Holy Rollers - Charlatan

Just a status update

2009-10-13T11:13:00.001-07:00

Hey Kids!

Well, the 2nd draft was complete on Oct. 1. My critique posse is hard at work looking for any parts of the book that suck. While they're working on that, I've been hard at work planning this year's novel. Yes, it'll be another Holy Rollers. Yes, I'll be blogging it. Yes, you'll love it.

In the meantime, if you want to read this one, you can get to the Table of Contents here.

More rewriting progess

2009-08-18T20:55:00.000-07:00

Hey Kids!

If you're still playing along, I've been busily rewriting. I've completed one pass through, and I'm about to go through again filling in all the dumb little holes and eliminating boring parts. With luck, I'll have this all wrapped up before October.

Just in time to start writing the next one!

Go to the Table of Contents if you'd like to read the original again.

Rewriting Is The Hard Part

2009-06-13T16:48:00.000-07:00

Hey, is this thing still on? How about that?

So I've spent the last two months, I believe, rewriting this sucker in fits and starts. There were quite a few scenes I had to redo in order to "show" instead of "telling." Happily, most of those were at the beginning of the novel, because if I'd had to entirely redo scenes all the way through the novel, it's likely I would have gone insane.

Anyway, I just wrapped up my first pass through - the "fix all the dumb language and passive sentences" bit. Up next is adding the scenes that really should have been in there, but weren't. I've got a few characters to flesh out a little bit, as all five of you dedicated readers probably noticed. But, I should have those done in the next couple of weeks, and then I get to do PASS TWO through the novel.

Making all of this more difficult is the desire to scrap this project and start on a whole new novel entirely unrelated to Holy Rollers. I've also been fighting off the temptation to spend my time daydreaming about Holy Rollers IV, which you all will get to enjoy in November this year.

Anyway, just wanted to pat myself on the back a bit for getting through phase one of my editing process. Now to flesh out Ares and Killer, get this sucker polished up and SELL IT.

Backwater book tour, here I come...

If you're jonesing to read it again, or if you haven't read it yet, head over to the Table of Contents.

2008-11-30T18:06:00.000-08:00

Chapter One - In which we learn about the nature of Hell, and take jokes seriously at our own peril.

Chapter Two - In which our young Reverend loses his religion.

Chapter Three - In which we learn a bit more about the good Reverend and his business

Chapter Four - In which we find out what an old friend has been up to for the last millenia

Chapter Five - In which we witness a rude awakening, followed by inappropriate breakfast conversation

Chapter Six - In which a deserving clerk gets told off.

Chapter Seven - In which we meet a little demon.

Chapter Eight - In which Scroat may have met his match

Chapter Nine - In which Joe loses a friend.

Chapter Ten - In which Joe gets ready to head out

Chapter Eleven - In which we learn a bit about Scroat and his Girlfriend (but not much because I just ran out of time today...)

Chapter Twelve - The demon broods.

Chapter Thirteen - In which Reverend Milton begins taking care of business.

Chapter Fourteen - In which the Reverend meets a new, lifelong friend.

Chapter Fifteen - In which an unlikely creature threatens to swallow Hep's soul.

Chapter Sixteen - In which the trouble has just begun for the Reverend.

Chapter Seventeen - In which Reverend Milton pisses the demon right off.

Chapter Eighteen - In which Reverend Milton has a bright idea

Chapter Nineteen - In which the demon plays hard to get

Chapter Twenty - In which the demon is a real jerk.

Chapter Twenty One - In which Hep has a moment to himself, and promptly discovers he needs to go save the day.

Chapter Twenty Two - In which things might be looking up for the Reverend. Or not.

Chapter Twenty Three - In which three bikers, and a parrot, make their way cross country.

Chapter Twenty Four - In which our four favorite people have a big reunion.

Chapter Twenty Five - In which we learn how Hep first met the demon.

Chapter Twenty Six - In which not a whole lot happens, but there's some mildly funny dialog.

Chapter Twenty Seven - In which everyone is bored, but the Reverend has a good idea

Chapter Twenty Eight - In which Hep calls in a favor from an old friend, who is very eager to help

Chapter Twenty Nine - In which the Reverend loses a friend

Chapter Thirty - In which Joe goes home early.

Chapter Thirty One - In which Joe has to give some stranded friends a lift

Chapter Thirty Two - In which Joe goes to a funeral, and the demon has a meeting

Chapter Thirty Three - In which the demon recovers from a hangover, and goes to a strip club

Chapter Thirty Four - In which almost everybody dies.

Chapter Thirty Five - In which the Reverend goes to Hell

Chapter Thirty Six - In which Scroat gets back just in time for Hep to leave

Chapter Thirty Seven - In which the Reverend suffers in Hell.

Chapter Thirty Eight - In which Hep and Ares stir up some trouble

***Hey, look at that pretty pretty banner that says "WINNER"***

Chapter Thirty Nine - In which you find out what happens at the end.

Epilogue - In which I pad my word count by wrapping things up.

IT'S OVER!

Epilogue

2008-11-30T17:04:00.001-08:00

Hep arrived in Oklahoma the next morning. During the process of buying his tickets, he learned that they’d been gone for approximately one week. He’d been mildly worried that Ares and he would arrive back two centuries later, or something like that. It had happened before.

He went to the storage lot where he and Scroat had left their motorcycles. He was relieved to see Scroat had already gotten his motorcycle.

Hep had been mildly worried that Scroat and Sarah would stay too long at Cyrus’s house. They did, after all, love consequence free partying.

Hep paid for his parking, and set off towards Arizona. It was a fourteen hour trip. Hep was glad there wasn’t anyone else with him. He could just blast through Texas and New Mexico without stopping. Hep figured he’d be home in twelve hours, tops.

He stopped at a gas station on his way out of Oklahoma City to pick up some things to munch on as he rode. He got gum, water, corn nuts, peppered beef jerky and a couple of snickers bars. He stashed the bag in his sidecar, and rode on.

Ares arrived home to find everything as he’d left it. That is to say, in total chaos. He was a little disappointed he hadn’t gotten to finish the fight with Satan, but assumed there would be plenty of opportunities for a re-match in the future. In the meantime, he had no problems finding trouble to get into.

Scroat and Sarah had taken a couple of days to get back to Arizona, since they were in no particular hurry. Once they had reached the house again, Scroat parked the bike, Sarah put Killer in his cage for a bit, and the two of them set about fucking like it was going to go out of style.

Grace got herself a new job working as a volunteer for a charitable organization. She had plenty of money. In fact, in his will, Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton had left her everything he’d owned, since she had been his best friend for the last several years. Grace wasn’t exactly sure that was true, but was happy to accept the money. Now she had a great job where she didn’t even have to show up if she didn’t want to. She made a point to give generously, and tried not to rip anyone else off.

She was able to sell off Joe Anderson’s house without too much difficulty, along with most of his possessions. She kept the motorcycle, though.

The other preachers continued doing revivals. No one really noticed Reverend Milton’s disappearance, though many of the other preachers attempted to imitate his showmanship. One or two of them may have gotten demons of their own, but that’s a different story.

Hep’s trip back to his house was extremely dull. For all of the wonder and beauty in Texas, it sure is spread out all over the place. The great majority of the state is a whole lot of boring. That was OK though, because Hep had had enough excitement for a while. He just really wanted to get back into his shop, and start tinkering again.

Hep arrived home, and heard the horrible noises coming from inside the house. Apparently all the excitement had not calmed Scroat’s sex life in the slightest. Hep hung his head for a minute, then got off the bike, went over to the garage door and opened it. Hep rolled his motorcycle into the garage and debated getting to work on another project in order to avoid going in the house.

Ultimately, he decided he was just too tired to stay awake any longer. He went inside, and was greeted by Killer yelling “I’ll swallow your soul!”

“Maybe not tonight,” Hep said.

He went into his bedroom, pulled the covers up over his head, and fell asleep within seconds. He did not dream, and didn’t move all night.

The next morning, he woke bright and early. He got out of bed, dressed, and pounded on Scroat’s door, then yelled “Wake up! It’s time for breakfast!”

Scroat and Sarah were grateful Hep did not wake them in his usual way.

For breakfast, Hep had a gigantic pile of bacon, hash browns, some fresh fruit, and a whole lot of coffee. He spent the rest of the morning reading the newspaper, and once he was certain he was well rested enough, he went out to his shop, fired up the forge, and spent the rest of the day and the next evening working on a new project.

It was good.

Nubbins did indeed get revenge on the last few demons who had slighted him, and now held a position he felt suited a demon of his experience and power.

He quickly got back to his old tricks, seeking out challenging souls to tempt and torment. You might think some of the more recent military actions and political fiascos were his doing. They were not. He assigned things like that to his underlings, now.

Speaking of underlings, he was now regarded with an appropriate degree of respect and fear among the ranks of Hell. Anyone caught using office politics was cast immediately into the pit, and overall, Hell got a lot worse. Or better. Or worse. Or, you know. People got tortured in Hell, and possessed and tempted on Earth a whole lot more.

Nobody called him Nubbins anymore. Not a single solitary damned one of them.

Chapter Thirty Nine

2008-11-30T15:06:00.000-08:00

After Hep and Ares had beaten and dismembered a great number of the demon horde - upwards of half of them - the rest thought a strategic retreat would be the best course of action. They ran like, well, Hell.

Ares had chased after a group of them, leaving Hep alone to try and find Cyrus. Every now and then he’d hear a distinctly demonic shriek, followed by Ares’s laughter.

Hep walked past the lake of fire, and past the pit. He walked past souls chained to the wall begging him to let them free.

“Sorry, I’ll try to get you on the way back,” Hep said to them.

Every now and then, he’d spot a demon out of the corner of his eye. When he’d turn to look, the demon would duck out of sight. Hep couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought it was more than just one demon following him.

He did not get the impression they were going to mess with him. At least, not these specific demons. He knew better than to think he and Ares would be able to waltz out of Hell with Cyrus in tow.

After a long while, he reached a row of caves, each with an iron door barred shut. He walked along the caves, taking a moment to peer into each and see if Cyrus was inside. In each cave was a despondent soul. Most were curled up and either rocking back and forth or gibbering. A few tried to be efficient and rocked and gibbered at the same time.

Cyrus was in the second to last cave. He too was curled up, though he was neither crying nor gibbering.

Hep grabbed the key to Cyrus’s cave. The key was hung just far enough out of reach that Cyrus would be unable to reach it, but close enough for him to know it was there and try to grab it.

Hep put the key in the lock, and turned it. The lock made an awful grating noise that put Hep’s hair on end. The hinges did the same as Hep opened the door.

Cyrus looked up at Hep, then started.

“Hep? What the?” Cyrus asked. His eyes were wide open, and he suddenly didn’t quite know what to do with his hands.

“Well, you didn’t think we were going to give up on you just because you’re dead, did you?” Hep asked in reply. “Come on, let’s get out of here before someone notices.”

They heard running footsteps then, and seconds later Ares appeared in the doorway next to Hep.

“Hey, you found him! All right!” Ares said in between breaths.

“What’s your hurry?” Hep asked him.

“Oh. I found some more demons with a bit of fight in them. I didn’t want to hog all the fun,” Ares said. “They’re headed this way.”

“Um, thanks?” Hep said. “Come on Cyrus, we don’t want this to be the shortest jailbreak ever.”

Cyrus got up, and left the cave he’d been in. The three of them turned to leave, and saw a battalion of armed demons heading towards them.

“Oh, they’re so cute!” Ares said. “Look at them, with their little swords, it makes me want to give them all a big hug!”

Cyrus looked at Hep for an explanation. Hep looked back, shrugged, and said, “It’s best not to ask, or argue.”

“You kids want to play?” Ares said, and gleefully ran towards the demons.

The demons had heard Ares was a god of war, but they really weren’t expecting this. Ares head-butted the first demon he reached, snatched his sword away from him, stabbed him, then threw the sword to Hep. Seconds later, he did the same to another demon, and threw that sword to Cyrus.

Cyrus was not accustomed to such things, and Hep had to catch the sword at the last second to prevent it simply sticking into Cyrus.

“Here. You hold this end, and poke the bad guys with that end,” Hep said, and handed the sword to Cyrus.

Cyrus looked at Hep, blinked, and said “Are you crazy?”

Hep looked back at Cyrus, and said, “Do you want to stay here?”

After less than half a second of consideration, Cyrus decided he most definitely did not want to stay in Hell. He clutched the sword, which was already dripping with demon gore thanks to Ares, and walked slightly behind Hep to meet the demons.

Ares had not had this much fun in a very long time. The problem with killing mortals, you see, is that they aren’t alive to appreciate your witticisms after you’ve dispatched them. Demons, of course, do not die. At least, not as such. So Ares was able to carry on a conversation with the heads he’d lopped off.

“OK, go long!” he’d say to a head he was holding, and then he would drop kick the head. If it didn’t fly far enough, he’d then taunt the head, question it’s parentage, and tell it not to let him catch it hanging around again.

The now-armed demons never really stood a chance. They were made for wickedness, certainly. Evil, most definitely. Torture and suffering, undoubtedly. But nothing had prepared them for Ares doing what he loves best.

To give you an idea of what Ares loves best, Cyrus never had to lift his sword, except to use it as a bat in order to fend off the occasional stray head or limb. Hep did have to fight, a little bit, but honestly he was just picking up scraps Ares had missed in his passion.

It didn’t take very long for the rest of the demons to flee, again. Really, they just weren’t cut out for this kind of thing.

Nubbins had, however, found someone who was indeed cut out for this sort of thing. Nubbins, his boss and, well, his boss’s boss were all heading for Hep, Ares and Cyrus, determined to end this nonsense, kick Ares and Hep out, and get everyone back to work punishing the damned. Productivity was already going to take a huge hit as the demons Ares had dismembered waited to heal.

The three demons, two of which were actually powerful, and one of which was really good at office politics, reached Hep, Ares and Cyrus quickly.

Hep, Ares and Cyrus were standing near the pit, trying to remember their way back to the gates, when the three demons found them

Hep turned, and said, “Satan?”

Satan stepped forward, and said, in a weary voice, “Hep, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Getting this guy out of Hell,” Hep said. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“He can’t go,” Satan said. “We got him fair and square. We didn’t break any rules, and he deserves to be here.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Hep said. “I’m taking him anyway.”

“The fuck you are!” Satan said. His eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared. “He’s mine. He couldn’t belong to me any more than he does now, even if I branded ‘Property of Satan’ on his ass and kept him on a leash.”

“Oh, that’s good, write that down,” Nubbins’s boss said to Nubbins. Nubbins glared at him and wrote down “Boss is a total fuck head,” then put his notepad back in his satchel.

“Hey, I found him first,” Hep said. “In fact, he wouldn’t even be here if it was for me suggesting he use religion to make money. As far as I can tell, I own his fucking soul, not you!”

Cyrus looked quickly at Hep. “What the fuck?” he asked in a panicked little voice.

“Hep, that’s just bullshit and you know it,” Satan said. “Now hand him over, and we’ll walk you to the gates, and you’ll have to stop by sometime again for coffee.

“Nah, I think we’re just going to have to kick your ass,” Hep said.

Ares grinned widely, and charged at Satan, bellowing. Satan raised his arms, and the two of them caught each other and grappled, each trying to knock the other to the slippery, hard ground.

“What the fuck Hep?” Cyrus said. “You don’t own my soul.”

“Shut up. I was trying to get him pissed off. It didn’t work as expected, but I think Ares has things under control,” Hep said.
Just then, Ares went flying past the two of them, and crashed into a rock wall.

“Oh, that sucked,” Ares said, and got up again. He ran at Satan once more, and both of them fell to the ground, getting in little punches and both trying to get a proper hold on the other.

Nubbins’s boss was entirely engrossed in watching the fight, and didn’t see Nubbins leaping towards him until it was too late to avoid him.

“Steal my fucking job, will you?” Nubbins snarled. “I’ll fucking kill you. You knew I would. Today, I will.”

The other demon grunted, and tried to grab Nubbins and pull him off. The little demon was tenacious, however, and slippery. Nubbins grabbed on to his boss’s horns and repeatedly drove his knee into his boss’s face.

Hep and Cyrus watched all of this with a mixture of surprise and awe. To one side of them, Ares and Satan were locked in combat. To the other side, Nubbins was apparently trying to climb the career ladder. Neither Hep nor Cyrus realized how close they were to the edge of the pit.

Nubbins’s boss managed to give the little demon a solid punch, dazing him enough to get a solid grip. The larger demon grabbed Nubbins with both hands, and threw him into the pit.

Only, not quite. Nubbins managed to grab hold of the edge of the pit, and did not fall.

Without thinking, Cyrus reached down, grabbed Nubbins and pulled him up to safety. He set the little demon on the ground next to Hep.

“Oh, fuck!” Satan said, and released Ares. Ares, puzzled, got to his feet and looked at Satan.

“Um, why did you stop?” Ares said.

Satan gestured vaguely towards Cyrus and Hep and grunted.

A white glow grew around Cyrus. Cyrus looked around, then to Hep.

“What the fuck?” Cyrus asked, and then faded from view.

“What the fuck?” Ares and Hep asked at the same time.

“The son of a bitch performed an entirely selfless act. He had nothing to gain from helping Nubbins, and he did it anyway,” Satan said, disgusted. “Fucking people.”

“So, pretend we’re stupid and tell us what that means,” Ares said.

“I don’t have to pretend, you are stupid,” Satan said. “It means he redeemed himself. He’s probably not in heaven at this moment. I expect he’ll have a few thousand years in Limbo, since he couldn’t even avoid cussing as he was being redeemed, but he’ll get there eventually.”

Satan turned then, to face Nubbins’s boss.

“And this was all caused by you,” Satan said. “Consider yourself fired.”

Nubbins’s boss sputtered for a second, before being whisked away to the lake of fire.

“So, Nubbins, a new management position has opened up, are you interested?” Satan said.

“Sure I can handle that,” Nubbins said, delighted for the first time in centuries.

“Good, you start right away. Give ‘em Hell!” Satan said. Nubbins gave an awkward salute, and disappeared.

“Now, you two,” Satan said. “Come with me, I’ll show you the way to the gates.”

The three of them walked in silence, until they reached the gates.

“Now, seriously you two, you’re welcome to drop by for a visit anytime. Please just let me know you’re coming first instead of beating up my doorman,” Satan said, then whispered conspiritorially, “He’s not really good at anything else, and I can’t afford to let him quit.”

“Got it,” Hep said. “We’ll see you around, Satan.”

“Yeah, take care,” Ares said.

The two of them walked out the gates of Hell then. The doorman saw them, and tried to stay inconspicuous behind his pedestal.

“Hey, nothing personal,” Ares said to the demon.

Then he and Hep returned to reality. They stood on a chilly street corner. It was hard to tell if any time had passed since they’d gone to Hell. Everything still appeared the same as when they’d left.

“Well, I gotta get my ass down to Oklahoma and get my motorcycle out of storage,” Hep said.

“Yeah, I should probably go find out if I still have an apartment. Talk to you later, Hep,” Ares said.

“Sure will,” Hep said. Ares vanished then, and Hep walked off in search of a cab to take him to the airport.

Chapter Thirty Eight

2008-11-28T21:36:00.000-08:00

Hephaestus and Ares had gone into the kitchen in Cyrus’s house.

“Well, here goes,” Hephaestus said. He took a breath, and stepped out of reality.

He and Ares stood in a vast, dark space. It was not hot. It was not cold. There was no wind. The ground, if it could be called that, was insubstantial. Above them shone an intensely bright light, though there was no tunnel coming down to meet them. Below them, impossibly far away, was a dim, red glow. It looked like little more than a pulsing ember from where they stood.

“That’s where we’re headed, I think,” Hep said.

Ares clapped his hands once and said, “Let’s get going then!”

They fell. Since they were in a spiritual dimension, not a physical reality, distance was as irrelevant as time. They could have fallen miles. It might have taken years to get to their destination. Or, they may have simply stepped off a curb and continued on seconds later. None of it mattered, so long as they were in the right spiritual state to arrive at the gates of Hell.

As gods, of course, they’re generally in the right state to arrive where ever they decided they wanted to arrive. And where the two of them wanted to arrive, at that moment, was at the gates of Hell.

The large demon who minded the gates of Hell was quite surprised to see them. No one was scheduled to arrive for a few more minutes, according to his book.

Hep took a moment to examine and admire the ironwork of the gates. They weren’t quite up to his standard, but apart from their grotesque appearance the gates were quite well done.

Hep and Ares approached the demon who stood, as always, behind his book on the pedestal.

“Um,” the demon said, visibly flustered by their unscheduled appearance, “Names?”

“I am Hephaestus, and this is Ares,” Hep said. Ares bowed slightly.

The demon put on his reading glasses and scanned through the great book in front of him. He flipped a couple of pages and continued scanning, then checked his watch.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” the demon said, helpfully.

“Oh, yes, I’m quite sure this is where we’re meant to be,” Ares said.

The demon looked back at his book again. He flipped through a few more pages, then pulled a slightly smaller book out from behind the pedestal. He set it on top of the great book of names, and flipped through it.

“Ah! Hephaestus, and Ares!” He said, as though everything made sense now. “You’re both gods. Greek.”

“That’s a very handy book you have there,” Hep said.

“Yes. Now, then, what exactly are you doing here?” the demon said. He removed his glasses and set them down again.

“Getting in to Hell,” Hep said.

“Well, we’re always happy to get some new faces around here, but I’m pretty sure you aren’t meant to be here,” the demon said.

“Oh, come on. Sure we are. We’re bad guys,” Ares said, and grinned. “Really, really bad guys. I mean, I’m a god of war, for fucks sake. I’ve killed so many people I lost count two thousand years ago.”

“Well, you may or may not be bad guys, as you say, but you are not the kind of bad guys who get sent to Hell,” the demon said.

“Aw, come on,” Hep said. “Hey, what was that one bad thing we did?”

Ares looked at Hep. His eyes twinkled.

“You mean the one thing we did that was really rotten?” Ares said.

The demon watched them quietly, with growing impatience. There were fresh, hell-bound souls on the way, and these two were wasting his time.

“Yes, that one,” Hep said.

“Oh, man, you are going to love this,” Ares said to the demon.

“Oh yes?” the demon asked as politely as he could manage.

“Yeah,” Hep said, “You see, Ares and I, this one time...”

At that moment, Ares swung and landed a mighty blow, hitting the demon’s jaw just where it hinges on the skull. The demon fell like a sack of demonic potatoes, unconscious.

Ares darted behind the pedestal, hopping easily over the demon, and grabbed the key to the gates.

He and Hep had just reached the gates, and were about to unlock them, when two worried-looking souls appeared.

“Hell-bound?” Hep asked.

The souls both nodded at him, trembling.

“We’re full. Fuck off. I hear there’s room in Heaven.” Ares said.

The souls looked at each other, decided not to ask questions, and ran like hell in the opposite direction.

Hep and Ares unlocked the gates to Hell, and pulled them wide open.

“After you,” Hep said, and gestured grandly to Ares.

“You’re too kind, sir,” Ares said, and walked in to Hell. Hep followed him, leaving the gates open.

The demon who guarded the gates came around a few minutes later. He sat up, and rubbed his jaw, then stood. He spent a moment looking for his reading glasses, put them on, and looked at the great book.

Two souls were due. He checked his watch. They were due ten minutes ago.

He then noticed the gates to Hell were wide open, and Hephaestus and Ares were no where to be seen.

“Oh fuck!” the demon shouted, and scrambled to alert the other demons.

“Man, I thought Hades was bad,” Ares said to Hep. “This place just reeks of efficiency analysis and middle management.”

“And sulphur,” Hep added.

They had reached the Lake of Fire, and spent a few minutes looking around and trying to get their bearings. There was no discernible order to Hell’s layout. Hep blamed middle management for that too.

“So where the hell do you think he is?” Ares asked Hep.

“I don’t know,” Hep said, honestly. “Where do you think they’d stash a con-artist preacher?”

“Perhaps we can be of some assistance?” said a voice behind them.

Hep and Ares looked at each other, and turned around slowly. Standing behind them were the legions of Hell. All of them, from what Hep and Ares could tell.

“Would you kindly tell us what you two are doing here?” the demon in front of them said.

“Sight seeing?” Hep said in reply.

“Ah, yes. Well, I’m sorry to say Hell is what you might call a restricted area. If you would be so kind as to walk with me to the gates, we can all get back to work,” the demon said.

“Aw, man, and we haven’t even see the pit yet!” Ares said.

“Well, perhaps we can arrange a tour for you at another time. Currently, we’re all rather busy though, so if you would just come with me,” the demon said.

“Now wait just a minute. You folks have been nothing but rude to us since we got here. I think we deserve a little more professional respect than that,” Hep said.

“Yeah!” Ares said.

“Well, I gather the demon guarding the gates was quite offended that you punched him unconscious, but he isn’t here wasting your time and complaining about it,” the demon said, impatiently.

“Gee, poor guy. He could have just let us in,” Hep said.

“Yeah! We told him we were bad guys,” Ares said.

“Sure thing. This way, please,” the demon said.

“Aw, fuck that. I’m not getting escorted out of here by the likes of you, you little pussy!” Ares said.

He grabbed the demon by the throat, lifted him off the ground, and threw him back into the crowd of demons, knocking a great many of them over.

“Nicely handled,” Hep said.

“How kind of you to say,” Ares said. “So, what do you say we rip these fuckers limb from limb?”

“Sounds pretty good to me,” Hep said.

The demons closest to Ares and Hep were still trying to get their bearings when the two gods came at them, fists swinging.

Hep had his favorite hammer, and used it to great effect against any demon foolish enough to approach him. Many demons lost a horn or two when Hep’s hammer connected with them.

Meanwhile, Ares was getting hands-on in his own unique way.

“A demon, scared of heights? I don’t believe it. Here let me show you how great they can be,” Ares said to a slightly-built demon. He grabbed the demon’s horns, and with a twist and a yank pulled the demons head free from his neck. Ares then lobbed the demon’s head as high into the air as he could.

“See? It’s fun!” Ares called after the head.

“Now then, how can I cure you?” Ares said to the next closest demon, who decided it would be a prudent time to run the fuck away.

“Hey! Come on, this is one-on-one, top quality therapy I’m offering!” Ares yelled.

Nubbins and the muscular demon saw all of this from the back of the demon horde. Nubbins ran off to summon some more help, while the other demon pushed his way through the demons, to get his own turn at fighting the two gods.

Chapter Thirty Seven

2008-11-28T20:16:00.000-08:00

Over the last five minutes, or thirty centuries, it was hard to tell, Cyrus had been whipped, boiled, stretched, beaten, broken, eaten, burned, poked, prodded, pinched, slapped, punched, violated in every conceivable way, left to rot, left to freeze and worse.

Worse was, of course, having to relive every painful memory without being able to do a damn thing about it, hearing himself utter words he’d wished he could take back, watching himself doing terrible things and being entirely powerless to stop any of it.

Nubbins was always present, but rarely involved in the actual torture and punishment. The little demon generally stood off to one side, looking extremely bored, ordering around another demon who did the actual dirty work. Cyrus may or may not have been interested to know that Nubbins was using him to show less experienced demons the ropes, but it didn’t matter because Cyrus did not, in fact, know that.

The current demon, who was busy trying to heat a propane torch in an intimidating way and failing miserably, did not seem to have the same aptitude for the job as the others had. Nubbins expected this one would likely get assigned to a desk in the pit, keeping track of punishments given, making sure everyone was thoroughly unhappy. He just didn’t seem to have a knack for torture, and the last attempt Nubbins had made at taking him along for field work had been a disaster. Instead of possessing and corrupting a young man of fourteen, he’d somehow managed to only convince the young man, and three of his friends, in the existence of Hell. All four of them swore right then they’d join a monastery as soon as they would be accepted.

Now Nubbins would have to go back and tempt them while they were monks.

The demon had finally managed to get the torch lit, and attempted a menacing laugh. He sounded less like an angel of Hell, and more like a thirteen year old role-playing nerd.

Cyrus was still suitably intimidated, because the demon did, after all, have a lit propane torch. The demon made a production of selecting a pair of tongs from the assortment lined up on the wall of the cave they were in. He finally selected a pair which came to a sharp point, good for tearing and twisting Cyrus’s skin.

Unfortunately, the demon somehow managed to get his hand in the way of the torch’s flame, and gave himself a nasty burn. It did not improve the smell of the room at all. Cyrus watched, mildly puzzled, as the demon hopped and danced around the room clutching his burned hand and cursing up a storm.

