by Zack Murphy
She groaned as she hunched over, grabbing her knees because her ankles were only a distant memory. Satan, who had been trying his best to be as understanding as possible while keeping a safe distance, rubbed her shoulders and cooed soothing words in her ears.
This practice did not help the woman as much as it did the man. Men will always find that women can make the most out nothing; men will find women to be irrational when it comes to pain. Men will also cry out in pain and agony when they have an upset stomach that could be cleared up by a bottle of some over-the-counter pink liquid.
Dana Plough bolted back up to a sitting position. The sudden movement startled him, and he bounced off a cushion into a safer place on the couch, away from her jolting pursuit of comfort. She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, counting backwards from ten.
She forced down the excruciating torture that played ping-pong with her spine. This was pain in all its glory; this was pain nearing its completion inside her. She knew now that her body was putting into motion a plan to expunge the creature that had taken over her every organ and turned it mush. “This is it.” She said through clenched teeth.
Satan leapt up and sprinted for the door, tripping over the rug and landing face first onto the floor. He bolted up and began his journey again, arms flailing, eyes darting every which way around the room, trying to gather anything that might be necessary. He grabbed a suitcase from the hall closet. He snatched a lamp and a doily from an end table. He grabbed a copy of Consumer Digest Weekly and an issue of Sports for Men from the coffee table.
He hobbled out the door towards the car with his loot wrapped tightly in his arms, a couple of throw pillows stuffed between his knees and miniature replica of the Statue of Liberty teetering between his teeth. He paused for a second as he stood on the front porch.
“Sorry!” He yelled, turning back to Dana Plough. “I forgot you.” He put the lamp down, threw the doily on his shoulder, stuffed the magazines down his pants and rushed over to Dana Plough. She just sat looking at him the same way an owner looks at a dog after it has chased after a fly that had situated itself on the ceiling. The dog may feel it has a chance to get the fly but the owner knows what the dog does not; dogs aren’t spiders.
Satan put his hands out to help her off the sofa and into the car. “Come on! We have to go!”
“No we don’t.” She picked up the phone and started to dial “False alarm.” She said as Satan stood mouth agape, staring down at her.
“Thank goodness, I wasn’t ready for this.” Satan said as he collapsed on the sofa next to her, the magazines crumpling inside his pants. “I couldn’t find the remote.”
*****
DANZ & C>500TP paced feverishly behind the other Deaths. She had spent the last hour or so attempting to qualify her statements, which ranged from Barnaby to Michael Ryan to the reason why on Fridays the cafeteria served meatloaf when no one there was a particular fan of it.
“Can’t we just agree that the boss has a plan to make everything right?!” She belted “But, if his plan fails, which if Barnaby has anything to do with the plan it will, and if we do have to do our jobs, and let me repeat, our jobs, that we will do it happily and without argument.”
There was a rumbling amongst the others. They whispered to each other in a muted trumpeting that was meant to be both secretive and audible enough for DANZ & C>500TP to hear their rumblings about her.
“Fine, we’ll do it. But I hope that the boss knows what he’s doing.” The Death of London, Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburg and Liverpool said, rising from his seat to come face to face & DANZ and C>500TP. “And I just hope the big guy can’t hear what you’re saying or thinking right now.”
*****
The Death couldn’t hear what his employees were saying about him or his plan. He was too busy with a rousing sing-along of America from the hit 1957 Broadway production of West Side Story that Famine had started.
The Four Horsemen and Ducat had found a happy compromise in the affair of finding the ranch: They wouldn’t kill him if he found it. Ducat was wary about the stipulation of the agreement, but it was better that the alternative; they’d kill him right there and then, and find it on their own.
War kept a close eye on their traveling companion to be sure they were being led in a direction that at the very least seemed to be right. He wanted to make sure that Ducat was keeping a steady line toward wherever he thought he had spent his entire life living.
