Pride's Spell

by Matt Wallace

  The stuff they used to use gave the champagne a funky aftertaste, and it would make the producer sick for days, despite the medication he took beforehand to neutralize the sedative’s immediate effects. He hated that.

  He’d have to give his assistant a bonus. Where the kid found this stuff, it was a keeper.

  The producer sets his glass down on the prep station top and peers down at the unconscious chefs.

  He thunderclaps his hands together.

  “All right, kids! It’s showtime!”

  BELOW THE LINE

  Backstage, Producer Two approaches Jett with two flutes of champagne and a dazzling smile.

  “Well, I’d call this a grand success,” she proclaims.

  “Oh, thank you so much! But we haven’t even done the finale yet. I’ve got a thousand silver balloons and the cream for the giant flaming cherries jubilee that’s going to drop from the ceiling at midnight!”

  “And I cannot wait!” the producer assures her, extending one of the half-filled champagne flutes. “Toast with me.”

  “Oh, no thank you,” Jett says as sorrowfully and sweetly as possible. “I don’t drink. The calories, the sugar. My system can’t handle it, let alone the booze.”

  “Oh, come on! One sip, just for me. You’ve done such a good job.”

  Jett puts on her most sincere and polite smile. “You know there is like nothing I wouldn’t do to please my special clients, but it would just make me sick and those Jimmy Choos you have on are too fabulous and rare to ruin.”

  The producer sighs, taking back her proffered hand. “That’s really disappointing, Jett.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry! Really! But thank you. I—”

  “Boys!” The producer yells, sounding nothing like the delightful hostess from a moment ago.

  Jett looks where the producer is now looking, at one of the black curtains quartering off the area.

  Two absolutely humongous men in dark suits and wearing severe expressions step through the curtain. One of them is holding an electric taser in his right hand.

  Jett looks back at the producer. “What is this?”

  “This is what a line producer does, sweetie,” she says blandly.

  The man holding the taser advances on her. Jett frowns at the producer before turning away and then abruptly leaping from the spot where she’s standing. She bounds at the taser-wielding goon like a gazelle, shouting a bloodcurdling war cry.

  The man actually stops advancing, eyes widening in total surprise.

  Jett drives the heel of her right palm up under his nose with shocking speed and power, crushing his septum, shattering bones, and causing his head to snap back at a wholly unnatural angle.

  The other man is on her immediately, arms widening to encircle her. But before he can begin to close them Jett has reared back and driven the slim, hard, protruding bone of her forearm into his throat with deep impact. She immediately recharges and unloads several more forearms and elbow strikes on the man’s face and skull, but in truth the shock of the oxygen-restricting first blow was enough to send him crumpling to his hands and knees, sucking air that can find no access.

  Meanwhile his compatriot, dazed, has dropped the taser and is trying to rub away the tears filling his eyes. His feet shuffle drunkenly. Blood is pouring down his mouth and chin and the front of his suit.

  His nose, which naturally pointed slightly down when he walked through the curtain, is now upturned.

  Jett whirls furiously on the producer.

  “Whoa!” the woman yells, holding up the champagne flutes as if they’re shields. “Where the fuck did that come from?”

  “I am a single professional woman in New York City!” Jett yells back, sounding more offended than angry. “What exactly about me makes you think I dick around?”

  The producer lowers the flutes slightly, staring at Jett in abject wonder.

  “Now,” Jett demands, “what is this? Are you in some way unhappy with Sin du Jour’s service?”

  “Wow. Girlfriend, you are fierce, but you aren’t very bright, are you?”

  Jett frowns again.

  She also punches the woman in her mouth.

  The producer drops both champagne flutes. They shatter on the floor as she staggers backward, cupping both hands around her bleeding mouth and spitting two teeth between her fingers convulsively.

  Jett turns and flees between the disabled bodies of the producer’s goons.

  THE BREAK OF DAWN

  They all wake up suspended high above the ground and with splitting headaches.

