This Was a Bad Time to Laugh–If I laughed now, I could ruin it, and I really liked this girl, but she just couldn’t see what was going on behind her. We’d been talking religion (usually a bad idea for a first date, but I tend to get away with it–usually) and she was on a tangent about being on a religious retreat and seeing God in the shape of the curtains on the window.

You laugh, or roll your eyes, thinking it cheesy, but I actually like sentiment, thank you very much, and she had plenty. My problem wasn’t that she was being diabetically precious right now, it was the fact that there was a hotdog vendor out the window behind her, having an argument with a particularly precocious squirrel. This would have been entertaining enough in and of itself, but to make matters funnier, the squirrel had somehow managed to smear mustard in a streak across its furry scalp, so it now appeared to be wearing a bright yellow Mohawk, and it reminded me of the time I’d watched that punk pilfer the billfold off some suit bragging on the phone about his charitable businesses after conspicuously passing by a hooded homeless woman and her child without even a second glance, and how the punk had then given the cash to the needful and left the empty wallet under a tree.

The hotdog vendor was a jerk–I knew him–and deserved anything this squirrel would give him. But I couldn’t enjoy the Schadenfreude of seeing the hotdog vendor get his recompense while my utterly lovely date was seeing God in her memory of a blowing curtain. I knew the image she was talking about. I’d once seen Santa Claus through my open window as a child, and I remembered the Christmas morning anticipation, which must have something in common with the love of God, right? The promise of renewal, the rewards of virtue? I’m no great believer myself, but I appreciate the ability to snatch meaning from the jaws of apathy and spy the motives of the unseen.

So you see I couldn’t laugh, caught here quite thorougly between the sublime and the ridiculous, the unbearably romantic and the callous, uncaringly ironic.

“You’re smiling,” though, she finally noticed.

“Well… yeah. Why shouldn’t I be? I think it’s very sweet.”

“Sweet?” She seemed offended, but was still smiling.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “You just have a very out-there way of looking at the world.” Still not good. “I like it?”

“I don’t know,” she concluded. “It’s just how I think, I guess.”

And there’s nothing wrong with that! I wanted to scream at her. Well, not scream, maybe. I just wanted to shake her and throw my arms around her to reassure her, you’re not losing points! Be yourself! I love you!

Well, OK, that last part was a bit far, I suppose, for a first date, but really, it’s short-hand, at least, for “I love the way you find meaning in insignificant details”–dammit, that still sounds all snarky and cynical…

Just then, the squirrel appeared at the window, upside-down, looking right at me, head cocked to the side, and it was the cutest, most manically delightful thing I had ever seen, at least in contrast to the bliss of speaking to Her Hotness here with me. And it was so sudden and so striking, I just broke, I just couldn’t hold it anymore.

She frowned and finally looked behind her, but not in time. “What?” turning back.

I was forced to explain and apparently, it wasn’t as funny as I’d thought it was.

“It’s a squirrel? You’ve been watching the squirrel the whole time?”

I floundered. “Well, I mean… it’s the same thing, though, right? Seeing God in the movement of the curtain? Seeing God in a squirrel with a mohawk messing with a shifty hotdog vendor?”

She didn’t think they were the same.

This was a bad time to laugh.

“That’s not God,” she told me. “That’s something else. I thought you were different. I thought you understood. But you’re just like all the others, aren’t you? It’s all just a game to you…”

And she ditched me, walked out, left me behind. Left me feeling like a shallow jerk. Or no… Maybe I wasn’t the one who was shallow. Maybe she just couldn’t take the joke.

That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway…

Once upon a time, there were twin sisters named Syndi and Abby Synger, each of them more terrifyingly beautiful than the other. Nary a boy (or even a man) could look upon either of them without losing his calm as his mind wandered into fantasy and desperation.

One day, the Synger sisters went to a fortune teller at a fair. They didn’t think much of it, really only went on a lark, but the fortune-teller told them “I see your path and it is a rocky one. Your beauty is an enemy to your love, for any man who falls in love with your beauty will suffer a terrible fate if you let him.”

At first, they merely thought the prophecy curious. Syndi mused “I thought fortune tellers were supposed to tell you what you want to hear?”

“She was probably just jealous,” Abby concluded. “Wanted to take us down a peg or two—well, we’ll show her!”