War was apprehensive about the fact that Ducat seemed not to know how to get back, seeing as how he had only left it a few days ago. He watched Ducat’s eyes as they honed in on a distant hill on the horizon. He watched closely as Ducat’s pace seemed to quicken toward the sparkling sand from the locale. “What do you see?”
Ducat never took his stare from the spot and said, “I think we’re going home.” He stretched a finger out and pointed toward a spot on the horizon. “We’re almost there.” He let out a maniacally nervous laugh as he began to gallop toward the speck he knew in his heart was the place that would save his ass.
“He does know that’s like three hundred miles, right?” Famine said as she watched him race off into the expanse.
“Oh let him have his fun,” said Conquest, “He’ll be all tuckered out in an hour or so.”
*****
Mr. Perry Rainford Bidwell was about to hit a shot from the sixteenth tee when his phone rang. He swung hard and over the ball, causing him to tumble off balance. He caught himself before hitting the grassy floor and stood up straight, a grimace of annoyance spread over his face.
He didn’t have many rules, but he was adamant about his golfing time; he was not, under any circumstance, to be disturbed. The links were his church and everyday between eight a.m. and noon was Sunday.
His personal assistant Janet, who had been with him for the past twenty years, answered the phone. Janet was a small, sixty year old woman whose last name, along with the names of her children, grandchildren and her birthday, continuously escaped Bidwell for the past two decades.
She had been with him from the ground floor and was assured she would have a job with him as long as she liked. Some days it seemed to her that he was trying his best to dissuade as long as you like, especially when he insisted that the grandmother of eight caddied for him.
“It’s Dana Plough, Mr. Bidwell.” She kept the receiver tight to her sagging chest.
“I thought she was dead.” He said placing the small ball on the tee.
“No, just pregnant.”
“What does she want?” he said as he lined up at the edge of the tee for another swing at his ball.
“I don’t know, she says it’s personal.” Janet moved closer to the wiggling Bidwell, who was geared into his shot. “She also says it’s important.”
“More important than my golf game?” He dropped his club in a huff and took the phone from Janet. He held the phone to his ear and listened intently to the voice on the other end. He gave a series of ‘yeses’ and ‘you don’t say’s’ before he hung up and handed the phone back to his waiting assistant.
“Was it important? What did she say?”
“It seems that I’m a giant horse’s ass and she just wanted me to know it.” He picked up his club and strode toward the ball.
“Do you want to fire her sir?”
. “No, she quit. Besides, I am kind of an ass.” He swung and hit a lofting shot into the lake that lined the course. “Come along Janet, pick up the pace.” Janet picked up his bags and lugged them behind her as he walked toward his ball.
****
Juliet sat Henry down on a park bench and patted him on the head. She went to the curb and tried hailing a taxi. She normally didn’t have a problem getting a cab. She was attractive, young and white, something cab drivers look for in a fare.
With Henry in tow she was having more of a problem. Drivers took one look at his face and drove on. He was scaring off potential rides with his sullen quintessence that seemed t
o have been touched by the hand of the grim reaper. He was grey and shivering; somehow, whatever had happened to him during his task had him rattled.
A cab stopped to pick up the fair haired Juliet as she rushed back to the bench to grab Henry. Before the cabbie could make a run for it she shoved the comatose Henry into the cab and jumped in after him.
After a few moments of debate she convinced the driver to take them to their destination. How she was going to explain her assistant to Dana Plough when they finally reached the house was beyond her. But she had to do something; she felt somewhat responsible for had happened to him.
*****
Ketty had dried off and put her hair up into a large towel. She walked out into the living area of the hotel room and immediately felt uneasy. As she passed by the grinning black men in skimpy shorts she tried desperately to advert her eyes from their manliness that were wiggling a little too close for her comfort towards freedom. She found Barnaby and scuttled up next to him. “Who are these?”
“They’re his-- well, how would one put it? Companions?” said Barnaby. It was still difficult to exactly explain the relationship between Santa Clause and a group of scantily clad young men after all these millennia.
