Chapter Thirty Two

Judy’s funeral was at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. Cyrus, Joe Anderson, got up early and dressed in Joe Anderson’s best suit (which was significantly less fancy than Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton’s best suit). He, and Nubbins, who discretely climbed into the car along with Cyrus, rode with Sam since the windshield in the Challenger was ruined, and it was pretty darn cold out.

Nubbins had been uncharacteristically quiet that morning. Cyrus thought he seemed anxious.

Good, Cyrus thought, let him sweat for a change.

Hep had offered to come along to the funeral, but Cyrus insisted he stay at the house. This part of his life had been separate from the religious part of his life, and it seemed best to keep it that way right now.

Hep thought Cyrus was probably on crack, since Nubbins, a definite reminder of the religious part of his life, was going to be at the funeral with him. But Cyrus had been quite clear that he didn’t want Hep to come with.

Cyrus hated funerals. He felt the whole mess with viewing the dead body and then, inexplicably, having ham sandwiches and noodle salads for lunch afterwards was just a little too bizarre for a grieving person to have to put up with. He had stipulated in his will that when he died there was to be a memorial barbeque with an AC/DC cover band playing no less than six months after his passing, and that was it. No morbid corpse-gazing for him, thank you.

And the burial services! If anything, Cyrus liked those even less than the viewings. The best that could be said for the graveside stuff was that it was reasonably quick, and most of the time the graveyards were pretty enough to think it wouldn’t be so terrible being buried in a place like that.

Judy’s funeral was exactly as unpleasant as Cyrus had expected it to be. Judy’s sister wept openly through the entire thing, while others in attendance seemed nearly jovial, at least when the service didn’t call for them to be somber. It was odd to see the different ways people mourned, and to wonder if he was doing a good enough job of mourning his friend.

The graveside service was extremely odd for Cyrus. Not because of the service itself, but because Nubbins had wandered off on his own seconds after arriving at the graveyard. Nubbins had never done anything like that, apart from the time he disappeared while fighting with Ares.

Which had resulted in Cyrus having to come to a friend’s funeral. So, it was understandable that the demon’s disappearance made Cyrus very nervous.

The little demon’s reappearance made Cyrus even more nervous. Nubbins had popped out from behind a tree, and wandered over to Cyrus again. He seemed even more nervous than he’d been earlier that morning. Nubbins shifted from foot to foot, and kept looking around anxiously. His nervousness began to make Cyrus nervous.

Eventually the service was over, and Cyrus and Sam (and Nubbins) made their way back to Sam’s car. They rode back to Sam’s house, making idle conversation and pointedly avoiding the topic of Judy’s death. Sam invited Cyrus, Joe, in for coffee, but he passed, promising to have Sam over the next day for lunch. Cyrus and Nubbins walked back into Cyrus’s house, to find Hep sitting in the living room with his fingers in his ears, and some kind of awful racket coming from the room Sarah and Scroat were in.

“Are they?” Cyrus began.

Hep nodded.


Upon his arrival in the graveyard, Nubbins ditched Cyrus and went to find a remote corner to hide out in, and wait. This particular corner of the graveyard was dark and not particularly well maintained. There was just enough room for Nubbins, and the other demon he was expecting.

That morning someone inside his head told him they would meet him during the funeral, and he should temporarily leave the Reverend alone. Nubbins thought leaving the Reverend was a poor idea, but funerals had a tendency to be very distracting, so he felt it was unlikely the Reverend would get any bright ideas.

The voice inside his head was, of course, a demon senior to Nubbins, at least hierarchically. The little fucker (little in this case is not strictly literal) was well over five thousand years Nubbins junior, but good at being in the right place at the right time.

Nubbins was not eager to meet with this demon. This assignment was the kind of thing he should have been left alone to just do. Meetings were not required. Discussions were not required. Planning and strategy were really not required. All he had to do was wait for the fucker to die, and make sure he made it to Hell. Easy as tossing a politician into a lake full of snakes and bile.

So why a meeting? It made Nubbins nervous.

So, he waited in the darkest corner of the graveyard. He was only there for a few minutes before he could feel the presence of the other demon.

“Hail Satan!” said a voice which sounded as though it thought it were very important.

“Hail Satan,” Nubbins said, in as unenthusiastic a voice as he thought he could get away with.

Nubbins’s supervisor then faded into view. He was approximately seven feet tall, with impossibly black eyes, and sickly, pallid white skin. His name is not important for us to know, as we don’t have enough jaws to pronounce it anyway.

