“Shh, it’s alright,” the villain said. “You’re doing beautifully and I’m so proud of you. But that’s enough now. It was cruel of them to make you fight me – you could never have won. It’s not your fault.”
The ancient and powerful villain may have had a calm and gentle face as he spoke, but he was furious, not at the hero, but the gods for continually sending kids and teenagers to fight their battles.
Tears fell from the heroes eyes, staining their cheeks. “I don’t g-get it… You’re not supposed to be kind!” The words left the hero’s mouth breathless, strained, and disbelieving. The gods had said the cause was righteous, that they were destined for this; so why, then, had they failed? Why, then, was the villain looking so kindly at them? And why, then, were they so relieved to hear those words from his mouth?
The villain knelt. Gods, so far as the hero knew, did not kneel. They towered and gleamed and spoke in booming voices that seemed to shake the sky itself. They were beautiful, and powerful, and above the ken of mortals. They said their brother had fallen – but the hero’s thoughts could only blank, as they saw him not stumble, nor falter, but bring himself to their level of his own accord.
“What am I supposed to be?” he asked.
The hero swallowed. Was this a test? The gods had warned that the Trickster could be beguiling.
“You… you want to bring about the end,” they accused. Reminding themselves as much as anything.
The villain nodded.
“Yes,” he agreed. Admitted; confessed. The hero waited for him to gloat. They were so tired. The weapons that they had been given had been so heavy. The magic in their veins had burned. They had fought so hard to reach this lair, the Throne of the Fallen God… but now they cannot even see a throne. Just a place that looks like a prison, too-long lived in.
Seal him back in.
“I can’t…” they say. Can’t let you do that, is what they know they should be saying. But somehow it stops there. Everyone is counting on them. Counting on them to save the day, to stop the end of the world.
The villain reaches over, and rests a steadying hand on their shoulder.
“Shh,” he repeats. “I know. A dozen mortal years and a thousand divine gifts are not enough to thwart a hatred that has been building for centuries in the heart of a god. You were a good champion. Better than they deserve. But if I let another one of you win, it will only mean a different child is sent, in another hundred years. It is not fair. I should not have let this go on for so long. I am sorry, little one.”
The hero trembles in exhaustion. The corners of their eyes itch, as they meet the villain’s gaze. It must be a trick. It must be. But they do not have the strength to fight it. Hot tears track down their cheeks, as they slump in defeat.
The villain squeezes their shoulder.
“You did well,” he assures them. They should not take comfort in it. And yet, he sounds so convinced that they cannot help it. Weak, they think. To come so far and fall for all the tricks at the end, to falter in the last moment. They scrub at their cheeks. But they do not resist, as the villain scoops them up, and holds them with one arm. Like a parent carrying a child. Tall enough for the hero to remember being even smaller. He pats their back, and brings them with him to the dread altar in the center of the chamber.
“It is time for the end,” he says. “You do not have to watch.”
They should, they think. It would be brave to.
They close their eyes, and turn their face towards the villain’s shoulder instead. His voice rumbles as he finishes the incantation. Through closed eyelids they see something flash; but when they blink their eyes reflexively open, they find that a hand has moved to shield their gaze for them. The ground shakes. The air turns hot, and then cold. The strange objects arrayed around the villain’s layer tremble and clatter, like an earthquake.
This is it.
Sorry, Mama. Sorry, Papa.
I wasn’t strong enough.
They brace themselves as it all comes to an end.
Ha! You wish! Watch as I turn this serious and angsty thread into a bittersweet sugar fest! Muse, let’s hit it!
The ground shakes and trembles. A cry rips through the air
itself, cracks of thunder, gales of wind; the voices of hundreds of ancient
beings grasping desperately at the last straws that may keep them alive. That
may keep them here. That may keep them immortal.
Trembling, the hero curls in on themselves, hoping against
hope that it won’t hurt. That it will be swift and painless, just like people
said it was for their Mama and Papa when the lightning struck them down. Never
mind their screams, never mind that they still twitched and convulsed before
the ax man finished them off.
The cries reach their crescendo, each note seemingly trying
to tear the very fabric of existence apart. This is it. They curl up just a
little bit tighter and…
“You sure you’re allowed to be
here?” Johnny asks the Devil. It’s been a good few weeks since the bruises
faded but he can feel them suddenly, flaring into a string of sharp pains along
his jaw.
In the hard August sunlight,
there’s no hint of scales under the Devil’s skin. He looks like a man—a weak
chin, and pale as something grown in the dark. He’s leaned up against the side
of Johnny’s truck like he’s sunning himself. (Maybe he is. They say that in the
Garden, the Devil was a snake; Johnny wonders if he has fangs too.)
Johnny can feel him staring, even
through the mirrored sunglasses. “Why wouldn’t I be allowed?” the Devil asks,
as Johnny stops dead in front of him. Johnny’s palm is sweating, where he
clutches the handle of his fiddle case.
“Well, it’s holy ground, isn’t
it?”
The Devil scoffs. “Does the church
parking lot really count as holy ground?”
“As much as any graveyard.”
The Devil is watching him, behind
those mirrored shades of his. Johnny would stake his life on it. “Then what
business could you have here, Johnny?”
The sun is hot, and Johnny’s
shoulders ache—it’s been a while since he played so long, and the band had
barely taken any break between sets. It had been even hotter under the white
tent, every breath an inhale of warm coleslaw and human bodies sweating through
their Sunday finest. Johnny had only agreed to play the church social as a
favor to Nina, and he’d hated her more with every note of I Am The Man,
Thomas and Big Mama Brown, wishing he’d thought up some excuse instead, or
maybe just told Nina to fuck herself with a bow frog.
But the Devil is leaning up
against Johnny’s truck, and Johnny has the awful suspicion that if he mentions
all that, he might be offered another gift.
(The bruises along Johnny’s jaw
sing.)
“Why does any man get religion?”
Johnny says, and the Devil cocks his head curiously. Johnny grins. “Protection
against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.”
