Hell Inc.

to Cookie

It's
never easy to deal with supernatural creatures, especially when
they've got the IQ of a doormat. And the clerk behind the counter
wasn't your typical teenage drop out. Nope. This one was a special
one. He glared at me with his one eye (which just happened to be
lazy and seemed to be staring at the ridiculously bright fluorescent
lights above my head instead of at my drowsy face) while I questioned
him as to the whereabouts of a very specific item. I was looking for
black candles. Spooky, huh? But that's what the newspaper ad had
specified and so, that's what I was going to get.

“Um,”
the clerk, who I suspected was probably a Cyclops, mumbled under his
garlic scented breath. It was so bad that I actually had to take a
step away from him, press my spine against a display of cheap romance
novels, and choke back a sob. His breath was so terrible, in fact,
that I thought I saw a puff of green float out past his thin lips and
join the CFC gasses in destroying the ozone layer. “I think
we've got some Glade Flameless Candles in the clearance aisle.
They're eggplant purple, but they look black.” I tried not to
scowl. The Cyclops didn't know what I needed them for. I thanked
him politely and wandered off. Served me right for trying to go to
Target for dark arts supplies.

I
found the aisle my halitosis challenged friend had been talking about
and stared at the little white boxes with their red clearance
stickers.
Yeah
,
I thought sourly, feeling
defeated before I'd even begun.
That's what the Devil
wants, candles without flames. In eggplant. Fantastic.
I scooped several of the boxes into my basket anyway and tried to
ignore the pixies that were swooping and giggling and pulling my
mussy hair. If I swatted at them, if I paid them the tiniest bit of
attention, then they would do worse. Had done worse. Focus,
attention,
belief
, it
was what made them real. When a girl and her mother sauntered into
the aisle, tossing their identical peroxide manes and glaring at my
ripped jeans and my faded
Shrek
T-shirt, they walked right through them.

The
pixies giggled and darted towards their shopping basket, shedding
sticky glitter dust all over the white linoleum as they heaved a
packet of pens out, twiggy arms straining with the effort, and
dropped them on the floor. The mother picked them up absently,
hardly noticing what she was doing. I sighed. How nice it would be
to live so ignorantly. To not know that anything other than humans
walked this world. I squinted my gaze at the shelf and tried not to
kick something. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair.

But
this was why I was doing this. Following the directions in this
stupid ad. I picked at my pants pocket until I found the crumbled square of newsprint. As I
reread it, I couldn't help but have terrible flashbacks to Brendan
Fraser and
Bedazzled.
But he'd been stupid. He hadn't been clear with his wishes. I would
be. I'd rattle 'em off like the best of bureaucrats. The key was to
be
specific.
Very,
very specific. I mouthed the words aloud as I walked, swinging my
basket and trying to stay positive.

“WANTED:
Souls. Single adults only. We are a professional organization
looking for talented persons of marriageable age to enter into a
trade agreement. Willing to offer three wishes in exchange for a
signed contract. Please contact us at our office by arranging three
black candles into a semi-circle in front of a mirror. Anoint with
blood. Recite address. Hell Incorporated, 666 Gladiola Lane. This
solicitation posted by the Devil. No sales inquiries. Offer ends
08/16.”

Okay,
so it sounded shady and well, just plain bizarre, but I was getting
desperate. Two years out of high school had left me with a crappy
apartment and a crappier job. I had no friends (except for Erin, but
I didn't even really like her), my family was too busy to ever come
and see me (and I never went to see them either, I know, I know), and
I had absolutely no romantic prospects of which to speak. Well,
there was this guy that worked at our local museum, William T.
Smidden's Palace of History, that was pretty smoking hot, but I knew
I didn't stand a chance. He always had this group of people swarming
around like he was the queen bee, buzzing and nodding and kissing his
ass. He was young with sandy hair and a strong jaw and pale eyes
that shimmered like the aquamarine jewel on my pinky finger. I
raised my hand to my lips and gave the ring a light kiss, pretending
for just a moment that it was that man's mouth, confident and strong.

I
was so entranced in my thoughts that I forgot about the pixie dust
and ended up slipping, rather comically, my legs flying out from
under me, worn rubber soles of my shoes parallel with the ceiling for
just a moment before I ended up slamming into the floor so hard that
I was seeing stars. I knew it was bad because the stars weren't just
spots of light; they were yellow and smiling and singing the theme
song to
My Little Pony.

The
Cyclops I had spoken with earlier raced towards me, red vest
flapping, as he pounded over to me and knelt quickly, waving a hand
in front of my face and asking a bunch of stupid questions that I
wouldn't have known the answer to even if I hadn't just given myself
a concussion.

I
waved him away but ended up with the store manager and several rubber
necking customers surrounding me, jabbering away, and making my head
spin while the pixies laughed and sprinkled more of their sparkling
crap over my face and arms. I'd be visible from space for the next
week. I groaned and sat up while the manager sweated and mumbled
things about lawsuits. I rubbed my head and pointed at my basket,
just wanting to get the heck out of there.

