Old Clerks Don’t Die – Chapter 6

Old Clerks Don’t Die, They Slay Away

Chapter 6

It never ceased to amaze Gloria how going a few blocks on the Hill could feel like walking into a completely different world.  There were so many people, buildings, and businesses densely packed together that a person could go for days without leaving a three or four block radius yet still be able to get anything they needed.  So while the Club McPhisto was only a six or seven minute walk from the OneStop, it could still be in an area she barely knew.

“When the hell did this happen?” Gloria asked as they walked north up Grant Street.  She gestured with her duffel bag at a half-finished building that had been nothing more than a parking lot last time she saw it.

“Oh, don’t get me started on that crap,” Caleb said.  Gloria waited for him to get started anyway, but he stayed quiet.  In fact, he had been pretty quiet for almost ten minutes now.  That had to be a new record for him.  She’d noticed lately that he’d been distracted, but she hadn’t asked him what was up.  They may have been sleeping together, but that didn’t mean she’d gotten comfortable being too personal with him yet.

“Well?” Gloria asked.  Caleb sighed.

“They started construction about a week ago.”

“And why would that bother you?”

“Well, just look at it.”

Gloria stopped and looked at the construction site.  There wasn’t really much she could see.  The outer edge was lit by the street lights, but most of it was just shadows.  From what she could make out, it looked like it might be kind of high class when it was done.  The upper floors looked like they would probably be apartments, while the bottom floor looked like it had multiple entrances.  There would probably be a number of businesses there.

“Not really sure what I’m supposed to be seeing.  Apartments and, what, stores?”

“Condos, actually,” Caleb said.  “And from what I’ve heard, all the businesses are going to be things like big chain coffee shops or whatever.”

“Okay, so?”

Caleb scowled at her.  “You don’t see the problem here?”

“Um, no.”

“Fine.  Let me put it this way.  You know Shakespeare’s Records down on 12^th?”

“Yeah, I think so.  I mean, I’ve never gone in there.  Isn’t it supposed to be kind of famous or something?”

“It was, but not anymore.  Back in the sixties and seventies, this whole area was starting to catch on to the counter-culture thing.  Probably because it’s so weird, people could do all sorts of drugs and thought the things they saw at night were just hallucinations or whatever.  In the seventies, Shakespeare’s Records wasn’t just a music store.  It was a studio, and the home of one of the earliest independent punk rock labels.  It’s part of the reason I originally moved to the Hill.  I thought being close to all that was really cool.  Did you know, word on the street is that the first band on the label was a bunch of fairies?  Supposedly they would turn the heads of anyone that booed them into donkeys.  Don’t mess with a punk rock fairy, man.”

“Does this history lesson have a point?  It’s really cold out here, and Jack Frost is nipping at my nose.”

“Actually, I think I saw him passed out in an alley a block back.  My point is that that store is history.  Not some cookie-cutter big box music store like you find for the tourists when you go downtown.  You can’t just replace that one store with any other.  And now it’s gone.  Some company bought it out two weeks ago.  That’s the exact same thing that’s happening all over this neighborhood.  Give the Hill enough time, and everything that makes it unique and bizarre and awesome and scary will be gone.  All that will be left is condos and Starbucks.”

Gloria looked again at the half-finished construction.  She supposed he was partially right, but she didn’t completely buy it.  “What was the last customer you served before you left work tonight?”

“What’s that got to do with any of this?” Caleb asked.

“Just answer the question.”

“Just a normal everyday human, I guess.”

“Well, okay.  Before that, then.”

“Um, well… a vampire wearing nothing but a bathrobe and fuzzy bunny slippers.  He bought a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.”

“Right.  And you know what was one of the first things I did when I started my shift at the Sin Depot tonight?  I gave a lap dance to a triffid.”

“That’s a bizarre and… strangely erotic image.  But what the hell’s your point?”

“My point is where else can a giant carnivorous plant go for a lap dance?  Where’s a vampire gonna go to get ice cream?  As long as these things exist, they’ll need a place where they can go and do everyday normal things.  Even if the Hill were to change, it can’t change completely.  It will always be bizarre and wonderful and scary, no matter how much people try to whitewash it.”

Caleb grunted.  “Maybe.”  He started walking again.  “Maybe things won’t change, maybe they will.  Maybe some things will change and the wrong things will stay the same.”

“Caleb, I don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about.  What has gotten into you lately?”

“Nothing.  Come on.  Don’t want to keep the flesh-stealing demon waiting.”

Gloria didn’t want to stop the conversation, but she knew him well enough to know when he was too stubborn to budge.  Whatever was really on his mind, he wasn’t going to share it now no matter how much she prodded.  She would just have to wait until he was ready.

They could hear the Club McPhisto before they rounded a corner and saw it.  The ground shook with the bass of dance music, and there was a murmur of people waiting outside.  That had to suck.  The temperature was close to freezing at this time of night, and the weathermen had predicted the city would see the first snow of the year within a few days.  Yet most of the people standing in line hoping to get in weren’t dressed very warm.  They were dressed to look good in the hopes of picking someone up and getting laid.  It probably didn’t occur to any of them that nobody looked good with frostbite.

The outside of the building was pretty plain.  A few of the other trendy clubs in the city tried to entice people to them with flashy exteriors, but the Club McPhisto didn’t need that.  It relied entirely on reputation and word of mouth to get people to it.  During the day, casual onlookers probably wouldn’t even realize it was a nightclub.  The only thing that clued people in on what might be inside the squat red building were the line of people, the velvet ropes outside the door, and the gigantic gentleman guarding the door with a clipboard.  Gloria guessed that he probably wasn’t completely human, but he didn’t show any of the telltale demon signs of Mary’s bodyguards.  Gloria and Caleb approached him slowly, aware that everyone in line was giving them the evil eye.

“Um, hi,” Gloria said.  “Mary McPhisto is supposed to be expecting us.”

The bouncer glanced down at his clipboard.  “Amesnay?”

Gloria blinked and looked at Caleb, who only shrugged.  “Uh, Gloria Alvarez and… wait, Caleb, what’s your last name?”

“Seriously?  We’ve been sleeping together for months now and you still can’t remember my last name?  All your smoking must be killing your damned brain cells.”

“Hey, it’s not like I need to call out your last name during sex.  I don’t even usually need to use your first name.  All I need to say is ‘What, done already?'”

Caleb bristled.  “Hey, at least it’s better than when I have to poke you during sex to make sure you haven’t fallen asleep.”

“Yeah?  Well there’s a reason I keep falling asleep.”

“Yeah?  Well so’s your face!”

“Eyhay!” the bouncer yelled.  “Othbay ofhay ouyay, utshay ethay uckfay upyay.  Ouryay othbay onyay ethay istlay.”

Gloria took a couple seconds to translate the pig latin in her head.  “Oh.  Okay.”  The bouncer let them through the velvet rope, and there was an audible grumble from the waiting crowd as they went in.

There was a lady at a register near the front taking cover charges along with another bouncer.  This bouncer must have been told a little about them, because he made sure to pat them both down for weapons before he let them go further.  Despite their protests, he wouldn’t let them take their duffel bags in with them.  Gloria hadn’t expected they would be allowed to go into the meeting armed, but she’d wanted to bring the bags just in case they could.  As they walked into the club proper Caleb tried to say something, but the music was too loud for her to hear him.

“What?” she yelled.

“I asked when was the last time you were in here?” he yelled back.

“I don’t know, maybe a year ago?  This kind of place isn’t my scene, even without the hellspawn owner.”  The interior didn’t look like it had changed much, though.  A long, remarkably well-stocked bar took up the center portion of the room.  The bar itself looked like it was glowing, but Gloria couldn’t be sure if that was some trick of the lighting or something supernatural.  A dance floor and a DJ booth took up one whole side of the club, while the other was full of tables and booths in dark corners.  A quick glance showed Gloria that pretty much all of the dancers looked completely human, although she occasionally thought she saw a pointed ear or two poking out from someone’s hair.  There were forms in the darkened booths, however, that were too disproportionate to be anything other than beasties.  That would be where they had to stay, too, if they wanted to continue coming back to the Club McPhisto.  If a mundy saw a malformed shadow, that could still just be dismissed as an effect of the alcohol or drugs being passed around.  If one of these things came out into the shifting and pulsing light of the dance floor, though, that would make Mary McPhisto mad.  And nobody wanted her mad.

“You want a drink before we get down to business?” Gloria yelled.

“Yeah, I’ll have a shot of No Fucking Way In Hell Am I Drinking Anything From This Place.  With a cherry instead of an olive, thank you.”

Gloria shrugged.  “Hey, how come the two of us never go out to places like this?”

“I didn’t think this was your kind of scene.”

“It’s not.  But when was the last time we went anywhere that didn’t involve slaying something?”

“What, doesn’t that count?”

“Very romantic of you, Caleb.  Really.”

Gloria stepped up to the bar and wormed her way through a crowd of drunk people until the bartender saw her.  The bartender looked like she hadn’t slept in days, and when she looked in Gloria’s direction her gaze was unfocused.  There were a pair of bracelets on her wrists that look suspiciously like golden manacles, although there was no chain attached to them.

“Yes?” the bartender asked.  Her voice was hoarse but contained no inflection whatsoever.  “What can I get you?”

“Are you okay?” Gloria asked.

The bartender paused, twitched a little, and then repeated herself.  “What can I get for you?”

Gloria looked at Caleb, but he just shook his head.  There was obviously something wrong with the poor woman, but they couldn’t do anything right now.  “Um, we’re supposed to meet with Mary McPhisto.  Can you tell us where we’re supposed to find her?”

“What would you like to drink?”

“We’re not here to drink,” Gloria said.  “We’re looking for…”

“I can get you a drink.”

“Forget it,” Gloria said.  “Guess we’ll just have to find her by ourselves.”

The bartender twitched, gave a small and pained gasp, and then spoke again.  “Mistress is in her office.”  She pointed with her thumb at a door near the back, then turned to the person next to Gloria.  “Yes?  What can I get you?”

Caleb grabbed Gloria by the arm and pulled her away from the bar.  “Still want me to take you out here?” he asked.

“I didn’t say this place specifically.  And no.  I’m beginning to remember why I haven’t been here in so long.”

“I vote we go talk to that evil bitch so we can get the hell out of here with our souls intact.”

“Seconded.”

The door was down a short hallway, and as they approached it the sound of the music seemed to taper off.  By the time they were actually within knocking distance of the door, they could barely hear any of the noise out in the rest of the club.  There didn’t seem to be anything special about the hallway to deaden the sound, so Gloria could only assume there was something enchanted about it.  Maybe McPhisto didn’t want to be disturbed by the sounds of her own club, although Gloria bet she more likely didn’t want anyone outside hearing things in the office.  All manner of things could happen in there, and no one outside would be the wiser.

Caleb’s thinking must have been along the same lines.  “I just want to state one last time for the record that I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Anybody smart always has a bad feeling on the Hill.  Can’t avoid it, though.  I mean, come on.  We’ve faced worse, right?”

Caleb didn’t answer.  He was probably trying to think what else on the Hill might be worse than Mary McPhisto.  Gloria couldn’t think of anything or anyone off the top of her head.

Caleb reached out and knocked on the door.  Gloria fought the urge to smack him when she realized he was tapping out “Shave and a haircut.”

“Come in,” Hannah’s voice said from inside.  It gave Gloria a chill.  She wondered for a moment how McPhisto could imitate the voice without actually having Hannah’s voicebox, but for all she knew McPhisto had ripped out the poor girl’s larynx right along with her skin.

Caleb opened the door and they both walked in.  Gloria had almost expected some medieval torture chamber inside, but it looked like a normal office.  It was much larger than Gloria would have expected, and there were tall filing cabinets lining two of the walls.  She doubted McPhisto needed all that filing space just for club business.

Mary McPhisto sat behind a large, somewhat ornate wooden desk with her elbows resting on the surface and her hands folded in front of her.  There were three comfortable-looking chairs just in front of the desk, and McPhisto gestured for them both to sit.  Everything appeared very civil and normal, if Gloria ignored the woman’s glowing red eyes.

“Glad you could make it, Alvarez,” McPhisto said.  She nodded at Caleb and Gloria waited for her to say his last name, but she didn’t.  “You as well.”

“Caleb, do you even have a last name?” Gloria asked.

“Of course I do.  It’s…”  He paused.  The pause went on for a very long time.  “Miss McPhisto, that’s the point where you’re supposed to interrupt me for comedic effect.”

“Don’t call me miss.  And I don’t do comedic effect.  Sorry,” McPhisto said.  “I do business.  Are you two ready to do business as well, or do you want to continue acting like morons for a while longer?”  She reached down to open a drawer in her desk and pulled out a small, locked wooden box.  She pushed it across her desk and let it sit between them.  Gloria entertained the idea of just grabbing it and running, but she was sure McPhisto had a few hidden tricks that wouldn’t even let her get as far as the door.

“So,” McPhisto said.  “I have the Osterhaggis Key.  You want it.  Let us see what it takes for me to give it to you.”

“Pardon me if this seems a little weird to me,” Gloria said.  “You’ve had the key ever since the beginning of summer.  You could have sold it, or you could have traveled to one of the places it works and used it.  Instead you wait all this time and then want to just give it to us.”

“And right after your hostile takeover of the Sin Depot, too,” Caleb said.

“Your point?” McPhisto asked.

“So pardon us if it seems a little fishy,” Gloria said.  “If we didn’t know any better, we’d say this is some sort of setup and you’ve got something planned.”

McPhisto nodded.  Gloria waited for her to say something, but she didn’t.

“Well?” Caleb asked.

“Well what?” McPhisto asked back.

“This is the point where you’re supposed to say we’re wrong and make up some story about how your intentions are pure,” Caleb said.

“Anyone who knows me is aware that my intentions are never pure, unless you count that they’re purely for my own self interests.”

“So what are you saying?” Gloria asked.  “That you want us to take the key for your own nefarious interests, and you’re not trying to hide that from us?”

“Why would I try to hide it?  Despite the way you two always bumble your way through supernatural problems, I know you’re both intelligent enough to realize when I might be trying to screw you over.  So I’m not going to avoid the issue.  Yes, I want you to have the key so I can inevitably screw you over.”

Gloria looked over at Caleb, who stared at McPhisto with his mouth wide open.  “Did you just…” Caleb said.  “Are you actually telling us that you’re setting us up?”

“Definitely.”

“So… if we take the key from you,” Gloria said.  “We’re falling into some sort of trap.”

“Correct.”

Caleb blinked.  “Then why tell us?  In order to avoid whatever this trap is, all we need to do is not take the key.  That doesn’t seem very smart.”

“Indeed,” McPhisto said.  “Not smart at all.  And do I strike you as the kind of person who isn’t smart?”

“So, I don’t get it,” Caleb said.  “You’re smart, so you wouldn’t tell us you’re up to something by giving us the key.  But you did tell us.  Which must mean… um… you actually don’t want us to take the key.”

“But she would know we would figure that out,” Gloria said.  “She tells us we can just have the key, so we decide we shouldn’t, but we know that’s what she wants so we decide we should.  Which she knows we would do, so maybe we shouldn’t.”

“Okay,” Caleb said.  “I’m completely and totally confused.  We don’t want to do whatever she wants us to do, but what does she really want us to do?”

Mary just smiled at them both.

“So what do we do?” Caleb asked Gloria.  “Take the key or not?”

Gloria looked at Mary, searching for a tell.  Maybe it was easier for her to hide any kind of facial twitch when she was wearing someone else’s skin.

“I think we need to get out of here,” Gloria said.  “Right now.”

“There’s the door,” McPhisto said.  “You’re free to walk out of it at any time.  Are you sure you don’t want to take the key with you?  None of my customary contracts for this sort of exchange, no need to promise me your skin or soul.  I’ll give it to you free of any charge.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Gloria said.  She stood up, waiting for Caleb to stand up with her before she went for the door.  He moved slowly, like he was still too dazed by this whole thing to understand that a hasty retreat was probably the sanest move just now.  Gloria waited for Mary to try something as she grabbed Caleb’s arm and pulled him to the door, but nothing happened.  Once they were out the door and it closed behind them, Gloria paused.  She thought some nasty surprise might have been waiting for them out here, but still everything was calm.  In fact, it was a little eerie how serene the quiet hall was, considering how rowdy the crowd was not too far away.