They weren’t—or didn’t think themselves—the type who would change their lives based on a prophecy. But it wasn’t just a prophecy they witnessed.

First it was Aaron Knoll.Syndi was out on an island in the bay, sunning, and he swam to her, but lost his breath and drowned when no one was looking.

“How do we know it was me he was swimming for?” she asked her sister, but Abby only looked at her until she realized of course he was.

Then it was Abby’s turn. Matt Golding stood outside her window in the rain, serenading her, and caught his death of cold. He had pneumonia, but still she visited him.

“Why did you do that?” asked Abby.

He could barely speak, let alone sing, but he managed to get out “You… are… so… beautiful… to me!” He died in agony three days later.

“That’s crazy!” Syndi insisted. “People don’t die of pneumonia—not anymore!”

“They’re not supposed to drown in the Bay, either,” countered Abby. “I’m telling you, this is the Curse!”

“The Curse?”

“Fine, then. The Prophecy. Whatever.”

“Well, we can’t just let that horrible old woman win!”

“You want to keep on killing guys who like you?”

But it wasn’t just liking them, and they both knew it. Syndi had been encouraging Aaron. Before she swam out to that rock herself, she sent him a come-hither glance that made him swoon, made him seek out his swim trunks. (Her glances weren’t quite powerful enough yet he’d follow her in his clothes.) It wasn’t enough that he loved her beauty, his love had to be requited. She loved that he loved her for it.

And Abby. She had truly loved Matt’s singing. She thought he was a wonderful person and she’d used her beauty to seduce his love.

“Never again,” Abby vowed. The red hair that was their pride and joy, she felled, sending it all down the drain to clog and salting the earth that grew it by continually bleaching it to hell. She wore make-up to hide her adorable freckles—not enough to stay pastily out of the sun. She covered herself in tattoos with rings through her nose, in her lip, in her cheek, not because she liked them, thought because she thought they looked good, but because she didn’t.

When she did take lovers, she did it through sheer force of will, overpowering them with her offputting frankness until they buckled under her sex. And the moment they sighed for her, the moment they said “It’s not the tattoos I love, it’s you,” it was over. They couldn’t come back.

But Syndi. She went the other way. “I’m not going to change who I am just because of some stupid witch,” she insisted when she saw what her sister was putting herself through. So she kept her beauty.

“You’re crazy,” Abby insisted. “You’re going to kill everyone. I swear to God, Syndi, every single guy you ever meet!”

But she didn’t. Not every one. They would fall in love with her, of course, just by looking—who wouldn’t? She was used to that. But she would never spare a second glance.

Once, she almost married a blind man. “You’re wasted on him,” her boss said to her after a meeting. “He could never really appreciate you.”

Which was why she let herself love him. Until one morning she was straddling him and he commented on the smoothness of her skin, on her scent and taste, on the sound of her voice.

That doesn’t count as beauty, does it?

Later that day, he was hit by a bus in the street and died instantly.

“You’re crazy,” Abby told her again after the funeral. “There’s no way you can live without love. It’s not physically possible!”

This angry challenge from her self-righteous sister was all Syndi really needed. She would not change who she was, she would only change what she wanted.

“You’re a cold-hearted bitch, you know that?” said man after shallow, ignorant man the last time she turned him down (and sometimes not even the last). Couldn’t they see, she had the warmest heart that ever beat. She expressed her love by sacrificing it to keep these men alive.

Every now and then, though, she found she couldn’t help herself. She’d notice something, or a girl-friend would whisper to her in confidence, and she would unleash. “You’ve been a bad boy,” she would whisper in the night, and he would die within twenty-four hours.

It gave her a reputation.

But that still didn’t stop suitors from lining up.

The old woman bent over her cauldron, the gnarled knobs on her hands dropping flecks of spice into the brew. The eye of newt, the ear of mole, all of the essentials were in it already. The recipe was well under way.

Outside, in the field beyond the heath, the earth stirred, the dirt cracked and when the dust had settled, there stood a menacing figure, thin and creaking and still wrapped in its shroud, the only wall between it and the elements. Not even flesh encased it; what lurked under the shroud was not bone-white but bone itself, divorced from even sinew, and yet it moved, crept skulking towards the small house on the moor.