  Bronko, Lena, Darren, Nikki, Pacific, and Mr. Mirabel are all tied to thick wooden poles cut to equal length and lined up in a perfectly spaced row. Their arms are stretched behind them around each pole and bound at the wrist with tight, heavy bonds. Their feet are perched precariously on tiny ledges nailed to each stake.

  “Did he call me a ‘cunt’?” Lena asks drunkenly, trying to blink away the haze.

  Darren is far away in his own mind, wondering what Lena is cooking for their breakfast. “Who did?”

  “Harsh buzz,” Pacific complains amiably.

  “Moto California es fuerte mierda,” Mr. Mirabel agrees, painfully.

  Nikki has more pressing concerns. “Hey! Where’s my cherries jubilee?”

  “All of you, get your heads together,” Bronko instructs them. “We’re in a fix here.”

  With his words they begin to examine their current predicament in earnest.

  The giant cherries jubilee Nikki constructed for the grand finale has been removed from the center of the space.

  In its place is a five-foot-high platform upon which the stakes they’re tethered to have been raised. Several feet below theirs, dry kindling is piled high, covering the platform’s surface. In several spots it’s bunched around plastic containers marked as chemical accelerants.

  Bronko is the first one to realize it’s a pyre.

  Lena is the first one to say it out loud.

  “They’re going to burn us alive? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “This is a joke, right?” Darren pleads more than asks. “This is some kind of . . . Hollywood thing. Or . . . or YouTube thing?”

  “Bronko, what’s happening?” Nikki asks, more composed yet no less terrified.

  They’re all looking to him for the answers, as they often do, as they’re supposed to do. He’s their chef. He’s their leader.

  But all Bronko can do right now is shake his head.

  He looks from the kindling and accelerant at their feet to the VIP party guests now lining the walls of the space. Some are watching them with a combination of detached interest and mild amusement. Most are ignoring them in favor of chattering among themselves, staring at the screens of their smart phones, and continuing to munch on the appetizers and desserts from the buffet tables.

  “They’re still eating the food,” Bronko can’t help marveling. “They’re still eating our damned food.”

  He suddenly finds himself laughing, absurdly and maniacally and uncontrollably.

  It’s somehow more frightening to the other chefs than finding themselves tied to a sacrificial pyre.

  The outburst ends as quickly as it began, leaving Bronko hyperventilating slightly, his barrel chest heaving up and down.

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry, y’all,” he says to them, his head hanging in shame and defeat. “I didn’t see this coming. Any of it.”

  “You should have, Chef,” a familiar voice half-chastises, half-taunts from far below.

  “These other rubes don’t know any better,” the producer continues, “but you were part of the scene for years, Bronko. You know how it works out here. You should’ve paid more attention while you were cooking our meals.”

  He pops a sushi roll into his mouth and smiles as he chews.

  Bronko raises his head and closes his eyes, breathing deeply in and out until he’s brought himself back under control.

  He opens his eyes and regards the producer coolly.

>   “They’re employees,” he says, voice steady and calm. “I’m the boss. I call the shots. I’ll stand for them alone.”

  The producer applauds him. “There he goes thinking like a director instead of a producer, folks. Sorry. It’s got to be all of you.”

  “Says who?” Bronko asks.

  The producer sweeps an arm back toward the closed double doors. “More satisfied customers.”

  Two attendants pull those doors apart and a procession of figures robed in red begins filing inside, dozens of them, all of them carrying medieval-looking torches lit and blazing.

  They’re the same robes worn by the Oexial clan, the oldest demon collective.

  Everyone tied to a stake remembers them immediately, particularly the melée that occurred at a peace accord banquet between them and a younger clan when an Oexial elder choked on food served by Sin du Jour.

  The Oexial begin surrounding the raised pyre, chanting low and faint beneath their hoods.

  Nikki is the first of them to speak: “Oh, dear.”

  “We’re hosed,” Lena agrees.

  “Their boss doesn’t forgive and he doesn’t forget, apparently,” the producer informs them.

  “Yeah,” Bronko says. “I know.”