“Whose companions?” she whispered.
“Mine,” said Saint Nicholas, grabbing her in a bear hug and squeezing her tightly. “Don’t worry about them. They won’t bite.”
He smiled and winked, “Unless that’s what you’re into.”
Ketty eyeballed the large bearded man in the ultra-sparkly flowing robes that had accosted her. She turned to Barnaby and said, “Why is the gay pope standing in our living room?”
“Gay Pope? I love it!” St. Nick gave an ingratiatingly riotous laugh in her face, “No honey, I’m Santa Clause.”
Ketty turned again to Barnaby, not saying a word. Her look of confusion said everything she didn’t. “The Santa Clause of Norway,” Barnaby said.
“Oh?” Ketty was more confused by the answer than she was by the question. There are certain aspects of Santa Clause every little girl knows as a fact. What was standing beside her in his ostentatious clothes and horde of well-oiled men was not the Santa Clause to whom she had spent her childhood writing letters.
Christmas was always a time of great bliss in the Bauer household, full of Yule-tide joy of hanging stockings and drinking eggnog. Each Christmas Eve her mother would tuck her in and sing her carols to get the visions of sugarplums dancing in her head started into dreamland.
This was not the jolly old fat man dressed in soot-covered red, wistfully bouncing from rooftop to chimney. This was not the Santa Clause who sat on a candy cane throne at the mall while bawling children wrestled to get back to the warm embrace of their mothers.
This was man to whom the concept of ‘bring it down a notch’ was a whisper in the wind. He was jolly; there was no mistaking that, but it was a ‘festive’ jolly usually reserved for Christmas parties in Provincetown.
As Ketty tried in vain to wrap her head around the sight of the Norwegian St. Nick, Jeremiah took her by the hand and led her out of the room. “That’s not Santa Clause,” she garbled as the bedroom door closed behind her. “That just can’t be Santa Clause.”
“It is.” Jeremiah led her to the bed and seated her, “You’ll get used to it. Everyone does. It just takes a little time.”
“And those elves,” she stared at herself in the mirror while visions of buff and bronzed he-men danced in her head, “They’re so--”
“That’s something you may not get used to.” He started for the door and turned to check on her on last time. “Now get dressed. Everything will be better once you have time to soak it all in.” He closed the door behind him, leaving Ketty alone with her thoughts about the true meaning of Christmas.
“They’re all so--” she said to the air, “festive?”
*****
“I think she’ll need some time to adjust,” said Jeremiah slipping back into the conversation.
“I toned it down for the occasion too,” said the Norwegian St. Nick as he handed his gloves to Barnaby, “I could have really gone full-blown with the whole end of the world thing. You should have seen what Hank wanted to do.”
Hank, Longis, Julius, Darren, Demeter, Guy-Williams, Sebastian and Jordan were, for lack of a better term, his elves. They had been with him for the last three thousand years and had yet to utter a collective word between them.
This is how St. Nick preferred it; strong, toned and bronzed didn’t need to speak to be enjoyed. They each had their own unique personality, ones that the Norwegian Santa Clause never bothered to delve into.
The Norwegian St. Nicholas was his own man, one who didn’t feel the necessity to conform to the rigors and regulations of all other Yuletide Clauses. He had etched out a nice rainbow-colored niche that made him unique.
He existed in a world where boundaries were broken by the bulldozers of tolerance. Where being who you are and not letting anyone else tell you it’s wrong is built in its dusty ruins.
“Now let’s get down to business. We didn’t fly half way around the world to sit around comparing whose army is more up to hand to hand encounters. Although, hopefully there will be time for such frivolities later.”
Jeremiah let simmer a pregnant pause before finally wrapping his head around the double entendres that were thrown his way. “Well, we still have to find a couple more people to complete our congregation.”
“The more the merrier; that’s what I always say.” St. Nick blustered, slapping Jeremiah on the back so hard he lost the ability to breathe for a minute.