Nubbins sighed, said something Cyrus could not understand, and led the clutzy demon out of the cave. Cyrus was only alone for a moment, however, as Nubbins let in a few tiny, tiny demons with wings. They were maybe twelve inches tall, at the most. They were carrying spears, however, and kept Cyrus very occupied indeed by flying around him jabbing at his tender parts with their spears.

Cyrus was entirely unable to defend himself because he was tied to a stake in the middle of the room. The rope chafed his skin, and there were several patches where he’d been rubbed raw.

Despite the torture, Cyrus remained defiant. At least, as defiant as one can be while tied up in a hot cave while being prodded by action figure sized demons.

“I’m going to get my hands on you eventually, you little bastards,” Cyrus yelled.

The little demons laughed, and as one said, “No, you’re not.”

Eventually, once Cyrus was riddled with little punctures from the spears, the demons left him alone in the cave, still bound to the stake. He was hot, and he ached, and he was thirstier than he’d ever been.

He thought, if only I’d known it was this bad when I was preaching. I probably could have scared the money right out of those suckers’ pockets.

He was left alone for what seemed like years. Decades, even. He could feel his beard as it grew. He itched. He started to think his bonds were getting looser. It seemed his teeth were getting loose as well.

It did not occur to him that he had no body to degrade, even though he’d been tortured repeatedly, and instantly healed just in time to be tortured some more.

The heat grew more intense every moment as he stood in the cave. His thirst was unbearable.

The door to the cave opened, and Nubbins came in. He smiled a wicked smile at Cyrus, and untied him.

“Would you like some water?” Nubbins asked him. He pointed to a pitcher of crystal clear water near the door of the cave.

Cyrus took a huge, ragged breath and staggered towards the pitcher of water, imagining the joy of the clean water wetting his lips and cooling his parched throat.

A huge fist, seeming to come from nowhere, slammed into Cyrus’s jaw just as he’d been reaching for the pitcher. It sent him sprawling back across the room. Cyrus looked up to see a large demon step the rest of the way through the door.

The demon was very large. He was also quite muscular. And he was carrying a black, spiky, iron implement which the Reverend really did not want to contemplate the use of.

The most terrifying aspect of this demon, however, was his smile. Huge. Evil. Jagged. Pointy.

Cyrus had a small revelation then. What, he wondered, if Hep and Scroat had just been joking about the religion business?

Cyrus heard a voice inside his head say, “I am going to break you. Again, and again.”

Cyrus looked around on the floor of the cave for something to defend himself with, but there was nothing. Not even a pebble to bounce off the demon’s forehead.

Just then, Nubbins shouted something in the language of Hell to the larger demon. The big demon stopped smiling then.

“I am going to break you, later,” the voice inside Cyrus’s head said. The two demons left Cyrus alone in the cave then, locking him in once more.

“What do you mean someone has broken in?” the larger demon asked Nubbins as they both hurried towards the gates of Hell. “No one can break in to Hell. It’s impossible!”

“Sure they can, if they really want to. Hell is set up to keep souls in, not to keep things out,” Nubbins said. “Someone really wanted to get in, it seems. Hurry up.”

The pair of demons broke into a run, and were joined by many other demons. All of them were hurrying towards the gates.

Chapter Thirty Six

2008-11-28T18:23:00.000-08:00

Scroat’s flight back to Minnesota was long and boring. The passengers sitting near him on the plane were singularly dull, and he’d stopped trying to converse with them less than an hour into the trip.

He was stuck in the middle seat. The plane was pretty packed, so he couldn’t relocate to a different row with some more interesting company. He’d tried hanging out near the restrooms hoping for some social contact, but the flight attendants shooed him back to his seat. He’d read the in-flight magazine and Sky Mall repeatedly. As much as he wanted a countertop upside down hydroponic tomato garden, he wasn’t going to be able to play with it until he got home, so reading about it didn’t do him much good.

Scroat had never been good at sleeping on planes. Apart from the discomfort of the seats, and the noise, the smell of the airplanes just bothered him. He was relieved none of the other passengers in his immediate area were wearing a ton of fragrance, but all the same he would have liked something to cover up the smell of recycled air. His seatmates didn’t seem like the types to participate in a fart-off, either.

By the thirteenth hour of the flight, Scroat was about ready to try hijacking the plane just to alleviate the boredom.

He did eventually reach Minnesota (after about 20 hours of travelling, all told), and he’d never been happier to get off a plane some place cold and snowy. After a stop in the men’s room, he went to one of the airport payphones, and called Cyrus’s house.

Sarah answered the phone. For the time being, Hep, Scroat and Sarah were the only ones who knew Cyrus was dead, but someone was bound to figure it out sooner or later, and she was worried about what would happen if that person called. But, at the same time, they were expecting a call from Scroat when he arrived, so she couldn’t just ignore the phone.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hey, baby, I’m back,” Scroat said.

“Scroat! I could kill you!” Sarah said.

“Hey, don’t do that. I’ll wake up in fucking Australia again, and I didn’t enjoy the flight home so much that I want to do it again,” Scroat said.

“You should have stayed here,” Sarah said.

“Well, I tried to, but you told me to leave,” Scroat said.

“You shouldn’t have wanted to go in the first place!” Sarah said.

“Are you high?” Scroat said. “Of course I wanted to go. Then I wanted to stay, but somebody didn’t want me to. So I left. Then I got killed. Now I’m back. This is a good thing, remember?”

“You’re a dick,” Sarah said.

“Damn straight. Is Hep there?” Scroat said.

“Yeah,” Sarah said, and dropped the phone. Scroat pulled the handset away from his ear until the clattering noises stopped.

“Scroat?” Hep said.

“Yeah, man. I’m back,” Scroat said. “Can you come get me?”

“Uh, no, Scroat. The car blew up. Remember? Take a damn cab,” Hep said. “See you soon!”

Hep hung up the phone then.

“Fucking dick,” Scroat said, and hung up the phone.

Scroat arrived back at Cyrus’s house about an hour later. By the time he had gotten out of the cab and on to the sidewalk, Sarah had come running out of the house.

“You son of a bitch!” she yelled.

Scroat turned to see five feet and seven inches of Sarah flying through the air towards him. She knocked him to the ground, and smothered him with kisses.

“You’re not allowed to die again, do you hear me?” she said.

“Yeah, loud and clear. No more dying for me,” Scroat said, and laughed.

They got up again after a minute or two of rolling around in the sticky, heavy snow, and went into Cyrus’s house. Hep was sitting on the couch reading a motorcycle magazine when they got inside.

“Hey, dumbass, how was the flight?” Hep said.

“It sucked shit right out of a pig’s asshole,” Scroat said.

“You gotta quit getting yourself killed. It’s really an inconvenience,” Hep said.

“Are you telling me?” Scroat said. “So what’s going on here?”

“Well, I’m trying to figure out how to get Cyrus out of Hell,” Hep said.

“Any good tips in that magazine?” Sarah asked.

“Tons, None of them really apply to this particular situation, however,” Hep said.

“How’s your plan coming along, then?” Scroat asked.

“Well, so far I’m stuck at the part where we somehow get into Hell. I figure we can play the rest by ear,” Hep said.

“What’s this ‘we’ shit?” Sarah asked. “Scroat is staying right here.”

“Yeah, I didn’t mean him, anyway. I’d hate to mess up your thing by keeping him wrapped up in Hell for a few decades,” Hep said.

“Decades?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah, time as you know it doesn’t really apply in Hell. I might get back in five seconds, or in a few hundred years,” Hep said.

Sarah looked at Scroat, “You are so not going.”

“OK, you’ve sold me,” Scroat said.

“So who is ‘we’?” Sarah asked.

“Well, me and Ares. Who did you think?” Hep said.

“I don’t know, Hep. Ares might get a little too into the job, don’t you think?” Scroat asked.

“Nah, I think in this case his unique passion will come in quite handy,” Hep said.

“So when are you leaving?” Scroat asked.

“Well, now that you’re back here, I guess we’ll leave as soon as he gets here,” Hep said.

“And when is get going to get here?” Scroat asked.

“When is who going to get here?” Ares asked, with a big grin. “Uh oh, my ears are burning.”

“Hey Ares. Do you want a drink or anything before we go?” Hep asked Ares.

“Hell yeah! How about a beer?” Ares answered.

“No beer. Want some water?” Hep asked.

“Aw, fuck. Yeah, ok, I guess since we’re bound for a hotter climate,” Ares said.

Hep got Ares and himself a couple of big glasses of water from the kitchen.

“So, I hear you got killed too Scroat,” Ares said. “How did that work out for you?”

“Well, I’m back here in this fucking cold-ass state, so I guess the effects weren’t permanent this time,” Scroat said.

Hep finished his water.

“Are you ready to go?” Hep asked Ares.

“I’m always ready to go,” Ares said.

“So, uh, you guys probably shouldn’t stay here too much longer,” Hep said to Sarah and Scroat. “Cyrus didn’t give us the house or anything, and someone is going to notice he’s gone sooner or later.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll catch up with you back in Arizona, Hep,” Scroat said.

“Or, not,” Sarah said. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Hep said.

“Don’t need it,” Ares said. “I’m all over this one.”

Chapter Thirty Five

2008-11-27T20:46:00.000-08:00

Cyrus could not recall exactly how he died, which meant he probably was dead before the car went up in a big fireball. A small mercy.

He could recall looking down on the flaming car and realizing it was his car, and also realizing his body was still inside the car. These discoveries came with a cool detachment. Then the edges of his vision went blurry and dark, and soon all he could see was a brightly lit tunnel before him. He felt peaceful. He moved to take a step forward into the light.

“Oh no you don’t,” a voice said, and he felt something grab his ankles and start pulling him down. He looked down and saw Nubbins dragging him down into darkness, away from the light. He began to panic, and thrashed and struggled to get away from the demon as the light at the end of the tunnel got further and further away from him. Cyrus could not believe the strength of the little demon, who was not phased in the slightest by Cyrus’s struggles.

“Yeah, it’s best you get all the struggling out of the way now,” Nubbins said. “Pretty soon all the fight will have gone out of you, and struggling just won’t be as satisfying.”

They descended for an eternity, or so it seemed. Time passes strangely in the afterlife. That is to say, if it passes at all. Occasionally, time seems to stop and take a breather. Alternately, time can pass very, very quickly if it decides to.

After an age, Cyrus realized he could see a red glow coming from far beneath them. What started as a tiny spot of dim, red light quickly grew, until Cyrus and Nubbins arrived at the gates to Hell.

Given the number of souls entering Hell every day, one might expect there to be a long, long line to get in. There was not. If Hell prides itself on anything, it is their attention to quality customer service. Granted, the customers usually did not want to experience their unique service offerings, but a soul had not had to wait for what it had coming for a long, long time.

The gates to Hell were impressive. No, they were imposing. Huge, black and pointy, there was no way anything could get through them, unless the gates were open. They were easily sixty feet tall, and the proportions were exactly wrong, such that simply looking at them made one’s mind hurt. Those lucky enough to be on the outside of the gates (usually a temporary situation) usually did not want to find out what was on the other side of the gates.

There was a demon standing to the left of the gates behind a pedestal with an enormous book upon it. The demon was easily eight feet tall, and enormously muscular. He was also wearing a pair of reading glasses.

As Cyrus and Nubbins approached the demon, he looked up at them, and gave a small nod to Nubbins.

“Name?” the demon said when they reached the pedestal he stood behind.

Cyrus looked at Nubbins.

“Tell him your name, shithead,” Nubbins said.

“Uh. Cyrus,” the Reverend said.

“Your full name, please,” the demon said, and tapped irritably on the book with his pen.

“Uh, Cyrus Evander Milton,” Cyrus said. The demon looked down at the book through his reading glasses, and scanned through the open pages using his index finger to keep track of where he was. His hands were huge, and he had thick, black fingernails that came to a sharp point.

“Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton,” the demon said in it’s impossibly deep voice. “There you are.”

The demon made a few notes in the book, looked up and said, “You’re a bit early. Did you get a little to eager to get here?”

“Aw, shut up and open the gates, will you?” Nubbins said.

“Whatever, no need to be a dick to me,” the demon said. He produced an enormous key which had been hanging behind the pedestal the book was on and walked over to the gates. He inserted the key, and pulled the gates wide open. He then walked over to Cyrus and Nubbins.

“Welcome to Hell,” the demon said, then, with a great roar, he grabbed Cyrus and forcefully threw him through the gates and into Hell. He then shut the gates forcefully, and locked them again. The lock clicked shut with a heavy, final thunk.

“Nubbins, always a pleasure to see you,” the demon said. “I trust you know the way to the employee entrance.”

“Yeah, yeah. Talk to you later,” Nubbins said. He vanished.

“Little prick,” the demon said, and went back over to the pedestal to await the next soul, whom he was expecting any second.

Cyrus lay where he fell. Contrary to popular belief, the road to Hell is not paved with good intentions, but with sharp and very hard rocks which really hurt to fall on. Good intentions would be far too comforting.

Nubbins appeared next to Cyrus.

“Get up,” he said, and kicked Cyrus in the side. Cyrus groaned, but made no move to get up.

“I said get up,” Nubbins said and gave Cyrus a hard kick in the left kidney. Cyrus cried out in pain, rolled over and got to his hands and knees.

Nubbins kicked him again. “Get the fuck up!” Nubbins shouted at him.

Cyrus stood, and got his first good look at Hell. He immediately regretted looking up from the road. There were buildings, of a sort, along the road. There were terrible noises coming from inside of all of them. In the distance, Cyrus could see the lake of fire he hadn’t believed in. The sky above was a dull red, with no sun or moon visible. There was one star visible, tiny, but brilliant. It gave him no hope.

“Start walking,” Nubbins said.

Cyrus did as he was told. He did not walk quickly enough for Nubbins, however. The little demon picked up a rock and threw it at Cyrus’s head.

“Walk faster!” Nubbins yelled.

Nubbins led Cyrus past the buildings, past the lake of fire, and past the torture pits to a dank, foul-smelling cave, with an iron door sealing it shut. Nubbins took a key from the wall next to the door, unlocked the door and opened it.

“Well? Go in!” Nubbins said.

Cyrus ducked a bit, and went into the cave. Nubbins slammed the iron door shut after him, and said, “We’ll be back for you later.”

Nubbins walked away. Cyrus took a look around the cave. It was damp, cold and there was a disgusting smell of sulphur and rot. He could hear screams and wailing in the distance. Someone, or several someones, closer to him were sobbing.

“Hey, who’s out there?” Cyrus asked. He did not get a reply. “Anybody?”

Silence. He tried to shake the door, but it was solidly shut and didn’t even wiggle a little bit. He leaned up against the wall then, and slid down to the floor. There was, of course, no furniture in the cave. There wasn’t even a rock for him to sit on. His options appeared to be standing up, sitting on the floor, leaning against one of the slimy walls or laying on the floor. The floor was cold and damp.

“Well, this isn’t so bad,” Cyrus said, semi-hopefully.

That was when the beetles swarmed out of nowhere and covered him in a chittering, multi-legged wave of unpleasantness. Cyrus hated bugs. They crawled in his ears. They crawled up his nose. When he opened his mouth to yell, he immediately regretted it, as many of the beetles crawled into his mouth.

If you’ve never closed your mouth when it’s full of beetles, well, you probably don’t want to know what it’s like. It’s crawly. And crunchy. And exceedingly foul tasting.

Getting bugs in your various facial openings is pretty bad, but getting eaten by a cave full of beetles is worse. In fact, the only thing worse than being eaten by beetles in a sulphur-smelling cave in Hell is realizing that one is already in Hell, and once the beetles are done eating you, you’ll be whole again. Just in time for some other rotten torture.

Chapter Thirty Four

2008-11-26T19:31:00.000-08:00

Hephaestus woke up in Greece. Well, actually, he woke up in Olympus, but for all practical geographical purposes, he was back in Greece. He looked around a little bit and tried to get his bearings. When he realized where he was, he leapt up and yelled, “Fuck!”

Ares, who was sitting at a table nearby with Zeus and some of the other gods, looked over at him.

“So, you got killed in a auto accident, huh?” Ares asked. “Probably not the strategy I would have gone for. How did it work out?”

“I gotta go!” Hep said, and promptly vanished.

One of the main reasons Hep preferred travelling by motorcycle was the fact that riding is reasonably painless. Travelling by thought, on the other hand, always resulted in a massive hangover. It didn’t seem to bother Ares, for whatever reason, and a few of the other gods seemed to be fine with popping in and out of physical existence, but it gave Hep the kind of headache that starts wars.

Because of the excruciating pain, Hep only used teleportation in dire circumstances.

Hep popped back into existence in Cyrus’s house. Sarah was playing catch with Killer the parrot, and not her breasts as she’d said she was going to do when he’d left with Scroat, Cyrus and Nubbins. This was a relief. Sarah stopped playing with Killer, and stared at Hep with an expression of incredible surprise.

Hep said, “hey,” and then fell to the floor clutching his head and groaning in pain.

“Hep? What the fuck? Where’s everyone else?” Sarah asked.

Hep continued groaning and thumped his head on the floor a few times.

Everyone else, as it turned out, was dead. Well, that wasn’t completely true. They had all been killed, but Scroat was alive once again, back in Australia. Nubbins was alive and on his way back to Hell.

Cyrus was definitely dead, though, and on his way to Hell with Nubbins.

As they drove away from the strip club, a chunk of ice had come loose from a truck next to Cyrus’s car. The chunk of ice went under the Challenger, and knocked the exhaust system loose, sending it slipping and spinning across the road to rest in the gutter.

Cyrus, who was quite distracted by all the terrible things happening to his car, did not notice the red light, and drove directly in front of an eighteen wheeler carrying a load of bricks. The trucker was shaken, but fine. His truck was mostly undamaged. The Challenger, on the other hand, was thrown across the road and rolled, coming to rest on its roof.

“Whoa,” Scroat had said, and then the car burst into flames. As gods, upon their death Hep and Scroat just went back to their original home. For gods, physical death is kind of like pushing a reset button. Only with a lot more pain, most of the time.

Hep wasn’t sure if Cyrus had been alive or not when the car burst into flames, but Hep hoped he hadn’t been. Of the ways to die, incineration was pretty low on the list of most enjoyable ways to go.

Hep managed to sit up, still holding his head, and muttering under his breath. Sarah couldn’t hear him, but what he was saying was “Owie owie owie owie”

“Are you OK?” she asked him. “Where are Scroat and Cyrus?”

Just then, the phone rang. Sarah was the closest, so she answered it.

“Hey Sarah,” Scroat said.

“Scroat? Where are you?” Sarah asked, urgently.

“On the edge of the Australian outback,” Scroat said.

“Fuck you, I don’t have any patience for games right now,” Sarah said.

“I’m not playing games. I’m on the edge of the fucking bush in Australia. It’ll be a couple of days until I get back,” Scroat said.

“I don’t understand. That’s like a twenty four hour flight!” Sarah said.

“Ask Hep to explain. Look, I had to scrounge change for a pay phone, and international rates are a bit higher than...”

The phone clicked, and Sarah heard only the disconnected tone.

“What the fuck?” Sarah said, then turned to Hep. “Hep? What the fuck?”

The pain in Hep’s head had mellowed out enough for him to be able to speak again. He took a breath and said, “He’s on the edge of the outback, right?”

“Yeah, what the fuck is the deal?” Sarah said. She took a breath to really light into Hep with some intense questions, but he held up a hand before she could start and shook his head.

“OK, you know we’re gods already. We were just killed,” Hep said. Sarah’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to start asking even more questions. “Hang on,” Hep said.

Hep got up off the floor, and moved to the couch.

“OK, so we were just killed. Well, what do you think happens to a god on Earth who gets killed? He goes back to whatever origin he, or she, had. In my case, I go back to Olympus. Scroat is from Australia, so that’s where he ends up. Actually, I’m kind of surprised he called so quickly. Civilization must be moving further into the bush. The last time he got killed, I didn’t hear for him from several days, and he was mighty pissed off about having to hike through the wilderness.” Hep said.

“Well, how’s he going to get back here?” Sarah asked. “He’s in fucking Australia, without any of his stuff.”

“He’s got everything he needs, including the information he needs to withdraw cash from his bank account. He’ll get cash, he’ll catch a plane, and he’ll be back here swearing at us and being his usual crude self in a couple of days,” Hep said.

“How many times have you guys been killed?” Sarah asked.

“Me? Not so much. Scroat is always getting his dumb self killed though,” Hep said.

Scroat woke up in a very bad mood. He realized what had happened when he looked up and saw a couple of kangaroos looking at him with some curiosity.

“Fuck off,” Scroat said to the kangaroos.

“Blow me,” one of the kangaroos said in reply, and the pair hopped away.

“Fucking overgrown fucking jumping fucking bush fucking rats,” Scroat said. He stood up and brushed the dust off. He stood looking around for a minute or two, then turned and started walking east. He was surprised to find a road after only a couple minutes of walking, and even more surprised when a car came along shortly after that and offered him a lift to the next town.

All told, it took him less than an hour to get back to civilization. The last time this had happened, he’d had to hike through the bush for a few days before he’d finally reached a town. Happily, he hadn’t bumped into any of his relatives in a few hundred years. He still owed a bunch of money to a few of them, and it was probably best to simply avoid them.

“So what happened to Cyrus and Nubbins?” Sarah said.

“Well, obviously Cyrus died, and Nubbins escorted him to Hell,” Scroat said.

“So we’ve failed,” Sarah said.

“Not yet,” Hep said.

“What the hell are you talking about? He’s in Hell! I’d say we failed!” Sarah said.

“Well, we’ll just have to go and get him out of Hell, won’t we?” Hep said. “Well, not you. You’ll have to stay here. Sorry.”

Sarah thought about it for a minute, and said, “You know, I’m OK with staying here this time around.”

“It’s really for the best,” Hep said. “Hell is... difficult. I mean, I’d drag you through Hades in a heartbeat, assuming you wanted to go, but Hell is just nasty.”

“So how long did Scroat say it was going to be until he got back here?” Hep asked Sarah.

“A couple of days, he said,” Sarah told Hep.

“Well, until then we’ll just have to hope no one comes around looking for Cyrus,” Hep said. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a nap.”

Chapter Thirty Three

2008-11-25T20:13:00.000-08:00

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.

Chapter Thirty Two

2008-11-25T20:12:00.000-08:00

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.

Chapter Thirty One

2008-11-24T18:50:00.000-08:00

The cab driver did not like Killer at all. He didn’t like those stupid dogs some women felt compelled to carry in their purses. He didn’t like cats. And, he just discovered, he did not like birds. He discovered this fact about himself only seconds before Sarah and Killer had gotten into the cab, along with Hep and Scroat.

Shortly after Scroat had given the driver directions to their destination, Killer made his presence known by saying “I’LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!”

The cab driver forced a laugh, and said “That’s some animal you’ve got back there.”

He figured he could tolerate the bird long enough to get a decent tip. But then Killer kept talking and carrying on, as an excited parrot is known to do. The racket drove him crazy. He started to think the bird was actively trying to irritate him. The little shit. Then the bird screamed. A 110 decibel bird scream in the confines of a taxi is, to put it mildly, uncomfortable.

Halfway to Joe Anderson’s house, he pulled off the freeway onto a side road and told them all to get out.

“What the fuck?” Scroat asked.

“I can’t take any more of that goddamned bird. Get out of my cab!” the driver said.

“Did you lose your mind?” Hep asked. “We’re not even close to our friend’s house.”

“Well, you’ll have to call him and ask him to pick you and the fucking bird up, then. Get the fuck out of my cab!” The driver said.

“I don’t believe this shit,” Scroat said as he opened the door and got out of the cab. Sarah and Hep got out behind him. Hep slammed the door and told the cabbie to watch his back.

“Fuck you!” the cabbie yelled, and sped away from the curb, throwing up a nice spray of grey slush which made the whole experience that much more pleasant for Hep, Scroat, Sarah and Killer.

Sarah wrapped a small blanket around Killer’s cage and said, “So. What now?”

“Now we find a phone and tell Joe to get his ass over here and pick us up,” Hep said. He started trudging north, away from the off ramp and towards – or so he hoped – a gas station or some other establishment with a heater and a payphone. Sarah and Scroat followed along behind him.

Traffic whipped past them, showering them with a nearly constant spray of dirty water and snow. They walked two blocks before they reached a sidewalk that was reasonably clear of snow.

“Now I remember why I moved to the desert,” Sarah said.

Hep struggled to keep from falling over on the slippery patches. Ice was hard enough to walk on as it was, but it’s really not any fun when one has two gimpy legs and shoes not meant for the cold.

After walking a few more chilly blocks, a gas station came into view.

“Phew!” Hep said.

A few minutes later the three chilly walkers (and one cold bird) opened the door and went into the gas station. There they bought three large cups of coffee and tried to warm up a bit. Given the short notice for their trip, none of them were dressed particularly well for the weather.

After he’d finished his first cup of coffee, Hep dug a couple of quarters out of his pocket and went to the payphone to call Cyrus.

The phone rang a few times before someone picked up, and Hep heard Cyrus say “Hello?”

“Hey, ‘Joe,’ we need a ride,” Hep said.

“I thought you guys were going to take a cab,” Joe said.

“Yeah, we did too, until the dink cabbie threw us out. Come get us,” Hep said.

“Can’t you get another cab? My car is put away for the winter,” Joe said. He really didn’t want to expose the Challenger to the winter roads. Too much salt, and chunks of stuff getting thrown up from other cars.

“Come. Get. Us.” Hep said.

“OK, OK, I’ll come get you, you big baby,” Joe said. “Where the hell are you?”

Hep told him where the gas station they were currently hanging out was located. Joe told him he’d be there in an hour or so, since he’d have to get the mothballs out of his car.

“Whatever. We’ll be here,” Hep said.

Hep got himself another cup of gas station coffee (“Best in the Mid-West!” said a sign next to the pot of roofing tar they called coffee), and went to hang out with Scroat and Sarah again.

“He’ll be here in an hour or so,” Hep said.

“Oh. Nice of him to hurry,” Scroat said.

“Yep, he’s just a hell of a nice guy,” Hep said.

Joe spent a couple of minutes trying to come up with a way to avoid taking the Challenger out. Sam wasn’t around, and it was unlikely he’d loan Joe his car anyway. His other neighbors were all at work. He began to wish he’d kept a beater around, for circumstances like these.

After pacing around his kitchen for a few minutes, much to the delight of Nubbins who enjoyed seeing Cyrus in distress, he realized he was just going to have to suck it up and take the Challenger to get them.

It only took him a few minutes to get the car down from the jack stands and hook the battery up again. Nubbins poked around the car a bit to torment Cyrus.

“Oooh, what’s this do?” he asked, and Cyrus ran around the car to see what the little demon was doing. Nothing, as it turned out. He was just standing there with a shit-eating grin.

Cyrus opened the garage, got in the car (Nubbins hopped in the passenger seat), and turned the key. The engine roared to life, as it always did, the first time he turned the key. Cyrus had always hated getting into a cold car. Somehow, being cold in a car was much worse than being cold out in a howling snowstorm. He backed the car out of the garage, pushed the button on the remote for his garage door opener, made sure he had the directions to where Hep, Scroat and Sarah were, then backed out of his driveway, and pointed the Challenger in the direction of the freeway.

If it had been a warmer and less icy time of year, Cyrus would have then stomped on the gas pedal and smiled widely as light bent around him. However, it was currently a jillion degrees below freezing (at least, that’s how it felt) and the roads were nice and evenly coated with ice and snow. Cyrus had to be extremely careful not to give the big V8 too much gas lest both rear tires spin wildly and send the car, along with its occupants, into the closest snowbank or ditch.

Cyrus drove with extreme caution, and it took them five minutes longer than it really needed to in order to get to the freeway. When they reached the on ramp, Cyrus accelerated slowly, getting up to the speed of freeway traffic just as he reached the end of the ramp, to the annoyance of all the drivers stuck behind him. Once on the freeway, he stayed in the right lane and stayed far, far behind the car ahead of him.

It took him about twenty minutes to reach the exit he needed to pick up Hep, Scroat, Sarah and Killer. Two minutes later he arrived at the gas station they were waiting at.

“For fuck’s sake, man, it’s been two hours!” Scroat yelled at Cyrus when he got out of his car.

“Well, if you guys hadn’t pissed off the cabbie, it would not have been a problem, would it? Fuck, I had to get my car off of blocks, and now it’s all covered in road salt and sand. Jesus, how hard is it to get along with a cab driver? Just sit there and shut up, and...” Cyrus paused there, as that’s when he noticed Sarah staring daggers at him.

Sensing an opportune moment, Killer said, “FUCK YOU!”

“Right. Get in the damn car,” Cyrus said. He put the front passenger seat down, and Scroat and Sarah climbed into the back. Hep waited for Nubbins to get in. Nubbins, meanwhile, stood glaring at Hep.

