Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish

by Andrew Buckley

  "You've done a fantastic job of house sitting, thanks very much, Azeal, bye bye now."

  Azeal responded with a series of quick burps, which prompted the Devil to throw him out a nearby window. The Devil stretched his wings, tapped on Percy's fish bowl, which Percy hated but couldn't do much about, and then lay down on his bed.

  "Maybe I'll have better luck in the next millennia," said the Devil.

  The Devil's phone rang. Being in absolutely no mood to talk to anyone, he let the machine get it. The Devil's answering message clicked on.

  "Hi, you've reached the Devil in the very pits of Hell; unless you wish to be ravaged relentlessly I suggest you don't leave a message. Oh, and wait for the beep."

  There was a lengthy pause, and then the generic answering machine beep.

  "Hello, Luci," came Heinrich's smooth voice.

  The Devil sat up and stared ferociously at his ancient answering machine, having absolutely no intention of answering it.

  "God here. I realize that this whole situation must have been very trying for you. You really should learn to read our contracts a little more closely." A couple of angels could be heard giggling in the background. "But sincerely, I do wish you better luck on your next endeavor, whatever that might be. Maybe next time we can get you into something a little bigger, maybe a dog, oh, I know, how about an unusually large rabbit. You could try to take over the Easter holiday?"

  The Devil became so furious he spontaneously combusted.

  "Anyway, I've got some errands to run, universe to watch over, that sort of thing. You take care of yourself and give me a call sometime, we'll do lunch."

  The answering machine clicked off and the Devil rolled around on the ground trying to put himself out. He lay there for a while, smoldering quietly.

  The anger he felt was the painful kind and he didn't like it.

  "Only one thing for it." The Devil fished about in his closet, then pulled out a large wooden spoon. He put on his best look of ill contempt and stalked off to find someone to torture.

  Nigel had wanted to thank Death for everything he'd done, for the realization and knowledge he'd obtained and for making them not dead anymore, but his soul had been sucked out of the afterlife waiting room too soon. There was also one question in particular that he had wanted to ask Death, a question that played on Nigel's mind, a question he felt to bean important one and to which the only answer he could come up with was one that needed confirmation from someone who knew what they were talking about, which was, who is Heinrich? And how did he know everything?

  These were all really inconsequential at the moment as Nigel, Celina, and Gerald quickly discovered that coming back to life after an explosion was a hell of a lot more painful than being blown up in the first place. Each of their bodies had to rebuild itself from scratch: bone, muscle, hair, skin, clothes, everything.

  Later, Nigel compared the experience to swimming in a pool of broken glass and lemon juice, only ten times worse. His soul whipped out of the cosmos, back toward the Earth, and on the way down got assaulted by a great many elements. Atoms rushed toward him, rebuilding his bones, muscle, skin tissue, and hair at the speed of light. The Earth got closer and closer, the pain got worse and worse, and Nigel and his companions blacked out.

  When they awoke, they found themselves lying in a pile of rubble that had once been the Majestic Technologies building. Nigel struggled to his feet and looked around. Small fires still burned, and it was impossible to see anything else because of the large dust cloud that enveloped them. The smell of crushed lemons was unmistakable.

  Celina coughed a little, stood up, looked down at her fully formed body, and hugged herself warmly. Gerald had only just been getting used to his body and now felt he had to do it all over again. Sirens sounded close by.

  Nigel looked at Celina. Celina looked at Nigel. Nigel, half smiled, blushed a little, and looked at where he presumed the sky would be through the dust. Celina brushed her red hair away from her face and kissed Nigel squarely on the mouth, something that took Nigel completely by surprise but made him feel warm and tingly.

  "What was that for?" he asked.

  Celina shrugged and grinned mischievously.

  "Seemed like the right thing to do."

  "Oh, okay, as long as we're both on the same page." Nigel grabbed Celina and kissed her with as much fervor and passion as someone who had just died and come back to life could muster.

  The rain that had momentarily stopped became bored with doing nothing and began to throw itself toward the Earth once more, which helped clear the dust a little.

