Chapter Nineteen

“You want me to what now?” Nubbins asked Reverend Milton, disbelief written all over the little demon’s face. “I think you might have already forgotten the basic nature of our relationship. I am not here to do favors for you. I am here, just so we’re clear on this fact, to make sure you go to Hell.”

“Well, if I’m already going to Hell, what’s a little more lying? You’ll be making extra sure I make it to Hell. Think of the sin. It’ll make you look good, actually. Everyone in Hell will say ‘Wow, look at Nubbins going above and beyond.’ I bet they’ll give you a promotion.”

Nubbins considered this for a moment. He knew this was a jerk off assignment, just to get him out of his bosses hair for a few years. No one would be checking up on him. He could easily claim credit for the idea. Maybe they’d even manage to damn a few extra souls while they were at it.
Then he thought about how Reverend Milton was also a con-man, and Nubbins really wasn’t there to make things go better for the bastard. Be a part of the show? Make miracles happen? It sounded an awful lot like scoring points for the other team; houses divided, and that kind of stuff.

He’d already fucked up once, and it seemed he wasn’t going to get any more clout in Hell, at least not until he’d destroyed everyone who remembered his mistake. Presently, there were four of them left (not bad out of the eighty or so who had witnessed his faux pas). The last four were the wily ones. The wary ones.

Five hundred seventy eight years earlier, one of his underlings had blown it completely, and allowed one of the souls he was supposed to be torturing a moment’s respite. This fucking soul, in life, had been a soldier with a penchant for taking underage trophies of war. Nubbins wasn’t overly concerned with the actual nature of the sins. When the demons weren’t out tempting, possessing and otherwise tormenting the living, their purpose was to endlessly punish the condemned souls.

Early in the history of Hell, they had discovered that punishment had to be continuous. They didn’t necessarily have to physically torture the souls - throwing them in a freezing cold, damp cave and keeping up a stream of psychological torment was just as good - but the punishment could never stop.

Souls which got a break from punishment sometimes got bright ideas. Bright ideas were bad news in Hell.

This child-molesting, murderous soul wasn’t even that smart. And all the underling had to do was make sure the level of fear and anguish stayed high enough to keep the fucker distracted.

This underling, who would shortly discover what it’s like being fired as a demon, did not keep the soul sufficiently distracted. In fact, he had all but brought the damned a pillow and a glass of warm milk.

In a moment of clarity, the soul cried, “dear God, help me!” and POOF, he was gone. Presumably, he was whisked off to Heaven, though Nubbins hadn’t had time to figure it out.

Upon learning of his underling’s supreme fuck up, Nubbins lost his temper. This particular underling had already let similar things happen twice. Nubbins had just explained the reason for constant agony fifty years ago, and this dumbass forgot already?

In his rage, Nubbins seized the other demon, and cast him into the lake of fire, where he suffered the burns and agony only a demon can experience (shortly before being fished out and put back to work).

“Jesus Christ! Are they getting dumber or is it just me?” Nubbins exclaimed to no one in particular.

Hell went oddly silent. Nubbins noticed the silence, and realized his mistake seconds before he noticed all the other demons looking at him. He put a hand to his mouth. No one in Hell spoke J.C.’s name aloud, in vain or not.

And that was how Nubbins had reached the last rung on his particular career ladder.

Having considered the Reverend’s proposition, Nubbins reached a decision.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I think I’ll just keep fucking with you however I see fit.”

Nubbins lit a cigarette and looked hard at Reverend Milton. Reverend Milton looked back for a moment, then realized he probably wouldn’t win a staring contest with a demon. His shoulders slumped, and he sat down in the closest chair.

“So you just want to stay here and torment me. Don’t you think it’d be more fun to fuck with lots of people instead of just me for the next thirty to forty years?” Reverend Milton said.

Nubbins appeared to consider his question for a moment, then said, “Nah. I’ll just save my best tricks for you. And who said you’ve got thirty to forty years? There’s this funny thing about people who are tormented by demons: they tend to meet an early, ironic and messy end.”

Then the little demon smiled. “And even if you do last forty more years, which I intend to make sure doesn’t happen, but just for the sake of argument, let’s say you live to be one hundred and seventeen years old. Hell, even if you live an extra hundred years, the time will pass in the blink of an eye for me. I, unlike you, am eternal.”


Grace, who had not been present for the pandemonium at the revival, saw Nubbins for the first time the following morning. Unlike the faithful who had fled the convention center, she took a couple of steps closer to get a good look at him.

“What the fuck, Cyrus?” she asked.

“Grace, meet Nubbins the demon,” Reverend Milton said. He couldn’t think of a better way to approach the subject.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Nubbins said, then turned to read the newspaper. He chuckled now and then when he read something he found amusing. Had Cyrus and Grace been less distracted, they might have noticed he was reading the obituaries.

“Why have you got a demon, Cyrus?” Grace asked.

“Apparently he’s going to be haunting me, for want of a better term,” Cyrus said.

“Uh huh. And, why you?” Grace asked.

“Because I’m doing so much good?” Cyrus said. Nubbins snorted, but said nothing.

“Right,” Grace said. “So did you sell your soul? Because that’s not going to go over well with your target audience.”

Cyrus sighed.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t sell my soul. Apparently I’m damned, and he’s here to make sure I don’t turn my life around and become a saint.”

“Ding! Ding! Ding!” Nubbins yelled. “We have a winner!”

Grace sat down, hard, in another chair. She, like Cyrus, had not really believed in such things until walking into the room. She opened her mouth to speak a couple of times, then closed her mouth again. After a few minutes of this, she took a breath and started to ask a question.

Nubbins interrupted her, “No, not yet. And if so, you probably won’t get a demon escort. We generally like to keep it a surprise. That way it’s fun for everyone!” He paused for a moment, then said, “Well, everyone except the damned. They never seem too happy about it. Can’t say I blame them, especially the ones who had been so certain they were going straight to Heaven.”

The little demon laughed then, and said, “Those ones crack me up the most.”

“So, what are you going to do then, Cyrus?” Grace asked. She was starting to worry a bit about her career, and what associating with a damned preacher who had his own personal demon following him around might do to that career.

Cyrus leaned close to her and whispered, “I’m trying to get him to be a part of the show.”

“And so far, it ain’t working for shit,” Nubbins said loudly.

Reverend Milton sighed and leaned back in his chair.

“There’s just this one little snag in the plan,” he said, and jerked a thumb towards Nubbins, who had finished with the paper and had started blowing smoke rings and winking at Grace.

A little while later, Grace left to go and process the strangeness of a demon showing up to follow Reverend Milton around for the rest of his life, after which he would presumably go straight to hell. Which neither of them had really believed in. Which was pretty fucked up.

Reverend Milton, for his part, spent the rest of the day trying to come up with a way to talk Nubbins into going along with the plan. He had actually kind of thought the little bastard would go along with it right away.

Nubbins smoked, and thought up witty reasons for not going along with Cyrus’s ideas.