Mister B. Gone (2 page)

Then my mother comes in, with such a look of fury on her face I knew I was going to get the beating of my life for this.

“You are a selfish, vicious, horrible creature,” she said to me.

“And I wish you’d never been born.”

I tried to lie.

“It’s just a story I’m writing,” I told her. “I know there are real names in it right now, but they were only there until I could find something better.”

“I take it back,” my mother said, and for a second I thought what I’d said had worked. But no. “You’re a
lying
, selfish, vicious, horrible creature.” She took a big metal spoon from behind her back. “I’m going to beat you so hard you will never—
never, do
you hear me?
—waste your time inventing cruelties again!”

Her words brought another lie to mind. I thought: I’ll try it, why not? She’s going to beat me anyhow so what’s to lose? I said to her:

“I know what I am, Momma. I’m one of the Demonation.

Maybe just a little one, but I’m still a Demon. Well? Aren’t I?”

She didn’t answer. So I went on. “And I thought we were supposed to be selfish and vicious and whatever else you said I was. I hear other kids talking about it all the time. The terrible things they’re going to do when they get out of school. The weapons they’re going to invent, and sell to Humankind. And the execution machines. That’s what I’d really like to do. I’d like to create the best execution machine that was ever—”

I stopped. Momma had a puzzled look on her face.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m just wondering how long I’m going to let you go on talking nonsense before I slap some sense into you. Execution machines! You don’t have the brains to make any such thing! And take the ends of your tails out of your mouth. You’ll prick your tongue.”

I took the tail tips, which I always chewed on when I was nervous, out from between my teeth, all the while trying to remember what I’d overheard other Demon kids saying about the art of killing people. “I’m going to invent the first mechanical disemboweler,” I said.

My mother’s eyes grew wide, more I think from the shock of hearing me speak such long words than from the notion itself.

“It’s going to have a huge wheel to unwind the condemned man’s guts. And I’m going to sell it to all the most fancy, civilized kings and princes of Europe. And you know what else?”

My mother’s expression didn’t alter. Not a flicker of her eye, or a twitch of her mouth. She just said, in a monotone: “I’m listening.”

“Yes! That’s right! Listening!”

“What?”

“People who pay for a good seat at an execution deserve to hear something better than a man screaming as he’s disemboweled. They need music!”

“Music.”

“Yes, music!” I said. I was completely besotted by the sound of my own voice now, not even certain what the next word out of my mouth was going to be, just trusting the inspiration of the moment. “Inside the great wheel there’ll be another machine that will play some pretty tunes to please the ladies, and the louder the man’s screams become the louder the music will play.”

She still looked at me without so much as a twitch. “You’ve really thought about this?”

“Yes.”

“And these writings of yours?”

“I was just noting down all the horrible thoughts in my head.

For inspiration.”

My Momma studied me for what seemed like hours, searching every inch of my face as though she knew the word LIAR was written there somewhere. But finally, her scrutiny ceased and she said:

“You are a strange one, Jakabok.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked her.

“It depends on whether you like strange children,” she replied.

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“But I gave birth to you, so I suppose I have to take some of the responsibility.”

It was the sweetest thing she’d ever said. I might have shed a tear if I’d time, but she had orders for me.

“Take all these scrawlings of yours down to the bottom of the yard and burn them.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can and you will!”

“But I’ve been writing them for years.”

“And they’ll all burn up in two minutes, which should teach you something about this World, Jakabok.”

“Like what?” I said, with a sour look on my face.

“That it’s a place where whatever you work for and care about is bound to be taken away from you sooner or later, and there isn’t a thing you can do about it.” For the first time since this interrogation had begun, she took her eyes off me. “I was beautiful once,” she said. “I know you can’t imagine that now, but I was. And then I married your father, and everything that was beautiful about me and the things that were all around me went up in smoke.” There was a long silence. Then her eyes slowly slid back in my direction. “Just like your pages will.”

I knew there was nothing I could say to her that would persuade her to let me keep my treasures. And I also knew that it was approaching the time that Pappy G. would be coming back from the Furnaces and that my situation would be a lot worse if he picked up any of my Revenge Stories, because all the most terrible things I’d invented I’d saved for him.

So I started to throw my beautiful precious pages into a large sack my mother had already laid beside them for this very purpose. Every now and then I would catch sight of a phrase I’d written, and with one glance I would instantly remember the circumstances which had caused me to write it, and how I’d felt when I’d scrawl the words down; whether I’d been so enraged that the pen had cracked under the pressure of my fingers, or so humiliated by something somebody had said that I’d been close to tears. The words were a part of me, part of my mind and memory, and here I was throwing them all—my Words, my precious words, along with whatever piece of me was attached to them—into a sack, like so much garbage.

Once in a while I thought of attempting to slip one of the special pages into my pocket. But my mother knew me too well.

Not once did she take her eyes off me. She watched me fill up the sack, she followed me down the yard, step for step, and stood by while I upturned the sack, picking up those pages that had cartwheeled away from the others and tossing them back onto the main pile.