  Celina and Nigel helped Gerald to his feet. The three of them made their way through the dust and rubble and emerged out onto a roadway lined with fire trucks. Police cars were just arriving and an emergency response team milled around drinking coffee and telling blonde jokes. A fireman noticed the three survivors, and they were all quickly questioned, then wrapped in blankets and seated on the back bumper of an ambulance.

  None of them really had any answers to the questions asked. They couldn't rightly say what had happened, as it still all sounded completely crazy to them, let alone anyone who hadn't even shared the experience.

  "What about all the other workers?" Nigel asked Celina.

  A young fireman brought them all tea, which Gerald sniffed suspiciously. Since becoming human, all he'd had to drink was alcohol.

  "On the security cameras it showed the elves were holding them in the storage warehouse which is over there." Celina pointed to the far end of the compound where a large steel structure sat quiet and undisturbed. "It has a reinforced structure to protect many of our old prototypes. Aside from being wrapped in bubble wrap and packaging paper, they should all be okay."

  Nigel quickly relayed the information to a nearby officer who released the employees of Majestic Technologies.

  The bomb site had started to attract attention and either end of the street was cordoned off and manned by the police who did their best to look menacing, daring anyone to step across the line. Chester decided to challenge the menacing looks of the police as he ducked under the yellow caution tape and ran full belt down the street toward Gerald.

  "Mr. Miller! Mr. Miller!" he shouted.

  Had it not been for Big Ernie and Itch running into Chester and knocking him over, he would likely have been caught up in the explosion too. The two criminals themselves, both very much wanted by the law on counts of extortion and threatening grievous bodily harm in the form of hanging people off the edge of buildings, were now in the back of a police van. Fuzzbucket had permanently attached himself to Big Ernie and had no intention of letting go.

  A police constable took up the chase after Chester, who was running with his arms flailing, a bad habit he'd never been able to get rid of.

  "Who's he shouting at?" asked Nigel.

  Gerald went over what Heinrich had told him, very specific instructions involving a small, pudgy gentleman who would be happy to see him and refer to him as Mr. Miller.

  "He's here for me, don't worry I'll take care of it," said Gerald.

  Chester ran up to Gerald and gave him a big hug, holding him tightly.

  "Oh thank the heavens," said Chester, "you're alive!"

  "Umm, yes," said Gerald. "It's, uhh, good to see you again, Chester."

  Chester released Gerald and looked at him.

  "It's an honor to see you again, sir! What happened? Why are you here? We got a report that you were hit by a bus in Portugal."

  Nigel and Celina, happily holding hands, glanced at each other and shrugged.

  "Uhh," said Gerald.

  Nigel suddenly put two and two together.

  "I'm sorry, Chester, is it?" Nigel grabbed Chester's hand and shook it firmly.

  "Yes, I'm Mr. Miller's bank manager."

  "Ahh, yes, of course you are."

  Nigel put his arm around Chester and gently moved him away from Gerald who was doing his best to remain calm.

  "Mr. Miller has had a mo
st trying experience. First that whole bus business in Spain."

  "Portugal," corrected Chester.

  "Yes, and then this whole bomb thing, it's all been quite horrifying, as I'm sure an astute gentleman like yourself can understand."

  "Well, of course," said Chester, "It's just that when Mr. Miller vanished I was quite beside myself."

  "Really," said Nigel, "I had no idea that bank managers took such an interest in their client's well being these days."

  "Well, Mr. Miller is no ordinary client," said Chester, then whispered, "his fortune is rather substantial."

  Nigel's mind clicked over; there were definitely parts of this scenario that didn't fit, but Death had told him to look after Gerald.

  "Of course," said Nigel.

  "Who are you anyway, if you don't mind me asking?"

  "Doctor Reinhardt," said Nigel.

  This caused Celina to raise an eyebrow and smile.

  "After such a traumatic episode, Gerald, uhh, Mr. Miller has decided to undergo my total emergent treatment. He'll be staying with me for a little while and we'll be in contact with you shortly. Where is it you're from again?"

