Threkma managed a half-smirk of pride and self-satisfaction as Grznarb continued. “Of course, the straight-back institutional chair of false confession placed into police interrogation rooms was the big highlight of your stay. Anger, guilt, depression, false witness, suicide… the list of sin is infinite.”
Grznarb approached the minion, looming over him. “Your stay here in The Lower Realms is infinite, but your job-security is not. One four-letter word from me and you could be chewed for all eternity by an Arch-Demon with breath that makes mine smell like peppermint schnapps.”
Threkma quaked in fear, or maybe it was just another of the aftershocks of Beelzebub’s Fall from Grace.
Grznarb jabbed the damned bureaucrat in the chest with a bloody talon. “Tell me what you were going to use this latest allocation of eternal damnation to curse now, right now. And it had better be good. I want a cursed wearable that has enormous impact but does not wear out and get tossed in a box for Goodwill. Something that passes from generation to generation. Something insidious. Something delicious. And by delicious, I mean truly evil.”
Threkma made no attempt to stem the bleeding that now flowed from both his snout and his chest, as he replied. “I did find an old recipe, almost a half-century since its last use. It has a tremendous impact not only on the wearer but also on his victims, the victims’ extended families for generations to come, and on the misguidedly faithful.”
“Why haven’t you produced these to date?”
“They take an incredible amount of evil, your Rancid Hatefulness. They have to ward off constant blessings and that is not easy.”
Father Breen returned to his room once most of the parishioners had left. He took off the stole that lay across his shoulders, kissed it, and placed it reverently on his desk. He sat down at the same desk with a weary slump and put his face in his hands. When he had first been called, he had been counseled by the monks who had trained him that celibacy was no easy task but that he must put his mind and his energies to holy work instead. So many years had passed since that day, and his normal sexual urgings had lessened with each passing year. He had performed well in his duties and had moved up the church hierarchy. Celibacy was no longer a struggle. His sexual feelings were a faint and distant memory.
But lately, since his promotion and transfer, he had felt new, disturbing, urgings. Urgings that excited him one moment and horrified him just a few hours later. Urgings he could not understand and could not tell anyone about, lest all his good work be destroyed. As he stroked the brocaded symbols of his stole, passed to him by his predecessor at St. Basil’s and his predecessor before that, he thought of what he should do.
He got up, kissed the stole, muttering a quick blessing, and draped it once again across his shoulders. It was time to meet with the new altar boy.
As he left his room, he no longer thought about what he should do, but he knew what he would do.
He smiled.
Somewhere in the firepits of Hell, Grznarb smiled, too. “A pleasing result, but expensive and, of course, not your recipe,” rumbled the demon to Threkma.
Threkma quavered and lowered his eyes, but he spoke in a rush of words. “No, it’s not. I mean, yes, it’s not, your Coagulating Rottenness. But, it gave me an idea. Perverted symbols of allegiance. Not really jewelry, but tokens of membership or belief that are worn every day. Little gold crosses of cruelty, for example.”
“Fah,” snorted Grznarb, “you focus only on the faithful. Blessing resistance will need to be built-in at extra cost. Besides, The Dark Angel requires a broad spectrum of sinners. Each and every soul should have an equal opportunity to damn itself for all eternity.”
Threkma’s eyes darted from side to side. “Not crosses,” he murmured, no doubt stalling for time. “Been done before, anyway,” he blathered on, punctuating his words with a cracking, maniacal giggle. “Although both the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition did have their moments. No, your Regurgitated Sliminess, but perhaps nonreligious icons. We can pervert all of their symbols against them.”
An excellent suggestion. But Grznarb was an excellent manager. He knew that he had to make his underling sweat just a bit more. “Symbols of allegiance? This is not the Middle Ages, my misguided minion. Heraldry is no longer in style.” He curled his lips in a faux grimace.
“Modern symbols,” insisted Threkma, “Frat pins of homophobia, perhaps.”
“Too narrow a base,” growled Grznarb, making a mental note of the suggestion.
“Union pins of racism,” proffered Threkma, obviously desperate to please his taskmaster.
“Declining union membership,” replied Grznarb, secretly pleased at his servant’s creativity.
“Corporate logos of greed…”
“Nobody publicly identifies with their employer these days.”
“American flag lapel pins of intolerance and warmongering…” shouted Threkma, in revelation.
Grznarb roared in laughter, unintentional Hellfire incinerating the office desk, the straight-backed chair, and his erstwhile employee.
“How do you think I got this job?” he mumbled to himself as he strode off to the pits to find a damned replacement.
JACK’S MANTLE by Joe Masdon
Bob was miserable. The kids were away for the day with Brenda’s mother, and her idea of quality time with her husband involved book fairs and consignment stores. She had been smiling all day, and he irritably began to wonder if part of her smile came from the knowledge that she was driving him violently insane. The novelty of morning romance had been good, but that had been the only ten minutes that he had enjoyed of the past three hours. Enjoyed? Tolerated. Ten minutes of routine, passionless sex with his wife was way too little payment for a day filled with flea markets and pottery shops.
She despises me.
As they entered crap-for-sale shop no. 5, she smiled blissfully at him as if they were part of some happy cruise ship commercial. His weary half-smile as he held the door didn’t slow her down. She hurried into the shop purposefully, cooing about some sugar bowl she’d noticed as they entered. Clearly the sex was better for her than it was for him to keep her in this gooey-eyed mood all morning.
God, I hate her.
Fifteen minutes later, Bob wasn’t sure where Brenda was in the store, and he didn’t much care as long as it was away from him. He was ambling carelessly down a few aisles, looking spitefully at the junk that stuffed the store claustrophobically. It was a big store, and shelves and clothing racks went from floor to ceiling. He had been stomping around angrily, but misery took a lot of effort to maintain, particularly when it was really just exaggerated boredom.
After a while he found himself looking lazily through the men’s coats. For some reason, there seemed to be more men’s coats here than just about anything else. They were too tightly packed to actually move the hangers, but he fingered the fabric and pushed a few coats a half-inch or so, pretending that it gave him a better view of the merchandise. Amid the tightly bunched rows of shoulders and sleeves he would occasionally pull out a coat that he would vaguely reject and be unable to squeeze back into the rack. He left a trail of protruding half-coats and limp sleeves dangling into the narrow aisle.
Almost buried under the faded shoulder of a baby blue Members Only jacket and a stained London Fog trench coat was a garment that caught Bob’s eye. He jammed his hand in and felt something rough and woolen. He pulled on the hanger once, twice, and slowly pried the long black overcoat into view. Bob noted that the black overcoat had one of those peculiar-looking capes attached to it. It was worn thin in a lot of places, and even though it was bulky, it seemed a little narrow for him. More for amusement than for any serious intent, Bob looked for a size tag in the collar. There was no tag or label of any kind. It occurred to him that the overcoat was probably so old that all of the tags had frayed away. It looked like one of those things that got donated to community theaters and showed up in everything from Victorian England costumes to WWII Americana musicals.