“Get in the fucking car already,” Nubbins said.

“What? You don’t have bad legs, you get in the back,” Hep said.

“Fuck that, he’s my pet human, you have to ride in the back,” Nubbins said.

“Son of a bitch,” Hep muttered and climbed into the back seat along with Scroat, Sarah, and Killer.

“Damn, these cars are pretty roomy,” Hep said.

Nubbins got in to the front seat then, and slammed the passenger door. Cyrus got in on his side, and fired up the car again. Then he set off at the same creeping pace he’d used to get here.

It took a solid fifty minutes for them to get back to Cyrus’s house. He had kept such a long following distance on the freeway that a plane could have landed between him and the car in front of him. He carefully yielded to any car anywhere near him.

They arrived back at his house, and he stopped the car in his driveway and sighed with relief. So far as he could tell, there was no new damage to his car. He’d just have to wash it right away, and it would be good as new. He clicked the remote for the garage door opener, and once the door was all the way open he slowly pulled in to the garage.

Had he pulled in a little faster, the coming disaster might have been avoided.

Just as the windshield passed under the garage’s overhand, one of the huge icicles fell and landed on the windshield. The glass spiderwebbed, and then collapsed in on itself.

Hep, Scroat, Sarah and Killer were all stunned into silence.

“What. The. Fuck?” Cyrus yelled and stared out the hole where his car’s windshield had been seconds before.

He looked over at Nubbins, who looked back at him with a huge, defiant smile.

“What? I didn’t do it,” Nubbins said.

Chapter Thirty

2008-11-24T08:01:00.001-08:00

Cyrus, that is to say, Joe Anderson, was on the phone with one of his neighbors in Minnesota.

“Sam! It’s Joe, how ya been?” Joe said.

Nubbins watched him calmly from the other side of the room. There were only a few pieces of undamaged furniture left in the room, and Nubbins had claimed the comfortable chair for himself.

“Joe!” Sam said, “Wow, weird timing that you called.”

Joe felt an icicle push into his heart, but tried to maintain a jovial tone of voice.

“Oh yeah? Is my house burning down as we speak?” Joe asked.

“No, nothing like that. I have some bad news for you though,” Sam said.

“Oh yeah? What’s that?” Joe asked. He felt his stomach crawling up his throat, and had to fight a strong urge to start pacing about the room.

“Well, I hate to have to tell you, but Judy passed away last night from a heart attack,” Sam said.

“What?! Oh my god!” Joe said.

“Yeah. She’d been bringing the garbage out, and collapsed. Steve across the way saw her, and called 911. By the time the ambulance arrived, it was too late,” Sam said.

“Oh no!” Joe said. So the little bastard really had killed her. He had been hoping the little demon was bluffing.

“Yeah. There’s going to be a memorial service for her next Saturday,” Sam said. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

“It’s OK, Sam. I guess I’ll be seeing you later this week,” Joe said. Nubbins sat up in his chair and watched Cyrus with a bit more interest.

“See you Joe,” Sam said, and hung up the phone.

“See you later this week?” Nubbins asked. “You’re going up there?”

“Yes, I’m going up to my friend’s funeral,” Joe said. He called Grace, and told her he needed her to cancel the coming weekend’s revival appearance for him. She objected until he told her about the funeral for a friend.

“What the hell is going on over there, Cyrus,” Grace asked him.

“Grace, I promise I’ll tell you all about it another time,” Cyrus said. “By the way, cancel payment on the check to Judy. Donate the money to your favorite charity instead.”

He hung up the phone.

The next morning Cyrus was on a flight back to Minnesota. He’d bought two seats on the plane, ostensibly for a bit of space, but actually because he didn’t want Nubbins sitting in his lap.

Nubbins was unusually still during the flight. There was something deeply unsettling to the demon about being thousands of feet in the air.

They landed in Minneapolis, and took a cab to Cyrus’s – Joe Anderson’s – house. Once he had opened up his house and turned the heat up a bit (he kept the thermostat at a cool forty five degrees, since he wasn’t there) he stopped by to visit his neighbor Sam.

The street in front of the house was icy, but Sam had done a great job of keeping Cyrus’s sidewalk and driveway clear. It actually looked like someone was living there. Cyrus decided he was going to have to pay him more for helping out.

He and Sam visited for a little bit, and talked about nothing much of importance in the way that people who’ve lost a friend will do when they’re trying to avoid talking about their friend who just died. While they talked, Nubbins slid around on the ice out on the street. Many people think demons would hate the cold, given the usual climate they have to live in, but the fact is a trip to somewhere snowy is a universal daydream among demons. If he hadn’t needed to keep such a close eye on the Reverend, Nubbins probably would have stuck around up in Minnesota for a while longer after killing Judy.

But, instead he had to get back to the Reverend. He’d catch hell if anyone in Hell found out about how he’d had to kill Judy. Not, you understand, that they’d have a problem with her death. The problem was that Cyrus had gotten awfully close to redeeming himself. Preventing such a thing from happening was the whole reason Nubbins was here, and Cyrus shouldn’t have gotten that close to saving himself.

So he kept a close eye on Cyrus as he, Nubbins, tried to enjoy the cold weather.

After a while, Cyrus, Joe, wrapped up his conversation with Sam and walked back to his own house.

“Well what the fuck happened to him?” Scroat said in the hallway outside the room Cyrus had been staying in while in Coalgate, Oklahoma.

Several hotel employees were hauling away the wreckage from the fight Ares and Nubbins had had the night before. The cleaning crew was waiting outside to get in and take care of the wood splinters and broken glass, as well as to replenish the towels and strip the sheets.

Hep thought about it for a minute.

“I know where he probably went,” Hep said, and paused. “He probably went up to Minnesota.”

Scroat and Sarah both gave him a blank look.

“For the funeral?” Hep said. “You know? For his friend? The one Nubbins killed?”

“Oh. Right,” Scroat said. “Well, I guess we can all go home then, right?”

Sarah and Hep both gave Scroat the kind of look usually reserved only for those who are being willfully and maliciously stupid.

In Scroat’s case, he was honestly that stupid, with no malicious intent.

“No, Scroat. We’re all going up to Minnesota now,” Hep said. “You know, to keep trying to help him out.”

“Yeah. You know, we haven’t been doing a real great job of that,” Scroat said. “We might want to consider giving up and finding some other impossible challenge.”

Sarah kicked him, hard, in the left shin.

“Ow! Fucking Fuck! OK, we’ll go up. Just throwing an alternate idea out there. Keep your pants on,” Scroat said. “I hope Killer likes the cold.”

They all stood silently in the hallway for a moment as a couple of scrawny guys hustled by them carrying replacement furniture for the room Cyrus had been in.

“Anyone know where he lives?” Sarah asked.

No one answered, and they turned and walked back down to the lobby of the hotel. Sarah spotted a woman sitting on one of the couches, and said “Hey, isn’t that his secretary?”

Sarah, Hep and Scroat walked over to the woman.

Hep said, “Excuse me, do you work with Reverend Milton?”

Grace looked at the three of them, and hesitantly said, “Yes.”

Waves of relief flowed through Hep. He had no idea how they would have found the bastard up in Minnesota. He knew Cyrus lived under an alias up there, but he didn’t actually know what the alias was.

“Can you tell us how to find him in Minnesota?” Hep asked.

She blinked twice, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And Reverend Milton is a very private man.”

Hep and Scroat looked at each other, and Scroat said, “Do we look like the fucking holy rollers that go to hear him preach?”

Grace looked at the three of them again, and said, “Well, no.”

Hep said, “We really need to catch up with him. Could you help us at least figure out how to find him?”

Grace was quiet for a moment, then dug a pen and note pad out of her purse. She wrote something down, handed it to Hep, and said, “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Hep said, and walked away. Scroat and Sarah followed him.

“So? What did she give us?” Scroat asked Hep.

“A name and the number for directory assistance,” Hep said. The left the hotel and went out to the bikes again.

“Let’s head to a bank and get some quarters,” Hep said.

“What for?” Scroat asked.

“Someone has to make a whole shitload of calls to directory assistance. And then call a whole bunch of guys named Joe Anderson,” Hep said.

They rode to the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, and left their bikes in the long-term storage lot. They went into the airport then, after Sarah put Killer into his shiny new travel cage.

In the airport, Hep set about getting the three of them (and the bird) tickets on the next available flight to Minnesota. While he was doing that, Sarah and Scroat went to call directory assistance and try to track down ‘Joe Anderson.’

There were fifty six listings for Joe Anderson in Minneapolis alone. Sarah and Scroat really hoped he didn’t live in St. Paul, or one of the outlying cities.

After about twenty minutes, Hep came over to the bank of phones Sarah and Scroat were at. He handed each of them a ticket.

“Any luck?” Hep asked them.

“In a manner of speaking,” Sarah said, and showed him the huge list of phone numbers they had to go through.

“Well, good thing we’ve got four hours until our flight,” Hep said. “Let’s get to the terminal and start calling from there.”

They made it through security with relatively few problems. One of the security doofuses tried to take Killer out of his cage while Sarah was otherwise distracted, and got the hell bitten out of his hand.

Sarah looked at him and said, “Do you always stick your hand in the face of small, cornered animals? You should have just asked me to take him out.”

Once they had made it to their gate, they split the quarters and headed for the payphones to try and find the right Joe Anderson.

The temperature in his house had just become comfortable enough for Joe to take his jacket off. Nubbins had found Joe’s liquor cabinet almost immediately. He was three quarters of the way through a bottle of Jack Daniels when Joe noticed.

“Hey, stay out of the expensive stuff, would you?” he said to the little demon.

“Fuck you, I’m going to drink whatever I want,” Nubbins said.

Joe had been about to say something when the phone rang. He was a little curious who would be calling him, but figured it was probably Grace.

He picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”

“Is this Joe Anderson?” said the voice on the other end of the line.

Joe sighed. How had a telemarketer found him when he’d only been home a couple of hours?

“Yes,” he said.

“Joe, this is Scroat. Do you know who I am?” said the voice.

“Oh, yeah! Uh, how’d you find me?” Joe asked.

“I have my fucking ways, dickhead,” Scroat said. “Most of them involve calling twenty other Joe Andersons until I find you because you couldn’t be enough of a fucking gentleman to fucking call us and fucking tell us you were fucking going to fucking Minnesota, you fucker.”

“Um. Sorry about that. I was distraught,” Joe said.

“No, you were a dickhead,” Scroat said. “But enough of that. Where the fuck are you, and how the fuck are we going to get there from the Minneapolis airport?”

“Yeah, uh, here goes,” Joe said. He gave them directions to his house, and asked when he could expect them. Then he hung up the phone, and wondered how he was going to explain Hep, Scroat, Sarah and Killer to his neighbors.

Chapter Twenty Nine

2008-11-22T19:37:00.000-08:00

Hep knocked on the door to Cyrus’s hotel room. He, Scroat and Ares heard someone cursing and walking to the door. Cyrus opened the door, and they were shocked to see he had a shiny new black eye.

“What the fuck, Cyrus?” Hep said.

“The little bastard threw the closet door open as I was walking by,” Cyrus said.

“I was expecting you to say something like, ‘I fell down the stairs,’” Scroat said. “Or, ‘it’s just his way, I should have kept my face out of the way,”

“Fuck you,” Cyrus said to Scroat. Then he noticed Ares, and his eyes widened.

“Cyrus, meet Ares. Ares, Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton,” Hep said.

“Hi,” Cyrus said.

“Greetings. Are you going to let us in, or are we going to stand here in the hall for the rest of the night?” Ares said.

“Oh, yeah, come on in,” Cyrus said, and opened the door wide. The three gods walked in to Cyrus’s hotel room.

Nubbins was busy jumping on the bed, which made a horrible creaking noise with every bounce, like demonic fingernails on a demonic chalkboard along with a choir of damned cats fighting. He was grinning widely.

“Hello Ares,” Nubbins said, still jumping on the bed.

“Hello Nubbins,” Ares said.

“Jesus, do all of you know each other?” Cyrus asked Hep.

“I didn’t know that fucker until you had to go and introduce me,” Scroat said.

“So, you’re our man, huh?” Ares said to Nubbins.

Nubbins stopped bouncing on the bed for a moment, raised an eyebrow and said, “Yes?”

He didn’t have time to say anything else, because Ares had already thrown a chair at him and was stomping over to grab him. He dodged the chair easily enough, but Ares was a bit tougher to avoid.

Nubbins stepped to one side just as Ares reached him, and Ares missed him by inches. Ares roared.

“What the fuck?” Nubbins said and turned to keep Ares in his sight. He was a little ashamed of himself for not foreseeing a stunt like this.

Ares turned around and grinned at Nubbins, he crouched a bit, hands out and ready.

“You’re pretty quick,” he said.

“I saw you coming a mile away,” Nubbins said. Ares lunged again.

Meanwhile, Cyrus had grabbed the phone and frantically dialed Grace’s number. She answered just as there was a huge crash as Ares and Nubbins grappled.

You might think Ares would have the advantage in this fight, since he was much larger than Nubbins, not to mention more physically powerful, and experienced in handson combat. What you must consider, however, is the speed and relative agility of a demon that is only knee-high.

Nubbins currently had a solid grip on Ares head, and would occasionally give him a quick punch in the nose. Ares grabbed wildy, just barely missing the little demon each time.

“Grace, listen fast. I need you to send a check to Judy Sachsen, she lives in my neighborhood in Minnesota,” Cyrus said. There was another great crash, and Ares laughed loudly.

“What the hell is going on?” Grace asked. She was more than a little disturbed by what she was hearing on the phone.

“There’s no time for that. Send Judy a check for $20,000. That should do it. Send a note with saying God told me to do it because of her need. OK? Send it overnight! You got that?” Cyrus said.

Ares and the little demon were faced off, circling one another. Ares clutched a chair leg in each hand like a pair of clubs, while Nubbins had a pair of scissors held out in front of him like a fencing foil.

“I don’t understand!” Grace said to Cyrus.

“There’s no time for that! Do you have the info you need?” Cyrus said urgently.

Ares bellowed, dropped one of the chair legs and pulled the scissors out of his thigh. The little bastard had thrown them. Ares swung the chair leg he was still holding at Nubbins’s head. Nubbins ducked it easily, then looked sharply at Cyrus.

“Oh no you don’t,” Nubbins said to him, just as Ares leapt to tackle him. Nubbins saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, gave Ares a look of supreme contempt, and made a pushing motion as he said something in a demonic language no one knew.

Ares flew across the room and crashed into the entertainment center, destroying it.

Nubbins popped out of existence then, for a few minutes. Cyrus looked back at the room, and hung up the phone as Grace was asking him what was happening again.

“Where the hell did he go?” Cyrus asked the others.

Hep and Scroat both shrugged, each as surprised as Cyrus was, while Ares climbed out of the rubble that was once an entertainment center.

“I don’t know,” Ares said. “I guess he fled.”

“Not fucking likely,” Scroat said. “He was kicking your ass.”

“Fuck you,” Ares said.

“Shut up and tell me where he went!” Cyrus shouted.

“I don’t know!” Ares shouted back.

Just then, Nubbins appeared again. He looked very pissed off.

“You stupid fucker,” Nubbins said. “Because of you, I just had to go and kill an old lady who hadn’t really done anything wrong. Now no one is even going to get another chance to tempt her and get her into Hell.”

The blood drained from Cyrus’s face.

“What?” he asked, in a small voice.

“That stunt,” Nubbins said. “Trying to send her the money back. Very clever, except I’m here, remember? I can’t have you saving your soul like that. The only thing I could do was kill her.

“Besides, it wouldn’t have worked, because you were sending her a pretty fucking huge lie along with the money.”

“If it wouldn’t have worked, why did you kill her?” Hep asked.

“Because I’m a fucking demon. I’m not here to be nice,” Nubbins said.

Just then, Ares clubbed Nubbins over the head with a chest of drawers.

“Take that, you little dick!” Ares yelled at Nubbins.

Nubbins stood up then, to Ares’s surpise, and slowly turned around to look at him.

“Oh, it’s on now, motherfucker,” Nubbins said.

Nubbins leapt at Ares then. Ares was off-guard because most people, even demons, don’t get up that quickly after getting hit with a couple hundred pounds of veneered fiberboard. Nubbins latched on to Ares’s head and bit down hard on his nose.

Ares bellowed, and grabbed on to Nubbins, trying to pull him loose. He finally managed to get a good hold of the little demon’s head, and got him to let go. The two of them continued to duke it out, Ares fighting with brawn, and Nubbins outwitting him, until they both lay on the floor next to each other, gasping for breath.

“You really are a dick,” Ares said, and paused to catch his breath again, “You know that, right?”

Nubbins looked over at him, and said, “And you’re a shithead.”

“It’s agreed then. We’ll call it a draw,” Ares said, and got up. “If I thought I could trust you, I’d give you a hand up.”

Nubbins got up from the floor on his own. “You can’t trust me. Comes with the job.”

Hep patted Cyrus on the back, and said, “Sorry, man. We tried.”

The three of them left then.

Out in the hallway, Ares said, “That little fucker had some fight in him.”

“I guess. Boy, I didn’t see that coming. If I had, I would have warned Cyrus,” Hep said.

“Well, don’t beat yourself up too much. Demons are tricky, nasty little fuckers,” Ares said. “I guess I’d better get home. You guys take care.”

Ares then vanished.

“Come on,” Hep said to Scroat. “We’d better find some flowers for you to give Sarah.”

Chapter Twenty Eight

2008-11-22T14:10:00.000-08:00

The last time Hep had talked to Ares was five years ago, when Ares had needed a replacement part for his nineteen sixty five Ford Falcon Station wagon, the Battle Wagon. It would have been easy enough to get the part he needed (the air cleaner cover) at any auto parts store, but Ares wanted the replacement to have a certain style that the OEM parts just don’t have. Specifically, he wanted a falcon holding a couple of battle axes while breathing fire formed into the metal.

Ares was not into subtlety.

Hep had done the job, because what’s family for if not doing favors in expectation of reciprocal favors in the future?

It was time to call in the favor. Cyrus had asked for a distraction, and Ares was good at being very, very distracting.

Hep called Ares at about nine thirty in the morning. He’d figured it was late enough for Ares to be awake, given it was a Tuesday. He’d been wrong.

Hep heard a loud clattering on the other end of the phone, followed by a snuffle and a grunt, then a slurred “Kill you?”

“Shit, sorry Ares, I thought you’d be awake by now,” Hep said.

“Hep? It’s seven thirty, are you nuts?” Ares said.

“Oh hell, I forgot about the time zones,” Hep said. The damn time zone thing always threw him off, particularly because Ares was living in southern California, so usually there was a one hour difference in their time zones, at most. “Sorry about that.”

“No sweat. So, to what do I owe the honor of this call?” Ares said.

“I need a favor,” Hep said.

“Of course! Wake me up and just start asking for favors. Fuck, Hep, when did we get married?” Ares said.

“Har har, Ares. Do you feel like causing a ruckus today?” Hep asked.

“That’s hardly a favor, Hep, I cause a ruckus most days before I’m a mile away from home,” Ares said.

“Yeah, but this time you’ll be rumbling with a demon,” Hep said.

“A demon? No shit?” Ares sounded very interested all of a sudden. “Like, straight from the pit? All sulphury and vile and stuff? Oh, yeah, where are you? I’ll be there in two shakes.”

“I’m in Oklahoma,” Hep said and gave Ares the details of where he was staying.

“Sweet,” Ares said. Hep heard the phone click then.

“Ares, you still there?” Hep said.

“Nope, I’m right here,” Ares said from behind Hep.

Scroat came out of the bathroom then. He looked at Ares, then at Hep.

“When did he fucking get here? For fuck’s sake, clue me in when we’re going to have guests,” Scroat said.

“This is my room, shithead,” Hep said to Scroat, “And he just frickin’ got here.”

“Right,” Scroat said. “So, hi Ares.”

“Hey Scroat,” Ares said, then turned to Hep, “So? Where’s this demon at? Is there anyone else I should kill while I’m at it?”

Ares was practically jumping up and down.

“What the hell are you so excited about?” Scroat asked.

“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a worthy foe? Usually I just end up fighting a whole bunch of people. I mean, not that killing a whole gang in one go isn’t fun. It is. Lots of fun. But it’s not really a challenge. It’s like popping bubblewrap, it’s great fun, but I’m always kind of bummed when I run out of bubbles.

“A demon, though, well, that’ll be a challenge. They fight dirty. Really dirty. Will there be any scribes around to catch the details of the epic battle? “

Ares thought for a minute, then said, “Oh right. No scribes left.”

He looked disappointed for a second, but then brightened a bit, “Maybe a blogger?”

“If you’re lucky, maybe,” Hep said.

“Nice!” Ares said. “So? When are we leaving?”

“Settle down,” Hep said. “We’ll leave in a few minutes.”

Sarah knocked on the door then. Hep went over to the door, and let her and Killer in. She walked in to the room, and saw Ares.

Ares is an imposing figure, as are most gods of war. He dressed in enough black leather to shame Judas Priest, only Ares was actually intimidating instead of campy and silly. He was muscular but not muscle-bound, and carried himself with aggressive confidence. He had thick, black hair, dark eyes, and at this particular moment he was grinning in the disturbing sort of way that only Ares can grin when he’s excited about getting down to killing things.

“Um, hi?” Sarah said, and looked at Scroat and Hep with a questioning expression on her face.

“Sarah, this is Ares, god of war. Ares, this is Sarah, keeper of a parrot and lady friend of Scroat,” Hep said.

“I’LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!” Killer said before anyone else had a chance to speak.

“Uh, and that’s her parrot, Killer,” Hep added.

“Pleasure,” Ares said. “So can we go now?”

“No, you’re going to have to wait a goddam minute,” Scroat said.

“Where are we going?” Sarah asked.

“Where we always go, only you’re staying out of the way here. That is to say, you’re staying here to take care of Killer,” Hep said.

“What the fuck? Who are you to tell me to stay here and take care of the damn bird?” Sarah asked.

“Well, I’m a god, for one,” Hep said. “But more importantly, I’m keeping you out of the path of Ares while he, uh, distracts Nubbins. Ares gets a little exuberant when he’s working, and there tends to be a lot of damage to things in the vicinity.”

Ares grinned widely, “What can I say? I do what I likes, and I likes what I do.”

“Goddammit,” Sarah said. “I hate this protect the little woman bullshit.”

She stomped out of the room and back to hers.

“Looks like you’re going to need to bring her some flowers,” Ares said to Scroat.

“What the fuck? I didn’t tell her to stay here, that was Hep,” Scroat said.

“Yeah, but you didn’t go out of your way to argue with him,” Ares said.

“Well, for fuck’s sake, she does need to stay out of the way. I’ve seen your aftermath, and I don’t want her to be a part of it,” Scroat said.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re still wrong,” Hep said. “We’ll pick up some flowers on the way back from visiting Cyrus.”

Chapter Twenty Seven

2008-11-22T12:37:00.000-08:00

Reverend Milton had another very successful evening. The miracles and healings resulted in so much profit he wished he would have incorporated stage magic into his sermons years ago.

Of course, that probably would have resulted in him being found out, and he wouldn’t have done as well. The semi-genuine article was probably best.

At any rate, he had made a hell of a lot of money in the last two weeks. The only reason he needed to keep going this season, really, was because he was booked in a few more places. As far as income was concerned, he was far enough in the black to need a fresh bottle of ink.

“So what’s our cut as divine bodyguards?” Scroat asked Cyrus after Grace had left to deposit the donations.

“My sincere thanks and a hearty handshake,” Cyrus said.

“Oh fuck. Do I really have to stay here for this?” Scroat asked Hep.

“Yes,” Hep said.

“Only if you want to get head again,” Sarah said.

“JOIN US!” Killer said.

“You all suck,” Scroat said.

The following morning, Reverend Milton, Grace and Nubbins left around six o’clock. Nubbins complained quite a bit about waking up so early. He didn’t actually mind, he just wanted to hassle Cyrus about something inane. He had to keep him distracted, after all, lest the Reverend come up with a bright idea.

Nubbins was glad the gods who had shown up to help Cyrus out weren’t a bit more scholarly. If, instead of following him around and swearing a lot, they had gone to the selection of Christian texts in the religion section of the local Library, they might have already had some bright ideas of their own. They might have shared those ideas with Cyrus, and Cyrus might have saved his soul. Since, as long as Cyrus was damned (and alive) Nubbins didn’t have to go back to Hell, Nubbins was very interested in making sure he stayed damned. This was also why, tempting as it was to just kill him and everyone in the vicinity, Nubbins let Cyrus keep living.

Meanwhile, he would continue to enjoy the food, liquor and smokes available to him here on Earth. He’d be damned if he was going to miss out on the few perks this assignment had.

Around eight o’clock in the morning, Hep, Scroat, Sarah and Killer left to follow Cyrus to his next stop. Breakfast had been a hurried affair, since they’d meant to leave around seven, not eight. Not that it was a big deal, really, they knew where he was headed so they’d catch him eventually.

Where he was headed, by the way, was Coalgate, Oklahoma. Scroat was, understandably, pissed off they were going to another no name town in the middle of nowhere.

“Fuck, these hicks are no fun at all,” Scroat said. “They’re not even fun to mess with.”

Hep said, “Where do you think people who’s only source of entertainment is church live? Hicks are his paying audience.”

Scroat grumbled a bit, then said “Couldn’t he have just made up a religion? One that appealed to people too smart for speaking in tongues, but too dumb to realize an organization that determines your holiness by how much you’ve spent is a scam?”

“No, I don’t think he was cynical enough to do that,” Hep said.

“Well, fuck, do I have to do everything?” Scroat said.

The ride to Coalgate, Oklahoma from Hope, Arkansas is dull. Really dull. The kind of dull ride that makes a pair of biker gods wish they could just go to sleep. The kind of dull that makes a biker god’s passenger wish she could go to sleep too. It’s the kind of dull ride that makes a biker god’s passenger’s parrot named Killer go to sleep on his wrought iron perch.

Nope, nothing of interest happened on that whole damned ride. No one even had to stop for a piss. That might have been interesting. One never knows what kind of weird shit one is going to encounter in a truck stop restroom, but it’s usually disturbing at best. Yep, that might have been interesting.

But it wasn’t. It was just boring. Boring Boring Boring.

I mean, fuck, I’m getting bored just writing about it.

Eventually, three hours and fifty some minutes later, if you want to be picky, they arrived in Coalgate.

Coalgate was supremely dull. With a name like Coalgate, one would expect a pair of gods to encounter some kind of gigantic, carbon creature bent on destroying them, or at least making them solve a difficult riddle. Or perform feats of strength, that’s always a good one when dealing with giants.

But no. There wasn’t even a scary McDonald’s to have a weird encounter with someone’s mean old grandma in.

Boring.

So horribly motherfucking shit-stoppingly boring.

Curiously enough, all the boredom one could avail himself or herself of was precisely what Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton, sometimes known as Joe Anderson, needed to come up with a brilliant plan to redeem himself.

He was sitting on the toilet in the supremely boring hotel room in this supremely boring stupid awful town when he had a delightfully simple, elegant, and hopefully effective revelation.

He could just give Judy the money back! He’d come up with a story about how God had given him a sign, and he knew she needed the money far more than he did. In fact, here was some extra money, just to make things extra nice for her. He could do all this as Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton, and when he got back home as Joe Anderson he wouldn’t have to feel bad about anything at all.

Fuck, it was brilliant. If he hadn’t been so distracted he would have thought of it right away, he told himself.

If there was only a way he could distract Nubbins so he could take care of it before the little shit interfered and something extra rotten happened to Judy.

Nubbins was also bored. The hotel Cyrus had picked (really, Grace had picked it, but who was keeping track?) was ill-equipped in the way of entertainment. There wasn’t even a mini-bar for him to get into. Liquor was hard to find in Hell, so along with cigarettes, pizza, french fries and strip clubs, Nubbins wanted to get as much liquor in him as he could before he had to go back to the pit.

Speaking of strip clubs, by the way, Nubbins was pretty annoyed they hadn’t been to any yet. The only reason he hadn’t forced the Rev to bring him to see some titties was because Cyrus had made the very good point that some of his congregation might see him. Ordinarily, Nubbins would have told Cyrus his congregation could take a flying fuck at a rolling donut and they were going to see tits and ass or Cyrus was going to grow a pair of his own. Unfortunately, Nubbins had had the idea about eventually letting the congregation “discover” a demon had been behind all the miracles which would simultaneously ruin the Reverend and give the faithful a royal mind-fucking.

Which would be pretty neat.

