by Bob Bannon
She had worked at the diner for a little more than a year. It was her first job that she got the summer she turned sixteen and continued it with limited hours into her senior year. She loved everything about it. Well, maybe not the greasy food and the fact that she’d sometimes come home smelling like french fries, but she loved talking to people and the job made her feel useful and responsible.
She liked her co-workers. The two women there had been waitresses for years and advised her not to stay long and to make sure she went to college. They felt a degree was very important. For her, college was just a given. She liked school and hadn’t given a second thought to not continuing.
And then there was Sally. He was the cook in the back. “Cook,” he had said to her, “I ain’t a chef.” She was sure Sally had been an attractive man somewhere in his past, but now he was older and tubby and had gray hair coming out in patches underneath the baseball cap he always wore in the kitchen. He also liked to say the funniest, rudest things about people he would see in the diner. He never ceased to make her giggle in shock.
She was thinking about all of this as she got to the block her house was on. She almost turned, but decided she’d like a latte from the gas station another two blocks up. It sounded good on a snowy night like tonight. She didn’t mind the cold; she was quite warm in her new winter coat.
She walked into the station and said “Hi, Mister Nolan.”
“Umm…Yup,” was the response she got from the old man behind the window of glass who was right now chewing on an unlit pipe.
She went to school with Mister Nolan’s grandson, Ryan. Ryan was a senior and was on the baseball team. His father was a dentist. His grandfather had owned the gas station for as long as anyone could remember, and he also ran the only tow truck business for miles around. Mister Nolan was known for never really saying much.
She went directly to the latte machine and filled a large Styrofoam cup. She was just putting a drink carrier around it when she heard the roar of a loud engine pull up outside. It sounded like a very old car.
When she turned to walk to the register, a man wearing a stocking over his head entered the store and pulled a gun from his jacket.
He pointed it at Mister Nolan and pointed it at Jenna, making her drop her latte.
“Oh my God, please!” She screamed.
“Gimme all the money in the drawer, old man.” The man demanded.
Mister Nolan didn’t know quite what to do. He looked at Jenna, then looked at the man. It was impossible to tell what the man’s face looked like. It seemed mashed under the stocking. He wore a blue windbreaker that was zipped up all the way and jeans that had holes in the knees.
“Now!” The man yelled, pointing the gun from the glass in front of Mister Nolan and back at Jenna. Back and forth.
His demand seemed to propel Mister Nolan into action. He had just pushed the button to open the register when the oddest thing happened.
A red and black blur seemed to shove the man into the far corner of the store.
It happened so fast Jenna screamed.
Standing in front of the man, with two bright-red hands clutched firmly on the front of the robber’s windbreaker, was a devil. A real-life devil in a black leather suicide coat. And between the slit in the back of the long coat was a very real, very long, spiked tail.
When it turned its head toward Jenna, she could see that its eyes were black as night and rimmed with black, making them look even darker. Its lips were black, making the sparkling white teeth from its devilish smile actually twinkle.
The devil bashed the man against the beer cooler. He went down in a heap. In the next heartbeat, it was there, right in front of her.
“You okay, gorgeous?” the Red Devil said to her in the kindest, lushest deep voice.
“I…” she swallowed hard. “Um…” was all she could get out.
She got a better look at the thing. He was completely ruby-red, head to toe. He didn’t have a shirt on, only the flowing black overcoat and a pair of black shorts that went down to his knees. His head was completely bald. He had no eyebrows, and when she looked in his eyes, she could swear she actually saw small flames deep inside.
As she took all of this in, her knees gave way. The devil caught her just before she hit the floor.
Just then the robber stirred from the floor. She heard the gun clank against the floor, then heard it clank against the beer cooler. A shot rang out.
Her ears registered a sound as air moved past her. Zzzip. She was at the back of the store. The thing in front of her had moved her with its incredible speed.
She saw over the Red Devil’s shoulder that the man had shot at the glass in front of Mister Nolan, who had ducked under his counter. The glass was bulletproof, so the bullet cracked it, but also lodged in it.
The man raised the gun again and zzzip she was in front of the magazine rack just as he fired at the spot where she had been at the back of the store.
“Be right back.” The devil said to her with that steely smile.
His tail seemed to move on its own. It grew longer and coiled around the fluorescent hanging light above them. He lifted off the floor and swung in an arc, turning himself toward the gunman who was still on the floor.
He landed with a foot on either side of the man, his devilish face right in front of the man’s face. Causing the man to make a gurgled noise that was either fear, or surprise, but most likely both. The tail swung wild and its spike dug into the hand holding the gun. It immediately clanked to the floor as the man yelped in pain.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to point things at pretty ladies?” The devil said in the man’s face.
“I...” was the only thing the man could say. The devil reared up and punched the man square in the face. Jenna heard the man’s head hit the floor hard.
The devil was back in front of her in the next second. His fingers traced the edge of the shelf of the magazine rack. He began drumming them while he looked deep into her eyes.
“So,” he began, “you think I could get your number, or, well, something. You know. Hero is supposed to get the girl and all.”