“Gloria,” Caleb said, “why do I get the suspicion we just did exactly what she wanted us to do all along?”

“Because I have the same feeling,” Gloria said.  “And I’ll do you one better.  What do you want to bet that some time in the very near future we’re going to discover just how horribly screwed over we now are?”

Caleb declined that bet.

Old Clerks Don’t Die – Chapter 5

Sorry for another week-long delay.  As always, if you need to catch up on the story then the first book in the series can be purchased here, and the first chapter of this one can be found here.

Thanks as always, and enjoy!

–Derek J. Goodman

Old Clerks Don’t Die, They Slay Away – Chapter 5

“Hey, Courtney!  How’ve you been?”

“Okay.”

“How’s the other job been going?”

“Fine.”

Phil waited, hoping that Courtney would realize the awkward pause in the conversation meant she was supposed to answer in sentences consisting of more than just one word, but she didn’t take the hint.  Instead she just walked into the store, went in back to punch in and put on one of the blue OneStop smocks, and then went about her job.  Caleb and Gloria said hi to her on their way out, but even though they were the closest things she had to friends she still didn’t give them anything more than a nod back.  In someone else Phil might have thought she was mad at everyone for calling her in, but he had learned to just accept her like this.  He didn’t see her often enough to know if she was like this all the time, but considering everything she had been through, it would have been unreasonable to expect her to just one day be happy and chipper.  That didn’t mean it would be fun working with her.

Still, on the few occasions she came in for a shift she was a hell of a worker, so Phil didn’t mind.  And Sue would probably be in sometime soon, which would brighten up the night considerably.

It was coming up on a year now since he had first met Sue, and although they hadn’t started dating (or doing the closest thing he could with someone who slept six feet under during the day) until after Valentine’s Day, it still felt to him like their relationship had been going on longer.  Of course, any relationship longer than a couple months was a long time for him.  He didn’t know if it was because of him or the girls he had dated, but after too long he’d begun to feel bored in his relationships.  He’d never felt the need to get close to any of them.

Sue was different, although he wasn’t sure why just yet.  Part of him wanted to say that was because she was a zombie and the novelty of the relationship hadn’t worn out yet.  But another, growing part of him didn’t want to think that.  He wanted something more than just a story of an interesting yet bizarre relationship in his history.  He wanted to believe that, if Sue hadn’t been among the breathing-challenged set, he would still feel the same for her.

Courtney came up to Phil by the registers.  “There anything specific you need me to work on right now?” she asked.  Her face showed virtually no emotion as she spoke.  There were a lot of people on the Hill with their own little creepy issues, but Courtney’s problem was one of the few that unnerved him.  Maybe that was because, unlike most of the strange customers, he actually knew what had made her like this.  Courtney had trouble showing emotion thanks to a combination of her condition and way too much makeup hiding the subtleties of her expressions.  At least she had gotten much better at the makeup since she’d first had to start.  Her face, her hands, and any other bit of exposed flesh once again matched her original light brown complexion.  Anyone looking at her would never guess that, under her clothes, she was green and had leaves growing in unseemly places.  She’d come from another universe where humans had fought a war against sentient vegetables and lost.  Her condition was the result of a virus the vegetables had used in an attempt to control her.  Now she was part plant.

“Um, no,” Phil said.  “Caleb got most of the work done before he left.  I’ll just need your help to deal with the bar rush in about an hour.”

“You mind if I take a moment to eat then?” Courtney asked.  “I didn’t get a chance yet.”

“Yeah, sure,” Phil said.  Courtney went into the back and pulled out a cellophane-wrapped chunk of raw hamburger that she’d brought with her.  She’d once told him she couldn’t eat vegetables anymore because it felt like cannibalism, although Phil thought sometimes she was more afraid that any vegetables she ate would try to rise up and kill her again.  Phil still didn’t understand why she had to eat the meat raw, but before he could ask the front door chime went off.  He went back to the register to see a girl in paint-spattered jeans standing in front of it with a worried look on her face.  Phil knew her face but couldn’t remember her name.  She was around here enough that he wasn’t surprised when she said his name.

“Hey, Phil?  You’re dating that zombie right?”
“Um, yeah?”

“You need to get outside.  Like, quick.”

Phil nearly forgot to grab his duffel bag of weapons from under the counter before he ran around the counter for the door.  The thought that Sue might be in danger almost trumped the common sense that, if something were happening to her, it probably wasn’t something mundane.  No one in their right mind would mess with a zombie.

As Phil got to the door and saw what was going on out in the street, he had to amend that thought.  No one in their right mind would mess with a zombie alone.

Phil unzipped his duffel bag as he ran out the door, trying to figure which of the many mystical weapons he could use for a situation like this.  He wasn’t certain immediately what was going on, but he thought maybe he got the gist of it.  A couple people were starting to gather at the street corner to watch, but they kept a safe distance as three men surrounded Sue in the middle of the street.  All three were white men that Phil guessed were in their thirties.  Two of them were overweight and kept some distance from Sue, but the third looked like someone Phil wouldn’t usually want to mess with.  Despite the cold weather, all he wore was a tank top and jeans.  Phil thought his head was shaved, but it was hard to tell between the poor lighting from the street lamps and the ragged cowboy hat on the man’s head.  While the two larger men saw Phil coming and took a step back, the cowboy didn’t pay him any attention.  Instead he shoved Sue backward.  Her balance wasn’t great even under normal circumstances, and she fell over and slammed her head against the pavement.  Phil wouldn’t normally worry about her getting hurt- she was already dead, after all- but head damage could still stop her cold.

Phil’s heart did a strange irregular beat as she hit the ground, and for a moment he thought the blow to the head might have actually hurt her.  Then she moved, a slow, confused sort of crawl away from the cowboy.

“Hey, get the fuck away from her!” Phil screamed.  He tried to blindly grab something from the bag as he ran at them, anything that he could use as a weapon, but his fingers kept touching bottles of holy water or spellbooks.  The distance closed before he could get anything useful, and as the cowboy turned to look at Phil with surprise, Phil made a quick decision and zipped the bag back up.  Before the cowboy had a chance to do or say anything more, Phil swung his duffel bag in an upward arc, clocking the cowboy right across the chin and sending him sprawling next to Sue.

“Oh shit, what the fuck?” one of the overweight guys said.  Both of them took a step back, although from the way their gaze went from him to the cowboy, Phil couldn’t be sure of which they were more afraid.

Phil kept an eye on all three of them as he bent low to help Sue up, but the cowboy was the only one who appeared to be a threat, and he was still groaning on the ground.  Phil gently grabbed Sue by the arms and helped her to her feet, taking care not to accidently pull too hard and take off any of her skin.  He’d done that once during sex and it wasn’t pretty.

“You okay, honey?” he asked.  She still had a shocked look on her face, but then her range of facial expressions wasn’t terribly wide.  She wasn’t crying, at least.  That was something most people never realized.  Zombies could cry, too.

“Fiiiiine,” Sue said.  Her head slowly moved back to look at the cowboy, and she backed away from him, almost tripping over her own feet this time.  Phil caught her and held her steady.

“You just messed up big time, boy,” the cowboy said.  One of the other guys tried to help him up, but the cowboy hit his hand aside and got up by himself.

“Fuck off and don’t call me boy,” Phil said.  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”  The cowboy made a big show of dusting himself off, even though he didn’t have anything on him.  “This thing was trying to eat my fucking brains.”

Phil snorted.  In the whole time he’d known her, he had only seen Sue eat brains twice.  The first time had been the brains of a clown demon, and the second time had been a cybernetic elephant.  He’d had to help her pick pieces of circuit board out of her teeth after that one.  Never once had he seen her intentionally harm a person that hadn’t tried to harm her first.

“I highly doubt that,” Phil said.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you highly doubt,” the cowboy said.  “That thing is a menace.  If I had a gun right now…”

“You would be walking funny because I would shove it up your pasty white ass,” Phil said.  “I know her.  She wouldn’t attack anyone unprovoked.  So even if she did go after you, you must have deserved it.”

For the first time, the cowboy appeared to notice the way Phil held Sue.  He took a step away and wrinkled his face in disgust.  “Oh shit.  Boy, please tell me you’re not doing with that thing what I think your doing.”

“It’s none of anyone else’s business what me and my girlfriend do.”  He realized as the words came out of his mouth that he hadn’t hesitated at all in admitting their relationship.  Only a few months ago he’d been too embarrassed to show her any affection in public, yet now he could admit the truth to a complete stranger.  That certainly seemed to him like proof that she was more to him than just an experiment.  He smiled even as the cowboy cracked his knuckles.

“I’d heard rumors about the kind of people at this place,” the cowboy said, gesturing at the OneStop.  “But I thought it had to be bullshit.”

“Don’t try to look all threatening at me,” Phil said.  “If you’ve heard rumors then you’ve probably also heard that we can deal with a whole lot worse around here than a bunch of rednecks.”

“Is that a threat, boy?”

Phil unzipped his duffel bag and reached inside.  Now that he wasn’t running he found something threatening in it a lot quicker.  He pulled out a silver stake and pointed it at the guy.  The stake may have been designed as a dual weapon against vampires and werewolves, but it would still work just as well against a human.  “Yeah,” Phil said.  “It really is.”

The two larger men backed even further away.  The cowboy just looked at the stake for several seconds.  Briefly, Phil thought he might try something.  He wasn’t sure if he was comfortable with the idea of actually using the stake on a human, but a threat was a threat.  Sometimes the beasties weren’t the bad guys.

“You’re going to regret this,” the cowboy finally said.  He turned and walked away down 13^th Street, angrily motioning at the other two to follow him.  Phil watched until they were nearly out of sight.  Revenge threats weren’t something to ignore around here, and he had no idea when it might come.  But for now, at least, they looked like they wouldn’t be a problem.

“Honey,” Phil said to Sue, “I don’t suppose you could tell me what that was about?”

“Aaaaai waaaaalk, theeeey pooooosh,” Sue said.  Her speech had gotten a lot better than it used to be.  There were a lot of mystical factors that had helped her along in that regard, but they couldn’t account for all of her improvement.  Once in a great while she was even able to speak in whole sentences, but most times he still had trouble figuring out what she tried to convey.

“You were just walking along and they started pushing you around?  Is that it?”  She nodded.  “Well there has to be more to it than that.”

“I saw them start it,” the girl in the paint-spattered clothes said.  She’d come up behind him when he hadn’t been paying attention.  “They just started harassing her, no reason or anything.”

“Do you know who they are?” Phil asked.

“I heard rumors that the dude in the hat runs a meth lab or something.  It’s not like she’s the first one he’s screwed with.  There was a story that he just went up to some vampire last week that was begging for change on 15^th and just staked him.”

“The vamp didn’t do anything to him?”

“Minding his own business, from what I heard.”

Phil hugged Sue close to him.  “I’m sorry about all that,” he said.  Sue hugged him back, but the contact with her didn’t make him feel any more at ease.  He’d killed monsters on the Hill before, had in fact done it more times than he could count.  But every time it had been because the world was at stake or someone was in trouble.  There hadn’t seemed like any other choice.  To do like that guy and assume something was bad just because it wasn’t human was… well, the first word that popped in Phil’s head was racism, but that didn’t really cover it.

“Come on, Sue.  Let’s go inside where it’s warm,” he said.  He looked back over his shoulder as they went in.  The cowboy was gone.  Suddenly Phil wasn’t very comfortable letting Sue wander around the Hill by herself.

(c) 2010 Derek Goodman

Old Clerks Don’t Die – Chapter 4

Welcome back!  The newest book in the Apocalypse Shift series continues.  If you’re new here and would like to start the book from the beginning, you can click here.  If you’re still confused and would like to read the first book in the series, you can order it here.  And in non-AS news, the release of my new collection Machina is almost upon us!  The official release isn’t for a few days, but you can pre-order the print book at the publisher’s website, and the Mobipocket version is already available!

On to this week’s chapter.  Enjoy!

–Derek J. Goodman

Old Clerks Don’t Die, They Slay Away

Chapter 4

The worst thing that could happen was currently napping once again in her recliner.

Snookie would have been much more comfortable sleeping in her bed, but the bed, although made and meticulously dusted every day, hadn’t had her in it for years now.  There’d been a time, after she had retired from her calling, where she had bought the bed brand new and hoped sleep in it without nightmares.  In the end, it hadn’t been the nightmares that were the problem so much as plain old habit.  Sleeping in a bed was too comfortable.  If she slept there she felt like she might not get up in the event that something horrible happened and she needed to come back to her senses in a hurry.  It no longer mattered that she couldn’t do anything in a hurry.  She just didn’t feel right otherwise.

Much like the night before, Snookie wasn’t entirely sure what was happening when a loud noise woke her up.  She at least woke with a clear enough head to remember yesterday, so her first thought was that the apocalypse was coming again.  Twice in two days.  That was uncommon, but not unheard of.  She remembered one memorable time in her youth when she’d had to deal with nine separate Ends of the World in one week.  She immediately looked around, trying to see if the source of the End might have found a way into her apartment.  From the repeated, ear-splitting shriek she had to guess this thing was somewhere in the room with her.  Maybe this was it.  After all these years maybe something had found her and was ready to pounce, taking her out when she wasn’t prepared.  It was a relief, really.  She was prepared to finally stop living like this.

Then she realized the noise was just her phone.  She sighed, then realized this was nothing to be disappointed about.  Her phone was actually ringing.  She didn’t remember the last time she’d heard that noise.  She’d bought the phone purely to place calls to the outside world, and even then those were only to make an order with the grocery delivery service or to let the pharmacy know she was low on her meds.  No one ever called her.  Her family was long gone, and all her friends… well, she’d killed them, hadn’t she?

So just who the hell would possibly want to talk to her at… she looked at the clock on the wall.  Almost one o’clock in the morning now.  It certainly couldn’t be anything official, like the landlord.  Whoever had deemed it necessary to contact her, they kept night shift hours.

Everyone she’d once known who had kept those hours had either been a friend or wanted her dead.  So.  An enemy finally finding her?

Interesting.  She went for the phone as quick as she could, but in her current half-asleep condition that took the best part of a minute.  Still, the phone didn’t stop.  Whoever was on the other end had to be patient.

She took a deep breath before she picked up.

“Hello Snookie.”

Snookie thought she was going to have a heart attack right there.  She must have started breathing hard as her heart began racing, because the oh-so-familiar voice responded in a quiet, reassuring tone.

“Calm down, Snookie.  Take deep breaths.  I know this is probably a shock.  Just be calm and one with the universe.”

One with the universe.  That damned phrase had so annoyed her back in the day.  She’d heard it all the time and had grown to hate it.  But now those four simple words were so beautiful to her ears, beautiful and scary at the same time.

“You can’t be Aurora,” Snookie said.

“You want me to say something that only I would know, right?  To prove it’s really me?”

“Um, yes.”

“Remember when we were swallowed by the Beast from a Couple Fathoms, and we were trying to escape from its stomach but we couldn’t see and you complained about where my hand was?  And I said that wasn’t my hand, had to be something else?”

Snookie wanted to cry.  After all this time thinking Aurora was dead…  “Yes.  Yes, I remember.”

“Well I suppose it’s time to come clean.  That really was my hand.”

Snookie laughed, and with that she really did start to cry.  “I always knew, you know.  Not about the hand.  About the way you felt.  I always felt so bad about it…”

“You hush now,” Aurora said.  “You were straight.  I knew it wouldn’t work.”

“How is this even possible?” Snookie asked.  “There was no way you could have survived, especially after I… I…”

“That’s a really long story, and I promise I’ll tell you as soon as I can.  But we don’t have time at the moment.”

“Aurora, please, you can’t just call me up in the middle of the night after almost forty years and not tell me what happened.”

“I will, but first something really bad is about to happen.  The Osterhaggis Key is back in play.”