Alas, it meant he had to wait until the off-season to see some boobs. He could have dealt with this if there was some liquor to be had, or some pay per view porn to put on the Reverend’s tab, but no. They were stuck in this boring shithole with no porn, no booze, not even a goddamn McDonald’s.

Hep and Scroat went over to Cyrus’s hotel room around four in the afternoon. Sarah stayed in the hotel with Killer, since Nubbins got so worked up when Nubbins was around.

They decided to go and have dinner at the one restaurant that had looked remotely interesting, the Old Koaly Cafe. The food was reasonably OK. They had french fries and Coke, so Nubbins was reasonably content. While the little demon was paying attention to his fries, Cyrus discretely passed a note to Hep.

“I need a way to really distract him for a few minutes,” the note read. Hep read it, crumpled it up and stuffed it in his pocket. He nodded at Cyrus, and went back to eating.

When they got back to the hotel Cyrus was staying in, Hep and Scroat said they were going to head back to their own hotel for the night.

“We’ll swing by tomorrow and see what we can do for some entertainment,” Hep said, and winked at Cyrus.

Chapter Twenty Six

2008-11-19T19:25:00.000-08:00

After Hep, Scroat and Sarah had caught up with Cyrus a little bit, they went back to the hotel. Killer, who had been left in Sarah’s room to entertain himself, had made an unholy mess of the place. He had unplugged most of the cables from the TV, chewed most of the way through a chair’s leg, scattered the towels all over the bathroom, ripped up the phone book, and pooped everywhere.

When Sarah entered the room, she saw the mess, and Killer perched on one of the lamps looking proud as could be.

“I gotta get you a travel cage,” Sarah said to the bird.

The next morning, the four of them checked out of the motel (Sarah left a generous tip for the cleaning staff) and rode over to the place Cyrus was staying. Cyrus let them into his room. Nubbins was sitting in an easy chair and watching TV.

It only took Killer a matter of seconds to notice the demon. The bird did not leave Sarah’s shoulder, but growled continuously at the little demon.

“Killer, hush,” Sarah said, but he did not stop growling.

“Dammit, you’re freaking my bird out,” Sarah said. “I’m going outside.”

“Hey, I’ll come with you,” Scroat said.

The two of them left the room, leaving Hep, Cyrus and Nubbins.

Nubbins said to Hep, “I hope you guys don’t think you’re going to be able to help the Rev here.”

Hep said, “We’ll see.”

He, Scroat and Sarah had decided to accompany Cyrus for the rest of his tour (and for the foreseeable future after that, unless they were able to take care of the demon problem quickly). The idea, frankly, made Cyrus uncomfortable. He preferred to travel light and discrete, and an entourage on motorcycles (with a parrot) was far from travelling light. It would be, well, large and obvious.

Ducking out of town would be more like leading a parade now, unless he came up with a plan for how they could accompany him without drawing attention.

“So,” Hep said, “How are we going to keep your followers from noticing the biker gang chasing you around?”

“Well, I guess you could start by not coming to the revivals. It’s not like a whole lot of bikers show up, ever, so when someone finally notices you, they’re going to think you’re a part of the show. Or worse, they’ll think you’re following me like a couple of filthy deadheads,” Cyrus said.

“Milton-heads?” Nubbins suggested, and exhaled a surprising amount of smoke. Really, no one would have expected a tiny demon to take such massive drags off a cigarette.

“Yeah, we don’t really want that,” Hep said. “Scroat hates a crowd. Especially a crowd of deadheads.”

They decided that Hep, Scroat and Sarah would hang out in the general area, but would avoid the revivals, and would stay a ways back from Reverend Milton’s car while they traveled. That should help keep things nice and discrete.

Eventually it was time for Reverend Milton to leave for the tent again, and the second night of the revival. He and Nubbins left with Grace. Scroat, Sarah and Killer saw the three of them leave the hotel, and decided to head in and see what Hep was up to.

Hep was, in fact, sitting with his head in his hands. He let the three of them in to Cyrus’s room, and resumed sitting with his head in his hands.

“So, what are we up to, Hep?” Scroat asked. He turned on the TV and checked to see if the room had pay-per-view porn.

It did not. Scroat was quite annoyed.

“We’re trying to figure out a way to help Cyrus,” Hep said.

“And why, again, are we doing this instead of riding around and getting laid? I mean, the dumb bastard did it to himself,” Scroat said.

“Well, because if one of us were hell bound and knew about it – it’d probably be you – I’d like to think someone would come along and help us out,” Hep said.

“Uh huh. And so why are we helping him?” Scroat asked again.

“Because we’re nice guys?” Hep said.

“Fuck that. You’re a nice guy. I’m not. I come along for this shit for the riding and the, uh…” he looked at Sarah then, and noticed she was glaring at him.

“What?” he said.

“You, are helping out your friend. Because you’re a good guy. Because good guys help their friends, and get nearly unlimited head, while jerks do not help their friends, and do not get any head at all,” Sarah said.

“Oh, now I remember why we’re helping our friend. Uh, Cecil, right?” Scroat said.

“Cyrus,” Hep said.

“Yeah, him. I always liked that guy. I’m glad we can help him in his time of need,” Scroat said, and smiled as sweetly as he could.

“Right now, you’re a guy who might get occasional head if he asks really, really, really nicely, and makes me cum twice beforehand,” Sarah said, then got up and started digging through the drawers in the room, hoping to find a magazine or something to stay occupied.

“I’LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!” Killer said.

Scroat sat quietly for a moment. Hep still had his head in his hands.

“So, uh, you got any ideas, Hep?” Scroat asked, quietly.

“No. I do not. Do you?” Hep asked in return.

“No. I was just checking,” Scroat said. “Think we could get him baptized again?”

“Sure, if you can figure out how to distract Nubbins long enough to get Cyrus in the river,” Hep said.

“Oh yeah,” Scroat said. “What did he do to get Hell so interested in him that they sent a demon to accompany him to Hell.”

“He ripped off a sweet old lady who was his friend,” Hep said.

“Yeah, but I don’t think that’s really worthy of demonic accompaniment, is it?” Scroat said.

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Hep said. “It’s kind of a fucked up religion though.”

Chapter Twenty Five

2008-11-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

Hep met Nubbins for the first time in 1098 AD. Hep had been playing cards with a group of travelling merchants in a dark tavern. Nubbins, at the time, had been following one of the younger ones around. None of the merchants, including the one Nubbins kept whispering to, noticed the little demon.

Nubbins, however, noticed that Hep had spotted him. He winked at Hep, put a finger to his lips and said, “Shhhh.”

The youngest merchant had several winning hands in a row, and he had taken most of the other merchants’ cash.

After losing yet another hand to the young man, one of the merchants slammed his hand down on the table, stood and pointed an accusing finger at the winner.

“You’re cheating!” he shouted.

Hep noticed one of the other merchants had drawn a knife from his boot, and the other merchants around the table all had one hand hidden as well. He had just backed away from the table a little bit when one of the others leapt to his feet and lunged at the young merchant, knife in hand.

The young man remained seated, and the man who had attacked him made a pained gasp and fell to the floor clutching the inside of his leg, which was rapidly growing bright red from a deep wound. The young man stood then, casually holding a dagger in each hand.

Two of the other merchants then attempted to grab the younger man, with similarly messy results. The man to the right fell over clutching at his stomach, while the man to the left fell back with a puzzled look on his face, blood gushing from his neck. The last remaining merchant, showing some good sense, turned and bolted.

Unfortunately for him, the young man threw one of his daggers, which sunk deeply into the fleeing man’s back.

Hep, who had thus far only scooted his chair back a little bit, said, “Whoa.” The young man turned to look at him then. Hep said, “Hey, I didn’t accuse you of cheating.”

The young man smirked, rifled through the pockets of the other men looking for any cash he hadn’t won, and left the tavern.

Hep was not there to witness it, but he heard the young merchant was killed later that night just outside another tavern, when a pair of thugs decided to relieve the drunken man of his heavy coin purse. They’d quietly crept up behind him, and one stuck him with a knife while the other grabbed his money.

Hep made a note to himself to avoid getting mixed up with the little demon, should he see him again.

Three hundred and seventy four years later, he did see the little demon again, just outside a small farming village Hep had passed through. This time he rode on the back of a General’s horse, and again, no one seemed to notice him except for Hep. And, once again, the little demon noticed Hep and winked at him. He whispered in the General’s ear, and shortly after that the General gave the command to kill everyone in the village, and burn the buildings. His army swarmed into the village then. The men of the town were all gone, apart from the very old and very young, off fighting far away. The soldiers killed the old men, the women and the children, and razed the village, leaving behind only smouldering ruins.

He heard, a few years later, that the general had been killed by his own men, who could not bear the atrocities of war any longer and simply wanted to go home again.

He saw the little demon again fifty four years later, standing next to a banker forcing a family to leave their home because they could not pay their debt. No one noticed the demon at the side of the banker.

This time, however, the demon walked over to Hep, who very much did not want to talk to him. The demon looked up at him and said, “Greek, huh?”

Hephaestus blinked, and said, “Yes. And you?”

“Well, who could say for sure? Maybe Zoroastrian,” the demon trailed off, then said, “I am known as,” here the demon paused and took a breath, “Nubbins.”

Hep blinked, stifled a giggle, and said, “I am Hephaestus.”

“Well, Hephaestus, the pleasure is mine. I assume I’ll see you around,” the little demon said, and disappeared.

I hope not, Hephaestus thought. He wasn’t overly fond of the mortals, but he didn’t enjoy watching the destruction this little devil wrought either.

The last time Hep had seen Nubbins was in Salem, Massachusetts. He’d been on his way to Boston. From what he later learned about the events in Salem, Hep knew Nubbins had been a busy little son of a bitch.

And now, here he was again, following around an old bar buddy. This did not bode well for Cyrus, even apart from the eternal damnation. After all, with Nubbins around it was likely Cyrus would reach the pit of Hell well before he would have had he simply been left to live out his life. Plus, Nubbins had made himself known to the Reverend, which could only mean he intended to torment Cyrus along the way.

Hephaestus was unaware of Hell’s corporate politics, and assumed Nubbins was following Cyrus around because Hell wanted to be sure Cyrus was in capable hands. He hoped they’d be able to find a way to distract the little demon and help Cyrus redeem himself before the little bugger got bored and killed him off.

Chapter Twenty Four

2008-11-17T19:30:00.000-08:00

Hep, Scroat, Sarah and Killer woke up early the next morning, and got rolling as quickly as the could. The group arrived in Hope, Arkansas around two thirty in the afternoon, which gave them enough time to find a decent motel, get some lunch and rest up a bit before making their way to the revival.

Hep was a bit anxious about going, since he had bad legs he knew they’d want to drag him up front to be healed. If he wouldn’t go along with it, the preacher would come out to him. It was very annoying, and the reason he avoided such events (well, one of the reasons. The other was that he wasn’t a Christian.).

Scroat, on the other hand, was anxious to get going. If there was one kind of person he liked to fuck with, it was the overbearingly pious types who went to revival meetings.

Sarah was not particularly excited about going one way or the other. She was somewhat curious about the so-called demon, but skeptical. She did not get as much amusement out of baiting the holy rollers as Scroat did, and would just as soon have gone to one of the local bars.

Killer was not going. Sarah didn’t think he needed to deal with that scene.

Soon enough it was time for them to head to the tent set up just outside of town. They caused quite a stir pulling up to park on their motorcycles. Dozens of respectable church ladies, every single one of which wished she’d married a biker, sniffed and tutted at the three of them.

They made their way to the entrance to the tent, where, sure enough, one of the ushers asked Hep what ailed him, and escorted him to a seat down in the front of the stage. As expected. Scroat and Sarah sat next to Hep, and they waited for the revival to begin.
While they waited, the ushers brought several others in wheelchairs and those carrying crutches down to sit in the front.

After what felt like a couple of hours, the worship band took their places, tuned up, and began to play. The house lights dimmed a bit as the stage lights came up, and a few minutes later the first preacher of the evening came out.

His sermon was pretty uninspired, and he left the stage after a quick thirty minutes. The next preacher was a little better, and got good and revved up when he reached the hellfire
and damnation part of his sermon. The crowd was still pretty unexcited at this point, but up next was Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton.

When the preacher introduced Reverend Milton, the crowd went wild, yelling and clapping and carrying on as though they’d been saving their energy for his sermon. Reverend Milton walked out with his hands held wide. He embraced the preacher who had introduced him, and took the microphone from him after exchanging a few pleasantries (they had not seen each other earlier, since Reverend Milton now required his own dressing room).

“Good evening brothers and sisters,” Reverend Milton began, and the crowd went ballistic. He began his sermon talking about the power of belief, and the wonder of redemption.

Hep didn’t really pay attention to the sermon, he was focussed on the weird vibes he was getting from stage left. He couldn’t see anything or anyone, yet, but he could tell something was definitely waiting there. He knew it must be the demon, and wondered what exactly was in store for them.

The audience had been going crazy since Reverend Milton went on stage, and many of the faithful had already started talking in tongues. Scroat looked around and saw two or three people surrounded by a group of others, jabbering away in a nonsense language. He had a wicked idea.

Scroat stood and threw his arms in the air.

“Hoobah-la! Shiittee-doook Mutha-fuckaaaaaarrrgh! COCK-A-TURD DOO WIPE-UH!” he shouted.

Several of the other audience members gathered around him, saying “Hallelujah, brother.”

Sarah watched him, thinking he’d lost his mind. Then she got the joke, and had to fight to keep herself from laughing.
Scroat fell to the floor, helped by the crowd around him, chanting “tuktuktitty-fuckfuckaducka-hoo!” while those around him called “Amen!” and “Hallelujah.”

Soon enough, he “came back to his senses” and the group around him helped him back into his seat and went their own ways again.

A little while after that, it was time for the healings. A woman with crutches was lead to the stage, where Reverend Milton laid his hands on her head and said “Heal this woman’s legs, in Jesus’s name, Hallelujah!” and gave her a shove on the forehead forcing her into the arms of the waiting ushers. Hep was shocked to feel a surge of power as this happened, and sure enough, the woman stood up on her own, and walked around to wild applause from the audience.

An old man wearing an oxygen mask pulling a cart with an oxygen tank was next. Hep felt the surge of power again, and became suspicious as the old man took off his face mask and, believe it or not, did jumping jacks.

Hep was so caught up in this that he didn’t notice the ushers gathering around him until they’d already grabbed his arms and started leading him to the stage.

“Hey, wait, no,” he said, but to no avail. Hep was led up on to the stage, where Reverend Milton looked at him briefly, then did a double take.

He regained his composure, laid his hands on Hep’s head, and said “Heal this man’s legs in Jesus’s name! Hallelujah!” and shoved Hep backwards.

Hep fell, and the ushers behind him toppled over with Hep. They helped him up again. Hep gave Reverend Milton a dirty look, then limped back to his seat. The crowd’s enthusiasm died a little bit, until the next person was miraculously healed. That perked them right back up again.

Eventually, that evening’s service ended, and the crowd all left, until it was only Hep, Scroat and Sarah left in the tent. The three of them made their way to the “dressing rooms” which were RVs a short distance from the tent. They found Reverend Milton’s easily enough - it was the one with the line of young women waiting outside.

They joined the line, and waited for Reverend Milton to appear. After a time, he came out of his RV, and greeted everyone. His face fell, momentarily, when he saw Hep and Scroat, but he regained his composure once again, and spent a few moments talking with everyone outside his RV, and signing autographs. Eventually he managed to shoo away all the young women until it was just him, Hep, Scroat and Sarah standing outside.

“Would you like to come in?” Reverend Milton asked them.
“Yes, I think we would,” Hep said.

They filed into the RV, which wasn’t quite big enough to hold everyone comfortably. The four of them spent a moment looking at each other in an awkward silence, before Cyrus spoke.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you two,” he said, then looked at Sarah. “I should say, you three,” He grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator, and offered some to the rest of them.

“Three?” Hep asked. “You know Sarah already?”

“Sure, she was in my confirmation class. If I remember correctly, she’s the one person from that class I’m not going to have killed when I rule the world. Well, apart from my friend Andrew. One of the two,” Reverend Milton said. “Hi Sarah.”

“Hi Cy,” Sarah said. “I never thought you’d become a priest.”

“And yet I never doubted that you’d end up running around with biker scum,” Cyrus said, and laughed. He looked at Hep then.

“So how come your legs didn’t heal?” Cyrus asked.

The four of them heard a door open, and a deep, cold voice said, “Because he’s from the wrong fucking pantheon, shithead. And because he’s a god. I can’t do much to a fucking god, now can I?”

“What?” Cyrus asked.

“What?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” Hep said. Then, to Cyrus’s surprise, he said “Hey Nubbins.”

“Hey Hephaestus,” Nubbins said with, if possible, even less compassion or warmth than usual.

Cyrus needed a moment to process all of this new information.

“So... you’re a god?” Cyrus asked Hep.

“Yep. Do you think there are many mortal greek guys still named Hephaestus?” Hep said.

Cyrus looked at Scroat then.

“Yes, I’m also a fucking god,” Scroat said. Then he winked at Sarah and said “And a god of fucking.”

“What??” Sarah asked. Up until this point, she’d had no idea that Scroat was in any way divine. She’d thought Hep and Scroat were eccentric, and had unusually high tolerances for liquor, but gods?

“Uh, yeah. Um. Meant to tell you about that,” Scroat said.

Sarah considered this for a moment, then said, “You’d better not knock me up, shithead. I don’t want to spend the rest of eternity showing up on toast, or whatever it is your followers would be likely to see me on.”

“Don’t worry, sweet-ass, I won’t. As if I want to take care of some half-breed bastard god child,” Scroat said.

There was another awkward silence as Hep, Cyrus and Nubbins tried to think of something to say to follow up that discussion.

Hep turned so Cyrus and said, “So, I hear you’re damned.”

Cyrus hung his head, and said, “Yeah, pretty much.”

Nubbins said, “Not just pretty much. You. Are. Damned.”

Chapter Twenty Three

2008-11-17T16:30:00.000-08:00

Hep’s minimal research told him Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton’s next scheduled revival was going to be in Hope, Arkansas. Since they had a passenger, and a parrot, travelling with them, they were going to have to stick to six hour days which meant it would be a three day ride. With luck, they’d arrive in time to have some lunch and stretch their legs (and wings) a bit before they had to get to the circus tent the revival was going to be in that night.

Currently, the three of them, and Killer the parrot, were just an hour or two west of Dallas, and had stopped at a rest area to stretch, drink some water and have a snack. They had found a shaded picnic table, and sat around it munching on beef jerky and corn nuts. Sarah had cut up some fruit for Killer, and put out a bowl of water. The bird was in high spirits, and spent as much time throwing the food around as it did eating.

One of the other people stopped at the rest area noticed Killer, and walked over to chat.

“Say, are you guys traveling with that bird on those motorcycles over there?” he asked. He was wearing a thin plaid shirt with pearl snaps, and a string tie, along with a pair of brand new Wranglers and beat up cowboy boots.

“Sure are,” Sarah said. Killer was jumping up and down on the table with a piece of orange held firmly in his beak.

“Is that safe for the bird?” the traveller asked.

Sarah would have replied, but Killer had chosen that moment to drop the piece of orange, say “I’ll swallow your soul!” and charge down the table towards the man talking to them.

Understandably, the man uttered a little scream and fled without looking back.

“Seriously, I love that fucking bird more every day,” Scroat said.

“He does have his good qualities,” Hep admitted.

They were a little better than half way to Arkansas, and so far the trip had been pretty smooth. The weather had been clear and comfortable, and traffic on the interstate highways had been reasonably light. They decided to press on to Houston and stop there for the night. From there it would be about seven hours to Hope, Arkansas.

Hep could see storm clouds gathering on the horizon to the East, and he hoped they would make it to Houston before the storm reached them. Hep didn’t particularly mind riding in the rain, but a nasty storm could slow them down quite a bit if traffic got messed up. And traffic always gets messed up in the rain.

Once every one felt ready, and had a chance to use the restroom, they stashed the food and water back in their bags and fired up the bikes.

The storm did not stay away, as Hep had wished, and actually moved in pretty quickly. They had been on the road again for less than half an hour when the wind picked up. They could see lightning flashing in the distance. A few minutes later, the first drops of rain hit them. They pulled over under a bridge to put on their rain gear, and Sarah stuffed Killer in her jacket so only his head poked out. Killer squawked at her in protest, but settled in when he realized she wasn’t going to let him out. Sarah felt bad, because Killer loved being out in the rain, but she was worried he might spread his wings and get blown away. He was trained to stay by her, but shit happens and she wasn’t about to lose her bird.

The storm grew in intensity, and the lightning seemed to get closer and closer to them. They rode on through the downpour, even as the rain came hard enough to reduce visibility to fifty feet ahead of them. Thunder boomed and crashed, and they saw a tree in the distance get hit by lightning and burst into flame.

Sarah was suddenly very aware that they were riding across a wide open plain.

The wind became more violent, and soon they discovered any exposed skin they had been unaware of as the rain drops turned into little needles poking at them over and over. Killer ducked down inside of Sarah’s jacket, and stayed there.

Hep and Scroat rode on, accelerating even, determined to make it to Houston that day. They passed several billboards and signs for nearby motels, and Sarah was about ready to kill Scroat for passing all of them.

Great gusts of wind came and blew against them, forcing Scroat to lean into the wind just to continue riding in a straight line. Hep was getting soaked even under his rain gear, as were Scroat and Sarah.

The storm did not let up, even when they’d reached Houston. They stopped at the first motel they saw. They went into the lobby, where the clerk’s face fell as soon as he saw the three dripping bikers. And their parrot.

“I’m sorry,” the clerk said, “we have a no pets policy.” He was a thin, balding and fussy-looking man, with a nasal voice and glasses which didn’t suit him and made him look kind of like a myopic turtle. One with a bad attitude.

“Aw, come on,” Hep said, “You’re not going to send us back out into this weather over a little bird are you?”

The clerk looked at the bird with distaste, then back at Hep. “I am indeed going to send you back out into this weather, if you intend to keep the bird in one of our rooms. Company policy, I’m sorry.”

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” Scroat said under his breath.

“Let me talk to the manager, please,” Sarah said. “Perhaps he’ll bend the rules for us, given that we can pay in cash, and are soaked to the bone.”

“I am the manager, “ the fussy clerk snapped, “ and you can take your cash to another motel. One which allows pets. Good day to you all.” He turned to go back into the office.

“Fuck you and the fucking horse you fucking rode in on, you fucker!” Killer said, and chuckled.

“Excuse me?!” the clerk exclaimed, but the three of them had already turned and were walking out the door.

“You wait just one minute!” the clerk shouted and chased them. Hep and Scroat fired up their bikes, and Scroat paused for a moment to give the clerk the middle finger and a toothy grin, then they rode off to find another motel.

They didn’t have a hard time finding a motel which allowed pets. As a matter of fact, the very next motel they stopped at did allow pets, and the clerk made a big deal about how adorable the biker parrot was, and laughed when the bird screeched “Join us!”

The clerk also promised to bring an armload of towels to their rooms in just a few minutes, and she offered to let them use the motel’s dryer for their wet clothes, an offer they gratefully accepted.

Once they had changed out of their wet clothes, the three of them ordered a couple of pizzas. The pizza was greasy, and the crust was terrible, but they enjoyed it all the same because it was hot and they weren’t out in the storm any longer. Hep made sure to give the pizza man an extra big tip for contending with the weather to bring them their pies.

After they’d eaten, they went back to their respective rooms and collapsed in to their beds. The beds were old and squeaky, and the most comfortable any of them had slept in for a while.

Chapter Twenty Two

2008-11-17T14:30:00.000-08:00

To Reverend Milton’s amazement, Nubbins told him he would go along with performing miracles and so on.

Dollar signs had immediately begun flashing before Reverend Milton’s eyes, so he didn’t think to ask why the little demon had experienced this change of heart. He assumed, in a vague sort of way, that Nubbins didn’t want to fend off his congregation again.

Nubbins, actually, wasn’t worried about any future congregations. Now that he knew what to expect, any one who so much as thought about trying to touch him would be immediately debilitated by the worst hemorrhoids known to medical science. That would give them something to get all butt-hurt about, instead of worrying about the length of their neighbor’s daughter’s dress.

What he was worried about was Reverend Milton getting the bright idea to do something soul-redeeming while his congregation was busy distracting Nubbins. And besides, Nubbins planned on revealing, after a suitable fervor had built up among the faithful, the source of the miracles: a little demon. One from Hell. Something like that would throw a nice monkey wrench in the church’s works.

He hoped Reverend Milton wouldn’t realize what he was up to. The little demon was confident the preacher wouldn’t, of course. Cyrus had already more or less accepted his damnation, and was busy chasing after dollars and attractive women again. Nubbins was glad the Reverend was playing along so easily, but kind of disappointed at the same time. In the old days, he’d had real challenges. He’d had to turn people who were actually faithful. He’d convinced good men to perform atrocious crimes. Getting a con-artist to be more of a con-artist wasn’t what Nubbins considered his greatest work.

Reverend Milton, for his part, was indeed dreaming of dollar bills and young, beautiful women. He was also trying to come up with a way to get rid of Nubbins, but not having any luck. The demon was too fast to get away from, despite his size, and messing with Reverend Milton seemed to be the only thing which cheered him up at all.

The other day Cyrus had been out walking, and a man on the sidewalk next to him sneezed. Reverend Milton, of course, said “Bless you.” The man who sneezed muttered “Thank you,” seconds before Nubbins grabbed Cyrus’s foot, stuck it out in front of the other man and tripped him. The man, who’d had his hands full with a coffee and his briefcase, fell face first on to the sidewalk.

He got up, cursing, and Cyrus Evander Milton had been forced to run like hell to avoid an undeserved - but justified from the other man’s point of view - beatdown.

This kind of thing happened constantly. Actually trying to do good, such as giving money to a beggar, or helping an old lady across the street resulted in the kind of horrible scenes that get shown on the evening news. Thus far, Reverend Milton had been responsible for the brutal murder of a homeless man (after another homeless man saw the Reverend give the first man one hundred dollars), the accidental death of an old woman (who he’d somehow bumped in to the street just in time for the local bus to run her down when he tried to help a delivery man who’s cart nearly tipped over), and a great number of bruises and sprains.

Truly, fewer people got hurt if he just kept to himself.

So, Reverend Milton did his best to keep to himself. He would ask Grace to run whatever errands he needed done, since the little demon didn’t go out of his way to injure her when she was around. In fact, she was the only person Nubbins didn’t bother too much. Reverend Milton had asked Nubbins about this, and he’d dismissed it at not being worth the effort.

“The only reason she hangs around is because you’re paying her,” Nubbins said. “I don’t expect her to try doing anything nice for you any time soon, unless there’s a thousand dollar bonus in it for her. And even then she might not.”

“Screw you,” Reverend Milton said, “Grace is a good friend.”

“Do you really believe that?” Nubbins said. “I don’t think you do. If you did, the two of you might discuss what you did during your respective summer vacations. She’s a con artist just like you, she just doesn’t spend as much time facing the public. When your money runs out, she’s gone.”

Reverend Milton could not deny she was as much a part of the game as he was. More, really, since she was the one who set everything up. All he had to do was show up and charm the suckers out of their money. He could do the behind the scenes work. He had done it for several years when he was starting out. Grace was better at it though, and he paid her very well for a secretary.

He didn’t like to think about it.

At any rate, Grace took care of the minor errands he needed to have handled so he wouldn’t have to contend with angry butchers chasing him because of their befouled display, or getting slapped by a random woman who thought it was him pinching her butt.

The next revival should be fun, though, since the little demon had agreed to help him conjure some miracles. He’d be able to actually heal people, instead of just convincing them they were healed long enough for other folks in the audience to open up their wallets and make large donations to his cause.

That was good, but even better was knowing Nubbins would not wait in the wings for an opportune moment to leap out again and start humping Reverend Milton’s head. Stuff like that can really throw a preacher off his game. So can fielding questions about why he’s apparently got a small army of demons chasing him around and tormenting him. After all, hadn’t the congregation vanquished the last demon? Reverend Milton really didn’t want to have to come up with an answer for that one. It was better no one knew Nubbins was there.

Chapter Twenty One

2008-11-15T21:16:00.001-08:00

The house was blissfully quiet and, apart from Hep, empty. Scroat and Sarah (and Killer, of course) had gone to do what ever the fuck it is that Scroat and Sarah did when they weren’t having sex, and they’d brought Killer with them.

Hep had slept in that morning. He’d been disappointed to miss out on waking Scroat up, but then, he didn’t really like waking Scroat in the traditional way when his girlfriend was in the room. He wasn’t sure she’d see the humor in it. That, and if she was in there, Scroat was decidedly not sleeping.

