My Ex-Wife Said Go to Hell

by Zurosky, Kirk

  “Yes, that is what happens when you have relations with an apparently in-heat werewolf during a full moon.”

  “You did that?” Buttercup laughed, slapping his knee. “Really, Sirius? No one could be that stupid . . .” He saw the look on my face and stopped talking. “Can you read the summons?” I raised my hands, and the chains clinked loudly. “Right,” Buttercup said, quickly perusing the paperwork.

  “He can’t hold the papers!” said the boil. “But, I can between my lips, so why don’t you come a little closer?”

  Buttercup ignored the boil. “She is divorcing you on the grounds of abandonment,” he said. “She claims that after your wedding, you left her and the children without even saying a word. Wow, you must be a real dick to do that . . .”

  “Would you like to hazard a guess as to who kidnapped me and imprisoned me here?”

  Buttercup shook his head. “Oh no,” he said. “That is something for your lawyer to hear. I am just the messenger. And, you know what they say, don’t spit pus on the messenger.”

  “I would if I could,” the boil spouted, clearly disappointed. “That would send the messenger a message—fuck off.”

  “You know I have to agree with him there,” I said. “I mean, come on now, Buttercup, just how am I going to find a lawyer to represent me in Immortal Divorce Court since I am chained to the walls of a hidden dungeon on the Isle of Man?”

  “That is a good question,” he said. “But I am afraid I do not have any answers. Well, I have to go, Sirius, but I’d like to wish you luck. In spite of the dog and the boil, you seem like a rather pleasant fellow.”

  “Thanks,” I said as he headed for the door.

  “Faeries suck bull pizzle!” the boil yelled as the dungeon door clanged shut. I was starting to like the way the boil talked. Faeries did suck bull pizzle. At that moment, I wished for another visitor to come to this dungeon—a visitor by the name of Maximillian Justice. But I had no way to contact him, and he certainly didn’t make dungeon visits outside of the IDC jail. What was I going to do?

  I heard footsteps outside the dungeon, and Buttercup’s familiar face hove into view, keeping his distance this time from the spitting boil. “Aww, come on, faerie,” the boil taunted. “Are you afraid of an itty bitty boil?”

  “Something like that,” Buttercup replied.

  “Did you change your mind and decide to help me after all?” I asked. “You could not have gotten far as it has only been a few minutes since you left.”

  Buttercup frowned and held out a new sheaf of papers. “Being locked up is completely addling your sense of time,” he said. “I am afraid I have to serve you again. She got a default judgment entered when you failed to appear in court.”

  “Fault?” I exclaimed, clenching my fists in anger. “How is being chained to a wall my fault?”

  “Because you were stupid enough to not look behind you and got knocked on the head, you ignorant ass,” the boil said. “And your bedding the Winter Witch didn’t work out too well for either of us!”

  “Not fault,” Buttercup explained. “Default. It means because you did not show up in court, whatever the other side says is pretty much deemed to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” He opened the sheaf of papers and read quickly. “It appears she got her divorce on the grounds of abandonment, full custody of the children, and you have one month to pay the child support and alimony ordered, or you will be arrested.”

  “But,” I protested, “that is not fair.”

  “I didn’t say it was fair,” said Buttercup. “I said it was divorce law.”

  “This sounds like some kind of cruel joke.”

  “The only joke I see is the one chained to the wall,” said the boil.

  “I am deeply sorry,” Buttercup said. “But I must serve you with the judgment. By the powers vested in me by the Immortal Divorce Court, you are hereby served.”

  I watched, stunned, as that accursed rainbow shot from the wax seal and struck my money pouch. “Can you at least give a message to Justice, or Harvis, or anybody?”

  Buttercup shook his head slowly, looking quite sorry for me. “I am forbidden from interfering in any proceeding,” he said. “If I do anything to help you, I will be stripped of my office and banished to Hell. And word around the IDC is that you are persona non grata in Hell, for some reason—so helping you would, no pun intended, be doubly damning to me.” I watched Buttercup leave, and the boil fell oddly silent. Maybe even it felt sorry for me.