Snookie wished she had bought a cordless phone instead of this one.  The cord didn’t reach all the way to the recliner, and she wasn’t sure how much more information she could take without sitting down.

“Who has it?” Snookie asked.

“Someone really evil.  Really harshed groove.”

“Aurora, we’re old ladies now.  I really don’t think I can handle this.”

“Really?  That doesn’t sound at all like the Selected One I remember.”

“Well, I’m not the Selected One anymore.  Haven’t been for a very long time.”

“But you still have all your tools from back then, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t bear to get rid of them.”

“And please tell me you never used the necklace I gave you?”

Snookie took a deep breath.  “No.  No, I didn’t.”

“Then this is your chance.  Our chance, really.  We can put all of it right again.”  Her voice hitched, like she was trying to keep from crying herself.  “Both for us and for Dani and Cory.”

Snookie’s own voice rasped with the effort of choking back her sobs.  “One with the universe again.”

“That’s right,” Aurora said.  If Snookie hadn’t been letting her emotions get the better of her, she might have noticed Aurora’s slightly malicious tone, but she didn’t.  “One with the universe.  Just as we should be.”

(c) 2010 Derek Goodman

Old Clerks Don’t Die – Chapter 3

Welcome to the next chapter of The Apocalypse Shift Book 2.  If you’ve missed any of it so far, here’s a link to go back and start from the beginning.  If you haven’t read the first book, then it’s available for purchase here (I’ve got some cool news I’m sitting on about TAS, but I’m not at liberty to reveal it yet.  I’ll post information here when I can).  Also, don’t forget that my non-AS universe collection Machina will be released at the beginning of April and is now available for pre-order.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy!

–Derek J. Goodman

Old Clerks Don’t Die, They Slay Away

Chapter 3

“You think I should get one?”

Caleb finished ringing up a customer and turned to look at Phil.  He was looking at the new prepaid cells lined up on the rack just over the cartons of cigarettes.

“The one you have now is basically the same as all those,” Caleb said.  “They’re even from the same company.”

“I’m not talking about one for me.  I was thinking about getting one for Sue.”

“What, so you can call her while she’s in her grave?” Caleb said.  “I’m sure the dirt makes it hard to talk no matter how good the phone is.”

Phil took one of the phones down and looked at it.  The bright Qwark Telecommunications logo on the package was almost as obnoxious as the ever-lit sign at the top of the Qwark building downtown.  “I just worry about her sometimes,” Phil said.  “I’d like to make sure she’s okay once in a while when she’s not here.”

“Except she’s always hanging around, so you shouldn’t have to worry,” Caleb said.  He didn’t understand why the OneStop needed to start carrying the prepaid cells in the first place.  The only people who would try to buy them from a place like this were drug dealers and cultists looking for the next creative way to place the call of Cthulhu.  But Big Maggie had been ordered to start stocking them by the higher ups, so whatever.

It was about midnight on a Thursday, so although there was a steady stream of customers, it at least wasn’t too busy.  Caleb was glad for that.  He’d found it harder lately to fake being polite to some of the people that came in.  He’d think about all the things he would rather be doing than working at a convenience store, bizarre and unpredictable or not, but then realize he didn’t have anything else to do.  The store, after so damned long here, had pretty much become his life.

Something knocked at the glass front door, and Caleb looked up to see a black bird on the front walk, its beak tapping incessantly at the glass.  He went around the counter and opened the door.  “What do you want?”

The bird looked up at him, cawed, and the hopped one hundred and eighty degrees to caw back at the parking lot.  It took wing, vanishing momentarily into the night.  Caleb was about to close the door when he heard the flutter of many more wings.  He continued holding the door as twenty or thirty black birds struggled through, carrying a dead body with their feet.  They dropped it just inside the door then flew off, leaving only one bird behind.  Caleb wasn’t sure if it was even possible, but the bird looked like it panted from exertion.

“Hey!” Caleb said to the bird.  The body belonged to a skinny, pale man with stringy black hair.  He appeared to have a gunshot wound to his chest.  “You can’t leave that in here!”

The bird gave Caleb a scolding caw, then pecked the dead body.  The body immediately gasped and sat up.

“Oh God,” the not-so-dead body said.  “They killed her!  They killed me!”

“You okay there, buddy?” Phil said from behind the counter.

“No,” the guy said.  “I’ve got to get my revenge for my wrongful death.”

“Yeah, but why would your damned birds need to bring you in here to do it?”

“Um…”

“You gonna buy something?” Caleb asked.

“Wha?  Um, no, I wasn’t planning on it.”

“This is a place of business,” Caleb said.  “If you aren’t going to buy something then you have no business coming back to life here.  That’s loitering.”

“But there’s nothing I need… Wait.  Do you have any eyeliner?”

“Er, no.  Most convenience stores don’t carry eyeliner.  Sorry.”

“But how am I supposed to avenge my wrongful death without black eyeliner?”

“Hey,” Phil said.  “Why don’t you try the Florblue Pharmacy east of here on 15^th?  If you hurry you might be able to catch them before they close.”

The dead guy ran out the door without another word.  The door slammed as the bird took wing to follow, causing it to crash into the window.  It cawed mournfully until Caleb finally let it out to follow the dead guy.

“Deadbeat,” Caleb muttered.

“What is with you?” Phil asked.  “You’re in an even worse mood than normal.  Things not going right with you and Gloria?”

Caleb finally smiled, probably for the first time that night.  “Oh, no, nothing like that.  In fact, things with us are so good.  Although, yesterday while we were in bed…”

“Hold it.  I really don’t want to know about you two’s sex life.  How would you like it if I started talking about sex with Sue?”

“No, just listen.  We were in bed, and all of a sudden she…”

“Okay, that’s it,” Phil said.  “Let me tell you something about being in a relationship with a zombie.  You see, they have these extra holes…”

“Ew, stop!  Okay, I get it.  Look, doesn’t matter.  My point is, there may be little tiny problems sometimes with our relationship, but everything else is great.  Really great.”

“Yeah?  You been thinking about taking the relationship further?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe,” Caleb said.  That was something he wasn’t ready to talk about yet.  The idea had occurred to him that maybe, at some point in the future, he might want to think about ring shopping, but for now there were just other things on his mind.  He had just felt restless lately, and it had nothing to do with Gloria.  He couldn’t pinpoint the reason, but it was there, somewhere inside him.

A few customers came in, and Caleb and Phil were busy for the next few minutes taking care of them.  They got busy enough that Caleb didn’t even notice Gloria had come in until she stood directly in front of the register, butting in ahead of a man with a top hat and a skull painted over his face.

“Hey!” the man said.  “Gloria, wait your turn!”

“Sorry Baron,” she said.  “But I’ve got to borrow Caleb for a minute.”

“What’s wrong?” Caleb asked.  “Why aren’t you at work?”

“Because there is no work anymore.  You could say I’m fired.”

“What?”

“Hey, can this wait?” the Baron asked.  “All I want is to get my smokes.”

Gloria stepped aside and let Caleb ring the Baron up.  She continued talking as he worked.  “I really think we should have this conversation in private,” Gloria said.  “There might be some things we don’t want get out into the gossip mill.”

“Everything always becomes gossip around here eventually,” Caleb said.  “If you were fired, then there’s probably a lot of people out there who would want to know that.  Better they know the whole thing than just random half-truths, right?”

“Fine.  Whatever.”

“So how the fuck could you possibly get fired?” Caleb asked.  “I thought Hancock loved you.”

“Sure, except Hancock no longer owns the Sin Depot.  Mary McPhisto does.”

“Mary… Mary McPhisto?  You mean scary-ass demon bitch Mary McPhisto?”

“Yep.”

“Okay,” Caleb said to the other customers in front of his register.  “This register’s closed.  Phil can take care of everyone.”  Phil gave him a dirty look, but that was too bad.  Gloria had been right.  If they were going to discuss one of the biggest power players on the Hill, one whose enemies routinely had a way of disappearing, then they should really move the conversation somewhere that other people wouldn’t hear.

They both went into the back room.  Gloria took a seat cross-legged on the desk while Caleb stood over by the crack in the floor at the mop sink.  It wasn’t quite big enough to fall through, which was good because that meant nothing could come up from it, either.  He could sometimes hear things speaking from down there, and Caleb didn’t have any desire to meet them.

“Okay,” Caleb said.  “So tell me what exactly is going on.”

Caleb listened as Gloria talked about Hannah and the uncomfortable meeting with McPhisto in the dressing room.  When she got to the part about the papers McPhisto had shown to Hancock, Caleb interrupted.

“Hold on.  I thought Hancock had full ownership of the place.  No co-owners, no loans out on it, nothing.  Am I right?  So how the hell could she possibly suddenly become the owner without his permission?”

“She said it’s a zoning thing.  I didn’t really understand it myself.  It all sounded like legalese gobbledygook to me.  Something called the Historic Hill Beautification Project.  Somehow she got a whole bunch of local politicians to declare the Sin Depot a blight on the community, and now it belongs to her so she can close it down.”

“That still can’t work,” Caleb said.  “There’s no way something like that would stand up in a court.”

“I don’t think it needs to, if she works quickly enough.  She probably just needed to get pictures of the right people with their dicks in something’s tentacles, just to get control of it for now.  She’s already announced plans to knock the building down.  By the time anyone figures out how to legally challenge a demon with all the right connections, the Sin Depot will already be gone.”

“That’s total bullshit,” Caleb said.  Phil stepped in, listening to them both from the door while keeping an eye on the front.  “We’ve got to do something.”

“I don’t know if you really could,” Phil said.  “Unless you’ve got super-secret lawyery powers we don’t know about.”

“what about that one guy we used to see come in here a while back?” Caleb asked.  “You know, the Green Lawyer?”

Gloria shook her head.  “He got corrupted by the yellow impurity in his bar exam and turned into the villainous Paralegal.  Not gonna help us.  And besides, when you’re talking about someone like Mary McPhisto, you’re not just dealing with human laws.  We’re talking about metaphysical rules and regulations too.  Trying to navigate through messes like that is a good way to lose your soul.”  Gloria looked down at her hands in her lap, and her voice went quiet.  “Just ask Hannah about that one, I guess.”

Phil and Gloria both went silent.  Caleb thought for a second.  “Well, wait.  Why don’t we?”

“Why don’t we what?” Phil asked.

“Ask Hannah.  She had to have been one of the last people Mary McPhisto talked to before she went to the Sin Depot, right?  Maybe McPhisto said something about what is going on.  Maybe Hannah could at least give us some clue what she’s up to.”

“Um, yeah, sure,” Gloria said.  “Except for that one teeny problem where she’s dead.”

“Hello?  Don’t you remember where you are?  The store has a ghost that haunts the security camera and Phil’s girlfriend is a zombie.  Around here death is just an inconvenience.”  Caleb felt bad when he saw Gloria wince.  Her mother had passed away recently, and he knew she still had some issues when it came to that.  She didn’t need to be reminded of those kind of things, but that didn’t make his point less valid.

“So what are you suggesting?” Phil asked.  “That we call her up on a Ouija board or something?”

“Those things don’t work,” Gloria said.  “I tried using one right after my mom died.”

“I’ve gotten one to work right here in the back room,” Caleb said.  “But I don’t think they’re very reliable.  As soon as I tried it, the first thing the little indicator doohickey spelled out was if this was going to be carry out or delivery.  But there are other ways.  I know a spell that can summon spirits.”

“I’ve tried those too,” Gloria said.  “How the hell are you getting results with this shit when I can’t?”

“I really don’t know.  Guess I’ve just got the magic touch and you don’t.”  The look on Gloria’s face at that told him that he definitely wasn’t going to be getting any after work tonight.

“Well, I’m not sure that any of that matters anyway,” Gloria said.  “If we really want to know what Mary McPhisto’s intentions are for the Sin Depot land, we could just ask her in two hours.  She might even give us an honest answer, but I doubt it.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Caleb said.  “What do you mean?”

“You and I have a meeting with her at the Club McPhisto at 2:30,” Gloria said.

“Holy hell, are you fucking crazy?” Caleb asked.  “You want us to meet with one of the meanest, nastiest things on the Hill on her home turf?  I can’t do that, I’ve got to work!”

“We could call Courtney, see if she’ll come in to cover the rest of your shift,” Phil said.  “That is, if she actually answers her phone for a change.”

“Which just leaves us once again with the point about the home turf of the crazy, skin-stealing bitch,” Caleb said.

“I kind of thought we had to,” Gloria said.  “She said she wants to see us both, and it’s not about the Sin Depot.  It’s about the Osterhaggis Key.”

Caleb forced himself to take a deep breath.  The key had been just one of the many things that had been making him feel on edge lately.  Life at the OneStop had a way of being about either trivial little things that drove you nuts or giant, world-shattering things.  There was nothing in between.  Not only had he started to think he should have more in his life than just the OneStop, but he had also begun to wonder about his mistakes at the store.  The incident with the stolen artifacts had driven that home for him.  He’d kept things he shouldn’t have and the consequences hadn’t been happy.  Although they had recovered most of the stolen artifacts (still hidden in Gloria’s apartment until they could figure out a safe way of getting rid of them), a few had been lost, including the Osterhaggis Key.

Or maybe lost wasn’t the right word for it.  They’d known exactly who had it over these last few months: none other than Mary McPhisto.  Getting the key back from her would have been a higher priority, except that, to anyone around here, the key was useless.  It could theoretically be used to rip the planet apart, but only when taken to one of three places: Ayer’s Rock in Australia, a hidden temple in the Congo, and Disneyland Paris.  There had always been the possibility that Mary would sell it or give it to someone who could take it away from the Hill, but all reports said she wasn’t the kind to give up power or bargaining chips if it wasn’t necessary.

“Okay, so… what?” Caleb asked.  “Is she going to try striking up some kind of deal with us?  We give her something, and she gives us the key?”

“I kind of figured that would be how it works,” Gloria said.  “Quid pro quo, or something like that.”

“I think I like the idea of giving her something about as much as I like the idea of having a Great Old One conjured up my nose,” Caleb said.

Both Gloria and Phil responded at once.  “It’s not as bad as you would think.”  They looked at each other with surprise, but thankfully neither of them elaborated.  Really, Caleb didn’t want to know.

“I don’t think it’s gonna hurt just to see what she has in mind,” Gloria said.

“Oh, right, I’m sure that having the fricking skin pealed from my body isn’t going to hurt at all.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Gloria said.  “She never takes the skin of a guy.”

“Then that’s even worse, because that only leaves her taking the skin of the woman I… well, you.”

Gloria raised her eyebrows at that.

“I really don’t think Gloria has to worry about that,” Phil said.  “From what I’ve heard, she only takes new skin when the old one has worn out.  And if she just switched into this Hannah girl’s skin, she won’t need anything new just yet.”

“Yeah,” Gloria said.  “And she was all hung up on the paperwork thing for Hannah.  I don’t think I’m in any real danger as long as I take a really long and hard look at anything she tries to get us to sign.”

“I’m still not sure about this,” he said, but maybe this would be a good thing.  There might be some way for him to get the key back.  After that he could work on getting his mind straight and figuring out what exactly had been bothering him lately.

“Come on, Butcher,” Gloria said with a smile.  “It’s a meeting and we both know what we’re doing.  What’s the worse that could happen?”

All three of them went silent as they thought about that.  Phil finally broke the silence.

“That was a really stupid thing to say, Gloria.”

They all agreed it was.

(c) 2010 Derek Goodman

Old Clerks Don’t Die – Chapter 2

I apologize for again being late.  I have no one to blame but myself this time.

For anyone who’s become a fan of my stuff through this blog, I would like to point out that my new non-AS universe story collection Machina is now available for pre-order from M-Brane SF.  The official release date isn’t for another month, but now is your chance to get it early.

Thanks as always for reading!

–Derek J. Goodman

Old Clerks Don’t Die, They Slay Away

Chapter 2

Gloria sometimes wondered if quitting the OneStop had been a good idea.  Neither of her jobs at the time had been glamorous, but the OneStop at least was considered “respectable.”  Her other job, even in a place like the Hill, where taboos were few and far between, was still something people looked down on.  But she had made her choice, and even if she was sometimes treated like even less of a person than she had been at the convenience store (which was really saying something), she at least made a hell of a lot more money by showing men her breasts.