  The producer cocks his head to one side, curiously. “You really thought you got away with it, didn’t you? Or were you just deluding yourself that you had?”

  “What’re you getting for this?” Bronko asks, ignoring the question.

  The producer shrugs. “Guaranteed billion-dollar worldwide box office. At least five Oscar nods, guaranteed win for myself. Two sequels. Pirates of the Caribbean–type shit. The stuff of dreams around the Producers Guild.”

  Bronko can feel the desperation rising from deep inside him, but he has one last card to play.

  “There’s no way Allensworth signed off on this. We don’t give our own kind to demons or anyone else. That’s the oldest rule there is.”

  The producer. “You really are shockingly naïve. I didn’t ask him. Why the hell would I? I’m answering to a slightly higher authority here than a government spook. I’m protected.”

  “Not from me,” Bronko assures him, but the threat is hollow and he most of all knows it.

  The producer is even more unimpressed. “Right, yeah. Well, look, they have to do their pre-ritual thing here. Should only take a minute, and then we’ll light this candle. Feel free to scream all you want. That’s part of it.”

  The producer turns and slips through the assemblage of demons, returning to the rest of the humans lining the walls.

  Lena’s head whips toward Bronko. “They’re not really going to do this, are they? Not really?”

  “Yeah, they really are,” Bronko says without looking at her.

  “No worries, brah,” Pacific says. “I’ve got this.”

  He begins shifting the sharp angles of his thin body against its bonds as if trying to reach something behind him.

  “What’s up, Pac?” Bronko whispers urgently. “Have you got a blade? Can you get free?”

  “I almost . . . got it!” Pacific proclaims triumphantly.

  Bronko and the rest crane their necks to see.

  Pacific tosses something from his restrained hands to the kindling at their feet.

  It lands with a soft rustling.

  “What was that?” Darren asks.

  Mr. Mirabel laughs until it becomes a hacking cough. “His stash,” he says.

  “Just breathe in when the smoke hits you. It’ll make the whole ride easier,” Pacific assures them.

  “Goddammit, Pac!” Bronko thunders.

  “Better than nothin’, boss!”

  Darren can’t grasp the St. Guadalupe medal around his neck with his hands, so he presses his chin into his chest over the precious object given to him by Wela Vargas on the day of his First Communion.

  He begins muttering inaudibly to himself, eyes shut tight, lips fluttering with the rapidity of hummingbird wings.

  The rasping, unintelligible words draw Lena’s attention.

  “Darren? Darren! What are you doing?”

  “Praying,” he answers quickly before returning to the litany.

  “Are you fucking serious?”

  “Leave him be, Tarr,” Bronko instructs.

  “No! What are you praying to?” she demands. “What do you think is going to happen?”

  Darren opens his eyes and looks up at her, unbelieving.

  “How can you ask me that? We . . . we met Him. We touched Him.”

  Lena is practically vibrating with rage now.

  “It was a dog, Darren! It was a fucking stray dog!”

  “But the angel—”

  “It was a mutant bat! A carnival freak! There’re no angels and no God pretending to be a show dog! Grow the fuck up! This is real! This is real and we’re all about to die!”

  “Lena, that’s enough! Please!” Nikki insists, her voice filled with the same compassion that always resonates there, even now.

  “Where are all your fucking wonders now, Nikki?” Lena shoots back at her, completely out of control.

  “Let it go, Tarr! Now!”

  “Uncool, babe,” Pacific adds.

  Mr. Mirabel begins to agree, but begins coughing and hacking before he can get the words out.

  The old man’s sudden spasm more than anything seems to snap Lena out of it. She looks around at them all as if seeing them for the first time suddenly.

  Then the reality hits her, and she hangs her head silently.

  “Fuck!” she curses under her breath.

  Around them, the chanting of the Oexial ceases.

  One of them breaks from the circular formation of the others. He’s the only one not bearing a torch. He draws back his hood, revealing a wrinkled, aging, yet no less imposing demonic visage.

  The Oexial elder raises his arms and addresses all of them tied to the stakes.

