by Tim Pratt
"Brother Bill?"
Brooks came up on one side of me, Zin Zan on the other. Neither of them was smiling and neither was I.
"Are you all right?"
A fireman rushed by us and knocked into me hard as he passed but I didn't react.
"Now I'm your Brother? Is that what you call me from now on? Brother Bill?"
"We don't have to call you anything if that's what you'd prefer. Are you all right?"
"You know where I just was, don't you?"
They both nodded.
"And you both went there once and saw the Devil?"
Again, slow nods.
In the smoke and the fire and the confusion and the running around and the noise that was a hundred kinds of noise, I saw something I hadn't seen all afternoon although it had been right in front of me the whole time.
"My God, you're Brooks Collins!"
Half a smile crossed Brother Brooks's face and then died. He nodded again.
"I have all your albums."
"Better take care of them--there won't be any more."
"You gave that up?" A few beats passed until I understood. "That's what you gave the Devil? Your talent?
"And the fame. He wasn't going to let me go just giving up the one. The world today is full of people who have no talent but are famous. No one recognizes me anymore. Only you, but that's because you've been to Hell. You perceive things other people don't."
"I guess we'd better get going."
It was not a far walk to my place but long enough to look around and appreciate things like I never had before. Now and then we'd pass a house and from just a glimpse, we knew if it had been taken over or not. But once I wasn't sure and crept to a window to look. I can't tell you how happy I was to see a normal family inside watching TV and eating popcorn.
"How come Mel Shaveetz and his dog were on fire when they left their house, but the caveman wasn't? All of them were dead."
"Because the Devil keeps changing the rules all the time. That's the reason why so many people are unhappy in life--the rules keep changing. There's really no way of knowing what will happen from one day to the next with this. That's why it's so hard for us to convince people of what's going on. And because it's happening so much faster now, that's why Beeflow has become more directly involved."
"Why doesn't the Devil stop him?"
"Arrogance. He doesn't see Beeflow or us as a threat. There's your house. Do you know what you're gonna do?"
"Stay here. I've got to see something."
They stood by a light pole while I went and opened the front door. Closing it quietly behind me as if someone nearby was sleeping and I didn't want to wake them, I just stood in the hallway a minute, being home, breathing home. My mother used to say after we'd come back from a trip, "At home, even the walls heal you." And that's just how I felt standing there, smelling my life in those near rooms, my eyes running over our possessions and photos on the walls that I knew the whole history of. Lucky me--all of them showed in different ways what a very good time I'd had right up until that day. Lucky me. But the Brothers had earlier said a moving van had been in front of my house. That's why I'd come back in here--to see who had taken over our house and how they had changed things. I needed to see what was different so I could prepare my wife and somehow protect her from what was happening. But why then was nothing different in here?
Then I heard it--the zhunk of furniture being shoved hard across a floor. Someone else was in my house. Someone upstairs from the sound of it. The back of my neck prickled and my eyes opened wide of their own doing. I wore sneakers so I was able to cross the floor and climb the stairs with very little sound. While climbing I heard that same sound a few more times, sometimes louder and longer, sometimes short and sharp. Zhunk-silence-zhuuunk. Like that. I couldn't figure out what it was but it was definitely real and I needed to find out about it.
At the top of the stairs I stood still and waited till the next time it came.
It was down the hall in our bedroom. Zhunk. From where I stood I could see that door was open about a third and something white was on the floor just inside the bedroom. I couldn't make out what it was. Tiptoeing down the hall, I kept trying to focus in on what that white thing was. It came to me in stages. A piece of clothing--a shirt--a white T-shirt. And just when I realized that's what it was, I heard the other sounds. Sex. A woman having sex and liking it a lot.
Rae doesn't like sex. That's been the major problem in our marriage. Once in a while she's sort of in the mood, but it's like when you're sort of in the mood for pizza but can easily do without it if there's none around. I always got the feeling she's doing me a favor when she said yes and I can't tell you how dry and lonely that made me feel. She's a woman I have always wanted to touch but is more than clear she doesn't want that.
A T-shirt was on the floor and when I looked I saw writing on it and knew it said "Hard Rock Cafe." It was my shirt but it was very big and Rae liked that so she often slept in it. Her sounds kept up and they would have made any man hot. I'd known them once but not for a long time. Still, I recognized them instantly. I walked as close to the door as I could and looked in.
My wife was on our bed naked, straddling a guy whose face I couldn't see. She was working him so hard that their banging bodies made the bed slide on the floor. Zhunk.
Even when we did have sex, she'd never do it like that with me because she didn't like me seeing her entirely naked. It was always in the dark and she'd wear some kind of clothes--a shirt or sweatshirt so she'd never be completely stripped. As if wearing something meant she was still distant from me and this act even when it was going on.
Did I watch? Yes. Did it make me hot? It sure did. I stood off to the side and watched her do whoever it was beneath her all the things I'd dreamt of her doing with me for as long as I could remember.
What had I given the Devil to come back here? Rae's love for me. My love for her wasn't enough, or so he'd said. So I said take hers then.