As her last song ended, Gloria stooped to grab her tear-away bra from the stage and gathered up the assorted dollar bills strewn around the brass pole.  She took a closer look at one of the bills, realized it was a five, and then gave an appreciative nod to the man in a backwards cap at the edge of the stage who had given it to her.  The man, Carl, winked and clapped for her as she stepped off the stage.  Carl was a regular, and one of the better tippers.  Gloria usually took it as a good sign when he showed up at the Sin Depot.  Carl was a necromancer, and if he had lots of money to burn then that meant he had just done some really big job.  And when a necromancer did a big job that meant more undead walking around, which in turn made lots of people nervous, mundy or not.  Nervous people did their best to forget their troubles, and one of the ways they did that was by watching people like Gloria strut their stuff.

Natalia walked up to the stairs as Gloria came down.  “Well, how is it so far tonight?” she asked in a thick Russian accent.

Gloria held up her folded wad of bills.  “Looking good.  How about you?  You ready for this?”

Natalia nodded, but the poor girl shook visibly.  This was going to be her first time stripping.  She’d gone through a lot, though, so Gloria didn’t think going topless in front of a bunch of strange men would be any worse.  This was, after all, a girl who had been the subject of grizzly post-Cold War genetics experiments.  She looked beautiful, though, despite what Natalia might think of herself.  Her pale skin blended in almost perfectly with her short white skirt and white top.  The outfit was lined in gold thread, giving her every appearance of an angel.  Of course, that might have less to do with the costume and more to do with the giant white wings protruding from her back.

Most of the men and women watching the stage didn’t care that Natalia had wings, unless there were a few of them who were specifically turned on by it.  Strange things were common in this neighborhood.  The Sin Depot had certain girls, ones who could blend in like Gloria, that worked both before and after the sun set, but once darkness came on the Hill, girls like Natalia took the stage.  There were two more girls on the other stages right now.  One, Kimberly, gave every appearance of being a normal human like Gloria, but the other, Ginger, had partially changed herself into a cat.  Ginger worked most nights unless there was a full moon, since she had less control over her cat form then and had a tendency to go into heat.  Hancock wouldn’t let her anywhere near the customers when she was like that.  He made damned sure that everything at the Sin Depot stayed above board and legal, but the things an in-heat were-cat might do in the privacy of a lap dance booth came too close to prostitution.  There would be none of that here.

After putting her bra back on, Gloria strolled over to the bar and ordered a jack and coke before pulling out a cigarette from the pack tucked in her garter belt.  Emily, the girl who’d been quietly working on a crossword puzzle from the stool next to her, looked up at Gloria with a raised eyebrow.

“Whatever happened to you trying to quit?” Emily asked.

“That was last week,” Gloria said.  “I only try to quit smoking every other week.”

Emily shrugged and pulled up the top half of her costume from where it had been slipping down her chest.

“What are you even supposed to be dressed as?” Gloria asked her.  “You look like a cross between a cowgirl and a Japanese schoolgirl.”

“Actually, I think that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be.  Hancock suggested it.  He thought it was exactly what a few of the customers would find sexy.”

“I can pretty much guarantee none of the customers care about your clothes.”

“Hey, I’ve got to try something, right?  Especially with Ginger over there tonight.  You know how tough it is to get decent tips when she’s around.  Everyone saves their money for her.”

Gloria took a sip of her drink instead of answering.  She liked Emily okay, but she was always blaming the other girls for her lack of tips.  In truth, the customers virtually ignored her because she danced like she was stuck in tar.

She wasn’t wrong about Ginger being a top earner, though.  Any of the girls who had a sense of the exotic to them tended to make more money.  This was probably the only strip club in the world where girls like that could dance in the open.  The Hill was a haven for all that the rest of the world pretended existed only in dreams and nightmares.  Even the daylight people who tried to ignore what happened to the neighborhood at night- the “mundies,” as they were known- couldn’t deny that there was just something off about the neighborhood.  No one knew why, although there were plenty of implausible theories.

“Carl’s in tonight,” Gloria said.  “You want some extra cash, I’m sure you can talk him into a lap dance.”

Emily shrugged.  She appeared far more interested in the crossword puzzle than making any money.

“You hear any interesting word on the street yet for tonight?” Gloria asked.  Emily looked at her, appeared to think for a second, then set her crossword puzzle down on the bar and leaned closer to Gloria.

“Have you talked to Hancock at all since you got here?” Emily asked.

Gloria shook her head.  “No.  Kind of weird, too.  On a night with this many customers he’s usually walking around making sure everything is running totally smooth.”

“I know.  I saw him for a second.  He was reeeeally flustered looking.  Going from his office to the front counter and back, really quick-like.  I’ve never seen the guy look so much like he was on a caffeine buzz.”

Gloria nodded.  That was weird.  Hancock was the sort of guy that never rushed anything, a really laid-back person.  Even when he got angry, it was the kind of fuming anger that stayed just below the surface.  “No clue what that’s about?” she asked.

Emily started to shrug, then cocked her head.  “No… well, maybe.  Something else- Hannah never showed up tonight.”

Gloria took a long drag on her cigarette, thinking.  Hannah Stein was a really quiet girl, not usually spending much time with any of the other dancers.  If she had a good reason not to show up, she wouldn’t have bothered telling anyone.  But there were rumors about her lifestyle.  She spent more than she could afford.  The gossip was she was behind on payments for her Mustang and her credit cards were maxed out.  She was even a bit of an amateur mad scientist, supposedly reanimating stitched together corpses every time there was a lightning storm.  That kind of equipment didn’t come cheap.  On a busy night like tonight, Hannah would have wanted to be here to make all the money she could.

“You think the two things are related?” Gloria asked.

“Don’t know,” Emily said.  She rolled up her crossword book and stood up.  “I’ve got to get going though.  I’ll be up in about five minutes.”

Gloria finished her drink and cigarette, turning on her stool to watch Natalia’s performance.  She was very awkward on stage, and her wings got in the way when she tried to do anything more complicated on the pole than swing around it, but she was still beautiful.  She already had a good pile of dollars building at the edge of the stage.  She seemed like she would be all right in the long run.  Gloria was happy for the girl.  She and her boyfriend Caleb had been the ones to help her out of her previous bad situation.  Gloria knew there were plenty of people who would say stripping at a seedy dive on the Hill still counted as a bad situation, but those sanctimonious assholes could go screw themselves.

She stubbed out her cigarette in the nearest ashtray and got up to go back to the dressing rooms.  It sounded to her like there might be some trouble going on tonight, and she wanted to check her supplies and make sure she had come prepared.

Gloria knew she wasn’t the only one who kept “supplies” with her wherever she went on the Hill, but she was one of the few who took some joy in it.  The duffel bag Gloria had stashed in the back was full of pretty common items for the Hill, things like stakes and silver and holy water.  Those were simply this neighborhood’s equivalent of mace.  Muggers were as common here as in any other rough section of the city, but here they were just as likely to be a vampire or were-something as they were a human.  Gloria, however, went beyond the simple necessities.  She kept things for even more bizarre occurrences, since she had the habit of seeking the bizarre out and trying to help wherever she could.  She supposed one could consider that her hobby.  Some people did crossword puzzles or crocheted.  Some people reanimated stitched together corpses.  Then there were the few, like Gloria, who spent all there extra time as freelance beastie-bashers and helped the helpless.  What could she say?  It was fun.

That was another thing that hadn’t been so bad about the OneStop, she supposed.  She never would have taken up monster-hunting (although that wasn’t a really good term for it, considering the so-called “monsters” were just as likely to need a hand as anyone else; just because they were different didn’t mean they did not just want to go about with their lives), if it hadn’t been for the brief months she’d worked at the convenience store.  That was where she had first realized things hid in the shadows when nobody was looking.  That was also where she had learned that all of those things, good or bad, were just as prone to late night munchies as anyone else.  The OneStop, being at the heart of the Hill, had often been the last place the beasties went before trying to destroy or take over the world.  The apocalypse had nearly happened several times a month.  Gloria had her mundy-cherry broken very quickly there, and she had never looked back.

That had also been where she had met her current boyfriend.  Caleb had been a clerk at the OneStop for a long time before Gloria had shown up, and he was still a clerk now.  Being at the OneStop meant he got paid to do what Gloria did for fun, but to him it was just part of the job.  At first he’d been nothing more than a friend at best, an annoyance at worst.  Her opinion had changed over time.  The man who had at first struck her as unambitious now seemed to her like more of a survivor, making it through life with what he’d been given.  Despite his insufferably snarky tone, she’d slowly fallen for him.

The fact that they had been forced into bed together by a cursed Rubik’s Cube might have helped their relationship along, though.

Even though Gloria still practiced her hobby alone most of the time, Caleb had still become a big part of her nightly excursions.  Sometimes he would come along with her when he wasn’t on at the OneStop, but usually he opted out, saying that was too much like work.  He was still a key source of information, however, especially when he was at the store.  She would have to give him a call and ask him if there was anything going on she should know about.

There were a couple other girls in the dressing room getting into their next change of outfit before they got on stage, but most were out in the main room, getting drinks or smoking or trying to talk a few guys into the lap dance booths.  Gloria went over to the lockers and started to put her combination into her lock, but she stopped when she looked back at the door and saw Hannah walk in.

Gloria turned and approached her.  “Hey, Hannah, where’ve you been?  Some of us were worried…”  She stopped when two very large men followed Hannah in.  There weren’t supposed to be any men allowed in the dressing room, not even Hancock.  If he needed official business taken care of while girls were in here, he sent in his assistant manager.  Even people who took their clothes off for a living needed a private place, and Hancock respected that.

Gloria was going to chastise the two men for violating this sacred principle, but she stopped before any words left her mouth.  Something was very, very wrong here.  Hannah was dressed in a suit- a very expensive one, from the look of it.  Gloria might not have known the girl too well, but she was pretty sure Hannah was not a suit person.  She was more likely to come dressed in a designer lab coat.  She also wore sunglasses, which were pretty useless to people who only came out at night.  The two men also looked off, like they were slightly out of proportion.  Each was well over six feet, and their skin appeared stretched over their faces, like there was something underneath straining to get out.

Both the other girls looked at the trio that had entered the room and they left, completely ignoring whatever makeup or costume changes they needed to finish.  Gloria didn’t blame them.  It was obvious to her that the men weren’t human, and while that alone wasn’t cause for alarm, Hannah’s demeanor might be.  She stood straight with her hands clasped in front of her, a briefcase clutched in her fingers.  This was not normal for Hannah at all.

“Hannah?” Gloria asked.  “What’s up?”

“You’re Gloria Louisa Alvarez, correct?” Hannah asked.  Her head moved up and down, taking Gloria in, almost scanning her.  Gloria initial reaction was to back away, but she held her ground.  Most of the girls only knew each other by first names and stage names.  Hannah probably shouldn’t have known Gloria’s last name, and she definitely had no way to know her middle name.  Gloria hated her middle name, and she hadn’t even told Caleb.

In a place like the Hill, that led Gloria to only one conclusion.  If Hannah couldn’t know her full name then…

“You’re not Hannah,” Gloria said.

Hannah cocked her head.  “No, but we’ve met.  Very briefly, although not formally.  I would say I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t remember me, but then I do also have something of a reputation.”

Hannah took off her glasses and stared straight at Gloria.  This time she did back away.  Hannah’s doppleganger had eye whites just like anyone else, but instead of irises and pupils there were just glowing red pits.  Only then, Gloria realized Hannah’s skin didn’t fit completely right on her, too tight in some areas while drooping in places it shouldn’t.  These were all the signs of a demon.  Not all demons looked like this, just very special kinds.  And there was only one demon like that of any repute on the Hill.  This could only be Mary McPhisto.

Mary was right.  They had met for one very brief, very chaotic moment in the past, and there had been no formal introductions.  Several months ago there had been another apocalypse.  Normally that was nothing special, but this one had partially been Caleb’s fault.  The problem with failed apocalypses was they tended to leave world-destroying artifacts lying around afterwards.  Caleb had taken to collecting them, leaving them all in one place where a sufficiently ambitious guy bent on making the world a better place had been able to get them all in one fell swoop.  He’d lured the most powerful people on the Hill into one location with the promise of auctioning the items off, although his real plan had been to wipe out everything that made the Hill different.  Gloria, Caleb, and their friend Phil had all been there trying to stop him.  McPhisto, on the other hand, had been there trying to buy her very own world-destroying artifact.

Had the auction been real, Mary McPhisto could have possibly walked away with everything that had been on sale, no matter the price.  She didn’t hide the fact that she had money to burn, although there were many differing rumors about how much.  She didn’t keep a low profile, either.  She owned the Club McPhisto, which was close enough to the edge of the Hill that even clueless mundies went there.  The club had a strict policy that anything non-human had to conceal its true nature within its walls (it also had a no zombie policy, but that was for a different reason entirely), although strange things still happened there.  Those strange things were exactly what made it so popular.  Everyone knew that a night at Club McPhisto would be a night to remember, even though Mary’s bouncers usually had to wipe the memories of the club-goers before they left.

While Mary McPhisto’s true nature might have been unknown in the mundy world, everyone on the Hill knew what she was and kept their distance.  If she wanted to go outside the Hill for business, then Mary needed to look human, but that wasn’t easy for most demons.  Their actual appearance varied depending on the type of demon, but generally they had red or purplish skin, often with horns, scales, or tails.  Some kinds of demons could make themselves look human with the proper illusion spells.  Mary was not that kind of demon.  Illusion spells slid off her body like water.  So in addition to magic, she needed something to physically cover her body.  In short, if she wanted to look human then she needed an actual human’s skin.

Gloria had seen people die on the Hill.  Sometimes it touched her and sometimes it didn’t, depending on the person and the way it happened.  Often she could shrug it off.  She should have been able to shrug it off now.  After all, she hadn’t been very close to Hannah.  No one here had.  But the idea that the girl had actually been skinned so that someone else could now go walking around in it?  For the first time in too long, Gloria had to fight not to puke.

Gloria backed in the direction of her locker.  She had no idea how she could get her weapons out of her locker without McPhisto or her bodyguards stopping her, but she would find a way.  She was going to kill this bitch.

McPhisto chuckled.  “If you’re thinking of doing something rash on Hannah’s account, let me assure you that I came by her skin in a completely legal manner.”

She opened up the briefcase.  There were quite a few papers inside.  McPhisto pulled out one and held it up for Gloria to see.  Gloria took a cautious step closer and looked at the bottom of the sheet.  There was a signature at the bottom that may or may not have been Hannah’s.  It was dated a month ago, and judging from the rust color of the ink, Gloria would guess it was signed in blood.  McPhisto put the paper back in her briefcase before Gloria could see anything else.

“She was having financial problems,” McPhisto said, “and heard that I would be willing to help.”

“And did she know what you would eventually be taking in return?” Gloria asked.

“It is not my fault if she was careless enough to sign without reading thoroughly.  The point is that anything I did to her was completely legal, when taken in context with the right authorities.  So if you get any closer to that locker while I am in your presence, I will consider it right and proper self defense to have my two associates eat every one of your fingers and toes.”

Gloria froze.  If this was anywhere else, that threat could have been nothing but an exaggeration, but Gloria knew better.

“How did you know my full name?” Gloria asked.

McPhisto laughed.  “Honey, you would be extremely surprised to know exactly which people are keeping a close eye on you and your boyfriend.”

“Hey!” someone said from behind Mary’s bodyguards.  “The rules are clear.  No men in the girls’ dressing rooms!”  Hancock pushed past the two guards, but stopped as soon as he saw McPhisto.  “Hannah?  What’s going…  Oh, Mary.  Um, I didn’t know you were here.”

“But you heard I might be coming, I’m sure,” McPhisto said.  She and the bodyguards turned their back to Gloria.  They must have had a lot of confidence in their threat if they didn’t expect Gloria to try something while they weren’t looking.  Unfortunately, Gloria had to admit at the moment that the threat was enough.

