Jeremy Bushnell - The Weirdness

The goat had worked its way up Wee Billy’s sleeve until it finally began to nibble at the rim of his ear. His sniveling turned into open shrieking. He had needed his mother to rescue him from Evil and she wasn’t there. No one was there.

She had never been far, of course, nor had his father, and they rescued him a second later and took him home, stopping at an ice cream stand for soft serve vanilla with a sweet orange shell, but something in Billy’s world had cracked a bit. He learned that day that he was not fully under anyone’s protection, that there were bad things out there, things that don’t understand mercy, and ultimately, he would have to face those things by himself, whether equipped for the task or not. And on this cold morning, his mission failed, fucked in more ways than he can count, Billy has, once again, been reminded of precisely how ill-equipped he is, most of the time.

He thinks of Ollard’s rotting teeth, of the stink that bloomed from his mouth.

He sits there, in the mud, trying futilely to come up with a next move. The planet is slated to die and he’s in Ohio, of all places. He’s cold. He’s alone. Apple Cheeks seems to be closed for the season, or something; he doesn’t see anybody else around: no farmers, no members of the public, nothing but goats and sheep. If he could get to his dad’s place — easily forty-five minutes away even if he had a car — then maybe he could … borrow some cash? That would be a good start. But then what?

Billy feels a hot flush of frustration surge into his face, threatening to squirt out into big stupid tears. Ollard didn’t make a mistake . He was right not to care where he sent Billy off to because in the end it doesn’t matter. Ollard didn’t need to kill him, all he needed to do was flick him away and he would no longer count.

He wants his mother.

He lies back down.

He’s been lying there for a few minutes watching clouds scud across the sky when he hears approaching footsteps crunching through the rutted dirt. Billy tries to prepare an explanation for the proprietor of Apple Cheeks, some plausible narrative explaining how and why he came to be lying in this field. He’s a fiction writer, ostensibly; he should be able to come up with something.

But there’s no need. It’s not the proprietor. It’s Lucifer. He looks down at Billy with some admixture of pity and consternation, with the latter seeming more genuine than the former.

“What are you doing?” Lucifer says.

“Just—” Billy says, trying to figure it out, exactly. “Just lying here? Feeling sorry for myself?”

“Well, stop it,” Lucifer says. “We have things to do.”

Billy considers this. He considers the alternative. After a moment of this, he gets up, knocks the biggest clumps of dirt off of his coat with the heel of his hand.

“You’re a real asshole, you know that?” Billy says.

“Perhaps.”

“I promised myself I would kick you in the nuts the next time I saw you.”

“But why?”

“Why?” Billy says. “I’ll tell you why. You said your plan was unfuckable by design. But let me tell you: it was fuckable. Totally fuckable.” That sounds wrong.

“Slow down, Billy,” Lucifer says. “Tell me what happened.”

“I’ll tell you what happened. I got tortured .”

“But — the ward,” Lucifer says, in a manner that seems to convey exactly no surprise.

“Yeah, the ward didn’t work worth a crap,” Billy says. “You told me it would protect me, but Ollard was just able to, just, dispel it or rip it away or something.”

“Ah,” Lucifer says. “But, you see, that’s good.”

Billy stops knocking mud and shit off of himself. Instead, he gives over all his energies to try to make any sense at all of that utterance. “That’s good ? How on earth is that good ?”

“Well,” Lucifer says blandly, “it was what I expected would happen.”

“It was—? Let me get this straight. You expected that Ollard would be able to dispel the ward that you put on me to protect me?”

“Correct,” says Lucifer.

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“Correct.”

Billy lets this sink in.

“You really are an asshole,” he says.

“Let me ask you something,” Lucifer says, ignoring the invective. “Did Ollard find the second ward? The older ward?”

“Yes?” Billy says, not at all certain that he should be answering this question honestly.

“And he dispelled that one, too?”

“Maybe?”

“I was hoping that would happen,” Lucifer says. He swells his chest proudly. “I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist, once he got into your head; he’s gotten careless in his confidence. I knew he’d go through there and just scrape you clean. So, you see, Billy, you see the genius in this? You see the real purpose of the ward I put on you? Not to protect you but to draw Ollard’s attention, to get you free, at last, of that accursed older ward. A thing I could not do myself. And now we’re ready. Now we can move into Phase Two.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Billy says. “I don’t get it. This older ward? What the hell was it even for ?”

Lucifer grins. “The older ward.” He emits a chuckle. “What was it for . Well, a couple of things, actually, but in part the older ward was designed to protect you from me .”

Something drops in Billy’s stomach. He takes a step back.

“But,” he says. “But, why would I need that? You and I — we’re, we’re, like, friends.”

“Associates,” Lucifer suggests.

“Pals,” Billy insists.

“Coconspirators,” Lucifer tries.

“Yeah, sure, coconspirators. But the point — the point is, you don’t want to hurt me. It makes no sense.”

“It makes some sense.”

“What sense? We’re on the same goddamn side!”

“Be honest, Billy,” Lucifer says, quietly. “You’re really on your own side.”

“That’s not true. I want to — I want to save the world and shit, same as you.”

Lucifer weighs this. “Very well. Let’s say that we’re on the same side. But in order for our side to be victorious, I need you to be — let’s say, more efficient as an ally. You require certain — modifications.”

Modifications? Billy remembers Lucifer’s fingers in his brain on Thursday morning, making tweaks, adjusting things. He remembers falling, distressed, into a huddle. He’s not really up for more of that right now, even if Lucifer can rejigger his identity to make him resemble some kind of Special Forces dude, someone more mentally capable of completing an objective. “I don’t think I like the sound of that,” Billy says.

“No, no,” Lucifer says, “I didn’t expect that you would. And if you still had the protections of the older ward, I would require your consent. But now the older ward is gone. And here we are.”

Billy can’t make sense of it. Why did he even have an older ward in the first place? Who put it on him? Who would find him worthy of protecting? He thinks again of his mother: her face, filling his field of vision.

“So,” Lucifer says. He looks around, faint distaste curling his lips. “I’d like to take this elsewhere. Shall we adjourn?”

“No,” Billy says, “I think, for now, we should stay right here.” He eyes the tree line beyond the fence, tries to figure out how far he could get if he loped into it at top speed.

“Billy,” Lucifer says. “I hate to put it this way, but you don’t have a choice.”

Billy opens his mouth to protest.

Lucifer raises his hand and snaps, once, only instead of a snapping sound his fingers make the pungent ashy burst-noise of an old-timey flashbulb, complete with the crinkle of tiny glass collapsing. And, just as if the Devil has popped a flashbulb in his face, everything goes white.