by Zack Murphy
“Didn’t wake you did I?”
“What? No, no, just resting my eyes,” which is the international lie for ‘of course I was sleeping, but it makes me seem weak for some odd reason to admit such a thing, so I’ll just say I wasn’t’.
“So? Barnaby.” Satan said, a grin damming the flood of laughter that rushed inside.
“Don’t please.” Barnaby had been trying desperately to live down his new moniker now for a week. And if sleeping was a sign of weakness, a stupid name in the eyes of the ruler of the Gehenna was certainly a plume in the cap of feebleness.
Satan threw up his hands in a jovial defense, “Wouldn’t say a word.”
“Thanks. You know how it is.” He looked at whom he was talking to, “No, you probably don’t.”
“Hey he’s got his, um,” Satan paused searching for the right word to describe The Death and his penchant for oddities, “quirks.”
“That’s one word for it.”
Barnaby nodded and Satan returned the nod. They sat in silence for a few minutes, each taking a turn in granting the other a small smile. Satan scratched his nose and started to speak but said nothing. Barnaby tapped on his chest with a finger, puffing his cheeks with the rhythm.
He turned to Satan and started to speak but drew the words back and sat silently. It was two alpha wolves waiting for the other to drop their guard and make a slip. Each knew that the other knew that the other knew that they knew what the other knew. It was a very boring chess match between two people who didn’t much like the game.
“So,” Satan was the first to break the silence. “What are you doing in the hospital?”
“You know,” answered Barnaby, “lots of dead people in hospitals.”
“Yep.” He nodded.
“And you?”
“You know,” shrugged Satan, “lots of lawyers in hospitals.”
*****
The Thirteen Insurance Agents made their way to the lobby to greet their combatants. They figured the rag-tag group that was milling about must be the enemy since they were carrying weapons; although it seemed a bit odd that these were the people who had been sent to destroy them. They just weren’t that impressive, they were having a hard time lifting the broad swords they dragged behind them.
The group stopped their aimless pacing when they spotted the Agents and hovered in a tight cluster. Ketty broke from the group and took a couple of steps toward the Agents. Number One did likewise and took a couple of steps toward Ketty. The two stared at the ground, occasionally exchanging slight glances to the other.
“Hey,” nodded Ketty shyly.
“Hey,” Number two echoed, meekly kicking invisible dirt at his feet.
“So, how we do we do this?” she questioned pensively.
Number One thought about this question for a time. He knew it was a silly question, but he conceded in his mind that he hadn’t really an idea how to go about starting. He knew what the plan was once the battle actually started, but the opening volley was something that no one taught them in all their years of training.
“I guess we just fight?” It wasn’t a strong and forceful kickoff to the battle to see who would control the destiny of man, but neither side was what one would call the height of military intelligence.
Ketty drew her knives from their holster as she watched Number One swing his sword high above his head. A lump in her throat suffocated her as she stared at the glimmering metal that was about to make sliced bread out of her skull. She crouched down in an offensive position ready to leap toward him at the first hint of movement.
The tension was palpable as the others began to draw their weapons. Beads of sweat trickled down the participants’ noses as they anticipated the inevitable start to the bloodshed. Weapons readied at their side, waiting to draw blood or whatever else that came out of someone when hard metal gored soft flesh.
“Hey!” The tension was cut by the shrillness of the words that broke their concentration. All eyes turned to direction of the commanding voice, where they found a large woman standing behind the registration desk. “You can’t fight here!” She had a hard look in her eyes as she stared with scornful nuisance at the warriors. “Take it to the morgue.”
*****
Screams bounced off of every nook and cranny of the maternity ward in an assertive attempt to warn all those around of impending reprehensibleness of birth. Satan and Barnaby released their one-upmanship stares and perked up at the spinal fluid curdling scream.
Those were the unmistakable sounds of Dana Plough going into labor. The time had come for Satan to go and be at the side of his wife, who was about to give birth to the destroyer of all, without it seeming like it was the time to go and be with his wife, who was about to give birth to the destroyer of all.