“Wait a minute,” Barnaby butted in to stop what was becoming a ridiculous tête-à-tête, “This is all you got?”
“I thought you were taking care of the rest,” said Jeremiah. “I just assumed.”
“You know what they say about people who assume?” Barnaby replied.
“Oh I certainly do,” rang in St. Nick. “Something about asses and you and me,” he winked.
“All right! That’s enough for now.” Barnaby was watching his plan inch closer to the edge and one small stroke would push it right over to the briny deep. He looked over the troops that had assembled as a wave of certain doom made its way down from his head to his bowel.
A teacher, an angel who was more heck than hell, Santa Clause and his eight wise men weren’t exactly the army of mercenaries for defeating the bringers of all things malevolent that he had hoped for.
He didn’t want to be here in the first place; he didn’t like humans, and after spending less than a week walking amongst them he disliked them even more. Of course, he pondered, the alternative was worse; having them all up in the after-life with him at the same time. “Let’s just take a deep breath and try to get our heads around this.”
St. Nick raised a finger and started to open his mouth. “No. Don’t,” Barnaby stopped him; his finger slowly drifted back down toward his side.
*****
Juliet watched the hulking mansions, with their swimming pools and tennis courts and servant quarters float by and then vanish into tree-lined canopies. The taxi was being shadowed by the casts of darkness from the brick and steel-fortified gates that grew from the pavement like giant sequoias.
Henry sat beside her, hunched over in a cold sweat, paying no attention to the trip. She put a calming hand on his back and watched his spine wave with every lungful of air that he lapped up from the floor of the cab.
She watched the afternoon sun beat down on the sunglass-mirrored eyes of women who lay on freshly laundered towels. They peered from behind their shaded shelters, exhibiting their newly collagened lips for the young boys on their lawn who dripped with sweat.
She watched as stockbrokers pulled into their driveways rushing to get a quick afternoon delight with their neighbor’s trophy wife. She watched a community where it didn’t matter who you were; it mattered what you owned. Wealth ruled this society of buyers and sellers of human souls.
She looked
at this world with envy. She looked at this world with pity. It was a world where she longed to be and longed to never be a part of. She had grown up watching these people from behind her mother’s apron as she washed the dishes and prepared the meals. She had fought her entire life to not become her mother but to become the people for whom her mother worked.
Her mother had taken two jobs to put Juliet through college; she put her own life on the back burner to make a better life for her daughter. Juliet appreciated everything her mother did for her, but she still didn’t want to be her mother.
She watched as they looked at her mother with shame and contempt. It infuriated her the way they would scoff at her mother behind her back. As a child she would accompany her mother to work and play among the ruins of the nouveau-riche.
She would hide behind the thick velvet drapes as she listened to them speak with amusement and condescension about her mother and the other domestics that made the household run.
She wanted to be better than what she saw her mother as, if for no other reason than to stick it to the ones who laughed at her. She wanted something better for her mother, she wanted her to be able to take her rightful place between the rich and pompous, something her mother never struggled for, but wanted for her daughter.
“Stop here for a minute,” she said to the driver. The cab came to a standstill, hugging the curb outside of a white mansion. Juliet climbed out of the car and stood staring at the house set back behind a hill of meticulously administered green. A tear made its way to the edge of her eye when she picked up a rock and threw it as far and hard as she could.
As she flew back into the cab the sound of shattering glass could be heard around the neighborhood. “Step on it,” she shouted at the cabbie as they sped away, leaving the smell of burnt rubber on the street behind them. She gazed back at the house she had marred and smiled, “That felt good.”
*****
Manuel opened the door and watched as Satan slid in, followed by a struggling Dana Plough. He shut the door and walked around to the other side, pausing to take a handkerchief out of his pocket to give the car a quick buff.
Satan had spent more time than he had planned on to peruse the contents of the refrigerator. He had finally given up after his fourth time through and suggested they go out for lunch.