  It seemed like only minutes had passed, but I knew it was a month’s time, for coming through the door were three heavily armed faerie deputies of the IDC. Their sergeant was a brutish lout with a cruel sneer permanently affixed to his face, and he spat at the ground at my feet as his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the dungeon. “Sirius Sinister,” he called, “step away from that wall and surrender.” He spat again and stepped forward into the range of the boil.

  “Oh yeah?” the boil answered in challenge. “Right back at you, you fat faerie fucker.”

  “What madness is this?” the sergeant shouted, wiping gobs of yellow pus from his face. “Sirius Sinister, you are under arrest for failure to pay child support and alimony as ordered by the IDC, and now I am going to file additional charges for assaulting a deputy with your foul vampire spew.”

  “Why don’t you charge me, you idiot?” the boil spouted. “Because I am the one that just assaulted you!”

  “I am charging you,” the faerie said. He was apparently unable to discern that the boil and I were two different entities. Well, we were sort of two different entities. “Raise your hands, drop your weapons, and come with us,” the faerie continued.

  “My hands are raised, and that is a rather permanent condition right now. And my weapon is unfortunately in full view for all to see. However, I cannot rightfully claim the spew adorning your face . . . still . . . since you missed a spot,” I said. “Nice aim, though, boil.”

  “Thank you, Sirius,” said the boil. “I’ve had plenty of practice on that other stupid faerie. Well, no sense in leaving the other two all nice and clean.” The other two deputies soon had faces full of pus and danced around, desperately trying to wipe it out of their eyes.

  “Who speaks?” shouted the sergeant, looking high and low for the assailant. “Sinister, I warn you, any allies of yours are subject to immediate arrest and imprisonment. Show yourself, you foul, invisible demons, so we can punish you with all the might and power of Immortal Divorce Court!”

  “Listen, boil,” I said, “if they can get us out of here, we might be able to sever our little relationship. So let us let them try. Ease off with the spitting, all right?”

  “Sure, it’s no skin off my ass,” the boil said. “Truce, you stupid faeries!”

  The sergeant and his men approached gingerly, finally getting a good look at my predicament without getting pus in their eyes. “Sinister, why did you chain yourself to that wall?” the sergeant asked. “You cannot escape us that way. It has been tried before.” The sergeant reached for the chain, turning his body into diamond and yanking with all his might. Clearly, he expected the chain to splinter into a thousand shards at his slightest touch. He let go of the chain and looked to me. “Where did you get these Immortal Divorce Court chains, and what magic have you put on them?”

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You think I chained myself to this wall with these IDC chains, two hundred paces below Peel Castle, just to avoid getting arrested by the likes of you?”

  “Yes,” said the sergeant. “That is exactly what I think.”

  “And after I chained myself to the wall, how did I manage to pull my breeches down to my ankles?”

  “Loose breeches?” one of the other deputies suggested.

  “And I cursed myself with a talking boil on my ass, right?”

  “Nope, that was the Winter Witch,” said
the boil.

  “The Winter Witch did this to you?” said the sergeant. “That makes a little bit of sense now. What did you do to get on her bad side?”

  “He gave it to her but good, then left her to get married to a werewolf bitch the very same day. And it was the werewolf bitch, along with her daddy, that chained him up,” the boil said.

  “Is that true?” the sergeant exclaimed. “Wow, now I say that is a great story!”

  I nodded. “Yes, it is. You fellows want to be my witnesses in court?”

  “I am not a witness,” said the sergeant. “I would be merely repeating what I heard the boil say about what you said in its presence. That is hearsay, actually double hearsay, and is completely inadmissible in court.”

  “Hear me say what?” said the boil. “What are you rambling on about, faerie?”

  “And the boil is not a witness for the same reason,” finished the sergeant.