He gave a knowing little whistle and nodded an impressed head at the bloody scream that came echoing down the hall. He slowly stood up and did a few abdominal stretches, trying desperately to act the calm and cool Satan he was known to be. He cracked a few choice knuckles and turned to Barnaby, “Sounds like evil a-doing; I should probably go.”
“I don’t know, could be the serene sounds of last breath racing down the river of death.”
“No.” Satan tried to stop the erratic impression of his objection, but it came out more desperate than composed. “I’ll get this one, you get the next.”
His steps accelerated to a rapid-fire pace as he rushed down the hallway toward the operating room. Barnaby watched Satan hot-foot it down the corridor and sighed. He knew that this was about to become the time his life that would be forever changed. He slowly pulled himself up to a standing position and sauntered down the hall toward the waiting arms of all things evil. Horribly, gruesome, macabre, EVIL things that would soon make his life a living hell.
*****
Jane Whitman had been an obstetrics nurse for the past thirty years. She had worked by one simple creed that she displayed proudly on a homemade button strapped to her lapel: Don’t take no gruff from no one.
Nurse Whitman’s gruff was taking a beating at the moment, to what she referred to as the most beautiful experience a man and woman [And a doctor and a few nurses and, if you want, a midwife, but that’s the total number of people you want to intimate with] can share together was becoming a college Frat party.
The room was crowded with not only the husband, whose accent seemed to have changed several times during the hours of waiting, but the mother had insisted on bringing her assistant into the delivery room as well. If this wasn’t bad enough for Nurse Whitman they had wheeled in a comatose little gray man and set up his bed in the corner.
Nurse Whitman had been a stickler for rules, rules she had carefully sculpted over thirty years of practice. She had kicked out many an extended family member from the beautiful moment with a harsh word and a magazine to shoo them away.
There was something about the father-to-be that made her drop her defenses, but the farther her defenses were lowered the higher her gruff grew.
It was one thing to have an assistant there; birth was not the place for making high powered decisions, but to bring in a man who was near death and, more importantly, a creepy set piece was unacceptable. This was L.A. and things were different she knew, but the ridiculous amount of bystanders was a little too Hollywood and not enough Disneyland.
Dana Plough screamed in pain and Satan, doing his best sitcom dad impression, held her hand and told her to push. As his overly-theatrical breathing demonstration went on, he suddenly stopped with the look of a man who had just realized he had forgotten the most important element of a most important day.
He pried his mangled hand from Dana Plough’s clutches and drew the silver pendant from his pants pocket. The silver that was had been meticulously wrought was acting as a prism, casting a glorious rainbow over the room. He placed the necklace over Dana Plough’s neck and smiled.
Nurse Whitman, whose patience had packed a bag, gotten in a cab, and left the state, reached over and grabbed th
e pendant, taking it off. “No jewelry during the birth.”
“This is a special circumstance.” Satan grabbed it back out of the reach of Nurse Whitman and replaced it over his wife’s neck.
Nurse Whitman’s eyes grew wide and a little ‘oh no you didn’t just disrespect my authority you sniveling male’ expression bobbed from her neck. She grabbed the necklace with two hands and tugged at the shining metal. “No jewelry during the delivery!”
Satan, whose grip had only tightened, tugged back hard on the necklace, “I said it’s a special circumstance,” through a clenched jaw.
“No jewelry!”
“Special circumstance!” he yelled, jerking the pendant back.
The two tugged and grappled with the chain, neither one letting up one their determination to be right. They stared and huffed at each other, like dragons, waiting for the other to budge. The pendant that hung from the chain waved back and forth over Dana Plough’s head. “For the love of god, whom I will take as my own personal savior if you don’t stop this; stop this!”
Satan and Nurse Whitman were frozen in mid tug as their stares crossed to the seething woman below. Nurse Whitman out of instinct dropped her grip on the chain to rush to the aid of the grieving mother.
