Ken dropped his arms and sighed. “Yes, ma’am.”
Kim quickly slipped on a white, peasant-style blouse and stepped into her jeans. They didn’t slip on as easily as she had expected. She tugged at the waistband and sucked in her now smaller tummy, not that it really made a difference for the hip-huggers. Finally, she got the pants pulled up and the zipper closed. Tight jeans were fashionable, but she felt like a boa constrictor was swallowing her.
Ken stepped out of the closet with a clean rugby shirt on. “Do these jeans look too tight to you?” Kim asked, her mouth in a frown.
Ken froze, his eyes darting down and up her figure and then up and to the right, searching the heavens for the right answer, if there possibly could be a right answer to such spousal inquiries.
“Uh… er… m-m-my wife is right,” he stammered.
She pursed her lips and gave him an icy glare. “Nice try, bucko. Now, what’s the real answer?” She folded her arms and thrust her hip to one side to await his answer, when the button holding the jeans closed popped, bouncing along the floor and under the bed.
Damn it. She was down twenty-two and a half pounds. How could the jeans not fit? Ken better not have been monkeying with the bathroom scale…
***
Grznarb snarled, his yellowed fangs dripping sulphuric saliva onto the institutional, metal desktop.
“I transfer you in from another department to head up the Cursed Clothing and Frivolous Fashion Accessories Division and this is what I get? Something that could be accomplished with a 3-for-1 sale on Häagen Dazs or accidentally washing the jeans in hot water?”
Threkma was sweating profusely, and it wasn’t just from the typically infernal heat. His horn-nubs glowed red from embarrassment and stress. “No, no, your Unholy Toadliness. It’s not just that the pants have shrunk or the woman has not lost weight. The jeans are cursed. No matter who tries them on or when or where, they will always be just one size too small. It’s actually a variation of the cursed camera gambit, the one which automatically adds a double-chin and twenty pounds to everyone in the picture, back from when I worked in the Cursed Electronics and Other Incomprehensible Technology Division.”
“Fah!” yelled Grznarb, a bit of Hellfire bursting forth from his mouth and singeing off Threkma’s eyelashes. Grznarb had always found singed eyelashes to be a particularly effective management technique. He couldn’t imagine how humans had never stumbled upon it. “And what does this cursed clothing get us? Mild aggravation on the part of the would-be wearer?” He knew his saliva was still steaming from the burst of Hellfire, distracting the underling, but he liked his minions terrified and confused, especially during their performance reviews.
“M-m-much more than that, sir. Diet failure, or at least perceived diet failure, can lead to bingeing. I think gluttony is the classic word, your Pus-Filled Putrescence.”
“Gluttony!” roared Grznarb, a glob of still steaming saliva spewing forth onto the desktop and starting to eat away at the tally sheets and memoranda, then the metal beneath. “What kind of penny-ante curse-works are you running here? Your latest curse produces occasional gluttony? Who in Hell cares? As if gluttony wasn’t endemic in human population anyway!”
Threkma swallowed hard. “More than that, your Unclean Maggotness. The cursed jeans can lead to domestic quarrels, displaced anger, depression, and, in a small number of cases, suicide. That’s a mortal sin, there, your Vomitous Abomination. A mortal sin.”
Grznarb snarled. “Even the little black dress thing was better than this.”
Threkma straightened his thrice-broken spine at Grznarb’s words. “The little black dress of infidelity did have some good results.”
“Fah. You have been spending too much time around humans. Your speech offends me and not in a good way. Call the thing by its true name.”
Threkma’s spine began to curl, the previously broken vertebrae grinding against each other with excruciating pain. “The micro-mini of sluttishness, you mean, your Diseased Ferretbreathness?”
“Yes,” grumbled Grznarb, “but even it had limited effectiveness. The problem with cursed clothing is that the curse begins to fade too quickly when you take it off. Extended foreplay can lead to second thoughts. That’s a real structural dilemma in dealing with fornication fabrics.”