The old woman poured herself some potion. It had been bad the last few days, but the warmth of it soothed her soul as much as its other properties worked on her body. With a sure, steady foot, she navigated the tightness of her hovel away from the fireplace at last and towards her bedroom when all at once her good ear pricked up at the sound of creaking at the door.

Was it her imagination? she found herself wondering. Or was the hour upon her at last?

Her suspicions were confirmed not by the fact of the knock on her door, but by its quality. She had no knocker on the eave, but here she could tell there could be no soft tissue muffling the rattle of bone on wood.

Choice was not a question in this venture. She changed course and set down her goblet on the organ on the way. Arriving at the foyer, she turned the handle and met the sight that awaited her.

“Well?” the old woman asked the skeleton, “are you going to stand out there in the rain, or would you like to come inside?”

Despite the nature of their depiction in art, there were no smaller bones in the face on the skull that could draw together or drift apart to create expression. The white shadow of a face gave no expression. Yet there was something unmistakable in its posture as it drew itself back in bemusement before graciously bowing its head.

“I know you can’t catch cold anymore,” the old woman remarked, “but I still have flesh and it’s not getting any less weak in this weather. Now get in here.” She made a path for the skeleton to pass her.

And pass her the skeleton did.

With stilted, creaking movements, the human remains approached and pulled up a chair and the old woman circled around the other side of her hoarded detritus, collecting the still-standing goblet on the way.

The skeleton reared itself up slightly before dropping back down—whether this was the affectation of a sigh by one who had no lungs or an attempt to pop an ill-used spine was beyond the crone’s ken. “I’d offer you a cup,” she assured the visitor, “but I doubt it would do you any good.”

One bony hand came up in a gesture of grateful refusal, but then paused and went back to the throat, as if suddenly remembering the unmistakable lack of vocal cords.

“Oh dear,” said the old woman, whereupon she put down her cup and made a series of hand-gestures, to which she received a response in the same medium.

“Do you remember how to talk like this?” her gestures said.

“Oh, yes!” was the reply. “Isn’t it lucky we learned this in our youth.”

“Yes, very lucky,” said the old woman aloud. Soon, she had setled down and picked up two long, sharp needles attached to a piece of children’s clothing. “Speaking of which, how are mother and father?”

The Skeleton nodded its skull and slowed, trying to decide how to phrase the response: “They have needed some time to adjust to one another after being apart so long, but they have found their way again at last.”

“Oh! Of course!” said the old woman in revelation. “What must have happened between mother and her first husband? And then father showing up to find her with a man who’d died before they ever met!”

“They are all fine now,” the skeleton assured her. “They have decided on an arrangement that is nothing short of modern, all marital bonds having dissolved at the point of death.”

“Oh, good!” the old woman exclaimed. “One oughtn’t fear a scandal in the AfterLife, it is what I have always heard said. Would not you agree?”

The skeleton nodded most emphatically, but then the nodding slowed as it drifted off into contemplation of its own loneliness.

The old woman soon realized what she’d stepped in and went back to her knitting, allowing the silence to seep into the space between them. Comfortably.

And soon the skeleton pushed back the hood of her shroud and nestled into the frame of the chair, leaning her head back into the soft shadow of the hearth and thinking how happy she was to be home for the holidays.

“Well, I don’t feel cold,” said Saskia to Sylvie. Though it wasn’t clear how. She was dressed in tight, thin T-shirt, not even wearing a bra, and here her girlfriend was, wearing three sweaters.

“It’s like five degrees in here!” Sylvie insisted. (Celcius, that is.)

“It’s like twelve degrees,” Saskia assured her.

“That’s still too cold!”

“Well, I’m not cold, I don’t know what to tell you!”

Sylvie kept thinking there must be something wrong with the heating, but they’d had it checked by three people and nobody found anything wrong with it. “I just don’t understand how it can be so cold.”

“I’ll keep you warm,” Saskia offered early on, inviting Sylvie in for a snuggle.

“No!” Sylvie soon realized. “I get even colder touching you, I mean not that I don’t want to, but you’re not exactly a space heater.”

One of their friends had joked that it might be worth investing in a boyfriend, if only for the specific purpose of keeping them both warm. He hadn’t stayed a friend of theirs for long.