“There was some talk,” Hancock said.  He wasn’t a small man, being a little overweight but very tall.  In a fair fight it was possible he could take one of the guards if something happened, but demons rarely fought fair.  He trembled as he spoke, and with good reason.  “Would you like something to drink?  I’m sure that whatever you want to talk about…”

“I’m a busy woman.  I don’t have time to talk,” McPhisto said.  She reached into her briefcase and pulled out the paper that had been on top of the pile.  “I’m only here to give you this.”

“What…”  Hancock took the paper and looked at it, his eyes growing wide.  “This is ridiculous.  You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Please insert a cliché right here about how I never kid, Mr. Hancock.”

“This can’t be legal!” Hancock said.

“I knew that you would think that,” McPhisto said.  She took a large number of papers from the briefcase and handed them to him.  “So I took the liberty of making copies of all the paperwork for you to peruse.  You’ll want to make some phone calls, I’m sure, also have your lawyer look at them.  You’ll find that every possible loophole for you getting out of this has been filled.  From this moment on, you no longer own the Sin Depot.  It belongs to me.”

Old Clerks Don’t Die – Chapter 1

Okay, after last week’s unfortunate delay, I should now be back on track.  As promised, I am starting to serialize the sequel to The Apocalypse Shift (which is available for purchase here if you haven’t read it yet).  I’m trying to write this one so you don’t need to have read the first one to understand it, but it will probably contain quite a few spoilers for the first, so you have been warned.  I will be posting one chapter a week for now, which will make the individual entries much shorter than when I was posting large chunks of stories. 

So let’s get this thing started.  I hope you enjoy!

–Derek J. Goodman

Old Clerks Don’t Die, They Slay Away 

Chapter 1

 

     Snookie Winters was nodding off in her recliner when things from another planet tried to destroy the world outside her apartment door.

     She jerked awake and looked around, confused for a moment.  She had that problem more and more these days.  Every time she woke up she forgot for a moment where she was, what year she lived in.  She could almost make herself believe it was the old days again, the glory days. 

     Then she felt all the aches in her body and the wet patch on her chest where she had drooled on herself as she napped, and she remembered that the glory days were a long time gone.

     Despite the deafening noise coming from the hallway, she still remained confused for several seconds about what had awakened her.  The TV was on, stuck on the episode menu of a DVD.  The old familiar song from the TV show she’d been watching- ba-da-da-DUMP-snap-snap- was extremely loud in the small living room, turned up so she could still hear it even with her failing ears.  Old shows like that were the only reason she had bothered buying a DVD player to begin with.  They reminded her not only of a time when she had been younger, but also the kind of people she had once known.  They were all gone now, leaving behind a new generation that didn’t care where it had come from.

     The noises in the hallway got louder, and finally she realized what had brought her out of her restless slumber.  Someone screamed, and something wooden broke, and there were shouts.  Something buzzed and whined, a noise completely unlike anything that should have occurred in nature.  Snookie’s heart sped up, something she would have rather avoided if possible.  Her troubled ticker didn’t like excitement much anymore.  Despite the strain, however, Snookie got up out of her recliner as fast as she could.  She still knew the sounds of an apocalypse when she heard it.

     She grabbed her cane from its place against the chair and walked to the door.  She still kept a rack of what she had used to call her “just in case” items right next to the door, although she hadn’t used them in years.  Still, before she grabbed any of them, she peered through the peep hole.  It would be best if she knew just what the hell was going on first.

     To anyone on the other side of the door, her peephole looked completely normal.  However, she’d had some modifications done to it when she’d moved in here, just like she had her entire apartment.  When she looked out, she didn’t get the typical fish-eye view of whatever was directly in front of the door.  Instead the view was widescreen, covering nearly the entire length of the hallway.  If she just tapped lightly on the door, the magic spell on the peep hole would switch views to somewhere else in the hall, making sure that no matter where somebody stood out there, Snookie could still get a look at them.  And what she saw looked like a small army of six foot tall orange salt shakers.

     “Hmph,” Snookie muttered.  “These things again.”  They moved down the hall like they were on wheels and had only long thin sticks for arms.  Each had a single eye.  They looked ridiculous rather than scary, but Snookie had seen them come around once or twice before and knew what they could do.  There wasn’t much around here that she hadn’t seen.

     She tapped the door, and the view changed to one at the end of the hall just above the stairwell.  One of the doors near the end was broken with a smoldering dead body lying just outside.  Snookie didn’t know why these things had chosen to come into this building, but they obviously didn’t intend to leave it peacefully.

     Snookie reached for the rack, her hand falling on the necklace hanging from a nail on the rack’s side.  It was made of hemp with a smooth green stone dangling from it, and it looked like it had seen better days.  It had been made several decades ago when it became obvious she would never again be the same person from her youth, but she had never worn it.  It would only work once, and she hadn’t wanted to waste it.  These creatures seemed like a good enough reason to put it on, but she hesitated.  She knew this neighborhood.  It didn’t need her anymore when it came to stuff like this.

     Snookie tapped the door again as she heard a rattling doorknob.  The view changed to something closer, giving her a clear look as the door of the apartment immediately to her left flew open and a young man and woman came jumping out.  Each one held a katana in hand.  The weapons were rather elegant, the sort of thing one would expect from warriors in heavy samurai armor.  But neither the boy nor girl wore armor.  In fact, they wore nothing but a single bed sheet draped over them both. 

     “Every freaking time,” the boy said to the girl.  “We’re just about to get all hot and heavy, and then either the phone rings or we’re invaded by a bunch of…”  He paused, cocking his head at the salt shakers as they turned to look at the naked couple.  “What the hell are these things, anyway?”

     “Not a clue,” the girl said.  “These are a new one, even for the Hill.”

     Snookie made another “hmph” noise, but she let her hand drop away from the necklace.

     The lead salt shaker pointed a stick arm at them and spoke in a high-pitched robotic voice.  “You will not resist!  You will not resist!”

     The boy looked at the girl.  “You’re up, Gloria.”

     “No, I came up with the last clever insult before a fight, Caleb.  It’s your turn.”

     “Are you sure?  Cuz I kind of remember it being pretty lame.”

     “Which is obviously why it must have been yours.”

     “Are you kidding me?  My quips are far better than…”

     The salt shaker spoke again.  “You will not resist!”

     Caleb waved the katana at it.  “Would you be quiet?  No one is fucking resisting yet.  Just hold your horses until we can come…”

     A door opened across the hall, revealing a sleepy neighbor in a red bathrobe.  “What the hell is going on out here now?”

     The girl, Gloria, looked alarmed.  “Get back inside!” she yelled at the man.  “Change into a different colored bathrobe!  Hurry!”

     The man looked thoroughly confused.  He could only be a mundy.  Snookie again reached for the necklace, but she was too late.  Events moved too quickly for her to do anything.

     The lead salt shaker turned to the man.  “Exfoliate!  Exfoliate!”

     Caleb looked at Gloria.  “Really?  That doesn’t sound like much of a threat.”

     The lead salt shaker aimed his stick arms at the man, and brilliant blue beams of light shot at him.  The man dropped dead to the ground, all the skin now gone for his body.  His red bathrobe became a whole lot redder.

     “Oh,” Caleb said.  “Right.”  He swung his sword before the lead salt shaker could move.  The blade sliced right through it at a diagonal, sending a thick purplish blood splattering all over the other salt shakers.  The shaker next to it screamed and backed away as Caleb moved to take another swing, but he got tangled up in the bed sheet.  He tripped and fell to the ground, nearly pulling the other end off Gloria.  She gripped it tighter over her chest but still jumped over Caleb’s prone form, tangling him even further, as she swung her own blade.  She only missed because all the other shaker things were backing toward the stairs. 

     “Gah!  No!” the closest creature said.  “You will not resist!”

     “Resist what?” Caleb asked.  He hadn’t been able to unwind the sheet from around himself, so he had instead cut it open with his sword.  He stood holding the katana threateningly at them with one hand while he tried to cover himself up with a torn piece of sheet in the other.  “You’re barely even doing anything now that your leader guy is gone.  Aren’t you even going to put up a fight?”

     “We are sorry for what he did!” the nearest one said.  “That ‘Exfoliate’ thing is just something he got off on!”

     The next closest shaker-thing spoke.  “He was a douchebag!”

     They all spoke in unison.  “Douchebag!  Douchebag!”

     Gloria lowered the sword and looked like she was trying to find a way to scratch her head without setting it down or lowering the sheet.  After a moment, she took the hand and sheet away from her body long enough to scratch.  Snookie guessed that she didn’t think the creatures cared whether or not she was clothed.  The girl probably didn’t realize anyone else might be watching.

     “So what exactly is it you guys don’t want us to resist?”

     The first one spoke.  “Do not resist giving us directions to the bowling alley!”

     Gloria and Caleb both stared for several seconds.  “That’s it?” Caleb asked.  “You just broke into the building, let your friend kill people…”

     “Not our friend!  Douchebag!  Douchebag!”

     “Whatever,” Gloria said.  “What do you expect to do at the bowling alley?  You don’t even have hands!”

     One of them waved a stick arm at one of the creatures near the back.  “Larry over there thinks the girl who sprays the shoes with disinfectant is hot!”

     Caleb and Gloria gave them the directions, then went back into their apartment.  They didn’t bother to watch the shaker-shaped things leave.  Snookie had no idea how they had made it up the stairs in the first place, but they didn’t have any trouble getting down.  They just wheeled to the stairs and fell the rest of the way.

     Snookie continued to watch the hallway until she was sure no one else was coming.  If the boy and girl knew anything about how things worked around here, they had probably called someone about cleaning up the dead bodies and coming up with a plausible story in case any of the mundy neighbors asked the wrong questions.  But just because they knew how to get rid of strange things didn’t mean Snookie would admit they knew what they were doing.  Snookie shook her head as she stepped away from the peep hole.  Amateurs.  They were complete amateurs, acting like they had the slightest clue about anything, even when they didn’t.  They should have known katanas weren’t the best weapon in that situation.  Any true beastie-basher worth her salt would have used a Scottish claymore. 

     Snookie leaned her cane against the rack and grabbed her own Scottish claymore from the “just in case” rack.  Her frail arms strained at the great weight, but the hilt still felt good and familiar in her hands.  The sword was almost as tall as her, but there had once been a time she could have wielded it easily.

     Her eyes misted a little as she carefully put a hand on the blade.  It desperately needed a polish, but she hadn’t been able to make herself clean it since she had last used it.  There was still blood on it.  Not a lot, but just enough to remind her.  Four distinct spots of old, dried human blood, one for each of the OneStop Mart employees she had killed.

     She carefully put the sword back in its place and grabbed her cane again.  She shuffled back to her recliner, trying to accompany the music on her TV with a double-finger snap from her free hand.  Her arthritic joints just couldn’t do it anymore.

 (c) 2010 Derek Goodman

Apologies

I just want to give my readers an apology.  I had previously stated that Old Clerks Don’t Die, They Slay Away would start appearing here today, but do to technical problems beyond my control, it will be late by at least a week.  Please check in next week, as I anticipate these issues will have cleared up by then.

What to Get a Zombie For Valentine’s Day

Hello again!  Welcome to what will be the final individual story on this blog for some time.  Remember that next week I will begin serializing Old Clerks Don’t Die, They Slay Away, the sequel to The Apocalypse Shift.  If you haven’t yet, you should really check out the first book.

I hope you enjoy!

–Derek J. Goodman

What to Get a Zombie For Valentine’s Day

     Phil was checking the temperatures of the hotdogs on the roller grill (and making sure they weren’t possessed by demons like they had been last night) when he heard Caleb clear his throat from behind the counter.

     “Hey Phil?  She’s coming across the parking lot.  You want to go hide?”  Caleb sounded honestly curious, even though it wasn’t really any of his damned business.  At least he had stopped giving Phil crap about this.  Just a week or two ago, Phil would have responded with a sigh and gone to hide in the back cooler until she left the store again, but he’d been starting to think about this lately.  Maybe he should be keeping an open mind here.  After all, the girl coming across the parking lot had made the trek from wherever she came from just to see him, and she did seem to be sweet.  It wasn’t her fault she was a zombie.

     “No,” Phil said.  “Maybe I’ll just hang around and see what she has to say.”

     Caleb blinked at him.  “Dude, she can’t say anything.  She doesn’t have much of a tongue anymore.”

     Phil shrugged, hoping that would be the end of the conversation, but Caleb continued to stare at him.  Caleb could be pretty cool sometimes, but other times he could just be a dickhead.  He’d been giving Phil a hard time ever since this zombie had started making return trips to the OneStop Mart, especially once it had become obvious she had a crush on Phil.  Caleb was probably unnerved that Phil was having less and less of a problem with that.

     Phil put the thermometer and temperature charts away and stood in front of the counter to look at the zombie as she shuffled toward the store.  There wasn’t a lot he knew about her, and it wasn’t like he could really ask much.  She was dressed in the same clothes as usual, an old and rotten 80’s ensemble.  So from that much he could at make a guess as to when she had died.  But otherwise she was a mystery to him. 

     The thing was, Phil couldn’t figure out when this zombie, just another one of many beasties that wandered around the Hill at night, had started to intrigue him.  She certainly wasn’t his type- his type tended to still have all their skin- and it wasn’t like he was hard pressed for companionship.  He hadn’t had a steady girlfriend for a while, but there had been a few women.  An attractive six foot black man with no visible horns, fangs, or tails had no trouble finding willing partners around here.  So why did he wonder if maybe this one was something unique?

     She made it to the door and fumbled with it, trying to get it open while her hands were full.  Phil hadn’t even realized before that she carried something.  It looked like a box, the kind someone would put shirts in, although it was pretty battered.  There was blue wrapping paper around it, but it looked like it had been wrapped by someone using only their teeth.  The paper barely even covered the box itself, and the tape on it looked like it had been put on at random, occasionally fastening the paper to the box purely by accident. 

     Phil had never held with some of the old fashioned ideas of gentlemanly conduct or chivalry.  Women these days didn’t want a man to stand up when she left the table or drape a coat across a puddle so they wouldn’t get their feet wet.  But as he saw her struggling, he couldn’t help but rush to the door and open it for her. 

     She looked up at him with her one good eye as she walked in.  She seemed surprised that he had come to help her, but then again she always looked surprised.  It was the muscle-less way her jaw tended to hang open.  Recently she’d been looking a little better (a little more recently dead, for lack of a better term), the after effects of some magic she’d been infused with, but it was starting to wear off.  Even through her pocked greenish skin and rotted features, however, Phil thought maybe she was trying to smile at him.

     “Iiiiiillll,” she said.  His name was one of the few words he ever heard out of her mouth.  She’d been dead long enough that most of the speech parts of her brain were likely gone, but she tried.  “Oooooooo.”

     “Um, Hi,” Phil said, glancing self-consciously over his shoulder at Caleb.  The other clerk did his best to go about his work without looking like he was staring at them, but Phil could see the way his eyes moved to them every so often, trying to see just what the hell was going on.  Phil wasn’t entirely sure of that himself.

     Keeping one arm around the package, the zombie reached out and touched his arm.  Before he could stop himself, Phil flinched away.  Her touch was cold, and her fingers were rough and cracked.  It didn’t feel like a hand.  More like half-thawed brown-and-serve sausages.  Briefly all those thoughts about how strange and interesting she was disappeared, replaced with a moment of primal revulsion.  Then he came back to himself enough to be embarrassed.

     The zombie, thankfully, didn’t appear to realize any of this.  She took her hand back and held out the box to him.  “Ooooooo.”

     “What are you trying to say?” he asked, staring down at the box.  “‘You?’  Are you saying this is for me?”

     That much, at least, she appeared to understand.  She nodded.  “Ooooooo.”

     Phil tentatively reached out and took the box.  It was also cold, probably from the late winter weather outside.  He had no idea how far she had come to give him this, but it must have been a long way.

     The zombie paused like she didn’t know what to do next, then turned and walked back through the door.  Phil continued to stare after her, not sure what to make of the incident.

     Caleb leaned over the counter and stared at the package.  “Dude, what was that all about?”

     “I’m not really sure,” Phil said.

     “Are you going to open it?”

