by Mark Eller
* * * *
Feeling nervous, Phrandex clutched his cloak around him. He didn’t like the idea of being above ground at such a terribly young age. According to the tales around the caverns, humans smelled funny, had weird habits, and resented being eaten. He hated the thought of walking among them, but really, how else was he going to gain experience so he could properly teach his precious brood about the world they would someday own.
The devil peeked around the corner of the Hellhole Tavern’s kitchen door. According to his teaching the low amount of light coming through the window indicated it was early morning as humans reckoned things. The place appeared empty. Good. He didn’t want to face off with one of those pesky knights he had heard were often lurking about. The tales said human knights had always tried to catch his kind as they came out of the hole back before the king forbade them doing so. They waved their swords about, shouted, whacked, jabbed, and just generally annoyed his brethren. Pains in the ass, every one of them,
Or so he had heard.
Phrandex quickly scuttled across the dirty wood floor and took up a position near the entrance. He glanced carefully about and found the street full of loud and nauseatingly sweet smelling people.
How in the two hells was he going to find his way around and get what he needed? He clacked his jaws in frustration. Maybe he wasn’t going to get a nursemaid after all. Ideally, he could reach out the tavern’s door and just snatch a woman, but what if she hated children, and what if one of those knights were out there with their pointy things? No. He had to have a milkmaid. Or was that a nursemaid? But how?
“Can I help you, stranger?”
Phrandex nearly jumped out of his scales when a man’s voice spoke from behind him. How had he missed the fellow? He turned slowly, making sure his face was in shadow and his shape change remained mostly intact. Standing behind the bar was a large, stout man with his hands resting on the bar top. He was as tall as Phrandex and almost as hairless. What little hair he did have swirled in gray wisps around his head. He wore a brown shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
“I…ah…am looking for someone.”
“Hmm. Who would that be?” The man’s hands remained carefully near the bar’s edge, probably because he had a weapon of some sort hidden there. Was he one of those knight things?
Phrandex frowned. The man was most likely the owner, but he had heard human knights were slippery fellows good at deceiving even the most careful of devils. No easy feat. This human seemed to be sizing him up as well. Maybe he should eat him and be done with it. Still, the man didn’t appear to be armed so he might not be a knight. What a quandary. To eat or not eat, that was the question.
Not. He needed answers, and this human was the only intelligent being around who could give them to him. If he proved useless, well— it was past breakfast time wasn’t it?
Phrandex stepped closer to the bar and examined the surroundings. Behind the bar were many bottles of liquor, one of them labeled ‘Evertrue Whiskey.’ At the sight of the bottle Phrandex drooled. He loved Evertrue Whiskey. His mother once brought him half a bottle of it for his seventy-fourth birthday.
Fishing out a large diamond, the devil threw it on the bar. “I want two bottles of your best Evertrue.” He looked down to see that a large puddle of his drool had fallen to the bar top.
Looking disgusted, the bartender eyed him suspiciously before picking up the diamond and biting it. “Huh. Feels real. Where did you get this?”
Phrandex pulled his tongue back into his mouth and allowed his shape to revert slightly back towards devil. “In Hell.”
With his expression suddenly cool, the bartender moved through a doorway leading to, Phrandex assumed, the kitchen.
Phrandex frowned. Was the man being tricky? There were tales of tricky humans, and this one, Carrid Brewer, Phrandex remembered from the tales, had a reputation of being especially tricky.
Just to be careful, he walked around the bar and into the kitchen. When he walked through the door, the bartender wheeled on him with a pan, smacking Phrandex directly in the face.
Phrandex blinked. “You hit me.”
Carrid looked at the ruined pan.
Casually, Phrandex grabbed the man by the throat. Carrid gasped when Phrandex lifted the bartender off his feet and shook him. “Now that was not nice. You will give me back my diamond plus four bottles of whiskey. Now!”
After shaking him once more to make sure the fellow got the message, Phrandex released his hold. The bartender scuttled quickly out of the devil’s way, ran into a back room, and reappeared moments later with the requested items.
“Good. Furthermore human, you will get me a…” Phrandex paused. Was it a nursemaid he wanted? Yes, yes, at least he thought that was it. “A nursemaid. Now.”
