Death Sucks

by Andrew Mallen

  “Go on,” Sin fiended for more.

  “He asked me to be his spy, to come here and find out as much as I could about you and your plan. The size of your army? Where and when you planned on attacking, that kind of thing,” Bobby explained tensely.

  “And is that what you are doing? Is that where your allegiance lies, with him?” Sin’s deep voice bellowed the accusations.

  Bobby put on his best look of insulted outraged and shook his head in disgust. “I ain’t exactly a genius or nothing but I’m not stupid. I would never agree to spy on Satan…on you. I‘m not a moron and only a complete fucking moron would try to deceive the great deceiver. Not exactly a healthy choice, you know what I mean?”

  “I do,” Sin replied and studied Bobby carefully for any sign of treachery.

  “Listen Sin, Mr. Sin, I came here to tell you about what I learned so you’d know what was going on. That dude’s scared shitless. He thinks you’re out to get him and he’s scrambling to try and save his ass. I’m just doing my job here, trying to serve and protect the Master, you.”

  “Do you think I need your protection? Or that you can protect me? I am Sin! I am God! I am worshiped by the uncountable in uncountable worlds!” he boomed as he burst from his chair and began pacing in front of the fireplace. “So Esha would see me destroyed. He has at last found the balls to face me!”

  “Uh uh,” Bobby disagreed and Sin spun on him like a rabid mongoose, his blue eyes had turned completely black and the glimmering pools of hate held Bobby in their fearsome glare.

  “He’s still got no balls is all I meant,” Bobby explained as his own balls retreated into the safety of his abdomen. “He sent me to face you right? He sent me to do recon because he’s afraid he might not be able to defeat you.”

  “He can’t! He is too weak! Too pathetic! Too afraid of me!” Sin roared and his voice filled every inch of the massive chamber.

  “Yeah!” Bobby pounced to his feet and pumped his fist in the air. “Fuck that guy!”

  Sin paused his pacing and stared at the Reaper curiously. Bobby shrunk back into his chair as if scolded, “I got overexcited, my bad.”

  “No Robert, no need. It is the opposite in fact, you should be proud to share my rage, my lust for revenge, my cry for war.”

  “War?” Bobby didn’t like the sound of that.

  “War! Yes! War! It has been too long! I have waited too long! It is time to take back what was stolen from me! It is time to make him pay for all that he has done to me!”

  “Massive!” Bobby cheered. “Epic!”

  Sin regarded him once again with a baffled look on his face, “Odd choice of words Robert.”

  “Oh, well, I was just saying that with your army of Reapers and his new army of Angels that it’ll be huge ya’know. Like Lord of the Rings type of stuff or D-Day without the guns, epic right?” Bobby tried to seem thrilled even as his fear began to reassert itself.

  “New army?” Sin growled as he approached Bobby’s chair. “What new army? Speak!”

  “Oh, I…I thought you knew,” Bobby didn’t need to pretend he was afraid, he was terrified.

  “Speak!” Sin snarled, it was no sound a human could make or any other creature Bobby could think of.

  “He must have had a spy here before me because he said he knew about your army and had started building his own. He thinks he has the numbers but couldn’t be sure, that’s why he sent me. He said he did not want to send his children to war. He said he would do it if he had to but he doesn’t want to ya’know. He’s scared, he’s like a super big pussy. He was talking about making some sort of treaty or a pact or something.”

  “Scared?” Sin liked that part.

  “Terrified.”

  “Interesting, Robert, very interesting,” Sin’s voice was human again. “So, Bobby, tell me, how were you supposed to convey this ill begotten information about me to my dear brother?”

  “He figured I’d be put back into service ya’know. He said once I was back in the rotation that he’d meet me at my first assignment,” Bobby dropped the bomb as casually as if ordering a latte.

  Sin backed off and began to pace frantically, pulling at his hair, tugging at his clothes and dancing to the rhythm of whatever mad music echoed in his head. His rage induced antics made a mess of his suit, his designer coiffure jutted in every direction and his drastically pointed dress shoes bulged and split in their failed attempt to contain whatever grew inside them. “He knows! He knows when to meet you so he knows who is going to die. He’s figured it out as well. He can forecast death! He is cheating! The hypocritical, lying, self-centered bastard is cheating!”