     “I don’t know.  You think I should?”

     “Opening any sort of package on the Hill is dangerous.  You never know what kind of flesh-eating magic spell might pop out.”

     “Yeah, but she doesn’t look like she could come up with anything like that.  If she wanted to kill me she would just crack open my skull and scoop out the gray matter.”

     “Someone else could have put something dangerous in it and given it to her to bring to you.”

     Phil looked down at the package.  “I don’t think so.  It looks like she tried to wrap it herself.”

     “But why would she…”  Caleb trailed off, staring at the box for a moment.  “You should open it.”

     Phil shrugged.  He didn’t see why not.  He didn’t have high hopes for it, though.  If this was intended as a gift, then a zombie’s idea of an ideal gift was probably maggoty meat.  He sniffed it, but it wasn’t rancid.  There was only the faint linger of the zombie’s own putrefied flesh, which really wasn’t as bad as Phil would have suspected.

     “Okay,” Phil said.  “Wish me luck.”  He undid the wrapping paper, which was harder than he expected considering the crappy job the zombie had done, and pulled off the lid of the box.  His breath caught in his throat when he saw what was inside. 

     “Oh holy shit,” Phil said.  Caleb leaned further over the counter for a better look.

     “Let me see, let me… oh wow.  Holy Cthulhu in R’lyeh.”

     Despite the terrible state of the package, its contents had been treated with the utmost care.  A football jersey sat carefully folded in a nest of tissue paper.  That alone would have made Phil pause and think of the zombie differently.  But that wasn’t the true “holy shit” of it.

     Phil had always had a good relationship with his father, but the true moments he remembered were sitting on his dad’s lap as a young boy and staring at the television screen, cheering and screaming obscenities together as they watched his dad’s favorite team, the Cowboys.  The greatest moments of all, though, had been when Deion Sanders, Phil’s favorite player of all time, had made the perfect play at the right moment.  His dad would hug him, and Phil would hug back, and the world had seemed totally right.

     The name Sanders sat right at the top of the silver and blue jersey in the box, right above his number.  And between the name and number there was something written in Sharpie marker.  Phil had to stare at it, unable to make himself believe at first that this was indeed Sanders’ signature.

     “Is that authentic?” Caleb said.

     “I think so,” Phil said.  “I’ll have to check it against signatures on the net when I get home, but… I pretty sure that’s real.”

     “How the hell?” Caleb asked.  “Where would she get that?”

     “A better question would be how would she have known I would want this?” Phil said. 

     “Wait, don’t you remember about a month ago?” Caleb said.  “You were talking football and I was trying not to be bored out of my mind about it when she came in.  You were talking about Deion Sanders then.”

     Phil vaguely remembered that.  He hadn’t ever considered that she might actually listen to anything he said.

     “But why would she get me this anyway?” Phil asked.

     “Dude, really.  Don’t you remember what today is?”

     “No.”

     “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

     Phil looked up at him.  Caleb was right.  Neither of them had girlfriends right now, so neither of them had paid much attention to it. 

     “You know what?” Phil said.  “I think that is the single best, most thoughtful present anyone has ever given me in my entire life.”

     “So what are you going to do?”

     Phil put a hand on the jersey, caressing the fabric but making sure not to touch the signature.  “I’m going to have to figure out something just as thoughtful to give back, ain’t I?”

*    *    *

     For the next week and a half, Phil went back to hiding in the cooler anytime the zombie came by.  It became harder to make himself avoid her as the days went by, but he didn’t want to have a moment with her until he was completely prepared.  He thought he had the perfect present for her, but it had proved more complicated to prepare than he had thought.

     Finally, on a slower night where Caleb could man the store by himself and Phil could take a day off, Phil waited outside the store with a folder in hand until the zombie showed up.  She was later than usual, and he was afraid she wasn’t going to come at all that night.  Maybe she had realized he was avoiding her and taken the wrong hint from it.  He hoped that wasn’t the case.  Now more than ever, with everything he had learned, he wanted to see her.

       She didn’t show up at the OneStop until three in the morning.  That was a long time for Phil to have to wait outside, but he hadn’t wanted to wait in the store with Caleb.  Caleb had been somewhat supportive of Phil’s plan and had helped him find some contacts to help, but the guy still seemed a little squeamish.  He thought Phil might actually be considering a relationship with this zombie, and he didn’t appear completely comfortable with it.  Phil wasn’t sure if this was really going to go as far as a relationship, but he was willing to find out.

     He saw the zombie shuffle down the street and cross into the OneStop’s parking lot, but she didn’t see him until she was twenty feet away.  As soon as she did, however, her shuffle became more of a lurch.  No matter how much was still left of her brain, she at least could still feel excitement at seeing him. 

     She stopped a few feet away from him.  She made no attempt to touch him like she had last time.

     “Iiiiiilll!”

     “Um, hi,” Phil said.  “Er, how you doing tonight?”

     “Iiiiinnne.”

     “Right.  Um, would you care to take a walk with me?”  He gestured back in the direction she had come from.  He had never realized she always came from the same direction before, but he supposed that made sense.  Even a zombie had to have something resembling a home.  And now, thanks to the folder in his hand, he knew where that home was.

     The zombie did her best approximation to a smile, which really wasn’t much of a smile at all, and turned to shuffle back the way she had come.  Phil followed, staying close to her side.

     They walked in silence for several minutes before Phil got his thoughts together enough to speak.  “I wanted to thank you for the jersey.  It’s awesome.”

     The zombie looked at him.  The expression on her face either meant she was pleased or she was trying to pass gas.  It was kind of hard to tell.

     “I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you.  But I wanted to do something special in return.  It’s taken a while, but I’ve got it now.” Phil held up the folder for her to see.  She looked at it.  Was she really curious what was inside, or was she just staring because she had nothing else to look at?  He wished he could tell for sure, but he really wanted to believe she was still capable of curiosity.  If she could still feel one emotion, then she could probably feel all of them, which in turn made her not much different than him or any other human.  She was only different on the outside.

     “Sue?” he said.  Her head moved with a speed he didn’t know she had, going from looking at the folder to looking him in the eyes.  “That is your name, isn’t it?  Susan?”

     She stopped walking, and Phil stopped with her.  They were only about a third of the way back to her home, but it didn’t really matter to him whether they got there or not.  Her home now was Leechman Park.  That damned park held many secrets, including the secret that was Sue herself, but no secret stayed hidden for long on the Hill.  There were plenty of ways to find out, if you had the connections and the money, and Phil had spent all of his savings to get the folder’s contents.  He just hoped there was enough of Sue left to appreciate them. 

     “Uuuuuueee?” Sue said.  She pointed at herself.  “Uuuuueee.”

     “That’s you,” Phil said with a nod of his head.  “Did you remember that before?”

     Sue moved her mouth but didn’t actually speak.  Maybe she had a lot to say about that, or maybe she didn’t.  Either way, Phil didn’t think she had to capacity to really discuss it.

     “It’s okay,” Phil said.  “I think I understand.  Do you remember how you died?”

     Sue paused, then nodded her head slowly.  She didn’t seem too sure. 

     “If you don’t, it’s all here,” Phil said, holding up the folder again.  “Any answers to questions you might have.  You’re death was covered up so that no one would know about…”  Sue started walking again, much faster than before, and Phil had to jog to catch up.

     “Okay, okay.  Don’t run away.  We don’t have to talk about it if it upsets you.”  Sue slowed down and looked at him again.  “That’s not really the gift, anyway,” Phil said.  “You see, I wanted to find something that would be special to you.  But I didn’t really know who you were, so first I had to find out.”  He opened the folder and read some of the information on the first page.  “Susan Emily Buchowski, born April 18^th, 1960.  Died in the mid-Eighties.  And when you died, you left behind a mother and a brother.”

     Sue stopped again.  Phil really wished he could read her emotions better.  He couldn’t tell if she was angry that he was bringing this up, or if she was shocked he’d found this much, or what.

     “Um, did you want me to stop?” Phil asked.  “Because I haven’t gotten to the big part yet.”

     Sue stared.  It was like that was all she could ever do.  Maybe he was only imagining that there was more under the surface.  Maybe zombies really were just brain-dead monsters. 

     Then he looked at her one good eye.  He had no idea what it was that brought zombies back to life on the Hill, and he wasn’t sure how their bodily functions were supposed to work.  But he could see now that at least one function could still continue.  Her eye was watering up.

     “Ahhhhhhhm,” she said.  “Iiiiiannnn.”

     He wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean until he looked at the paper again.  “Oh, right.  Your mom, Genevieve, and your brother, Brian.”  He flipped through some more of the sheets.  He’d had some people on the Hill who were skilled in finding people get him all the info, but that still wasn’t the real gift here.  He just hoped he wasn’t going out of bounds.  He really had done all this to try pleasing her.  Suddenly he wondered if maybe he’d been wrong.  Maybe this was more like stalking.  “Do… do you want me to tell you whatever happened to them?”

     Sue nodded.

     “You mom, well, I’m really sorry.  She died of breast cancer in ’96.  Brian was by her side, I guess.”  He watched Sue to see if anything of this news affected her.  She didn’t show anything he could interpret as emotion, so he continued.  “She got to see two of her three grandchildren before she died, though.  You see, Brian’s now an engineer in San Francisco, happily married with two sons and a daughter.  I… I have pictures, if you want to see them?”

     She nodded again, this time more slowly.  Phil flipped to the last two items in the folder, the two things he had considered the real present.  He just hoped he wasn’t crossing the line here.

     He pulled out two photos and held them up for Sue to see.  With slow, shaking hands, she reached out and took them.  The person he’d hired had found both of them on the internet.  The first wasn’t just a photo but a newspaper article.  It showed a picture of Genevieve Buchowski, looking rather tired but still happy, and told about some of the charity work she had organized in the last years of her life.  Phil wasn’t sure if Sue could still read, but the article mentioned how Genevieve’s daughter had disappeared, and how the woman had taken her grief over the disappearance and turned it into something else.  She had done lots of work with missing person’s groups, doing everything she could to help people find their lost loved ones.  She had also volunteered at domestic abuse shelters and worked extensively with local food banks.  The article suggested that Genevieve had never been involved with any of this before Sue’s disappearance.

     The second item was a family photo.  Brian Buchowski sat in the middle, his arm around his smiling wife, with three children ranging from eighteen to ten sitting in front of him. 

     Sue didn’t move for a long time.  Phil didn’t want to do anything to disturb whatever she might be going through right now, but then he wasn’t sure she was actually going through anything.  Maybe the cold had simply frozen her undead body up.  After nearly two minutes of nothing, he reached out and touched her shoulder.

     “Sue?  Are you alright?  I’m sorry if I hurt you by showing this.  I just wanted to get you something.  I thought maybe if I showed you your family, what happened to them, how they turned out…”

     Sue moaned, and Phil pulled his hand back.  That hadn’t sounded like a good moan.  She turned to look at him.  The water in her eye had turned to tears.

     “I’m sorry if I hurt you or something, Sue,” Phil said.  “That wasn’t my intention at all.”

     Sue shook her head.  “Aaaaang… oooooo.”

     “Wait, what?”

     “Aaaaang… oooooo.”

     “Is that… thank you?”

     She moved again with that same surprising speed as when she had tried to get away.  Still keeping a tight grip on the photos, Sue flung her arms around him, hugging him tight.

     “Aaaaang… oooooo.”

     “Your welcome, Sue.  You’re welcome.”  He hugged her back.  It wasn’t until she let go that he realized he hadn’t shied away from her touch this time. 

     Something told him he wouldn’t be doing that ever again.

(c) 2010 Derek Goodman

The Devil and Danielle the Fry Cook – Part 2

Hello again, and sorry for again being late.  Here’s the conclusion to last week’s story.  Don’t forget that, if you haven’t already, now would be a good time to purchase a copy of The Apocalypse Shift, since the sequel will be serialized here starting in two weeks.

Enjoy!

–Derek J. Goodman

The Devil and Danielle the Fry Cook – Part 2

     At eight o’clock, with two hours to go until closing and the main portion of the dinner rush over with, Carrie knew she should be worried.  Danielle may have been doing slightly better at her duties than normal, but that wasn’t saying much.  Carrie had rearranged everyone’s position tonight to accommodate the extra worker, which had landed Danielle working the drive-thru.  Three times already, Danielle had screwed up the customers’ orders, and despite Carrie’s constant reminders that both their souls depended on her, Danielle seemed to be ringing up orders and counting out change slower than usual.

     The Devil, on the other hand, was the model of a perfect worker.  She worked the front registers where Carrie could keep a close eye on her from the fry station, and Carrie could barely see anything wrong with her.  She was quick, polite to the customers, and even managed to get most of them to super-size their combos.  Under other circumstances Carrie might have even admired the girl.

     If there was any flaw to the Devil’s work, though, it was that Carrie could clearly see how much she hated this.  The Devil managed to keep her smile with each and every customer, but the instant they were gone her smile would disappear.  Carrie could even see how forced that smile was on occasion.  With one man she had asked if he would like fries with that and he had gone off on her for no real reason, getting rather loud as he asked her just how stupid she had to be to not know that of course he wanted fries with that, that he actually worked a real job for a living and after a long day he was hungry, damn it!  People like that came in once in a while, people who thought they were so much better simply because they were on the other side of the counter, but despite some uncontrolled twitching at the edge of her fake smile, the Devil had maintained her cool until the customer left.

     Carrie pondered the incident as she sat in one of the booths and flicked the ashes of her cigarette into a small aluminum ashtray.  She’d been working long enough today that she got a smoke break, and she needed this time to calm her nerves a little.  She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t notice that both Andy and the Devil had disappeared from her immediate sight until the Devil walked up to her booth.

     “Hey boss,” the Devil said without any irony or sarcasm in her voice.  “Think I’ve been here long enough for a smoke break myself?”

     The absolute last thing Carrie needed right now was the Devil sitting next to her and fraying her nerves even more, but what was she going to do, say no to the Devil?  Besides, according to Burger Master policy the Devil really had been working long enough for a short break.  Carrie gestured to the seat across from her and pulled the ashtray to where they could both get at it.  The Devil sat, patted down the pockets of her uniform, grimaced, then looked sheepishly at Carrie.  “I’m sorry, but I don’t suppose I could please bum a cigarette from you?  I wasn’t expecting to be gone from Hell this long today, so I didn’t bring mine.”

     Carrie only hesitated for a moment before giving her one.  The Devil had actually just said “sorry” and “please.”  Whenever Danielle wanted one she was always rude about it.  “Enjoy it while you can,” Carrie said.  “I heard the boss say that all Burger Masters across the country are about to go smoke free.”

     “Yeah,” the Devil said.  “A lot of Hell is like that now, too.  Which is surprising, considering how many people from California are down there.  You’d think they’d allow smoking just to annoy all those health-conscious jackasses.”

     Carrie chuckled as she exhaled a breath of smoke.  “You know, you’re nothing at all like I expected the Devil to be.”

     “And how did you expect the Devil to be?”

     “I don’t know.  Not like you.”

     The Devil looked around to make sure there were no customers watching, then lit her cigarette on a burst of flame from her finger.  “Part of that is probably because you surface people have such weird ideas of what Hell is.” 

     Carrie couldn’t help but lean forward in interest.  “Why?  What do we have wrong?”

     The Devil took a deep drag, then let it out.  “Well, for starters, I’m not the Devil.”

     Carrie raised her eyebrows.  “But I saw what you did earlier, with the horns and hooves and whatever.”

     “Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong.  I am a devil.  I’m just not the Devil.”

     “Okay, I’m confused.”

     “There’s more than one of us,” the devil said.  “All the stuff that you people blame on the Devil, which, by the way is usually not our fault at all, but the stuff that is our fault… You don’t think it’s really possible for just one person to do all of it, do you?”

     “Well, I guess not.  I’ve never really given it much thought.”

     “And you don’t just wake up one day and Bang!  You’re a devil.  You have to work for it.  You want to know why I’m so good at this job you’ve got me doing?  It’s because I had to do this for three hundred years in order to pay for college.  Then, after school, I had to do another hundred years of internship before I earned the right to actually call myself a devil.  Do you have any idea what an internship is like in Hell?  Not pretty.”

