Alissa Nutting - Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

“You were right,” he nodded, “what you said the other night.”

“I was drunk,” I offered. His eyebrows rose. “Though not technically.”

“No, some things could be updated.” We began to gaze at one another. His eyes turned a fiery red that didn’t exactly scare me but was hypnotizing in an assertive way.

I thought for a moment. “You could build a roller coaster?” I described my favorite ride ever, the Demon Drop, which plummeted straight down and made my stomach feel insane every time I rode it.

He thought for a while and agreed it would be a good thing to try. “Thor could operate it,” he suggested.

We had a raffle contest to decide what the ride would be called. The winner was Betty, a former Wisconsin housewife, who chose the name of SKULLKRUSH.

As the ride was being built, the nurses wanted to know if they could set up a triage hospital next to SKULLKRUSH. “No one will get hurt,” I said. I put a supportive arm around Thor. The devil and I had outfitted him with a SKULLKRUSH uniform and nametag in preparation, just to get him into the role. As I looked to Thor for reassurance, he grabbed the devil’s lit cigar and crammed it up his nose.

“Just in case,” they insisted.

The hospital turned out to be very beneficial — Thor has his good days and his bad days. They’re actually the same day. He likes to ignite and smoke his own tail, and have seizures. Sometimes Thor will appear to be safely stopping the ride, but then at the last moment he’ll defecate into his paw instead and throw it at the riders just before they’re pulverized. Of course no one can die, but there is no shortage of mangling, reconstruction, and extreme transformation. The whole concept that energy can never be destroyed really works out in Hell. Physics, etc. Examples of this abound.

There is Varmint Man, who lost a rib in a poker game. The hole it left was annoying, because Hell varmints waste no time packing up inside of cavities. I accepted an invitation from Varmint Man to try his yoga class, which wasn’t the best because of the twelve baby raccoons romping around in his chest hole. They were cute, but were demon raccoons, so they had green green buckteeth and puss flowing freely from their eyes.

After a wonderful date riding SKULLKRUSH with the devil (it was nice to feel the crazy stomach feeling while holding his giant claw), I spoke to him about Varmint Man and he was more than happy to help. He suggested we take Varmint Man dumpster diving to find something to seal up the chest hole. The dumpsters in Hell have unbelievable finds. I always thought I was hot stuff on earth, wading through the old éclair piles behind Dough Knots. I had no idea. We ended up outfitting Varmint Man with an elaborate series of copper piping: resistant to rodent teeth. I also found an intestine that had been stuffed with rat poison and fashioned into a noose. I decided to hang the whole thing from my chandelier. “You’re becoming more comfortable with entrails,” the devil commented. I liked the way he took notice of my growth.

SKULLKRUSH turned out to be a very lucrative venture. The best part was how the devil and I had succeeded in it together. I’d always wanted to be someone’s right-hand go-to girl, and there I was.

We were keeping the bags of profit from SKULLCRUSH in my house, but soon it started rotting. “Our money is beginning to smell,” I told him. He stared at me for a while, weighing whether or not to say what was on his mind. Finally he sighed and took my hand and said to get all the money together. His hands in mine give me that great feeling of dating someone my father would completely not approve of.

We walked the bags down a long tunnel that was like an everlasting gobstopper of horrible smells: first dead cats then dead dogs then dead cows then dead whales until I couldn’t even take it. “This stinks,” I managed. The walls were boiling with blood.

“We’re almost there.” He picked me up and put me inside a pouch in his stomach that I didn’t even know he had. Actually I’m positive he just tore his flesh open and let me hang out inside so I wouldn’t have to walk anymore.

The inside of the pouch was wet and oozy and took me back to when I was little. Each time my family had to go on a long car ride, my grandma first sat me down on the toilet and poured warm water between my legs to make me pee. It’s something I was trained to do from the earliest age onward, and suddenly I found myself sitting in a warm blood-organ puddle. “Whatever you do,” I thought, “don’t pee inside the devil.” I think he felt it before I did, but suddenly we both got really quiet and it was the most awkward moment of my life. Or it would’ve been, if I weren’t already dead.

I defensively took my boobs into my hands before confessing, just in case he was sore about the whole thing. “Sorry.” After it was still quiet for a moment I added, “I didn’t mean to.” For a second I thought I was going to faint from embarrassment but then he started laughing and so did I; I started laughing so hard that I cried. My tears were acidy and smelled like motor oil. I think my new boob ducts are connected to my tear ducts.

Finally we arrived at the end of the tunnel, where the dead smell seemed to disappear. I wriggled out of his pouch then he reached down and did a squeegee-like wringing motion; all sorts of things splashed onto the ground and then the flap was instantly gone. It’s cute how he doesn’t make a big deal out of his ability to do such amazing things. Although he tells me I do amazing things that I don’t think are amazing at all, like have hair on my head.

“Do you feel the air?” I asked, but he was already smiling. This was his coup de grâce.

We’d arrived at a cave where cold air was literally blasting. Feeling cold after being hot for so long hurt somewhat; it made me realize that it probably was painful to breathe for the first time when I was born. I kept breathing the cold air and soon it started to feel pleasant, like stretching a muscle that’s sore.

He flipped on a light switch. In front of us there were hundreds and thousands of rows of frozen liver and hair. After stacking the bags of money in the back, he nervously put one of his arm hooves against the other and locked their grooves together. “I’ve never shown anyone this place before.” He paused. “You can imagine how popular it would be.”

“I won’t tell anyone. I promise.” I stretched out on a liver strip near the lip of the cave so only the top half of my body was in the freezer. I wanted to bask in the difference.

“I know you won’t tell,” he said. “If I think about things in the future hard enough, I can see what will happen, and you don’t tell anyone.”

This pleased me. To be honest, I’ve never been able to keep secret.

We stayed there breathing cold air for quite awhile. It reminded me of the first time I smoked a cigarette. How strange it was to just breathe and feel better.

“I should be getting back,” he said finally. “If I’m gone for too long, it’s not good.”

I nodded. Usually in Hell it’s so hot that my skin is bright pink. But when I looked down I saw a very pale chest, and for the first time ever, the purple-green veins running through my acid boobs.

“You can stay if you want,” he offered. “I can come get you later.”

“No,” I said, “I’m ready.” It wasn’t true. I figured he’d know that I was lying to be polite. Hopefully, this would let him know how much I liked him.

He grew wings and giant claws to hold me so the journey back would be faster.

“I love this,” I said. “We should fly more often.” He seemed unsure. I pressed the issue until he admitted that he doesn’t like to grow wings and talons. He thinks they make his head look disproportionate. I had been pinching my nose because of the smell, but I let it go before speaking. I didn’t want to sound like some annoying mother-in-law from New Jersey.