Weird Tales #358, page 8
* * * *
Richard Holinger’s poetry, fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in The Southern Review, The Iowa Review, New Letters, Boulevard, ACM, WHR, Flyway, Witness, North American Review and elsewhere. He has received three Pushcart Prize nominations and lives in Illinois’s Fox Valley, where he writes a newspaper column, facilitates a writing workshop, and teaches English at Marmion Academy. A collection of innovative flash fiction is forthcoming from Kattywompus Press.
THE HAND, by Gio Clairval
When it’s dark, my hand waits under a crack in the asphalt.
Every night around nine, I drag myself downstairs into the cellar and crawl through a tunnel I dug beneath the street, up to a hole in the pavement as wide as the palm of my hand. The mouth in the palm has red lips but no tongue. The skin around the lips is smooth like a child’s cheek and white, veined throughout with the blue of mold in a creamy cheese. Whenever a bird or a cat treads on it, three rows of teeth snap shut. The hand shivers. It has a life of its own, and it chokes the words and the flowers in my mind.
How I wish I could tell you, my juicy love, that you are the only one who can give me a reason to live.
Right now I am inside my house because the sun is still up. I gaze through the window at your maple-red dress as you stroll under the cherry trees toward the crossroads. Little pale petals scatter in the wind as you go. You stop to gather your billowing skirt around your knees with little pale hands.
You are a cherry yourself, tiny and plump. I eat you with my eyes until you disappear around the corner. I don’t remember the name of that street. I’ve been shut inside the house for so long. Mum said it was better for everyone if I stayed in. Dad left the day he saw my “naughty mitt” swallow a newborn kitten. Thinking of that kitten makes me sad even now.
For weeks, after I dug the tunnel, the hand was content with small animals. My fingers closed around a sparrow, if we were lucky, and the bird screamed when it got gobbled down. Since you moved into the house opposite mine, our life has changed. You wear pumps with stilettos to look taller. Your legs are gorgeous even if they are short, but all the hand cares about is your foot. It wants to taste your exquisite foot.
To be able to taste a woman’s foot, the hand must grow bigger. It eats all the lizards and mice it can trap.
Through the window I see my neighbor John come out with a broom made of a bundle of twigs tied to a pole. He sweeps the tiny bones into a dustpan and dumps them in the bin.
John glances up and catches my gaze. I pull back. I hate looking people in the eyes, although I wouldn’t mind looking into yours. I have nothing against John. Since the grocery-store boy got the measles and stopped delivering, John has left a bottle of milk on my doorstep every day. He is a nice fellow, except for his interest in you.
You reappear finally, carrying a bright-red dress wrapped up in cellophane. I push the curtain aside with the hand that has no mouth, to watch you rock your hips. At half past eight, John crosses the street toward your house. Five minutes later, the two of you pass in front of my window. My mouth-in-hand clenches its teeth so hard it hurts.
The streetlights come on. I quit dusting my neat living room to take up my place under the crack in the asphalt. I imagine the mouth in my palm accepting your heel down its throat. The stiletto pierces the hand through and through and kills it. Maybe it is better if it dies. If I let it bite into one of your feet, I won’t see you anymore. No. I can’t let the hand maim you.
We must be together soon, my sweet dark cherry. I’ll turn twenty in October and I’m alone since Mum died last month. My hand accidentally ate her thumb and the stump rotted. She said nothing, called no doctor because she never spoke to strangers.
Three hours pass before I hear your voice. I can’t see you but I know you’re curvy and lovely in your bright-red dress. Are you walking close to John? Is he gripping your elbow in a protective way? Surely you were out on a date.
The hand senses you; its teeth clink. The wind has blown petals into the hole, soft petals like kisses on my skin.
John says, “Look. Someone’s lost a ring.”
He must have spotted Mum’s ring on my pinkie, glinting in the lamppost light.
“What’s that?” you cry.