She could only stare at his perfectly white teeth as he tried to put on a smile that seemed to say ‘aw shucks’.
Just then, the gunman stirred on the floor and was mumbling something in pain. His nose had certainly been broken and it looked like his hand was bleeding.
The spiked tail flew out again, seemingly of its own accord, wrapped itself around one end of a shelving unit full of goods just to the left of the man and toppled the entire thing, cans and all, right on top of the guy. He was certainly down for good this time. The tail returned to its normal length.
Sirens rang out somewhere up the street. Mister Nolan had obviously pushed the alarm.
“Gotta go, gorgeous. Maybe next time, then?” The devil said with a smirk and a raised eyebrow that wasn’t there. And then he was gone out the front door.
Mister Nolan had reappeared behind the glass and had watched the entire exchange. She was just about to say something when the devil was back in the next breath, standing at the register.
He snagged a large bag of popcorn from the row of bags in front of the counter with his tail and held it up. “Hey, pops. You mind?” he said pointing at the bag.
Mister Nolan looked at Jenna, looked at the bag, looked at the Red Devil and shrugged.
The devil turned back to Jenna and he shrugged too. “I love popcorn. What’re ya gonna do? Am I right?” And then he was gone again.
This time, she hesitated a moment longer, unsure he wouldn’t be back. A moment ticked by, then two. She finally said, “You saw that, right?”
“Ummm..Yup,” was what Mister Nolan said.
VIII
Jonah woke up in his nest of furniture covers and the electric blanket. He could tell it was another one of the late days from the placement of the sun on the floor. He braced himself for the pain, and the pain came.
He curled up in a ball
and tried not to cry. As always, it shot straight through his left eye and bored its way through. He gripped the sides of the blanket and waited for it to pass. Squeezing his eyes shut seemed to always help.
This was one of the rough ones. He hadn’t seen the clock when he opened his eyes, but he was sure it was a while before he could open them again. As it subsided to a dull ache in the back of his brain, he bolted up and went to the bathroom for a drink of water.
When he came back into the office, he noticed the backpack, which he hadn’t brought in last night, was on the roll top desk. It was unzipped and the notebook containing the mysterious notes had been opened. He moved toward it.
Written in yet another handwriting, on a third page, was a simple line:
I Like her. That one’s a keeper. A little quiet for my taste.
“She’s a keeper?’ Jonah said out loud. “Who’s a keeper?”
He looked for more in the notebook, but there were only the three notes. He dropped the notebook on the floor and tried the door handle. It was still locked.
This was getting annoying as well as frightening. The blanket, the food, and now the realization that someone knew where he hid the backpack during the day. Yet somehow they could get in through a locked door without him hearing and get out as well. Not that he suspected for a moment that the lock was the sturdiest thing, but just tampering with it would make a racket.
He put on his coat and his boots and went downstairs. He found Grouchy at the bottom step with his head half inside a bag of popcorn. The raccoon had heard him coming and withdrew from the bag for only a moment, sized him up, and decided he liked the popcorn too much to bother.
“Now you’re getting snacks too, I see.” Jonah said to him. “Care to fill me in?” Grouchy ignored him.
Jonah stepped off the other side of the step, giving the animal a wide berth, and looked around the room. It would be impossible to guess if someone left footprints in here. Too much dust and debris shifted around the room in the wind. Nothing looked like it had been moved. The chains were still on the doors. He couldn’t quite figure out what was going on.
He went back up the steps and into the office. He looked down at the notebook. The pen had been neatly placed in the spiral binding. He stared down at it. Then, with a huff, he bent down, picked it up and turned to the next page. He grabbed the pen, turned the notebook sideways and wrote in large capital letters:
PLEASE TELL ME WHO YOU ARE
He wrote from one end of the paper to another.
He jammed his belongings one after another into the backpack, except for the tablet. He shoved the blanket into the roll top desk and shut it. The notebook he rested on the control panel with the note facing the entire room. If anyone came in, they couldn’t miss it.
He wasn’t at all sure if he was coming back to his nest this time, but he put the backpack inside the little door under the stairs and took his tablet to the mall.
The first thing he noticed on Main Street is that more people were talking to each other animatedly. Everyone seemed to be excited about something. He wondered if that something would be in the news headlines today. He felt it gave him something to look forward to.
By the time he got into the mall. He noticed even more groups of people huddled together. Something was definitely going on. Still, he kept to his routine. He made a loop around the mall, wondering what had everyone so excited. He wanted to prolong it, but eventually sat down near the central fountain and opened the tablet.
As soon as the internet signal turned green, he touched the local news button, which he had saved to the start page. What he saw startled him. It was an artist’s rendition of a devil, drawn in red ink. It had dark eyes and dark lips and wore a long coat and board shorts.
The headline read:
Red Devil saves 2 during local robbery
There was a picture of Jenna, from the diner, and the old man from the gas station talking to a reporter.