Satan, whose instinct wasn’t as fine-tuned to assisting the needy, or in his case, helping the mother of his soon-to-be born offspring, kept his grip and placed the necklace over Dana Plough’s head. As Nurse Whitman’s back was turned he gently tucked the pendant inside his wife’s dressing gown and smirked as the pain in the ass nurse’s back could do.
*****
The shrill blood-curdling battle cries of war came up from the basement of the hospital. Very few would have attributed the high-pitched screech to the large white bearded man wielding a sword with such grace it seemed like it was merely another appendage of his own body. That’s because very few people ever really knew the multiple dimensions that made up the Norwegian Saint Nicholas.
The man could slice a person in half with the precision of a samurai then turn around to cover a million homes in less than two hours with a sack of presents in tow. He also had the highest-pitched most feminine scream ever credited to the male persuasion.
He bowed his head and charged Insurance Agent Number Thirteen with the full force of a million burning suns; swung his sword forcefully, melding steel with steel and pierced the air with a haunting scream of, “Ho, ho, ho, Merry Ass-kicking to all and to all a good death!”
Number Four turned his attention away from Ketty for a brief moment in bewilderment at Santa Clause’s death chant. She saw her opportunity and grabbed it; she dug a quick dagger into his stomach, twisting it around his ribcage. The knife rattled around like a pinball until it came to a tilt. She watched the behemoth tumble at her feet in a blood soaked lump.
She threw her arms up in the air and gave a firm, vocal whoop in victory, but quickly composed herself, placing a hand over her mouth in embarrassment over her thrill in taking a life. She pulled the mortified hand off to reveal a cheeky smile that she just couldn’t shake.
Number Twelve, after having watched his comrade fall to a smaller weaker woman rushed over to Ketty, brandishing his sword high above his head. He began to swing at the back of the unsuspecting Ketty when he was stopped by silver buckshot that ripped through his gut.
He stood, motionless for a moment, looking purposefully at the saucer sized hole that had been drilled through his abdomen. He let out a hearty laugh as he stared at the filtering blood and fell to the floor, revealing a petrified Jeremiah standing a few yards away, smoking shotgun wrapped in his hands.
Ketty spun around to find the giant laying at her feet and a rattled Jeremiah aghast. She rushed over to him and jumped into his arms, the hot steel of the still-smoldering gun sizzled at her flesh. She looked longingly into the eyes of her hero and was overcome with a rush of unbridled gratitude with a tinge of sexual euphoria.
She grabbed Jeremiah’s head and pressed his lips to hers; as they fell to floor in a long embrace. The battle halted for a brief moment so a wave of nausea could encapsulate the others. As the combatants tried desperately to somehow avoid staring at the two bodies writhing on the ground, exchanging saliva, Number Twelve raised a hand and listened to the intercom. A hush befell the participants as Twelve exclaimed, “I love this song!” The other Insurance Agents nodded in agreement and bounced their heads to the cool refrain of the Hues Corporation’s Rock The Boat.
*****
“You’re doing great!” said the disembodied voice of Dr. Arneau from down among the nether regions of Dana Plough’s gown. “Oh goody, dilating at five centimeters. It won’t be much longer now. He popped his head back up and smiled as he snapped off the rubber gloves and tossed them into a pail.
Satan’s grip on his wife’s hand tightened a little and she returned the joyous grasp. It was becoming more and more difficult to breathe for the soon-to-be-dad, as the actuality of fatherhood was creeping closer. Juliet handed him a bottle of water and helped him lift it to his mouth.
She had been brought in to aide Dana Plough, but was now being pulled in three directions by three different patients. It was a task she neither wanted nor needed at this point in her life.
She took the bottle and shoved it back into the bag she had filled with little bits and pieces of things she may be called upon to provide, as long as it was anything that could be found in a hotel mini bar. At least Henry was quiet for the most part; he had until the past few minutes been screaming unconsciously from his coma, making the room and especially Nurse Whitman a little on edge.