The disgust in your voice shatters me. Now I’m sure you will never love me as I am. I slither beneath the pavement under the trash containers, stumble through the cellar and up the creaking stairs. I shower, don my bathrobe and sit down in my tufted-leather armchair. The glittering ring betrayed us so I try to pull it off my pinkie. The fingers have swollen since the mouth’s been feeding, and the ring does not budge. I cradle my mouth-hand in my lap but it snaps at my groin and I jerk my arm away.
The leather glove I slip on is chewed-up in the middle. I wonder what would happen to the rest of me if the toothy hand grew too hungry.
In the letter I’m writing, I ask John to lend me his broom to sweep the basement. I have no telephone because I hate speaking to people, although I’d love to speak to you.
As soon as I get the stuff I’ve ordered by mail, I’ll slip the letter under John’s door. After work, he’ll ring the bell, holding the besom broom.
It’ll take a while for the mouth in my palm to eat John’s body once it’s chopped up properly. When my greedy hand is full of flesh and blood, it will sleep. I’ll use the syringe of anesthetic on it, and then the hatchet and a surgeon’s sewing kit I’ll have set down by the armchair.
I’ll be free at last. Free to touch you with my loving hand.
* * * *
Gio Clairval is an Italian-born writer who lives in France and writes in English. A postgraduate from La Sorbonne and Dauphine, she surrendered to her weirdo’s nature when she gave up her career as an international management consultant to create a post-rock band. Now she’s gotten serious writing fiction and translating stories from French, Italian, Spanish and German. Her fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine and is forthcoming in the HarperCollins anthology The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. She occasionally rambles at gioclairval.blogpost.com.
A CONTRACT WITHOUT LOOPHOLES, by Eric Lis
There’s an old saying in the realm of demons: I’d tell you to go to Hell, but I work there and I don’t want to have to see you every day. Like so many of Hell’s popular sayings, this one is quite popular on the surface world as well, but whether this says more about Hell or Earth is strictly a question of point of view. In the Netherworld, the quote is most frequently found stuck to the back of vehicles, hanging from the padded walls of cubicles, occasionally tattooed on the faces or chests of demons who don’t deal directly with the public, and, not infrequently, scrawled on the walls of Hellish buildings, graffiti being a regular sight in the less draconian areas of the Inferno. The younger demons, most often those who have yet to live beyond their first century, find this saying to be hilariously funny and use it frequently. Indeed, among the more tasteless class of demons, it might even be said to be “riotously funny,” riots not taking very much incentive to get started where demons are involved. The older demons, who have seen and done more and have a bit more experience, don’t find this saying to be very funny at all, because, of course, they know it’s true.
The saying hung on the wall of Notlh’s office in a simple aluminum frame. He considered it to be nothing more than a plain statement of fact. Take Moch, for example, Notlh’s direct supervisor. Moch was a passable demon but a terrible boss, not cruel or capricious but uninspired and unmotivating, and whenever he walked through Notlh’s door, as he just had, it was always a portent of some unpleasant task. “Go to Hell” pretty much summed up how Notlh felt about Moch, but practically speaking, it wouldn’t actually solve anything.
Moch sat down in front of Notlh’s desk and leaned forward, trying to put on his best ‘I have a great assignment for you’ face and managing only to look as though a small rodent was in his mouth and trying to climb up his pharynx into his nose.
“How’s the Simonson case coming?” Moch asked. Whatever Moch’s other flaws, he didn’t waste time with pleasantries. Notlh appreciated the efficiency.
“Slow,” the younger demon replied. “His shoulder devil reports that he went out to get drunk again last night, which is a step in the right direction. We’ll get him.”
“Um hm.”
“I’m thinking of sending him a 5473-A dream in a few days, see how that goes.”
“Of course.”
Notlh stopped talking and stared at his boss. Moch obviously didn’t care about the human Notlh had been working to corrupt but didn’t want to be the first to raise whatever subject he’d come in to talk about. Two could play that game, though. Notlh stared at him, looking bored.
Finally, Moch cleared his throat and said, “You don’t enjoy working in Acquisitions, do you?”
Notlh considered his response carefully. There was no right answer to that question, certainly not the truth.