     Carrie didn’t realize her jaw had been hanging open until she closed it.  “Wow.  So how long have you been a devil for, then?”

     “A month.”

     “Only a month?  But I thought you said Danielle sold her soul to you last year.”

     “That wasn’t me.  That was my predecessor.  She retired and moved to Antarctica.  I’m still on probation.  And that’s why I’m not going to blow this challenge.”  The devil took a final puff on her cigarette, and then stubbed it out in the ashtray.  “I’m sorry that little waste of flesh dragged you into this, Carrie.  I’m not just saying that.  When I looked into your eyes earlier I saw how hard you’ve been working for your dreams.  But if I lose I’m going to get fired, and there goes my chance at my dreams.”  The devil stood up and started walking back to counter, then stopped and turned back for a moment.  “Still, for what it’s worth, good luck.”

     Carrie finished her cigarette, then immediately started another one.  That last one hadn’t managed to calm her nerves at all.

*    *    *

     With only a few minutes until closing, Carrie was no longer just worried.  She was scared witless.  She paced back and forth in front of the fryers, trying to think of something, anything, that might save her soul at this point.  Andy kept looking at her from where he stood emptying the shake machine for the night, and even though he didn’t have anything to worry about he looked just as nervous as her.  The devil was wiping down trays with a damp rag and putting tray liners on them for the next morning, and despite how sure her success looked about now she would occasionally look back at Carrie with something that may have been anxiety.  Or maybe that wasn’t anxiety at all.  Maybe it was sympathy.

     Danielle, however, was nowhere to be seen.  Carrie glanced quickly around, then noticed the suspicious smell wafting through the air.  Carrie followed the odor towards the back, past the cooler and freezer to the storeroom in the far rear of the store.  Danielle stood in the storeroom doorway smoking something that was most assuredly not a legal cigarette.

     “Danielle!  What the hell are you doing?”

     “Enjoying my last few minutes on earth before I’m dragged down into Hell.  Want some?”

     Carrie grabbed the joint out of her fingers and stomped it out on the floor.  “You’re supposed to be working, dammit!  Both our souls are depending on this!”  She took Danielle by the arm and started dragging her back to the front.

     “What’s the point?” Danielle asked.  “We close in, like, two minutes.  And then it’s over.”

     Both of them were back by the fryers now.  Carrie only barely noticed as the front door of the restaurant opened and a lady with graying hair made her way to the counter.  Under normal circumstances that would have annoyed Carrie to no end.  The store hours were clearly posted for everyone to see, but there was always someone who waited until the last possible moment to come in.  The devil took her place at the register as the woman stood staring up at the menu.

     “It’s not over,” Carrie said.  “After the store is closed there are still things that need to be done.  We’ve got maybe another half-hour.  We can still do this.  But you have to stop being such a damn slacker!”

     “Can I help you, ma’am?” the devil said to the woman.

     “Don’t you go calling me ma’am.  I’m still young enough to be your sister, young lady,” the woman said.

     “We’re still not going to win,” Danielle said.  “So why bother even trying?”

     “Why?” Carrie asked.  “How about because I stood up for you!  I’m going to have my soul eaten by some Hell-beast now because I did what I thought was right.  Don’t you think you owe me at least to do what you can?”

     “What’s on your Burger Master Supreme?” the woman said.

     “Cheese, bacon, onions, tomatoes, and barbecue sauce,” the devil said.

     “Ugh.  That’s disgusting.  What about the Burger Master Deluxe?”

     “That’s a quarter pound hamburger with mayonnaise, ketchup, pickles, tomatoes, and lettuce.”

     “I never asked for your help,” Danielle said.  “If you’re screwed, that’s your own fault.”

     “That sounds disgusting, too,” the woman said.  “But I suppose I’m not going to get anything better out of you, am I?  I’ll have the Deluxe thing.”

     “You little frickin…” Carrie started to say.  Then she finally realized what was going on at the counter.  “Oh.  Wait.”

     “Wait?” Danielle said.  “Wait for what?”  She turned to look where Carrie, as well as Andy now, were looking.  Despite the false smile still on the devil’s face, it was obvious how annoyed she was starting to get.  She punched in the woman’s order, then said, “Would you like to make that a combo today?”

     “Just hold your horses and don’t rush me, all right?  I’m still thinking.”  The woman stared at the menu for a few more seconds.  “On second thought, I don’t want the Deluxe.  I want the Supreme.”

     The devil’s smile was no longer so easy to see as she had to void out the order and start over.  “Will that be all then, tonight?”

     The woman looked offended.  “Aren’t you going to ask whether or not I want it as a combo?  Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

     The devil had to take a deep breath before she spoke again, but her voice no longer sounded anything close to polite or friendly.  “Would you like to make that a combo?”

     The woman nodded her head.  “No.  That would be way too much food for this late.  But when you make my burger, could you not put on any of that… um… that one topping… I can’t think of it.  The one that doesn’t taste good.”

     The devil just stared at her.  No smile anymore whatsoever.

     “Oh come on, help me jog my memory,” the woman said.  “It’s that one topping… it’s red…”

     “Tomatoes?” the devil offered.

     The woman grunted.  “No.  Do you think I’m stupid?  I know what a tomato is, thank you.  No, that other topping.  It’s runny.”

     “Ketchup?” the devil said.

     “Yes, that’s it.  No ketchup.”

     Carrie felt her heart start to beat faster.  She gestured wordlessly for Andy and Danielle to look at the devil’s hands.  She gripped the sides of the register with so much force that she left dents in the plastic.  Her skin looked like it was trying to go back to its natural red color, but she still fought it.

     “Ma’am,” the devil said in a tone that made it quite obvious that she didn’t care if the woman took offense to the term or not.  “There is no ketchup on the Supreme.  I told you.”

     Carrie put her hands to her mouth.  That was definitely a rude thing to say, but it still wasn’t enough to offset Danielle’s horrible performance.

     The woman narrowed her eyes at the devil.  “And I told you that I didn’t want a Supreme.  I clearly said that I wanted the Deluxe.”

     The devil bit her lip as she voided the order again and re-rang the burger.  “That will be three-sixty-five, then.”

     The woman started to rummage around in her purse.  “I have a coupon for a dollar off.”

     The devil entered the coupon into the register.  “Two-sixty-five.”  The woman handed her the money.  There was no coupon.

     “The coupon?” the devil said.  The woman blinked at her like she was speaking a foreign language.

     “What about it?”

     “You said you had one.”

     “I do.  It’s at home.”

     The devil started voiding out the order again.  There was no hiding the venom in her voice, and Carrie thought she could actually see smoke coming out of her ears.  The scent of brimstone suddenly filled the air, but the woman didn’t seem to notice.  “Three-sixty-five.”

     “But I have a coupon!”

     “You have to have the coupon with you in order for it to work!”

     “No one ever told me that!  If that’s your policy then you should have it posted somewhere!”

     “I can’t give you the coupon price without the coupon.”

     “Where’s your supervisor?  I want to speak to your supervisor!”   The woman raised her voice to a ridiculous level and slammed her fist down on the counter.  “I want my burger for two-sixty-five!  I demand that I get satisfaction!”

     Carrie expected that to be the last straw, that the devil would finally snap and say something nasty to the woman.  But the devil didn’t say anything at all.  Instead she snapped her fingers and set the woman on fire.

     “Holy crap!” Carrie screamed.  “Danielle, grab the fire extinguisher!”  She could barely hear herself over the woman’s cries as she started running back and forth in a panic in front of the register.

     “I don’t know where the fire extinguisher is!” Danielle said.

     “Andy, grab the fire extinguisher!” Carrie said.  He didn’t run for the extinguisher, though.  Instead he grabbed the bucket into which he had been emptying the shake mix.  Carrie turned to the devil who, despite a brief moment of satisfaction on her face after she had snapped her fingers, now looked absolutely horrified at herself.  “Hey,” Carrie screamed at her.  “Put her out!”

     The devil snapped her fingers again and the woman went back to normal.  There was no damage whatsoever to her or her clothes, although her screaming continued for a few seconds more.  The screaming cut short when Andy, already in the process of throwing the bucket, dowsed her in melting chocolate shake.  The woman stood there for several moments, wiping the shake off her face and staring at the four people behind the counter.

     “Well!” the woman said.  “See if I ever eat here again!”  She turned and tried to run out the door, but she ended up slipping twice in the shake on her shoes before she finally made it out.

     The devil sighed.  “Thing is, I know I’m going to see her again.  It’s a little known fact that there’s a special place reserved in Hell for anyone who comes into a restaurant when they’re trying to close.”

     Carrie, Danielle, and Andy were all quiet for several seconds before Danielle spoke.  “So… what does this mean?  Does this mean we win?”

     The devil nodded.  It was such a surprising sight that Carrie almost doubted her eyes, but the devil appeared to be on the edge of tears.  “You win.  I failed to keep my temper, and you and Carrie get to keep your souls.”

     “Yes!”  Danielle pumped her fist into the air and proceeded to do something like a jig past the fryers.  Andy watched as Carrie talked to the devil.

     “So what happens to you, then?” Carrie asked.

     “At best they fire me.  At the worst they continue to employ me but make me clean toilet stalls instead of collect souls.”

     “Why is that the worst?” Carrie asked.  “You’d still have a job.”

     The devil snorted.  “Obviously you’ve never seen a toilet stall in Hell.”  She changed back into her real form, and Carrie couldn’t ignore how surreal it was to see a seven-foot tall demon with a tears streaming down her red cheeks.  Strangely enough, this didn’t seem fair.  Here was someone who had worked hard for something like four hundred years only for all of it to suddenly mean nothing.  In the mean time, Danielle got out of the consequences of her actions all because of a fluke.  Carrie took a deep breath, making sure this was really the decision she wanted to make, then spoke to the devil in a whisper that Danielle couldn’t hear.

     “You know, I really like my soul right where it is.”

     The devil sniffed.  “Huh?  I don’t think I follow you.”

     Carrie shrugged.  “If I were to keep my soul, then maybe… you know… I might not have seen you freak out on that lady.  As the one judging the challenge I might still say that you won.”

     The devil raised her eyebrows.  “Are you serious?  You’d do that for me?  But what about your friend Danielle.”

     “She’s no friend of mine,” Carrie said.  She looked back at Danielle in time to see her pick her nose and then flick what she had found into the nearest fryer.  “And I’m dead serious.  What’s the point of her keeping her soul if she never uses it?”

     The devil wiped away her tears.  “So is it official then?  I win?”

     “Only if it’s official that I keep my soul.”

     “Deal,” the devil said, and her smile returned.  This time it looked genuine.  “Okay, Danielle, time to go.”

     Danielle stopped in the process of reaching for her other nostril.  “What?  No, wait, I won!”

     The devil grabbed Danielle by the arm and pulled her toward the back door.  “Stop squirming.  We’re wasting valuable torture time.”  As she reached the door, the devil turned around and looked at Carrie, gesturing for her to come closer.  “Thank you.  Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”

     “Don’t take this the wrong way,” Carrie said, “but I kind of hope not.”

     “Right,” the devil said.  Her voice dropped to a whisper.  “And don’t worry.  That little slimeball can’t deal worth shit, so you’ll snap out of it sooner than he suspects.”

     “Huh?” Carrie asked.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

     “You will.  And when you do, remember to aim for his soft bits.” 

     The devil nodded at her, gave a smirk to Andy, and then pulled Danielle out screaming into the night.

     Andy narrowed his eyes at Carrie as she approached him and put an arm around his waist.  “What did she say to you?” he asked.

     Carrie shrugged.  “Not a clue.”  Then she smiled at him, following it up with a deep kiss.

The End

(c) 2010 Derek Goodman

The Devil and Danielle the Fry Cook – Part 1

Welcome back!

Before we get to this week’s story, I want to mention the mystery event I talked about in last week’s post.  I said that I would soon be ending the short stories on this blog but they would be replaced by something else.  I then said that it would be a good idea for any fans of the blog to buy a copy of The Apocalypse Shift from Amazon before that happened.  I figured that, for all my cryptic talk, most people would still be able to figure out what was going to start appearing here as of February 15.  My original intention was to not actually say what the mystery event was until it actually happened. 

Well, I’ve changed my mind, and I’m announcing it now: as soon as I run out of stories set in the AS universe, I will start serializing Apocalypse Shift 2.

I’ll be posting the novel here one chapter at a time.  I’ll likely be doing one a week, although I’m getting far enough ahead on the project that I’m considering possibly posting two chapters a week, one on Monday and one on Thursday.  I’ll have a better idea about how to approach that as the time comes closer, I think.

While the sequel is written in such a way that you dont’ exactly have to have read the first book to understand it, I still suggest reading The Apocalypse Shift before you read the second book, as book 2 will be chock full of spoilers from book 1.

Okay then, on to today’s story.  I hope you enjoy!

–Derek J. Goodman

The Devil and Danielle the Fry Cook – Part 1

     It was only on a hunch that Carrie took a position at Burger Master, although she did definitely need the job.  Just because she had gotten multiple scholarships based on her soaring grades didn’t mean she was financially secure.  Other than paying for college she still needed to keep a roof over her head and something other than ramen in her cupboard.  A few of her schoolmates, even ones late in their twenties like Carrie was, still lived at home and depended on their parents to pay for school.  Carrie could have lived at home, but her parents were hardly rich and she knew what kind of burden she would be if she expected that kind of thing from them.  Other people who didn’t care about things like that made her sick.

     But there were a lot better jobs than shift supervisor at Burger Master.  Carrie could have had them easily, but she had wanted this one.  The hours were terrible and the pay sucked, but most other jobs didn’t have a coworker who had sold her soul to the Devil.

     Carrie didn’t have solid proof that Danielle had done it, but these sorts of things left trails that could be followed if you knew where to look.  She was well aware that her obsession could be construed as morbid, which was why she took great care to hide it.  She went to school for Library Science because she enjoyed books and loved stories.  She wanted to surround herself with them, study them, understand them on some deeper level than all the people who virtually ignored them in this modern world.  And as she had studied she couldn’t help but start to believe that some stories, the old ones that lasted for generations simply by word of mouth alone, had some truth to them.  She’d found obscure references in some books and newspapers to people who claimed they had actually met Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.  One con artist in Colorado insisted for years, even on his death bed, that he himself had been conned by the Tooth Fairy.  Carrie wasn’t sure about any of those stories, but tales of selling your soul to the Devil and then winning it back in some competition?  She’d now seen with her own eyes what she believed to be proof.

     Just because she believed such a thing was possible didn’t mean she wanted to try it out just to be sure.  She was not a religious person and got annoyed at anybody who followed religion blindly, but if she believed a soul was real enough that it could be sold then it was probably something she wanted to keep.  If she wasn’t willing sell it herself, though, it had never seemed likely that she would prove her hypothesis.  Then she had come in one day for lunch at the Burger Master on Speer Boulevard and a young woman had taken her order.

     Danielle was just a few years out of high school and kind of pretty, but she would have been gorgeous if she cared about her looks at all.  Her hair didn’t appear to have even been combed in a week and there was a stain on the sleeve of her uniform that looked like it would come out easily if she only washed it.  When she had taken Carrie’s order she had been surly, acting like making her use the register was the rudest thing Carrie could possibly do.  These were details that Carrie didn’t register until later, though.  What Carrie did notice was the odor coming off the girl.  There were actually several odors that Carrie noticed, mostly grease from the fry vats along with just a hint of body odor and even pot.  But underneath it all, just faint enough that Carrie hadn’t entirely been sure it wasn’t her imagination at first, was the smell of sulfur.  After a little discreet research Carrie had been almost certain.  Danielle had in fact made a deal with the Devil.

     Carrie had gotten the job easily enough and had quickly proven herself to be capable of supervising.  Even though Danielle had worked there longer and would have been next in line for a supervisor position, she hadn’t complained.  That would have implied that Danielle had even the smallest ambition at all to become more in life, and after only a few times working with her Carrie realized that was something Danielle lacked.  Despite the fact that Danielle had actually been the reason she took this job and Carrie wanted Danielle to eventually trust her enough to confide about the whole soul selling thing, Carrie couldn’t help but feel some disdain at the girl.

