DEMON DAYS: Love, sex, death, and dark humor. This book has it all. Plus robots. Read online

  Something had been bothering Zachary today. All week, to be honest. Put him in a bad mood. He didn’t want to dance, to hang out, to do anything in the “fun” category. No, he wanted to be home in his crappy little apartment and brood.

  There was a sense of foreboding, of a bad moon rising. He wanted to crawl into bed and stay there ‘til the whole thing, whatever it was, blew by. He wanted whatever cups were out there with his name on them just to pass over him, thank you very much.

  Life, which a few short years ago used to be so full of promise and parties, now seemed purposeless, foolish, wasted. Guilt and shame flooded him for the way he’d lived the past few years of his life. He had squandered college by not trying to learn, but instead simply looking to impress his buddies and the ladies.

  Networking among his stepdad’s friends had managed to corral him his first and only job, in which he underachieved by doing the minimum required. Zachary Zemeritus was supposed to be the next big thing for the Zemeritus stock, the lineage of his stepfather. But Zachary was fired—fired!—from his stepdad’s best man’s company.

  Zach took about a year to “recover” from this setback. Now he found himself doing the only thing he knew how to do: He was a literary agent at Le Agençie (The Agency), a boutique organization catering to only the best authors in the finest of genres. No science fiction, no fantasy, and certainly no horror.

  In reality, Zach evaluated crap manuscripts all day long and sometimes well into the night. Usually on-screen, sometimes via BookRDR10. The worst, though, was the hologram. Writers could, and too often would (although firewalls and other measures were in place), beam themselves into Zach’s office. The writer would then read aloud and/or act out the manuscript.

  Shouldn’t they have realized then how awful their writing was, when they heard it spoken aloud?

  So Zach continued in his hunt for the mythical well-written novel. A new author to energize him, to get excited about! But that moment never came. And so Zachary slogged on through the bad grammar, disconnected metaphors, and leaden tone of uninspired prose, day after interminable day.

  Yet, he realized, if it weren’t for his being fired and subsequently discovering this career, he never would have met Mallory, senior literary agent and love of his life.

  From around his neck, Zach pulled out a chain— the going-away present created by his adopted parents, Thomas and Martha Zemeritus. The end of the chain had an odd ring11 on it, which Zach rolled absently in his fingers.

  His birthparents had died rushing to get to the hospital so Zach could be born. They didn’t make it, crashed in the ice and rain. The damaged rings (now reshaped into one), he was told, were the only things they could salvage from the car wreck.

  Zachary sighed as he put the ring back under his shirt. He spit on the sidewalk, nodded to the bouncer, and weaved his way through the nonstop party people at the Big Blue Marble.

  “Hey, look who’s here, Lord Zak-A-Ray, The Dispirited.” This was hollered in a drunken voice by Bryan Solmes, Zachary’s oldest friend. “Well, we’ll fix that! For the Dispirited: Spirits!” Bryan grabbed a beer off the table and handed it to his friend. “Better late than never,” he said. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.”

  Bryan let out a rumbling burp and wiped a bit of drool from the corner of his mouth. He slapped his hand against his jeans to dry it.

  “Where are the girls?” Zachary asked.

  “Perfect timing, as always. They’re in the Ladies’. Sit, man!”

  “Yeah, take a load off.” Timmy Jimmy, whose real name was Timothy James, pushed a chair toward Zachary with his foot. Zachary sat and took a swig of his beer.

  “So what’s going on, man?” Timmy Jimmy asked.

  “The usual,” Zachary said. “What’s happening here?”

  “Going mucho well, my friend. Got my hand halfway toward Helena’s honeypot already.”

  “Honeypot?”

  “What?” Timmy Jimmy blushed.

  “You’re blushing.”

  “No, I’m not. Hot in here.” He got up and went to the bar.

  Zachary forced himself not to laugh and took another couple of gulps from his bottle.

  “Hey, good-looking,” someone said behind him.

  Zachary swung around in his seat. Mallory stood before him, disheveled and smiling. Her hair was wild, and one of her sleeves had slipped almost off her shoulder.