*****
Barnaby rifled through the reading material that lined the waiting room coffee table. He peeked at his watch for the eighth time in the past two minutes and sighed. He really wished someone had told him that the birthing procedure was not a ‘get in, get out’ experience, but the long, drawn out process of waiting for nothing much happening.
Then he waited some more. Then when it seemed like he couldn’t wait any longer, he waited some more. He picked up a fishing magazine, took a quick glance, turned his nose in a crooked scrunch, threw it back in the pile and sighed again.
*****
Actor Jonathan Frakes was in heaven [Not literally, he would be pissed if his death scene had been left on the cutting room floor]; this was the best action movie he had ever been a part of. It was so life-like; he couldn’t wait to rush home and update his resume. He swung wildly in the general direction of two Insurance Agents, missing each by a foot. He lost his balance and staggered, hitting the cold cement face first.
“That’s it!” he snarled as he lifted himself off the grey, icy ground. He lightly touched his face to see if any damage had been done to his meal ticket. “We need to set some ground rules here!”
As he finished that sentence the right hand of Agent Number Five came barreling across his jaw, knocking him back down. He bolted up with an aura of insanity written in permanent marker across his face. “As I was saying about ground rules,” he stood up, dusting himself off, to address the crowd.
“Rule number one; no hitting people in the face.” Just then another right hand emblazoned its print across his left jaw, knocking him back to his original position on the ground. “Were you not listening to me!?” he screamed to Number Five, who was standing over him. “No faces. Some of us count on our looks for a living, you know?”
“Yeah, like ten years ago.” A roar went up through the room, who were quite pleased with Number Five’s dig.
“Oh, it’s on!” yelled the actor, leaping to his feet and brandishing his sword high over his head.
“You go girl! Don’t let anyone tell you; you ain’t a pretty boy no more.” St. Nick grabbed his sword and thrust it into a laughing Number Eleven’s neck, sending the giant tumbling down. The eight companions began jumping and clapping wildly at the masterful feat pulled off by Santa.
As they leaped up and down, their buttocks peeking from behind their shorts, Longis
found himself on the business end of long sword. It’s silvery tip jutting from beneath the glittery bowtie he had donned just for this occasion. St. Nick rushed to the fallen Longis, cradled his neck in his arm and exclaimed for everyone to hear, “I’ll get the son of a bitch who did this to you.”
Longis looked up through cloudy eyes, “It’s just a flesh wound; I’ll be all right.”
St. Nick dropped him and stood up, “Who told you you could speak? You never speak.”
Longis looked through him with glassy eyes, a look of rueful dispiritedness. St. Nick brushed his sweat-ladened hair from his scribe’s eyes and holding back a tear whispered, “It’s just that you’ve kind of ruined the mystique.”
*****
“I see a head.” Giggled Dr. Arneau poking his head up from where it had been for the past few minutes, a state where which Satan was getting a little uncomfortable with. He understood the whole doctor-patient dynamic, but he felt that Dr. Arneau was spending just a little too much time down there.
He would always come up from his crouch with a grin that seemed to be plastered to his face, like a boy looking through his first girly magazine. “This is very exciting.” He almost snickered as he tried to avoid the steely, infernal gaze of the watchful father to be. He dove back down under the sheet that hid him from the watching eyes and into the safety of Dana Plough’s lady parts.
Satan turned to Juliet to get her reaction to the doctor’s gleeful practice of birthing. She just shrugged her shoulders in an ‘I guess it’s normal to be that excited about your patient’s hoo-ha’ fashion; though, she had a feeling she would soon be required to separate the good doctor from his post. It’s always a bit awkward ushering in the time of unmitigated death and degeneration when the body of your OB/GYN is lying in a pool of his own blood at the end of the bed, while his head is somewhere up his nether regions.
The room watched in anticipation with every ooh and aah coming from the hidden physician as his head bobbed up and down from under the sheet.
“This is a bit odd,” he said, poking his head back up.
“What? Is everything all right?” Satan had lost his anger with the doctor at this declaration and was now filling the void with nervous expectancy.
