fast. Whatever held the other end didn't see that move coming. Just like the cleaning crew guy and the Red Vine tug of war. Ha! “Here boy, Fetch!”

  I threw that bone as hard as I could and shuffled out of the way. Hunter followed it as it arced up through the air, into aisle two, and jumped up, ready to catch it in his giant toothy mouth.

  Phew. That was close.

  Crack. Chink.

  Shit. Broken records. DeeDee!

  I whirled around. One of Kevin's records crashed to the floor in pieces. Kevin's mouth split into a row of black spike fangs. Kevin reached for the register. Again.

  “DeeDee! Run!”

  I bent my legs, put my arms out, and squatted down, as low as I ever had. Perfect form. And push! I used the force of that perfect squat, thighs burning, to catapult myself up up up at Kevin. I flew through the air like a big fat javelin. I cleared the counter. YES!

  I hit Kevin's legs as they reached for the cash register. The force of my love handles pulled that machine right out of his ghostly grip.

  “Re-CORRRRRD!” Kevin growled. His white clawed monster legs flailed in my peripheral vision.

  YES! Crunk. Ow. Unfortunately, I crashed right into the back counter. Seriously. Ow.

  “Lloyd. Dude. Are you okay?”

  DeeDee reached for me. No time. I jumped up and grabbed that Rainbow Rising album by the sleeve as it rose up
, floating in mid-air. Huh. I hung in the air for a moment, as if some invisible force was holding me up. Just like the bone.

  Whatever it was, it shook me off. The album slipped right out of my hands, and I fell right through that hipster ghost and landed practically on top of DeeDee.

  Kevin cracked and popped and stretched and screamed, monster legs reaching out for that record, about to shoot right through DeeDee. Again. I didn't know what to do, so I pressed my body against her to shield her. She grunted. “Lloyd. You're mushing me.”

  Kevin's legs poked and flapped and stretched. We were trapped. That record floated down down down, then stopped, squarely between us and Kevin, as if something were marking us with a big fat bull's eye. Some thing. Or some one.

  “ReCORRRRRRRD!” Kevin growled.

  Shit! Think, Lloyd. Think! I hopped up. I grabbed an album off the stack and lured the hipster away from DeeDee. “Kevin wants to sell you his entire collection. How much will you give him for it?”

  Dude. As if on cue, that hipster—who was clear, blue and still clinging to his earthly habits, not yet spoiled—followed me, scribbling something on an invisible note pad, saying, “I can give you sixty dollars in store credit. That's very generous, considering. There's almost no demand for these.”

  Yeah. You wanna see a dead cockroach forget about a floating Dio album and get really mad? Kevin's black eyes turned on that hipster and lasered in on him with such intensity, it's as if they were powering up to melt his pompadour down to dust. I ducked. “Go go go!”

  I wrapped my arms around DeeDee, enveloping her in a safe layer of Lloyd pudge, and I did something I have never done—I tucked and rolled us both right out of there. Okay, sure. It probably looked a hippo doing a somersault while hugging a supermodel, but who cares? It worked. When we stopped rolling, we were halfway down the counter, out of reach of the enraged Kevin.

  Yes! We had survived our original appointments with death. YES! YES!

  All DeeDee said was, “Ow.”

  Unfortunately, we still had a store full of angry, violent ghosts. All around us. No plan. No escape route.

  But we did have a reaper. A gainfully employed reaper. I hopped up. Oh shit. The ghosts—no longer smoke. Solid, big, angry—were ripping apart the store. “Zack! Reap them! Now!”