“It’s okay. You can be honest. You’ve done good work here these last few decades, but I know that after you graduated, you wanted to get into Contracts. Hard department to get into, not a lot of openings, so you ended up here. How would you like a shot at that kind of work?”
Notlh narrowed his eyes. It was untrue that there are no good deals in Hell, but it was true that they should be agreed to carefully.
“What kind of contract?”
“There’s a young human who’s trying to sell his soul. He wants the usual: money, women, power. Didn’t ask for eternal life. The trick is, he’s supposed to be some sort of great occultist. The first couple of Contract Negotiators we sent to visit him… well, he scared them, that’s the best way to put it. He’s got contract tricks the department’s never seen. He’s submitted three drafts of his own devising, and each time Legal just barely caught some clever loopholes he’d put in that might have let him get out of paying his end. Now, he says he’ll only sign a contract if it’s written up by a demon who’s never bought a soul before. Word got around to me about him and I thought of you. This is small-time, but it could be your chance to do some more exciting work. Get him to sign a contract without any loopholes. . . not ones that work in his favor, anyway. . . and we might be able to find a more permanent opening for you in Contracts.”
There’s an old demon saying that says that an important decision should be made within fifty heartbeats, which is no small feat given that demon hearts beat over one hundred and fifty times per minute. Notlh didn’t take quite that long to think it over.
“Can I see the old contracts?”
* * * *
Someone who has never visited Hell could be forgiven for assuming that it’s unpleasant there everywhere—all fire and screaming victims without a decent bar or bookshop to be found. Hell certainly does have its less pleasant areas, particularly those regions where damned souls go to while away their time, but in actual fact, Hell is really only uncomfortable in the places where it’s meant to be. Large areas of Hell have no raging flames whatsoever. There was only one fire burning in the Hot Cocoal, the coffee shop across the road from Notlh’s office, and it burned in a discreet fireplace off in one corner of the shop, near the bookcases. It smelled faintly of sandalwood, instead of sulfur and burned flesh. Where Notlh sat, it was pleasantly air-conditioned, and the faint breeze from above was gently rustling the papers he had spread out on the table in front of him. Jup, a friend from the office down the hall, sat with him, sipping iced pain.
There was only one word to describe what Notlh was reading.
“Ridiculous!”
“Beg your pardon?” Jup asked, taking a noisy slurp.
“These contracts. The ones that the human submitted to us. They’re ridiculous. Moch said he’s supposed to be some kind of occultist, but these. . .”
Notlh picked a few papers at random and shook them at Jup.
“Look at these: ‘The undersigned parties assert that events which might otherwise qualify as ‘act of god’ shall not invalidate this contract or Hell’s duty to fulfill its obligations.’
“Or here. ‘Wealth provided to the signing party by Hell shall not be obtained via theft, deception, deceit, laundering, illegal activities, donations, solicitations—’ it goes on for five lines—‘but shall be obtained only by legal, traceable, and taxable means, including but not limited to earnings from investments and stocks, small lotteries never in excess of five thousand dollars per month and twenty thousand dollars per year. . .’
“‘Hell asserts that no agents of Hell will by action or inaction allow any physical or psychological harm or cancer to come to or afflict the undersigned for a period of no less than seventy years unless that harm is brought about by the undersigned’s own deliberate and knowledgeable action.’
“‘Years shall be defined as a period of no less than 365 days as measured by standard Gregorian calendars. . .’ He operationalizes his definitions, for Satan’s sake!”
The demon glared at the papers, as though by doing so he could change their text. A few of the letters did become nervous and wiggle around, but not to any significant degree. Notlh sighed.
“Do you remember the classes we took on legal documentation? This human covered every aspect of Contracting that I know, and a bunch I’ve never heard of. I’m no expert, but I’m willing to guess that not even our best legal teams would be able to use this against him.”
“I guess that’s why we didn’t use his?” Jup ventured. Notlh dropped the papers back on the table and rested his forehead on one hand, feeling inexplicably tired.
“How long has it been since we graduated?” he asked weakly. Jup paused in his sipping to think about it.
“Must be near on three hundred years now, I guess. Remember, we were studying for our exams when they announced that the War of the Spanish Succession was over. Big disappointment, that.”