  "Upper Ramsbottom," said Chester quietly.

  Nigel gave the man a sincerely apologetic look. "I'm sorry," he said.

  "You get used to it," replied Chester.

  Gerald had been concentrating hard, searching the fragmented memories of Raymond Miller's mind. Something came to him suddenly like a brick to the head.

  "Ba Ba Black Sheep," blurted out Gerald.

  "What was that?" asked Nigel.

  Chester nodded knowingly.

  "Good to see your memory is still intact. I'll be expecting your phone call, then." Chester hugged Gerald again, bid farewell and left.

  "What just happened?" asked Nigel.

  Gerald took a sip of tea calmly, as if he'd been inhabiting other people's bodies all his life.

  "The man whose body I have is very rich. His name was Raymond Miller I think. Raymond and Chester had passwords with which to control the flow of money from one place to another. They also had passwords for emergencies and passwords for discretion."

  "So what does 'baba black sheep' mean?"

  "It means everything's fine, can't talk now, will contact you later."

  "And you have Raymond Miller's memory?"

  "I dunno, sort of. Parts of it, lots of it. Hard to say. I definitely know that I'm rich, though," said Gerald and smiled. "Not that I really understand what that means, or what money is for that matter, but I have a lot of it. And to think that all I was this morning was a penguin."

  "Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you about that," said Nigel, but the words went unheard as Gerald noticed something over Nigel's shoulder and took off at a run.

  "Where's he going?" he asked Celina, who also didn't hear, as she'd seen what Gerald was looking at and taken off after him.

  Nigel stood there awkwardly before joining in the sprint.

  Emergency crews noticed the three of them running, and saw what happened and promptly converged on the scene.

  The rubble of Majestic Technologies was unmoving, with the exception of one tiny area to the far side of where the warehouse once stood. Here a tiny, grubby elf waved wildly from what looked like the remains of a metal filing cabinet. The jingle of the bell on Eggnog's hat wasn't as jingly as it normally was, but for the most part, the elf appeared unharmed.

  Gerald, being the first to reach him, helped him out of the filing cabinet drawer.

  The Emergency Response Team climbed over the rubble and helped dislodge the stuck elf.

  "What is that?" asked one of the officers.

  "That," said Celina, partially out of breath, "is my, uhh, little brother, he was visiting me at work when all this happened."

  "Why's he dressed like a Christmas elf?" asked the officer.

  "He's very festive," said Nigel.

  "Why's he dancing?" asked the officer who was observing Eggnog doing The Sprinkler.

  "He's happy to be alive, obviously," said Celina. She motioned to Eggnog. "Come here umm, Bobby."

  Eggnog looked at Celina and shuffled his way over to her with all the grace that a dancing elf can call upon.

  Celina picked him up with amazing difficulty, as each elf weighed approximately one hundred and eighty pounds.

  Nigel helped support her, and together with Gerald, they made their way back across the rubble.

  "Is anyone else hungry?" asked Celina.

  "Hungry?"

  "Well, all I've had to eat today was some yogurt."

  "All I had was fish while I was still a penguin, and then some peanuts," added Gerald.

  "Now I think about it, I don't think I've had anything all day," said Nigel.

  Celina put Eggnog down on firm ground so he could walk.

  "Okay, so I say we go out and get some food and talk everything over. I hardly think our lives are going to be the same after this mess. It really makes you wonder what kind of a cosmic presence moved us around all day so that we'd end up right here, together."

  The four of them walked through the police line and made their way through the crowd. Eggnog was the only one who really drew any stares, but after a stern look by Celina that would have made her dead ancestors proud, most onlookers decided it was best to look in other random directions.

  All the while, Nigel tried to reflect on the day as best as a rational mind could.

  "You're right, the whole thing's mind-boggling," he said. "But I think a large part of it had to do with a fish."

