The Free Indie Reader #1
Page 6
* * *
A week later, Lou was still missing, and Alan's lawn was now starting to look like it needed attention. Alan knocked on Lou's door, and was treated with the same silence he had experienced the weekend before. Nothing seemed to have changed, except a notice from the Homeowners Association taped to Lou's door notifying him that if he didn't mow his lawn soon, he would be faced with a fine.
Alan turned around. Lou's lawn was still unmowed, and in fact, since it had been a week, was now even worse. He went back to his house and woke up his wife.
“Dear,” he said, “have you seen our neighbor?”
“Lou?” asked Betsey. She was still groggy with sleep, and rolled over to rub her eyes in protest of the unwelcome consciousness.
“Yes,” said Alan. “I think something might have happened to him. I haven't seen him since I loaned him my lawnmower.”
Betsey frowned. “I told you not to loan out our tools. I told you.”
“He was just right next door, all right?”
“Well you need to get our lawnmower back, Al,” said Betsey. “Our yard has to be done this week, or we'll get fined.”
“Looks like they already fined Lou,” said Alan. “I saw a notice on his door.”
“But he was taking care of his lawn last week, wasn't he? You should call him.”
“I'd call him, but I never got his phone number. He didn't finish. His lawn is still terrible.”
“Well, that's not our fault,” said Betsey. “Get our lawnmower back. Thomas needs to do some yard work if he's going to get an allowance from us this week. Maybe Lou's at work.”
“Where does he work?” asked Alan. “Do you know?”
“Some office on Seventh Street,” she said. “The one with the ugly architecture.”
“All right,” said Alan. “I'll check it out.”
Alan took a shower, got dressed, and got in his car. Seventh Street was only half a mile away. The office building with the ugly architecture was immediately apparent: While the surrounding buildings were easy to look at with a nice desert motif, Lou's workplace was painted a bright, obnoxious red. He walked up to the building and paused at the glass door, chuckling at the address printed on it: 666, Seventh Street.
Alan went inside. The lobby was completely and alarmingly bare. There wasn't even any furniture to sit down in while waiting: Just a single desk and a single chair, occupied by a single receptionist.
The room was red. The desk was red. The paintings hanging on the walls had red frames and held nothing but canvases painted solid red. The receptionist had red hair, and was even wearing a red dress and a red pair of glasses. Alan walked up to address her. “Um, hello,” he said.
The receptionist was silent.
“I'm here... um...” Alan continued. The receptionist pursed her cherry-red lips and her thin red eyebrows started to slowly sink into a frown. “My neighbor works here. I just wanted to see if I could talk to him.”
“If he does work here,” said the receptionist rudely, “and it's doubtful, I promise, then you can't see him because he's busy.”
“Um...” said Alan, “How would you know? I need to see him. It's kind of urgent.”
“We're all busy,” said the receptionist. “We have a deadline we're trying to make before our competitors, the firm on 777, Sixth Street.”
“His name is Lou,” said Alan.
“Definitely not someone who works here,” said the receptionist. “Please, leave.”
Alan hung his head forlornly, and reached into his pocket for his car keys. He felt something in his pocket that he was sure he hadn't put there. He pulled it out. It was a folded piece of paper; the contract that Lou had signed, stating that he promised to return Alan's lawnmower.
Alan handed the paper over to the receptionist. “He gave me this,” he said. “Do you recognize the signature?”
For a moment the receptionist did nothing, but then she reached out and snatched the paper from his hands impatiently. With complete disregard for the condition of the document, she unfolded it roughly and read the first few lines. Then, she screamed.
It was like a thousand damned souls from the depths of Hell crying out in simultaneous and incalculable surprise. Alan jumped two feet in the air from the noise, and stared at the receptionist in sheer astonishment. She still had the document in hand, but her eyes were brightening up in excitement. Something was lighting up her face, and it took a few moments for Alan to realize that the light was coming from the document itself.
The receptionist snapped her head up. There were tears rushing from her eyes. “Where did you get this?” she asked. Her voice was a strange cross of hopefulness and desperation.
“I told you,” said Alan, still startled from the reaction of the secretary. “From my neighbor, Lou.”
“Lou?” asked the secretary. “Why do you call him Lou?”
“He told me to call him that,” said Alan with a shrug.
The secretary got up out of her seat. There was a brightness in her eyes, and it wasn't a figurative one. Her eyes seemed to be replaced with a pair of twinkling stars. “Well, your neighbor is not named Lou. He is Lucifer, the First of the Fallen, the Last to be Saved. He is the Prince of Darkness, the Father of Lies, and the ruler of Hell! Your neighbor, sir, is the Devil!”
Alan stopped backing towards the door. He thought about Lou, how he seemed so young and so successful. He remembered the tall man with the fake skin and the Hugo Boss suit, and the swarm of bees that could talk, and the fact that Lou had vanished without a trace and had taken Alan's lawnmower with him. And for these reasons, Alan thought, it made absolute, one hundred percent, perfect sense that his neighbor, Lou, was actually Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness.
Alan put his hands on his hips. “Well,” he said authoritatively, “I'll have you know, ma'am, that the Devil still has my lawnmower.”