“Maybe he’s a lawyer,” Notlh muttered, as though Jup hadn’t spoken. “Human lawyers have advanced the field of legalese beyond anything we ever imagined when we started writing these things. That would explain how he knows so much. How am I supposed to write a contract that’ll trip up someone who’s too smart for the Legal department?”
“Maybe you should peek in on him. He’s probably got a Tempter or a shoulder devil. Maybe even someone in our department.”
Notlh’s eyes widened. He sat perfectly still for a moment, then frantically started to gather up the scattered papers. He sputtered out something that sounded a bit like “jupthatsbrilliantthankyouihavetogo” and then he was gone.
“Who’s going to pay for your coffee!?” called Jup after him. Notlh didn’t hear.
* * * *
He wasn’t a lawyer. He wasn’t in politics. In fact, he wasn’t out of college. He wasn’t studying law. He wasn’t even a member of a debating society. The man who had stymied the whole Legal department of Hell was in his second year of university and getting average grades towards a bachelor’s degree in English literature. Notlh didn’t know if he should be shocked, horrified, or disappointed.
Getting into and out of the surface world is no small feat for a demon. Some few are able to travel over regularly, but to most demons, making the trip is nigh on impossible. Not only are the paths upwards few and far between and the miles of tunnels forbidding and treacherous, the customs checkpoints are downright infernal. Notlh had opted instead to visit the scrying office in the Tempters’ building. The scrying pools were inefficient, but certainly easier and safer than a trip up to the surface. Other demons sat at nearby desks, peering into their small pools of fluid, many furiously scribbling notes or laughing softly at whatever they were observing. Thus far, Notlh had watched his human go about much of his day—watched him sit in class, eat, walk around, and generally do nothing of any interest whatsoever. The human didn’t seem to have any wards in place or any other protections against the scrying pool and didn’t seem to carry around any of the implements one might expect of an occultist, competent or otherwise. Each minute he used the pool cost an exorbitant amount, and thus far the time he had wasted had proved to be utterly useless. Tiring of watching the human himself, Notlh decided to take a quick look at his home before giving up.
At first glance, looking around the human’s apartment was about as useless and watching him in class had been. Reasonably well-kept with a few days’ of dirty dishes accumulated in the sink, there were no mystical signs daubed on the door in blood, no candelabras, no tell-tale chalk-marks showing where there might have recently been protective circles. There wasn’t so much as a cross or a mezuzah, let alone any magical paraphernalia. It was, in fact, almost too useless. By and large, the people who managed to sell their soul to a demon had at least some occult background or training. Contacting Hell wasn’t so easy to do, after all. In the apartment of an ordinary person, it would make perfect sense for there to be a conspicuous absence of, say, black altars consecrated to the Black Darkness from Beyond, but in the home of someone who had not only gotten in touch with a demon but actually stymied their Contracts department, such a normal residence was almost unthinkable. About to disconnect the scrying pool, Notlh put another coin into the slot to buy himself a few more minutes and took a closer look.
There it was: the library.
Calling it a library was somewhat overly generous. Two small bookcases were jammed full of texts and tomes of all manner of colors and sizes. Eagerly, Notlh looked for any authors he recognized, but here, too, he met with disappointment. There was no Crowley, no Heraclitus, no Dee or Nostradamus or Weishaupt. The closest thing he could spot to a book of demons was a copy of Goethe’s Faust, and even that was a newer printing, only a few years old, and an English translation at that. A number of names did appear several times, and Notlh grabbed a piece of scrap paper to write them down to look them up later. He had copied several names down—Gaiman, Pratchett, Adams, Heinlein—when a nagging suspicion struck him. Having already paid for a few more minutes yet, Notlh changed his view to the nearest public library and quickly looked for the same names. Yes, there they were. The young demon could scarcely believe his eyes. With his last precious few seconds of access he jumped his view back to the human’s bookcase and, yes, there it was, the most damning of all: Lovecraft. The scrying pool flashed once and then went black, save for floating red letters which read simply, “Please deposit coin to continue.”
