Devil Take Me

by Jordan L. Hawk

  Carlos finishes topping off Merrick’s cup. He spills a few droplets across the table. They resemble planets revolving around a star.

  Carlos doesn’t notice—he’s giving Merrick a funny expression. “You’re a handsome young man.”

  Merrick’s neck and cheeks redden almost instantly. “Th-thank you?”

  Carlos spares Asuka a glance and then says to Merrick, “Maybe he can dream.”

  Merrick doesn’t know what that means or what sort of response is expected of him, so he laughs instead. It’s forced and awkward.

  Carlos shuffles away from the booth.

  “What was that?” Merrick whispers.

  Asuka shakes his head, then takes a sip of coffee.

  “Dream about what?”

  “Forget it,” Asuka replies sternly. He sets the mug down. “Carlos has been through a lot.”

  Merrick reluctantly leans back. The cushion of the booth sags under him. “Thank you,” he says after a moment.

  “For?” Asuka gradually asks.

  “Saving my life.”

  “Oh.” He shrugs.

  “You’re not one for chitchat, are you?”

  Asuka takes another drink of coffee. Merrick is still looking at him with those shining blue eyes. Eager. Wanting, even.

  He needs you to talk, Asuka realizes. He’s still scared.

  Asuka clears his throat and grasps for a topic that doesn’t feel utterly pointless. His gaze falls onto the stained books sitting beside the condiments. “Are they ruined?”

  “Hmm?” Merrick follows Asuka’s line of sight. “Oh!” He picks up a book and flips through the pages. “I suppose not, although page fifteen will be a constant reminder of seeing a monster burst like a water balloon.” He turns the book around to show Asuka the barely legible words underneath a dark stain.

  “Buy new ones,” Asuka states, but it comes out far more commanding than he intends.

  Merrick shuts the book. “They’re okay,” he insists, seemingly oblivious to Asuka’s tone. “But even if they weren’t, most are out of print.”

  Asuka sips his coffee.

  Merrick scoots forward, the cushion making a sound of protest. “How long have you been the Neighborhood Nightmare Watchman?”

  Asuka opens his mouth.

  Tip-tap, tip-tap, tip-tap.

  High heels.

  Asuka doesn’t move, merely flicks his gaze to the right. A woman in a bright sundress opens the diner door and steps outside.

  “I just moved here from Brooklyn,” Merrick is saying. “The night I ran into you, I asked my… neighbor… who you were.” His voice drops, causing Asuka to return his attention to Merrick. “She said you always came to help. No matter what.”

  He’s looking for reassurance, Asuka decides. “It’s just something I do.”

  “Don’t they scare you? The monsters?”

  “No.”

  Merrick smiles again, this time a bit self-consciously. “They scare me,” he responds. “I shouldn’t be afraid of dreams.”

  “They’re not normal dreams,” Asuka says, as if that is suitable reason to fear each little sound that goes bump in the night.

  Everything around Asuka shifts.

  Suddenly.

  Subtly.

  To the right.

  He watches the dribbles of coffee on the table slide together and create one large droplet. He looks back at Merrick. The red hair on his forehead has swayed to one side.

  The diner is silent. No one is speaking. No one is moving.

  Tip-tap, tip-tap, tip-tap.

  Asuka watches a woman in high heels and a bright sundress—

  Didn’t she leave already?

  He raises his wrist to check the time.

  11:59 p.m.

  No. That can’t be right. It hadn’t even been sunup when Asuka left the apartment.

  But—no. Did that mean—he’s near?

  “Asuka?”

  He raises his head, and all at once, as if a bubble popped, the diner is alive with patrons eating, murmurs of conversation, and the gentle clatter of dishes echoing from behind the kitchen door.

  Merrick’s eyebrows are raised. He looks curious. “Are you okay?”

  Asuka looks at his watch again.

  6:12 a.m.

  “I have to go.” He climbs out of the booth and grabs his sword from where it rests behind the seat.

  “Wait!” Merrick grabs his books and scrambles to his feet.