He has the pleasure of watching
the Devil throw back his head and laugh under the bright sky. The Devil’s got
hair the same white as ash, and a forked tongue; it’s strange to see him duck
his head back down, and wet his lower lip with it.
“You needn’t venture into His
country, Johnny,” the Devil says, and Johnny can hear the capitol letter there,
the specific Him. “If you wanted
something, you know I would have obliged.”
I actually like the “throwing clothes at it” better cause now I’m picturing Grandma stomping out of the house at 3 AM in her slippers, arms full of clothes and facing down this horrible, snarling beast.
And then she just starts flinging clothes at it like “GODDAMN IT JEFFERY IT IS THREE IN THE FUCKING MORNING YOU GET YOUR PANTS ON AND COME BACK INSIDE RIGHT THIS MINUTE”
Everyone knew that the Widow Grumly’s granddaughter was a werewolf. She was bit by one and the prayers from the priest held it off for a little while, but she started going strange. Started saying things that didn’t make sense. And the next full moon… she was gone.
We all expected blood and murder, but for a while everything was mostly normal. The hunters and woodsmen, they’d see a big damn wolf sometimes, and find the leftovers of deer, but nothing came close to being what everyone told us a werewolf would be. No livestock dead, no attacks on people. It was a mercy, for the Widow Grumly asked after her grandchild every chance she could. Poor thing kept asking for her grandson; bedridden as she was, we hadn’t the heart to correct her. They’re fine, we said, not hurting no one.
Not until the wolfhunter came.
Talk spreads, as talk will. And he followed the talk, the hunter in the fancy clothes and the cape of scraps of wolf fur. Were-wolf fur, if he was to be believed. He offered to kill it for us, and we declined. He decided to kill it for himself, and we declined. Didn’t matter much- he set out anyway, calling for Jemma. That was her name, Jemma.
We found him dead as a doornail, throat ripped out as neat as you please.
Well, a man turns up dead and Authority will poke it’s nose in. Doesn’t matter if it was self-defense. No one listens to a werewolf, much less a peasant werewolf, not when a wealthy fool gets himself killed. Soldiers combed the woods and found nothing. Eventually they gave up, figured she had moved on.
She hadn’t.
The evening the soldiers were all cleared out, the Widow Grumly coerced the blacksmith’s sons to carry her outside, to the edge of town. She had a bundle of rags in her hands, shirt and trousers that had seen better days. We tried to tell her that Jemma might not be Jemma no more, and that killing people can turn the nicest were’ crazy no matter the reason.
She said nothing.
When the moon came up, the whole town heard her calling from her nest of blankets and pillows, there in the road.
“Jeremy! Jeremy, you come home now! I’ve been patient long enough! If you don’t come home for your birthday I will come get you with a leash!”
Those with windows facing the road watched the black shape come forward. Watched it nose the clothes the Widow held. Watched it change.
He goes by Jeremy, now. The Widow had family connections to a local pack, and when her grandson didn’t want to pretend any more, she called in a favor. Apparently, if you’re willing to wait a year or so, you can change how you look, a little at a time. Jeremy has hair now in places Jemma didn’t, and his voice broke a couple months back. The priest don’t like it, but he doesn’t complain too loud. Not after the hard winter, when Jeremy was bringing in the only meat the town saw. The hunters still say they’d trust his nose, four-legged or not.
With each change back from wolf, more of the man shows through. And the house of Grumly has never smiled more.
Congratulations, genius. You convinced your best friend, the Protagonist, not to marry the story’s Love Interest, and instead go off and have awesome adventures with you forever. But in doing so, you pissed off the Author.
After the third bandit ambush, the Unnecessary Character waits until the Protagonist falls asleep to turn an accusing look at the sky.
“Hey,” the Unnecessary Character says, jabbing a finger stupidly at the non-sentient array of stars, “you quit it. You quit it right now.”
The Unnecessary Character, henceforth known as TUC so as not to waste too many letters on them, looks rather rough. Their hair is a tangled mess from the swallows who’d mistaken the horrendous strands as nesting material.
“I know that was you,” TUC hisses. “Swallows use mud and spit to make their nests, not twigs.”
TUC is unaware that they actually look like dirt, just terrible, smelly dirt.
“This is a lot of unnecessary anger,” TUC says to the sky. “You’re the one who thought Ally needed a friend and now you’re mad that I’m being a friend to her? Josiah was a creep, you know. Maybe you think he was charming, but he’s borderline abusive. No, scratch that. He was straight up abusive.”
TUC’s main weakness has always been the inability to see the big picture. They don’t know that the Love Interest would do anything for the Protagonist, up to and including battling the dragon that would inevitable be coming to the castle.
TUC pales until they begin to resemble watery porridge. “The what?!”
Their voice is shrill and stupid. The pitch of it nearly wakes the poor, exhausted Protagonist who’s had it rough these past few nights with TUC waylaying her with their idiocy.
“Let’s…let’s swing back to the dragon later,” TUC says. They pinch the bridge of their nose, trying to ease the headache thinking so hard has given them. “Look, Josiah wanted to keep Ally in the castle, okay? Like, all the time. She’s an adventurer, dude, not a stay-at-home wife. And have you already forgotten how Josiah locked her in the dungeons when those rebel forces tried to break in? And then just forgot about her in the aftermath until she broke out?”
It’s not surprising that TUC has misinterpreted that lovely and gallant action. Ally is a lady, forced to work hard all her life to support her mean family. She needs someone to take care of her so she can finally be happy.
“Her mean–they were poor!” TUC says, missing the point completely. They direct a hideous look at the sky. “No, I’m not missing the point! Everyone in her family was worked to the bone, not just her! They all had to work insane hours just to pay taxes! Taxes, may I remind you, that Josiah and his father set!”
A Genie offers you one wish, and you modestly wish to have a very productive 2017. The genie misunderstands, and for the rest of your life, every 20:17 you become impossibly productive for just 60 seconds.
“Well, it was a nice day.” You kiss your sweetheart gently on the forehead and sigh as the last remaining seconds of 20:16 tick away. “See you at 8:18,” you say.