  Bobby watched and waited as Sin frolicked like a kid who’d just won a giant stuffed animal at the county fair with his last dollar. Sin twirled and laughed and cried and howled while tearing off his suit and tossing it into the hungry fire as he did. “Get Jones now!” he commanded when the antics slowed.

  Bobby obeyed.

  “Tell him to bring my scythe! Tell him we are going on a field trip!” Sin cackled and commenced his wacky cavorting.

  I hope you know what you’re doing up there Gordo. It looks like you caught yourself another big one but this one has teeth.

  *

  “Hey asshole, Sin wants you!” Bobby shouted.

  Jones jumped, startled from whatever sick fantasy he’d been lost in. “What did you say you little wanker?”

  “Your Master wants you and he said to bring his scythe.”

  Jones grinded his teeth, a glob of spit dripped from the corner of his murderous sneer. He hated Bobby with everything he had and wanted nothing more than to skin the Reaper alive and roll him on salt.

  “Oh…and hurry the fuck up about it too,” Bobby savored the torment. “Chop, chop. On your bike and all that rot my good chap.”

  “You’ll regret this boy,” Jones growled.

  Bobby smiled, flipped him the double bird, spun and skipped back to where Satan waited leaving Jones to choke on his fury.

  Sin had gone through some serious changes by the time Bobby returned to the library. At least three feet taller and three feet thicker, his slick suit had been replaced only by a rough leather kilt revealing a torso laden with thick, knotty muscle that bulged with his every movement. The smooth, golden brown skin of his former self had given way to a dense covering of bile green scales. The neat rows of armor rippled and flexed as the muscle beneath them tested their restraints. “Where is he?” he hissed and turned on Bobby as he approached.

  Bobby froze in terror and in awe.

  Holy shit! What the fucked happened here?

  Sin’s face was no longer handsome. It was no longer human. The black eyes remained but lived now in the shadow of a squared brow of ridged bone that spread across the expanse of his wide face. A rusty nail pierced each of his long, narrow ears and another speared the flaring nostrils of his bulbous nose. A wickedly curved black horn erupted from the neat bed of scales on his chin. His powerful, angular jaw flexed with impatient energy. “Holy? No boy, not holy, not even close. Where is Mr. Jones?”

  “He…he’s coming,” Bobby managed to reply even though most of his energy went into keeping himself from running.

  “Do you not approve?” Sin raised his thick arms and spun like Chernobyl’s Ms. Universe candidate.

  Bobby simply stared, it was all he was capable of.

  “Is it not what you would expect? Isn’t this how I am seen? The gruesome, fallen Angel corrupted in mind and body by his own evil?”

  Nope. No tail. No horns. Wrong color. Spielberg would definitely fire the fx guys.

  “Horns are too much, a tail’s a nuisance and red seems cliché but I can change if you think it would be a better look,” Sin answered Bobby’s thoughts.

  “No dude, no way!” Bobby backpedaled sensing that his host would not be as gracious and forgiving as he had been earlier now that he’d entered battle mode. “You look awesome dude! Scary as fuck!”

  Sin smiled revealing two r
ows of tightly packed, needlelike teeth.

  “Seriously, if I could piss myself I’d be ankle deep right now,” Bobby continued the unusual sweet talk. “Horns would be kinda cliché, too Disney maybe, ya’know. No, you got it, that’s the look if you want to scare the crap out of people.”

  “The scales?” Sin looked down at himself. “Black? Maybe purple?”

  Really, fashion advice? Shit keeps getting weirder and weirder.

  “Definitely not purple!” Bobby cried imagining the Prince version of Satan trying to scare someone only to have them laugh and break into a rendition of Purple Rain. “That weird green thing ain’t working though, too Hulky I think. Maybe try like dark red or burgundy or something?”

  “Dried blood! I like it.” Satan was into it and flashed from green to blood-clot red like the world’s weirdest traffic light ever before Bobby’s eyes.

  Bobby gave the monster two thumbs up. Sin nodded and scratched his navelless belly with the black claws that had replaced his manicured nails, “Where is that worthless pile of dog shit?”

  “Here Master,” Jones stumbled into the library, overburdened and imbalanced by the colossal scythe he carried.

