Victor Sellers swayed slightly from side to side, a testament to his lack of sobriety, considering that he was sitting at the kitchen table, leaning heavily on both elbows.
In front of him stood a half-empty bottle of Five Star Vodka, its clear warmth and the promise of forgetfulness beckoning to him like a mermaid calling to a wayward galleon. His right hand clutched a cell phone — the call delivering the “good news” he’d passionately visualized for over a decade could only be moments away.
His other hand gripped the handle of a beat-up .44 Magnum, a present from his father. An inheritance, actually, seeing as Father’s last act was using the .44 to splatter his brains all over the rumpus room.
Victor had kept the gun as a morbid memento; he was the next big horror writer, after all, and such a grisly talisman seemed to fit his pre-fabricated image of a twisted literary superstar. He’d never planned to use the gun for anything other than interviews with Entertainment Weekly, a publicity stunt to show just how “messed up” he was. People got off on that shit if you were a horror writer; they wanted to know you were damaged in some way, as if your deviance and lack of normalcy justified creation of dreadful yarns.
How ironic that he now planned on using the .44 in the same fashion as his dear old dad—like father, like son. The hollow-point rounds would do more than just take a chip off the old block.
Victor’s head hung down until his precisely shaggy hair brushed the tabletop. He’d just written his masterpiece, clearly the best work he’d ever done. After ten years of mediocre manuscripts, ten years of striving to be the new master of horror, Generation X’s answer to Stephen King, ten years of wading through the ego-laden short-story market, ten years of kissing ass in the holier-than-thou old boy’s network of the writing awards circuit, ten years of chasing the latest “me too!” fad (vampires then time-travel then vampires again then zombies then ripping off public-domain classics by putting in monsters then dystopian YA then steampunk and soon, probably, more fucking vampires), ten years of supplementing his “full-time writer” income by doing freelance high school football and basketball stories for the local paper — after ten years of pure bullshit, he’d written something that simply could not miss.
He’d just emailed that something, that can’t-miss something, to Morty, his agent, who by now had surely read over the brief manuscript. Victor knew Morty would rave over the piece. The way things were going, Morty would probably just happen to be having lunch with some major publisher, Morty would share the story, the publisher would flip over it and instantly offer at least a cool million.
Victor prophetically knew these things for one simple reason — when you sell your soul to the devil, fame and fortune are a done deal.
The phone beeped softly. Despite his dulled reactions, Victor answered without a moment’s thought. He slowly pulled the cellular to his ear as if it was a thirty-pound dumbbell and he was on his last, excruciatingly slow rep.
“Hullow?”
“Victor!” Morty’s enthusiasm ripped through Victor’s vodka-addled brain. “This is Morty. I just got your manuscript, kiddo! I have to say I never thought I’d see you write something like this, but it’s incredible.”
“Thanks,” Victor said.
Morty screamed each sentence as if he were an orgasmic guest of a Playboy Mansion orgy. “I mean this is a show-stopper! You’re going to be a household name, my boy. I knew there was a reason I stuck by you — where have you been hiding this stuff the last ten years?”
“Up my ass, maybe,” Victor said, his words thick and slurred. “You might say I found a new muse.”
“Well, I’ll buy that muse a drink!”
“Beat you to it, Mort.”
“Sounds like it, kiddo. Listen, you’re not going to believe this, but I just happen to be having lunch with Joshua Tallent, the publisher of Penguin Group.”
“You don’t say.” Victor took a quick pull from the bottle. His taste buds were long dead from the cheap liquor, and at room temperature, the vodka went down like lukewarm water.
“Yeah! And he read the manuscript just now. Right at the table! I mean, of course, it’s only ten pages long, but he loved it! He offered us one-point-six million bucks for domestic rights, and we haven’t even talked about international!”
“Imagine the luck,” Victor said.
“I have to admit, when I saw the title Fanny the Fluffy Little Kitten, I thought you were nuts, but it’s the best damn children’s book I’ve ever seen! Joshua loved it, wants to get the art and have it on the presses by this Christmas.”
“Ho-ho-ho,” Victor said. “Just cut the deal, Morty. Do whatever you think is best.” Victor hung up. He set the phone down and lifted the gun.