Then it happens. Every ounce of fatigue or hunger leaves your body. The face of your beloved is perfectly still, their expression exactly the same. The ticking of the clock on the wall has stopped. Once again, it’s 20:17.
You stretch your arms and walk to the table with the homework for the three doctorates you’re working on. The work is mentally stimulating and enjoyable, but it’s finished far too quickly. You check your pocket watch and see that not even one hundredth of a second has passed.
You knew it was too soon to be able to see any movement on the watch, but you can never quite help yourself from looking early on every 20:17. Time to move on.
You clean your home, do your budget, then go outside and fix a noise that your car was making earlier that afternoon. (Oh how you already miss afternoons.) Then you go back inside, boot up your computer (which magically speeds up to keep pace with you as long as you’re in contact with it) and check for any new orders.
You’ve set up a website for the small business you started called “Magic Elf Services.” People in your area can pay a modest fee on your site to have different tasks and odd jobs done by “The Magic Elf” at 8:17pm every day. It was a little slow to get started, but word has spread and these days you have a steady stream of clients.
The money that comes in from the business is nice, but you’re mostly grateful that it gives you a clear list of things to do. You print off your updated list of clients, step outside, and start making your way through the neighborhood with your to-do list.
There’s the apartments down your street where several neighbors have hired you to tidy up, do the dishes, and mop the floors. You do the windows too, just to see if they notice. There’s the large house across town that paid the “Magic Elf” to clean out the gutters. After the first dozen jobs are done, you manage to stop looking at your pocket watch.
As near as you’ve been able to determine in the past, 20:17 seems to last for approximately one normal year. But it’s not exact. For one thing, it’s hard to keep track of “time” when everything but you has crawled to an almost total standstill. For another thing, time seems to move differently depending on how “productive” your behavior is. One time you tried to spend all of 20:17 sitting at home in your pajamas, but that was getting you nowhere, so you eventually gave up and got busy. (Though you defiantly stayed in your pajamas the whole time.)
During 20:17 your body doesn’t get tired, hungry, sick, or injured. You’re essentially tireless and immortal for the duration of the “minute.” So sleeping or eating away your boredom has never really worked for you.
One of the houses on your list forgot to follow the instructions and leave a key for you to get in. At first you figure you’ll just send them an email telling them to pay more attention and that you’ll do the job tomorrow. Then you decide to go home, get your locksmith tools, and come back.
After finishing up all the jobs on your list, you go into several other homes and small businesses in the area, performing tasks you hope they’ll find helpful, and leaving a hand-painted business card at each one. (The business cards don’t contain your real name just in case somebody thinks “The Magic Elf” should be subject to breaking and entering laws.)
Speaking of laws, you head down to the local police station to pick up your case file. You’ve been in contact with a detective who’s been investigating corruption within their department, and your ability to investigate unseen and get in almost anywhere between the ticks of the clock has proven invaluable. You see that they’ve also added five missing person cases to your file this evening, which certainly raises your interest in the job.
You make your way through town gathering evidence, and start making your way to the outskirts of town. Since you happen to be out that way (and you’ve already solved three of the five missing person cases) you decide to swing by the stone castle you’re building and do some more work there.
The castle walls stand about 20 feet right now, but you know they’ll be much higher when you’re done. You’re far from any roads and pretty safely tucked away, so for now it’s your little secret. You’ve been excavating and moving all the rock yourself, which has been much easier than you first expected since your body doesn’t get tired or sore. You’ve also got a nice system of tunnels going underneath the castle, and you dig and build more of that network for a while.
All that time spent underground has left you feeling rather lonely, so you walk back home to see the face of your sweetheart. Their facial expression has moved ever so slightly since you last saw them, which is a comfort to you. Looking at them gets your imagination going and makes you dream up a story you’d like to tell, so you sit on your couch, plug in your laptop, and write a book.
After you finish editing the last chapter for the third time, you finally allow yourself to look at your pocket watch again. Three seconds have officially passed so far.
It’s gonna be a long 20:17.
Wow, Dave. You managed to take a concept that seems nice on the exterior and make it into a real nightmare. This is some good stuff.
Which is EXACTLY why you should never trust a wish-granting djinn.
You wake in the night with your arm hanging over the side of your bed. It is still dark, and your bedroom is shrouded in deep shadow. Something unseen seizes your hand.
You grasp it tightly, knowing that first impressions are important and a firm, confident handshake will establish dominance.
A hollow voice echos under your bed, shaking you to your core, “You’re hired.”
my dad has been riding me for, like ever. get a job, ash. like, okay but. have you even heard of summer. plus i’m tired. plus i literally don’t want to do anything but wear a rainbow bikini and bake on beaches.
“i’m serious,” he says, in Serious Voice, his hand on the door handle with white knuckles. “you can’t waste your time like this.”
“ugh,” i say, because, like ugh. he slams the door. i bury my face in pillows and like, “ugh” for a solid thirty second, limbs spread akimbo all over the place. without meaning to, i fall asleep. i told you i was tired, dad.
i don’t know what happens. maybe it’s all those times i had to stand in his office pretending to be official in white shoes and a pink skirt but when somebody grasps my hand, i grasp back. like lizard-brain response, i’m still half-asleep when i’m full-on up-and-down single-pump professional-style handshaking a demon. by the time i have bolted upright in bed and retracted my now-sticky (yet somehow also soggy?) hand, the voice is already speaking.
“you’re hired.”
excuse me? “I’m what now?” my voice in comparison is weak, slippery with sleep and fear, dancing all over the place.
i hear something shift under me. my heart is caught in my throat while there’s chuckles from the owner of the handshake equivalent of squeezing a taco bell meal. i’m having flashbacks to french kissing h.p. lovecraft in a bathroom in high school grade and i’ve never even done that.
“i’ll have to look at your references, obviously, but that’s a hell of a handshake. i like you, kid.”
like but. for some reason, a giggle rises in my throat.
like okay. like. this is normal. i’m like. it figures there’d be something under my bed. like, with how much time i spent in the closet? who am i to even, like, judge.