  She never looked better.

  “Been dancing all night?” he asked.

  “I’d love to!” she said, grabbing his hand and dragging him to the still-packed dance floor.

  An old song by that guy everyone’s parents listened to, Jay-Z, was blasting from oversized speakers. Good to hear the old-timey tune again.

  Zach took one last pull from his beer and dropped the bottle on another table as they passed. Then they were in each other’s arms, more making love than dancing.

  Which was pretty much what everyone else on the dance floor was doing.

  THE UNDERGROUND

  Under the overpass near FDR Drive and the Queens Midtown Tunnel, next to a wall stamped “N.Y.C. TRANSIT SYSTEM SUB-STATION,” there was a large metal door. At least, there used to be. The door was now torn off and tossed aside, about twenty feet from its original location, bent and busted.

  If you were to travel through the opening and down the dark stairs, slick with dampness and mildew, you would be taken to a long hallway, then to a tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, there was a cavernous room.

  In this large expanse, an abandoned tunnel and machine storage area, a hundred innocent victims huddled together. Some stood separately, staring into the dark space; others held each other, and others sat alone. Some crying. Some sleeping. Some already dead.

  The screaming started as the monsters appeared again. The fiends were as tall as houses, but nowhere near as safe. One was covered in reddish scales. One had burnt, bubbling skin. Another was radioactive green. Still another was green and brown, as if mold and mushrooms grew on it. Their skin was molten, pus-filled, grotesque.

  They strode into the cavernous room, monarchs surveying their victim kingdom. At random, humans were snatched up and immediately broken in two.

  Then it was on to the next, while all around there was screaming and gnashing of teeth. One by one, in a room filled with over a hundred Earthlings, the hungry demons picked out snacks until the room was half-full and the monsters were very full.

  The beasts left for the adjacent space, filled with carnal desires and all of the deadly sins: gluttony, sloth, greed, jealousy, bad breath, cold feet, remote-control covet-ness, porn addiction, mass murder, genocide, matricide and patricide, indecision, pride, and prejudice.

  When they were satiated, the beasts passed through the tunnel, down the hallway, and out again into the night, wings wide, eyes red. They disappeared, intent again on their mission. Find Zachary of the Prophesies and destroy him.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Mallory said. “I’m bored.”

  “You’re bored?” Helena asked. “You’ve been dancing all night. Drinking. Flirting. Where was the downside? When, exactly, were you bored?”

  “That’s not the point. I had my fun, and now I want to leave. Come on,” she said, leaning on Zachary’s shoulder and looking up into his face. “Let’s go. Pleaasse?”

  “Sure,” said Zachary. His armpits and back were sweaty. He wiped his forehead. “Just a sec. I need some water.”

  Zach found his way over to the bar and signaled for a bartender.

  “Okay, okay,” said Dani. “We can go. Yeah, good idea. Let’s go eat.”

  “I’m all for that,” said Bryan. “Barely had any food tonight.”

  “I could go for a pizza,” Timmy Jimmy said.

  “I don’t know about pizza,” Dani said. “I was thinking something along the lines of sushi.”

  “Sushi? Are you kidding me? Sushi? That stuff is disgusting. Full of worms and crap.12”

  “You’re the one that’s full o
f it,” Dani said to Timmy Jimmy.

  “Screw you.”

  “In your dreams.”

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Zachary said, returning to the group, a bottle of cold water in his hand. He had already drunk two glasses at the bar, fighting dehydration.

  “We’re debating food plans,” said Mallory.

  “Good,” Zachary said. “I know this great burger place, just opened. Killer sliders.”

  “Yuck!” Helena said. “Plus, I just started a new diet.”

  “Really? You had, like, forty Cosmos, Helena!” Mallory said.

  “So? That’s liquid. No calories; not much, anyway. Not like food. Food’s a solid.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “What?”

  “Forget it.”

  “So, somebody decide.”

  “Fine. Pizza.”

  “No, not pizza. Sushi. Or at least Chinese. Noodles.”

