The Grimscribe's Puppets (11 page)

“I can assure you, sir, that all of the fees are enumerated quite specifically online. These are the rules. The rules for
everyone
. Is it possible that you were, perhaps, not of the most sound mind when perusing our web page?”

He began searching his pants for his pack of Camels. “So basically, we drove all the way up here from Louisville for nothing.”

“My word. Not at all! I can’t think of a single customer who’s been able to pay for the service, out of pocket. Even with credit cards.”

Dad tilted his head like a confused dog. “Beg pardon?”

The woman leaned over to her side. She retrieved a plastic three-ring binder, flipped past a few of the dividers until she reached the section she wanted, and pushed down to break the metal rings apart. They let out a loud snap. Then she took a bunch of papers out.

“Everyone I’ve seen come through town ends up making arrangements to work their fee off. We’ll take the money that you brought with you as a down payment, of course. And you can sell things—all but your most essential belongings—to the company store. Then you can begin working, until you pay off the rest. We certainly need people to work in the warehouses. But other...well...other fields are better compensated. Are you a good marksman? Can you tie a noose?”

Dad started to stammer a response, but the lady continued.

“Of course, there will be expenses deducted. Food allowance. Tuition for your little girl to attend the company school so that she can learn skills that are in demand. So that some day she can pay off
her
part of the fee. That sort of thing.”

“So how much are we talking about. I mean...
total
costs.”

She swiveled her computer monitor around so Dad could see it.

“That’s not what the website said. Nowhere
near
what the website said.”

The woman nodded. “Fair enough. Then I suppose you’ll be on your way?” She handed Dad’s license back to him.

He tucked it into his wallet. Then he stood there for a long time, just sort of staring at something in the middle of the wallet. This whole trip had been creepy and sad, but nothing felt creepier or sadder than that stretch of time (a minute?
five
minutes?) when he just stood there, looking at the middle of his wallet, all bug-eyed. “No,” he said (finally breaking his silence). “It’s a high price. But, honestly, I think it’s worth it.”

“We all do,” the lady said. “If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, it’s been about twenty-seven years since I first arrived. I only need to stay hired here another six months until I’ve worked off the fee. Then the company will take arms against my sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.”

Dad nodded and smiled and ended up signing a lot of papers that night. Oodles and oodles of them. I ended up walking over to a bench and catching some zees. I realized the whole thing would go faster that way.

By Cody Goodfellow

So, what are we to discuss today, erm… What is your name today? That would be a good place to start.

No names, please––names are lies, except for the one you choose for yourself, and I won’t…I can’t… I get a different one every time I try to remember it, and if I gave you one, I wouldn’t be the same person who needs to talk to you.

Well then, shall we begin with
what
you are?

That changes too, I’m afraid, and never for the better. Have you always wanted to be a psychiatrist?

As long as I can remember, yes. It’s my calling.

Calling, sure. But have you ever thought of being anything else?

Everyone fantasizes about a different life, but I’m always a fantasizing psychiatrist. But enough about me. What of the essential “you?” What are you, that never changes?

I’m a whipping boy. I’m the pain-puppet of an angry, third-rate god.

Well, now we’re getting somewhere. That’s a common enough delusion––not an easy dragon to slay…

That’s just the sort of thing one of His characters would say––

So you’re convinced that you’re a––

We all are.

~*~

What did a guy have to do to summon the Devil around here?

Mr. Furst was used to getting results, and he’d been trying for a solid month; tried everything he’d seen in movies or read in tabloids and paperback grimoires, even a few new things he’d come up with on his own. But the road to true Biblical evil had been far harder than Sunday school would have you believe.

Even for so naturally immoral a person as he, the descent into mindful malevolence had been harder and more painful than a willfully benevolent soul might find the ascent to sainthood. It was a lonely lookout, and with none of the easy gains they squawked about in the Bible, he thought as he lit another Kent Menthol off the guttering butt of the last, so wrung out he forgot to pick up matches on the way home.

Because of the sacrifice.

