Chapter Thirty Three

Cyrus woke the next morning around six thirty. Once he had gotten his bearing, he looked around and realized he was awake before Nubbins. This was a first. He crept out of his bedroom, and went down to the kitchen.

Hep, Scroat and Sarah were already up. Nubbins was passed out on the couch, with a mostly empty bottle of cheap vodka clutched in his right hand. You don’t need to know what was clutched in his left hand.

“Hey,” Cyrus whispered, “the little shit is actually asleep.”

“Yeah, fucking weird huh?” Scroat said in his normal, loud voice. Nubbins muttered something, and turned his head so he was facing the back of the couch.

“Yeah. Weird,” Cyrus said. “He’s never been asleep when I’ve been awake. I don’t think he sleeps, really.”

“Sure he does,” Hep said. “He’s just got enough pride in his workmanship to be awake before you are up, and still awake after you go to sleep.”

“So what’s this?” Cyrus said, and pointed at the little demon. “And he was acting all spooked yesterday at the funeral.”

“I think he’s depressed,” Sarah said.

Hep, Scroat and Cyrus all turned and looked at her.

“Uh, what?” Cyrus said.

“Maybe he got some bad news?” Sarah suggested.

“What kind of bad news could a demon get?” Cyrus asked.

“Well, he could have been told he had to go back to Hell sooner than planned,” Hep said.

“What?!” Cyrus asked. “Sooner than expected? But he’s not supposed to go back until I die! He’s supposed to escort me!”

“Yeah, and I bet he’s not looking forward to that at all. You people might joke about already being in Hell, but you’ve got it good up here. This is as close as he’s been to heaven for eons. Think on that a minute,” Hep said.

“Oh, gee, sucks to be him,” Cyrus said. “If he’s going back soon, that means I’m going to die soon!”

“Well, maybe they’re just going to replace him with some other demon,” Sarah said.

Hep thought about his long past experiences with the little bastard. Chasing a crooked preacher around really didn’t seem his style.

“Yeah, that could be it,” Hep said.

“Yeah, or maybe he’s going to, oh, I don’t know, kill me!” Cyrus shouted.

Nubbins snorted and dropped the bottle of Vodka. He grabbed one of the throw pillows on the couch and put it over his head, then stopped moving again.

“Nah, he won’t kill you. There’s a loophole, you’d get off scot-free,” Hep said.

Scroat turned and looked at Hep.

“Where the fuck did you hear that?” Scroat asked.

“I think it was a Stephen King novel,” Hep said, doubtfully.

“Oh, I’m so fucked,” Cyrus said, and put his head in his hands.

“You sure are!” Scroat said as cheerfully as possible, and slapped Cyrus on the back.

“Fuck you,” Cyrus muttered.

“Hey, that reminds me,” Scroat said, and looked at Sarah. He winked.

“Not now, shithead,” Sarah said.

“Aw come on!” Scroat said. Sarah kicked him, hard, in the shins. “Ow!” he yelled.

Nubbins sat up on the couch and said “Will you fuckers keep it down? I’ve got a motherfucker of a headache.”

“Tough titty,” Cyrus said.

Nubbins looked at Cyrus, then at the end table by the couch. There was a nice, heavy looking snow globe sitting there. He snatched up the snow globe and pitched it at Cyrus’s head.

“Duck!” Sarah said.

Cyrus didn’t think, just ducked, and the snow globe smashed on the wall behind him, leaving a nice dent in the drywall.

“Thanks,” Cyrus said.

“Don’t mention it,” Sarah said.

Nubbins stumbled off in the direction of the bathroom then. He was gone for a very, very long time. When he came back, he had a very satisfied look on his face.

“What are you so happy about?” Hep asked. Nubbins said nothing.

“Hey, did anyone hear the toilet flush?” Cyrus said after a minute. They all looked at him, mute.

“Aw, shit!” Cyrus said, and ran to the bathroom. Hep, Scroat and Sarah heard Cyrus yell, “God damn it!”

They turned, then, and looked at Nubbins. He gave them a toothy grin, and went back to the couch muttering something about, “last time he wakes me up like a dick.”

Cyrus came back in to the kitchen with his jaw set. He rummaged around under the sink for a minute and produced a large bucket, several rags, a pair of thick rubber gloves and a bottle of bleach. He left the room again muttering, “little son of a bitch.”

“You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think they were in love,” Hep said.

“You know better?” Scroat asked.

“No, I guess not,” Hep said.


About an hour later, Hep, Sarah and Scroat heard Cyrus flush the toilet repeatedly, then he came through the kitchen on his way to the back door carrying a garbage bag at arm’s length. He went out the back door, and they heard him slam the lid down on the metal garbage can back by the garage. He came back into the house, and spent several minutes scrubbing his hands in the kitchen sink. Then he scrubbed out the kitchen sink with bleach.