“I
won't sue you,” I said, pointing at the candles and trying not
to drool. “But can I have these for free?” The manager
licked his lips and nodded.
This is too easy,
my brain tried to convince me.
Ask for more.
“And do you happen to have any chicken blood?”

A
half an hour later, I was strolling out the automatic doors of the
Super Target and mouthing the lyrics to some pop song that I only
actually knew half the words to. They hadn't had any chicken blood,
but they had given me several containers of chicken hearts. There
seemed to be quite a bit of bloody residue sloshing about in the
bottom of the Styrofoam containers, so I decided that would count.
It would have to. It was getting late, and today was the sixteenth,
the last day for me to try the spell.

I
trudged up the rickety, cement steps to my apartment and tried to
ignore the permanent smell of moth balls and dog urine that seemed to
permeate the dreary hallway. My neighbor, Gene, a lady of
questionable age with a sneer as sharp as cheddar and a smell to
match, kicked open her door and proceeded to glare at me as I fumbled
around with my keys. She always did that. Opened her door and
stared at me. I think on some deep level that she recognized that
there was something different about me. Sometimes people did.
Though they never seemed to be able to get what that was. If only I
felt confident enough in my own sanity to share the simple fact that
I could see things that they didn't. I sighed and managed to get
into the eight hundred square foot shit hole before Gene began
shouting. She did that, too, sometimes. But that was only because
she was crazy. She shouted at everyone: the super, the PG&E guy,
the mail lady. That act wasn't just reserved for me.

I
slammed the door behind me, locked it, handle, dead bolt, chain,
always in that order, and headed immediately for my bedroom. If I
was going to meet the Devil, I was going to do it in style.

I
found a slinky, skin tight dress as red as a hooker's lipstick, and
since I'd bought it used at Goodwill, probably something that had
actually been worn by a hooker, and paired that with some black pumps
and a quick slash of eyeliner. I grinned at myself in the wavy
mirror that hung crookedly on the back of my bedroom door. I was as
hot as a book cover bimbo. Perfect. I fluffed my black bob,
punctuated by neon streaks of pumpkin-bright orange, courtesy of
Punky Colour, and sashayed into the bathroom. I was in a better mood
than the day I'd bought my Rabbit Habit, though not by much.

The
candles, once I'd taken them out of eight, stiff, plastic layers of
protection and about a dozen twist ties, looked absolutely ridiculous
arranged around the edge of the porcelain sink in my bathroom. They
flickered weakly, the cheap lights inside dimming and brightening in
a pathetic imitation of a true candle. I frowned at them as I opened
the plastic top to the chicken hearts. They smelled gamey and a
little bit like iron, leaving a heavy, metallic burn in the back of
my throat.

“God,”
I choked as I dipped two fingers into the cold, watery bird blood.
My spine bucked involuntarily as I rubbed the runny ooze down the
side of one candle, and then the next, and the next. Let's just say
it didn't get any easier or any less disgusting.

After
I was finished, I tossed the unused hearts into the bathroom garbage
can and scraped anything resembling so much as a fingerprint off of
my skin in an attempt at cleansing myself. Once I had decided that
liquid soap, a squirt of shampoo, and half a travel sized bottle of
Purell would just about do it, I was ready to begin.

I
flicked the lights off and grabbed the newspaper scrap off its
temporary home on the back of the toilet. I squinted at the words
which were incredibly difficult to read in the flickering light and
took a deep breath.

“Hell
Incorporated,” I began, trying to pitch my voice low so that it
came out as eery and mysterious as possible. “666 Gladiola
Lane.” I set the newspaper down on the edge of the sink next
to one of the plastic eggplant monstrosities and waited. And waited.
And waited.

Nothing
happened.

“Goddamn
it,” I screeched at myself, fighting back tears and gripping
the sides of the mirror with a frenzied fervor. “Why do I do
this to myself?”

I
had a tendency to get really,
really
involved in things that
most people could tell weren't going to work out for the best. It
was one of my special talents. I punched the mirror once, in a
juvenile fight of rage, cracking the glass and cutting my hand open
along with it. Tiny droplets of red dripped into the sink and
swirled down the drain, turning the residual water a pinkish color
and staining the edges of the white porcelain.

“Ah,
hell,” I cursed, unaware of the swirling black vortex beneath
my feet. “I'm going to need stitches.”

And
then I was falling down a hole, screaming like a B-list actress in a
horror movie, until I found myself landing face first onto some
terribly itchy, navy carpeting. I pushed myself up quickly, tugging
down my dress in the back in an attempt to cover my ass, before
taking a look around.

My
exploration ended before it even got started because the very first
thing I saw was the demon.

And
he was pissed.