  “Wow,” Bobby muttered as he watched Jones stagger toward them while trying his best not to crumble under the apparent weight of the giant weapon.

  The thick handle had to be at least twice the big man’s height and its curved blade was easily ten feet from its wide base to its lethal tip. As black as the eyes of the creature who owned it, the blade glimmered in the light of the fire as deadly as it was intimidating. Sin plucked it from Jones, its weight as inconsequential to him as it was overwhelming to his second. “It has been too long my beauty,” Sin whispered and kissed the ebony iron lovingly.

  Weird…

  “What do you think?” Sin asked.

  “You look magnificent Master,” Jones kissed ass.

  “Not you dog!” Sin snapped, literally, his teeth collided with the force of a well-oiled bear trap.

  Jones cowered and retreated slowly backward. Sin looked to Bobby.

  “Yeah, you look like a bad ass!” Bobby spiced it up. “A real ass-kicking machine.”

  “Deadly?”

  “Very.”

  “Terrifying?”

  “Extremely.”

  I guess confidence issues run in the family.

  “Horns? Yes, no?” Sin wasn’t yet satisfied.

  “Let’s see them,” Bobby was game, it wasn’t everyday he got to design a god.

  A long, curved, black horn sprouted from either side of Sin’s massive head as he watched Bobby intently for his reaction.

  “That’s like the coolest thing ever!” Bobby obliged. “Don’t go all Hellboy though, maybe just a short curve. Keep them tight, ya’know, like maybe a foot, foot and a half.”

  Sin heeded the advice. The horns morphed to Bobby’s exact specifications, curving and thickening until the reaper raised a hand to halt the transformation, “Yeah, right there! Wicked!”

  “Tail?” Sin asked.

  “No tail,” Bobby shook off the request.

  “You sure?” Sin wasn’t convinced.

  “Nah, dogs have tails, mice, pussy cats, that’s not what we’re going for, right?”

  Shit’s weird enough.

  “Ok, no tail then, good.”

  “You are one scary, bad-ass motherfucker!” Bobby whooped and clapped.

  Sin smiled, threw his newly horned head back and bellowed laughter with such power that the flaming sky fluttered high above them. Bobby covered his ears as the echoes bounced off the walls and assaulted him again and again. He noticed Jones’ eyes were locked on him, felt his hate and smiled.

  Right back at you asshole.

  *

  “I have a plan. Listen carefully,” Sin announced and watched the Reapers for any sign they were not giving him the undivided attention he required, neither made the mistake. “Good.”

  Sin revealed a simple plan that was exactly what his brother had expected of him. Bobby nodded along as the demon explained it while trying his best not to cringe when the bloody parts were explained.

  “We go alone?” Jones asked in fearful surprise once Sin was done.

  “There are three of us and only two of them,” Bobby dismissed the concern.

  Jones ignored it, “We should bring a dozen hunters at least my Master and leave nothing to chance.”

  Sin considered his Second’s advice in silence.

  “He’s Satan dude, fucking Satan! Look at him, do you really think he can be beaten?” Bobby cried, he needed to make sure they went to the rendezvous alone.

  Jones growled at Bobby like a wolf protecting his kill. He was a sick, twisted prick but he was no fool.

  “Do you think I can be defeated?” Sin interrupted with a heavily loaded question.

  Jones was in a tight spot and he knew it, “No Master, of course not but why risk being ambushed? What if he brings an army of his own?”

  Sin nodded, Jones’s point was a good one.

  “He won’t,” Bobby tried to smother the thought before it grew roots. “He thinks he is meeting me. He won’t bring anyone, he’ll be afraid that if he showed up with a hundred Angels that you would notice it. Even if you had no idea what was going on, if I never told you about it, you’d definitely notice if an army of Angels popped up in one spot and then it’d be game over, his whole plan would be ruined.”

  “It is an unnecessary risk Master,” Jones wasn’t willing to concede. “What if this one is in league with him, what if he was sent here to draw you out?”

  Bobby laughed, hoping it would hide the shock of hearing Jones lay out God’s plan so precisely. “Dude, you’re on crack! I’m just a Reaper! He’s Satan. You really think I can fool him, you think I can mind fuck this guy? Wow! You really don’t think much of the Master if you believe he’s that stupid.”