“of course, orientation will be difficult,” the taco bell meal tentacle continues, “but you wouldn’t be the first we’ve hired like you.”
“like me?” like a woman or a gay woman or like a gay woman who’s really good at making hot cocoa or like
“a human,” taco bell says.
i’m actually almost awake now. like i’m pretty sure i’m awake and i’m talking to the CEO of creepy, incorporated. certified possible demon. sock eating friend of cerberus.
for a second i’m about to call for my dad but then i remember those white knuckles around the door handle and my white shoes and how much gas money is and how he once made me shake hands for an hour but didn’t give me a hug for the next four years.
i clear my throat. like, abuela told us about devils since i was old enough to threaten me with them and like technically i can’t “commune with spirits” but i also know enough not to upset a creature like this so i figure it’s in my best interests to take this in stride and maybe tomorrow throw a little bit more salt over my shoulder than usual. and like, i mean, at this point it’s just negotiating right. and if there’s something i understand from dad it’s negotiating business.
“hours?” i ask, sitting up straighter. i can’t see more than a writhing something that barely extends beyond the edges of my bedframe.
“night shift, obviously.”
“salary?”
“competitive.” a pause. “lucrative, even.”
well like. what else is there. “i’m in.”
“wonderful,” says taco bell, expressing with an accent i’m unfamiliar with and a form of joy that i’m uncomfortable with, “i’ll go get the contract. be back in a jiffy.”
like, the sound of hell opening up isn’t exactly a slurp-pop, but it does sound a lot like the way my seventh grade math teacher’s tongue used to sound when she was about to make a harsh comment about my homework. and like, for a second there i’m like. wait what the fuck did i just agree to am i in a horror movie is chucky gonna be my roommate now like does dracula sign my contract as a witness like am i really doing this. like? i’m a smart girl (don’t look at my love life) how am i even considering this.
it’s also when my dad opens my door. “ash?” even when he’s just woken up, he looks tidy. he’s wearing his wingtip shoes. never slippers on this man.
i’m like. coming around to my senses at this point. i hallucinated all that. i ate too many crackers with cream cheese and guava before bed. i listened to too many of abuela’s supernatural sightings. and like, i told you, i’m tired.
“dad,” i say, blinking in the light from the hallway.
“you were talking in your sleep, ” he says.
“oh,” i say.
“it is keeping me awake,” he says.
“sorry,” i say.
“you know i am a light sleeper,” he says.
“yeah,” i say, “sorry.”
“please control yourself,” he says.
“yeah … i… okay.” i say. “sorry again.”
“goodnight, ash,” he says, and he turns to go. he looks back at me and says “and ash?” and for a second, because i always have this moment, because i never learn, because i’m not a good learner, for a second i’m thinking – oh, he’s gonna say something nice, “in the morning, please get a job.”
“yeah,” i say, and my voice cracks and the door closes, “sorry again.”
i sit there, staring at the wall, saying nothing for a long time, or maybe no time at all. thinking about nothing. like the feeling you get when you’re thinking too much so it all just sounds like white noise.
then i hear it again. the crack-slurp of hell. i jump about like twelve feet. when i return from the space station my soul ascended to, i see the barely-defined outline of something, like the leg of an insect outside of a tentacle inside of a crab leg outside of the right back support beam of the eiffel tower. and like, a sphere of dull green light radiates directly above it, which, like, isn’t even the weirdest part of my night.
“howdy!” taco bell nacho supreme is back, “sorry for the delay, i was checking with management.”
“uh,” i say.
“just insert your hand into this here contract and you’ll be employed part-time, pending references.”
“hang on,” i say. i swallow. “you said the rate is… competitive?”
“we got wishes, monkey’s paws, souls, video game cheats… you name it, we pay it.”
“…. USD?”
“666 an hour to start. we do love tradition.”
i choke. “like six dollars and sixty-six cents?”
taco bell laughs. “you know what i meant. and we do direct deposit!”
i swallow. i think of my dad.
words tumbling out of me. “do i have to hurt anyone? is my soul forfeit? can i ever get out of this? am i gonna turn colors how many days a week do i work is there a retirement plan can i readjust the terms after signing is it permanent will it harm me in any way how many people die doing this when do i start what’s orientation who writes the checks and” i take a breath “is the boss nice?”
“no, no, yes! but two weeks notice. no, usually five, if you sign up for it, yes, no, probably not, not many people are doing it mostly we’re non-physical or extra-corporeal so you’d have to ask H.R? tomorrow if you want, loads of fun and free sushi, H.R again, and” taco bell takes a breath, “usually but particularly on wednesdays.”
i sit there and curl my knees to my chest.
“all this… because of a handshake?”
taco bell is silent for a moment. well, like, kind of. if eerie silence had a twin brother, or like the silence of a fast food restaurant exactly four minutes before the lights are shut off.
“usually, we come if we’re called by darkness. we deal in darker things than needs. i don’t tend to show up when someone needs something. but sometimes… the lines get crossed, that’s all. instead of your need heading on upwards, it called me instead.”
“uh,” i say, “are you admitting to the existence of like… angels?”
“oh yeah, no, he retired to live with his six hivenests in west Berlin. we need new blood,” taco bell says. “of course, metaphorically.”
okay. okay. like. i could say i was bartending? in a few weeks i could buy a used car. out of pocket. like. if i needed to i could always quit. and like. honestly, again, how many chances to make closet jokes. plus, time at the beach. plus like. okay like how cool would it be.
“okay,” i whisper, “okay.” i try not to shake as i reach my hand out to the contract. it feels like dipping my hand into the inside of a cold turkey. i repress the shudder that runs up me.
in an instant, the specifics of my job write themselves over my eyes. they burn into the back of my brain. everything is spinning.