  “There’s a 24-hour Thai place just around the block. Can we compromise?”

  “Fine.”

  “Done.”

  “Let’s go already.”

  They gang-piled out of the club, stumbling into the daylight, their slurred speech a bit out of place for this hour in the morning.

  TOP OF THE WORLD

  The view from the summit of the Empire State Building was beautiful to behold, even for a satanic being from the center of the universe. Malum Regnator-Infernus13 was as out of proportion to the structure as King Kong once was. The demon stood eighteen and a half feet tall. Its wingspan was more than twenty feet across. Scales covered him, not like a snake, but like a disease. Small hairs the size of rose branches grew at random all over its body.

  The eyes on the first of its three heads had a serpent’s split pupils, puke green. The eyes on the second head (which grew not beside the first head but on top of it the way a cyst would) were as red as a poison frog’s. The third head was stacked on top of its brothers, but this head was not worth talking about. It was a baby’s head—and it was dead.

  The teeth of the bottom-most head were filled with slime and bits of everything it had ever eaten. The head above it contained teeth that, while rotting, were virtually free of debris. Just sharp wolf’s teeth, with gums as rosy as Christmas ribbon.

  The first head also sported huge, elephant bat ears (if there were such a creature). The head above had no ears at all, but it was the head that wore the “crown,” so to speak. That is to say, it displayed antlers, the kind you’d find on a creature’s head hanging in a gentlemen’s club. Only this one was diseased.

  The breath of the head at the bottom reeked of rotten, putrid flesh, of blood ill-gotten, of stolen life. Of lies and treachery, of colluding with the Nazis, of voting for the other side. Of gossiping behind your back and later lying to your face. The head in the middle smelled, by contrast, of fire and, of course, brimstone. And oddly of gasoline, too, or maybe kerosene or, perhaps, ordinary lighter fluid.

  Malum Regnator-Infernus, or “Mal” for short, gazed stupidly out at the night’s landscape, though the thing was not stupid at all. This beast was, in fact, the leader of the pack of satanic beings. It led them to Earth years ago. Found the parents and killed them. Not just killed them; tore them asunder.

  Mal, the same demon that—though changed now, morphed as these demons do, accumulating and absorbing other demons into themselves—had searched the intervening years. Searching for the son she bore, who should have been destroyed, as intended. To have been eaten and digested and ultimately crapped out on the world. Mal was unlucky that day, while his prey had somehow escaped. Exactly as the Oracles said the boy would. Les Prophéties Démoniaques14, which they had chanted and sung for generations.

  All just blood under the bridge now, as the boy would be found before long. The demons felt it—sensed it in their bones and their boners. Earth’s so-called savior was here, in this city, and close by. He wouldn’t run, because he wouldn’t know he was being hunted.

  The “one” would be caught, tortured, and torn apart as his parents were. At that time, the real feasting could begin, the celebration. Because, according to the Prophesies, without killing that boy first, they could be interrupted, taken off track, even destroyed if he were to suddenly appear. Best to destroy the boy of the Prophesies first.

  Then, and only then, could their job begin: the annihilation of Earth.

  “This was amazing Thai, man!” Timmy Jimmy shouted. He pushed his hair out of his eyes. Meanwhile, hot sauce (heat level 5 of 5) oozed down his narrow goatee, which was really more of an extended soul patch than any kind of beard.

  “Tell me about it,” Bryan said, burping, his eyes crossing just a bit.

  “So, girlfriend,” Helena slurred, talking to Dani, “who was that hunk you were draped over all night, anyway?”

  “That guy? He was hot, sure. But he had a strange look in his eyes, y’know? Not to say I wouldn’t have let him do me. Just not boyfriend material. I mean, a girl has got to have rules to live by.”

  Both girls giggled. Dani farted a quick little “frrrp!” by accident from the chuckling. They stopped laughing, sitting in awkward silence until they broke into chortles, even louder.

  “No way! Did he know you aren’t a girl?”

  “What are you talking about, bitch? I am a girl.”

  “You’re a tranny, honey.”

