THEY SAY, "THE Devil is in the details," but I met my first demon at the movies. Some poor sucker had to go all the way down to Anwich to sell his soul to the Devil, but I met one of his employees in an empty theater in Athen, which I guess makes sense.
It was my twenty-fourth birthday, and I was hiding from it. I did this by going to one of those 5 dollars movie theaters that can only exist in a place where people are so obsessed with entertainment they even like the old stuff.
It was the kind of theater that only showed old films from before the world was in color, back when all sound was polluted with hisses and pops.
The cushioned seats were probably older than me. They smelled of cigarettes, stale popcorn, and what I can only assume was distilled sadness.
But I didn't care about any of those things. It was just a place to go to be alone. My hair was still wet from the drizzle that often accompanies the emergence of spring.
Unbidden, I heard my mother's voice, echoing from my childhood: April showers bring May flowers. I've always thought April
got the raw deal in life, something my birth month and I have in common.
I pulled the bottle of tequila I'd smuggled into the theater out from under my jacket and wrested it open. I say smuggled, but if I'm being honest, a place like that probably didn't care.
The elderly man who was working the graveyard shift that night seemed more upset that someone bothered to show up. It meant he had to turn on the projector instead of dozing behind the popcorn machine or whatever he normally did with
himself.
I took my first sip of tequila and learned an important lesson: Breathing right after drinking raw liquor burns. I coughed on the fumes stuck in mythroat for a few seconds before staring at the bottle with a sense of betrayal.
I'd never really drank before; it hadn't been interesting to me. But with my life firmly hanging out on the bedrock level of Rock Bottom, I was willing to try almost anything.
Every action movie I had ever watched had
promised me that the miraculous adult juice was the key to a getaway of bliss. A couple glasses of scotch or a few beers with the bros, and everything was supposed to be better. Instead, it turned out alcohol kind of
sucked. Whatever. So did everything else. I could have another drink.
I managed to take my second swig with a bit more dignity and settled more into my chair. I don't actually like old movies or old anything, but flashing lights and sound are good distractions from thinking, and I had a
lot I didn't want to think about.
Four years ago to the day, my mother and
my two sisters died in a car accident. They were on their way to visit me at college for my birthday when April showers swept them off the road and into a swollen creek. Since then, I'd flunked out of college, the love of my life—not that she knew it—got engaged to my best friend, and I basically ended up living on his couch.
Which was why on tonight of all nights, I wanted to be anywhere else. Every year since the accident, my friends tried a different birthday approach. The surprise party didn't go well. The fancy dinner last year was awkward too. So this year I was hiding from them to spare us all. Maybe
this tequila stuff would turn out to be a better companion.
"Hey," a voice whispered at my left elbow. With a strangled yell, I jumped in my seat. Cut me some slack, when the movie started, I was the only person in the theater, so no one should be there to talk to me. Plus,
talking while a movie is playing is a sin. I glanced over, and my jaw hit the horrific, sticky floor.
The creature sitting next to me looked about five feet tall. He had a neatly trimmed thick black beard accompanied by a comically long handlebar mustache. His bright teeth were so white that they seemed to glow as he flashed a smile in the dim theater. Two black horns curled out of his forehead and pointed inward. In his left hand, he held a pitchfork, and the end of a pointed red tail (which I assumed was his) was wrapped around the tines.
Oh yeah, and his skin was a bright red, like tomato soup. I probably should have mentioned that first.
"Are you Dylan Walker?" he asked.
I nodded stupidly, too shocked to formulate a more intelligent response. Technically, most of my friends called me Lan, but I wasn't prepared to correct this thing, whatever it was.
"Great," he said with another quick smile and a rush of breath as he inhaled. "My name is Arzal. I work in the Sales Department of Hell. I was hoping to take a few minutes of your time to speak with you about some of the exciting offers we currently have available. Would that be all right with you?"
I looked down at my bottle of tequila and gave it a betrayed look. This was not what I had signed up for. "Maybe I got one of those bottles with a worm or something. That's supposed to make you hallucinate or whatever, right?" I mused. The dem— No. I couldn't bring myself to even mentally call him a demon.
The red horned guy sighed flamboyantly and pinched his nose between two clawed fingers.
"There's so much wrong with what you just—no. The worm isn't even used in making tequila. It's a marketing ploy to mess with stupid gringos like you who don't know better. Either way, you're thinking of wormwood and absinthe. And that stuff will mess you up."
I looked up from my bottle and shrugged at him. "I guess you would know, wouldn't you?"
Arzal the Alleged Demon stared at me for a few seconds, his smile flickering once before freezing in place. My sarcastic jab seemed like something he was completely unprepared for.