Threkma was sweating profusely, and it wasn’t just from the typically infernal heat. His horn-nubs glowed red from embarrassment and stress. “No, no, your Unholy Toadliness. It’s not just that the pants have shrunk or the woman has not lost weight. The jeans are cursed. No matter who tries them on or when or where, they will always be just one size too small. It’s actually a variation of the cursed camera gambit, the one which automatically adds a double-chin and twenty pounds to everyone in the picture, back from when I worked in the Cursed Electronics and Other Incomprehensible Technology Division.”
“Fah!” yelled Grznarb, a bit of Hellfire bursting forth from his mouth and singeing off Threkma’s eyelashes. Grznarb had always found singed eyelashes to be a particularly effective management technique. He couldn’t imagine how humans had never stumbled upon it. “And what does this cursed clothing get us? Mild aggravation on the part of the would-be wearer?” He knew his saliva was still steaming from the burst of Hellfire, distracting the underling, but he liked his minions terrified and confused, especially during their performance reviews.
“M-m-much more than that, sir. Diet failure, or at least perceived diet failure, can lead to bingeing. I think gluttony is the classic word, your Pus-Filled Putrescence.”
“Gluttony!” roared Grznarb, a glob of still steaming saliva spewing forth onto the desktop and starting to eat away at the tally sheets and memoranda, then the metal beneath. “What kind of penny-ante curse-works are you running here? Your latest curse produces occasional gluttony? Who in Hell cares? As if gluttony wasn’t endemic in human population anyway!”
Threkma swallowed hard. “More than that, your Unclean Maggotness. The cursed jeans can lead to domestic quarrels, displaced anger, depression, and, in a small number of cases, suicide. That’s a mortal sin, there, your Vomitous Abomination. A mortal sin.”
Grznarb snarled. “Even the little black dress thing was better than this.”
Threkma straightened his thrice-broken spine at Grznarb’s words. “The little black dress of infidelity did have some good results.”
“Fah. You have been spending too much time around humans. Your speech offends me and not in a good way. Call the thing by its true name.”
Threkma’s spine began to curl, the previously broken vertebrae grinding against each other with excruciating pain. “The micro-mini of sluttishness, you mean, your Diseased Ferretbreathness?”
“Yes,” grumbled Grznarb, “but even it had limited effectiveness. The problem with cursed clothing is that the curse begins to fade too quickly when you take it off. Extended foreplay can lead to second thoughts. That’s a real structural dilemma in dealing with fornication fabrics.”
“Still,” squeaked Threkma, “we did have that high profile political success with the little blue dress variant made out of fellatio fabric…”
“Fah! You can’t rest on old successes for eternity.” Grznarb nested his pointed chin in his scabby hand, letting a talon hover just a millimeter from his own eyeball, just to unnerve his unworthy subordinate. “What we need is something people wear every day, like the old eyeglasses of impure thoughts. Why aren’t we making them anymore?”
Threkma trembled. “People switched to contacts, so we had to miniaturize and increase the potency of the cursed material. Then the humans switched to disposable contacts, creating a black hole in our supply and production budgets. Lately, they’ve started flocking to laser eye surgery. We rigged a few of the lasers to malfunction and boil the insides of the eyes ’til they exploded, you know, just to try to buck the trend, but the whole subgroup has completely fallen apart, your Metastasizing Worminess.”
“So, just what are you doing?” demanded Grznarb. “You keep requesting more and more of Hell’s powers of damnation for your department, but I’m just not convinced it’s being used well. The Dark One’s power to curse is finite, you know. Not like the infinite blessings of our… competitor.”
“Yes, your Festering Warthogness, but curses do last forever, so the total damnation in the world increases at all times. That should please you and The Horned Slayer.”
Grznarb tapped his talon on his eyeball lightly, causing a yellow trail of bubbling ichor to ooze out and eat through the scabs on his cheek. “The total damnation increases, but so does the population. Besides, these fabric curses are especially problematic. The power of the curse dissipates as the item wears, fiber by fiber, leaving the item ultimately ineffective and a level of damnation in most lint filters that swallows errant socks whole.”
The sock-less Threkma did not respond to the revelation of the answer to one of life’s great mysteries, so Grznarb continued. “That’s why hard items work the best-the curse can last for centuries, undissipated, especially with gems and gold. Why aren’t we using our limited power of damnation for the old classics, like the cursed sword that damages whoever the wielder loves most in all the world equal to the damage inflicted by the sword in battle? Death to kings and comrades, wives and wenches. Now, there was a good time.”
Threkma shuffled his feet, the claws clacking audibly on the rough stone floor. “Although occasionally used as fashion accessories, swords are really in the Cursed Weapons and Things That Blow Up Real Good Division, your Oozing Snotfaceness. In that vein, we did produce some wedding rings (in contemporary styles in both gold and platinum) of infidelity… er… sluttishness. Cursed diamonds really are forever, your Drooling Hideousness. But the humans took the damned rings off whenever the urge to be promiscuous took hold, generally well in advance of removing their clothes to rut. The rings were, accordingly, no more effective than the fornication fabrics and matching fetish footwear.”
Grznarb snarled.
Threkma blathered on. “Wedding rings of shrewish-ness and wife-beating have been much more successful in eliciting the behavior sought to be induced.”
Grznarb’s snarl turned into a full-throated roar, sending a glob of glowing phlegm onto Threkma’s foot. The minion endured the pain as it melted through to the floor. “Then why aren’t we producing more of those?”
“Unfortunately, the effectiveness is high, but the overall duration tends to be short, failing to justify the expenditure of curse power needed to infuse the precious metal. Women’s shelters, high divorce rates, and increasingly effective law enforcement in the area of domestic violence have all been an issue. And, once the ring is removed, whether because of divorce or incarceration, it is essentially a wasted curse. No one passes down family heirlooms anymore. High precious metal prices have resulted in the rings being melted down and the power of the curse diluted and spread across newly manufactured jewelry and electrical components, leading to hardware freeze-ups in most major computer brands and a general low-level of irritation across the population, but no more.”
Grznarb picked his nose with his tongue. “So, jewelry no longer is effective?”
Threkma brightened a bit, whether from the question or because the glob that had been on his foot had finally eaten its way deep into the stone floor. “We have had some success with bling.”
“Bling?” Grznarb hated human slang.
“Heavy, gaudy necklaces and rings worn by youthful enthusiasts of hip-hop music.”
Grznarb tapped his foot on the stone floor. “Get on with it. What sin is this ‘bling’ cursed with?”
Threkma smiled weakly. “It was meant to increase the popularity of the… er… singers.”
Grznarb’s brow furrowed. Threkma rushed on. “The so-called music is truly horrendous to hear, your Decomposing Vileness. It was hoped that insanity and mass suicide would result.”
“And did it?”