“I don’t have any matches.”

“Step aside, child,” she said.

I knew what was coming, and I stepped away quickly from the pile of pages. It was a wise move, because as I took my second step I heard my mother noisily hawking up a wad of phlegm. I glanced back as she spat the wad towards my precious journals.

If she’d simply been spitting on them that wouldn’t have been so bad, but my mother came from a long line of powerful pyrophantics. As the phlegm flew from her lips, it brightened and burst into flames, dropping with horrible accuracy into the chaotic pile of journals.

If there’d simply been a match tossed onto my young life’s work it would have burned black from end to end without igniting a page. But it was my mother’s fire that landed upon the journals and as it struck them it threw out streamers of flame in all directions. One moment I was looking at the pages onto which I had poured all the anger and the cruelty I had cooked up inside me. The next moment those same pages were being consumed, as my mother’s fire ate through the paper.

I was still standing just a step and a half away from the bonfire, and the heat was something ferocious, but I didn’t want to move away from it, even though my little mustache, which I’d been carefully nurturing (it was my first) shriveled up in the heat, the smell making my sinuses sting and my eyes water.

There was no way in Demonation I was going to let my mother see tears on my face. I raised my hand to quickly wipe them off, but I needn’t have bothered. The heat had evaporated them.

No doubt had my face been—like yours—covered in tender skin instead of scales, it would have blistered as the fire continued to consume my journals. But my scales protected me for a little while at least. Then it began to feel as though my face were frying. I still didn’t move. I wanted to be as close to my beloved words as I could be. I just stayed where I was, watching the fire do its work. It had a systematic way of unmaking each of the books page by page, burning away one to expose the one beneath, which was then quickly consumed in its turn, giving me glimpses of death-machines and revenges I had written about before the fire took them too.

Still I stood there, inhaling the searing air, my head filling up with visions of the horrors I had conjured up on those pages; vast creations that were designed to make every one of my enemies (which is to say everyone I knew, for I liked no one) a death as long and painful as I could make it. I wasn’t even aware of my mother’s presence now. I was just staring into the fire, my heart hammering in my chest because I was so close to the heat; my head, despite the weight of atrocities that was filling it up, strangely light.

And then:

“
Jakabok!”

I was still sufficiently in charge of my thoughts to recognize my name and the voice that spoke it. I reluctantly took my eyes off the cremation and looked up through the heat-crazed air towards Pappy Gatmuss. I could tell his temper was not good by the motion of his two tails, which were standing straight up from their root above his buttocks, wrapping themselves around one another, then unwrapping, all at great speed and with such force behind their intertwining it was as though each tail wanted to squeeze the other until it burst.

I inherited the rare double-tail by the way. That was one of the two gifts he gave me. But I wasn’t feeling any great measure of gratitude now, as he came lumbering towards the fire, yelling at my mother as he did so, demanding to know what she was doing making bonfires, and what was she burning anyway? I didn’t hear my mother’s response. The blood in my head was whining now so loud that it was all I could hear. Their fights and rages could go on for hours sometimes, so I cautiously returned my gaze to the fire, which, thanks to the sheer volume of paper that was being consumed, still blazed as furiously as ever.

I had been breathing short shallow breaths for several minutes now, while my heart beat a wild tattoo. Now my consciousness fluttered like a candle flame in a high wind; any moment, I knew, it would go out. I didn’t care. I felt strangely removed from everything now, as though none of this was really happening.

Then, without any warning, my legs gave way, and I fainted, falling facedown—

into—

the—

fire.

So there you are. Satisfied now? I have never told anybody that story in the many hundreds of years since it happened. But I’ve told it to you now, just so you’d see how I feel about books.

Why I need to see them burned.

It’s not hard to understand, is it? I was a little demon-child who saw my work go up in flames. It wasn’t fair. Why did I have to lose my chance to tell my story when hundreds of others with much duller tales to tell have their books in print all the time?

I know the kind of lives authors get to live. Up in the morning, doesn’t matter how late, stumbles to his desk without bothering to bathe, then he sits down, lights up a cigar, drinks his sweet tea, and writes whatever rubbish comes into his head. What a life! I could have had a life like that if my first masterwork had not been burned in front of me. And I have great works in me.

Works to make Heaven weep and Hell repent. But did I get to write them, to pour my soul onto the pages?
No
.

Instead, I’m a prisoner between the covers of this squalid little volume, with only one request to make of some compassionate soul:

Burn This Book.

No, no, and still no.

Why are you hesitating? Do you think you’ll find some titillating details about the Demonation in here? Something depraved or salacious, like the nonsense you’ve read in other books about the World Below (Hell, if you prefer)? Most of that stuff is invented. You do know that, don’t you? It’s just bits of gossip and scraps of superstition mixed up by some greedy author who knows nothing about the Demonation:
nothing
.

Are you wondering how I know what’s being passed off as the truth these days? Well, I’m not completely without friends from the old days. We speak, mind to mind, when conditions permit.