Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish (34 page)

Nigel had been thinking about his goldfish and had somehow felt that the strange messages he had been receiving all day had something to do with his little swimmy friend.

"You played your parts," said Death, "you saved the world from constant torture and tyranny at the hands of Satan and you all came together."

Celina's soul rolled her eyes in a way that only a recently exploded, redheaded, female genius could.

"Doesn't stop us from being dead though, does it?" she said, stating the complete and utter obvious.

"Well, that's the other thing." Death looked at his wrist where a watch was not. "I'm not back at work yet; in fact, I have a good forty seconds before I'll be taking any dead people in, so I'm afraid you'll all just have to go back."

"You're serious?" asked Nigel's soul.

"We don't have to be dead?" said Gerald's soul.

"Good, because I wasn't exactly warming to the idea," added Celina's pouting soul.

Death smiled at his new friends.

"Celina, look after Nigel and don't you dare try to tell me you're not attracted to him just a little."

Celina's soul, which was an off-pink sort of colour, managed to blush a little.

"Nigel, look after that goldfish and take care of Gerald. And Gerald," Gerald grinned. "Don't forget what Heinrich said, we'll talk again soon."

"Thank you," was all Nigel could manage.

Death smiled a truly happy smile, and another doorway appeared where a cactus used to be. The door flew open, and the three souls got sucked inside like lint up a vacuum. Death closed the door and snapped his fingers, the landscape collapsed into itself and then exploded in a dazzling display of multi-coloured sparks that settled to form a large, snow-covered mountain top that looked out over several other snow-covered mountain tops.

A doorway arose out of the snow and swung itself open. The twisted and deformed soul of the Devil trudged through the doorway and stood with his arms folded in front of him, tattered leather wings folded behind him.

Death grinned.

"Ahh, Luci, so good to see you. You caught me at a good time; I just arrived back at work. You're going to want to take the elevator down to the basement. I think you know the way."

Heinrich took his break. The bistro was quiet, so he stepped outside for some fresh air and pondered upon the day.

The world was a mostly normal place. Strange events always happened, no doubt about it, but generally people went through their lives on a day-to-day basis under the impression that the world was completely normal. Although this was an arguable point; for all intents and purposes it could be agreed that the events so far in this story had not been normal. And, as with all not normal events, there were consequences. Unfortunately, things like dead people not dying and then all of a sudden dying again, the Devil leaving the Earthly plane abruptly, a penguin becoming a man, and an Entity traveling across the world, did cause quite the rift in our normal little universe. At the exact moment that Death sent the Devil back to Hell, the culmination of all these events caused reality to turn askew for a brief moment.

The moment passed practically unnoticed by most inhabitants of Earth, and the only telltale signs of anything happening at all were as follows: in northern Canada, a man inadvertently gave birth to a large mongoose, whom he eventually named Stan, was shunned by his friends and colleagues, and became a hermit. In the deepest deep part of the ocean, a creature of terrible power and fury that had slept for six hundred thousand years woke up, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

On the outskirts of London, a professional theorist named Terrence Macklesfield, who had recently been disgraced on national television briefly, turned into a mango chutney-curried chicken-mayo-dried cranberry sandwich. Those who knew Terrence would have seen this event as the epitome of irony.

At the BBC News Studio, a young anchorman who had agreed to be shot on live television suffered a terrible bullet wound that almost killed him.

The strangest and most noticed event that took place in that particular moment was the sudden and abrupt disappearance of the entire law firm of Chatham, Chitham, and Chump; the building, and all its inhabitants, including Neville Bartholomew Snell Jr III, ceased to exist on Earth. Despite an extensive search, the building and its inhabitants were never seen on Earth again.

Heinrich headed back inside the bistro but before returning to work decided he should make a very special phone call.

The Devil pushed his way through the line of ingrates and no-goods waiting to get into Hell. The dark gates of Hell arose ominously from the dry, hot, and generally hellish landscape. Stan the gate guardian was still at his post, refusing to open the gates as was his order. The Devil liked to make the new inhabitants of Hell wait in line for what seemed like an eternity, knowing full well that all they were waiting for was another eternity of pure suffering.

The Devil trudged up to Stan.

"Open the gate," said the Devil dejectedly.

Stan looked the Devil up and down.

"Don't I know you?" asked Stan.

The Devil put one of his talons to his forehead; he could already feel the onset of a migraine.

"Open the gate or I swear I'm going to flog you so hard you'll have no idea what hit you, and in your complete disbelief of not knowing what hit you I'll hit you some more so you know exactly what it is that's hitting you. Got it?"

Stan slowly shrank as he realized who he was talking to, and the thought of being flogged with a giant wooden spoon, which everyone knew was the Devil's instrument of choice, was not a comforting one. He quickly opened the gate and the Devil stalked through, eyeing Stan until the gate closed behind him.