Our relationship wasn't the best. We never had sex anymore, and we seemed to fight more than we should have. Still, I knew she loved me in her scared, mysterious way. I could see it in her eyes when she looked at me.
Sometimes. Plus there were other things she did that overall made up for what was missing. You get along and sometimes you get along so well that you don't think about what you're missing because you just love them there in your life, whatever way they've chosen to be.
As I stood there watching my wife fuck another man, I knew the Devil had changed the rules again: no dead people had moved into my house. No Casablanca backgrounds or jungles were needed here. Everything was the same except for the fact that my wife's love for me was dead. What more proof did I need than what was right in front of me?
There was nothing to take. I turned and went back down the hall, down the stairs. I was planning to go right back out of the house but when I touched the front doorknob I stopped. I walked back to the kitchen without thinking, kissed that new refrigerator. The thing that had started all this in the first place. That was all I wanted to do before leaving but don't ask me why. It just meant something to me and that was reason enough. I kissed our silver refrigerator and it was cool metal on my lips and then it was really time to go.
"Mr. Gallatin?" Beeflow's voice.
I stood and stared at the refrigerator. "What?"
"If it's of any comfort, he didn't make this happen. It's been going on for some time. Upstairs?"
"I know what you mean."
"You were never supposed to know about it. She was always very careful and discreet. But when you offered it to him, when you gave up her love for you--"
"I know what you're saying, Beeflow. I'm not that stupid. He shows me the truth, you show me the truth--both of you killing me with all this truth about my life. Was that the plan? Because what good does it do? Seeing the truth just shows you how wrong you were about things and how ugly they really are."
"Sometimes. And sometimes it brings the
genuinely good things into better focus."
I threw up my hands in disgust. "I don't want to hear any more. Okay? Don't say another word." I left my house for the last time and started walking over to the Brothers, not really knowing if what Beeflow had said made things better or worse.
But I didn't have any time to think about it. Suddenly from down the street came all these screams and sounds of people running. Lots of people running. I'd just gotten to Brooks and Zin Zan when this crowd arrived. First came a bunch of men in Roman gladiator uniforms--swords, shields, sandals up to their knees, the whole bit. They came stampeding down the street slap-slap-slapping on their sandals. Every last one of them looked scared shitless. They all kept looking over their shoulders at what was after them.
When they were gone, a few moments passed and then came the second wave. Maybe a hundred wild-looking, screaming women in leather and animal skins, wearing headdresses made out of crazy-colored bird feathers, carrying spears and swords and all kinds of other ugly weapons, some of their faces covered in war paint, went barreling after those scared gladiators. It was clear they were going to catch up any minute.
After the last ones passed I said, "What the fuck was that?"
Brooks and Zin Zan started running after them. Brooks said, "Some dead fool chose the movie Hercules and the Captive Women to fill his house. But guess what--they escaped."
"And we're supposed to do something about it? Us? Just the three of us?"
We were already running after them when Zin Zan said, "Now it gets interesting."
Mike's Place
David J. Schwartz
The Devil got a job tending bar at Mike's Place. You'd think he'd be bitter about his change of fortune, but he just shrugs it off. He says a lot of big corporations have failed, and Hell, Inc. was no different, when you get down to it. As for exchanging seven figures annually for five an hour plus tips, he just laughs and says there aren't a lot of places that will hire a guy with horns.
For his part, the Devil doesn't discriminate. Used to be you just had to be sinful; now you just have to be thirsty. He says the only difference is that now the really bad ones get tossed out instead of in.
Not that a lot of people are eighty-sixed from Mike's. It happens, of course--Mike doesn't put up with fighting, for example. But he puts up with a lot. Too much, some of the waitresses might say. Like Ashes, who never lets a woman enter or leave the bar without putting his hands on her in some way. Or Little Tony, who sits in the corner talking to himself and never tips for his Diet Cokes. Or Beezle.
Beezle used to work with the Devil. I think we've all figured out his real name by now, but nobody cares to say it out loud. The Devil insists they aren't friends, and talks to him as little as possible. Nobody talks to Beezle if they can avoid it. You see, Beezle takes the form of a giant fly, four feet high not counting the legs. On his barstool he looks like sort of a big hairy throw pillow with wings. He only drinks those blended frou-frou drinks, which the Devil hates making. Strawberry daiquiris, mostly. Beezle doesn't have any fingers, so he picks up the glass with both of his front legs, takes a long sip from the straw, and sets the glass back down again. Twenty minutes later he's ready for another.
On the surface, though, the waitresses have no reason to get so upset about Beezle hanging around. He always sits at the bar (at the same stool, in fact, and no one else ever sits there), and he never talks to anyone but the Devil--he doesn't even come in on Mondays, when the Devil takes off and Mike's pal Gabe fills in. He doesn't smell any worse than anyone else in the place, and better than some. He doesn't grab the girls and he doesn't try to brush up against them when the place is crowded. He also doesn't attract a lot of smaller flies, surprisingly.
But Beezle makes everyone nervous. For one thing, he sees everything with those multi-faceted eyes, and for all we know he hears everything too, so you either have to learn to ignore him or resign yourself to quietly getting drunk. Which, to be fair, plenty of the regulars are happy to do. Most of them don't have anywhere else to be, since the Crisis.