This was why Saskia had gotten in the habit of taking a very hot shower just before crawling into bed with Sylvie. It was too hot—it was uncomfortably hot, to the point that it made her pale skin unnaturally red, but with the lights off, that didn’t make much difference, really.

“That’s better,” Sylvie would apologize once Saskia curled up against her, nice and warm. “I don’t mean to be such a bitch about this. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“It’s okay,” Saskia lied. “Whatever I can do that will make you more comfortable.”

They had been living together since they both graduated high school. They went to the KUL together and while they had each had their separate adventures there, they had emerged stronger than ever. Or so they thought. Now Sylvie was working as a speech therapist and Saskia was still studying for her doctorate in Physics and something seemed different. Off.

Sylvie sneezed. “I really should go to the doctor,” she said. “I really can’t go into work like this, what will people think?”

“Well, I do have to go into work,” said Saskia. “I promise I’ll be home for dinner.” But as she kissed her girlfriedn on the forehead, she couldn’t help but notice Sylvie flinch. It gave her pause. They had a moment, during which Sylvie looked embarrassed at what she’d involuntarily done, snorted and reached for the tissues, while Saskia did her best not to look too accusing or confrontational.

At work, Saskia was distracted, which wasn’t like her. She wasn’t used to being this person. If she was preoccupied, it was usually something external or specific to the environment that bothered her. She didn’t carry her emotional baggage along.

“You comign along to that frietkot?” asked one of her colleagues.

“Which one?”

She described it.

“I don’t know if I’ve been to that one,” Saskia said.

Going to a new frietkot on her lunchbreak wasn’t supposed to be the highlight of her day, let alone a big deal, and yet as she set out with four or five other physici to go there, she found herself reeling with the sense of anticipation. It was a feeling she hadn’t gotten since… well, her first day of university, she thought. Maybe even high school.

“It’s the cute one,” Marjolein whispered at her with a grin when they got in and it didn’t take Saskia long to realize what that was about, as her eyes found the very good-looking Moroccan young man behind the counter. It’s so rare, she mused, to find service people smiling like that. Especially immigrants. Especially the young and good-looking.

But why bring it up to her, the lesbian with a girlfriend?

Then he turned and his eyes found her and

something happened.

Something that… Had she ever?… If so, it was…

Suddenly, the young man looked familiar. He took her order and was polite enough, yet something lingered in his gaze. It shoudl have made her bristle, made her quip. Instead, it made her blush and smile.

“Wow,” said Marjolein at their table. “Even Saskia agrees!”

It was the only thing that could have possibly kept her mind off of Sylvie, but it was no more conducive to work. She wasn’t sure exactly why, or how she was going to justify it to herself, what good it would do or even what she was going to do when she got there, but she resolved to return to the frietkot in question after leaving work early.

When she got there, it was the middle of the afternoon and the place was deserted.

The young man was there and when she walked in, he looked at her. And she looked back.

A polite young service worker would have asked “Can I help you, ma’am?” or even “Did you forget something?” in Dutch only very slightly accented with Arabic, but there was none of that. Then again, a polite customer would tell him how he could help.

Did she even know?

“Do I know you?” she finally asked him.

The first thing he did was draw himself up, lift his chin a bit. But then his whole face changed—not his features, nothing quite that bizarre, but his expression was…

“Wait… I do know you.”

Suddenly, Saskia was transported back to a night several years ago—how many years?—back in high school. She was fifteen years old and out with friends and three of them were together—no, that wasn’t right, not till afterwards…

Two of her friends were being assaulted. And she had arrived with… with a boy she’d just met.

Some part of her had tried so hard to forget.

“So you do remember,” said the man, who couldn’t have been that young; not if he was the same man.

He got out from behind the counter and Saskia backed towards the door instinctively—except which instinct was she following?

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, as though it should have been obvious. “Don’t you remember that night?”

He had saved her. Her and her friends. She didn’t know from what, wouldn’t say. Nor how.

“There were three of us,” she said. “Liesbeth and Cathérine—“

“That’s not the night I mean.”

She looked at him. She wanted to be confused. She should have been, and she wished that she was.

That was when he called her by a name she hadn’t heard in centuries.