After a decade of ceaseless struggle, Satan had come to him in — of all places — the soup aisle at Meijer’s grocery store. There was no fire and brimstone, no tail, no horns, not even that cool, hipster, pointy goatee the devil always sported in the movies. He was actually kind of fat. Wore a three-piece suit with Gucci shoes. He didn’t look at all like Satan — he looked more like Dom DeLuise posing as a lawyer.
“Got a deal for you, Victor,” Satan had said. From the first syllable out of his mouth, Victor instantly knew who he was. Victor hadn’t wasted time with all that how did you know my name? and how do I know you’re really the devil? bullshit because something inside him identified Satan as sure as a redneck knows a new Garth Brooks tune from the first twangy white-trash lyric.
“You want to be a writer, Victor?” Satan had asked. “I can facilitate this desire. You’ll be famous as all get-out. Make over a hundred million, be a household name, do the talk-show circuit, book tours, have movies made of every book you put out. The American Dream. Exactly what you always wanted, Victor — to be famous. To be a writer.”
Victor surprised himself by not even thinking twice. He made the deal. They slunk out to Satan’s black Cadillac Escalade to sign the contract, as if Satan were a cheap twenty-dollar hooker and they were knocking out a quick blow job. Satan, of course, had parked his obnoxiously huge vehicle in a handicap spot. Victor abstractly wondered how the Escalade handled on hot brimstone.
He had to prick his finger and sign in his own blood. His signature was damn near illegible, more a smear of thick red streaks than a name, like the writing of a five-year-old tripping on a double hit of acid, but somehow Victor knew penmanship didn’t really matter.
Satan handed him a copy of the 150-page contract, grumbled something about beating rush-hour traffic, hopped in the Escalade and drove away, ignoring a NO LEFT TURN sign as he did. Alone in the parking lot, Victor looked at the contract — no human skin, no parchment, just standard office paper. It was even notarized.
Had he just made a deal for his immortal soul? Fifteen minutes earlier he hadn’t even believed in soul. There was one way to find out if it was real or just some kind of elaborate prank played on a nobody, wanna-be writer; Victor rushed home and attacked his computer.
Would he write the next horror masterpiece? The new Frankenstein? Dracula? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? And no, he wouldn’t participate in starting yet another round of vampire copycat bullshit — he wanted something original. How long would it take him? A month? Two months?
It took him all of twenty-five minutes.
Once he started typing, he couldn’t stop. For only the second time in his life, Victor felt true terror. The first time he’d felt that coppery emotion, he was an eleven-year-old on a new Huffy Trailmaster dirt bike, bought at Kmart and freshly assembled.. Riding along happily on the shiny new bike, he nearly went under the axle of a Fritos semi captained by a man who collected both empty Jack Daniels bottles and DUI citations. That fear was nothing compared to what he felt as his fingers did their own thing.
As Victor wrote, that creeping feeling of dread grew stronger. Try as he might, the only thing he could think of was the quirky story of a little lost kitten named Fanny. He wrote Fanny’s first misadventure: how she got lost in a mall and couldn’t find Clara, her seven-year-old human owner.
Sweating, shaking and horrified, Victor finished the story, knowing that he’d been duped. He started a new document, trying to think of death and terror and malice. He’d just met Old Scratch himself — how much more inspiration did a budding horror writer need? Despite the visions of death, dismemberment and despair that raged through his head, all he could find was an uncontrollable urge to write about a wacky camping trip in which Fanny made friends with Gweneth the Greedy Grasshopper and Sally the Soft-Spoken Squirrel.
Tears streaming down his face, Victor emailed the first story to his editor, pulled the bottle of Five Star from the top shelf, fished the gun out of his closet and sat at the kitchen table to wait. He’d known, somehow, that Fanny the Fluffy Little Kitten was a guaranteed smash hit. According to Morty, that guess had been dead-on. Now Victor was on the precipice of fame and fortune from his writing, and yet he wanted none of it. He’d sold his soul (which was a truly admirable act for the next King of Horror) yet wound up writing cheesy children’s books.