  “Witness?” said the boil. “I am too a witness! You wouldn’t believe what I have to witness down here.”

  I realized what the sergeant said made sense, sort of. And I had caused enough of a ruckus in Immortal Divorce Court without dropping my breeches in open court so that the boil could testify. The only ones that could testify on my behalf were the ones that imprisoned me here in the first place. “I understand,” I said with a frown.

  “Sorry,” the sergeant said. “We are the arrestifiers and not the testifiers.” He motioned to the other two deputies, and they changed to pure diamond and grabbed on to one of my chains, yanking with all their might. I thought I could feel the ground beneath my feet begin to waver and shimmy, but the chain still remained affixed to the dungeon wall. The sergeant released the chain and stood back, scratching his head. “We should still be able to break these Immortal Divorce Court chains since we are on official business. I find this highly unusual. Sinister, we shall return. Don’t go anywhere while we are gone, all right?”

  “Who knew?” the boil said. “Faeries can be funny!”

  I could do nothing but wait for the deputies to return and, hopefully, free me. I was just beginning to grow a little bit crazy, trading insults with the boil, when I heard footsteps approaching. Through the door came a broad-shouldered figure wearing a traveling cloak as blue as the sky with a large cowl draped over its head. It moved slowly but deliberately, like its knees had suffered many an injury, and stopped suddenly just out of the boil’s range.

  “Drat,” said the boil to our mysterious guest. “How did you know to stop just outside of spitting range?”

  “I’ve read Bartholomew’s Treatise on Enchanted Boils,” the deep voice behind the cowl said. “Save your pus for a less well-read guest.”

  “Who are you?” By this point I’d had so many guests that I was not remotely bothered by my privates being on full display. “Are you a special warlock envoy of Immortal Divorce Court, sent to try your magic on these accursed chains?”

  “Well, Sirius Sinister,” said my guest, “I have actually been waiting a few centuries to make your acquaintance. I grew tired of waiting for you to come to me, so I decided to come to you. And seeing how you have been on the wrong end of a few bad decisions, I figured now was the perfect time.” He drew his hood back, revealing a perfectly clean-shaven head that glistened in the eerie light of the chains. “I am Hedley Edrick, but you can call me ‘the Teacher of Teachers,’ ‘the Master of Masters,’ ‘the Scholar of Scholars,’ ‘the Sage of Sages,’ and yes, you guessed it, I am the most learned creature on this amazing planet of ours.”

  “What a cocky cock!” opined the boil.

  I smiled wryly. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you,” I said. “I always meant to attend your school at some point in the last two hundred years. But instead I seem to have wandered off onto an all too different path.” I rattled my chains. “Of course, I have been getting some hard lessons all the same, though.”

  “So I see,” Hedley replied, his eyes twinkling. “But it is never too late to find the proper path. Sometimes life is like making sausage—the process is not something that is pleasant to look at but ends up as something you really wanted all along.”

  “What I really want is to be free from these chains so I can go to Immortal Divorce Court and fight for my girls,” I said, feeling a tear come to my eye, which I fought unsuccessfully to blink back in.

  “I will free you from those chains,” Hedley said. “If you promise that you will do just one little thing for me.”

  “Anything!” I said. “Just name your price!”

  “No matter your result at the IDC, whether you are jailed for a thousand years or are free to live unfettered with your girls, you must promise to come to my school and study for as long as I say,” he said.

  “I will,” I said. “Not a problem. Now get me out of these chains!”

  “Swear,” Hedley said.

  “Shit!” said the boil. “Are we free yet?”

  “Fine, I swear, I swear,” I said. “Now come on, Edrick, get a move on, those faeries will be coming back any minute now. I can feel it.”

  “Swear also to never give up in trying to find the purest love that lifts your heart up and makes all well with the world.”

  Damn, that certainly wasn’t a question I wanted to be asked while chained to a wall with my breeches at my ankles and some strange hooded man in the room. But hopefully, this wasn’t that kind of party. So why was I questioning anything the Teacher of Teachers said? The reality was that I would promise anything just to be able to pull my breeches up.