  Asuka does not wait. He straps his sword to the back of his holster and walks out the door. The morning sun is cleansing the city of its nightly scares. Despite the heat of another summer day, the light feels good against Asuka’s skin.

  “Asuka!” Merrick bolts out of the diner after him.

  “I have an appointment,” Asuka replies, turning uptown.

  “Take me with you!”

  Asuka pauses midstep and looks over his shoulder.

  Merrick swallows. “It’s just—I don’t think I can go home right now.” He stares at his shoes. “I feel safe around you.”

  “I’m no different from the nightmares,” Asuka states.

  Merrick quickly raises his head. “You’re a man.”

  A monster.

  “A real hero.”

  A coward who sold his soul.

  “And I—” Merrick smiles, and his light skin has a pink tinge to it. “Want to… know more about you.”

  “There’s nothing to know.”

  “That’s not true,” Merrick answers. He shifts the weight of his books in his arms. “Everyone has dreams.”

  Not me.

  But Asuka can’t say it out loud.

  MERRICK IS light on his feet, moving to music only he can hear. “What did you do before the nightmares began?”

  Asuka takes a breath. He can’t understand why he’s allowed Merrick to follow him.

  It’s unnecessary.

  Dangerous.

  Fucked-up.

  And the trauma of having his soul ripped from his body has never been more apparent than in this moment, with Merrick suddenly—perfectly—filling the void at Asuka’s side that had shadowed and dogged him for five years. But he can’t hope and he can’t wish—so what is this feeling and what’s driving it?

  Perhaps he is no longer immune to the sickness of the dream world. Asuka briefly considers that he may be asleep, dreaming of a life with a partner, and soon will be swallowed whole by an intruding nightmare.

  “I was a cop,” he answers.

  Merrick nods and jumps from the road, over the gutter, and onto the curb. “I was a dancer,” he supplies without being prompted.

  This doesn’t surprise Asuka, with the way Merrick carries himself. What does surprise him is when he asks, “What style?”

  Merrick looks up. “I went to a conservatory for ballet. But I was in a dance troupe that also performed tap and swing.”

  “Swing?”

  Merrick grins. “I wore suspenders and a bow tie when I performed.”

  Asuka turns away from Merrick’s pretty smile and studies Billiards & Brew, coming up at the end of the block. “Why’d you stop?”

  “I lost my troupe.”

  Asuka halts.

  Merrick keeps walking until he realizes he’s alone. He turns and looks behind him. “What?”

  “You’ve… no one to dance with?”

  Merrick smiles again. Sheer force of will seems to be what keeps him alive and in a sunny disposition. He shrugs. “Maybe again. Someday.”

  Asuka once dreamed with the ferocity Merrick did.

  But now?

  What options had he had five years ago?

  He’d truly wanted to save people. If he hadn’t made the deal, Asuka would have fallen to his death after one of the first run-ins with a monster in New York. At least this way, he could still perform his sworn duty, police officer or not. It’s just…. Asuka hadn’t imagined that exchanging his soul to be immune to the dreams would be taken to such a degree that it would not only encompass
what happened during REM sleep, but the abstract and conceptual dreams as well.

  “Someday,” Asuka repeats—for whose benefit, he doesn’t know.

  Despite the early hour, the door to the pool hall is unlocked.

  Asuka pulls it open and warily peers into the dim room. Unlike the rest of the city, it’s not overblown with tungsten lighting to ward off the monsters—in fact, none of the low-hanging overheads above the pool tables are switched on. Asuka cranes his head to the left. A wall of liquor is backlit, silhouetting a lone bartender. The woman in heels and a sundress sits at a stool, absently stirring a tall drink with a straw.

  Asuka takes a step inside. He puts a hand behind him, as if to tell Merrick to keep a distance. The door groans to a shut, but neither patron nor tender look up.

  Asuka squares his shoulders and strides across the antique wood floor. “Ma’am, you requested my attendance?”

  She doesn’t look up from her mojito.

  “Can I get you a drink, sir?” the bartender asks.