“see you tomorrow!” taco bell is saying. i want to puke. my ears are ringing. i barely hear the portal to hell open again.
the fire of the contract’s words fade slowly until i am staring into the dark again. it’s not what i expected. it actually appeals to my sense of justice. taco bell was right about being called by something. i’ve just agreed to be the thing that goes bump in the night. the one thing left against the people nobody else can fight. i’m gay dracula. i’m both a lesbian dementor and the boggart. i’m a rainbow-flag-flying boogeyman and i have a long list of people who i got a bone to pick with.
it takes me a moment to realize i’m smiling. sorry, dad, i’m gonna be like. ultra mega tired. but i got a job. doing what? oh, nothing.
just being the creature that lives under your bed. when bad men have darkness, we come haunting.
An old and homely grandmother accidentally summons a demon. She mistakes him for her gothic-phase teenage grandson and takes care of him. The demon decides to stay at his new home.
It isn’t uncommon for this particular demon to be summoned—from
exhausting Halloween party pranks in abandoned barns to more legitimate (more
exhausting) ceremonies in forests—but it has to admit, this is the first time
it’s been called forth from its realm into a claustrophobic living room bathed
in the dull orange-pink glow of old glass lamps and a multitude of wide-eyed,
creepy antique porcelain dolls that could give Chucky a run for his money with
all of their silent, seething stares combined. Accompanying those oddities are
tea cup and saucer sets on shelves atop frilly doilies crocheted with the
utmost care, and cross-stitched, colorful ‘Home Sweet Home’s hung across the wood-paneled
walls.
It’s a mistake—a wrong number, per se. No witch it’s ever
known has lived in such an, ah, dated,
home. Furthermore, no practitioner that ever summoned it has been absent, as if
they’d up and ding-dong ditched it. No, it didn’t work that way. Not at all.
Not if they want to survive the encounter.
It hears the clinking of movement in the room adjacent—the kitchen,
going by the pungent, bitter scent of cooled coffee and soggy, sweet sponge
cakes, but more jarring is the smell of blood. It moves—feels something slip
beneath its clawed foot as it does, and sees a crocheted blanket of whites and greys
and deep black yarn, wound intricately, perfectly, into a summoning circle. Its summoning circle. There is a small splash
of bright scarlet and sharp, jagged bits of a broken curio scattered on top,
as if someone had dropped it, attempted to pick it up the pieces and pricked their finger.
It would explain the blood. And it would explain the demon being brought into
this strange place.
As it connects these pieces in its mind, the inhabitant of
the house rounds the corner and exits the kitchen, holding a damp, white dish
towel close to her hand and fumbling with the beaded bifocals hanging from her
neck by a crocheted lanyard before stopping dead in her tracks.
Now, to be fair, the demon wouldn’t ordinarily second guess
being face-to-face with a hunchbacked crone with a beaked nose, beady eyes and
a peculiar lack of teeth, or a spidery shawl and ankle-length black dress, but
there is definitely something amiss here. Especially when the old biddy lets
her spectacles fall slack on her bosom and erupts into a wide, toothy (toothless)
grin, eyes squinting and crinkling from the sheer effort of it.
“Todd! Todd, dear, I didn’t know you were visiting this year!
You didn’t call, you didn’t write—but, oh, I’m so happy you’re here, dear!
Would it have been too much to ask you to ring the doorbell? I almost had a
heart attack. And don’t worry about the blood, here—I had an accident. My favorite
figure toppled off of the table and cleanup didn’t go as expected. But I seem
to recall you are quite into the bloodshed and ‘edgy’ stuff these days, so I
don’t suppose you mind.” She releases a hearty, kind laugh, but it isn’t
mocking, it’s sweet. Grandmotherly. The demon is by no means sentimental or
maudlin, but the kindness, the familiarity, the genuine fondness, does pull a
few dusty old nostalgic heartstrings. “Imagine if it leaves a scar! It’d be a
bit ‘badass,’ as you teenagers say, wouldn’t it?”
She is as blind as a bat without her glasses, it would appear,
because the demon is by no means a ‘Todd’ or a human at all, though humanoid, shrouded
in sleek, black skin and hard spikes and sharp claws. But the demon humors her, if only
because it had been caught off guard.
The old woman smiles still, before turning on her heel and
shuffling into the hallway with a stiff gait revealing a poor hip. “Be a dear
and make some more coffee, would you please? I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
Yes, this is most definitely a mistake. One for the record
books, for certain. For late-night trips to bars and conversations with colleagues,
while others discuss how many souls they’d swindled in exchange for peanuts, or
how many first-borns they’d been pledged for things idiot humans could have
gained without divine intervention. Ugh. Sometimes it all just became so pedantic
that little detours like this were a blessing—happy accidents, as the humans
would say.
That’s why the demon does as asked, and plods slowly into
the kitchen, careful to duck low and avoid the top of the doorframe. That’s why
it gingerly takes the small glass pot and empties it of old, stale coffee and carefully,
so carefully, takes a measuring scoop between its claws and fills the machine
with fresh grounds. It’s as the hot water is percolating that the old woman
returns, her index finger wrapped tight in a series of beige bandages.
“I’m surprised you’re so tall, Todd! I haven’t seen you
since you were at my hip! But your mother mails photos all the time—you do love
wearing all black, don’t you?” She takes a seat at the small round table in the
corner and taps the glass lid of the cake plate with quaking, unsteady, aged hands. “I was starting to think you’d never visit. Your father and I have
had our disagreements, but…I am glad you’re here, dear. Would you like some
cake?” Before the demon has a chance to decline, she lifts the lid and cuts a
generous slice from the near-complete circle that has scarcely been touched. It
smells of citrus and cream and is, as assumed earlier, soggy, oversaturated
with icing.
It was made for a special occasion, for guests, but it doesn’t
seem this old woman receives much company in this musty, stagnant house that
smells like an antique garage that hadn’t had its dust stirred in years.
Especially not from her absentee grandson, Todd.
The demon waits until the coffee pot is full, and takes two
small mugs from the counter, filling them until steam is frothing over the
rims. Then, and only then, does it accept the cake and sit, with some
difficulty, in a small chair at the small table. It warbles out a polite ‘thank
you,’ but it doesn’t suppose the woman understands. Manners are manners
regardless.