Victor lifted the gun to his temple. No point in waiting. He was heading to hell — what good were another thirty or forty years compared to eternity? Three decades, three seconds, it was all the same in the grander scope of things, but if he died now, he didn’t have to live through hordes of laughing children screaming for his autograph or the plush Fanny dolls filling the stores at Christmas. He didn’t really want to live another forty years reviled as the person who invented the next annoying and probably pedophiliac purple dinosaur.
With his thumb, Victor pulled back the hammer and felt the catch vibrate lightly through his skull. He lifted the bottle for the last time — a one-for-the-road drink, so to speak — took a big swallow and set it down. His finger slowly squeezed the trigger …
His doorbell rang.
He blinked, finger still on the trigger. The doorbell rang again. Victor set the gun down, grabbed the vodka bottle and stumbled toward the door to his apartment. Maybe it was a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Wouldn’t they get a kick out of this situation? He’d head to hell clutching a copy of The Watchtower.
Victor opened the door and looked out at a clown.
A clown holding a briefcase.
The clown wore a baggy pink suit with lime-green ruffles at the sleeves and collar. His giant, red-patent-leather shoes stuck out at least a foot in front of him. A nose, which was almost as red as the shoes, stood in sharp contrast to his white greasepaint face. A severe, black greasepaint frown covered his mouth and most of his cheeks and chin. A ratty, red and black Dr. Seuss hat stood up on his head. The hat added to his six-foot frame, making him seem almost seven feet tall. To complete the ensemble, a plastic blue flower protruded from his lapel. Victor could make out a tiny squirt gun-like opening in the blossom’s center.
Victor was speechless. That didn’t seem to faze the clown.
“Victor Sellers?” the clown asked.
Victor nodded.
“I’m glad I caught you before you did anything stupid.” The clown produced a business card. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Chuckles Mulrooney, attorney for the damned. May I come in?”
• • •
Chuckles Mulrooney, attorney for the damned, sat on Victor’s living room couch, concentrating on Victor’s contract with the devil. A copy of Fanny the Fluffy Little Kitten — still warm from the laser printer — sat on Chuckles’ briefcase. A once-white blanket covered the couch, obscuring patches of duct tape and disintegrating red-and-yellow plaid fabric. Despite the blanket and the tape, bits of ancient stuffing still escaped the old cushions and found their way onto the worn shag carpet.
“Nice decor,” Chuckles said. “Kind of post-apocalyptic Brady Bunch.”
Victor sat in a splintery rocking chair, one of the few other pieces of furniture he owned, including a kitchen table and chairs, a dresser and a mattress that lay on the bedroom floor. He clutched the Five Star bottle, now three-quarters empty, and stared at the clown on his couch.
Chuckles shook his head. “You could have done better for yourself. One-point-six million for your eternal soul? Not much of a deal, Victor.”
“You don’t say,” Victor said.
“Yep. You could have netted at least two million and written a real book. Not that I didn’t like Fanny the Fluffy Little Kitten, of course. If I had kids, I’m sure they’d love it. But a mere one-point-six mil? You didn’t even try and sweeten the deal?”
“I wasn’t aware one could haggle with the devil.”
“That’s the problem with kids today,” Chuckles said. “You all don’t think twice about paying retail.”
Victor drank another long, burning swig.
“Listen,” Chuckles said. “Here’s my offer. You got tricked, and there’s nothing you can do about that, but you should realize how much money you can make in the course of your life. What I’m offering you is this — I get half of everything you make. In return, I’ll get you back your immortal soul.”
Victor stared and said nothing. There was a clown on his couch, reviewing the pros and cons of a bona fide contract with Satan. The sureness of it all stunned him into silence.
Victor finally spoke. “Who, exactly, the fuck are you? I’m supposed to believe you’re some kind of … clown lawyer? How did you find out about my deal?”
“I’m not a clown lawyer,” Chuckles said. “I’m an attorney for the damned. It’s my business to find people like you. I find loopholes in contracts with the devil and get my clients’ souls back. For this service, I get half of everything they make from said contract.”
“And you dress like Ronald McDonald … why?” Victor followed up the question with another long pull from the bottle. He was so bombed he couldn’t even smell the pungent alcohol.