Eventually Scroat was going to sleep by himself though, and Hep would be ready when that time came.

After sleeping ridiculously late, Hep noticed the house was delightfully quiet, and so he got up and made a gigantic breakfast with eggs, bacon, hash browns, more bacon, orange juice, some more bacon and coffee. Then he sat at the table, spread his bacon-heavy breakfast out, and ready the paper.

Most of the news, as always, did not pertain to Hep in any way, but he nearly spit out his coffee when he read about a preacher out in the deep south who had been haunted, for want of a better word, by a demon until his congregation had laid their hands on the demon and made him vanish. Presumably, the demon was sent back to Hell. The crazy part about this was there were thousands of people, not just a handful, who swore they’d seen the demon in person at this preacher’s revival.

There was a photograph of the preacher next to the article. Hep nearly spit out his coffee again.

“Holy shit! We met that guy!” he said to the empty house. The house, if you were wondering, did not respond, but did wonder who exactly Hep was talking to.

Hep had met a couple of Hell’s demons when he was in Jerusalem a long time ago. He’d thought they were dicks. And from what he remembered of the scuffle they’d had (Incidentally, drinking with Hell’s Angels - the demons, not the bikers - is just asking for trouble. Come to think of it, drinking with the bikers can get you in a lot of trouble too.), a few sweaty parishioners praying on a demon would not send it back to Hell. In fact, it would probably end messily for the parishioners.

“They got lucky,” Hep said. The demon was either distracted, or up to something else. And there was no way the demon was gone.

Hep remembered telling some young punk named Cyrus to get into the religion business to end his money problems. He thought he probably should have been careful to explain that it would mean paying attention to that religion’s particular rules if he wanted things to end well, though. Well, he and Scroat had been drinking for hours, so it was an easy oversight.

All the same, he felt a little bit responsible. At least, responsible enough that he should probably go and try to help this guy get rid of his demon. After all, what are godly friends for?

Hep heard Scroat’s motorcycle rumbling in the driveway. A few moments after it stopped, Scroat, Sarah and Killer all came in the house.

“Hey Hep,” Scroat said.

“Hey Hep,” Sarah said.

“JOIN US!” Killer said.

“Hey,” Hep said. He folded the newspaper back, and handed the section with the article about Reverend Milton to Scroat.

“You remember that guy?” Hep asked him.

Scroat looked at the photo, and scanned the article.

“Hey, yeah. Fuck, yeah! He was the guy who almost kept up with us in that shitty bar. He was all right. Looks like he got himself stuck neck deep in a pig’s asshole,” Scroat said. He tossed the newspaper on the table.

“Yeah,” Hep said. “So you know we’re going to have to go try to help him, right?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Scroat said. “It’s not our fault he got himself a demon chasing him around. Let him figure that shit out on his own.”

“He’s not going to be able to figure out a solution on his own, and we sorta set him on the road, didn’t we,” Hep said.

“Well, no, we didn’t. You did, shithead.” Scroat said. “Man, I don’t want to leave, I want to stay here. I’ve got a good thing going here, for once, and you’re trying to drag me off to go save the day again.”

Sarah watched this conversation not knowing what, exactly, they were discussing. She picked up the paper off the table and read the article. Something about the guy in the photo seemed familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. She wondered if anyone she’d gone to school with had moved south after graduating.

“Scroat, we have to help this guy out. Bring Sarah along if you want,” Hep said.

Scroat had taken a breath to argue, then realized Hep had just told him it was OK to bring Sarah. If it was OK to bring Sarah, Hep must be completely serious about going. Hep had yet to approve of Sarah in any way (at least that Scroat had noticed). As far as he could tell, Hep tolerated her as “the girlfriend” and that was it.

“Uh, OK,” Scroat said. “When do you want to leave?”

“As soon as you’re ready,” Hep said.

Scroat, Sarah and Killer went back to Scroat’s room.

“Uh, so do you want to come with us while we try to save some preacher we met a long time ago from a demon he picked up some place?” Scroat asked Sarah.

“Sure, why not?” She said.

“Do you need to get anything from your apartment? When Hep says as soon as I’m ready, he means we’ll leave within five minutes of me being ready.” Scroat said.

“Nope, I’ve got everything I need right here,” Sarah said, and patted the army surplus bag she had slung over one shoulder.

“Really?” Scroat said.

“Really. Be prepared, that’s Killer’s motto. It works for me too,” Sara said.

“OK, if you say so,” Scroat said. He grabbed a couple of essential items like clean underwear and a couple cans of baked beans and stuffed them into his own bad. Scroat, Sarah and Killer went back into the kitchen where Hep was just finishing washing the dishes he’d used for breakfast.

“We’re ready when you are,” Scroat said.

“Great, let’s go,” Hep said. He dried his hands, and walked to the back door of the house, where he had a small bag packed with the few essentials he carried with him when traveling. He usually brought clean underwear, socks, a pen, his favorite hammer, and a couple t-shirts.

He let Scroat, Sarah and Killer out, and then stepped outside. He locked the door behind him, and went to the garage where he had his motorcycle park. While Scroat stashed his and Sarah’s belongings on his bike, Hep stuffed his bag into the sidecar, opened the garage door and rolled his motorcycle out on to the driveway. He shut the garage again, and fired up his bike. The motor leapt to life as though it had been waiting for him (which it had).

Scroat fired up his own bike, and Sarah got on behind him. Killer climbed down Sarah’s back and hopped on to the perch Hep had made for him.

“Let’s go,” Hep said, and pulled out on to the road.

Chapter Twenty

2008-11-15T18:23:00.000-08:00

Reverend Milton sat in his own dressing room, seperate from the green room the rest of the preachers were hanging out in. Apparently they were worried that “demonic haunting” was catching, and didn’t want to spend too much time around Reverend Milton or Nubbins. So, the two of them sat, alone, until it was time for Reverend Milton to go on.

The crowd that night was easily twice the size of the last, disastrous revival. Apparently word had gotten out about Reverend Milton’s pet demon, and everybody wanted a look.

Nubbins had not agreed to help in any way with Reverend Milton’s sermon. Cyrus had hoped he might be able to “banish” the demon, or get him to hide off stage and help out with some miraculous healings.

The demon would not go along with his plan, however. Nubbins woudn’t even promise to stand quietly off stage and let Reverend Milton do his thing as though the previous revival had just been a fluke. He could have said the whole thing was an adversity he overcame with the Lord’s help.

Nope. He was going to have to contend with a disagreeable demon following him around on stage.
Eventually it was time for Reverend Milton to preach. The stage manager came and knocked on his door, called “sixty seconds!” through the door, and ran off.

Nubbins got up from the couch he had been laying on, walked over to the dressing room door, opened it, and said, “After you, buttercup.”

Reverend Milton got up from his chair, checked his hair and suit in the mirror, and stomped out of the room ahead of Nubbins. Nubbins followed closely behind him, chuckling in a menacing sort of way every few seconds. Reverend Milton tried to ignore this, and hoped he’d be able to get through the sermon without the crowd fleeing again.

They passed through the green room on the way to the stage, where the other preachers did their level best to avoid making eye contact with either of them.

“Thanks for the compassion and understanding, fellas,” Reverend Milton said as he left the room again. He grabbed a bottle of water to bring onstage with him.

Reverend Milton and Nubbins stood just offstage until it was time to go on. The preacher currently wrapping up his sermon, a balding man with a red face and black horn rimmed glasses, gave Reverend Milton a worried glance before he finished his sermon and introduced him.

As they waited, Nubbins rocked back and forth on his feet, humming a tuneless song. When Reverend Milton looked down at him, Nubbins gave him an exaggerated, sarcastic wink.

The preacher onstage introduced Reverend Milton, who walked on to no applause, or noise of any sort. Every one in the hall was silent. They simply watched him.

“Good evening bro...” was as far as Reverend Milton got in his greeting before Nubbins let loose a great, terrifying wail and leapt from where he stood offstage to the Reverend’s shoulders. He landed hard, nearly knocking Reverend Milton over.

The audience gasped.

Nubbins peered out at the crowd, then gave them his most wicked grin (which was quite wicked indeed. He’d had thousands of years to practice, after all), and began vigorously humping the back of Reverend Milton’s head. The crowd gasped, and a few of the women in the congregation screamed.

Reverend Milton dropped his microphone and yelled, “What the hell are you doing?” He then tried to catch Nubbins and get the little demon off of his shoulders, without success.

“Oh yeah! Fight back, baby, that’s what I like!” Nubbins exclaimed.

This crowd, who had been expecting to see a demon, did not flee. In fact, some of the burlier men in attendance stood up and rushed to the stage. They climbed from the floor of the hall up to the elevated stage, and hustled over to Reverend Milton. Two of them grabbed Nubbins.

If Nubbins had been paying better attention, this would have turned out very poorly indeed for the two suckers who grabbed him. However, he hadn’t expected any of the people in the building that night to actually try to attack him.

So instead of being destroyed in an artistic and disturbing orgy of violence and gore, the two faithful men were able to wrestled Nubbins off of Reverend Milton’s head and pin him to the floor. Several of the other church goers joined them in laying their hands on the little demon, praying for him to leave Reverend Milton and return to Hell.

Nubbins was surprised enough by their actions that he wasn’t precisely sure how best to respond. There was, of course, the old “explosion of entrails and blood” bit, which was always a crowd-pleaser. He could, instead, posess one of them and make him hump the Reverend’s head, which would be a lot of fun and put the fear back into these assholes.

Then he had a brilliant idea, and simply disappeared. The men who had been holding him found their hands empty, and those who had been laying their hands upon the little demon discovered they were no longer touching anything at all. They looked at their empty hands in confusion, then stood and cheered.

The audience cheered with them, celebrating the triumph over evil which had occurred right in front of them.

Reverend Milton looked around, completely bewildered. He wasn’t hopeful enough to think they’d actually gotten rid of the little demon. That would have just been foolish. He picked up his microphone again, and spent a moment looking around at the crowd.

He was searching for Nubbins, and didn’t see him anywhere.

“Brothers and sisters, we have witnessed a miracle tonight,” he began, and continued, eventually weaving his way back to his usual sermon. Nubbins, to Reverend Milton’s great relief, did not appear again for the rest of the sermon that night.

That night they took in nearly sixty thousand dollars in donations and merchandise sales.

After he was done preaching, he walked off stage and into the green room, where the other preachers were waiting to shake his hand and congratulate him.
Reverend Milton was unable to resist, and said “Do you expect me to accept congratulations from a bunch of holy jerks who did their best to avoid a brother in need? Get out of my sight.”

The other preachers looked at the floor, guilty, as Reverend Milton strode out of the green room into the hallway and back towards his dressing room. Once he had his back to the other preachers, he broke into a huge grin, and had to suppress a laugh. Even if he was damned, it sure was fun to be holier than the holiest of thou.

He continued down the hall, and turned to open the door and enter his dressing room.

Nubbins was back on the couch, smoking a cigarette and thumbing through an old copy of Newsweek.

“Hey fuckhead,” Nubbins said by way of greeting.

“Hey,” Reverend Milton said. He sat down in an easy chair, and loosened his tie. He started to take off his shoes when Grace barged in to the room.

“I heard about the miracle, is he really gone?” she asked, then saw Nubbins and said, “Oh.”

“No, he certainly isn’t gone,” Reverend Milton said. “Sorry to get your hopes up.”

“Aw, I feel all unloved over here,” Nubbins said. “It’s like you weren’t happy to see me in here. Did you really want those sweaty goons to banish me back to Hell? Think of all the fun you and I will have in the future! We can’t have any of that fun if I’m in Hell. At least, not until you get to Hell too. And it just won’t be the same then.”

“No, I imagine not,” Reverend Milton said, and pursed his lips. Cyrus, for one, could do without Nubbins’s brand of fun, whether it was in this plane of existence or the next. He hadn’t completely accepted the fact of his damnation, and it would be a lot easier to deal with without the fucking demon harassing him all day every day.

Also, if the demon wasn’t around, he could probably redeem himself, somehow. Maybe start going to church, do some volunteer work or something. But Nubbins kept him from even being particularly nice to anyone. The other day Reverend Milton had tried to hold the door open for a woman carrying two bags. At the last possible second, Nubbins had wrenched the door out of Reverend Milton’s hand and slammed it in the woman’s face.

Needless to say, the woman did not graciously accept Reverend Milton’s apology. In fact, he narrowly avoided getting a demonstration of the kicking power of the Ciderville High School soccer star’s right foot as applied to his nuts.
When she was out of ear shot, he angrily turned to the little demon and said, “That was just rude and uncalled for.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have expected her to kick you either.” Nubbins said.

“I meant slamming the door in her face,” Reverend Milton said, “and you know it.”

Nubbins looked at Reverend Milton for a moment, then said, “I’m a demon. I’m not nice. It’s contrary to my nature. And you know this.”

“Besides,” the demon continued, “You being nice to people isn’t going to save your soul. Ebenezer Scrooge? Had he been a real person, and had be been visited by the three ghosts of Christmas - as if - and had he entirely changed his ways and done good for the rest of his days - which he wouldn’t have because that’s not how you fucking people work - until he passed away, mourned by all who knew him, and a tower was erected to memorialize everything great he’d done for the world, he’d still have gone to Hell because he was a fucking filthy sinner just like you.”

“You’re just saying that because you want me to give up, And you said yourself you’re here to make sure I don’t save my soul,” Reverend Milton said.

“Right. But holding doors open for some lady, some lady who’s been fucking around on her husband and given him the clap, by the way, isn’t going to save your soul.”

“Maybe not, but being polite never hurt anyone,” Reverend Milton said.

“Tell that to the millons of polite people who spent their lives being walked over by less polite people,” Nubbins said, and lit a cigarette.

Chapter Nineteen

2008-11-13T20:15:00.000-08:00

“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.

Chapter Eighteen

2008-11-12T11:57:00.000-08:00

Reverend Milton’s last several sermons had not gone well at all. No one else could see the demon, but Reverend Milton was keenly aware of Nubbins’ presence at all time. It was worse when he was on stage. The little fucker paraded around behind him, mocking him the whole while.

Cyrus would say something about God’s boundless capacity for forgiveness, just to hear Nubbins say “Too bad you’re not ever going to experience that, eh buddy?”
If the demon wasn’t heckling him, he was high-kicking and twirling just out of easy kicking distance.

Nubbins constant harassment made it really hard for Reverend Milton to string more than a couple of coherent sentences together. It was nearly impossible to get the crowd worked up into a good fervor.

As bad as it was having Nubbins chase him around on stage, however, it was even worse when Nubbins would disappear into the crowd. Reverend Milton then had to contend with the knowledge that somewhere in a crowd of two thousand or more people who had worked themselves into a religious frenzy was a knee high demon messing with them.

If you were wondering, Nubbins didn’t actually do much when he was out in the crowd. Mostly he’d find a quiet spot, sit and smoke. The people in the crowd acted bizarrely enough on their own, they didn’t need his help. All he had to do was kick back and let Reverend Milton freak out wondering what he was up to out there.
Donations had dropped significantly, as had merchandise purchases. The pretty young things no longer came back to Reverend Milton’s hotel room. It was just as well they didn’t, since he wouldn’t have let them in anyway. It was hard to even imagine having sex with Nubbins in the room, presumably watching and making snide comments the entire time.

Grace had been keeping a very close eye on him recently as well. She thought he was either losing it, or having problems with drugs. She had a vested interest in his success, since he paid her extremely well when he was making a lot of money, but not so much when he wasn’t.

This steady decline would have continued, if it weren’t for the one crazy lady in the crowd who was indeed looking for demons, was indeed expecting to see them, and did, in fact, spot Nubbins as he was riding around on Reverend Milton’s shoulders yelling “Giddy up” during Cyrus’s sermon. Her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes bulged. She started to feel faint.

And then she screamed loud enough to wake the dead, and more importantly, loud enough to be heard over the crowd, “Dear God, there’s a demon tormenting Reverend Milton!”

Reverend Milton paused, unsure if he’d heard her correctly. Nubbins also paused, calculating the best way to work this development to his advantage. The crowd paused, even the ones busy speaking in tongues. And then, they all saw Nubbins at the same time.

You might expect a convention center full of the faithful to attempt to help Reverend Milton, or perhaps attack Nubbins. You might expect them to launch into prayer to give the Reverend strength to battle the demon.

You would probably be surprised, then, to learn what actually happened: As one, the crowd shrieked and began shoving and heaving their way towards the exits. In a matter of minutes, several thousand panicked, God fearing taxpayers as well as the band and all the ushers, cleared the room (and the building, for that matter) , leaving Reverend Milton, Nubbins and the sound and light men alone in an empty convention center. Nubbins couldn’t have orchestrated the whole scene better himself.

“Holy shit,” muttered the sound man, as he looked around at the room. Chairs were scattered everywhere, little paper fans decorated with Jesus paintings littered the floor, as well as the colored paper programs.

The light man brought up the house lights and killed the stage lights, which made the entire scene even more surreal.

“That was,” Nubbins slowly began, “totally awesome! Not even one of them tried to help you. Even the other preachers bailed! Gotta love that community spirit.”
Reverend Milton, for one, was seeing dollar signs galore. News of the evenings excitement would spread quickly, and he couldn’t pay for publicity like that. He suspected people would be camped out for his next revival by the end of the night.
He had to come up with a way to work Nubbins into the show. And he had to come up with something quickly, the next revival meeting was scheduled to begin the following Friday. That left him Monday through Thursday night to come up with a plan.

Nubbins had hopped down from his shoulders, and stood about ten feet away from Reverend Milton, looking up at him suspiciously. He lit a cigarette, and continued staring at Reverend Milton, who stared right back at him.

“You aren’t freaking out,” Nubbins said. “What’s the deal?”

“The deal is, you and me are going to be stars. If I’m going to be damned, I might as well figure out a way to profit from it,” Reverend Milton said, smiling slightly. “And if we do it right, you might even get to enjoy it a bit.”

Then Reverend Milton walked off the stage, towards the green room. Visions of demon exorcisms and elaborately staged spiritual warfare danced through his head. He was going to be able to earn more than he ever had, if he worked it the right way. But how to keep his audience from panicking at the sight of Nubbins. There would have to be a build up. Expectations. Showmanship. Yes, he had a lot of work to do by Friday.

He also had to hope Nubbins would be agreeable to all this. He wasn’t sure how to bribe a tiny demon, but he guessed it would take more than a new pair of elevator shoes and a handful of cash.

Chapter Seventeen

2008-11-10T21:56:00.001-08:00

The Reverend’s next gig was in Cheneyville, Louisiana. They arrived in Cheneyville later that afternoon, after stopping at McDonald’s for lunch. Reverend had been very specific about their need to stop at McDonald’s and get Big Macs. Grace and the driver would have been rather surprised if he’d told them the reason he wanted McDonalds so badly was not because he had a craving for the secret Big Mac special sauce, but because a knee high demon named Nubbins had told him they were stopping for lunch at McDonalds and getting a large supply of Big Macs, or else things were going to get very ugly.
So, they ate their McDonald’s as they drove on to Cheneyville. No one, apart from the Reverend, noticed Nubbins grabbing one of the Big Macs and then sitting back down in the front seat. Nor did they notice the joyful munching noises and appreciative grunts Nubbins made as he ate his Big Mac.

“Holy shit, these are even better than they told me!” Nubbins exclaimed. He popped up over the back of the seat and grabbed another Big Mac. “I could eat these all day!”

Just wait until you get the McDonald’s shits, you little fucker, Cyrus thought to himself. The rest of the ride in to Cheneyville was uneventful for everyone. Grace thought Reverend Milton seemed unusually quiet, but didn’t comment on it. He had said he’d slept poorly, after all, and there’d been an awful lot of empty mini-bar bottles in his room that morning. She assumed he had a massive hangover.

After they’d checked in to the hotel in Cheneyville, and Reverend Milton had put his things in his suite and gotten settled (at least, as settled as he could get), he decided to go for a walk. Yes, a nice walk to see the town. Maybe check out some of the local churches and meet the local clergy. Yeah, that’d be good.

He set off from the hotel at a brisk pace after a quick flip through the phone book in the hotel. He had found the address he wanted in a matter of minutes. Nubbins watched him do this, smoking a cigarette, entirely disinterested. Now the little demon followed Cyrus, just a couple steps behind him. He had swiped a couple little bottles of booze from the mini-bar, and every now and then would take a drink as they walked.

After a few blocks, Reverend Milton reached St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. He chuckled to himself as he went up the steps and into the church.

“Confessing your sins isn’t going to help you,” Nubbins said. “It wouldn’t even if you were Catholic, since I’m here to see to it you can’t do your penance.”

Reverend Milton grunted, and continued into the church. He walked directly to the font, scooped up all the holy water he could hold in two hands, and threw it directly on Nubbins.

Nubbins did not burst into flame. He did not boil away. He did not hiss, bubble, moan, screech or suffer in any noticeable way. He did take out his pack of Parliament Lights and examine them. They were soaked through. He looked at Reverend Milton with the kind of smoldering hate only a demon with a ruined pack of cigarettes can produce.

Nubbins uttered something in a demonic language, and Reverend Milton started to feel kind of strange. Kind of, itchy. Small red welts popped up all over his body, and quickly grew into large boils.
“What the fuck?” Reverend Milton said as he looked at the back of his hands which now had four or five white-headed boils on each of them.

“You wrecked my smokes, you son of a bitch,” Nubbins said. “The next time you try to pull that shit, I’m going to get really old testament on you. You dig me?”

Reverend Milton looked at the little demon, who was looking hard back at him. Cyrus’s shoulders sagged.

“I dig you,” he said.

“Damn right. Now, let’s go get me a carton of P-funks, jerk,” Nubbins said.

They left the church again, entirely unnoticed by the priest. There was a convenience store a couple of blocks away, where Reverend Milton went inside and and bought Nubbins a carton of Parliament Lights.

After that, the two of them went back to the hotel, where Reverend Milton ordered room service for himself and the demon, who wanted to try nachos. Reverend Milton looked in the mini-fridge, noticed the whiskey was all gone, and called room service again and had them send two bottles of Jack Daniels along with his food order.

Cyrus Evander Milton planned on spending the evening getting supremely drunk. Then he was going to spend the next day drunk. And the next. Then he figured he’d sober up long enough to do the revival without anyone smelling liquor on him, before coming back to the hotel and getting good and drunk again.

This plan would have worked out extremely well, too, if the little demon hadn’t managed to drink both bottles of Jack Daniels while Cyrus had been in the bathroom.

Not long after that, the demon had made a distressed little sound, clutched at it’s gut and ran for the bathroom. It is best not to consider the noises that came from the room, but suffice it to say, Nubbins experienced everything the combination of McDonalds and whiskey has to offer.

Half an hour later, Nubbins emerged from the bathroom, lit a cigarette and said, “I strongly suggest you do not enter that room for the next two hours.”

Reverend Milton decided it would be prudent to follow the little demon’s advice, and avoided that end of the suite for the rest of the evening.

Eventually, sheer exhaustion overtook Cyrus, and he slept all night. Nubbins curled up on one of the easy chairs in the suite and slept as well. If he weren’t evil incarnate, he’d have been kind of cute.

Chapter Sixteen

2008-11-10T19:49:00.001-08:00

Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton had just had the single worst night of his entire life. His morning was not shaping up to be any better, either. In fact, he was quite certain that the morning would, if anything, be worse than the night before had been. After all, the night before, he’d been able to hide in his room, and no one else would have to know there was a knee height demon named Nubbins following him around to make certain that Reverend Milton would make it to Hell when he died.

Which, by the way, he didn’t really care for anyone else to know about.

Unfortunately, Grace came to his room later that morning, as she always did, to get him moving and on to the next destination on schedule. She knocked on the door to his hotel suite. When he didn’t answer, she knocked again, louder.

“You might as well get that,” Nubbins said. “People will start to wonder what’s up with the guy living in the presidential suite and never emerging after a couple of months. It might look bad.”

So, since Reverend Milton couldn’t come up with a better plan, he went to the door and let Grace in. He steeled himself for her shriek of terror when she got in to the room and saw Nubbins sitting in one of the easy chairs, smoking a Parliament Light and drinking the little bottles of liquor from the mini-bar.

She didn’t scream. In fact, she didn’t notice Nubbins at all. She did notice the smell of tobacco smoke, and mentioned she would complain to the hotel’s manager about the smell in Reverend Milton’s room.
“It’s like someone is still smoking in here,” she said.

She also noticed Reverend Milton hadn’t packed yet.

“What the fuck? Do you expect me to start packing your dirty underwear for you now too? Because you aren’t paying me that much, so I’m not going to,” she said.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, uh, I didn’t sleep well at all. Woke up late. I’ll meet you in the lobby in ten minutes, I swear,” Reverend Milton said.

“Ten minutes, or I’m going to come up here and drag you to the car, packed or not,” Grace said, and left.

Reverend Milton looked at Nubbins, who had just cracked another tiny bottle of Johnny Walker and put it to his lips.

“How come she didn’t see you?” he asked the little demon.

“Because she wasn’t fucking expecting to, didn’t want to, and more importantly because I didn’t want her to see me. She’s already figured out her own little path to Hell, you think I’m going to let her see me, prove there is indeed a Hell, and set her on the straight and narrow path again? Fuck that, it’s bad enough my bosses sent me here to deal with you, I don’t need another fuck up on my record to make them consider giving me some really shitty jobs,” Nubbins said.

“Now pack your shit, we need to get you out on the road again. Your public awaits,” the little demon said, and winked at him again.

Because he couldn’t come up with a better idea, Cyrus Evander Milton packed
his bag, double checked all the drawers, cabinets and closets in the suite as he always did, checked his hair in the mirror to make sure he didn’t look too crazy (Crazy? Of course he was crazy. There was a god damned demon smoking recessed filter cigarettes and drinking little bottles of whiskey on his room’s tab. On the crazy scale, he had to be getting pretty god damned close to Charlie fucking Manson eating a big fucking bowl of Fruit Loops.), grabbed his bag and strode out of the room.

The little demon followed about three paces behind him, taking about three steps for every one of his. The Reverend and the demon got on the elevator to the lobby along with a couple of self-important looking businessmen. Once the doors were closed and the elevator had started its descent, Nubbins farted. This was not a quiet, accidental fart. No, Nubbins let rip with a long, loud, eye-wateringly powerful blast. The businessmen both looked at Reverend Milton, who did his best to pretend he hadn’t noticed.

Had one of them commented, he would have had to resort to saying “He who smelt it, dealt it,” since the businessmen probably would not have taken the news that a knee high demon named Nubbins had farted solely to make him look bad.

Luckily, they just shook their heads, and tried to hold their breath for the rest of the trip.

The elevator was mercifully quick, and the two businessmen practically shoved each other out of the way in their attempt to get out of the foul smelling little room.

Grace was waiting for the Reverend on one of the couches in the hotel lobby. She had already checked him out of his room, and the car was waiting in front of the hotel to whisk the Reverend and Grace on to the next city. Nubbins was looking forward to the trip, though he didn’t show it outwardly. It had been ages since he’d been top-side, so to speak, and he was looking forward to seeing the new delights available to him. He had heard good things about a common eatery called McDonalds, and specifically about something called a Big Mac. The food in Hell was awful, so it was always nice to get a break and try something new.

He was also looking forward to accompanying the Reverend to a strip club. And the Reverend would indeed be going to a strip club - many of them - while Nubbins was around. If not, well, there would be hell to pay.

The hotel’s bellhop loaded Reverend Milton and Grace’s luggage into the car, a large, black Cadillac. The Reverend’s driver opened the back door and helped Grace into the car, then ran around to the other side and let the Reverend in to the other back door. Nubbins slipped into the car unnoticed by the bellhop, driver and Grace. He clambered up in to the front seat and made himself comfortable.

Nubbins thought cars were pretty neat. Not only were they fun to ride in, but oh the sins that were committed in and because of automobiles. The only thing in the world responsible for more sins and atrocities was pussy. And maybe religion.

Chapter Fifteen

2008-11-10T18:52:00.001-08:00

Hephaestus, like the Reverend, was also coming to terms with going to Hell. In his case, however, he was not worried about the spiritual plane of torture, but rather the earthly plane of his house and roommate, along with his roommate’s girlfriend. And her fucking parrot.

There are three kinds of people in the world, when it comes to birds. Those who love them, those who will tolerate them because it makes their friend/lover/kid/parent happy to have one or twelve around, and those who wish that fucking bird would up and die already and give him or her a moment’s peace.

Hephaestus belonged to the last group. He liked birds in a general way, but not in his damn house. Scroat was in the middle group, edging towards the first for this particular bird.