“Still,” squeaked Threkma, “we did have that high profile political success with the little blue dress variant made out of fellatio fabric…”
“Fah! You can’t rest on old successes for eternity.” Grznarb nested his pointed chin in his scabby hand, letting a talon hover just a millimeter from his own eyeball, just to unnerve his unworthy subordinate. “What we need is something people wear every day, like the old eyeglasses of impure thoughts. Why aren’t we making them anymore?”
Threkma trembled. “People switched to contacts, so we had to miniaturize and increase the potency of the cursed material. Then the humans switched to disposable contacts, creating a black hole in our supply and production budgets. Lately, they’ve started flocking to laser eye surgery. We rigged a few of the lasers to malfunction and boil the insides of the eyes ’til they exploded, you know, just to try to buck the trend, but the whole subgroup has completely fallen apart, your Metastasizing Worminess.”
“So, just what are you doing?” demanded Grznarb. “You keep requesting more and more of Hell’s powers of damnation for your department, but I’m just not convinced it’s being used well. The Dark One’s power to curse is finite, you know. Not like the infinite blessings of our… competitor.”
“Yes, your Festering Warthogness, but curses do last forever, so the total damnation in the world increases at all times. That should please you and The Horned Slayer.”
Grznarb tapped his talon on his eyeball lightly, causing a yellow trail of bubbling ichor to ooze out and eat through the scabs on his cheek. “The total damnation increases, but so does the population. Besides, these fabric curses are especially problematic. The power of the curse dissipates as the item wears, fiber by fiber, leaving the item ultimately ineffective and a level of damnation in most lint filters that swallows errant socks whole.”
The sock-less Threkma did not respond to the revelation of the answer to one of life’s great mysteries, so Grznarb continued. “That’s why hard items work the best-the curse can last for centuries, undissipated, especially with gems and gold. Why aren’t we using our limited power of damnation for the old classics, like the cursed sword that damages whoever the wielder loves most in all the world equal to the damage inflicted by the sword in battle? Death to kings and comrades, wives and wenches. Now, there was a good time.”
Threkma shuffled his feet, the claws clacking audibly on the rough stone floor. “Although occasionally used as fashion accessories, swords are really in the Cursed Weapons and Things That Blow Up Real Good Division, your Oozing Snotfaceness. In that vein, we did produce some wedding rings (in contemporary styles in both gold and platinum) of infidelity… er… sluttishness. Cursed diamonds really are forever, your Drooling Hideousness. But the humans took the damned rings off whenever the urge to be promiscuous took hold, generally well in advance of removing their clothes to rut. The rings were, accordingly, no more effective than the fornication fabrics and matching fetish footwear.”
Grznarb snarled.
Threkma blathered on. “Wedding rings of shrewish-ness and wife-beating have been much more successful in eliciting the behavior sought to be induced.”
Grznarb’s snarl turned into a full-throated roar, sending a glob of glowing phlegm onto Threkma’s foot. The minion endured the pain as it melted through to the floor. “Then why aren’t we producing more of those?”
“Unfortunately, the effectiveness is high, but the overall duration tends to be short, failing to justify the expenditure of curse power needed to infuse the precious metal. Women’s shelters, high divorce rates, and increasingly effective law enforcement in the area of domestic violence have all been an issue. And, once the ring is removed, wheth
er because of divorce or incarceration, it is essentially a wasted curse. No one passes down family heirlooms anymore. High precious metal prices have resulted in the rings being melted down and the power of the curse diluted and spread across newly manufactured jewelry and electrical components, leading to hardware freeze-ups in most major computer brands and a general low-level of irritation across the population, but no more.”
Grznarb picked his nose with his tongue. “So, jewelry no longer is effective?”
Threkma brightened a bit, whether from the question or because the glob that had been on his foot had finally eaten its way deep into the stone floor. “We have had some success with bling.”
“Bling?” Grznarb hated human slang.
“Heavy, gaudy necklaces and rings worn by youthful enthusiasts of hip-hop music.”
Grznarb tapped his foot on the stone floor. “Get on with it. What sin is this ‘bling’ cursed with?”