Once he had finished he turned around and saw Scroat, Hep and Sarah watching him intently.

“You just don’t even want to know,” Cyrus said.

An hour after that, Nubbins got up from the couch and stomped into the kitchen, holding his head.

“You want some aspirin or something?” Cyrus asked.

Nubbins looked at him suspiciously for a moment, then slumped into one of the kitchen chairs and said “Yes please. Many of them, if you don’t mind.”

Cyrus tossed him a bottle, and Nubbins poured out four of the little white tablets. He tossed them into his mouth, and washed them down with a few big pulls from the bottle of vodka he’d been clutching earlier.

“Thanks,” Nubbins said.

“Don’t mention it,” Cyrus said.

“What the fuck?” Scroat asked the room at large.

“Love thy enemy as thy self,” Hep said.

Nubbins snorted, “I hope you don’t think that’s gonna work, buddy.”

Cyrus said to Hep, “No, it’s keep the hungover demon from doing more damage out of spite.”

“Also a good strategy, “ Hep said.
Half an hour later, after everyone except Nubbins had gone into the living room to see if anything was on TV, Nubbins got up from the kitchen table. He got a big glass of water, drank it, then went out into the living room and stood directly in front of Cyrus.

“You are taking me to a titty bar today,” Nubbins said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Cyrus said in reply.

Nubbins twitched his left hand a little bit, and Cyrus collapsed to the floor in agony, clawing at a spot on his back.

“You are taking me to a titty bar, now,’ Nubbins said.

“OK! OK!” Cyrus yelled. Nubbins twitched his left hand in a slightly different way, and Cyrus groaned in relief.

“How do you propose we get to this titty bar? My car has no windshield,” Cyrus said.

“Doesn’t bother me,” Nubbins said.

“Yeah, but it bothers me,” Cyrus said.

“Which bothers me even less than your broken windshield. I’d suggest you bundle up,” Nubbins said.

Cyrus looked at Hep and Scroat, who looked back at him and shrugged.

“Well, I’m game!” Scroat said. Hep rolled his eyes.

“I guess I’ll go to,” Hep said.

“Well fuck you guys. I’m going to stay here and play with my own tits,” Sarah said.

Scroat took a breath to speak, but Sarah spoke first, “And it’s too late for you to stay here, fuckhead. Have fun watching a demon get his rocks off.”

“Aw, fuck,” Scroat said. He was really going to have to start thinking these things through better, he decided.

The four of them left right away. Cyrus was in a rotten mood, and didn’t take the care he had taken the day before with his car. The drive to the closest strip club was still a long thirty minutes, made longer by the lack of a windshield.

“I’ll tell you what, that wind will work better for keeping the libido down than the coldest fucking shower,” Scroat said.

The strip club itself was pretty uneventful. At least, as uneventful as a strip club can be. No one noticed Nubbins, even as he leered at the girls mere millimeters away from their breasts. Of course, in the dark of the strip club, no one would have paid him much attention anyway. They got clients who were much stranger than a knee high demon on a regular basis. As long as the freak had cash, he or she was welcome any time.

Scroat sat with his arms crossed, trying to ignore the action going on around him. He was very pissed at himself for missing out on a chance to fool around with Sarah. Hep also did his best to stay unnoticed.

Of course, the only way to remain unnoticed in a strip club is to look like you don’t have any cash. As such, Hep had dancers visitng the table to offer private dances about every thirty seconds. He turned them all down with as much good grace as he could muster.

After a couple of hours, Nubbins had had enough and told Cyrus it was time to leave.

Cyrus was relieved, because he was running out of one dollar bills, and the ATM machine in the bar had a thirty dollar fee for withdrawing cash.

They left the bar then, squinting as they emerged from the gloom into the bright, snowy day light. When the four of them reached the Challenger, they saw someone had broken out the driver’s side window.

“God damn it!” Cyrus yelled. “Why would they do that? That’s just dickish!”

He opened the door, got in, and unlocked the passenger side door. As he leaned over to unlock the other door, he saw the stereo was gone.

“Who steals a factory installed radio from a 1967 Dodge Challenger? They’re not even worth anything! God damn it!” he yelled.

“Yeah, that sucks,” Hep said as he climbed in to the back seat with Scroat. Nubbins got in without saying a word, and slammed the door.

“Drive, fucker,” Nubbins said.

“Fuck you,” Cyrus said, and put the keys in the ignition. He started the car, and pulled out on to the street.

Once they were rolling, a huge chunk of ice fell off of a truck next to them on the road. It went directly under the car, and somehow managed to knock his entire exhaust system loose. It suddenly got a whole lot louder in the car. Cyrus saw his exhaust system go spiraling off to one side of the road in his rear view mirror.

“Could this day get much worse?” he shouted.

“Oh yes,” Nubbins said quietly. Too quietly for any of them to hear.