Giving the Devil His To-Do's

By Jacqueline Morse Kessler

Gayle Morrison opened one eye and glared at her clock radio. Four-thirty in the morning. For God's sake, she had just crawled into bed forty-five minutes ago...

Again, a mewling cry.

With a sigh that was half resigned and half hateful, Gayle fumbled for the monitor and shut it off. For a moment, she allowed herself to think that the baby had gone back to sleep. No such luck. Even with Brian's door closed,
she could hear his pitiful wail. Blinking, she forced herself to sit up. The cry, a third time--insistent, demanding.

"All right," she muttered, "all right." She had to soothe Brian before he woke up his brother. God knew if she had both boys awake this early, she would lose her mind. Shooting a baleful look at her snoring husband, Gayle
left the warmth and comfort of the bed. It figured that on her night for the monitor, the baby didn't want to sleep. When Gary was on overnight duty, Brian slept...well, like a baby.

Damn it, she thought as she stumbled to the bedroom door, it's just not fair.

She stumbled to the baby's room and opened the door. Peering in, she saw that Brian was sleeping deeply, his pacifier still working its magic, his blanket hopelessly tangled around his legs. In the soft glow of the
nightlight, Brian looked positively angelic. Gayle smiled as she watched him sleep. Something about seeing such peace on a young one's face automatically touched her, like a hopelessly-in-love switch getting flipped on.

Then the wail sounded again--but from outside the room. This time, it clearly was Corey's cry.

Frowning, Gayle glanced at the baby to make sure he was still sleeping, then she stepped outside the room and closed the door. The cry was pitiful, heart-wrenching...and it made Gayle think monstrous thoughts. She loved her
children more than life itself, but would it kill them to sleep through the God-damned night for a change? Corey, although three, still was up more often than not--he dropped his Cookie Monster doll, he had a nightmare about
doggies, he was wet, he wanted to play. It was enough to drive Gayle insane. Going on four years without a good night's sleep will do that to a person.

She stalked over to Corey's room and opened the door, a reprimand on her lips. But seeing her toddler sleeping just as peacefully as his baby brother left her speechless. She stood in the doorway, blinking, waiting for Corey
to turn and sit up. But no, he was off in dreamland, his beloved Cookie Monster held firmly in his grasp.

Must've had a nightmare, she thought, closing the door. She should have waited a few more minutes before getting up. Whatever; at least now she could go back to bed. With shuffling steps, Gayle headed back to her
bedroom.

A cry, echoing down the hall.

Gayle's eyes narrowed when she realized the sound came from the family room. Those damned cats, she thought, her mind swirling around images of the two tabbies wrestling with each other, hissing and spitting. Gayle cursed as she stormed down the hallway. One of these days, she swore silently, I'm going to turn them into mittens. I'll fry them up and eat them for lunch. God DAMN it, this never happens when Gary's got the monitor!

She turned the corner to wheel into the cramped family room. There, squatting on the lumpy sofa, was a scaly creature so huge that it stooped to keep from hitting the ceiling. Bat-like wings unfurled as it fixed its
yellow gaze upon her. It grinned, displaying curving fangs. The wail that had lured her here now transformed into a rising screech of laughter.

Gayle crossed her arms and said, "If you wake the baby, I'll kill you."

The creature paused in its roar. It blinked its yellow eyes, then cocked its head. "But I'm a demon," it said. "You can't kill me."

Gayle's voice was dangerously soft. "I'll hurt you so bad, you'll wish you were dead." And she meant it. A practically sleepless night for her, topped off by a monster in her family room? This NEVER happened to Gary.

Obviously perplexed, the demon said, "But--"

"I'll rip your heart out of your chest with my bare hands and shove it down your throat. And that's just for starters." She shook a finger at it. "Don't mess with me! And don't you dare wake the baby! Got it?"

"Er," the demon stammered, "yeah. I got it."

"Good," she muttered, rubbing her eyes. "Now get out of here."

With a plaintive cry, the creature asked, "But aren't you frightened?"

Gayle put her hands on her hips. "Listen, I'm so damned tired that you're not even a blip on my fright radar. Now git!"

The demon wrung its hands, its black talons clicking. Finally it wailed, "But I have a quota..."

"Oh, for God's sake." Gayle let out an impatient sigh. "Look, forget it. The baby's due up in about a half hour anyway. I'm not getting any more sleep. Want some coffee?"

It stared at her for a moment before asking, "Got any decaf?"

* * *

"Let me get this straight," Gayle said around her second bakery doughnut. "Hell's been outsourced?"

Lorak nodded glumly. Sitting on a squat kitchen chair, the demon's massive shoulders slumped with sorrow. In the harsh florescent glow, his scaly hide shone a fiery crimson. (Gayle didn't know if Lorak was male, female, or
neither, but she couldn't think of a guest as an "it," so she decided that Lorak was a "he.") His pointed ears, blackened horns, and cleft chin smacked of Malefic Standard Features. "Yeah." His voice, trained over the centuries to rock the skies, rumbled impotently in the small room.