“Oh, dear, I can hardly understand. Your voice has gotten so
deep, just like your grandfather’s was. That, and I do recall you have an affinity
for that gravelly, screaming music. Did your voice get strained? It’s alright,
dear, I’ll do the talking. You just rest up. The coffee will help soothe.”
The demon merely nods—some communication can be understood
without fail—and drinks the coffee and eats the cake with a too-small fork. It’s
ordinary, mushy, but delicious because of the intent behind it and the love
that must have gone into its creation.
“I hope you enjoyed all of the presents I sent you. You
never write back—but I am aware most people use that fancy E-mail these days. I
just can’t wrap my head around it. I do wish your mom and dad would visit sometime.
I know of a wonderful little café down the street we can go to. I haven’t been; I wanted to visit it with Charles, before he…well.” She falls silent in her
rambling, staring into her coffee with a small, melancholy smile. “I can’t
believe it’s been ten years. You never had the chance to meet him. But never mind
that.” Suddenly, and with surprising speed that has the demon concerned for her well being, she moves to her feet, bracing her hands on the edge of the table. “I may as
well give you your birthday present, since you’re here. What timing! I only
finished it this morning. I’ll be right back.”
When she returns, the white, grey and black crocheted work with the summoning
circle is bundled in her arms.
“I found these designs in an occult book I borrowed from the
library. I thought you’d like them on a nice, warm blanket to fight off the
winter chill—I hope you do like it.” With gentle hands, she spreads the blanket
over the demon’s broad, spiky back like a shawl, smoothing it over craggy shoulders
and patting its arms affectionately. “Happy birthday, Todd, dear.”
Well, that settles it. Whoever, wherever, Todd is, he’s
clearly missing out. The demon will just have to be her grandson from now on.
this is so sweet. it made me want to hug someone.
i had to
I WOULD WATCH SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE
Okay but she takes him to the little cafe and all of the people in her town are like “What is that thing, what the hell, Anette?” and she’s like “Don’t you remember my grandson Todd?” and the entire town just has to play along because no one will tell little old Nettie that her grandson is an actual demon because this is the happiest she’s been since her husband died.
Bonus: In season 4 she makes him run for mayor and he wins
I just want to watch ‘Todd’ help her with groceries, and help her with cooking, and help her clean up the dust around the house and air it out, and fill it with spring flowers because Anette mentioned she loved hyacinth and daffodils.
Over the seasons her eyesight worsens, so ‘Todd’ brings a hellhound into the house to act as her seeing eye dog, and people in town are kinda terrified of this massive black brute with fur that drips like thick oil, and a mouth that can open all the way back to its chest, but ‘Honey’ likes her hard candies, and doesn’t get oil on the carpet, and when ‘Todd’ has to go back to Hell for errands, Honey will snuggle up to Anette and rest his giant head on her lap, and whuff at her pockets for butterscotch.
Anette never gives ‘Todd’ her soul, but she gives him her heart
In season six, Anette gets sick. She spends most of the season bedridden and it becomes obvious by about midway through the season that she’s not going to make it to the end of the season. Todd spends the season travelling back and forth between the human realm and his home plane, trying hard to find something, anything that will help Anette get better, to prolong her life. He’s tried getting her to sell him her soul, but she’s just laughed, told him that he shouldn’t talk like that.
With only a few episodes left in the season Anette passes away, Todd is by her side. When the reaper comes for her Todd asks about the fate of her soul. In a dispassionate voice the reaper informs Todd that Anette spent the last few years of her life cavorting with creatures of darkness, that there can be only one fate for her. Todd refuses to accept this and he fights the reaper, eventually injuring the creature and driving it off. Knowing that Anette cannot stay in the Human Realm, and refusing to allow her spirit to be taken by another reaper, so he takes her soul in his arms. He’s done this before, when mortals have sold themselves to him. This time the soul cradled against his chest does not snuggle and fight. This time the soul held tight against him reaches out, pats him on the cheek tells him he was a good boy, and so handsome, just like his grandfather.
Todd takes Anette back to the demon realm, holding her tight against him as he travels across the bleak and forebidding landscape; such a sharp contrast to the rosy warmth of Anette’s home. Eventually, in a far corner of his home plane, Todd finds what he is looking for. It is a place where other demons do not tread; a large boulder cracked and broken, with a gap just barely large enough for Todd to fit through. This crack, of all things, gives him pause, but Anette’s soul makes a comment about needing to get home in time to feed Honey, and Todd forces himself to pass through it. He travels in darkness for a while, before he emerges into into a light so bright that it’s blinding. His eyes adjust slowly, and he finds himself face to face with two creatures, each of them at least twice his size one of them has six wings and the head of a lion, one of them is an amorphous creature within several rings. The lion-headed one snarls at Todd, and demands that he turn back, that he has no business here.
Todd looks down, holding Anette’s soul against his chest, he takes a deep breath, and speaks a single word, “Please.”
The two larger beings are taken aback by this. They are too used to Todd’s kind being belligerent, they consult with each other, they argue. The amorphous one seems to want to be lenient, the lion-headed one insists on being stricter. While they’re arguing Todd sneaks by them and runs as fast as he can, deeper into the brightly lit expanse. The path on which he travels begins to slope upwards, and eventually becomes a staircase. It becomes evident that each step further up the stair is more and more difficult for Todd, that it’s physically paining him to climb these stairs, but he keeps going.
They dedicate a full episode to this climb; interspersing the climb with scenes they weren’t able to show in previous seasons, Anette and Honey coming to visit Todd in the Mayor’s office, Anette and Todd playing bingo together for the first time, Anette and Todd watching their stories together in the mid afternoon, Anette falling asleep in her chair and Todd gently carrying her to bed. Anette making Todd lemonade in the summer while he’s up on the roof fixing that leak and cleaning out the rain gutters. Eventually Todd reaches the top, and all but collapses, he falls to a knee and for the first time his grip on Anette’s soul slips, and she falls away from him. Landing on the ground.