  “A ‘transgender woman,’ please. A little respect.”

  “Okay, okay. But while you were flirting and all that, he didn’t notice your, uh, well, ‘other’ assets?”

  “He was too drunk to see straight, and I kept his hands away from the southern regions. Not that it would have mattered. It’s all sheathed in steel anyways.”

  They both started laughing again, which morphed into ping-ponging hiccups. Which caused even more laughter.

  “Jeez, you two. What the hell—” Mallory shoved Helena, getting a bit of peanut sauce on her shoulder, and joined in the chuckling. “Ha ha ha!”

  She splashed wine on Helena’s blouse, which only caused all to laugh harder. Helena’s blouse was wine-colored; fortunately, it was the exact shade of the stain. She may as well have spilled water on herself.

  “Okay, I’m outta here,” Zachary said, standing, swaying a bit. “Volunteering at the food bank again tomorrow. Early.”

  A chorus of groans, protests, and mocking comments.

  “Yeah, whatever. I’ll see you around,” he said. “Anyone want to share a cab?”

  Mallory stopped laughing and wiped at the wet stain on Helena’s blouse. “She do,” she said. “I mean, I do.” She snorted. Her girlfriends giggled themselves dry.

  “I didn’t mean you, babe,” he said. Turning to the group again, he said, “Anyone else?”

  No takers.

  “In that case,” Zachary said, turning to Mallory. “You ready to go?”

  “Exactly what are you implying? Hee hee.”

  More giggles from the female peanut gallery.

  “Get ya coat,” Zach said, rolling his eyes. “Jeeziz.”

  Outside, spitball rain pelted the couple. No cabs in sight.

  “What time is it?” Zachary asked, taking out his phone to check. “5:12. Dammit. It will be light soon.” He put his arm around Mallory, as much to help himself stay upright as to protect her.

  A cab splashed up Broadway.

  “Here we go,” said Zachary. “TAXI!” He waved.

  The cab skidded up to them and Zachary opened the door for Mallory, let her in, slammed her door tight. He rushed to the other side. Before he could grab the handle, though, the taxi pulled away, tires spinning.

  “Hey!” Zachary shouted.

  But she was gone.

  Zachary ran down Broadway, like an idiot. He’d seen this scene in the movies. A lot. He’d read this same passage in many different novels.

  They all had the identical plot point. Which was: The hero rises to the task, commandeers a vehicle, finds guns and one or two lethal friends to become the kidnappers’ w
orst nightmare.

  Problem was, Zachary wasn’t secretly a trained assassin or a ninja warrior. Just a regular guy with an ordinary 8-to-8 job. He stood lonely on the side of the road, watching the cab weave its way up Broadway and into oblivion. He stepped back onto the sidewalk.

  What was he feeling? Helplessness? Were those tears? This was not how men react. His head spun.

  He stared at his own two hands. Why was there no sword, no shotgun, no rocket launcher in them?

  Instead, Zach pulled out his iPhone 12G14 and dialed the emergency number: 911-912-913-914.

  The WERM15 walked him through the various options (“Note: Their menu has changed.”). For murder, press 1. For assault, press 2. For armed robbery, press 3. For kidnapping or other hostage-related situations, press 4. For rape, press 5. For misdemeanors, please press 6 for the misdemeanor submenu. For all other crimes, press 7. To repeat this menu, press 8. If you are in immediate peril, please hang up and call 911-569-000-778-14-188, option 19, star-5. If you estimate that you are about to die within the next sixty seconds, please stay on the line.

  If that’s not possible, please shove your phone up your own ass and start praying. There’s nothing we can do for you. Zachary thought this last to himself; they weren’t part of the recording. Could’ve been, but weren’t.

  Zachary paused for a minute, not sure he remembered which button to push. Something told him it was 3. No, 4. No, wait. . . He pressed 8 to listen to the menu again. 1, 2, 3. Yes, he was right. He pushed 4.

  Please wait. The next available operator who couldn’t give a care will be with you whenever they damn well want to. Your wait time will be an eternity (Zach was thinking all this to himself, again.).