  Hedley interpreted my desperate inner dialogue as confusion at his request. “I read a lot,” he said. “You are actually featured prominently in Eros’s Book on Love. So promise.” He looked at a strange crystal strapped to his wrist. “And you had better hurry up with the promising, because the faeries are mere minutes away, by my calculations.”

  “I promise to always seek the purest love that lifts my heart,” I said.

  “And makes all well with the world,” he prompted.

  Really? “And that makes all well with the world,” I repeated. “Are you happy now?”

  “More than you know,” Hedley said. “Boil, if you choose to spit pus at me, both of you will rot in the Immortal Divorce Court jails for eternity. Got it?”

  “Aye,” said the boil. “My lips are sealed.”

  Hedley reached into his robe and pulled out a bottle of wine. “This rare vintage is courtesy of Don Indigo, my only mortal student, and a man who was worthy of many lifetimes on this earth.”

  “Don Indigo! He studied with you?” I exclaimed. “That is completely amazing. We had a chance meeting so long ago, but I keep finding myself the recipient of his gifts centuries later.”

  “I know,” Hedley replied. “He told me about your act of mercy. Remember this, Sirius—mercy knows no mortality. This wine is called Amor Lo Conquista Todo.”

  “Love conquers all?” I said, perplexed. “What can it do?”

  “Why, everything, of course,” Hedley said. He reached up and poured some of the wine over one of my chains, and then the other, and before my amazed eyes, the chains dissolved in a rush of golden liquid and pooled on the ground at my feet. My arms dropped to my sides, and I happily grabbed for my breeches and pulled them up.

  “Hey,” shouted the muffled voice of the boil. “I can’t see.”

  “It doesn’t matter, boil,” I said, extending a hand of thanks to Edrick. “We are free.”

  “Not for long if you don’t get out of here,” Hedley said. “You cannot travel by crystal because the deputies will track you wherever you land. You have to do this the mortal way. I have a small boat called Patty’s Folly moored by the dock. The crew is expecting you and will take you to London. There you can get your gold and see if you can rustle up old Justice to help you fight for your children.”

  “Thank you so much,” I
said. “I don’t know if I will ever be able to repay you.”

  “Just come see me when you are done with your business at the IDC,” he said. “The last place they will be looking for you is the IDC courthouse.”

  We hurried out of the dungeon, and I was thankful to see Peel Castle disappear from view as we headed to the docks. The sun was coming up, truly a beautiful sight, and one I thought I would never ever see again. The chill of the morning was welcome, and it felt so good to do something as simple as walk after being confined for so long. Winter was clearly fast approaching, but I needed no overcoat, being fully warmed by my vigor. How long had I been locked up in Peel Castle?

  The sea air had never smelled so clean, and I inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with its refreshing briny breath. Even though I had no weapons, and just the clothes on my back, and thankfully the breeches around my waist, I was ready to go fight for my children. I could see Patty’s Folly ahead and turned to Hedley Edrick. “One more thing, Hedley,” I said. “How much time has passed?”

  “It’s the twenty-third day of November, 1703,” he said. “Not so long for an immortal.”

  “Still, I have missed a lot.” I climbed on deck. My little girls were now eleven years old. A strange sadness came over me of having missed their first words, first steps, first everything—indeed nearly their entire childhood. Did they even know I existed? I could only imagine the horrible things the Howler had told them about me.

  “Years pass ever so slowly for us,” Hedley replied. “But even an immortal cannot go back in time to experience what has been utterly and irrevocably lost in the present, though now that I think of it, I should probably work on that.” He remained on the dock deep in thought.

  “You are not coming with me?” I said.

  “I have to see an old friend by the name of Finn McCool,” he said.

  “All right then,” I said. “Wish me luck.”

  “We are going to need it,” the muffled voice of the boil said from the depths of my breeches. “We are not going on a boat, are we? Are we?”