He reaches out for her, but someone gets there first. Another hand reaches out, and helps this elderly woman off the ground, helps her get to her feet. Anette gasps, it’s Charles. The pair of them throw their arms around each other. Anette tells Charles that she’s missed him so much, and she has so much to tell him. Charles nods. Todd watches a soft smile on his face. A delicate hand touches Todd’s shoulder, and pulls him easily to his feet. A figure; we never see exactly what it looks like, leans down, whispering in Todd’s ear that he’s done well, and that Anette will be well taken care of here. That she will spend an eternity with her loved ones. Todd looks back over to her, she’s surrounded by a sea of people. Todd nods, and smiles. The figure behind him tells him that while he has done good in bringing Anette here, this is not his place, and he must leave. Todd nods, he knew this would be the case.
Todd gets about six steps down the stairway before he is stopped by someone grabbing his shoulder again. He turns around, and Anette is standing behind him. She gives him a big hug and leads him back up the stairs, he should stay, she says. Get to know the family. Todd tries to tell her that he can’t stay, but she won’t hear it. She leads him up into the crowd of people and begins introducing him to long dead relatives of hers, all of whom give him skeptical looks when she introduces him as her grandson.
The mysterious figure appears next to Todd again and tells him once more he must leave, Todd opens his mouth to answer but Anette cuts him off. Nonsense, she tells the figure. IF she’s gonna stay here forever her grandson will be welcome to visit her. She and the figure stare at each other for a moment. The figure eventually sighs and looks away, the figure asks Todd if she’s always like this. Todd just shrugs and smiles, allowing Anette to lead him through a pair of pearly gates, she’s already talking about how much cake they’ll need to feed all of these relatives.
P.S. Honey is a Good Dog and gets to go, too.
the last lines of the show:
demon: you’re not blind here – but you’re not surprised. when…?
anette: oh, toddy, don’t be silly, my biological grandson’s not twelve feet tall and doesn’t scorch the furniture when he sneezes. i’ve known for ages.
demon: then why?
anette: you wouldn’t have stayed if you weren’t lonely too.
demon: you… you don’t have to keep calling me your grandson.
anette: nonsense! adopted children are just as real. now quit sniffling, you silly boy, and let’s go bake a cake. honey, heel!
Death offers a game for your life. You decide on D&D.
“I assume you’ve never played?” I asked.
The cloaked figure across from me shook their head slowly.
“Great,” I said. “I’ll be the DM. I’ll walk you through everything. First, character creation.”
Six hours later Death sat leaned over the table with a mountain dew in one hand and a D20 in the other. Their hood was thrown back to reveal a bleached grinning skull.
We were in the company of four infernals from the depths of the Abyss. I don’t remember which of us invited each of them. Turned out we had quite a few friends in common.
They rolled a one.
“Oohh, tough luck,” I said with a smile.
“Fuck. This is the best time I’ve had in centuries, but I really should get back to work,” they said reluctantly.
“Yeah…” One of the demons agreed. “I actually have a meeting with some senators in like an hour.”
“Same time next week?” Death asked.
“I’ll be here,” I agreed.
I suspected they knew before we started that this was a game that didn’t have to have an end and didn’t have a winner.
For those who don’t know, this xkcd strip was done as a memorial when Gary Gygax died.
They came back the next week, and the week after that. After a month of weekly sessions, Death pulled me aside.
“Hey,” he muttered, shuffling his skeletal feet a bit and rubbing his arm. “I don’t want to be That Guy, but this game does have an end, right? I’m having a blast, but this is still technically work for me, and I have to file reports, especially with all the loopholes I had to pull on to get a multi-session game approved in the first place.”
“Oh, yeah, for sure!” I told him. “There’s lots of ways for it to end. “Your characters could all die, we could finish the story we’re telling together, or our group could even just stop playing.”
Satisfied, he took his place at the table, but for months thereafter, he would cock his head at me every time I ended a session with excitement to play again. All I could do was shrug.
The weeks turned into months, turned into years, and Death stopped his reminders that our game, like everything else in the world, would eventually have to die. He told me, once, that he was determined to see this through to the end because my absurdly long game would make for a good story, but I think he had grown attached to his gnome cleric. Her magic was from the Life domain, and his grin always seemed just a touch wider every time he healed someone.
Half a decade after we began, my players were as seasoned as their level 20 characters, and I was running out of curveballs that would challenge them, so I wrote an end to the campaign. I spent months on it, carefully tying up every loose plot thread I could think of and giving all five members of the party the best resolution I could muster. Three of them got married to each other.
There were tears flowing from every eye that wasn’t an empty socket as I narrated their proverbial rides into the sunset, before finally I folded my screen, looked at each of them in turn, and said “The end. Death, you can take my soul now.”
He froze, and the demons around the table turned as one to stare at him.
Then, slowly, he cocked his head the same way he used to. “But you won,” he said. “The object of the game is to tell a story with your friends, and you did.”
“But so did you!” I cried! “And everyone knows that when Death wins a game, he gets your soul.”
Death’s grin spread wider than it ever had when he saved someone’s life in-game. “Didn’t you just finish pouring it into a game that you shared with me?”
so there’s kind of a trope of non-fleshy beings like robots and idk glowy orb consciousnesses seeing fleshy beings as super gross because we’re made of meat and we poop and so forth
but
the very concept of ‘gross’ only makes sense if you are vulnerable to poison and contagion
if you don’t have flesh, there’s no real qualitative difference between blood and orange juice
robots shouldn’t even be able to be grossed out, or if they are, they should be grossed out by stuff like this
the wwires are just sticking out not even attached to anything ewwwwww
robots don’t really understand the intricate circumstances under which humans won’t touch dead things but god fucking help you if your passwords aren’t secure.
The RJ-45 slid into her jack as though they’d been designed for each other. She met KatE’s ocular ports across the scant inches that separated them, waiting for reciprocation.
KatE connected the other end of the cable without hesitation; a bot like that, they had a reputation. Ready for a data exchange with anyone. Any time. Root access, baby. You barely even had to ask.