Threkma smiled weakly. “It was meant to increase the popularity of the… er… singers.”
Grznarb’s brow furrowed. Threkma rushed on. “The so-called music is truly horrendous to hear, your Decomposing Vileness. It was hoped that insanity and mass suicide would result.”
“And did it?”
“No. We did achieve some midlevel chaos and sin, however.” Threkma didn’t look at Grznarb as he continued sheepishly. “Moderate hearing loss and theft of digital music.”
Grznarb thrust two razor-sharp talons into the nostrils of the minion and hefted him off his feet, blood flowing down Grznarb’s scarred and scaly arm as the talons bit deep. “There is something you are not telling me. You are not the Prince of Lies! You, underling, cannot fool me.”
“There was a production error,” gasped Threkma with a nasal gurgle from Grznarb’s talons and the blood flowing down the back of his throat.
Grznarb twisted his hand. “Yes?”
“Instead of cursing the bling, the bling causes the wearer to curse. It’s… it’s proven quite effective at that. Hip-hop music is full of emphatic and descriptive cursing of all types, including all known and several unidentified forms of damnation and graphic representations of all bodily functions. And a sin is a sin, your Cancerous Moldiness.”
Grznarb flung Threkma down into the minion’s desk chair. “Have you nothing else?”
“Just the usual. Post Office uniforms with the curse of rage, Mont Blanc® pens cursed with arrogance, pretension, and condescension, adult diapers cursed with incontinence, and candy striper uniforms cursed with kleptomania and/or nymphomania. We did some cigarette lighters of pyromania, but everyone uses disposables now, so fireballs have declined noticeably.” Threkma seemed to tense for a more localized fireball and the resulting incineration that he, no doubt, thought was coming.
Instead, Grznarb shook his head. Lice and sloughed skin spattered to either side. “When I brought you from the Cursed Furniture and Decorative Lawn Ornament Division, I thought you would shake things up here, Threkma. The cursed couch of false confession you placed in psychotherapists’ offices really caught my good eye. And using the skin of Chinese dissidents to upholster it was an especially loathsome touch. Lots of guilt, a steady stream of suicides, some sprees of murderous mayhem, and trafficking in human parts sewn together in sweat shops by slave labor. All evil work.”
Threkma managed a half-smirk of pride and self-satisfaction as Grznarb continued. “Of course, the straight-back institutional chair of false confession placed into police interrogation rooms was the big highlight of your stay. Anger, guilt, depression, false witness, suicide… the list of sin is infinite.”
Grznarb approached the minion, looming over him. “Your stay here in The Lower Realms is infinite, but your job-security is not. One four-letter word from me and you could be chewed for all eternity by an Arch-Demon with breath that makes mine smell like peppermint schnapps.”
Threkma quaked in fear, or maybe it was just another of the aftershocks of Beelzebub’s Fall from Grace.
Grznarb jabbed the damned bureaucrat in the chest with a bloody talon. “Tell me what you were going to use this latest allocation of eternal damnation to curse now, right now. And it had better be good. I want a cursed wearable that has enormous impact but does not wear out and get tossed in a box for Goodwill. Something that passes from generation to generation. Something insidious. Something delicious. And by delicious, I mean truly evil.”
Threkma made no attempt to stem the bleeding that now flowed from both his snout and his chest, as he replied. “I did find an old recipe, almost a half-century since its last use. It has a tremendous impact not only on the wearer but also on his victims, the victims’ extended families for generations to come, and on the misguidedly faithful.”
“Why haven’t you produced these to date?”
“They take an incredible amount of evil, your Rancid Hatefulness. They have to ward off constant blessings and that is not easy.”
Father Breen returned to his room once most of the parishioners had left. He took off the stole that lay across his shoulders, kissed it, and placed it reverently on his desk. He sat down at the same desk with a weary slump and put his face in his hands. When he had first been called, he had been counseled by the monks who had trained him that celibacy was no easy task but that he must put his mind and his energies to holy work instead. So many years had passed since that day, and his normal sexual urgings had lessened with each passing year. He had performed well in his duties and had moved up the church hierarchy. Celibacy was no longer a struggle. His sexual feelings were a faint and distant memory.