The Devil was not happy to be home. His plan to inhabit a human body had been foiled the second he landed on Earth, and then to top it all off, his backup plan to take over the world had also been trashed. And here he was, back in Hell after only one extremely long day of being on Earth. Usually the sight of his fiery kingdom spread out before him, his lake of fire overflowing with lost souls, and the karaoke bar on the corner, were always enough to bring an evil grin to his leathery face. He was angry; no, not even angry, he was upset. He felt cheated, conned, taken for a ride.

"Damnit," he said.

I'm good at all those things; I should have seen it coming. At least my little apartment and my fish, Percy, will bring me some minor comfort.

He absentmindedly kicked a lost soul off a nearby cliff and made his way to his apartment overlooking his kingdom.

The demon he left in charge of his apartment, Azeal, although he had no power of speech, only one leg, half a wing, and smelled like something scraped off the bottom of someone’s shoe, was still able to—

The Devil's thought process ground to a halt as he stood in front of his apartment, which was currently on fire. The Devil kicked open his door to find Azeal sitting in a reclining chair watching re-reruns of
I Love Lucy
.

"Azeal! My house is on fire, you little ingrate, can't you see my house is—"

The Devil suddenly realized what he was saying and quickly put it all down to a serious lack of sleep. Of course, his house was on fire; he was in Hell, everything was on fire. The Devil picked Azeal up by the horns.

"You've done a fantastic job of house sitting, thanks very much, Azeal, bye bye now."

Azeal responded with a series of quick burps, which prompted the Devil to throw him out a nearby window. The Devil stretched his wings, tapped on Percy's fish bowl, which Percy hated but couldn't do much about, and then lay down on his bed.

"Maybe I'll have better luck in the next millennia," said the Devil.

The Devil's phone rang. Being in absolutely no mood to talk to anyone, he let the machine get it. The Devil's answering message clicked on.

"Hi, you've reached the Devil in the very pits of Hell; unless you wish to be ravaged relentlessly I suggest you don't leave a message. Oh, and wait for the beep."

There was a lengthy pause, and then the generic answering machine
beep
.

"Hello, Luci," came Heinrich's smooth voice.

The Devil sat up and stared ferociously at his ancient answering machine, having absolutely no intention of answering it.

"God here. I realize that this whole situation must have been very trying for you. You really should learn to read our contracts a little more closely." A couple of angels could be heard giggling in the background. "But sincerely, I do wish you better luck on your next endeavor, whatever that might be. Maybe next time we can get you into something a little bigger, maybe a dog, oh, I know, how about an unusually large rabbit. You could try to take over the Easter holiday?"

The Devil became so furious he spontaneously combusted.

"Anyway, I've got some errands to run, universe to watch over, that sort of thing. You take care of yourself and give me a call sometime, we'll do lunch."

The answering machine clicked off and the Devil rolled around on the ground trying to put himself out. He lay there for a while, smoldering quietly.

The anger he felt was the painful kind and he didn't like it.

"Only one thing for it." The Devil fished about in his closet, then pulled out a large wooden spoon. He put on his best look of ill contempt and stalked off to find someone to torture.

Nigel had wanted to thank Death for everything he'd done, for the realization and knowledge he'd obtained and for making them not dead anymore, but his soul had been sucked out of the afterlife waiting room too soon. There was also one question in particular that he had wanted to ask Death, a question that played on Nigel's mind, a question he felt to bean important one and to which the only answer he could come up with was one that needed confirmation from someone who knew what they were talking about, which was,
who is Heinrich? And how did he know everything?

These were all really inconsequential at the moment as Nigel, Celina, and Gerald quickly discovered that coming back to life after an explosion was a hell of a lot more painful than being blown up in the first place. Each of their bodies had to rebuild itself from scratch: bone, muscle, hair, skin, clothes, everything.

Later, Nigel compared the experience to swimming in a pool of broken glass and lemon juice, only ten times worse. His soul whipped out of the cosmos, back toward the Earth, and on the way down got assaulted by a great many elements. Atoms rushed toward him, rebuilding his bones, muscle, skin tissue, and hair at the speed of light. The Earth got closer and closer, the pain got worse and worse, and Nigel and his companions blacked out.

When they awoke, they found themselves lying in a pile of rubble that had once been the Majestic Technologies building. Nigel struggled to his feet and looked around. Small fires still burned, and it was impossible to see anything else because of the large dust cloud that enveloped them. The smell of crushed lemons was unmistakable.

Celina coughed a little, stood up, looked down at her fully formed body, and hugged herself warmly. Gerald had only just been getting used to his body and now felt he had to do it all over again. Sirens sounded close by.