  Asuka spares the man behind the counter a glance.

  He has no face.

  Asuka visibly recoils. He checks his watch.

  11:59 p.m.

  He looks at the woman again, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

  The Devil sits in her place. He holds a lit cigarette between two fingers, and a tumbler of whiskey is in front of him. “Hello, little bird. It’s been a while.”

  “What do you want?” Asuka says curtly.

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  Asuka swallows and spares the bartender another look. “No.”

  The man nods and resumes cleaning glasses.

  Asuka looks over his shoulder. Merrick is gone. He turns to the Devil, who is smiling a smile just slightly too big for his face. “Where is he?” Asuka asks, tone dropping low.

  The Devil sucks on his cigarette in response.

  Asuka lunges forward, grabs the Devil’s three-piece suit in both hands, and hauls him from his seat. “Where is he?” he shouts.

  The Devil makes a tsk-tsk sound, and smoke coils around them. “You just met him.”

  “Answer me!”

  “Merrick Elliott Grace,” the Devil murmurs. He traces his finger up Asuka’s chest and taps where a badge used to be. “For a man who can’t possibly wish for a happily ever after, why is it he makes your heart beat fast?”

  Asuka narrows his eyes.

  “He’d be in your dreams, wouldn’t he?” the Devil asks, and the question is like being stabbed, it hurts Asuka so deeply.

  “If you’ve done anything—”

  “Mr. Grace is fine.” The Devil smiles around the cigarette. “Beautiful soul, isn’t he? Like someone else I know.” His eyes widen with a provocative expression.

  Asuka shoves the Devil back onto the barstool.

  The Devil chuckles and adjusts his collar and tie. He sets his cigarette down in an ashtray that hadn’t been there before. “I wanted to speak in private.”

  Asuka puts his hands on his hips and takes a deep, centering breath.

  The Devil picks up his whiskey, sips it appreciatively, then reaches into his suit coat. He removes a skeleton key and slides it across the bar toward Asuka. “I need a favor.”

  Asuka feels his shoulders relax infinitesimally. “What is that?”

  “Your soul.” The Devil crosses his long legs and inclines his head at the free seat beside him.

  Asuka reluctantly pulls the stool out and sits.

  “I knew you’d be interested.”

  “I could care less about what happens to my soul after I die,” Asuka corrects. “You said you’d make me immune to dreams so that I could help people.”

  “And I did exactly that.”

  “You took my ability to desire. I can’t hope for the sun when it rains. I can’t love without my capacity for dreams.”

  “You should have read the contract closer,” the Devil says with a chuckle.

  Asuka lunges for the key on the bar top, but his hand wraps around nothing.

  The Devil reaches into his coat and removes the key for the second time. “Are you ready to listen, little bird?” He spins the metal between his thumb and index finger.

  Asuka sinks onto the stool again.

  The Devil sets the key down between them. “My name has changed over the centuries, but what remains constant is that it is my job to collect souls, and nothing more. I’m a pacifist. I kill nothing and no one.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “The nightmares have begun to affect the Underworld now. Ironically, you sold me your soul in order to fight the dreams. You are the only being capable of destroying the source while remaining immune to its sickness.” The Devil was smoking again. “I need you to kill the origin of the nightmares for good. I am losing my dear souls left and right, and if the nightmares come for me… chaos will reign.”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing for the past five years?” Asuka responds curtly.

  “You’ve been killing the infected. That’s like using a garden hose to put out the fire in the flowerbed instead of the house. The flowers will only be set on fire again and again.”

  “I can’t find the source,” Asuka says. “If I had, it’d be dead. That I promise you.”

  The Devil finishes his cigarette. His tumbler is empty.

  Asuka is certain he’d only taken one sip.

  “I know where it is.” The Devil sips from his full drink.

  The bartender is still shining glasses.

  “Where?” Asuka finally asks.

  “Will you take care of the matter?”

  Asuka eyes the skeleton key. “I destroy the source and you’ll return my soul?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that include my dreams?”