Chuckles sighed. He sniffed his blue plastic flower. “I do this because I was once just like you, Victor. I used to be a struggling lawyer. I worked hard, very hard, but I just didn’t have the goods. I wanted to be the greatest lawyer of all time, better than Cochran, better than Darrow, better than all of them. The devil came to me while I was buying condoms at 7-Eleven, and we hashed out a deal — he gets my soul, and I get to be the greatest lawyer that ever lived.”
“So what happened?”
“He came through on his end,” Chuckles said. “I mean I’m the greatest, a legal Muhammad Ali. I can give a deposition that will make your head spin. Most cases would be over by the time I finished my opening statement. I’ve become a master of the spoken word, a manipulator of emotions, an artist of legalese — and I have a photographic memory of every case and precedent in the history of mankind. Not just America, mind you, but every case that’s ever come to trial anywhere under any system. You should hear some stories about Cro-Magnon law. Fascinating stuff. And that Cherokee legal system, where they slice open your scrotum, insert a burning coal, then sew it back up again? Now that’s capital punishment.”
And Victor was worried about hell? Hopefully, hell didn’t mean burning coals stitched into one’s nut-sack.
“At any rate, I’m the best lawyer of all time,” Chuckles said. “The devil came through on his deal. He added one little clause, though. Every day I wake up with the uncontrollable urge to dress like a circus clown. I can’t help it.”
“If dressing like a clown is wrong, you don’t want to be right?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass, Victor,” Chuckles said. “The first thing I do in the morning is shower. The second thing I do is put on the greasepaint. You should see my wardrobe — it looks like a trailer from Barnum & Bailey. As you can imagine, it’s difficult to practice law when you show up with size twenty-seven feet, honk your nose every five minutes and squirt the judge with your lapel flower.”
Victor nodded. “I can see where that would get in the way,” he said, then polished off the bottle.
“Satan scammed my ass,” Chuckles said. “He is, if you’ll pardon the expression, one crafty old devil. They don’t call him The Trickster for nothing. I have all this legal prowess, and I can’t use it in a real court of law. But you know what? He fucked with the wrong guy. About a week after realizing the best suit I’d ever wear would have the Bozo label on it, I decided to kill myself. Why bother living for another thirty or forty years? It’s only a tick of the clock, anyway, you know?”
“Yeah,” Victor said, glancing at the still-cocked Magnum on his cheap kitchen table. “I know what you mean.”
“Then it hit me — that’s exactly what he wants. That’s why he tricks us, so he can get our souls faster. I found out later he’s got a monthly quota to fill. Who would have thought that?”
“A quota?” Victor said.
“Yeah, like a state cop with speeding tickets. Anyway, that tricking stuff got me thinking. If he can trick us, play with the wording, come up with new meanings, then it means the contract is just a starting-off point. It’s open to interpretation, if you follow the logic. Then I decided to get even with the fork-tailed bastard.”
“Get even,” Victor said, “with the devil.”
Chuckles nodded, his big hat flopping in time. “I decided to represent people who’ve made deals with the devil and get them out of their contracts. I do this for three reasons. First, I’m getting amazingly rich off it. Second, because I’ll keep doing it until he tears up my contract and gives me my soul back. Third, I do it just to piss him off.”
“You want to piss off Satan?”
“Piss him off and teach him a geography lesson.” The black greasepaint bizarrely magnified the clown’s smile. “This is America — you don’t fuck with a lawyer.”
• • •
“You’ve done this before, right?”
“Sure,” Chuckles said. “The devil hands out deals for fame and fortune all the time. You don’t need talent to be famous, just a good contract. Bob Saget was my first client. I just found a loophole in the Britney Spears contract, and you should see the renegotiation I did for Ryan Seacrest.”
“I always wondered how he did it.”
Chuckles started reading the contract. He ran a highlighter over the contract and made notes on a yellow legal pad.
Victor watched, or tried to, but he was a bit too drunk to see straight. “And you think this is going to work?”
“I think it will work, but this is up to you,” Chuckles said. “As your legal counsel, I have to warn you that Satan won’t be happy to hear from me. If we don’t succeed, you’ll be in for a pretty rough eternity.”