The reason Scroat liked Sarah’s bird because it was nearly as fucked up as Sarah herself. Sarah had adopted the bird, a blue front Amazon, from a pet rescue organization. The unfortunate creature had witnessed it’s previous owner’s brutal murder, and would occasionally mimic the woman’s pleading and screams. Sarah loved the bird, and tolerated this awful habit because she understood the trauma the bird had gone through, and didn’t expect it to come through that unscathed.

Scroat, on the other hand, thought it was just wicked cool to have his own little true crime show.

Sarah had also spent a great deal of time teaching the bird, named Killer, a variety of unsavory phrases. Her personal favorite was “I’ll swallow your soul,” though Scroat favored, “Fuck you and the fucked up fucking horse you fucking rode in on, you fucker.”

What all this meant for Hep was any time he walked in the house he was either greeted by a parrot saying “JOIN US!” in a demonic voice while Scroat and Sarah made unnatural love in the back of the house, or he’d be greeted by Scroat and Sarah saying “Hi” and Killer, the fucking parrot, saying “I’ll swallow your soul.”
It was, honestly, a lot to take for a god used to a mostly peaceful home. He was also having a hard time coming to terms with Sarah feeling comfortable enough in his home that she felt it was appropriate to bring the damn thing over anyway. What kind of person, apart from himself of course, what kind of woman would keep hanging around Scroat for that long. He was worried he was going to wake up to an ice pick in his forehead one night. Except, apart from the ungodly (you know what I mean) sex, sea-worthy swearing vocabulary, and demonic bird, Sarah seemed like a sweet girl. Nice, even.

He had to admit to himself, he might just be annoyed because Sarah was change and change was, in Hep’s experience, extremely bad. Change always seemed to result in finding one of his friends dead on the sidewalk in front of his house, or a wild goose chase around the country trying to save an old friend’s ass from a god of chaos.

So you can see why Hep was a little wary when ever something in his life changed in a big way.

If there was one thing Hep liked about Sarah, it was that she was always game for going for a ride, no matter how many hours the three of them would spend out on the road. There were damn few people in general willing to log the kind of miles he and Scroat racked up every year, much less nice-seeming girlfriends with parrots. Speaking of the parrot, if there was one thing Hep liked about that confounded bird, it was that the bird enjoyed riding as much as Sarah. It sat, happy as could be, on Sarah’s shoulder as the rode. When the wind started getting too intense for the bird’s comfort, it would just climb down her back and hang out there until the wind eased up. Then it would pop back up on her shoulder like a Weeble.

So Hep didn’t entirely despise the bird, even if it did scream loud enough at dawn and dusk for Hep to hear it when he was out in the shop pounding away on hot iron.

And Hep hadn’t seen Scroat this deliriously happy in a long time. He was so ridiculously happy Hep was starting to wonder if he’d been kidnapped and replaced. Scroat, on the whole, wasn’t a gloomy guy - as long as there were people out there choosing short, filthy words when a longer, fancier word would have done, he was a happy guy - but he was practically floating now. Hep was wondering when he would develop a beatific glow.

This coming weekend, the four of them, Hep, Scroat, Sarah and Killer, were planning to take a trip up to Nevada for some good, old-fashioned lawless fun. So today, Hep was in the shop making sure the bikes were road-ready. Honestly, their bikes were always road-ready - one of the perks of being a god is not needing to maintain your bike - but Hep liked tinkering, and it kept him out of the house. He had been feeling generous the night before, and forged a wrought iron perch for Killer to mount on Scroat’s bike. To the untrained eye, the perch looked like a real tree branch, apart from the fact that it was black and had a low sheen of beeswax. Hep attached the perch to Scroat’s bike just behind the sissy bar, and stood back to admire his handiwork.

Yep, it made Scroat’s bike look dorky as fuck. Perfect.

That done, he spent a minute or two going over his own bike, looking to see if there were any parts he could easily make more black. There weren’t, so he gave it a quick dust with one of his shop rags and called it good.

He went back into the house, where Killer greeted him by saying “That’s right, just a few steps more.”

Hep wondered, briefly, if he was being too nice. Yes, he decided, yes he was.

Chapter Fourteen

2008-11-09T19:33:00.001-08:00

Two weeks later, Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton was in Beaumont, Texas. Although he didn’t know it his neighbor, well, Joe Anderson’s neighbor, Judy was visiting her sister in Beaumont, Texas. If he had known, he would not have tried to call her, because that would have opened him up to questions he did not want to answer. Questions like “What are you doing here in Beaumont?” and “What have you done with your hair?” and “How come that lady just called you Reverend Milton?”

So it was probably for the best that he didn’t know she was in the same town he was in.

The first night in Beaumont did not vary from Reverend Milton’s normal routine. He slept in until noon, took care of the few errands he didn’t have Grace handle, then waited until about 4:30 to head to the convention center he was preaching at that night. He’d gone through his sermon notes already, made the few changes he wanted to make (based on what got the last crowd really revved up), and spent some time watching TV. He went to the convention center, preached, came back, entertained a few young ladies who wanted to share in the spirit of the Lord, and went to sleep.

The second night went much differently than he was accustomed to, however.

Around four thirty in the afternoon, he rode with Grace to the convention center again. He went in through the back entrance, to avoid the large group still waiting outside the front doors, and made his way to the green room the other preachers were hanging out in. There was a deli-tray and some other snacks, as well as a selection of wholesome, alcohol-free beverages for them to enjoy.

Every single one of the preachers in the green room wished there was a bottle of liquor or four back there, but every now and then a member of the audience came into the room, and it wouldn’t look good for them to have a stash of high-octane hooch, and highball glasses all around. Now and then, a few of the preachers would take a pull from their personal hip flask. None of them attempted to hide their drinking.

Around six o’clock, they heard the band start up, playing the classics of gospel, as well as some contemporary Christian rock, and Christian country for flavor. Reverend Milton wished he had an organist who could bust out the best of Bach, but he was reasonably certain most of his audience wouldn’t appreciate it anyway.

At about six thirty, one of the ushers came into the green room, and said “Reverend Smith, five minutes until you go on,” then left the room again.

Reverend Smith stood up from the couch he’d been sitting on, took a last drink from his hip flask, checked his appearance in the mirror, and said, “Here goes!”

One of the other preachers said, “Knock ‘em dead, Reverend!”

Eventually it was time for Reverend Milton to get out there and start preaching, and he did. He was his usual, fiery self, hitting all the key points he hit every night, making the gestures and movements that he made every night, and exhorting the crowd to give him their money, as he did every night.

After an hour or so, it was time for the laying on of hands. The members of the audience who wanted to be healed lined up, generally gave a sizeable cash donation to one of the ushers on the way up to Reverend Milton, and would then meet the Reverend briefly, who would put his hands on the person’s head, call “Be healed, in Jesus’s Name!” and give them a firm shove backwards into the waiting arms of a pair of burly ushers, who would lay the freshly healed faithful down if they needed it, or help them up again, depending on the cues from the healed.

Reverend Milton was in the middle of dreaming about laying his hands on some fine young ladies that evening when he saw a familiar face out of the corner of his eye. Judy was there in line, giving a huge handful of cash to the usher.

“Oh shit!” Cyrus thought.

Time slowed as Reverend Milton continued to heal the sick. It seemed Judy was never going to reach him, and he would have preferred it if she would never reach him. He tried to think of what he could do. He couldn’t take Judy’s money, she was broke. She needed that money far more than he could.

Later, when he’d had time to reflect upon it, he thought the smart thing to do would have been to say, “Sister, the Lord told me you need this money more than he does.” In the moment however, he was preoccupied with thoughts along the lines of “What happens when she recognizes me?”

After an eternity and a half, Judy reached the altar where Reverend Milton waited. To his amazement, she didn’t recognize him. She looked directly into his eyes, and saw only Reverend Milton.

He laid his hands on her head, said, “In Jesus’s name, be healed!” and pushed her back to the ushers.

He hated himself. This was the same shit he’d seen his pastor do when he was a kid. He’d taken her money, and given her no real help.

For the rest of the night, he had a hard time mustering the energy to strut about the stage, testifying and preaching the word of God. He didn’t say a word on the ride back to the hotel with Grace. He took his shower, and went out into his suite wearing a robe, planning to order all the comfort food he could think of from the room service menu.

Reverend Milton was looking for the folder with the room service information in it when he heard the distinctive metallic click of a Zippo lighter opening. He heard someone spin the striker, a pause, and another metallic clank as whoever had the lighter closed it. Almost immediately, he could smell tobacco smoke.

Cyrus turned around, and looked at the dining table in his room. He blinked, once, twice, rubbed his eyes, and then his mouth fell open.

Seated at his table was a very small, grey demon. The demon was looking at him, with a distinctly annoyed expression on his face, and smoking a cigarette.

“Hello, Cyrus,” the demon said in its surprisingly deep voice. There was not even a hint of friendliness, or compassion in the demon’s voice.

“Huh, what? Who are you? What?” Cyrus stammered, still staring at the impossibility sitting at the table in his hotel room.

“My name is,” and then the demon uttered a series of syllables the Reverend could not comprehend, much less repeat. Cyrus stared in horror.

The little demon sighed.

“You may call me Nubbins, mortal,” he said.

“What the fuck?” Cyrus asked, mostly to himself.

“Cyrus, I am from Hell. You might have heard of it once or twice over the course of your career. I am here to accompany you, so I suggest you stop wondering what I’m doing here, and start thinking about how you’re going to deal with me for the rest of your life?” Nubbins said.

“The rest of my life?” Cyrus asked. His eyes were open wide in terror, and he scratched compulsively at his temple.

“The rest of your life, yes. At which point, I will make sure you go straight to Hell, with no stops for sightseeing or other silliness,” Nubbins said.

“Hell?” Cyrus exclaimed. “What did I do to deserve Hell? I didn’t even believe in Hell!”

“Yes, Hell. Up until this evening, you had merely been very, very naughty. You would have gotten off with a millennia or two in Limbo. But then you ripped off your neighbor Judy. Which was, by the way, evil. For some reason my superiors have taken a particular interest in you. So, I am here until such time as you reach your final destination. So to speak.” Nubbins said.

“Isn’t there anything I can do?” Cyrus asked, near pleading.

“Well, yes, there’s probably a way you could redeem your soul, except I’m here to see to it you don’t. No, you are Hell-bound, and I am here to make sure you get to Hell. And I am very, very good at my job,” Nubbins said.

Just then there was a knock at the door. Reverend Milton went to the door, peered through the peephole, and opened the door to see a young woman standing outside.

“Hello, Reverend. I wonder if you might have some time to talk with me about the Glory of the Lord,” she said, while playing with her hair.
“Oh, I’m sorry, little sister, I have another guest tonight who’s spirit is deeply tortured. Here’s a card with my phone number, give me a call sometime in the next few days and we can talk then,” Reverend Milton said, and handed here one of his business cards. The phone number actually went straight to Grace, who would dutifully take a message, which the Reverend would then dutifully ignore, unless it was someone he really, really wanted to, er, speak with.

The young woman looked crest-fallen, but smiled and said, “OK, I’ll call. Good night, Reverend.”

“Good night,” Reverend Milton said. He shut and locked the door, and turned back hoping the demon had just been a hallucination.

Nubbins was sprawled out in the same chair he’d been in before, blowing smoke rings toward the ceiling lamp over the table.

“Fuck,” Reverend Cyrus muttered.

“You are, indeed, fucked,” Nubbins said, and took a drag off his cigarette. “I’d suggest you enjoy the time you have left, except I’m supposed to make sure you don’t.” Here Nubbins winked at the Reverend.

“Oh, fuck,” the Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton said, and sat down on the floor where he stood. He put his head in his hands, and did not move for a long time.

Chapter Thirteen

2008-11-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

It was on now. Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton arrived in Amarillo Texas the night before, and checked in to a suite at the Ambassador Hotel. He had four hours before he had to be at the convention center for the first revival meeting. His crew of volunteers (roadies) had been setting up the venue since six o’clock that morning. The Reverend planned to arrive at the convention center about an hour and a half before his “opening act,” one of the locals, went on stage. He usually gave his sound man and his lighting tech a tip in the form of a big bag of marijuana. They were, after all, just here for the money, not the religious experience. Like him. And it was worthwhile to make sure his sound and light crew were happy working with him. They were, of course, under strict instructions not to smoke weed anywhere near the revivals themselves. Even if they approached the revivals as rock concerts, the people who paid to be there weren’t, and most of them had a dim view of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.

For the next couple of hours, though, he would just hang around in his hotel suite. Dinner was going to be catered at the convention center, so there was no need to order room service. He’d already read the newspaper. He was saving his stash of books for traveling. He hated TV.

He was, in a word, bored.

First night out and bored already, he thought. He thought about heading over to the convention center early, realized he would just be bored and in the way if he did, and elected not to.

Instead, he lay down on the bed and took a nap.

The Reverend woke up, seemingly seconds later, to a frantic pounding on the door of his hotel room. He looked at the clock and saw it was six forty three in the evening. By now, the audience would mostly be inside, talking and waiting for the first preacher to begin.

“Shit!” Reverend Milton said. He rolled out of bed and stomped over to the door in a white t-shirt, boxers and black dress socks. He peeked out and saw Grace waiting outside. She began to pound on the door again.

“Hang on,” the Reverend called through the door. He looked around, spotted a pair of pants and quickly pulled them on. Then he went back to the door and let Grace in.

“You’re not even dressed yet? What the fuck?” Grace said by way of greeting. She shut the door as Cyrus scrambled around the room grabbing his clothes and shoes.

“Ten minutes,” he said, and hustled into the bathroom to get ready. He oiled his hair, combed it back, dressed as quickly as he could in a flashy brown suit and went out into the suite again to make sure he looked perfect in the full-length mirror. He put on his shoes, grabbed his bible and his cross necklace, and said, “Ready, let’s go.”

They arrived at the convention center five minutes before the Reverend was scheduled to begin his sermon. He just had time to make it inside, greet the other preachers, and get to the stage. The preacher on stage (was his name John? James? Jerry?) was visibly relieved to see Reverend Milton standing to the side of the stage.

“Everyone, please give Reverend Milton a warm welcome!” he said, and walked over to greet the Reverend. The congregation went nuts, cheering and clapping their hands and stomping on the floor. Reverend Milton embraced Reverend What’s-his-head, then took the microphone and strode to the center of the stage.

“Good evening, brothers and sisters,” he began, and went on to weave his magic for the next two hours. He sang. He preached about heaven and hell. He preached about the power of faith. He preached about being saved. He spoke in tongues (as did many in the audience).

He collected a hell of a lot of cash.

Reverend Milton generally didn’t even look at the evening’s take until he was back at the hotel, in private. Tonight was not an exception. His assistants and ushers had collected the money and given it to Grace, who gave it to Cyrus in a paper bag as they drove back to the Hotel. The bag was heavy tonight. He tried to put it out of his mind; if he didn’t think he had a gigantic bag of money in his pocket, he wouldn’t look like he was carrying a bag full of money. Or so he told himself.

Back in the safety of his hotel suite, Reverend Milton put the bag with the evening’s take in his room’s safe and locked it. He’d deal with it after he’d had a shower and had gone over his sermon notes for the next evening.

The Reverend took a good long shower. Being under the stage lights would make a camel sweat, and Reverend Milton was nothing if not energetic from the moment he stepped on stage to the second he left the building. His suits generally needed to be dry cleaned after a single night; no one wants to shake hands with a Reverend reeking of old body odour and hot brylcreem. Fortunately, he had a large wardrobe with him, and the hotels he stayed in almost always had a dry cleaning service.

His sermon notes were almost the same every night. It wasn’t like he was the Grateful Dead, with a caravan of devoted followers chasing him from city to city. Of course, if they did follow him, they’d probably still be happy. Reverend Milton’s services were ninety percent off the cuff anyway. The key was to keep his audience excited, full of passion and eager to give donations.

When he could no longer resist the song of the bag of cash, singing to him from inside the safe, he got up from the table, retrieved the money, and went back to the table. Reverend Milton had a love / hate relationship with his money. He didn’t feel guilty, precisely. After all, his congregation loved every minute of the experience, and left feeling full of the holy spirit. Donating made them happy. And the donations were certainly a good source of income, but he made even more money from his merchandise table. Almost everyone bought a CD of his sermons, or perhaps one of the new DVDs. He also had t-shirts so people could show off to their church friends that they’d been to his revival every year since he’d started doing them. More interesting, and far more profitable, were his collection of sacred items for sale. He referred to this stuff, internally, as glow in the dark Jesuses, although he generally only gave the plastic Jesuses to kids. The growns ups in the crowd, however, could buy prayer clothes for the low cost of fifteen dollars. A prayer cloth was a white dishcloth Reverend Milton bought for fifty cents each, and he (or, more precisely, one of his volunteers) would then cut the rag into eight or more pieces. Reverend Milton would bless them (by the hundreds), and his congregation couldn’t get enough of them. They frequently asked him to sign their prayer clothes, which he cheerfully did.

Reverend Milton opened the bag, and dumped its contents out on the table. There was a lot of cash there. On top of the pile of cash was a note. It read “$37,748.” Not a bad take for the first night out. The Reverend felt a bit sick. As mentioned, he didn’t feel guilty, exactly, so much as entirely undeserving. Also, he knew that many of the people in the congregation donated as a penance. They felt they needed to be punished, and giving away a large chunk of cash was the best they could come up with in order to feel better about themselves. It worked out pretty well for him, but he wished he could reach those people specifically and suggest other ways to work off what they felt were their sins.

Money, after all, is not a solution. It’s fun, and handy, and is good for buying burritos and Rolexes, but it doesn’t actually solve anything on its own.

All the same, he didn’t feel guilty about taking the crowd’s money because everyone there was getting something out of it. He wasn’t stealing anything, or hurting anyone. He was actually helping people, even if he didn’t believe in the cure he was selling.

But, good God, he had a lot of other people’s sins in his bank account, collecting interest.

“My cross to bear,” he muttered to himself as he stuffed the money back into the bag and filled out a deposit slip for his bank. Later he would give the bag to Grace, and she (and one of the bigger, meaner-looking volunteers) would take it to the bank and deposit it.

The amazing thing to Reverend Milton, Cyrus, was that tomorrow night there would be another huge sack full of money. He also knew he could set up shop for at least a week before attendance would drop, along with the donations. Cyrus liked to leave them wanting more though. They’d come back next year, hearts and faces full of hope and their wallets full of cash.

He put the cash back in the safe, turned off the lights, and went to bed.

The next evening, the take was bigger. He didn’t get a chance to investigate his bag full of green sins until well after midnight, however, as a couple of the young and faithful ladies of the church stopped by his hotel room for a visit after his sermon. They left again, rosy-cheeked and giggling together, a few hours later. If someone had asked them about their high-spirits, they would claim they were full of the Lord, but that wouldn’t be strictly true. Reverend Milton was also in high spirits, and after a shower, and a quick money counting session, he packed his bags and made sure everything was ready for his early morning departure.

It was best to leave everyone wanting more.

Chapter Twelve

2008-11-07T12:14:00.001-08:00

Deep in the bowels of Hell, which, believe it or not, is worse than only being slightly in the bowels of hell (which is still pretty bad), the ancient, powerful and diminutive demon Nubbins was taking out his annoyance and bad mood on a corrupt senator who had joined the ranks of the damned fairly recently. The senator had been reduced to weeping within nanoseconds of arriving in hell (not that time has much meaning in an infinite existence), but Nubbins intended to keep working with him, that is to say, on him, until he started gibbering and drooling. It was just that kind of day.

Nubbins felt annoyed and extremely irritable. The meeting he’d had with his superior had gone poorly. The higher-ranking demon had talked about opportunity, pulling together to reach a mutual goal and a used variety of other meaningless boss-speak Nubbins himself had invented. He did have a certain grudging admiration for how well the demon used this particular form of torture.

All the same, the new assignment – nay, the new busywork – Nubbins had been assigned was particularly insulting. Make sure a soul that was probably already doomed to Hell doesn’t go and redeem itself? That was the kind of work you gave to recently spawned demons to hone their chops, so to speak. It might be a little more challenging than possessing some unimportant asshole, but probably less fun. And he was under strict orders not to possess this soul.

So, essentially, he’d been told to leave Hell, and hang around on Earth for the next fifty years or so (unless he could figure out a way to bump the sucker off sooner) making sure the damned soul didn’t find Jesus or something.

Which would be ironic, given the soul’s profession. A preacher saving his own soul? Ho ho!

“The label on this says you should not get it in your eyes,” Nubbins said to the Senator. Nubbins held a box labeled “Lye.”

“N-no!” the Senator pleaded.

“Yuh-yes!” Nubbins said. “Open those peepers extra wide, I’d hate to have to remove your eyelids, seeing as the only tool I’ve got with me that could do the job is this rusty nail.”

I’ll spare you the details of how the lye mixed with the senator’s tears and burned great holes through his eyes, letting nasty, vibrantly green and sticky, lye-filled eyeball goo spill down his cheeks, which then burned as well. The smell was awful, truly putrid as only a chemical burn can smell. No, I won’t describe that, because it’s all too horrible, and besides, the senator’s burns healed up as soon as Nubbins was done with him, leaving him whole and fresh in order to be tortured some more later. So it’s like it didn’t even happen, really.

Nubbins knew he should have been promoted several times over by now. His immediate superiors weren’t even as powerful as he was, just better at office politics (an invention he hated himself for, given how it had worked against him). He could easily destroy the majority of the demons above him if he wanted to. And he did. Unfortunately, with the gift of office politics came the gift of being unnaturally good at watching their backs, so he simply waited until an opportune time. It’s not like eternity was going to run out, anyway.

This assignment ate him up, though. If he could have thrown down his hat and quit, he would have. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to resign as a demon. Hell is tricky that way. You probably don’t even want to think about what happens when a demon gets fired. Let’s just say it doesn’t smell very nice at all, though the colors can be quite pretty in a Hellish sort of way.

Guarding a soul, no babysitting a soul, that would find its way here anyhow. It was an insult. It was a deliberate insult. His boss didn’t even need to wink at him for Nubbins to know he was getting screwed, and they didn’t care if he knew it.

Foolish of them, he thought. He had, after all, also come up with what is now referred to as “going postal.”

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to a matter that should be cleared up before we continue any further. Historically, most people who claimed the devil made them do it, the devil in question was actually Nubbins, not Satan. Sure, Satan got out a bit now and then, usually if he was working on something personally important to him, but Hell had been in operation for a long time, and Satan had become pretty good at delegating. He didn’t do much on his own anymore. Contracts for souls, demon possessions, suggesting wicked deeds to otherwise innocent souls, tempting the strong-willed, these were all handled by the day to day demons. The peons, if you will.

Nubbins had been one of the first peons, and he had done a lot of good work. Well, to be accurate, he’d done a lot of very bad work. Well, you know what I mean. Nubbins was a pro.

Nubbins produced a black, oily-looking roofer’s torch and a large, blunt pair of iron tongs. The torch was bigger than he needed, really, but it was good for show. He scratched his fingernails against each other to produce a spark and lit the torch. Once he had the flame adjusted the way he liked it (big and showy, which was inefficient but good for scaring souls), he stuck the tongs in the flame and whistled a jaunty tune.

The senator, who had healed from the chemical burns, as promised, watched the tongs as the torch slowly heated them. They began to glow a bit at the tip, and after several minutes were a glowing a lovely bright from tip to hinge.

Nubbins looked from the tongs to the senator, and waited until the senator looked up at him and made eye contact. Then he smiled.

“No, please!” the senator screamed. Sweat covered him with a sick shine, and snot ran from his nose.

“Oh yes,” Nubbins said, and smiled all the wider. He opened the tongs, thrust them forward and grabbed on to the senators nose.

The senator shrieked. “Ged id obb! Ged id obb!” he cried.

“Oh ho! You like this game, eh?” Nubbins said. He let go of the senator’s nose, now a blackend wreck, and returned the tongs to the flame of the torch. “Let’s see, what other bits of you are conveniently sticking out?”

Quite a while later, when the senator was good and damaged, Nubbins went back to his dank, foul-smelling cave to brood a while longer and make sure he had his things in order for his trip to Earth. He took a small leather pouch out from a hole in the wall, and gathered his few possessions. He had a hooded cloak, and a staff (a stick, really, but Nubbins was very small and it suited him fine). He could find or improvise anything else he needed.

Now he had only to wait until the preacher committed his greatest sin.

Chapter 11

2008-11-06T20:21:00.001-08:00

Hephaestus had just finished grocery shopping, and was riding back to his house. The sidecar was loaded with beer, meat, beans and various packaged foods which required minimal preparation effort and kept for a long time in the pantry. Long shelf life was important when one tended to leave on an extended trip on short notice, as well as when a certain roommate had a tendency to move things and forget about them.

Hephaestus had once found a five year old can of fruit and two boxes of pudding mix hidden behind some books in the living room. He was ninety eight percent sure he was not the one who had put them there.

The weather was brisk, but sunny as always. Hep and Scroat loved the desert climate anyway, but comfortable riding all year long was a big perk. Automobiles cramped Hep’s style.

He reached his house and pulled in to the driveway, where he saw Scroat’s motorcycle parked. The front door of the house was half-open, which was unusual, but he figured Scroat had probably just made a huge mess of something, and was airing the house out.

Hep shut down the bike, and that is when he heard the noises emanating from the house. Again.

He rolled his eyes, and muttered, “Shit.”

Scroat had been bringing his girlfriend over to the house a lot. As in, every time Hep left. Ordinarily if he got back to the house and realized Scroat and his girlfriend were inside he’d just leave again, but he had a bunch of food in the sidecar just waiting to spoil. He really preferred not to buy food twice, so he was going to have to brave the chaos within the house and make a break for the kitchen.

Hep grabbed the most perishable items, the steak and bacon, locked his eyes forward and hustled in the front door hoping he wouldn’t have to see anything unsightly. He was halfway through the living room and nearly in the kitchen when he realized Scroat and the girl were back in his bedroom, so there was nothing (apart from the too horrible to contemplate noises) to worry about. He put the meats in the refrigerator, and went back to get the rest of the food out of his sidecar.

Apart from the beer, which went straight into the refrigerator, he left everything else out on the counter and beat feet out of the house. Hep wasn’t shocked or embarrassed by sex, per se, but these two kept finding new ways to make sure he knew they were fucking. Particularly because both of them announced exactly that, or some variation of it, very frequently. That, and he didn’t want to be sitting under anything when it fell off the wall. This was a distinct possibility at any time, and the probability of something heavy falling increased every minute.

So he left.

Scroat, for his part, had not been this happy in years. He and Sarah Johannson were nearly on the same wave length, at least when it came to communication styles and sexual preferences. She was the only woman he’d ever met who could be as crude as he was, and Scroat was, frankly, greatly impressed by this.

Despite Hep’s impressions of their relationship, the two of them did quite a bit more than have noisy, vulgar sex at every opportunity. For one thing, they both greatly enjoyed messing with other patrons in sleazy bars. Recently, they had been in a bar and Sarah had approached a table full of young guys.

She said to one of them, “I bet twenty bucks I could drink two beers before you could even finish a single shot.”

“Yeah, right. You’re on,” said the guy in a KMFDM t-shirt.

“Ok, here are the rules. First, I can’t touch your glass, and you can’t touch mine. Touching the other person’s glass means you lose. Second, I get a one beer head start,” Sarah said.

Scroat watched all of this with keen interest. He knew how the scam worked, but it was rare to see someone else pull it off. It was even more rare for his date to pull off a scam.

The waitress brought out two glasses of beer and a shot of Jack Daniels.

“Are you ready?” Sarah asked the sucker.

“Go ahead,” he said.

Sarah chugged the beer as quickly as she could and slammed the glass on the table upside down over the sucker’s shot of whiskey.

“OK, you can try to drink your shot before I finish this beer now,” she said sweetly, and took her time finishing the second beer.

The other guys at the sucker’s table had a good laugh at his expense. He gave Sarah a twenty dollar bill, moved her glass from over his shot, and drank it.

Scroat was reasonably certain they were made for each other just because of that experience. And it didn’t hurt that she looked like one of his attractive cousins.

Wait. You didn’t read that. Scroat felt no shame about what happened with his tease of a cousin in the distant past, but he also had no desire to spread the story around. It might make his seem undiscriminating. Which he is, but a fellow can pretend, can’t he? So just forget that part.

