Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

It’s true, I know it is.

The hope I hold secret deep inside my heart is that there’s one place on God’s green earth the Devil can’t see.

I was naked, my dick curled small and sticky to my thigh like it does after I’ve been looking through the bathroom window. A tight little trail of cum itched my skin. My ass was on dirt, and I could feel ants crawling up the crack. I opened my mouth to say, “Fine,” and a fly buzzed out from the inside. There was another one in the left side of my nose that seemed ready to stay a spell.

I didn’t really want to open my eyes. I knew where I was. My back was against hot metal. It felt sticky. I was leaning against Doug Bob’s bus and part of that new Bible verse about Uncle Reuben under the driver’s window had run and got Doug Bob’s heart blood all down my back. I could smell mesquite smoke, cooked meat, shit, blood, and the old oily metal of the bus.

But in all my senses, in the feel of the rusted metal, in the warmth of the ground, in the stickiness of the blood, in the sting of the ant bites, in the touch of the fly crawling around inside my nose, in the stink of Doug Bob’s rotten little yard, there was something missing. It was an absence, a space, like when you get a tooth busted out in a fight, and notice it for not being there.

I was surrounded by absence, cold in the summer heat. My heart felt real slow. I still didn’t want to open my eyes.

“You know,” said that windy, creaky voice, sounding even more hollow and thin than before, “if they would just repent of their murders, their sorceries, their fornication, and their thefts, this would be a lot harder.”

The voice was sticky, like the blood on my back, and cold, coming from the middle of whatever was missing around me. I opened my eyes and squinted into the afternoon sun.

Doug Bob’s face smiled at me. Leastwise it tried to. Up close I could tell a whole lot of it was burnt off, with griddle marks where his head had lain a while on the smoker. Blackened bone showed through across the cheeks. Doug Bob’s head was duct-taped to the neck of that glorious, golden body, greasy black hair falling down those perfect shoulders. The head kept trying to lop over as he moved, like it was stuck on all wompered. His face was puffy and burnt-up, weirder than Doug Bob mostly ever looked.

The smoker must of been working again.

The golden thing with Doug Bob’s head had Pootie spread out naked next to the smoker. I couldn’t tell if he was dead, but sure he wasn’t moving. Doug Bob’s legs hung over the side of the smoker, right where he’d always put the goat legs. Cissy’s crazy knife was in that golden right hand, hanging loose like Uncle Reuben holds his when he’s fixing to fight someone.

“I don’t understand…” I tried to talk, but burped up a little bit of vomit and another fly to finish my sentence. The inside of my nose stung with the smell, and the fly in there didn’t seem to like it much neither. “You stole Doug Bob’s head.”

“You see, my son, I have been set free from my confinement. My time is at hand.” Doug Bob’s face wrinkled into a smile, as some of his burnt lip scaled away. I wondered how much of Doug Bob was still down in the creek. “But even I can not walk the streets with my proud horns.”

His voice got sweeter, stronger, as he talked. I stared up at him, blinking in the sunlight.

“Rise up and join me. We have much work to do, preparations for my triumph. As the first to bow to my glory you shall rank high among my new disciples, and gain your innermost desire.”

Uncle Reuben taught me long ago how this sweet bullshit always ends. The old Doug Bob liked me. Maybe even loved me a little. He was always kind to me, which this golden Doug Bob ain’t never gonna be.

It must be nice to be loved a lot.

I staggered to my feet, farting ants, using the ridges in the sheet metal of the bus for support. It was hot as hell, and even the katydids had gone quiet. Except for the turkey vultures circling low over me, I felt like I was alone in a giant dirt coffin with a huge blue lid over my head. I felt expanded, swollen in the heat like a dead coyote by the side of the road.

The thing wearing Doug Bob’s head narrowed his eyes at me. There was a faint crinkling sound as the lids creased and broke.

“Get over here, now.” His voice had the menace of a Sunday morning twister headed for a church, the power of a wall of water in the arroyo where kids played.

I walked toward the Devil, feet stepping without my effort.

There’s a place I can go, inside, when Uncle Reuben’s pushing into me, or he’s using the metal end of the belt, or Momma’s screaming through the thin walls of our trailer the way he can make her do. It’s like ice cream without the cone, like cotton candy without the stick. It’s like how I imagine Rachel MacIntire’s nipples, sweet and total, like my eyes and heart are in my lips and the world has gone dark around me.

It’s the place where I love myself, deep inside my heart.

I went there and listened to the little shuffling of my pulse in my ears.

My feet walked on without me, but I couldn’t tell.

Cissy’s knife spoke to me. The Devil must of put it in my hand.

“We come again to Moriah,” it whispered in my heart. It had a voice like its metal blade, cold from the ground and old as time.

“What do you want?” I asked. I must of spoke out loud, because Doug Bob’s burned mouth was twisting in screaming rage as he stabbed his golden finger down toward Pootie, naked at my feet next to the smoker. All I could hear was my pulse, and the voice of the knife.

Deep inside my heart, the knife whispered again. “Do not lay a hand on the boy.”

The golden voice from Doug Bob’s face was distant thunder in my ears. I felt his irritation, rage, frustration building where I had felt that cold absence.

I tried again. “I don’t understand.”

Doug Bob’s head bounced up and down, the duct tape coming loose. I saw pink ropy strings working to bind the burned head to his golden neck. He cocked back a fist, fixing to strike me a hard blow.

I felt the knife straining across the years toward me. “You have a choice. The Enemy promises anything and everything for your help. I can give you nothing but the hope of an orderly world. You choose what happens now, and after.”

I reckoned the Devil would run the world about like Uncle Reuben might. Doug Bob was already dead, and Pootie was next, and there wasn’t nobody else like them in my life, no matter what the Devil promised. I figured there was enough hurt to go around already and I knew how to take it into me.

Another one of Uncle Reuben’s lessons.

“Where you want this killing done?” I asked.

The golden thunder in my ears paused for a moment, the tide of rage lapped back from the empty place where Doug Bob wasn’t. The fist dropped down.

“Right here, right now,” whispered the knife. “Or it will be too late. Seven is being opened.”

I stepped out of my inside place to find my eyes still open and Doug Bob’s blackened face inches from my nose. His teeth were burnt and cracked, and his breath reeked of flies and red meat. I smiled, opened my mouth to speak, but instead of words I swung Cissy’s knife right through the duct tape at the throat of Doug Bob’s head.

He looked surprised.

Doug Bob’s head flew off, bounced into the bushes. The golden body swayed, still on its two feet. I looked down at Pootie, the old knife cold in my hands.

Then I heard buzzing, like thunder made of wires.

I don’t know if you ever ate a fly, accidental or not. They go down fighting, kind of tickle the throat, you get a funny feeling for a second, and then it’s all gone. Not very filling, neither.