Gayle, wondering how the chair was able to hold the monster's weight, chewed her doughnut and waited for the demon to talk. It wasn't every day that a person had a real creature from the Netherworld in her kitchen. While she
would have preferred to be sleeping, this, at least, was interesting.

Lorak's hairy legs were splayed out on either side of the wooden table. He had a nervous habit of tapping one of his cloven hooves on the linoleum floor. But whenever he started doing so, like now, Gayle glared at him hard
enough to draw blood. Flinching from her heated gaze, Lorak forced his foot to frozen silence. He lifted the porcelain mug, his pinky talon extended, and he took a careful sip of decaffeinated coffee.

Gayle finished her doughnut, then added milk (none for the demon; he was lactose intolerant, and she hadn't stocked up on the blood of innocents) and sugar (which Lorak had added with a wild abandon) to her own cup of coffee. Finally, to fill the silence, she said, "That's tough."

"You have no idea," Lorak sighed. Then he prattled, "I mean, hauntings? Pit's gloom, I haven't had to do hauntings since the turn of the millennium."

"The millennium's not that old yet," Gayle countered.

"I meant the first millennium."

"Ah."

"Having to rack up scare points like some pus-infested newbie. Having to tally up our marks for the soul counters--" he said this with such distaste that Gayle thought he would spit fire--"with their manicured claws
that haven't rendered any flesh in ages."

"Bureaucrats," Gayle said, shrugging.

"Not just bureaucrats," the demon hissed. "Middle management. I'm talking contract lawyers and accountants."

Gayle winced. "Wouldn't want to be in your shoes. Hooves," she corrected.

Lorak drained his coffee before he spoke again. "We need souls. Fine. But do they listen to me when I tell them that humans are more willing than ever to make bargains, that everyone's looking for the easy answer? Oh, no. Of
course not."

"You're right, you know," Gayle said as she took a third doughnut. "Me, I'd do almost anything for a magic pill that would make me tall and thin."

Lorak nodded. "See? I know what I'm talking about. One doesn't get to be tens of thousands of years old without learning a thing or two about human nature. But now everything's different. The soul-counters don't care about
experience. They're just looking at their tallies of souls taken compared with the number of sins encouraged. They don't care about quality." The demon glanced at Gayle. "It takes a long time to plot a mortal's downfall,
you know. It doesn't happen overnight."

"I can see that," she said, wiping crumbs from her chin. "Temptation and all that."

Lorak grinned, a truly hideous thing of fangs and leathery lips. "Precisely! It's an art form." Then he deflated, and his wings drooped until they brushed the floor. "But that doesn't matter. Now it's all a numbers game. So I'm stuck doing hauntings while the deals go to the Boss's team."

"I so hear you," Gayle said. "My company outsourced its IT department. Now when I need computer help, I get transferred to someone who reads from a script, wastes tons of my time, and still doesn't solve my problem. But the
company's saving money, so that's all that matters to the higher ups."

"Higher ups," he muttered. "What do they know? They're too far removed from the demons in the field. I'm completely over-qualified for hauntings. I'm not a ghost, for Baal's sake! I'm a devil of the Third Level. But when I
mentioned that to the Boss's mouthpiece, does he listen? No. Does he insinuate I better be glad that I have a steady job and the wings on my back? Oh yeah. You bet." He growled deep in his throat as he reached for his
second doughnut--plain, as Gayle had claimed the chocolate-coated ones. "And he's so holier than thou!"

"Can demons do that?" Gayle asked, slurping coffee. "You know, be righteous?"

Lorak sneered as he took a huge bite. "Demons, no. But Hell's not run by demons anymore. Well," he conceded, swallowing, "technically, it is. Lucifer--praise the Fallen One, Unholy is His Name--is doing pretty well,
especially now with the soul-sharing plan he's got with the Boss. But between you and me--" here the demon lowered his voice to that of a mutated bumblebee--"ever since the Boss offered His services, Lucifer--praise the
Fallen One, Unholy is His Name--does whatever He suggests like...like a common lickspittle!"

"So who's really in charge, if it's not the Devil?"

The demon sighed. "The Almighty."

Gayle coughed, spluttering doughnut crumbs over the table. "How could God partner up with the Devil? Isn't that, you know, opposed to the whole good and evil thing?"

"Things are tough all over," Lorak said with a defeated shrug. "Between atheism and the media, we were all losing souls. So the two Powers That Be got together to figure out how to change with the times. Now Heaven and Hell
are a limited liability partnership. Lucifer--praise the Fallen One, Unholy is His Name--is the CEO. But the Almighty is the Chairdeity."

Gayle let out a soft whistle. "God damn."

"Exactly."

* * *

"So why weren't you scared?" Lorak was rubbing one of his horns as if he had an itch. "Wasn't I, you know, frightening?"

Gayle willed the coffeemaker to drip faster, but no dice. Sighing, desperate for more coffee, even if it was decaf, she said, "Yeah, you were good. But I'm sleep deprived."

"So?"

She said patiently, "It takes a lot to faze me. A hell of a lot."

"So you were too tired to be scared. Okay," he nodded, "I can see that. But what would, you know, get you next time?" He sat up straighter, nearly brushing his ear tips against the ceiling. "Maybe pain? No one likes pain."