With a slow shake of his head, Carrid Brewer’s face scrunched into an odd, perplexed expression. “I ain’t got no nursemaids. All I have are barmaids, and none of them are here yet. You have to go uptown to get yourself a nanny.”
Phrandex tilted his head. “A what?”
“A nanny, nursemaid, brood mother. Same thing. Just depends on where you’re from.”
Puzzled Phrandex didn’t know if it was better to have a nanny, a boob mother, or a milkmaid? This human was confusing him. Irritated, Phrandex grabbed and shook him again. “What is a boob mother, and is she better than a milkmaid?”
The man’s feet kicked frantically as his face turned an odd shade of blue. “Gack!”
Frowning, Phrandex loosened his grip and allowed Carrid’s feet to touch the ground. After a considerable amount of coughing, color returned to his face.
“Fascinating. You humans change color just like Similians do?” Because he liked experimenting, Phrandex played with the man for a while, testing his color range until he passed out.
“Oh hells bells, now what?” Phrandex nudged the big man’s still form for several minutes before a shrill scream rent the air. For the second time that morning, Phrandex nearly shed his scales.
“By Nedross, you killed him. You murdered Carrid.” A skinny, bedraggled, young woman stared at Phrandex from the kitchen doorway. Her long skirted dress was the same drab brown as her hair and eyes. A filthy gray apron was tied at her waist, and she looked like she had just crawled out of a garbage pile. When her eyes grew huge, Phrandex remembered he still wore his devil face.
“I did, most certainly, not kill Carrid,” Phrandex replied, allowing his features to shift back to something near human, a bit insulted at the idea he would kill someone without first torturing them for a day or so.
The woman looked up at him with wide, terrified eyes. He liked that. A feeling of perverse pleasure stole over him. The urge to grab her and experiment was nearly overwhelming. He resisted the temptation. Maybe she knew about boob mothers.
Reaching over, he casually snagged the woman by her hair. She screamed and kicked in a useless attempt to hurt him. “Now look, stop this nonsense. I only want to ask a question or two, and then I’ll let you go.” At least he thought he might. After all, she had brought up the subject of killing first.
The smelly creature stopped howling. Tears still ran down her dirt smudged face, but the noise was gone. Much better.
Phrandex grinned with satisfaction. “I need to find a boob mother or a ninny or something like that. Or a milkmaid if you know of one. Hmm. No. Wait. I don’t think milkmaid is it. What was that word again?” Phrandex’s mind twisted and turned as visions of mother’s with three and four boobs popped in and out of his head. “No, no, milkmaids are the women who don’t taste like milk.”
His captive whimpered. “I ain’t no milkmaid, and I don’t know what any of those other things are either.”
Blast it all. He had played too much with the bartender so he had to start all over with the explanations again. Fortunately, this human looked intimidated and pliable. She seemed like someone who would give him the information he needed with almost no persuasion. However, she kept one hand nea
r her pocket, probably where she concealed a knife. A trace of anger stirred in him. Briefly, he thought about breaking her for her effrontery, but refrained. She was the only human he had left.
Compromising, he stopped hurting her after she wore only a couple dozen small bruises. Phrandex carefully released the woman and once more explained what he needed. She rewarded him with detailed instructions on what he had to do.
“So, I have to go uptown to 356 Workers Lane and apply for a nanny? Correct?” Phrandex asked ten minutes later.
She nodded quickly. “Please, may I go now?”
“No, I can’t possibly go out there and do this. I’ve never actually walked in the human world before. I would end up lost.” Or worse, he thought darkly, he might run into one of those knights he had heard about. The king’s stricture about them leaving hellkind alone didn’t apply outside the tavern. “You go. Give them these diamonds and tell them I want their best milkmaid. When you have her, bring her to me here. If you don’t—” Flexing his talons, Phrandex snapped his jaws shut. “I have your scent. I’ll know where to find you.”
The woman shuddered and shrank toward the door. “I’ll be back soon.” She turned and ran.
After she left, Phrandex sighed and sat down next to the unmoving bartender. He hoped the woman returned with his–what was that again? Boob mother? No! Oh, damn it all, he just wanted to get back to his babies. Hopefully his threat was enough to bring the woman back because he honestly didn’t know if he could find her again. These humans all stunk the same, probably the result of too much bathing.
