Fools Motley Magazine

by Marc Crofton

I was in a bar in Hell, having a drink with a demon. I didn’t know how I got there but I sure knew I wanted to leave. On the other hand, the demon was buying.

“See, it’s like this,” the demon was saying. “You shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, sucking some beer. The demon looked like a giant lizard with metallic blue scales. It occurred to me that he’d make a good pair of boots. The room looked like it was made out of red-hot rock and felt like it was a thousand miles underground. The bar I was leaning on looked like it was made of red-hot iron, though I wasn’t getting fried. Go figure. The light in the dive just a dull red glow from all around, like it was a strip joint and the strippers were ugly. There was a weird noise from outside somewhere, like a million ducks quacking. Pissed-off ducks. I was definitely leaving, as soon as I finished my beer.

Another demon bellied up to the bar. This one looked like a giant raccoon.

“So who’s your new buddy?” the demon raccoon said to the demon lizard. “You gone queer for temporal entities all of a sudden?”

“He’s nobody,” the demon lizard said, the end of his tail whipping around on the floor like he was nervous. “We just gotta talk business for a minute, you mind?”

“Hey,” I said to the demon lizard, “are you embarrassed by me?” I don’t have to take that kind of crap, not from some goddamn lizard anyway. I turned to the raccoon. “Am I keeping you from something, fuzzy?” The raccoon snorted and went off looking for somebody else to hassle.

“Calm down, buddy,” the demon lizard said. “We gotta figure out what to do about the present situation.”

“How about we order another round?” I said. The lizard held up two claws. The bartender, who was some kind of big rat, slid two mugs down the bar. “You were saying?”

“See, this looks bad for me,” the lizard said.

“It’s not so great for me, either.”

“I can’t believe I got myself into this crap,” the lizard said. “First of all, and if this wasn’t bad enough, I get myself spell-bound by this chump wizard from the temporal plane of existence. He’d summon me up any goddamn time he felt like it and tell me to go fetch him a goddamn bag of gold or go find him a goddamn cap of invisibility, chicken shit crap like that. Being some mortal’s bitch was damaging my reputation among my friends and co-workers, let me tell you.”

“I can see how it might.”

“So one day the wizard slips up, mispronounces a syllable in one of his damn incantations, and I bust out of this pentagram he’s got me in and I rip his lungs out. But he gets off a last curse at me; he calls down great woe upon my head. And then you show up. What the hell are you, some kinda ape?”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“What a fiasco. So what’s your story?”

“You buying?” The lizard ordered another round and I told him my story.

I’d been given a contract to whack this free-lance wizard in LA who was laying love spells on babes that didn’t belong to him. He’d put a whammy on them and then take them up to this mansion he had in the Hollywood Hills and frolic with them. Frolic the hell out of them. This gets some people steamed, people with a proprietary interest in some of the babes, people who think this wizard guy should get his babes the old fashioned way, with hot cars and liquor. But this wizard’s got his mansion guarded by this killer ghost, backed up by some Colombian mercenaries. The cops won’t go near the place and every civilian who tries to take out the wizard on their own either gets greased by the Colombians or scared crazy by the spook. The Sunset Strip was lousy with loony guys wandering around, even more so than usual. So then I get a call.

“So what makes you so goddamn tough?” the lizard said.

“I’m not the nervous type. I deal with the mercenaries, I ignore the ghost going boo! at me, I find the wizard’s playroom, and I stick a shank in him. I figure that’s that, now it’s Miller time. But as he’s going out he damns me to hell. I thought that was just rhetorical but here I am.”

The demon lizard said, “These death-curses your guy and my guy were throwing around must have gotten screwed up somewhere on the astral plane, goddamnit.”

“So ship me back already,” I said. “I’ve got things to do.” Now the raccoon came back, getting in my face again. He was pressing his luck.