She barked out a laugh. "Honey, you're talking to a woman who's been through labor. Twice. Second time, the anaesthesiologist didn't get the epidural in until ten minutes before Brian was born. You kidding me? Pain I can handle."

Pouting, Lorak clicked his talons against the tabletop. "I forgot about that. Eve knew what she was doing."

Gayle rolled her eyes. "Oh please. Give me dumbness and pain-free labor any day."

The demon snapped his fingers. "What about filth? If you woke up, say, covered in your own feces. Would that make you scream?" he asked hopefully.

She wrinkled her nose. "In disgust, maybe. Fear?" She shook her head.

Lorak slumped. "Then what? How'm I supposed to scare you?"

"Look," she said, "you're going about this the wrong way. I'm a mother of two young kids. You can't scare the crap out of me, because my business is all about catching crap in my hands. And spit up, and vomit, and pre-chewed
food. I've been pissed on and pooped on and thrown up on. I've been hit by a thrashing two year old and kicked by my unborn son so hard that he nearly broke a rib."

Seeing the coffee was ready, she took the new pot to the table, where she set it on a trivet. "I'm still twenty pounds overweight," she continued, "because my youngest would nurse for nearly two hours, then sleep for a half
hour, then nurse all over again, so I constantly needed to eat to stay conscious. I've had to listen to screaming babies in my car while stuck in standstill traffic for an hour." She refilled her coffee cup, then made it light and sweet. "And because I work and have my kids in day care, I have to live with constant guilt. I hate myself for liking work and having time away from the kids. So no matter what you've got, it's really not going to impress me."

With that, she took a long, slow sip of coffee.

The demon sat, stunned, the entire time Gayle vented. When she finished, he stared at her as if in awe. "So why don't you kill them?"

She glared at him. "Now look--"

He waved a dismissive hand. "No, no. I'm not trying to tempt you. I'm not allowed to bring you visions of loved ones' deaths, anyway. Cheating, the Boss says. Have to scare you on a personal level, not vicariously through
the demise of others." He snorted, shaking his head. "Hauntings, and with one hand tied behind my wings. Pit's gloom. No, what I meant was, if your children cause you such misery, then why not get rid of them?"

Gayle sighed, then met the demon's yellow eyes with her own red-rimmed ones. "You don't have kids, I assume."

He smiled demonically. "Can't. Don't have the equipment."

Gayle pursed her lips. "Really? So, like, Rosemary's Baby...?"

"Fiction."

"Okay," she said, mentally equating demons with Ken dolls. "So you don't have children. Try to understand that these kids, these tiny creatures who you feed and bathe and dress and hold and soothe and kiss, these little
people are like magic. The first time they smile for you, or laugh for you, you're in love forever."

"But," he said, frowning, "they cause you pain."

She nodded. "Yeah. And I hear it'll get worse when they're teenagers. Doesn't matter. I would throw myself in front of a bus for them. They're my everything."

Lorak's brow wrinkled as he pondered her words. "Yet you go to work and put them in the daylight care."

"Day care. And I didn't say I wasn't conflicted. Want a refill?"

"Sure, thanks." As she poured, he said, "So parents of young children are a waste of time."

"I would think so. Try me after I've gotten a decent night's sleep."

"Bless me," he muttered. "I hate my job."

Gayle made a decision. Lorak may have been a demon, but there was something endearing about him, and she took pity on him. "Don't fret. I have an idea."

* * *

"You really think this will work?"

They were walking back to the family room, speaking in hushed voices. It was a little after five in the morning, and Gayle kept an ear cocked for any hint of crying from Brian's room. "Positive."

Lorak walked with an exaggerated step, doing his best to keep his hooves from scratching the wooden floor. "But I don't see how an extinct creature could be an object of terror."

"Trust me." They entered the room, and Gayle saw the imprint of a circle on her sagging couch. "That better not be permanent."

"It'll disappear when I do," Lorak promised. "But this entity you spoke of can this be a nefarious thing?"

Gayle smiled tightly. "Believe me, there's nothing more horrifying to a parent with young kids than to be trapped in a tiny room, forced to watch an endless looping show of children's educational programming. You can do
purple, right?"

"Easily." Lorak ambled onto the couch and stepped into the circle. "I'll try it. You've made it clear that I have to broaden my horizons."

At that moment, the baby began to cry.

Gayle sighed. Her day was just beginning, and she was already beyond exhausted. At least Gary was on the ball--she could hear him opening the bedroom door and stumbling into Brian's room. "That's our cue. Time to go."

The demon raised his arms. "Thanks for the coffee and the conversation. And thanks for the haunting tips. Really appreciated."

"Yeah, well," Gayle mumbled, suddenly embarrassed. "Just don't come back without an invitation, you hear me? And good luck with the job."

Lorak grinned. As he faded, Gayle swore she heard him sing, "I love you, you
love me..."

By the time Gary came downstairs with the baby in his arms, she had a fresh pot of coffee ready. "You look terrible," he said, softening his words with a kiss. "Bad night?"

She smiled. "Hellish."