Richard Holinger’s poetry, fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in The Southern Review, The Iowa Review, New Letters, Boulevard, ACM, WHR, Flyway, Witness, North American Review and elsewhere. He has received three Pushcart Prize nominations and lives in Illinois’s Fox Valley, where he writes a newspaper column, facilitates a writing workshop, and teaches English at Marmion Academy. A collection of innovative flash fiction is forthcoming from Kattywompus Press.
THE HAND, by Gio Clairval
When it’s dark, my hand waits under a crack in the asphalt.
Every night around nine, I drag myself downstairs into the cellar and crawl through a tunnel I dug beneath the street, up to a hole in the pavement as wide as the palm of my hand. The mouth in the palm has red lips but no tongue. The skin around the lips is smooth like a child’s cheek and white, veined throughout with the blue of mold in a creamy cheese. Whenever a bird or a cat treads on it, three rows of teeth snap shut. The hand shivers. It has a life of its own, and it chokes the words and the flowers in my mind.
How I wish I could tell you, my juicy love, that you are the only one who can give me a reason to live.
Right now I am inside my house because the sun is still up. I gaze through the window at your maple-red dress as you stroll under the cherry trees toward the crossroads. Little pale petals scatter in the wind as you go. You stop to gather your billowing skirt around your knees with little pale hands.
You are a cherry yourself, tiny and plump. I eat you with my eyes until you disappear around the corner. I don’t remember the name of that street. I’ve been shut inside the house for so long. Mum said it was better for everyone if I stayed in. Dad left the day he saw my “naughty mitt” swallow a newborn kitten. Thinking of that kitten makes me sad even now.
For weeks, after I dug the tunnel, the hand was content with small animals. My fingers closed around a sparrow, if we were lucky, and the bird screamed when it got gobbled down. Since you moved into the house opposite mine, our life has changed. You wear pumps with stilettos to look taller. Your legs are gorgeous even if they are short, but all the hand cares about is your foot. It wants to taste your exquisite foot.
To be able to taste a woman’s foot, the hand must grow bigger. It eats all the lizards and mice it can trap.
Through the window I see my neighbor John come out with a broom made of a bundle of twigs tied to a pole. He sweeps the tiny bones into a dustpan and dumps them in the bin.
John glances up and catches my gaze. I pull back. I hate looking people in the eyes, although I wouldn’t mind looking into yours. I have nothing against John. Since the grocery-store boy got the measles and stopped delivering, John has left a bottle of milk on my doorstep every day. He is a nice fellow, except for his interest in you.
You reappear finally, carrying a bright-red dress wrapped up in cellophane. I push the curtain aside with the hand that has no mouth, to watch you rock your hips. At half past eight, John crosses the street toward your house. Five minutes later, the two of you pass in front of my window. My mouth-in-hand clenches its teeth so hard it hurts.
The streetlights come on. I quit dusting my neat living room to take up my place under the crack in the asphalt. I imagine the mouth in my palm accepting your heel down its throat. The stiletto pierces the hand through and through and kills it. Maybe it is better if it dies. If I let it bite into one of your feet, I won’t see you anymore. No. I can’t let the hand maim you.
We must be together soon, my sweet dark cherry. I’ll turn twenty in October and I’m alone since Mum died last month. My hand accidentally ate her thumb and the stump rotted. She said nothing, called no doctor because she never spoke to strangers.
Three hours pass before I hear your voice. I can’t see you but I know you’re curvy and lovely in your bright-red dress. Are you walking close to John? Is he gripping your elbow in a protective way? Surely you were out on a date.
The hand senses you; its teeth clink. The wind has blown petals into the hole, soft petals like kisses on my skin.
John says, “Look. Someone’s lost a ring.”
He must have spotted Mum’s ring on my pinkie, glinting in the lamppost light.
“What’s that?” you cry.