He picked up a stray cat that rubbed itself against his trouser leg in the park at midnight. Taking it for a sign, he’d bundled the vermin up in his coat and run to an alley, where he’d cut its head off with a pocketknife and used the carcass as a brush to paint the sigil of the Ascending Dragon just like in the Pocket Books Edition of the
Necronomicon
. Then he’d waited, reciting some Babylonian nonsense and some Iron Maiden lyrics, but nothing came of it.

He sneezed out the cherry on his cigarette. The cat hair on his coat had his allergies at meltdown status. Now his cigarette was out, and not even two sticks to rub together for a flame. Same old shit, again and again...

“I know you’re down there watching,” he roared at his apartment. “I hear ya laughing at me so much now, it sounds like my own goddam laugh! When do I get to cut a deal, anyway? Church makes out like you turn up whenever a guy spits on a Sunday, but I done the works for you, and I got stood up! Whattaya, scared to do business with a
real
player? One salesman to another? Please, fertheluvvaGod––”

As his first sacrificial tear hit the floor, his front door opened, without any of his locks unlocking, without tripping any of his traps. Just opened. And in walked a blasé, coolcat sonofabitch in a vintage Botany 500 sharkskin suit and scuffed black wingtips. No horns, no red warty skin or forked tail… not even a sinister beard.

Where a lesser man might’ve fainted with shock or repentance, Mr. Furst was beside himself at the lack of ceremony; ignore a guy’s heart-rending pleas and backbreaking toil in the service of blasphemy for a whole month, only to breeze in through the front door dressed like a used-car salesman, without so much as stinking up the joint with brimstone? It rankled, but Mr. Furst wasn’t the sort to jump down a guy’s throat about details. Cut it and drink from it, maybe, but never jump down it.

The coolcat sonofabitch took a fierce hit off his cigarette like he was sucking poison out of a snakebite and said, “Picture, if you will––”

“Shut up. You gimme a cig first, then we’ll talk turkey, and I’m gettin’ extra gravy on mine, on account of how you kept me waiting.” He tapped his imitation Rolex to drive home the pointy point. Mr. Furst was never one to let a mark get the first––or the last––word in. He didn’t get to be Senior Appliance Salesman at
The Good Guys
by letting goons off the street dictate terms to him, and damned if he’d do business any different with the Prince of Darkness.

“Ah, yes.” The Devil smiled like a guy looking into a TV camera that only he could see. “Mr. Emil Furst. Takes his business brief, his drinks out of the bottle and his meals from the lunchboxes of slain virgins.”

“So you
were
watchin’. I was wondering what it took to make you come around.”

“What it takes, Mr. Furst, is a far rarer culinary offering, one not served since long before Rome burned or the ice caps froze, not since Hector––”

“
Soul
, yeah, you want my soul. Quit talkin’ in circles.”

“I do apologize.”

“And I wanna smoke.”

“Again, I beg your pardon, but I have only this one. But it never burns down.” He puffed hard to prove it. “It was a gift from the R&D people at Phillip Morris. Unmarketable, of course––”

Mr. Furst made a lobster-claw of his fingers and shoved it under the Devil’s nose. “Give it here.”

The Devil bethought himself a moment, then handed it over. “Yours, as a token of my esteem. As I was saying––”

“You mean this’ll never go out?”

“Eternal. It’s a long way between convenience stores, along some routes in my domain.”

“Can’t crush it out?”

“Impossible.”

“Dunk it in water?”

“It would not only be futile––”

“Great. Get on with it.”

The Devil smiled obligingly. “Of course. Now, in all fairness, you must admit that what you bring to the table is somewhat tarnished to begin with, so––”

“Whattaya mean, ‘tarnished’? My soul’s as pure as the next guy’s.”

“On the contrary. Even before your campaign of terror to get my attention, your soul was never any priceless asset. It’s a fair bet you’d have been mine anyway, barring some miraculous deathbed repentance. Had you given it any thought, you might’ve realized that all you had to do was perform a few outstandingly
good
works, and I’d have been at your side with all the theatrics you crave in an instant. Still, I don’t get much chance to do this kind of bare-knuckle horse-trading anymore––”

“You know, you’re not the only one out there buying up souls.”