Chapter Ten

2008-11-05T19:56:00.000-08:00

Halloween passed, with its costumes, parties, candy and perhaps even a genuine haunting or two. Joe had dressed up as the television version of Batman, and handed out candy to the neighborhood kids. Thanksgiving, similarly, passed. Joe invited Judy and a few of the other neighbors he knew were alone over for turkey, stuffing and beer. The winter gift-giving holidays, Christmas in Joe’s case, and New Year’s Eve also passed as they do every year.

On January 2nd, once all the lingering traces of his hangover from the New Year’s Eve celebration were gone, Joe, no, Cyrus called his secretary.

Although his secretary knew what Cyrus did during the summers, as well as where he did it, they did not discuss what either of them had done over their summer vacations. It increased the likelihood of one of them accidentally blowing the other’s cover, and Cyrus very much enjoyed escaping into a normal life after a few months doing revivals.

“I’m coming down. What do you have lined up for me?” Cyrus asked his secretary, Grace.

“You’re going to be a busy guy this year, Reverend,” Grace said. She told him when and where the first couple of revivals would be, and said she’d email his itinerary with the rest of the stops for the next three months.

Grace spent her summers in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Florida. She also enjoyed being left alone by the people who were so eager to meet the Reverend and ask for, well, whatever it was they wanted to ask for that week. She had a cell phone with an area code in Arkansas she used for arranging the Reverend’s business during the off-season. There was an address in Arkansas to match the phone number, which was actually just a mail forwarding service.

It was good to keep the crazies from knowing where to find you.

Reverend Milton called on January second every year, to see what the tour was going to be like. He and Grace would usually meet at a hotel in Montgomery, Alabama by January seventh. Depending on how antsy the Reverend was, he would frequently arrive a couple of days early to bum around town and get back the hang of talking with a drawl, as well as understanding what people said if their drawl was particularly thick.

By January tenth, the Reverend had his wardrobe for the tour selected and tailored. On the eleventh he would get his hair cut.

On the twelfth, they departed for the first revival, which was usually the second to last weekend in January.

Cyrus said goodbye to Grace, and hung up the phone. He went to his computer and checked his email. Grace had already sent his itinerary, and he was indeed going to be busy. They would be traveling a lot between revivals, and there was one scheduled every single weekend for the next three months. Three months he would have to remain perfectly in character, lest anyone suspect he have a secret.

And he did have a secret. Actually, many secrets. And Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton would really prefer if no one else learned about these secrets. He especially preferred if the faithful didn’t find out about it. If there was one thing they loved more than Jesus, it was judging, condemning and endlessly gossiping about an authority with caught with his pants down (metaphorically speaking, as well as literally).

Sure, he’d probably be able to come back in a year or so with a sob story about how he’d wandered from the path, but had found his way back and was a stronger person for it. The faithful also really loved to kind-of forgive someone who fucked up. Or he could figure out a way to discredit whoever learned his secret. That would be a lot of work though. And regardless, if they found out he was a fraud who spent his summers drinking beer, riding motorcycles and driving around in an old Dodge, he would never again have the earning capacity he currently had. So it was important that he not slip up.

Fortunately, the Reverend knew he was up to the task of being, well, Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton.

Cyrus sat back in his desk chair and contemplated the things he needed to do before he left for Alabama. First up was getting plane tickets. Then packing his few essentials. His neighbor, Sam, had agreed to keep an eye on his house this year, so he would just have to turn down the heat to keep the gas bill reasonable and he’d be all set.

His neighbors knew that Joe Anderson spent a few months in the southern United States each winter, but he was always vague on where he went, and what he was going to do when he got there. He was going to spend some time visiting family, and that was all anyone needed to know. And honestly, that was all they wanted to know about their nice neighbor Joe, who was so generous with his tools, and always invited every one over for beer and hamburgers.

Joe loved how the people in his neighborhood were so trusting. It kept him from having to tell big lies that he might later have to feel bad about.

He got up and went into his bedroom, where he pulled a vintage alligator-skin suitcase he’d scored at an estate sale out of his closet. Already in the suitcase, in two of the inside pockets, were his King James Bible, two tubes of Brylcreem, a black, pocket-sized comb and a gold necklace with a large cross pendant. He packed as much of his underwear and socks as he could fit into the suitcase, and got his toothbrush case out of the closet.

And with that, he was packed.

After that, he went into the kitchen and made himself dinner. About an hour after he’d eaten, he went back to his desk and figured out the details for his flight. He decided to leave as soon as possible. Ten minutes later, he had a ticket to Alabama for one thirty-seven PM the next day.

The doorbell rang then, startling him. He wasn’t expecting anyone, and had been in Cyrus-mode, not Joe-Anderson-mode. He took a second to compose himself, and turned off the monitor on his computer. Then he went to answer the door.

Judy was waiting outside, with a stack of neatly washed dishes.

“Hi Joe,” she said. “I knew you would be leaving sometime in the next couple days, and I just wanted to make sure you got these back.”

“Hi Judy, come in, come in,” Joe said. “Do you want some coffee?”

“No, I have some errands I have to run. I’m going to be going south for a couple of months too. Probably until May or so. I’m going to visit my sister in Texas for a while,” Judy said.

“Oh, wow, when are you going to leave?” Joe asked.

“In about a week. I figure I should get down there and see her before either of us shuffle off the mortal coil,” Judy said, and chuckled.

“Well, I hope you have a great trip! Is someone going to look after your house this winter?” Joe asked.

“Yes, my neighbor Dan is going to make sure the place doesn’t burn down or cave in,” Judy said.

“Good. Well, I guess I’ll see you sometime in May then, eh?” Joe said.

“I suppose so. Have a wonderful time, Joe,” Judy said, and turned to walk back down the steps.

“You too, Judy. Say hello to your sister for me,” Joe said, and watched Judy as she made her way down the steps and back towards her house. He shut the door against the cold, and tried to shake the weird feeling he had all of a sudden.

He felt like something was going to go horribly wrong, and soon. He couldn’t think of anything that could go wrong, however. Grace had everything handled down South, all he had to do was show up, look good and preach up a storm. Up here, his house was going to be taken care of, all of his bills were already scheduled to be paid electronically, the motorcycle and car were all set to be stored for the winter.

Cyrus walked through the house, looking for things out of place, or just anything he got a weird vibe off of. He checked each room, then the basement. He put on his coat and went out to the garage. Everything seemed fine. Weird.

Joe didn’t usually get the jitters before he left. He knew what was at stake every time he went a-preachin’, but most of the time he just felt excited to give people what they wanted while making a very tidy profit.

Eventually he went to bed, and he slept poorly that night.

Chapter Nine

2008-11-05T11:23:00.001-08:00

Joe Anderson dreamed he was on a small rowboat, with a rabbit. The rabbit didn’t do or say anything, it just looked at Joe, watching him row the boat. Moments later the boat ran aground, and the rabbit was actually a teddy bear full of lead shot. It weighed a lot for its size, and Joe struggled to carry it. He needed to deliver the rabbit, but he wasn’t exactly sure where to take it. There was a small building about two hundred yards ahead of him, so Joe decided he would take the lead-filled teddy in there. All he had to do was be careful not to touch any of the carnivorous plants lining the sidewalk.

He made it into the building, though he’d lost one of his shoes in the effort.

In Joe Anderson’s dream, he was in high school again, and late for a final exam he had forgotten about. He had forgotten about the entire class, actually. He ran to the classroom, but his legs didn’t work quite right, and the classroom was so far away. The bell began to ring, and Joe knew he needed to be in his seat before the bell stopped ringing or he would fail and have to repeat a year. The bell seemed unusually loud, and Joe started to panic. The teddy bear didn’t like loud noises.

He woke up, in the dark.

The phone next to Joe Anderson’s head rang again. He jerked up in bed and grabbed the handset.

“Yes? Hello? What?” Joe said. His tongue felt thick and clumsy. The rest of him felt thick and clumsy as well, he’d nearly fallen out of bed reaching for the phone.

“Joe?” asked the voice on the phone. “Joe, I don’t know what to do.”

Joe fumbled around in the dark for a moment or two before he found the switch for the lamp next to his bed. He turned on the light, and grabbed his alarm clock. It was three forty-seven in the morning.

“Sorry, who am I talking to? And you don’t know what to do about what?” Joe asked. He rubbed his eyes with his free hand, wondering who could possibly be calling him at this hour with problems.

“Joe, it’s Judy. I think Thomas is dead,” said the voice on the phone.

“What? Why did? Nevermind, did you call an ambulance?” Joe asked. He struggled to sit upright.

“No, not yet,” Judy said. Her voice sounded panicky and Joe suspected she was very close to tears.

“OK Judy. Everything is going to be fine. You call the ambulance, and I’ll come over to your house as soon as I can,” Joe said. “Be sure to unlock your front door so the EMTs can get in.”

He hung up the phone, and spent a moment staring at the wall wondering if all this had really happened. Why would Judy have called him? He was pretty sure she and Thomas had kids. Of course, they’d never mentioned their kids outright. Still, he was just a friendly neighbor of theirs.

Joe got up, used the toilet, went back to his room and dressed himself as well as he could in a rush at four in the morning. That is to say, he stumbled out of his room wearing slippers, mismatched socks, a pair of black slacks, a t-shirt he’d gotten at the state fair three years ago and a green and yellow flannel shirt.

He grabbed his wallet and house keys from the shelf next to his front door, and stepped outside. Half-awake, he locked the door behind him, and walked down his sidewalk to the street, where he turned to walk to Judy and Thomas’s house. The air was surprisingly chilly, and damp. Ridiculous as he looked, he was glad for the flannel shirt.

After a few moments, an ambulance rushed past him on the street, lights flashing. The siren was not on, but the ambulance did honk it’s horn at him twice, quickly, in case he’d missed the bright pulsing lights in the middle of the night.

Joe walked faster.

He reached Thomas and Judy’s house, and he could see Judy standing just inside the front door with her back to the street, watching as the EMTs stomped through the house. Joe walked up the sidewalk and stairs and said, “Hi Judy.”

Judy turned to Joe and said “Hi” in a small voice, then “Come in.”

Joe could hear the EMTs in the back of the house, talking to each other. They came back out into the room, looked briefly at Joe, then told Judy they were sorry, and that they had called the coroner, who would arrive shortly.

They left.

“Oh Joe, what am I going to do?” Judy asked, and reached to hug Joe. Joe hugged her back and tried to comfort her as she cried.

“Don’t worry, he’s in a better place now,” Joe said. He hated the cliché, but couldn’t come up with anything better to say. “Everything is going to be ok,” he said.

“The only family I’ve got left now is my sister down in Texas,” Judy said after a long time. “And she’s not in very good health either.”

Joe didn’t know what to say to that, so he tried to wing it. “Yeah, but you have plenty of friends here, and, uh, the people you volunteer with…” He stopped there. After weekly dinners with Thomas and Judy for several years, he would have expected to be able to come up with something more comforting than Judy’s volunteer work.

Joe spent the rest of the night at Judy’s house. They waited for the coroner, then waited for sleep to come again.

It was a long night.

In the morning, Joe had a cup of coffee with Judy, then walked back to his own house to shower and change into something that looked slightly less insane. By then, Judy had gotten in touch with some of her other friends, friends who had been through this before, who rushed over to help her with all the arrangements that needed to be made.

Joe had breakfast, and went for a ride to clear his head.

Chapter Eight

2008-11-04T11:40:00.001-08:00

Hephaestus had been polishing up the parts he’d cast for about an hour and a half when he heard Scroat’s motorcycle pull into the driveway. He heard the bike rumble, idling, for a moment and then shut down.

He heard Scroat say, “After you,” to someone, and a woman giggled. Hep checked his watch and marveled at how quickly Scroat had returned. It was a forty minute drive to the new dollar store, if Scroat went to the one Hep thought he was talking about. That meant Scroat had spent ten minutes in the store before he left with a girl.

“Scroat knows his target market better than I thought,” Hep muttered to himself, and went back to polishing the piston he had been working on.

Seconds later, he heard a huge crash from inside the house. Hep dropped the piston, shut down the grinder and hurried out of his shop to find out if everyone was ok. There was another huge crash, followed by a series of thumps, and somebody whooped for joy. Somebody female.

The racket in the house continued, and since Hep didn’t hear anyone screaming for help he went back out to the shop, picked the piston up off the floor and got back to work.

Several hours later, after he had polished every casting he’d made, remelted the scrap parts and cast them into ingots and re-organized his tool drawers twice, the noises coming from the house stopped. Shortly after that, he heard the screen door on the back of the house open and slam shut, and moments later a very sweaty and excessively happy-looking Scroat poked his head into Hep’s workshop.

“I’m inviting her to live with us,” Scroat said. “I’ve never met anybody like her. She has to stay. I can’t ever let her leave this house.”

“What? No!” Hep exclaimed. He imagined several years of living with someone who would willingly have sex with Scroat – and enjoy it, apparently – and then had to stop thinking about it. It would be hell.

“You don’t understand,” Scroat said. “We have a fucking connection, man. There’s never been anyone like this ever.”

“She can’t stay here,” Hep said.

Scroat thought for a minute, looked hopeful and said, “She has friends, Hep.”

“She absolutely can not stay here, Scroat,” Hep said.

“Hep, she has friends – who share. Do you dig me?” Scroat said.

“She can stay many places. Many wonderful places. Places you’d like too. But she can not stay here,” Hephaestus said.

“Well, why the fuck not?” Scroat asked.

Hep thought about the racket coming from the house earlier, and the enormous mess he knew was waiting inside, and decided on a tactful answer.

“I just don’t think you are ready for the level of responsibility needed to keep a pet human,” Hep said.

Scroat looked insulted, and said, “Aw, fuck you Hep.”

He went back in the house, and seconds later there was a war cry and another booming crash.

Hep picked up a broom and started sweeping the harder-to-reach areas of the shop. Shortly, he realized he was going to be in the workshop for the rest of the night, so he set about replacing the burnt pistons in his motor.

Moments later Hep was entirely engrossed in his work, and the hours slipped by. He didn’t notice the horrendous sounds coming from the house. If he had noticed them, he would most likely have dug out his hearing protectors to block it out. It was bad. Instead, he steadily worked on reassembling the motor.

A little bit after midnight, he had the bike back together and running strong. Since the noises emanating from the house had yet to decrease in intensity, he decided it would be a good time to take his motorcycle out for a shakedown cruise.

Hep rolled the bike out of his shop, loaded a few essential tools into the sidecar (just in case), shut all the doors to his workshop and locked them, then hopped on the bike and set out to explore some of the less-driven roads nearby.

When he returned home, sometime after three o’clock in the morning, he saw that Scroat’s motorcycle was gone. Hep opened up the garage and rolled his motorcycle inside, then went into the house to assess the damage.

The house was, to be polite, destroyed. Hep was reasonably certain that, in the history of fucking, nothing like this had ever been witnessed. Hopefully, it would never happen again, either.

The kitchen table lay on the floor, with all four legs splayed out. It looked like someone had taken a flying leap and landed perfectly on top of it. The cushions from the couch were strewn about the room, and most of them had new tears in the upholstery. The TV laid on the floor facing the ceiling, remarkably unbroken, playing a movie Hep was mildly surprised didn’t offend Scroat.

The bathtub was indeed full of baked beans, and the walls were caked with beans and sauce. There was a large, beany smear where someone had slapped his or her hand against the wall and dragged it down to the floor.

Thankfully, Hep’s room was untouched. Let it never be said that Scroat didn’t know his limits.

Hep heard the distinctive rumble and rattle of Scroat’s motorcycle pull into the driveway. He waited, and shortly Scroat came inside, alone.

“She can’t ever come back here, Scroat,” Hep said before Scroat could even open his mouth.

Scroat started to object, and Hep interrupted, with his arms spread to emphasize the mess their house was in.

“Not ever. Do you dig me?” Hep asked.

Scroat looked at Hep, then nodded.

“And you are entirely in charge of cleaning this shit up,” Hep said. “Good night.”

Hep went to his room, shut the door, and went to sleep.

Scroat looked around at the chaos he and his new lady friend had left behind. He sat down on the only chair still upright.

“I think I might be in love,” Scroat said.

Chapter Seven

2008-11-03T20:34:00.000-08:00

To be a damned soul in Hell was bad. This is a bit of an understatement, but it is important to appreciate that even in Hell, things can always be worse. Yes, having your soul cast into the lake of fire, being tortured with whips and other devices intended to break your spirit and cause unbearable suffering was very, very unpleasant. There are few indeed who claim to have a good time in Hell.

But it can be worse.

You could, for example, be a demon instead of a mere damned soul. A soul is insubstantial. A soul in a pit of boiling pitch certainly suffered from the heat, and felt the stinging pain of a whip with barbed ends, but this torture was only psychological. A soul released from Hell – rare, but it happens – is whole and undamaged.

A demon, on the other hand, suffers the same torments, but has flesh to burn and injure. An injured demon, even outside of Hell, is an injured demon until it heals.

And on top of all that, demons all have jobs, tasks they are assigned to accomplish. And the office politics in Hell are, well, diabolical. A demon can turn more souls than any other demon in his regiment and still watch another demon, one better at positioning himself, ascend into a higher rank over and over. One had to deal with this while contending with the admittedly unpleasant living conditions in Hell, and generally risky assignments given to lower-ranking demons.

Incidentally, never complain about your job to a demon.

In a cold, wet cave reeking of mildew and sulphur, a very small, grey demon rolled over in his nest and tried to muster enough energy to get out of bed. The tiny demon was ancient, even by hell’s standards, though one could not tell by simply looking at him. He had tempted more souls into hell than almost any of the other demons. He had caused wars. He had caused natural disasters, plagues and mass murders.

The Crusades? His idea.

His name, as most of the names in Hell are, is unimportant since we could not hope to pronounce or even understand it. Maybe we could if we had a couple more jaws and an extra tongue. At any rate, even the other demons did not call him by his true name.

The tiny demon, who had accomplished so much, who had brought so much evil upon the world, who had tormented thousands of souls for eons, was known by everyone as Nubbins.

And for this reason, he was unable to ascend beyond the middle ranks of Hell.

The tiny demon Nubbins groaned and sat up. Although he would never admit it to another demon, he was pretty tired of the run of the mill tormentings and possessions he had been assigned to lately. He knew better than to openly criticize his bosses, but the fact of the matter was tempting priests into doing unspeakable things just wasn’t that hard. It never had been. Nubbins wanted some new challenges. Maybe he could tempt an idealistic young charity worker to take advantage of those entrusted to his or her care. He wanted to start wars again. He wanted to corrupt the incorruptible.

Nubbins was about to be disappointed.

He stood up, splashed a bit of brackish water in his face from a recess in one of his cave walls, and emerged from his cave.

Souls shackled to sharp lava rock walls wailed as he walked glumly past them. He heard the whistling of whips and grinding of gears, and he could smell the odd sweet-sulphur smell of the souls burning in the lake of fire.

Before long, the demon above him appeared by his side. His superior had deep red skin, long, sharp teeth and wicked yellow eyes. His horns were long and black. He chuckled, and Nubbins braced himself for another bad assignment.

Chapter Six

2008-11-03T20:33:00.000-08:00

Cyrus, that is, Joe Anderson woke up early that fine morning with a list of projects he wanted to work on and errands he needed to run. After a delightful breakfast of Lucky Charms and coffee, he rinsed out his cereal bowl and left his dishes next to the sink to clean later. He put on his boots and leather jacket, grabbed his black Jansport backpack and went out to the garage.

He opened the garage door and rolled his Triumph out into the sunlight. It was quite dirty, as Joe felt motorcycles were meant to be ridden, not washed. Cleanliness may or may not be next togodliness, but filthy bikers get the best chicks. Or so Joe always said.

Joe took a quick look at the tires to make sure there weren’t any obvious nails sticking out of them, then went back into the garage to get his helmet. He liked the anonymity inside a full-face helmet, not to mention the drastic reduction in flying insects hitting him in the face compared to an open faced helmet.

With the helmet secured on his melon, Joe swung a leg over the bike, checked his brakes, and thumbed the starter. The motor leapt to life with the distinctive sound of a British inline twin.

He rolled on the gas and pulled out on to the road in front of his house. His first stop was the nearest mailbox. There was a mail drop outside of a bakery near his house. He turned into a parking spot in front of the bakery and shut off the bike. He took his helmet off and walked over to the mailbox. He had a couple of letters in his backpack, which he dug out of the bag and dropped in the mailbox. Then he went into the bakery to get a loaf of Italian bread. He passed a few friendly words with the baker, stuffed the bread into his bag and went back out to the Triumph.

Once he was situated again, he zipped into traffic again and made his way to the grocery store to pick up some cheese and a tomato or two to go with his bread.

Joe made his way through the grocery store carrying a basket to keep his few items in. He laughed to himself, as he always did, as people who ordinarily wouldn’t look at him twice leapt out of the way of the scary biker. Joe made a point to be polite and courteous, but he did enjoy watching the sea of people part before him as he wandered the store in his leather jacket and boots.

Once he had secured a fine asiago cheese and a couple of lovely ripe tomatoes, he strode to the check outs and got in line. He had just started to daydream when he realized the woman in line in front of him was saying something to him.

“Joe? Hi Joe!” Judy said. “How are you this morning?”

“Judy! I wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t see you there. I’m doing great, just out for a quick ride while I take care of a few errands,” Joe said. He was a little embarrassed he hadn’t noticed Judy; he was usually more attentive about who was around him.

He and Judy made small talk while the cashier rang up the person ahead of Judy in line. Soon enough it was Judy’s turn. Joe waited patiently as the cashier scanned and weighed each item Judy had. After a few minutes the cashier gave Judy the total. Judy dug in her purse briefly, and brought out an envelope with her food stamps in it. She gave Joe an embarrassed look as she handed the food stamps to the cashier, who rolled her eyes and called for a supervisor.

The supervisor came over, gave Judy a withering look, signed off on the food stamps and hurried away again. As Judy’s receipt printed, the cashier looked her right in the eye and said, “Why don’t you get a job instead of living off the government?”

Judy flushed, and looked down.

Joe stepped up closer to the cashier, raised and said, “How dare you judge a senior citizen in hard times? Who are you to say anything besides ‘Have a nice day’ to this woman? I’m glad you’ve never needed assistance from anyone. I hope in the future, you’ll have the class to stick to your principles and not expect help from a damn soul.” The volume of his voice increased as he spoke, and he nearly started using his preacher voice. He caught himself at the last second.

The supervisor who had just left came over to find out what the ruckus was. Judy was looking at Joe with her mouth wide open. She couldn’t believe nice Joe from down the street could get so angry so quickly.

“And you! I don’t believe for a minute you don’t know what your cashiers are saying to customers with food stamps,” Joe continued. “If you honestly don’t know then you’re incompetent, and if you do know,” he paused, “if you do know, you’re a rat bastard. I don’t expect much, but I would expect a group of union employees to have a little sympathy and compassion for someone in trouble.”

He set down his cheese and tomatoes as the supervisor and cashier sputtered.

“Shut up,” he said. “I don’t even want this stuff now. I won’t be in again, but I will be calling your manager.”

He helped Judy gather her bags, and escorted her out of the store. She was still staring at him.

“You don’t have to stare, Judy,” Joe said. She blinked, and looked down.

“Neither you nor Thomas deserve to be treated like that, especially in front of a bunch of strangers. And especially not by some fucking cashier,” Joe said, and stopped quickly, realizing he’d just dropped the F-bomb in front of an old lady.

Judy looked shocked for a minute, then clasped her hands together next to her cheek in a girlish way and said, “My hero!”

Joe laughed and said, “Aw, can it, granny.”

He helped her load her groceries into the car, made sure she and Thomas would be coming over for dinner and cards later that week, and went on his way. Riding helped him mellow out quite a bit, which was a good thing because now he had to find a new grocery store.

If there was one group of people he had sympathy for, it was poor folks who were stuck in a bad situation and trying to make the best of it. Joe knew that no one wants to get food stamps – just having to use them was humiliating enough. And the underlying idea, that somehow these people don’t deserve basic necessities like food regardless of their job status, truly ate him up. It made him want to hit things.

After a while he reached another grocery store. It wasn’t one of his favorite places to shop, but at least they had decent tomatoes. He checked out without incident.

Chapter Five

2008-11-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

Scroat’s bedroom was dark. The window was covered with a blanket, and only the tiniest bit of the sunrise could creep in. If more light were, for some reason, able to get in to the room, it would likely take a look around and leave. The room wasn’t exactly dirty so much as it was very, very cluttered. So although there were no plates of old food waiting for the unwary to reveal by lifting a pile of shirts, there were piles of clothing, tools and stacks of pointy things waiting to trip up and injure anyone unfamiliar with Scroat’s unique organizational skills.

Hephaestus was clumsy, but he had been living with Scroat for two hundred forty seven years, and could have found his way through Scroat’s room with his eyes closed. Scroat had a box fan noisily running at full speed, however, so Hep could have stumbled and crashed his way through the room and Scroat wouldn’t have heard him anyway.

Plus Scroat was a deep sleeper.

Two hundred forty six years and eleven months ago, he had made the mistake of asking Hep to wake him up early, since he had some things he wanted to get done. Hep was, of course, happy to help out. He had been waking Scroat at the crack of dawn ever since, in his own special way.

Hep crept, as best he could, up to Scroat’s bed. There was exactly enough light in the room for him to see where Scroat’s head lay on his pillow. Hep raised his favorite hammer, carefully judged the area he had to work with, and slammed the hammer down into the bed next to Scroat’s left ear.

Scroat had responded to this unique technique in exactly the same way for the last two hundred forty six years ten months and thirty days.

“You donkey-faced, shit-eating son of the cheapest infected whore in Olympus! Couldn’t you let me sleep in now and then?” Scroat yelled at Hep.

“Morning, sunshine,” Hep said, and left the room.

Scroat lay muttering curses and descriptions of what kind of ungodly act he thought was responsible for Hep’s creation. A couple minutes later, he smelled coffee and bacon cooking. He clapped his hands twice, and the lights turned on. Scroat had never been responsible for Creation, or even Creating something, but he imagined the Clapper did a pretty good job of mimicking the general feeling those Creator gods experienced after making their little parts of the world.

He sat up in bed, surveyed the epic mess that was his room, then climbed out of bed, walked over to a towering pile of t-shirts, stuck his hand in about three quarters of the way to the top and pulled out the exact t-shirt he wanted.

It read “Now Hiring. Please apply below.”

After he had pulled on his t-shirt, he looked around on the floor for the black jeans he had worn the day before. It took a couple moments for him to recall where he had left them, but found them quickly enough and put them on. He wandered barefoot out of his room and into the kitchen.

“Hey, bacon’s ready,” Hep said. “You want some?”

“You bet your ass I want some,” Scroat said and sat down at the table. “How about some of that coffee, too?”

Hep picked up a plate of bacon and eggs, and cup of coffee from the counter, walked to the beat up old kitchen table and sat down.

“Well then get a plate and help yourself,” Hep said. He took a sip of coffee and gave Scroat a toothy grin.

“Aw, fuck you, Hep,” Scroat said. He got up from the table, took a huge pile of bacon and poured a cup of coffee. He ate standing up at the counter.

“So what’s the plan for today?” Scroat asked Hep after a few minutes.

“Not a damn thing,” Hep replied, and took a bite of bacon. He intended to spend the day polishing up the successful castings he made the night before. If he had time after that, he was going to pull the busted pistons out of the motor and replace them. And after that, it would be time for the first beer of the day.

“I heard about a new dollar store in town, you want to go check it out?” Scroat asked him. Scroat loved dollar stores. He loved any place that seemed scuzzy and and old on its very first day of business.

“What the hell do you want to do at a dollar store?” Hep asked in reply. Hep, for his part, despised shopping. Why buy things when he could build them?

“To pick up chicks.” Scroat answered.

“Why would you want to pick up chicks at a dollar store? Those places are where you go to meet the freaks and rejects who… oh,” Hep stopped talking. Scroat wanted to go to the dollar store because he liked surplus and slightly damaged goods.

“Hey, a man has to have a good time, and the women who are at a dollar store, for fuck’s sake, looking for love are just the kind of women I want to have a good time with,” Scroat said.

Hep said nothing. He was hoping Scroat wouldn’t go into detail. It was a wasted effort.

“I mean, they’ll just want to come back here and fuck like wild animals for an hour or two. And these are the kind of ladies who think buying up a case of baked beans, filling the bathtub with them and making the beast with two backs is a good way to spend an afternoon,” Scroat said, and smiled widely at Hep.

“Well, you have a good time there, Scroat,” Hep said. “And you’d better clean the damn beans out of the bathtub, because I’m not going anywhere near that shit.”

“Hey, you know me,” Scroat said. “I don’t leave messes laying around once I’m done with them.”

“Make sure you give the poor girl a ride back to the bus stop this time, too,” Hep said.