  Jones growled, kneading his hands together as if squeezing Bobby’s throat. “You…you’re up to something. You’re not fooling me with this pathetic act of yours! You’re…you’re in league with them!”

  “Fuck you,” Bobby growled and took his scythe in both hands.

  “I will have you boy,” Jones snarled and hoisted his own.

  “Stop!” Sin commanded. “I would enjoy watching you two hack at each other but it must wait.”

  Bobby and Jones had each other locked in a tractor beam of bloodlust.

  “Stop I said!” Sin roared with such power that it shook the room and the Reapers turned their attention back to him in nervous unison. “Do not make me say something twice dogs. I will not tolerate insolence.”

  “Forgive me my Master?” Jones begged.

  “Forgive!” Sin boomed.

  Oh man, you fucked yourself good and hard this time dumbass.

  “Sorry Master,” Jones was on a roll.

  “Sorry!” Sin erupted.

  Keep digging asshole.

  “No Master, I am not myself!” Jones cried, fear dripped from every word.

  “Then who are you?” Sin stalked toward the groveling Reaper.

  Bobby noticed Sin’s feet for the first time and did a Gary Coleman double take. No cobbler, no matter how skilled or how Italian, could craft a shoe to cover the odd appendages. Hooves, Bobby could have accepted hooves, but instead Sin sported a set of feet any raptor or ostrich would envy.

  He’d make a fortune on the Tijuana cock fight circuit.

  Each of the three thick, segmented, round front toes sprouted directly from each bony ankles and were capped with wickedly curved claws. The fourth, which jutted backward, held another larger claw. They clicked impatiently on the floor as he closed on Jones who had fallen to his knees to plead for mercy. “I am a fool my Master! I am unworthy! I am shit, nothing, nobody.”

  Smartest thing he’s ever said.

  “Grant!” Sin called without looking up from his prey.

  “Yeah,” Bobby yelped, startled.

  “What should I do to this wretch?�
��

  Oh, that’s not fair! Easy Bobby, easy now.

  “He made some really bad choices for sure but I think we need him,” Bobby tried not to sound overeager but wanted so badly to see Jones get a healthy dose of what he so willingly gave. “Maybe if you soften him up a bit, until you feel he has paid his dues, then he’ll learn his lesson.”

  “We can find another,” Sin offered another enticing option. “Maybe one who is not such a sniveling coward?”

  “Up to you boss,” Bobby said realizing Jones’s time might be up regardless of what he had to say about it.

  “You deserve to be punished,” Sin growled, so raw it was almost indecipherable.

  “Yes Master,” Jones wisely agreed. “I do.”

  “You will be punished.”

  “Yes my Master.”

  Come on already. Shit or get off the pot!

  Jones shot up into the flaming sky with such speed that he was nothing more than a blur. Bobby watched as the Englishman disappeared inside the swirling fire and a twinge of empathy reared its telltale head inside him.

  Pussy.

  Jones reappeared as a spasming comet of flailing limbs a moment later. He careened silently back down toward the ground with ever increasing speed trailing the smoke of his burning flesh in his wake. The impact was both incredible and sickening. Jones splattered against the stone floor with a flat, wet slap. His body ruptured. His charred innards spewed in every direction. A wet, glob of unidentifiable goo sloshed against Bobby’s bare feet. Sin cheered. Bobby wanted to puke but stood in silent, terrified awe instead.

  The puddle of gore provided no clue or gave no sign as to who or what it had been before. Bobby tried his best to remain calm even as his mind ran riot.

  “Heal,” Sin commanded and the slop immediately began to squirm toward its center in a slow motion reversal of the devastation that hypnotized Bobby despite his best effort and his deep seeded desire to turn away.

  Jones reformed slowly. Bobby knew the agony of healing was an experience ten times greater than the injuries that required it. He had suffered under its spell a few times himself. Jones had been the orchestrator of his misery nearly every time and even though, in Bobby’s opinion, the bastard deserved the punishment, he could not help but feel sorry for him. He hated himself for it but he pitied him just the same. Once complete, Jones pilled himself to his feet and stood trembling in silence as his Master studied him. “This is your last chance,” Sin whispered.