“There’s varying degrees of hell?”
“Sure, sure,” Chuckles said. “As you may have guessed, Satan isn’t a nice guy. If you think burning in eternal flame is the worst he can do, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“So if I hire you, and we don’t win, then I’m fucked.”
“Let’s face it, Victor, you’re already fucked. It’s just a question of degree. Personally I think we’re going to kick his fork-tailed ass all over the place — in a metaphorically legal sense, of course — but it’s up to you. As your legal counsel, I’m obligated to give you all the facts.”
Victor leaned back in his rocking chair and mulled the possibilities. An eternity spent writhing in burning agony, skin perpetually blackening under the caustic kiss of sulfurous flames, internal organs cooking forever and ever — and that was the best he could look forward to.
“Fuck him,” Victor said. “I was misled in this contract, and I want out.”
“That’s the spirit, kid.” Chuckles pulled a piece of paper from his briefcase and started filling in blanks.
Victor leaned forward to look at it. “What’s that?”
“A writ of formal protest. The party in the first part — Satan — has entered into a binding agreement with the party of the second part — you — and the party of the second part finds the contract inconclusive with his original intention of verbal agreement, then the party of the first part, when formally served with this writ of notice, becomes—”
“Whatever,” Victor said, cutting off Chuckles’ windy explanation. “What’s it mean in layman’s terms?”
“It means as soon as you sign this, Satan, or an official representative, has to come here and do battle.”
“Battle?”
“A legal debate, if you prefer,” Chuckles said. “It all comes down to a battle for your soul.” Chuckles offered Victor the paper and pen. “Just sign here.”
“After I sign, how long till we get our day in court?”
“It happens immediately. No judge, just me and the legal representative of Satan. You remember how you knew the fat guy in the three-piece was Satan, the real McCoy and not some crackpot? Works the same way in debate — we just know who wins each point. We know when it’s over, and we know who won.”
Victor started to sign, then paused. Varying degrees of hell. That left a lot to the imagination of a horror writer.
“Just sign it, Victor. You got something better to do first? Like maybe wait for Fanny the Fluffy Little Kitten’s Saturday morning cartoon to be all the rage?”
Victor signed the paper.
A stench-laden cloud of sulfurous smoke billowed in the middle of the living room. Victor, for one, was glad to see at least something a bit more along the traditional lines of demons and whatnot. Considering the stakes, a little dramatic entrance couldn’t hurt.
Satan himself, resplendent in an immaculate three-piece suit, stepped forth from the rapidly dissipating cloud. He stared hard at Chuckles.
“I am pissed off,” Satan said. “I want you to know I was in the power tools aisle of a Home Depot in Des Moines, closing in on an aspiring actor.”
Chuckles stood and made a frowney-face. “Gee, that’s too bad.”
Satan glowered at the lawyer-clown. “So, you and I finally meet on the field of battle.”
Chuckles smiled his greasepaint smile. “It’s a long cry from the condom aisle at 7-Eleven, eh, pal?”
Victor stood up. “Wait, finally? Chuckles, what does he mean, finally? I thought you’d done this before!”
“Sure, but not with the Big Dog himself,” Chuckles said. “I usually deal with one of his minions. Think of them as combination demon/legal aides.”
Satan smiled. “Did he tell you he’s lost two in a row? Did he tell you about those poor, tortured souls?”
Victor looked at Satan, then back to his clown lawyer. “Is that true? You’ve lost your last two cases?”
Chuckles sniffed his blue plastic flower. “Don’t sweat it, kid. I’ve still got a winning record.”
Satan laughed. “I’d hardly parade five wins and four losses as a winning record, Chuckles. He didn’t tell you much, did he, Victor? You really should ask more questions. I bet you always buy retail.”
Victor moved to the couch and sat. He put his head in his hands and moaned with the noises of the doomed and the damned.
Chuckles smoothed out his lime-green suit. “My client’s shopping habits are irrelevant. Satan, you knowingly misled my client into a fraudulent contractual obligation. Since Mister Sellers did not fully understand the agreement into which he entered, he is free of any obligation to you.”