  Jeremiah swam around his little bowl, oblivious to the events of the day and with absolutely no memory of helping to influence any part of it. Jeremiah the prophetic goldfish simply swam without the knowledge that he was indeed a powerful, cosmic, spiritual, and unique creature.

  He suddenly felt a stab of excitement.

  "Good grief, there's a castle in here!"

  THE END . . .

  almost . . .

  Epilogue.

  6 Months Later

  The enquiry had lasted a little under six months. Although responsibility for the Majestic Technologies bomb was unofficially immediately claimed by the IRA, there was still a lot of speculation about Nigel, Celina, and Gerald's involvement. The enquiry involved several interrogations of Nigel in particular, as he infuriated his interrogators by telling them anything except what they wanted to hear which ranged from stories about polar bears to theories that the bomb was a direct result of a butterfly hitting the window of a fast-moving vehicle driven by a drunken beaver somewhere in northern Alberta, Canada.

  Gerald and Celina underwent their own interrogations. They dismissed Celina as being an employee in the wrong place at the wrong time. They let Gerald go as soon as the official investigators discovered that he was none other than Raymond Miller and was consequently wealthy enough to buy their jobs out from under them.

  The investigators grew weary of Nigel, who had developed a habit of giving them all a headache. Giving people headaches appeared to be the extent of Nigel's current telekinetic abilities. He could also change the channels on the TV by thinking, and while walking the street during a heavy rainstorm three months after the Majestic Technologies bomb, he had sneezed and inadvertently thrown seven cars, a bus, a small dog, two cats, and twenty-threepassersby six feet into the air. His abilities were there, he knew they were there, but he had yet to master them.

  The authorities charged Itch and Big Ernie with extortion, and they were put away for a three-to-five year stretch in Strangeways Prison in Lancashire. After much pleading and appealing, Big Ernie gained permission to keep Fuzzbucket, who was no longer an unholy vessel for the Prince of Darkness, in his cell. Police tried to return Fuzzbucket to Mrs. Jones, who opened fire with an ancient shotgun, barely missing the cat but injuring a police constable so that he couldn't go to the bathroom right for many months after. Mrs. Jones was serving a three-to-five year stretch in the mental hospital wing of Strangeways Prison in Lancashire. The c
at was then handed over to Big Ernie, who had grown to love the cat now that it was cute and not quite so evil-looking.

  The quaint little bistro where Heinrich worked vanished from the face of the Earth. Nigel and Gerald had returned to see Heinrich not even a week after the bombing, only to find the bistro boarded up, and no one in the vicinity could ever remember there being a bistro there in the first place.

  Gerald received a phone call from Death once a month to see how things were going. Gerald asked Death about Heinrich but the Angel simply replied that he didn't know what Gerald was talking about.

  Celina and Nigel had become very close over the last six months, with only one big fight which had occurred when the two of them were discussing their days in college where it would seem they had both partaken in similar games of Hide the Kipper. Celina claimed her high score to be better than Nigel's and a pointless fight had erupted. The fight lasted all of three minutes, the apologies took another twenty seconds, and the making up took a little over four hours and included a large pizza somewhere in the middle.

  Nigel's captain accepted a generous cheque covering the cost of the helicopter Nigel had lost at the poker tables inVegas, and then offered him his job back. Nigel refused, claiming that he had no wish to work for a large, over-reacting walrus and he was considering opening up his own private detective firm that would soon put the entire police force out of business. This was all lies, but it sounded good at the time. Gerald had been working on retrieving the parts of Raymond's memory that he really needed, and with Nigel's help, they had managed to sort out where exactly all the money was located and how they could access it, if need be. Gerald had moved in with Nigel who triedto teach him the finer points of being human and how to play Hide the Kipper.

  Celina decided to keep Eggnog at her apartment and see if there was any way to stop him from dancing all the time, but that seemed next to impossible without wiping his entire database, which she just couldn't bring herself to do. The little elf had developed his own personality and was very content to bounce between Celina and Nigel's apartment and, due to his size and limited knowledge, could be passed offeasily as a child with a growth deficiency.