“Oh, I’m well aware of that. The old milieu guaranteed us such a vast market share that we became careless about image, and it’s no surprise, by benefit of hindsight, that so many people have taken their business elsewhere. There’s more than a few out there collecting, and their offers are tempting, but whom can you trust? They’re not bound by the same regulations as I––”

“So I’m supposed to cry for
you?
”

“Remember who called whom, Mr. Furst.” Tapping his own fake Rolex.

“Okay, brass tacks. I was gonna ask for money and broads and shit, but then it hits me. I won’t ‘preciate any of that ‘cause I didn’t earn it. Then I get depressed, I get crazy, I get dead, and I go to Hell and get the shaft forever and a day, am I right?”

“You’ve seen right through us, Mr. Furst.”

“So I didn’t know what to ask for. At least not until you give me this cig, then I get an angle. I wanna live forever. No funny business, no fine print. I LIVE FOREVER. That way, I’ll have all the time in the world to earn the good life, so’s I can ‘preciate it with a clean conscience. Dig?”

“Like a sexton’s shovel in 14th century Venice, Mr. Furst. You’re the kind of man with an appetite for towering achievements, who lives for the thrill of still-greater prospects ahead.”

“That’s me all over.”

“I’m just afraid that’s an awfully tall order for a soul so shabby, that we’ll never even collect on...”

“I’ll throw you so many referrals along the way, you’ll never want to see me come back.”

“I’m sure if you look at it from my perspective, we can come to a more reasonable settlement––”

“No deal! I live forever, and I pass the word on about what a swell guy you are, or I’m takin’ a walk! Or maybe I go into the soul-collecting business myself...”

The Devil, who had gradually sagged into his ash-flecked blazer under the ferocious barrage of Emil Furst’s salesmanship, suddenly seemed to forget himself and Furst thought he saw what lay beneath his mask: a nightmare patchwork of intertwined animal horns and countless baleful black eyes, and below them, an unspeakable entanglement of bestial genitalia––a scaly, venom-sweating tongue lovelessly fucking its own dung-encrusted mouth––and all of it sheathed in a cold, blue-black fire that was its punishment as well as its protection.

Inside and out, not a molecule of Emil Furst stirred, but for the spreading stain on the front of his pants.

And then the mask was back, which was ever so much better. “No need for threats,” averred the Devil. “I think we can afford to take one on the chin, if it’ll spark up some life in the market. You’ll be sure to tell all your friends, if you ever chance to make any?” The Devil looked almost obsequious as he fished a checkbook-sized ledger out of his breast pocket.

“I got a secretary back at the store, gave it up to me for a baggie of marching powder, she’d probably sell her soul to you for a nice pair of shoes. You gonna write up the deal now?” He edged up alongside the Devil with his two-dollar reading glasses on. This was when a real salesman screwed the customer, yes indeed. Extended service warranty, delivery charges, and so on. They never read the fine print, and Furst dragged them through hell every time.

“Make that ‘forever an a day,’ just like I said before. And that ‘achievements and prospects’ bit too. I don’t want no boring eternity.” The Devil obligingly spelled it out and signed on his dotted line, then passed the pen and ledger to Mr. Furst.

“Not so fast, let a guy read.” His lips moving with painstaking care, he perused the contract. It was neither as complicated nor as elaborate as he’d expected––hell, it was simpler and homelier than the form he had to fill out to get copies made. “I, Emil Furst, accept the agreed upon terms entitling me to eternal life on earth in present indestructible corporeal state, to enjoy satisfaction of great achievements and grand prospects, in return for my immortal soul, for a term of not less than forever and a day. I understand that all
force majeure
clauses are herewith suspended, and that this contract can only be terminated by mutual agreement of both parties.” He grumbled over some of the larger words for a while, then signed it.

“Best deal anyone’s ever gotten out of Hell, Mr. Furst. When you spread the word, don’t let’s be too honest about our terms, please?” The Devil looked around as Furst studied his carbon receipt for the fiftieth. “Lovely place you’ve got here. One could spend eternity here and never want for comfort.”

“It’s a dump, but I like my privacy. I own it outright and tax free, and I’m tapped into municipal power and water and the neighbor’s cable, so there’s no bills. See, Devil? Nobody screws Emil Furst.”