  The Devil holds up a legal document. “Everything will be returned to you.” He smiles again, and it makes Asuka’s gut clench. “Your soul is the prettiest in my recent collection, but even I’m willing to make a compromise for the betterment of all.”

  Asuka swallows and holds his hand out. “Shake on it.”

  The Devil is suddenly without his drink or contract. He slides his slender hand into Asuka’s hold. His grip is neither warm nor cold. It feels like nothing, really. “Ask Mr. Grace about Phobetor.”

  “What?”

  “Asuka?”

  Asuka blinks. The Devil is gone. The faceless bartender is gone.

  The pool hall is silent.

  Dark.

  And empty.

  Asuka turns.

  Merrick is standing near the door.

  Asuka looks at his watch.

  6:34 a.m.

  IV

  ASK MR. Grace about Phobetor.

  Asuka stands outside Billiards & Brew and looks down at Merrick.

  Merrick squints one eye and meets Asuka’s gaze. The sunshine makes his red hair practically glow. “Appointment canceled?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Where to, then?” Merrick asks sweetly.

  To want again. Wish again. Dream again. Maybe even Merrick would become part of that wonderful, beautiful equation. The younger man certainly has pushed for… something to happen. Something more than coffee at Carlos’s shitty diner. But is Asuka going to invite more danger into Merrick’s life for nothing more than not wanting to be alone when he opens his eyes?

  “What is—what’s a Phobetor?” Asuka warily questions.

  Merrick blinks. “Who is Phobetor,” he corrects.

  Why does he have to know?

  “Why?” Merrick prompts. He shifts his books into one arm and takes Asuka’s bicep with his free hand. “Are you okay? You look a little green around the edges.” Merrick seems sincerely concerned.

  Asuka stares at him for a long time. The city hustles and bustles around them, but his attention is for Merrick alone. There’s something in Merrick’s bright blue eyes that soothes his aches, that gently eases the broken beat back into Asuka’s heart. The sun can fall and ris
e a hundred times, and Asuka feels like he can still stare at Merrick’s face for a hundred days more.

  A favor for the Devil.

  His mistake from five years ago would be torn up and forgotten.

  “If I could dream like you,” Asuka suddenly whispers, “I’d be your dance partner.”

  The look of worry on Merrick’s face fades. He smiles lightly at first, but hesitation and self-consciousness give way like a tide has washed over a sea wall.

  Never has Asuka—even before his deal—seen such love and life contained in a single smile. It was obnoxious to think so big of himself, but in the darkened, unused part of Asuka’s heart, there was a tug of emotion. A curious consideration. Had they been fated to meet? Why else, even with his inability to dream, did Asuka feel so protective of a man he’d only just met? Could it be possible that the endless battles and sleepless nights were nothing more than the catalyst to assure this moment?

  Perhaps.

  Because when Asuka looks at Merrick, this… this force he feels is akin to what sent Orpheus to the Underworld in order to rescue his beloved Eurydice.

  So here they are.

  Now Asuka must retrieve his soul. Not because the Devil has asked for help, and no longer for his own ability to dream at night. But for the sudden need to hope that there will be a them tomorrow.

  “I’m going after the origin of the nightmares,” Asuka says briskly. “I’ll need your help.”

  Merrick swallows audibly.

  “But I promise you—it will be dangerous.”

  Merrick drags his hand down Asuka’s arm and threads their fingers together. “What do you need from me?”

  ASUKA UNLOCKS his apartment door and holds it open.

  Merrick peers around the doorframe, then takes a slow step inside.

  Asuka follows. He shuts the door, unbuckles his sword, and removes his shoulder holsters. He walks to the left corner of the shoebox apartment, where there is exactly half a countertop and a single burner. Asuka hits the button on the coffeepot. There are mugs beside the machine, precariously stacked and leaning to one side. He picks up two and examines them.

  Dirty.

  Asuka rinses them in the bathroom sink. When he returns, he glances at his unkempt bed.

  Merrick is sitting on the edge, watching the television that’d been left on.

  Asuka studies the cups again. Dollar store finds.