Scroat looked hurt.

“You know I always leave my new lady friends in better shape than I found them in. ‘Give her a ride back.’ Fuck you! I’ll give her such a ride, she won’t want to leave. Dick,” Scroat said.

“Yeah, ok, Scroat,” Hep said. He pushed his chair back, got up from the table, kicked the chair back under the table and took his plate over to the sink. He walked over to the back door, put on his shoes and said, “You know where to find me.”

Then he took his cup of coffee and went out to his workshop again.

Scroat, meanwhile, finished his coffee, dumped his leftover bacon in the trash and went hunting for a clean pair of socks. He ran a comb through his short, dark hair, examined his three-day stubble, decided he could wait another day to shave, and grabbed the keys for his motorcycle.

Scroat’s bike was a flat black Harley-Davidson Sportster. He’d built it out of the parts of so many other motorcycles that he didn’t even venture to guess at a year. The frame was from 1981, though, so if someone pressed him for details that was the year he gave.

He fired up the motor, and tore out of the driveway, sliding to the left as he turned towards town.

Chapter Four

2008-11-02T21:17:00.001-08:00

Hephaestus toiled in the gloom of his forge in the wee hours of the morning. He preferred to work at night, since daylight made it hard to see the metal’s color, and he preferred having his shop wide open to get a good breeze going through. Working metal is, if anything, hot work, and Hephaestus, along with his roommate, lived far outside of town in the Sonoran desert. Their nearest neighbor was well over a mile away, which made it easier for Hephaestus – Hep to his friends – to get away with hammering away at two thirty in the morning day after day. His roommate, Scroat, could sleep through damn near anything, so Hep’s nighttime habits had never bothered him.

His forge was compact and efficient, contrary to the impressions one might get from his mythology. It had been a long time since he’d done any big work, such as Achilles’s shield (the way Achilles’s had died, like a chump, still bothered Hep), so it made more sense to keep his anvil, forge, vise and quenching tub all within an arm’s length of him while working. He had another work area set up for casting metal, and yet another with the latest welding equipment. Tradition was well and good, Hep thought, but drawing a neat bead with a TIG welder beat trying to get borax into a red-hot joint and then hammering the hell out of it any day.

Tonight Hep had his casting furnace running (it used clean, efficient propane, thank you), and was pouring pistons. He’d managed to burn holes in not just one, but both pistons in his motorcycle’s motor. He wasn’t exactly sure what he’d done, but was mildly impressed with himself.

He removed the lid from the furnace and peered into the crucible, the light from the propane flames casting his face into sharp relief. He had dark, curly hair, dark eyes, a powerful brow, and was otherwise lumpy in exactly the wrong way. Hephaestus was, in no uncertain terms, an ugly bastard. To top that off, his legs were weak and barely useful. He stand at his forge, and he could walk with some difficulty, but that was about it.

Those who fucked with Hep because they thought they could outrun him, of course, usually found themselves caught in a finely-wrought trap. Ares, the son-of-a-bitch, had been fooling around with Hep’s wife when he and Aphrodite wound up caught in a metal net so fine they had not noticed it, and so strong they could not escape it.

The other gods in Olympus had been very amused by their predicament.

Hep used a long spoon to scoop the dross off the top of the molten metal, then used a long pair of tongs to remove the white-hot crucible from the furnace. He turned to the right and carefully poured the glowing, shiny liquid metal into a ceramic mold. He set down the crucible in a bed of sand, closed the lid of the furnace and turned off the propane. The flame died with a “foomp,” and Hep’s workshop fell silent apart from the clicks coming from the piston mold.

While he waited for his new casting to cool, he walked over to his workbench and had a seat. He took a long drink from his mug of water, wiped his lips, and looked over at his latest motorcycle.

The bike was as black as he could make it. The sidecar was black, the gas tank and fenders were black, the handlebars and wheels were black, even the motor was black. The only parts that were not black were the lights.

He was trying to figure out a good way to make those black, but glass wasn’t really his specialty. If it weren’t for that damn cheery taillight, he was fairly certain his bike would actually absorb light.

Hephaestus spent a while tidying his shop, until the casting was cool enough to remove from its mold. Then he went over to the casting, pulled on his welding gloves and loosened the clamps holding the mold shut. He pulled the two halves of the mold apart, and used a pair of tongs to take out his freshly cast piston. There was still a lot of heat coming off of the metal, just as he wanted.

Hep turned and dunked the piston in the water in his quenching tub. It hissed and spit, and Hep shook the piston around a bit to make sure the water would actually touch and cool the piston. If he didn’t move it around, the piston might just build up a layer of steam around it, which was inefficient. A few seconds later, he pulled the now-cool piston out of the water.

“Well, fuck!” Hep said. There was a small bubble in the face of the piston. He threw the piston on to his pile of scrap to be melted and cast again.

The first light of day began to creep into his shop. Hep walked outside to cool off a bit, and to watch the sky brighten. The sun had not popped up over the horizon yet. When the sun did peek out from behind the edge of the world, he would go and get Scroat out of bed.

Scroat had been Hephaestus’s roommate for two hundred forty seven years. The two had known each other and traveled together for quite a while before that. When Christianity had become the predominant religion, Hephaestus ended up with no worshippers. He was effectively unemployed. He spent a bit of time moping around Olympus before he got tired of the trailer-park antics of the other Greek gods, and set out to see the rest of the world.

He’d been in what would become Mexico, drinking around a bonfire with a few of the Aztec gods (also unemployed). He’d just met them, and they seemed like a good bunch at first. Tequila, however, has a funny way of turning some people in to raging assholes spoiling for a brawl. Hephaestus had been watching his words very carefully, because the Aztecs were getting touchier by the moment, when a scrawny, dirty guy with short dark hair and a deep tan staggered into the circle.

The Aztecs eyed him warily, then one by one they began to size him up, and try to figure out a reason to beat him to a pulp.

“Hey you ugly motherfuckers, where’s the shitter? I’ve been walking all fucking day and I need a comfy spot to pinch out a nut loaf. If you get my meaning,” the newcomer said.

The newcomer, Bama-Pana (Scroat to those who knew him), quickly proved himself to be good in a fight, and he and Hephaestus had fought their way out of that mess and had been friends ever since. They’d made their way north, to what would become the United States, and bummed around meeting the native gods for a few years before they settled in the Arizona desert where the climate worked for both of them, and they were generally left alone to do whatever they wanted.

For the last hundred years what they’d wanted to do, mostly, was ride motorcycles. Scroat liked to go out and find trouble, while Hephaestus preferred to just work in his forge, tinkering with whatever new technology struck his fancy.

They both still had a deep love for alcohol, and spent a fair amount of time in seedy bars. The most interesting people could be found in the worst bars, it seemed to Hep. As far as Scroat was concerned, cheap bars were the best place to pick up cheap women who would tolerate his constant stream of profanity, and entirely inappropriate advances. Based on his success rate, Scroat’s assumption seemed to be correct.

The sun finally peeked out from behind the horizon, and Hep turned back to his shop. He shut down the gas lines, put his tools back in their correct places, swept up a bit, and shut the big doors. He walked out of the side door, turned around and locked it with a huge iron padlock he’d made back in the early eighteen hundreds. It looked primitive, but it would take a skilled person indeed to pick this lock. He’d carefully hardened and tempered the metal, and any attempt to remove it with a bolt cutter would likely result in a broken bolt cutter, severe muscle strain, and possibly some eye injuries. The tool, however, would not even leave so much as the tiniest mark on the lock itself. And what’s more, the would-be burglar would get a sneaking suspicious the lock itself was laughing at him.

Hep liked his lock.

The sun was now completely out, and beginning its daily climb towards the heavens. Hep walked across the sandy yard, up the worn, wooden stairs and into his house. He washed his hands in the kitchen sink, which had a few dirty dishes lurking in it, went into his bedroom and changed out of his work clothes and into fresh clothes he would not be embarrassed to be seen wearing in public. Or, at least, clothes that didn’t smell as bad.

After changing, he picked up his favorite hammer, the one he kept by his bed, and strode down the hall to Scroat’s room.

It was time to wake up his roommate.

Chapter Three

2008-11-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

The Rev. Cyrus Evander Milton’s church changed locations on a weekly basis. Some weeks, it was in a large circus tent, with the congregation spilling out into the surrounding fields, eager to be close to him and hear his words. Other weeks he’d be in a convention center, or a host church, or most anywhere else that had enough space for the crowds who came to his revivals.

In certain circles, Reverend Milton was bigger than any rock star. And, honestly, he thought of his revivals more as performances than religious ceremonies. He strutted across the stage with as much swagger as Mick Jagger. His brown suits were tailored perfectly, his shoes shined as brightly as the stage lights and his hair was slicked back with a generous helping of Brylcreem. He had a killer sound system, donated by a group of faithful businessmen. He had a staggering light system operated by one of the best lighting men in the southern United States. The light and sound crew got paid. He had an amazing band, all faithful volunteers doing their part for God, who followed his cues on stage without fail. The ushers, who circulated the collection plates endlessly at every revival meeting, were all local volunteers.

He had been in the business long enough to learn to read the congregation. If they weren’t excited enough, or if the donations seemed to be slowing down, he’d start preaching hellfire in a fast patter, with a pause between each phrase.

“Those who reject God, those who are wicked and live in sin will be cast aside! They will be cast into the lake of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and there will be no comfort for them! There will be no water to quench their thirst, and they shall suffer in the absence of the Lord!”

When the crowd was good and riled up, he’d tell them about the Glory of God, about being saved by Jesus Christ, and about the rewards awaiting each of the faithful in heaven. Once the congregation were really rocking and rolling, he’d even speak in tongues. Glossolalia had been one of the hardest tricks to learn. When he’d first started doing revivals, he’d utter a quick “tuk-uh tuk-uh” now and then, but now he really got into it and would go off on long, nonsense rants.

“And you will find the Glory of Heaven! Hooba TukTuk Wheeeee-Pong Dook Spang! Yes! I can feel that the Lord is with us tonight-uh!” he’d say. The crowd ate it up.

Reverend Milton tried to avoid adding an “-uh” at the end of sentences, but sometimes he couldn’t resist, as in “But if you reject the Lord Jesus Christ-uh, you will surely be damned-uh!”

It never failed to amaze the Reverend Milton how much the congregation went along with the whole act. It was better than going to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, as far as he was concerned. The first time he saw one of the congregation members start speaking in tongues, he nearly lost his shit and started laughing. Someone who needed attention would start speaking in tongues, and a large group of the faithful would crowd around them, making a big show of embracing them and holding them up. Frequently the one speaking in tongues would collapse to the floor. There was always an usher nearby with a white towel to protect the modesty of any ladies who fainted.

The good Reverend, frankly, liked his job a lot. He had fun doing it. It felt like he and the crowd were all a part of a big joke, one that no one would admit to but played their part in it with relish.

And then there was the money. Huge piles of sweet, tax-free cash money. He had four paid staff members: his secretary, his accountant, the sound man and the light man. He brought in $20,000 on a bad night, and on a night when the crowd caught the spirit, and their wallets started out full, the sky was the limit. Now and then he’d spread the night’s take out on his bed in the hotel and marvel at the scope of his con. He could make more than an average person’s annual salary in one weekend. His expenses were nearly always covered by the local church who had invited him to run a revival in their town, which meant every performance was almost pure profit.

It was a good gig.

And then there were the fringe benefits. He ate home-cooked meals from members of the congregation. People leapt at the opportunity to take care of any errand for him. And then there were the women; whatever trouble he’d had scoring in his confirmation class was replaced by trying to get someone’s attractive daughter to go home after the third romp of the evening.

He’d never had better sex than the sex he had with 19 year old girls full of the spirit of the Lord after a revival. Passion is passion, and they’d come back to his dressing room after he was done preaching and nearly tear his clothes off in their fervor. The Catholic girls might have put out, but these girls wanted to fuck for Jesus. Afterwards, he would usher them gently towards their home, heaping compliments and blessings on them.

Then he’d blow town. The next town would be more of the same.

At the present time, Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton was worth four million, eight hundred sixty seven thousand dollars, plus change. Not that he was counting. He would generally tour the southern states for three or four months during the winter, setting up in town for a weekend before rolling on to the next. He’d tour just long enough to earn enough money for the next year.

The rest of the year, he lived in a modest house in a quiet neighborhood in Minneapolis. His neighbors knew him as Joe Anderson, a quiet but pleasant man who would happily loan his tools and regularly invited them over for beer and hamburgers during the summer. No one in Minnesota knew about his career as a preacher, and none of the people he preached to knew about his life in Minnesota. Even his staff, apart from his secretary, were unaware of his other life.

Cyrus liked that just fine.

At his house in Minnesota, his hair was loose and shaggy. He wore old jeans, which were frequently greasy, flannel shirts when it was cold, t-shirts when it was warm, and his shoes were far from new.

When he wasn’t preaching fire and brimstone he liked working on his car, a purple 1967 Dodge Challenger, and riding his motorcycle when the weather wasn’t too cold. His motorcycle was a newer Triumph Scrambler, and he’d logged many miles every summer riding it around the northern half of the United States. He’d gotten his first motorcycle, a 1973 CL350, after meeting a couple of interesting guys in a bar. The same guys who’d given him the idea to start preaching, in fact. From what he’d gathered at the time, the pair spent a good deal of their time traveling on motorcycles, saying they were the only modern vehicles fit for gods. Whatever that meant. Riding sure sounded like fun though, so he hustled up some cash, bought the little Honda, and had been riding as much as he could ever since.

After several years, he had to agree with – what had their names been? – the two guys in the bar: motorcycles were good enough for God.

Cyrus – Joe Anderson - liked his small house just fine. There was plenty of room for him, and he had space when he had guests over. His furniture was nice, but simple. He had a decent stereo, a fairly nice TV that he only really used to watch movies and sports, and photos of old friends and trips he had taken decorated the walls. He had guests fairly frequently. His neighbors, Thomas and Judy, came over every Sunday night for dinner and a card game. Thomas and Judy were a retired couple, and didn’t have much money. Thomas’s pension just covered their monthly expenses and staples, but they didn’t have much left over after the bills were paid, and their kids rarely visited.

They were cantankerous in a charming way, and Cyrus liked having them over. It felt to him like having dinner with his grandparents, who had passed away a long time ago. He listene, amused, as Thomas and Judy would argue about minor details in their stories, such as whether the house had been on 1667 or 1668 Hennepin Avenue. After each visit, Cyrus always wrapped up the left over food and insisted that they take it with them at the end of the night.

He never let on, but he’d always made sure to make way too much food, far more than the three of them could possibly eat. Thomas and Judy also never let on that they knew he’d made too much food every time, and would refuse his offer, in a good natured way, once or twice before accepting the left overs. After a few days Judy would drop by his house to drop off the clean dishes.

His other neighbors were fine folks, as far as Cyrus was concerned, and they kept their noses out of his business. He really couldn’t ask for much more. It was good.

As much as he enjoyed traveling his revival circuit, hustling the crowds for bigger and bigger payouts, he preferred his life as Joe Anderson far more. It was simple, and he was happy.

Of course, it’s easy to be simple and happy when one has four million eight hundred sixty seven thousand dollars, plus change, waiting in the bank in case one needs something. Cyrus as Joe was careful to leave the flashy stuff to Cyrus as Reverend Milton. No one even suspected quiet Joe Anderson was one of the most successful revival preachers in the southern United States. And Joe liked that especially well.

Chapter Two

2008-11-01T23:17:00.000-07:00

Cyrus Evander Milton, like most of the other sixteen year olds he knew, spent his Wednesday nights in confirmation classes at his suburban protestant church. He spent most of the class time wondering what the girls in his confirmation class had on under their jeans and sweatshirts, and whether their undergarments were particularly difficult to remove.

He had heard it was easier to get Catholic girls naked.

Cyrus learned and remembered new facts easily, so he didn’t have any trouble with the required knowledge in his confirmation class. He memorized the Ten Commandments and their church-approved interpretations easily. There was, of course, the niggling little problem of his complete lack of belief in any of it. He also had trouble understanding how one could both fear and love anything. Every interpretation for the commandments began with “We are to fear and love God.” It didn’t make a damn bit of sense to him.

Cyrus also hated his entire confirmation class. There was not a single person worthy of his company, he felt. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. There was one girl, a year younger than him, who wasn’t a complete bitch. When he was ruler of the world, he decided in class one night, he’d spare her.

It was a mass grave for the rest of them though.

And so Cyrus spent his Wednesday nights memorizing Church doctrine, thinking about sex, and wondering if anyone else in his class actually bought any of this shit.

By the time he was confirmed, he was certain of two facts. The first was that, no, no one else bought it. The second was that no one would admit it, because they liked being up on their high horse. Just because one wasn’t supposed to judge another, didn’t mean it’s not especially fun and satisfying to judge others. Especially if the judging involves telling the judgee what you and five of your friends had decided. Even more so if you were on a retreat, and the adult chaperone was on the side of the kids making your life hell.

Not, Cyrus would be the first to tell you, that he was bitter. He wished all of them well, actually. After all, if he had his way, they were going to end up in a mass grave (except for the one girl who was ok). They might as well have a good life up to that point.

Cyrus wasn’t just skeptical of the church because of the folks in confirmation class. After all, there was a whole congregation of adults who couldn’t wait to prove him right.

Worse than that, he saw the family of his best friend in church every Sunday (Two people who won’t end up in mass graves. Not just one. Two.). His friend, Andrew, did not come from a rich family. His parents only owned one car, in contrast to the two cars every other household owned. It was a beat up old Ford Taurus, with rusty rocker panels and a variety of interesting sounds coming from beneath the hood. It had Wal-marts cheapest tires installed on all four wheels. They ate a lot of Hamburger Helper, and their clothes were from the Salvation Army and another local thrift store.

He saw them in church every Sunday morning, dressed in their best clothes they worked so hard to keep in good shape. And every Sunday, he saw Andrew’s parents put their donation in the offering plate.

As far as Cyrus knew, the church had never so much as offered Andrew’s family any of the clothes they collected every Christmas.

The pastor, however, drove a flashy, late model Cadillac. Most of his stupid classmates overlooked (or openly envied) his luxurious transportation, but Cyrus didn’t. He wondered why the pastor didn’t sell that car, buy a modest automobile, and use the difference in cash to help out some poor folks. Like his friend Andrew’s family.

Cyrus went to church and to his confirmation classes every week, though, because it was important to his parents for some reason. He didn’t notice them acting especially holy during the rest of the week, but for some reason they couldn’t just sleep in on Sunday mornings.

Cyrus, for one, thought sleeping in would do his soul more good.

Cyrus was confirmed on a Sunday afternoon. He’d been scheduled to work (twenty hours per week at the local mega-mart), and had to argue with his co-worker to get him to extend his shift by an hour and a half to cover for Cyrus while he got confirmed.

The confirmation ritual was nothing if not awkward for Cyrus. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, then line up to go kneel in front of the altar with his hands folded in prayer in front of him while the pastor came around and asked each of them if they promised to be good little boys and girls.

Afterwards, they had to line up in the back of the church, supposedly to be congratulated, or given cars, or whatever it is the families of the other freaks in his class did to celebrate being confirmed.

None of the congregation, apart from his parents, came over to congratulate him. He noticed.

After that, he went home, changed out of his church clothes and into his work uniform, and started his new life as an adult in the eyes of the church by mopping up vomit in aisle thirteen, Snack Foods.

That was the last time Cyrus had set foot in a church.

Chapter One

2008-11-01T21:18:00.000-07:00

Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny – Wisdom from a Fortune Cookie

Hell, the spiritual dimension, not the small town in Michigan, is not as bad as you think. It’s worse. In fact, the lake of fire, brimstone, weeping, gnashing of teeth and daily whippings could be considered the high points of the entire experience. The rest is unthinkable. Actually, it’s unspeakable – unless you have the right number of jaws.

The Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton, who did not have the correct number of jaws, would gladly confirm this for you if he was not busy trying to defend himself from a particularly large, particularly muscular, and especially ugly demon named, well, it doesn’t matter. Wrong number of jaws. For the time being, we will refer to him as Mr. Happy. He was certainly smiling, and a large muscular demon with several jaws and an disturbing collection of implements destined to meet the Reverend may as well have a cute name.

Standing to one side, evidently cheering the larger demon on, was a much smaller demon. Much smaller. Knee-high, in fact. Actually, he didn’t seem to be cheering so much as lending moral support to Mr. Happy. If you want to be picky about it, he actually looked rather annoyed about the whole thing. Every now and then he would yell something to the larger demon in the unspeakable language of Hell, then sit down again and rest his jaw (the largest, and only externally visible one) on his hand.

The good Reverend – well, let’s be honest, he wasn’t very good at all; hence, Hell – looked around for a rock or a stick or something to hit the larger demon with. Anything to stop his damned smiling. Most people, in Hell, have their spirits broken within seconds of arrival. Reverend Milton had an advantage over them, however. He knew he was going to Hell well before he died.

As Mr. Happy advanced on him with a large, black, rusty, spiky implement the Reverend didn’t really want to consider the use of, Reverend Milton had a small revelation. Perhaps, he thought, the individuals who suggested religion as a solution to his money problems were simply joking.

Cyrus Evander Milton – Cy to his friends – sat at a dirty bar. The bar was dark, smoky, worn and loud. Cy usually preferred quiet bars, but the noise didn’t bother him in this bar. In this bar, if it was quiet, it was deadly quiet. When this bar was quiet, it was time to leave quickly. If it wasn’t quiet, though, it was a good place to get thirty-two ounce glasses of Pabst Blue Ribbon for one dollar and twenty-five cents. Besides, it had a good jukebox and a pinball machine.

Sitting next to Cy at the bar were the two most interesting people he’d ever met in this bar. The first one was a scrawny guy with dirty jeans and the foulest mouth he had ever heard. His t-shirt read, “I fucked your sister, and I want my money back.” The other guy was huge. Cy was pretty sure superheroes would be jealous of this guy’s physique. At least, they would be jealous of his upper body. His legs were tiny and twisted, and he had some trouble walking.

He was also the single most ugly son of a bitch Cy had ever seen.

The two of them were drinking enough to incapacitate a group of elephants. The smaller one – what was his nickname again? Something profane – was ordering beers fast enough to almost need a dedicated bartender. The bigger guy, the one with the Greek name, simply ordered pitchers of beer and drank straight from the pitcher. They had both already been in the bar when Cy arrived at two o’clock that afternoon, and neither of them had slowed down in the four hours he’d been there.

Cy had learned the two of them were unemployed and had been for a long time. The bigger one was a welder, or something like that. The smaller guy never told Cy what his profession was. Cy guessed he was a hustler of some kind, based on what he had seen earlier.

The scrawny guy had walked up to a group of clean cut college kids. The four of them stood out among the bikers, punks and other troublemakers like sheep in a den of wolves. The waitress, heavily tattooed with blue hair pulled back in a ponytail, had just brought them a new round of drinks.

The scrawny guy said to the tallest guy, who had a freshly delivered glass of Johnny Walker in front of him, “I’ll bet you a dollar I can drink your entire drink without touching the fucking glass even once, or using a straw.”

The tall guy, blond and not too bright looking, looked around at his buddies, laughed, and said “You’re crazy.”

The scrawny guy dug a dollar bill out of his pocket, smoothed it out as well as he could, and put it down on the table next to the drink.

“There’s my fucking dollar. You put a dollar down, and if I can drink your entire drink without touching it, I get both dollars. If not, you get two dollars. What do you say?”

The college guy looked around at his buddies again. One of them said, “go on, I want to see him do it. I’ll cover your bet, just to see the trick.”

Blondie pulled out a dollar and put it on top of the scrawny guy’s dollar.

“Ok, you’re on,” he said.

The college guys were too inexperienced to realize the bar had quieted down quiet a bit, but Cyrus had certainly noticed. Other patrons, rough types who were drinking on a Tuesday afternoon, had turned to watch the scrawny guy’s trick. They knew bar bets in this bar did not normally end without hard feelings. Hard, brass-knuckled, steel-toed feelings.

The scrawny guy straightened his t-shirt, stretched his neck a little bit and took a few deep breaths.

“Gentlemen, watch this,” he said.

The bar was entirely silent now.

The scrawny guy snatched the drink and swallowed it in one gulp, then slammed the glass back down on the table. The college guys started laughing and the taller one grabbed the two dollars off the table.

“You touched the glass. You lost the bet,” the tall blond one said. “How dumb are you?”

“Yep, I lost the bet,” the scrawny guy said, and walked back over to the bar while the table of college kids hooted with laughter and slapped their pal on the back. The rest of the bar resumed their conversations, and the bar settled back into a comforting noisiness.

“The funny part about that,” the scrawny guy said to Cy and the greek guy after wiping his mouth, “is that I just got a five dollar drink for a buck, and that fucker thinks he came out ahead.”

“Jesus, you are likely to get your ass kicked in this place with that kind of trick,” Cy said.

“Well, no, that’s not very likely at all,” the scrawny guys said, “although I guess we do cause a bit of shit now and then.”

“Now and then,” the Greek guy said.

They ordered a few more drinks, and settled back into conversation. Earlier, Cy had asked them how they were able to afford going out to drink, even if the beer was only a buck or two, if they’d been out of work for so long.

“We don’t worry about it,” the Greek guy said. “For us, money issues take care of themselves. We’ve got pretty much all we need, anyhow. More than we need, really.”

“Are you guys crooks or something?” Cy asked.

The scrawny guy with the profane nickname and the ugly Greek guy laughed long and hard at Cy’s question. The Greek guy wiped his eyes and took another drink from his pitcher of beer.

“No, it’s nothing like that,” he said. “Well, maybe some parts are like that. The organized bits. But no, we’re not criminals.” He took another drink and continued.
“I guess the best way to explain it is to say that the universe is looking out for us. We’ve been out of work for a long time, but it’s never been a problem, money-wise. The last several years have been a little boring maybe, but that’s what motorcycles are for.”

The scrawny guy chimed in with a “Fuck yeah!”

“We’ve been around the country once or twice,” the Greek guy said. “It helps pass the time. Now and then we help out a friend in trouble.” He laughed.

“You’d might want to watch out, by the way,” he said to Cy, “Our friends get into trouble a lot. Nasty trouble.”

“What kind of trouble do you mean?” Cy asked.

“Nasty fucking trouble,” the scrawny guy said. “Shit, you’ve got to clean your ears out or something, you deaf shithead.”

“Huh,” Cy grunted. “I don’t know, not having to worry about money? The universe taking care of me? I wish I had that kind of trouble.”

The Greek guy turned and looked at Cy, hard.

“Well, friend, have you considered the religion business?” he asked, then laughed and turned back to his drink. “Buddy, that’s where it’s at,” he said.

“Religion, huh?” Cy asked. “Doesn’t that come with a vow of poverty or something like that?” Cy was pretty skeptical about religion as a cure to his money woes. The last time he’d been to church was when he was sixteen. It had been a bunch of unpleasant people eager to tell him how every thing he did, thought about, wore or said was wrong before excluding him from the group because he made the rest of them uncomfortable.

“Not necessarily,” the Greek guy said. “What do you think they used to pay for the great cathedrals and temples of the world? It wasn’t blessings and charitable deeds, I can tell you.”

“The religion business,” Cy mused, then ordered another drink.

Mr. Happy advanced on the Reverend Cyrus Evander Milton. Mr. Happy smiled all the wider, making it possible for the Reverend to see a couple more of Mr. Happy’s jaws. The Reverend hadn’t been able to find anything to strike Mr. Happy with. There wasn’t even a handful of sand to throw at him.

Hell was remarkably inconvenient in that way.

The Reverend heard a voice inside his head. It was cold, deep and malicious. It said, “I am going to break you again and again.”

The smaller demon stood up, reluctantly, and shouted something brief to Mr. Happy. Mr. Happy stopped smiling. His expression was, if anything, worse than the smile.

“I am going to break you, later,” said the voice in the Reverend’s head.

Mr. Happy and the smaller demon disappeared, leaving the Reverend alone in a pitch dark pit, cold, naked and shivering.

The Reverend decided to make the best of the situation by weeping and gnashing his teeth.

The Basic Idea

2008-10-18T22:43:00.000-07:00

Everybody's favorite pair of unemployed deities are back for their third adventure (as chronicled by your humble author).

When a small demon becomes his constant companion, a crooked traveling revival preacher learns he is damned to a hell he didn't even believe in. Hephaestus and Scroat try to help him save his soul, but ultimately it is up to the preacher to redeem himself and, perhaps, help the demon in the process.

Welcome to my 2008 Novel!

2008-10-12T17:56:00.000-07:00

Hep & Scroat will be back for a new adventure.

...More details when I come up with them.