“Your client had the opportunity to review the contract,” Satan said. “Your client waived that right. Ignorance of the contract’s content is not a defense.”
“There is also breach of said non-obligatory contract,” Chuckles said. “My client wanted to be a horror writer.”
“He is,” Satan said. He put a hand on his chest and leaned back in mock fear. “I happen to be quite terrified of fluffy kittens. Horror is in the eye of the beholder, wouldn’t you agree?”
Chuckles looked down. He picked a piece of furniture dandruff off his big red right shoe. He took a breath, held it, then let it out through his red nose.
“Cultural definitions of horror are the standard,” he said. “However, the eye of the beholder in this case happens to be the marketplace. In the case of Greenwell vs. Mephistopheles, I proved that contractual disagreements of cultural standards must be based on the accepted standards of mortal society, not the opinions of either pawns of hell, agents of heaven, or the voice of the Damned.”
“Yes, but you forget Simpson vs. the State of California,” Satan said. “In that case it was established that societal standards of behavior are irrelevant in the face of physical evidence, and I believe you’d accept the contract your client signed as physical evidence.”
Victor’s stare bounced from Satan to Chuckles, from Chuckles to Satan. He didn’t follow the argument but suspected Chuckles was down 30-love. Satan’s grin never wavered — he knew he was going to win.
“True, true,” Chuckles said. “But in the case of Grog vs. He-Who-Walks-Like-Death-Amongst-Men, 16,301 B.C., you yourself ruled that the verbal agreement is more important than the written contract.”
Satan’s arrogant smile faded. “You’re citing Grog as a precedent? They didn’t even have writing then. They signed deals by leaving teeth marks on sticks, for crying out loud!”
Chuckles shrugged, as if he were a helpless victim to the pure force of fact. “What you say is true, but a precedent is still a precedent.”
Satan stared, then shook his head. “Grog. You’re using Grog … but you haven’t used that precedent in all nine of your cases against hell.”
Chuckles’ white teeth flashed from beneath his black greasepainted lips. “Been saving old Grog just for you. Does that piss you off? Back to the subject at hand. Since we’ve established that the verbal is the primary form of agreement, and nowhere in your contract does it specifically state that all verbal agreements are secondary to the written form, then we must gather that your verbal agreement with my client takes precedence over the written contract, correct?”
Satan pointed a finger at Chuckles. “That’s a fucking loophole, and you know it!”
“There are no loopholes,” the clown said. “There are only interpretations. You said you would make my client a horror writer, and there are no societal standards anywhere on Earth that would construe Fanny the Fluffy Little Kitten as horror. Ergo, you, Satan, my friend, are in breach of contract.”
Satan stood quiet for a moment. Victor had a feeling that something big had just taken place, a major swing in momentum. Judging from the conceited smile on Chuckles’ face and the look of fused hatred on Satan’s, Victor dared hope that he’d won.
“Soon,” Satan said, “very soon, I’ll have you where I want you. I’m going to take a century’s vacation when you die. Do you hear me, Mulrooney? A century. I’ll invent tortures that will make you beg ceaselessly.”
Chuckles grabbed his crotch and shook it. “Hey, Satan, how’s that quota coming, anyway?”
Satan growled.
Chuckles started putting his notes in his briefcase. “You know, I’ve got two more cases coming up. All you have to do is rip up my contract, and I’ll let them slide.”
“You’ll run out of loopholes sooner or later,” Satan said. “I’ll keep making the contracts tighter and tighter, you fucking clown lawyer.”
“I’m not a clown lawyer,” Chuckles said. “I’m an attorney for the damned. Don’t forget, Beelzebubba, you made me the best. I’ll keep finding ways to beat you.”
“We’ll see,” Satan said. “We’ll see.” With that, the billowing cloud returned, and Satan stepped inside, disappearing from Victor’s living room.
Victor watched the last of the cloud wisp away into nothing. “Uh … what just happened?”
“You’re off the hook, kid. Your soul is your own again.”
“What about Fanny the Fluffy Little Kitten?”