The disgust in your voice shatters me. Now I’m sure you will never love me as I am. I slither beneath the pavement under the trash containers, stumble through the cellar and up the creaking stairs. I shower, don my bathrobe and sit down in my tufted-leather armchair. The glittering ring betrayed us so I try to pull it off my pinkie. The fingers have swollen since the mouth’s been feeding, and the ring does not budge. I cradle my mouth-hand in my lap but it snaps at my groin and I jerk my arm away.
The leather glove I slip on is chewed-up in the middle. I wonder what would happen to the rest of me if the toothy hand grew too hungry.
In the letter I’m writing, I ask John to lend me his broom to sweep the basement. I have no telephone because I hate speaking to people, although I’d love to speak to you.
As soon as I get the stuff I’ve ordered by mail, I’ll slip the letter under John’s door. After work, he’ll ring the bell, holding the besom broom.
It’ll take a while for the mouth in my palm to eat John’s body once it’s chopped up properly. When my greedy hand is full of flesh and blood, it will sleep. I’ll use the syringe of anesthetic on it, and then the hatchet and a surgeon’s sewing kit I’ll have set down by the armchair.
I’ll be free at last. Free to touch you with my loving hand.
* * * *
Gio Clairval is an Italian-born writer who lives in France and writes in English. A postgraduate from La Sorbonne and Dauphine, she surrendered to her weirdo’s nature when she gave up her career as an international management consultant to create a post-rock band. Now she’s gotten serious writing fiction and translating stories from French, Italian, Spanish and German. Her fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine and is forthcoming in the HarperCollins anthology The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. She occasionally rambles at gioclairval.blogpost.com.
A CONTRACT WITHOUT LOOPHOLES, by Eric Lis
There’s an old saying in the realm of demons: I’d tell you to go to Hell, but I work there and I don’t want to have to see you every day. Like so many of Hell’s popular sayings, this one is quite popular on the surface world as well, but whether this says more about Hell or Earth is strictly a question of point of view. In the Netherworld, the quote is most frequently found stuck to the back of vehicles, hanging from the padded walls of cubicles, occasionally tattooed on the faces or chests of demons who don’t deal directly with the public, and, not infrequently, scrawled on the walls of Hellish buildings, graffiti being a regular sight in the less draconian areas of the Inferno. The younger demons, most often those who have yet to live beyond their first century, find this saying to be hilariously funny and use it frequently. Indeed, among the more tasteless class of demons, it might even be said to be “riotously funny,” riots not taking very much incentive to get started where demons are involved. The older demons, who have seen and done more and have a bit more experience, don’t find this saying to be very funny at all, because, of course, they know it’s true.
The saying hung on the wall of Notlh’s office in a simple aluminum frame. He considered it to be nothing more than a plain statement of fact. Take Moch, for example, Notlh’s direct supervisor. Moch was a passable demon but a terrible boss, not cruel or capricious but uninspired and unmotivating, and whenever he walked through Notlh’s door, as he just had, it was always a portent of some unpleasant task. “Go to Hell” pretty much summed up how Notlh felt about Moch, but practically speaking, it wouldn’t actually solve anything.
Moch sat down in front of Notlh’s desk and leaned forward, trying to put on his best ‘I have a great assignment for you’ face and managing only to look as though a small rodent was in his mouth and trying to climb up his pharynx into his nose.
“How’s the Simonson case coming?” Moch asked. Whatever Moch’s other flaws, he didn’t waste time with pleasantries. Notlh appreciated the efficiency.
“Slow,” the younger demon replied. “His shoulder devil reports that he went out to get drunk again last night, which is a step in the right direction. We’ll get him.”
“Um hm.”
“I’m thinking of sending him a 5473-A dream in a few days, see how that goes.”
“Of course.”
Notlh stopped talking and stared at his boss. Moch obviously didn’t care about the human Notlh had been working to corrupt but didn’t want to be the first to raise whatever subject he’d come in to talk about. Two could play that game, though. Notlh stared at him, looking bored.
Finally, Moch cleared his throat and said, “You don’t enjoy working in Acquisitions, do you?”
Notlh considered his response carefully. There was no right answer to that question, certainly not the truth.