But lately, since his promotion and transfer, he had felt new, disturbing, urgings. Urgings that excited him one moment and horrified him just a few hours later. Urgings he could not understand and could not tell anyone about, lest all his good work be destroyed. As he stroked the brocaded symbols of his stole, passed to him by his predecessor at St. Basil’s and his predecessor before that, he thought of what he should do.
He got up, kissed the stole, muttering a quick blessing, and draped it once again across his shoulders. It was time to meet with the new altar boy.
As he left his room, he no longer thought about what he should do, but he knew what he would do.
He smiled.
Somewhere in the firepits of Hell, Grznarb smiled, too. “A pleasing result, but expensive and, of course, not your recipe,” rumbled the demon to Threkma.
Threkma quavered and lowered his eyes, but he spoke in a rush of words. “No, it’s not. I mean, yes, it’s not, your Coagulating Rottenness. But, it gave me an idea. Perverted symbols of allegiance. Not really jewelry, but tokens of membership or belief that are worn every day. Little gold crosses of cruelty, for example.”
“Fah,” snorted Grznarb, “you focus only on the faithful. Blessing resistance will need to be built-in at extra cost. Besides, The Dark Angel requires a broad spectrum of sinners. Each and every soul should have an equal opportunity to damn itself for all eternity.”
Threkma’s eyes darted from side to side. “Not crosses,” he murmured, no doubt stalling for time. “Been done before, anyway,” he blathered on, punctuating his words with a cracking, maniacal giggle. “Although both the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition did have their moments. No, your Regurgitated Sliminess, but perhaps nonreligious icons. We can pervert all of their symbols against them.”
An excellent suggestion. But Grznarb was an excellent manager. He knew that he had to make his underling sweat just a bit more. “Symbols of allegiance? This is not the Middle Ages, my misguided minion. Heraldry is no longer in style.” He curled his lips in a faux grimace.
“Modern symbols,” insisted Threkma, “Frat pins of homophobia, perhaps.”
“Too narrow a base,” growled Grznarb, making a mental note of the suggestion.
“Union pins of racism,” proffered Threkma, obviously desperate to please his taskmaster.
“Declining union membership,” replied Grznarb, secretly pleased at his servant’s cre
ativity.
“Corporate logos of greed…”
“Nobody publicly identifies with their employer these days.”
“American flag lapel pins of intolerance and warmongering…” shouted Threkma, in revelation.
Grznarb roared in laughter, unintentional Hellfire incinerating the office desk, the straight-backed chair, and his erstwhile employee.
“How do you think I got this job?” he mumbled to himself as he strode off to the pits to find a damned replacement.
JACK’S MANTLE by Joe Masdon
Bob was miserable. The kids were away for the day with Brenda’s mother, and her idea of quality time with her husband involved book fairs and consignment stores. She had been smiling all day, and he irritably began to wonder if part of her smile came from the knowledge that she was driving him violently insane. The novelty of morning romance had been good, but that had been the only ten minutes that he had enjoyed of the past three hours. Enjoyed? Tolerated. Ten minutes of routine, passionless sex with his wife was way too little payment for a day filled with flea markets and pottery shops.
She despises me.
As they entered crap-for-sale shop no. 5, she smiled blissfully at him as if they were part of some happy cruise ship commercial. His weary half-smile as he held the door didn’t slow her down. She hurried into the shop purposefully, cooing about some sugar bowl she’d noticed as they entered. Clearly the sex was better for her than it was for him to keep her in this gooey-eyed mood all morning.
God, I hate her.
Fifteen minutes later, Bob wasn’t sure where Brenda was in the store, and he didn’t much care as long as it was away from him. He was ambling carelessly down a few aisles, looking spitefully at the junk that stuffed the store claustrophobically. It was a big store, and shelves and clothing racks went from floor to ceiling. He had been stomping around angrily, but misery took a lot of effort to maintain, particularly when it was really just exaggerated boredom.
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