     So that was how it was when they worked, tolerating each other but not liking each other, until the day the Devil came in and ordered a hamburger.

     It was a Monday evening.  Monday’s were never that busy, and the crew at Burger Master was the bare minimum.  Danielle was at the fry station, Carrie manned the front counter and the drive-thru, and a teenager named Andy made the burgers.  Andy seemed like a nice enough kid, but Carrie didn’t feel comfortable working with him.  She couldn’t help but think he maybe had a crush on her.  He tended to get even more awkward than normal around her, and despite her uniform hiding what little figure she had she still caught him staring at her chest once in a while when he thought she wasn’t paying attention.  He was a good worker, though, ten times better than Danielle, so she was going to tolerate him tonight.

     What little dinner rush they expected tonight would start sometime around five, so by four-thirty Carrie was trying to make sure they had enough burgers ready to go in the freezer next to the broiler and plenty of fries on the basket rack.  Andy was wiping down the front tables but Danielle had disappeared to the bathroom for the third time in the last hour.  Carrie was so busy fuming to herself and wondering if there was really anything wrong with killing someone who’s soul was forfeit that she didn’t notice the door chime go off as someone came in.  She didn’t even realize anyone was standing at the register until she heard the girl clear her throat.

     “Oh, sorry!” Carrie said as she walked up to the counter.  “I didn’t see you there.”

     “That’s okay,” the girl said.  “I’m not the kind of person people tend to notice.”  Carrie wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a joke or not.  To Carrie the girl certainly looked like exactly the kind who was easily noticed.  People tended to pay attention to perky teenage blonds with incredibly short skirts and huge breasts.  The girl smiled and showed off impossibly white teeth.  “Double burger with extra bacon, please.  And extra mayo.  And a jumbo order of fries.  Oh, and onion rings.”

     Carrie started ringing all that up, all the while wondering how any woman could eat like that and still keep such a ridiculous figure.  She didn’t think such a thing would be possible without selling your soul to…

     Carrie’s gaze instantly snapped away from the register keys and back to the girl.  No.  No way.  There was no way that this could be…  Or could it?

     The girl frowned.  “Is something wrong?”

     Carrie struggled to keep her thoughts straight.  “No, of course not.  There’s nothing… uh, right, uh, would you like anything to drink with that?”

     “No thank you.  But maybe you could help me with something else.  I was coming here to visit a friend, but I don’t see her around.  Is Danielle here?”

     Carrie paused.  Holy crap, this was really happening.  Even though a part of her had been hoping for this moment, the moment where she finally saw the truth in so many old stories, she had never really thought it would come.  And she certainly had never expected how much effort it took to avoid crapping her pants.

     The girl raised an eyebrow at her.  “You’ve figured it out, huh?  I don’t think I’ve ever made a deal with you, though.  So how is it you know who I am?”

     “Er, um… I read things… uh, study stuff and stories… yeah.  Uh.”

     “Carrie?”  Andy was walking up to the counter, the sanitizer rag for the tables still in hand.  “Is something wrong?”  He glanced at the girl but didn’t seem to see anything interesting at first.  Then he did a double take, his gaze finally coming to rest on the tightness of her shirt.  The girl ignored him, keeping her focus on Carrie.

     “Look, you don’t need to be afraid,” the girl said.  “Just tell me where Danielle is and then I can make you forget I was even here.”

     Carrie didn’t know what was scarier: the thought that the Devil was in fact standing right in front of her or the possibility that she might not even remember this later.  Before she could say anything in protest, however, the door behind the counter opened from the back hallway and Danielle came back in.  She was too busy looking at her hands- a suspicious smudge on them made Carrie think she hadn’t even bothered to wash them- to notice the girl at first.  When she finally looked up she stopped in her tracks.

     “Oh,” Danielle said.  “Oh crap.”

     The girl smiled.  “There you are.”  Her perfect white teeth started to turn a sickly yellow and each one grew to a sharp point.  “Danielle Koplopski, the time has come.”  The girl slowly grew until she was nearly seven feet tall, and her skin darkened to a deep red. 

     “Holy…!  What the hell!” Andy screamed, tripping over his own feet as he tried to back away from the creature and falling flat on his butt.  The Devil didn’t even acknowledge him.  The skin on her forehead ripped open and two massive ram-like horns curled up out of the holes.  Her shoes changed to hooves and the air suddenly stank of brimstone.

     “According to the contract you signed with Hell one year ago today, your soul is now mine,” she said to Danielle.  “You can either give it to me quietly or I can rip you apart first and use your spleen as a urinal cake.  Your choice.”  With no effort the Devil jumped over the counter and landed between Danielle and Carrie.

     “No, wait, that wasn’t the agreement!” Danielle said as she started to back away.  “This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen!”

     This was exactly the way it always occured in folklore, Carrie realized.  Or maybe not quite.  Before she could think, before it occurred to her that it was perhaps not a good idea, she spoke.  “She can challenge you.”

     The Devil spun around to look down on Carrie, and for the first time since she came in, the Devil looked less than happy.  “Oh, please say you didn’t say that.”

     Carrie paused, thinking maybe it would be better to say she didn’t say that and the Devil could just continue on with her soul collecting, but that wasn’t how all this was supposed to work.  Carrie knew the rules, or at least she thought she did, and this was the only opportunity Danielle would have at not getting sucked into Hell.

     “She can challenge you to some sort of contest to keep her soul, right?  That’s how it always works in the stories.”

     Danielle flashed Carrie a look that was somewhere between hopeful and uncomprehending.  The Devil sighed and, even though she kept her new demonic shape, started shrinking back to her original size.  “Damn it,” the Devil said.  “I’ve gone through the last twenty soul collections without anybody knowing that rule.  What did you say your name was?”

     Carrie gulped.  “I didn’t.  And I don’t think I should tell you.”

     “Oh, come on.  Don’t be overly dramatic.  It’s not like I can do anything to you just because I know your name.  I just want to know who I’m dealing with.”  She shrugged.  “It’s only polite.”

     “Uh… Carrie.  Carrie Salinger.”

     “Well, Carrie Salinger, since you seem to know what you’re doing and Danielle here is clueless, I guess it would only be fair to give you a few minutes to confer with her.”  The Devil held her hand out palm up, and after a small burst of flame a legal-sized document sat in her hand.  “Here’s the contract.  You can look it over with her.  You have ten minutes to come up with the challenge and its terms.”  She handed Carrie the contract.  Maybe Carrie wasn’t reading demon body language right, but the Devil actually seemed to be depressed.  “But it would really be nice if we could get this over with as soon as possible.  I’m already on overtime and I’ve been on my feet all day.”

*    *    *

     Danielle and Andy went to sit in a booth in a far corner of Burger Master while Carrie took a couple moments with the Devil to make sure she had any important rules they might need in deciding.  When they were finished, Carrie left the Devil behind the counter and went to join the other two.

     “Would someone please explain to me what is going on?” Andy said.  “I mean, is that who I think it is?”

     Carrie set Danielle’s contract on the table and slid into the booth next to Andy.  Normally she wasn’t very comfortable being this close to him, but for once his attention was on someone other than her.  She couldn’t help but notice that, despite the Devil’s current demonic form, he still stared at her breasts.  Danielle slumped across from them, her jaw slack and her eyes wide and focused on nothing.  “Yep,” Carrie said.  “And I would think it’s obvious what’s going on.  Danielle is pretty close to screwed.”

     “Are you sure it’s a good idea to leave her back there?” Andy said.  Carrie looked towards the back to see the Devil take a basket of fries and set it in the fryer.  “What if a customer comes in and sees her?”

     “She said it would be okay,” Carrie said.  “According to her, this neighborhood is used to strange things.  Also she apparently surrounded the entire store in a kind of time bubble to keep us separate from the rest of reality until we decide what we’re going to do.  I couldn’t really follow what she was saying about it.  The whole description was very Hawking.”

     “So what are we going to do?” he asked.

     “What do you mean, we?  You don’t have to be involved in this if you don’t want to.”

     Andy shrugged and edged himself closer to Carrie.  “Hey, neither do you.  I’m willing do whatever I need to if I can, as long as you don’t go putting my soul on the line in the process.  If anyone’s going to be selling my soul then it’ll be me.”

     Carrie raised an eyebrow at that.  “Whatever, as long as Danielle doesn’t mind you helping.  Do you?”  She pointed this last question at Danielle, but she was still slumped and staring at the table.  Carrie snapped her fingers in front of Danielle’s face.  “Hey, earth to Danielle!  Snap out of it.”

     Danielle finally looked at Carrie.  “Is this really for real?  Could I really lose my soul here?”

     Carrie sighed.  “Yes, Danielle.  What the hell did you think would happen when you sold your soul?”

     Danielle shook her head.  “I guess I didn’t really believe it.  I mean, I did have to go to a crossroads at midnight to find her, and she did have horns when she made me sign in my own blood, but I figured maybe I was just seeing things because I was stoned.”

     “Well, I hope it was worth it,” Andy said.  “What did you sell it for, anyway?”

     Carrie snorted.  “I know what it was.  Take a look.”  She slid the contract over for him to look at it.

     “Well, it sure as hell wasn’t beauty or riches,” Andy said.  He picked up the contract and looked it over for a few seconds before his eyes went wide.  “Are you kidding me?  I can’t be reading this right.”

     “Nope,” Carrie said.  “You’re reading it right.”

     “But… Danielle, this says you sold your soul for an Xbox.”  He studied it for a few seconds longer before dropping it back to the table.  “A plain old Xbox.  You didn’t even ask for a 360.”

     Danielle shrugged.  “That was all I wanted that day.”

     “But you didn’t even keep it,” Carrie said.  “That’s how I knew what you had done.  I tracked down the video game store you sold it to.  They can’t even sell it because it burns everything it touches and smells like sulfur.”

     Danielle shrugged again.  “I got the munchies one day and didn’t have any cash.”

     “Wow,” Andy said.  “That’s all I can say.  Just… wow.”

     “Never mind that for now,” Carrie said.  “We need to figure out what we’re going to do to save her soul.”

     “Hey, I think I read a story like this in American Lit Class once, something about a lawyer,” Andy said.  “Can’t we call on the guy from the story?  Have the Devil bring him back to life long enough to argue Danielle’s case?  His name was… uh, I can’t really remember.”

     “Daniel Webster,” Carrie said.  “And no, we can’t.  The Devil specifically pointed that out to me in the contract.  Apparently after that story came out too many people tried doing it.”  Carrie took a closer look at the contract.  “Huh.  Also, for the same reason, we can’t call on Johnny Cochrane.”

     “Then you can’t do anything?” Danielle asked.  “Why the hell did you even stop her if you can’t do anything?”

     “But we can do something.”  Carrie positioned the contract where they could all get a good look and pointed to a line of fine print.  “All soul-selling contracts have one last chance for the seller to redeem themselves, a challenge-clause.  The seller can challenge the Devil to any sort of contest they want.  If they win the seller keeps his or her soul.  If they lose, though… oh, wait.”  Carrie picked up the contract and read the fine print closer.  She felt her breath catch in her throat.  “It says here that someone else has to vouch for the seller during the contest.  If the seller loses, then the person who vouched for them loses his or her soul as well.”

     Carrie looked at Danielle, who had gone back to staring at the table, then at Andy.  Andy shook his head and held up his hands.  “Uh-uh, don’t look at me.  I’m not going to risk my soul for her.  Now if it were you, then hell yeah I’d do it but…”

     “Andy, just shut up for a minute,” Carrie said.  She set down the contract and stared at Danielle for a long moment.  Was she really willing to risk her soul for this girl?  This lazy, unremarkable girl who was unwilling to try in even the slightest way to make something of her life?  Danielle wasn’t sure, but how could she live with herself if she didn’t?  It was a huge choice, and one she would have to make quickly before…

     “Hey, Carrie?” Andy said as he looked at the contract.  “You do realize that you already volunteered your soul, right?”

     “What?”

     “It says so right here.”  He handed the contract back to her and pointed to a line of text.  “When you challenged the Devil on Danielle’s behalf, that counted as vouching for her.”

     Carrie read the line then let loose with every curse word she had ever learned in her life.  “I guess that’s it then.  I’m in this.”

     Danielle looked hopefully at Carrie.  “So you’ll help me?”

     “I guess I will,” Carrie said.  She waited for Danielle to say something in the way of thanks, but she didn’t.  “All right then, we’ve got to figure out what the challenge is going to be.”

     “What kind of challenge can it be?” Andy asked.

     “Anything, really.  Musical challenges are popular in the old stories.  Danielle, can you play any instruments or sing or anything?”

     Danielle shrugged then sang the first line of “The Star Spangled Banner.”  It sounded like she was stepping on baby mice.

     “Okay, so no on that,” Carrie said.

     “What about chess?” Andy asked.  “Aren’t there stories where people play chess against the Devil?”

     “Not the Devil, the Grim Reaper,” Carrie said.  “But I guess the principle is the same.  Are you any good at games?”

     Danielle shook her head.

     “Not even video games?  For christ sakes, you sold your soul for a game console!”

     Danielle shrugged again.  “I didn’t really play it that much.”

     Carrie struggled to keep her frustration from showing on the surface.  “Danielle, isn’t there anything you’re good at?  Both our souls depend on this.”

     Danielle appeared to think about this for a moment.  The action looked like it physically hurt her.  “Not really.  I don’t do much.  I guess I eat.  And sleep.  And work here.”

     “That’s it?” Carrie said.  “You can’t think of anything else?”

     “Nope.”

     Carrie sighed.  “Then I guess that’s what we’ll have to work with.”  She stood up.  “Come on.”

     Andy and Danielle followed her back to the counter.  In addition to the fries, the Devil had made her own burger, and she was about to ring it all up in the register before they returned.  “Okay, we’ve got it,” Carrie said.  “We challenge you to work here.”

     The Devil had been leaning against the counter, but at Carrie’s words she stood ramrod straight.  Carrie hadn’t realized the Devil was capable of looking horrified.  “Oh come on.  You’ve got to be kidding.”

     Carrie took a deep breath before she continued.  She was making all this up as she went.  There were so many ways this could backfire, but it was all she could do.  Danielle didn’t give her much to go on.  “Until the end of the shift.  You work and Danielle works.  Whoever’s better at the job, whoever is the cleanest, the quickest, the most polite to customers, she’s the winner.”

     The Devil didn’t appear happy, which Carrie could only think counted in their favor.  “And who’ll be the one to judge to say who’s better?”

     Carrie shrugged.  “I’m the supervisor.  I guess I will.”

     “You do realize your soul is on the line, too, right?  How do I know you’ll judge fairly?”

     “Would it help if I swore on the Bible?”

     “Do you believe in the Bible?”

     “Not really.”

     “Then no.  What do you believe in?”

     Carrie shrugged again.  “Knowledge?  Stories?  Maybe if I swore on my textbooks?”

     The Devil looked her in the eyes, looked deep, and Carrie felt an uncomfortable probing sensation like all the contents of her head were being randomly flipped through.  After several seconds, the Devil sighed.

     “Yeah, seems like you mean it.  Okay then, I guess we’ll get this challenge started, huh?”  Her horns slowly retracted into her head and her whole form once more became the perky blond, but now she wore a Burger Master uniform.  Her nametag proclaimed “Hi!  I’m Lucy Irons!  In training!”

     “Just let me finish ringing up my meal first,” the Devil said.  She produced some money from a newly formed pocket, then deftly punched her order into the register.  Carrie felt a sinking sensation in her stomach.  She herself still didn’t know the register well enough to ring in an order that fast.  “Do I get an employee discount?”

     “Um, yeah,” Carrie said.  “Say, you haven’t by any chance worked in a place like this before, have you?”

     The Devil nodded, but she didn’t appear proud of herself.  “Of course I have.  If there’s any place in existence with an overabundance of fast food restaurants, it’s Hell.”

     It might have just been her imagination, but Carrie thought she could actually feel her soul slipping away.

To Be Continued

(c) 2010 Derek Goodman