Things were bad even before Heaven went out of business. Most people still refer to it as Heaven, or Heavenly Ventures, even though they changed the name to Heaventure when they spun the angels off into their own corporation. It's hard to say which was a worse mistake.
Heaventure. What kind of a word is that? The Devil says it sounds like Paradise with a sneeze attached. Heaventure. They claimed to have vetted it up and down, fed it to focus groups all across the mortal realm, but you know how that is. You give people fifty bucks, they tend to tell you what they think you want to hear. And the angels--I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how getting rid of your most visible, most profitable product line is a good idea. The whole time Heaventure was "focusing on the aftercare of exceptional mortal souls," as they put it, the Seraphim Company was making money hand over wingtip. Angels were big business: porcelain figurines, inspirational posters, bumper stickers, plush toys, recordings of the heavenly chorus, branded school supplies, protection services... that last was a bit controversial. Apparently there was a big shakeup in the boardroom before that went into effect, but that was just a picketer in the path of a juggernaut, if you get my meaning.
Meanwhile by this time the guys upstairs were about to lose their halos. They managed to keep it quiet until Friday came around, but when there were no paychecks every cubicle-dweller in the Eternal City emailed everyone they knew. The Big Guy called a company-wide meeting to ask people to remain calm and not to release confidential company information, but that was like throwing a deck chair off the Titanic. The ship was already sinking.
The twenty-four hour cable channels were on the story all weekend, but most people stayed pretty calm, because no one really understood the implications. Religious services were pretty well attended, but the clergy didn't have much in the way of answers.
Monday morning three things happened. The first thing most people noticed was that the streets, the cafes and the unemployment offices were clogged with all the blessed who had thought their needs would be taken care of for all eternity. They'd been kicked out of Paradise because of the second thing, which was that Heaventure filed for bankruptcy and announced that it was liquidating assets, beginning with real estate. The third thing was that The Wall Street Journal broke the story that Hell, Inc. was heavily invested in Heaventure, and stood to lose half a billion dollars.
Long story short, things went from bad to worse to the nether regions in a matter of days. Hell, Inc. followed Heaventure into insolvency, and the damned joined the blessed in the bread lines and the shelters. Congress made a lot of speeches about corporate accountability but stopped short of scheduling hearings; I guess none of them wanted to cross the Big Guy. The Dow took daily plunges, often only open for thirty minutes or less before the circuit-breaker safeguards shut it down. Massive layoffs were announced in every sector of the economy. Some wag at NBC, asked if this was a second Great Depression, said it was more like an Existential Crisis, and the name stuck.
After a week in hiding, the Big Guy turned up on--of course--Larry King. He said that Heaventure was conducting an internal investigation into what appeared to be some misreportage of funds. He said he deeply regretted that Heaventure was no longer able to provide services for the blessed, but financial realities necessitated a shutdown of operations. He had no comment on most of the softball questions Larry lobbed at him, and he cut the interview short when he was pressed on the question of the Covenant.
That was the Devil's first night at Mike's, and he shook his head at his ex-boss's performance. "He's really not good at doing his own talking," he said, and twisted open another bottle of Bud.
Everybody likes the Devil. He's unpretentious, he's funny, and he tells it like it is. It's a funny thing about life after the Crisis. The damned, in general, are a lot easier to get along with than the blessed. Even the ones who were only suffering eternal torment for a few days are pretty well-behaved, when all is said and
done, and they don't act like they're entitled to everything. I can't tell you how many times in the first few days a blessed walked up to me on the street and said "I'm hungry." As if not only was this the most unbelievable thing in the world, but they expected that once having realized it I would immediately fetch them a glass of sweet nectar or something. Nowadays they don't so much tell people their problems. Mostly they stand around in their beautiful white clothes, staring at their smooth, lazy hands and sulking.
The damned, on the other hand, are grateful for what they've got. There was no beer in hell, the Devil says, unless you were an alcoholic. He says the rule was nobody got anything unless they got too much of it. You'd think the damned who walked into Mike's would leave as soon as they saw the Devil, but most of them talk to him like an old friend. They steer clear of Beezle, though.
People--living, damned or blessed--come to Mike's because he lets them run a tab for weeks, sometimes months. The rumor is that Mike got a big severance package from some big company, so he can afford to extend credit to people who might not be able to pay for a while, or at all. Thing is, people do pay when they can. I don't know that the bar is making any money, but it's still open, which is more than you can say for a lot of places nowadays.
There's this couple that comes in to Mike's all the time--regulars. He's a Jack Coke and she's a naked dirty Absolut martini, but that's not the only difference between them. He was blessed, see, and she was damned. Before that, who knows? Maybe they didn't meet until the Crisis. It doesn't seem polite to ask about it.
They were there the night that Christ showed up. It was a Tuesday, and there weren't a lot of people in the place--the Seraphim Company was having a job fair the next morning. Anyway, Christ came in, announced he was back, and right away everybody had questions.
"Is everyone going to be saved?" asked the blessed man, holding hands with the damned woman.
"It's in negotiations," said Christ.