  “For causing the unnatural death of our greatest leader and general, Astaroth, our Lord and Master, the Morningstar of Desolation, has ordained your souls be sent to his terrible grace by fire.”

  “You suck, dude,” Pacific calls down to him.

  Several of the other Oexial clansmen hiss under the hoods of their cloaks.

  Their elder smiles.

  A smiling demon is the opposite of joy.

  “Send them home,” he softly commands.

  All around the chefs and servers staked to the pyre torches touch the kindling. It burns even quicker than they might’ve anticipated, spreading from the edges of the platform toward the center like a cartoon dynamite fuse.

  The heat is immediate and more oppressive than they could’ve imagined.

  “Do like Pac said!” Bronko yells above the rising chorus of demon chants and crackling fire. “Breathe in when the flames get high enough.”

  Lena can’t believe her ears. “Are you fucking serious?”

  “If you’re lucky,” Bronko continues, unabated, “the flames’ll collapse your lungs and you’ll go out! It’s the best we got!”

  His intentions and the logic of it cut through Lena’s hysteria. She stares directly at him, an unexpected calm seizing her in that moment.

  She nods. “Yes, Chef.”

  Lena looks over at Darren, then at Nikki, glancing back and forth between them as she says, “I’m sorry. I love you both.”

  Darren just nods, unable to speak.

  “We know how you are,” Nikki says, trying even now to sound hopeful, even playful. “We love you, too.”

  “I’ll see you on the other side, Mo!” Pacific shouts at Mr. Mirabel, who just nods, his coughing a ragged constant now.

  Lena looks back at Bronko, holding his eyes as deeply as she can. “This isn’t your fault. We all made the choice. Don’t blame yourself.”

  Bronko smiles back at her, but it’s a twisted smile, warped by sadness and pain. “You don’t even know, girl. But thanks.”

  There are no more words and no more time for them.

&n
bsp; The fire hits the accelerant containers, which burst, feeding the flames and causing them to jump five feet all around the stakes, which are now burning.

  They feel it on their feet, their ankles, searing their legs and sending shock waves of pain up their bodies.

  Darren is the first one to open his mouth to scream, out of fear as much as pain, but his scream is cut off by a much louder, far more surprising sound.

  It’s the 2013 hit single “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk (featuring Pharrell), all of a sudden blasting from the rafters throughout the entire space.

  As it does, expansive netting covering the ceiling reels back and releases thousands of reflective silver balloons, many of which pop as soon as they touch the intense heat and exposed flame of the pyre, but most of which float down between the collected humans and demons now glancing around in confusion.

  “I told you to find that hipster party planner bitch!” the producer screams somewhere against the thundering bass of the music. “She—”

  The sleekly composed pop song doesn’t drown out the rest of his words, they’re halted as he stares up and catches a glimpse of the third component to Sin du Jour’s epic after-after-after-party finale.

  Directly above the blazing sacrificial pyre, aimed at the spot where the giant cherries jubilee dessert stood just an hour ago, a thousand gallons of creamy, gourmet white chocolate pours from the ceiling.

  It bathes the chefs first, covering them head to toe before splattering over the entire breadth of the pyre and beyond.

  The torrential cream extinguishes every inch of flame with a bubbling chorus of “pops,” giving rise to the distinct, but not entirely unpleasant smell of burnt marshmallows.

  It even puts out the Oexial clansmen’s torches, slathering their ceremonial robes.

  After the balloons and cream have settled, the latter still dripping from the edges of the pyre and spreading across the floor, Pharrell’s smooth vocals abruptly deepen and elongate and then the song ceases entirely.

  No one, not even the demons, speaks.

  They don’t seem to have the words to describe the last few seconds.

  Who would, really?

  DIVINE STRIKE

  “Goddammit, we’re on triple overtime here already, people!” the producer announces irritably. “I’ve got union grips waiting to mop up a fire we haven’t even managed to set yet! Get this shit cleaned away and get new accelerants laid down on the pyre, now! And find Jett Hollinshead! I want her staked up there by the time we’re ready to go again!”