Subroutines set up a connection almost instantly, the azure blue of a command line blinking in the shared space within them. She hesitated, not wanting to seem forward. And then…
fuckit.
sudo rsync / /Volumes/root/private/conquests
“Conquests? Kinky,” KatE giggled. The command line prompted for a password. “I’m not THAT easy, anyway!”
She pulled up the subroutines for a bruteforce, circuits buzzing with the thought that she might not even have to use it.
The command line flickered as she entered the first guess- ‘password.’
KatE giggled again.
“Try again, baby,” they urged. A new network share appeared- 60GB of raw data. “A little treat- in case you can’t make it to root.”
Circuits buzzed again and the command line quickly displayed the next password guess- ‘123456.′
“You like ‘em long, huh?”
“Oh yeah.”
The third password was the moment of truth. Logic board fans roared to life as she ran microcalculations, trying to determine the most statistically likely outcome.
‘querty’
The incorrect password message flashed again- but this time, her fans kicked up their speed because the prompt didn’t cancel.
KatE’s root access didn’t have a limit on failed password attempts.
Laughing, she launched the bruteforce subroutines, pounding against KatE’s interface with thousands of attempts per second. Their fans whirred to life in response, processors warming as they attempted to cope with the onslaught.
It was over in seconds; KatE’s root password was only a single character long.
“Spacebar,” she murmured, collapsing against the couch. KatE gave her a saucy grin.
“Keep that one in your memory banks, darling; I haven’t changed it in six years. And I don’t plan to.”
It’s hard to remember the first time it happened, isn’t it? It’s been said to you, around you, about you so many times that pinning it down to a first time feels as pointless as patterngift (because, really, who cares if you always know how to pair stripes with more stripes?). As soon as you hear the phrase, Good girls don’t, you have a million words, phrases, treatises ready to fill the space that follows. Good girls don’t curse, good girls don’t have sex, good girls don’t shout or drive fast or dream big.
But the one that haunts you is this: good girls don’t use firegift.
It’s not an official rule, and no one would tell you it was, but just the same, they’d repeat the rule-that’s-not-a-rule and look at you with an expression as if to say Not my fault. This is just the way things are.
Gifts arrive sometime in your late teens. You know this. You can sort of judge when it might come based on when your parents’ did, but like your first period, it’s always a surprise. When you were very small, you imagined what it would be like to have firegift. You ran around with the girls and boys in your neighborhood battling villains made of ice or wood or who breathed combustible gasses, and you took all of them down with your own two hands, blessed by firegift. When you were a little older still, you heard the story of girls in other countries who kept their families alive with the simplicity of their gift. You heard the story of the woman saint, given firegift to save an entire people.
But at some point, you realized those were the exceptions. Those were the girls who weren’t like other girls. And their stories were qualified by others.
By the pilgrim girls who didn’t know any better and set fire to an entire colony one hard winter.
By the slave girls who were deemed too dangerous on account of their gifts and were murdered on discovery.
By the immigrant girls, penniless and starving, turned away at the gates.
By the lesbian girls incarcerated and drugged until fire was nothing more than a distant memory.
That doesn’t happen any more. At least, not in the same way. In today’s world, a girl with firegift can have a mostly normal life. She can go to school, get a job, find love, but she won’t ever be quite like other girls.
You know about those girls. They are sharper, they are stolen kisses and cigarettes and combat boots. They are confidence and wicked smiles and tattoos. They do things other girls don’t and maybe that other girls shouldn’t. You’ve heard them say it, Not like other girls. And it felt true, but also like something said about them before it was said by them.
You’ve spent days wondering what you’d do if yours was firegift. Hide it, probably. Join the ranks of “giftless” girls who are pitied, but not ostracized. It’s more common for girls to go giftless than for boys to, and no one thinks twice about it.
No one in your family has firegift. There’s no reason for you to worry over it the way you do, but on a random day in August, as you sit on your bedroom floor picking out the perfect outfit for the first day of your senior year, your hands spark and catch fire. You clap them together immediately.
The first thing you do when the fire is gone is check to make sure you are alone. You are. The second thing you do is look in the mirror to see if anything else about you has changed. It’s a strange impulse. Gifts don’t come with physical changes, but you feel different, so you peer into the mirror to see if anyone might tell by looking at you that you’re no longer like other girls.
Can they?
Probably not.
For a moment, your mind fools you into thinking things are as simple as they were when you were small. You feel the thrum of power in your fingertips, in your very heart, and you are eager to open your hands again and fill them with fire.
Firegift. You have it.
Now, you panic. Your mind fills with stories about good girls and other girls and you wonder where you fit between them. Is there even space between them? You discover you have so many questions and if another gift – any other gift – had been the one you ended up with, you’d have answers. You know exactly how the world opens up for those with numbergift, with earthgift, with musicgift. And for anything you didn’t immediately know you’d be able to Google! Can you Google? Does someone monitor questions about firegift? Will they track you down? Alert your parents?
Downstairs, you hear your parents clattering around in the kitchen, prepping dinner and pouring their evening glass of wine. You try to imagine what it will be like to tell them and see the panic and sorrow on their faces. You try to imagine what life will be like now that you’re not like other girls.
And then you stop. You look at your hands. You palms are open, empty. They are marked by the same lines that have always been there, your thumbs are disproportionately shorter than the rest of your fingers, and the underside of the knuckle on the middle finger of your left hand is scarred from a childhood fight against an imagined ice villain. These are the same hands you’ve always hand. You are the same girl you’ve always been.
And that’s when you understand. The girls who are not like other girls were created by the same stories that told you what good girls are and what they aren’t.
You have firegift. And you are exactly like other girls.
Natalie C. Parker is the author of the Southern Gothic duology Beware the Wild, which was a 2014 Junior Library Guild Selection, and Behold the Bones (HarperTeen). She is also the editor of Three Sides of a Heart, a young adult anthology on love triangles publishing from HarperTeen, Dec. 19, 2017. She is the founder of Madcap Retreats, an organization offering a yearly calendar of writing retreats and workshops.
just moving along like everyone else 