Richard Kadrey: Kill the dead

"One does. 'Hey, shithead.'"

"Lucifer always had a way with words. He's just like Bob Dylan, but without all the annoying talent."

"That's hilarious. He loves it when you say stuff like that. Every time you do, he turns up the temperature Downtown ten degrees."

"Then he should be able to cook biscuits on his tits by now."

"I'll ask him for you."

"No, you won't. When you download your brain or play video highlights or whatever it is you do for the old man, you'll only show him what you want him to see. You hold back crumbs 'cause when you know something he doesn't it gives you power. Just like you hold back things from me. And I hold back things from you and he holds back things from both of us. We're a little clusterfuck of liars."

Kasabian nods to the Styrofoam container I set on the bed when I ditched my weapons.

"Do I smell tamales?"

"Yeah, you want them? I lost my appetite."

Kasabian kneels down on six of his legs and hangs over the edge of the table. He uses four of his free legs to open the door of the minifridge I installed and uses two more legs to grab a bottle of Corona. He pops the top off the beer while pulling himself back onto the table and waggles a bunch of his other legs at me like a horny lobster.

"Slip me some crimson, Jimson."

I hand him the container.

"Don't forget your bucket."

"Have I ever?"

"I just don't want a first time."

He doesn't answer. He's already diving into Carlos's spicy tamales, working a plastic fork with two of his front legs. After each bite of food, a glob that looks like white-orange putty oozes from the bottom of his neck, through the hole I drilled in the magic carpet and into a blue kid-size plastic beach bucket. There's a pop-top trash can at the end of that table. Kasabian is good about dumping his scat when he's done, but he's short, so he needs me to step on the pedal to open the top. It's nice to be needed.

I'm not in the mood for Cirque de Puke right now, so I find a pad and pencil and try to remember what Eleanor's monster belt buckle looked like. Alice was the artist in my family. Even my handwriting made my teachers weep. When I'm done, I have a sketch that's pretty good if I was a half-blind mental patient in the last stages of tertiary syphilis. I hold it up so Kasabian can see it.

"You recognize this?"

"I'm on my lunch hour, man."

"Just look at the goddamn paper."

He doesn't move his head from the food, just swivels his eyes and squints at the image.

"Nope. Never seen it before. What is it, some monster you're supposed to kill or have you started dating again?"

"It's something I saw today. Like a belt buckle or an icon or something. I didn't think much about it at the time, but it's been bugging me."

"I don't recognize it."

Plop goes the tamale putty.

"Can you check it out in the Codex?"

Now he turns to look at me. He hates it when I ask him to look things up. I'm not even supposed to know about the Daimonion Codex.

"I don't think so. Someone's using it. Occupado, you know?"

"Bullshit. I saw this kind of thing when I was Downtown. It might be a book, but you don't read it like one. It's conceptual, mental. Like a mystical database."

"If you know so much about it, why don't you look it up yourself?"

The Daimonion Codex is Lucifer's private notebook, reference book, strategy, spell and wisdom book, and anything-else-you-can-think-of book.

"The Codex is for official Hellion business and I only use it when the big man asks me because he's too busy to find something himself."

Satan's Big Little Book of Badass. A kind of Bizarro World Boy Scout manual. High-grade Gnostic porn. The Codex is the second most important document in the universe, right after the Scroll of Creation in you-know-who's personal library.

"Bullshit. Every time I leave the room, you're in there trying to find some angle that'll get your body back."

"No, I'm not."

"You always were a terrible liar, Kas. A career crook should be able to bull better than that."

"Leave me alone. When I get a spare minute, I'll look for your monster. Now let me eat these while they're warm."

I sit back on the bed and sip the glass of Jack. On the monitor, Peter Fonda is shooting at carloads of backwoods demon fanciers from the roof of a speeding camper.

"You been watching this all day?"

Kasabian talks between mouthfuls of food.

"No. Before that it was Shout at the Devil, only there wasn't any devil in it."

"No. That's a war movie."

"Why doesn't it say that on the box? 'Warning: Lee Marvin might look pissed off, but he's not the devil. There's not one fucking devil in this thing.'"

"Watch what you want, but promise me that I'm never going to ever come in here and find you spanking yourself to The Devil in Miss Jones."

"You're a scream, Milton Berle. Now I'm not going to tell you the good news."

"What good news?"

Kasabian takes a last bite of tamale and lets it fall into the bucket. Then he takes it and the Styrofoam container to the end of the table and waits. I haul my ass up off the bed and step on the trash-can pedal. When it opens, he tosses in the Styrofoam and upends the bucket into the can.

"What good news?"

Kasabian goes back to where he'd been working, leans over the table, and sets the bucket underneath, next to the minifridge. Then he finally looks at me.

"You have an actual job. Starting tonight. Something a lot better than stepping on bugs for the Wells."

"I've already got a job tonight. Straight consulting for the Vigil. No killing."

"When are you supposed to do it?"

"Around three? Why?"

"Good. You'll probably be done by then."

"Done doing what?"

He smiles at me exactly the way you don't want a dead man to smile at you.

"The big man is in town. He wants to see you tonight at the Chateau Marmont."

Damn. I finish my drink.

"What's Lucifer doing in L.A.?"

"What do I know? I'm just the answering machine."

"And snitch."

"That, too. He knows every time you jerk off. Unfortunately, so do I. You really need to get a girlfriend."

"What time am I supposed to be there?"

"Eleven. And be on time. He hates late. It's a real thing with him."

"Christ. I don't even have a jacket anymore. I need to get cleaned up."

"Don't freak out, man. You've got hours. This is a good thing. We need the money. Doing the deed for the Vigil tonight and picking up some new work from Mr. D might just let us keep the lights on for another month."

I go into the bathroom, close and lock the door. I've never been a shy boy until recently.

I peel the Evil Dead shirt off over my black shoulder. The pink flesh under the peeling black skin looks like the worst sunburn since Hiroshima. I kick off my boots and jeans, and check myself in the mirror.

A pretty sight, I am not. I turn the light on over the sink and lean close to the mirror, turn my head from side to side. The thousand tiny cuts from the flying glass at the theater are mostly gone. I tilt my head forward and back. Run my hands over my face and neck, looking at the shadows of the lines and creases from my neck to my forehead, feeling familiar contours.

Maybe not so familiar.

I felt the changes before, but over the last month they're undeniable.

I'm pretty sure my scars are healing.

The one thing I brought back from Hell that I wanted. The one thing I counted on. I spent eleven years and shed a thousand pounds of blood, flesh, and bone to grow my armor, and after six months of living in the light, I'm losing it.

I hate this place.

Hell is simple. There are no friends, just an ever-shifting series of allies and enemies. There's no pity, loyalty, or rest. Hell is twenty-four-hour party people, and the buddy you shared a foxhole with yesterday is a head on the end of a stick today, letting everyone in shouting distance know, "Abandon all hope ye who piss me off."