“It’s okay. You can be honest. You’ve done good work here these last few decades, but I know that after you graduated, you wanted to get into Contracts. Hard department to get into, not a lot of openings, so you ended up here. How would you like a shot at that kind of work?”
Notlh narrowed his eyes. It was untrue that there are no good deals in Hell, but it was true that they should be agreed to carefully.
“What kind of contract?”
“There’s a young human who’s trying to sell his soul. He wants the usual: money, women, power. Didn’t ask for eternal life. The trick is, he’s supposed to be some sort of great occultist. The first couple of Contract Negotiators we sent to visit him… well, he scared them, that’s the best way to put it. He’s got contract tricks the department’s never seen. He’s submitted three drafts of his own devising, and each time Legal just barely caught some clever loopholes he’d put in that might have let him get out of paying his end. Now, he says he’ll only sign a contract if it’s written up by a demon who’s never bought a soul before. Word got around to me about him and I thought of you. This is small-time, but it could be your chance to do some more exciting work. Get him to sign a contract without any loopholes. . . not ones that work in his favor, anyway. . . and we might be able to find a more permanent opening for you in Contracts.”
There’s an old demon saying that says that an important decision should be made within fifty heartbeats, which is no small feat given that demon hearts beat over one hundred and fifty times per minute. Notlh didn’t take quite that long to think it over.
“Can I see the old contracts?”
* * * *
Someone who has never visited Hell could be forgiven for assuming that it’s unpleasant there everywhere—all fire and screaming victims without a decent bar or bookshop to be found. Hell certainly does have its less pleasant areas, particularly those regions where damned souls go to while away their time, but in actual fact, Hell is really only uncomfortable in the places where it’s meant to be. Large areas of Hell have no raging flames whatsoever. There was only one fire burning in the Hot Cocoal, the coffee shop across the road from Notlh’s office, and it burned in a discreet fireplace off in one corner of the shop, near the bookcases. It smelled faintly of sandalwood, instead of sulfur and burned flesh. Where Notlh sat, it was pleasantly air-conditioned, and the faint breeze from above was gently rustling the papers he had spread out on the table in front of him. Jup, a friend from the office down the hall, sat with him, sipping iced pain.
There was only one word to describe what Notlh was reading.
“Ridiculous!”
“Beg your pardon?” Jup asked, taking a noisy slurp.
“These contracts. The ones that the human submitted to us. They’re ridiculous. Moch said he’s supposed to be some kind of occultist, but these. . .”
Notlh picked a few papers at random and shook them at Jup.
“Look at these: ‘The undersigned parties assert that events which might otherwise qualify as ‘act of god’ shall not invalidate this contract or Hell’s duty to fulfill its obligations.’
“Or here. ‘Wealth provided to the signing party by Hell shall not be obtained via theft, deception, deceit, laundering, illegal activities, donations, solicitations—’ it goes on for five lines—‘but shall be obtained only by legal, traceable, and taxable means, including but not limited to earnings from investments and stocks, small lotteries never in excess of five thousand dollars per month and twenty thousand dollars per year. . .’
“‘Hell asserts that no agents of Hell will by action or inaction allow any physical or psychological harm or cancer to come to or afflict the undersigned for a period of no less than seventy years unless that harm is brought about by the undersigned’s own deliberate and knowledgeable action.’
“‘Years shall be defined as a period of no less than 365 days as measured by standard Gregorian calendars. . .’ He operationalizes his definitions, for Satan’s sake!”
The demon glared at the papers, as though by doing so he could change their text. A few of the letters did become nervous and wiggle around, but not to any significant degree. Notlh sighed.
“Do you remember the classes we took on legal documentation? This human covered every aspect of Contracting that I know, and a bunch I’ve never heard of. I’m no expert, but I’m willing to guess that not even our best legal teams would be able to use this against him.”
“I guess that’s why we didn’t use his?” Jup ventured. Notlh dropped the papers back on the table and rested his forehead on one hand, feeling inexplicably tired.
“How long has it been since we graduated?” he asked weakly. Jup paused in his sipping to think about it.
“Must be near on three hundred years now, I guess. Remember, we were studying for our exams when they announced that the War of the Spanish Succession was over. Big disappointment, that.”