Chuckled closed his briefcase. “The invalidation of the contract frees up any and all intellectual properties generated from said contract. All rights revert to the creator free and clear of contractual obligations.”
“What?”
“You can publish the fluffy kitty book, and your soul still belongs to you. Don’t forget I get half. Remember, I found a loophole for you. I can just as easily find a loophole against you, should you try and renege.”
Victor was free? Just like that? “But what if I don’t want to write that book? I just want to write horror stories. If I’m truly out, can’t I just not publish the stupid kids’ book?”
Chuckles smiled a do you really want to fuck with me smile. Victor felt as if an icicle tickled down the back of his neck. He didn’t like the look on that painted face, not one bit, and suddenly found himself wondering if he was any better off indebted to Chuckles Mulrooney than he was to Satan.
His cellular chimed lightly. Victor answered, never taking his eyes of the smiling attorney for the damned.
“Hello?”
“Victor, this is Morty! Listen, this shit is blowing up, my friend! Joshua’s college roommate happens to be Charlize Theron’s agent. We sent the story to the agent, and guess what?”
“Uh … Charlize Theron wants to make a movie of my book?”
“Hell, yes! She wants to play Fanny, and get this — she said she wants a private meeting with you so she can convince you how badly she wants it. I heard mention of a kitty costume.”
“Charlize Theron,” Victor said. “In a kitty costume. Meeting with me. In private.”
“Boom goes the dynamite, Victor. Forgive me if I put that image in my spank bank. My god, I’m envious of you! But hold your horses, it gets better. Penguin is insisting that Fanny be a series. I’ve got Joshua right here, and he’s offering two-point-three million for the next book and wants to option two more at three mil a piece. Now how soon can we get another book?”
The numbers danced in his head. Over eight million dollars for just over an hour’s effort. A far cry from a few thousand dollars for ten years of work. As yet he hadn’t signed any contract to publish Fanny the Fluffy Little Kitten — but if he didn’t, he knew Chuckles would find some interesting clause and hand his soul over to the devil once again.
And, more importantly, he wouldn’t get to see Charlize Theron’s kitty costume.
Cellular still pressed to his ear, Victor walked over to the kitchen table and picked up the .44.
“Victor,” Morty said, “don’t drag out the suspense. When can we get the next story?”
Victor stared at the gun, stared at the still-cocked hammer. There was only one way to keep his soul and his integrity. And he had to do it now. His eyes traced the length of the rust-speckled barrel.
“Victor, hello?” Morty said. “You there, kiddo?”
“For the moment.”
“Well? When can we get the next story?”
Victor made as if to point the .44 at his head, then sighed and let the weapon hang heavily near his hip. “I just happen to have a second book already finished. Fanny’s taking a little camping trip.”
“Sounds good, kiddo,” Morty said. “I’ll be waiting for it. You’re rich, kiddo. Rich to the tune of eight million bucks!” Morty disconnected. Victor pocketed the phone.
Chuckles set the briefcase on the table, then rubbed his hands together. “Well, that call sounded positive. So, just how much are you making for me?”
In that moment, Victor knew he’d spend the rest of his life writing cheesy children’s books. The money made it too hard to just pull the trigger. His spirit hung low. He’d escaped the deal with the devil, but his soul remained sold.
Somewhere in his imagination, Victor heard the squeal of tires on hot brimstone and the jovial laughter of a fat man dressed in a three-piece suit.
But … there was one way out.
For the first time in his life, a truly inspirational idea jumped into Victor’s head. He’d just beat a deal with the devil — he’d be damned if he’d let anybody share his sell-out money.
Victor looked at his lawyer. “How much? We’ll make eight million. Or should I say, I’ll make eight million.”
Victor raised the .44. Chuckles’ face probably went white, but who could tell under all that greasepaint?
• • •
“A vacation?” Mephistopheles asked. “You’re taking a vacation? For how long?”
“A century,” Satan answered with a wide smile. “I haven’t taken a vacation since humans beat the Black Plague.”
“But a whole century?” Mephistopheles asked. “What the hell are you going to do with that much time?”
Satan’s grin was a mixture of joy and creative evil. “I’ve got a few things in mind. Did I ever tell you how much I hate lawyers?”