“Nubbins, why are we here?” the larger demon said.
“Do you mean in a philosophical sense? I think we’re in a great cosmic game of checkers, and no one has gotten a king yet.” Nubbins said.

His supervisor hit him, hard, across the face, and sent Nubbins sprawling to the ground. Nubbins got up immediately, but did not retaliate. Not yet. He filed this latest grievance for revenge at a later date.

“No jokes, Nubbins,” the larger demon said. “How could you have let this idiot get so close to redeeming himself that you had to kill this woman?”

“Why do you give a shit about some old lady?” Nubbins said.

“I don’t. We don’t. Kill anyone you like, you know that. Preferably get a mortal to do it, but I don’t really care either way. No, what I’m pissed off about is the fucking meat popsicle out there who almost redeemed himself,” the larger demon said.

“It wouldn’t have worked anyway. The fucker was going to lie and undo any brownie points he earned anyways,” Nubbins said, getting annoyed.

“Maybe, maybe not, but he would have been that much closer to finding an effective way of saving his soul. And he’s got friends, divinity no less, helping him out. You need to stay on your guard,” the demon said.

“Yeah, OK, lesson learned already. You know I figured that out on my own. Why are you here?” Nubbins asked. He had already been annoyed, but now he was getting close to being really ticked off. Wisdom from a relative newbie? Someone needed to be put in his place, and Nubbins couldn’t wait to be the one to do it.

“I think a change of plan is called for,” Nubbins’s supervisor said.

“Oh really? What new plan do you propose then, oh wise and powerful fucktard?” Nubbins asked. He sneered at his boss. If the bastard would just step half an inch to the left...

The larger demon took a step to the right, and winked at Nubbins.

“The proposed plan is easy. You should be able to handle it, I expect, given your vast experience in these matters,” he said.

“Uh huh? And could you just tell me the plan sometime before the funeral is over?” Nubbins said.

“Kill him,” the larger demon said.
“I beg your pardon?” Nubbins said, honestly shocked.

“Take your little hands, and put them around his little throat, and choke the ever-loving shit out of him. Or something else. Just make him dead,” the larger demon said.

“I can’t kill him. If I do that, he’ll go to heaven. Loophole? Remember?” Nubbins said. The loophole was this - if a demon directly killed someone who was hellbound, it didn’t count because the damned soul hadn’t had a chance to properly atone for its sins. It was a pain in the ass really. Bureaucratic nonsense, since maybe one or two souls ever actually managed to redeem themselves. God may be all forgiving, but mankind is all-fuck-upping.

“Well then don’t outright murder him. Just influence things a bit. You’re good at that,” the larger demon said.

“Influence things, right,” Nubbins said. “Sure, I can do that. What am I getting out of this again?”

“You won’t be fired. At least, not immediately,” the larger demon said.

“Oh. Great,” Nubbins said. He truly could not stand this supervisor. The bastard didn’t even do quality work on his own, he just postured and made threats. His biggest accomplishment? He got an alcoholic priest to fondle a nun while on a bender. Hardly promotion-worthy. Nubbins had seen newly-spawned demons accomplish more.

“So, if you could just take care of that in the next couple of days, that’d be great. Good bye, Nubbins. Hail Satan!” the larger demon said, and faded out of sight.

“Hail Satan,” Nubbins muttered.

Kill the mortal? Shit, if he did that, he’d have to go straight back to Hell. He hadn’t even been to a strip club yet. Damn it, he was busy having fun up here. If they weren’t going to give him a good assignment, they could at least let him slack off a little bit here and there.

This was just management fucking with him. Nubbins fully intended to take his revenge, and it would be swift, and brutal.

And unfortunately, his superiors knew it. They would do the same thing, after all.

He kicked at one of the nearby gravestones, then hopped around on one foot in pain. Fucking people with their fucking sturdy fucking monuments.

Once he could walk again without limping too much, he slunk back to where Cyrus was. Then they rode back to Cyrus’s neighbor’s house.

Back in Cyrus’s house, Scroat and Sarah were having their usual wild, unbearably noisy sex. It did nothing to improve Nubbins’s mood. He went straight to the liquor cabinet and started drinking. The liquor made him feel a little better, as did knowing he’d just polished of a bottle of scotch whiskey he knew cost Cyrus about one hundred and sixty dollars.

Once he had a solid buzz going, he left the liquor cabinet, sat down in the living room with Hep, Cyrus and Killer, and irritably watched Cyrus for the rest of the evening.