The story went on to recount something that moved extraordinarily fast, with red skin and a long tail that foiled a robbery at gun-point. Jenna Worth, 17, was buying coffee after work when a young man, identified as John Hopper, 26, attempted to hold up the gas station owned by Jensen Nolan, 72. What the paper labeled the Red Devil appeared on the scene and subdued the assailant and then disappeared as fast as he came in upon hearing police sirens. The seventeen year-old Worth appeared to be in shock, but told reporters that it wasn’t a man, it was indeed a devil. “Not the devil,” she declared, “but a devil.” She also described him as short. Shorter than her, at any rate. Mister Nolan agreed with her account, to police, but refused to answer what he thought this hero may or may not be.
Jonah was enthralled. It sounded like something out of a comic book. But he worried about Jenna. He recognized her picture immediately. He hoped she wasn’t too frightened by the experience. Maybe he’d go see her again if he could collect enough change and he’d ask her about it.
There were no other really interesting headlines today. He doubted anything could measure up to the first one. So, he opened the “Kat Skratch” game.
A while later, Jonah searched around for a new perch in the mall, preferably one with an electrical outlet nearby. The video game was fun, but it was certainly a battery eater.
He found one on the first floor over near the department store at the far end of the mall. He plugged in and sat down with his legs stretched out across the entire bench. He’d been playing for about twenty minutes when he looked up and saw a boy about his age playing a video game on his phone. The boy had sandy hair that fell into his eyes, which were covered by dark-rimmed glasses. He wore a blue hoodie with a surfing logo on the sleeve and blue jeans.
Jonah had never considered talking to anyone in the mall, mostly because the people here consisted of groups and he wasn’t quite sure how to interrupt or randomly join into their conversations. But this boy was all by himself and clearly getting frustrated by whatever he was doing.
“C’mon!” The boy yelled. “No! Aw, c’mon!”
Jonah unplugged his tablet and stuffed the cord into his coat pocket. He walked over to the boy and said “Hey,” as a greeting.
“What?’ The boy said without looking up from his game. The word came out bluntly, with a sharp tone of annoyance and maybe a twinge of anger that was clearly directed at Jonah and not misplaced by the boy’s frustration with his game.
“I just wanted to know what you were playing,” Jonah said in a defensive tone.
“Why?” The boy said in the same biting tone.
“Fine,” Jonah said. “Skip it.” The boy clearly didn’t want to be bothered. Jonah started to go back to his own place across the seating area.
With an exaggerated huff, the boy paused his game and said “I’m playing Kat Skratch, okay?”
Jonah turned back and said “Oh my God, I love Kat Skratch! What level are you on?”
Whatever defenses were up around the boy seemed to momentarily melt but then Jonah could see something go back up in the kid’s eyes. “Thirteen,” the boy said, as if it were more of a question, as if he were unsure whether that was okay.
“Oh I hated thirteen!” Jonah said. “What character are you using?”
“Danger Man,” the boy said, again, as if asking if that was right.
Jonah sat down on the bench next to the kid. He’d unlocked Danger Man some time ago. Danger Man was all wrong for thirteen. He was a huge, hulking figure with muscular arms. He could throw things incredible distances and he could jump a long way and come down with a force that would shake the floor and throw down nearby enemies. But that’s not what you needed on thirteen, “Oh, no,” he said. “You can’t use Danger Man for thirteen.”
“What do you mean?” The boy asked, finally turning in his seat to face Jonah. “Who are you using?”
“Hell Kat,” Jonah said with pride. He pointed at the screen on the kid’s phone. “See. You have to get behind the guys on thirteen, they just catch everything you thr
ow at them from the front and throw it back at you.” He was pointing out things on the screen. “If you use Hell Kat, you can bounce off the walls and get behind them and then all you have to do is scratch them three times.”
“I like Danger Man though,” the kid said. “I’m kind of used to what he can do. I think it would be worse if I switched it up.”
“Okay,” Jonah said. “Then try and throw things off the wall.”
The kid considered it and then unpaused his game. Jonah watched over his shoulder.
On the screen, Danger Man picked up a trash can, threw it high at a filing cabinet. It broke the cabinet, but bounced and hit the bad guy behind him. He’d scored a hit.
“Oh, man!” The kid said. He repeated the process with objects in the game, a desk, and a floor light. The bad guy went down and disappeared.
“That’s so much better!” the kid said with a big smile.
“I know, right?” Jonah and smiled back. “Hey, are you online?”
“I think so.” The boy said.
“Does your version of the game have co-op?” Jonah asked.
“I don’t know.” He replied.
“Check your settings.” Jonah said.
The boy went to the game settings and saw the co-op feature. He pushed the Enable button.
“What’s your log-in?” Jonah asked.
“one-Eric-one-M-one,” said the boy.
“Mine is Jonah-twenty-three-H,” Jonah said. “See if it comes up.”
Jonah went to the settings on his game and enabled co-op and then input the boy’s log-in name.
“Oh, cool.” The kid said. “I got your request to join, but it says you’re level fifteen. You can’t join my game until I get there.”
“So see if you can get there.” Jonah said.
“Alright…” The boy said, as if that might be easier said than done.
A half-hour later, Danger man was hurtling through the last half of level fourteen. Jonah had helped where he could. The two boys were hooting and hollering when something went right, and equally frustrated when Danger Man failed and had to restart from a checkpoint.