“Maybe he’s a lawyer,” Notlh muttered, as though Jup hadn’t spoken. “Human lawyers have advanced the field of legalese beyond anything we ever imagined when we started writing these things. That would explain how he knows so much. How am I supposed to write a contract that’ll trip up someone who’s too smart for the Legal department?”
“Maybe you should peek in on him. He’s probably got a Tempter or a shoulder devil. Maybe even someone in our department.”
Notlh’s eyes widened. He sat perfectly still for a moment, then frantically started to gather up the scattered papers. He sputtered out something that sounded a bit like “jupthatsbrilliantthankyouihavetogo” and then he was gone.
“Who’s going to pay for your coffee!?” called Jup after him. Notlh didn’t hear.
* * * *
He wasn’t a lawyer. He wasn’t in politics. In fact, he wasn’t out of college. He wasn’t studying law. He wasn’t even a member of a debating society. The man who had stymied the whole Legal department of Hell was in his second year of university and getting average grades towards a bachelor’s degree in English literature. Notlh didn’t know if he should be shocked, horrified, or disappointed.
Getting into and out of the surface world is no small feat for a demon. Some few are able to travel over regularly, but to most demons, making the trip is nigh on impossible. Not only are the paths upwards few and far between and the miles of tunnels forbidding and treacherous, the customs checkpoints are downright infernal. Notlh had opted instead to visit the scrying office in the Tempters’ building. The scrying pools were inefficient, but certainly easier and safer than a trip up to the surface. Other demons sat at nearby desks, peering into their small pools of fluid, many furiously scribbling notes or laughing softly at whatever they were observing. Thus far, Notlh had watched his human go about much of his day—watched him sit in class, eat, walk around, and generally do nothing of any interest whatsoever. The human didn’t seem to have any wards in place or any other protections against the scrying pool and didn’t seem to carry around any of the implements one might expect of an occultist, competent or otherwise. Each minute he used the pool cost an exorbitant amount, and thus far the time he had wasted had proved to be utterly useless. Tiring of watching the human himself, Notlh decided to take a quick look at his home before giving up.
At first glance, looking around the human’s apartment was about as useless and watching him in class had been. Reasonably well-kept with a few days’ of dirty dishes accumulated in the sink, there were no mystical signs daubed on the door in blood, no candelabras, no tell-tale chalk-marks showing where there might have recently been protective circles. There wasn’t so much as a cross or a mezuzah, let alone any magical paraphernalia. It was, in fact, almost too useless. By and large, the people who managed to sell their soul to a demon had at least some occult background or training. Contacting Hell wasn’t so easy to do, after all. In the apartment of an ordinary person, it would make perfect sense for there to be a conspicuous absence of, say, black altars consecrated to the Black Darkness from Beyond, but in the home of someone who had not only gotten in touch with a demon but actually stymied their Contracts department, such a normal residence was almost unthinkable. About to disconnect the scrying pool, Notlh put another coin into the slot to buy himself a few more minutes and took a closer look.
There it was: the library.
Calling it a library was somewhat overly generous. Two small bookcases were jammed full of texts and tomes of all manner of colors and sizes. Eagerly, Notlh looked for any authors he recognized, but here, too, he met with disappointment. There was no Crowley, no Heraclitus, no Dee or Nostradamus or Weishaupt. The closest thing he could spot to a book of demons was a copy of Goethe’s Faust, and even that was a newer printing, only a few years old, and an English translation at that. A number of names did appear several times, and Notlh grabbed a piece of scrap paper to write them down to look them up later. He had copied several names down—Gaiman, Pratchett, Adams, Heinlein—when a nagging suspicion struck him. Having already paid for a few more minutes yet, Notlh changed his view to the nearest public library and quickly looked for the same names. Yes, there they were. The young demon could scarcely believe his eyes. With his last precious few seconds of access he jumped his view back to the human’s bookcase and, yes, there it was, the most damning of all: Lovecraft. The scrying pool flashed once and then went black, save for floating red letters which read simply, “Please deposit coin to continue.”