“Hey, temporal guy, how about an egg?” the raccoon said with an evil leer. Or maybe that’s just the way giant demon raccoons always look. There was a bowl of big eggs on the bar. He took one in his paws, bit off the top of its shell and lapped up the insides with a long tongue. The other demons at the bar were all looking on, a bunch of giant owls and weasels and I don’t know what the hell all. What a dive. The raccoon pushed the bowl of eggs my way. I knew was being challenged. I didn’t know the local rules but I knew the vibe.

“Sure, fuzzy,” I said. But I’m not eating any raw eggs on some kind of bullshit dare, not when there’s no money involved anyway. I took an egg and cracked it open and spilled it on the red-hot bar. While it sizzled I pulled a bowie knife from my boot and used it to scramble the egg. Then I used the knife to eat it. There was dead silence in the bar. You could hear the quacking outside.

“Jeez,” the raccoon said, shaken, “you don’t have to be a goddamn pervert about it.” He took a hike. And not a minute too soon.

“Hey,” the rat bartender said, holding up a phone, “is there a temporal guy here?”

“Yo,” I said. The rat bartender handed me the phone. The voice on the other end seemed to be coming from a great distance.

“Mr. Smyth, we were wondering what had become of you.” It was my asshole employer.

“It’s a long story, Mr. Thanos,” I said.

“And I’m sure it’s a fascinating one but you had a job to do.”

“It’s taken care of. I cancelled the guy’s breathing license.”

“Excellent,” he said. “Then I’ll bid you farewell, Mr. Smyth.”

“Wait a minute. I’m stuck in some kinda bullshit parallel reality. I could use a lift.”

“To be more precise, Mr. Smyth, you are presently in the lowest depths of a hell reserved for a race of sentient waterfowl. They’re being chastised for their sins by various demonic entities penumbral to their kind; species of nest robbers and so on, figures of dread out of the depths of their ancestral memory. I trust you’re not undergoing torment at the moment?”

“Naw, I’m in the employees’ lounge.”

“That plane of existence has some interesting parallels to the human. Both species entertain the concept of ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ although the two races vary somewhat in their definitions. I believe their sins involve such things as displaying a lack of due reverence to eggs, or breaking formation from those clever vees they fly in. And you both share the same vices, you should get on famously.”

“Listen, damn it, get me outta here.”

“I’m afraid my organization’s contractual obligations to you are concluded. Good luck in your new life, Mr. Smyth.” He hung up. Crap.

“Who the hell was that?” the demon lizard said.

“God. He says he’s going to declare war if you don’t send me back.”

“Aw, crap. All right, all right, it’s not my job but I’ll do it just to get rid of you. Come to think of it, maybe it won’t be all that hard. You don’t belong here anyway. Maybe you’ll just pop back into your reality if I give you a shove.”

“Wait a minute.” I chug-a-lugged my beer. “Okay.”

“Get the hell out of here,” the lizard said, and made a magical gesture, or maybe he just flipped me off. The universe exploded, I was shot out of a cannon, I was in a giant kaleidoscope and King Kong was cranking the goddamn thing for all he’s worth, and then I’m standing in the late wizard’s playroom, where I’d been before I got distracted.

The aforementioned ex-wizard was right where I’d left him, laying in a pool of blood in the middle of his heart-shaped love bed. He was wearing red silk pajamas bottoms and staring up at the overhead mirror. He looked like he had maybe taken a moment to reflect on the values of his life, but he was just dead. Something came spinning through the air aimed at my head. I grabbed it by the handle in mid-air. It was the knife I’d left sticking in the late wizard. I was wondering where it had gotten to. Across the room a leggy redhead dressed up in a Catholic girls’ school uniform was giving me death-ray eyes and breathing hard. She must have been one of the ex-wizard’s love-babes who had snapped out of his spell upon his demise. I could sympathize with her. I’d come to in some pretty unusual situations myself one time or another. This might just work out.

END

Published by Fools Motley Magazine, 2003. All rights are property of the author. Copying and distribution of this work is prohibited. Webpage designed by Fools Motley Magazine based on templates and images from www.angelfire.com . Backgrounds provided by www.coolarchive.com .