“No,” she said. “Stop.” She needed time, and answers. Which did she need more? “Who are you?”

“You know who I am.” But she didn’t want to. He moved even closer to her—

“Stop,” she said. “You say I know who you are, but do you even know who I am?”

“Of course,” he said, and she could see the breath steaming out of his mouth as he spoke.

“I don’t know who you think I am—“

He spoke that name again, a most familiar name—

“I don’t know who that is!” she insisted. “But whoever it is, I’m not her anymore.”

Now it was his turn to be confused, and he didn’t want to be.

“Goodbye,” she said, reaching for the door without realizing she’d just called him by a name she shouldn’t know.

Once she was outside, she realized the temperature was at least ten degrees higher.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Sylvie said when Saskia got back to her. “He said I have a cold, but my temperature’s fine and I felt fine while I was there.”

“We’ll figure it out,” said Saskia Van Sneeuwegem, knowing exactly what it was that was wrong.

“Maybe it’s this place,” said Sylvie. “Maybe I’m allergic to this house or something. Maybe we should just move.”

“Maybe,” Saskia lied.

Dear Zeecy, (since that’s the name you want me to call you)

First of all, I want to apologize for the circumstances of my last letter to you. I know my attitude and conduct showed a liberty and familiarity much unbecoming a gentleman such as I should like to be thought. I know that, long as our acquaintance can be said to have been, it began with a single meeting and has been followed exclusively by long-distance correspondence and it has been so long–so long!–since I have seen your face. But you must believe me, I implore you, when I say that it is etched inside my brain as firmly as a nail punched into a wall of wood that’s found a fault in the grain and cracked to the ceiling. I am broken for you.

And perhaps I am mistaken in who I believe that you are. Your grace, your poise, the structures in your language and your thoughts–I hope you can understand what would lead me to believe you were more than just a peasant-turned-playwright. The way you moved at that ball all those years ago, it seemed you were playing the sun, effortlessly inviting the entire room to revolve around you. And I, a comet from far abroad, was caught. I fell down your gravity well and now I’m drowning, spiralling closer to your surface.

But perhaps I’ll never reach you. Even if you are no more than who you claim to be, you are hailed as the most influential poetess of all time, the most groundbreaking playwright ever known, and I, a fourth-rate bumbler with a chip on my shoulder, from a fallen race. How can I hope to meet with you? How can I hope to compete?

Please, though, dearest Zeecy, please, from the bottom of this gravity well you’ve plunged me in, I beg of you, cease this silence. I will believe whatever you want to present me, I will address you how you wish to be addressed, and without question. But please, do not let my heavy heart stand in the way of our friendship and our correspondence. It has meant the world to me and I cannot but think it’s meant something to you. Therefore, please, milady, please, my Empress of Muses, speak to me. Lend me a place in orbit around your heart, and I will be

Eternally Yours,

Lornian Lothcar

It’s kind of weird. When you first meet him and people tell you he’s the hottest guy on campus, you’re, like, “for real? That guy? You look at the way he dresses in those baggy pants, how he walks all kind of bowlegged and slouched down, he’s kind of funny-looking, like his face was baked a little too long after molding and got cracked.

But seriously, once you get to know him, there’s this, like, bizarre animal magnetism that he, like, exudes or something.

I first met him when he started dating my roommate. I woke up from my nap–I take naps in the middle of the day a lot, don’t judge me I’m in college–and they were fooling around on the top bunk, so I told them to shut up and so, they were surprised, because, like, I guess they hadn’t noticed I was there?

Anyway, so he peeks his sub-human-looking face down with a grin like a chimp whose poo just hit the mark and then does this acrobatic somersault off the bed, before exiting the room in a hurry to let Olivia apologize to me (Olivia’s my roommate).

So, like, on the way watching him I noticed how hairy his chest was, because I, like, love hairy chests a lot more than I probably should, but what I didn’t really notice at the time until Olivia started complaining about it was the fact he was wearing pants.

Turns out, he sleeps with all these girls, right? But he never takes off his pants. Or shoes.

Which wouldn’t really bother me, because, like, whatever, I never take off my shirts ‘cause my boobs are all, whatever, but Olivia has this thing about, like, skin, so she was all disappointed and kept whining about it.

Anyway, so that was my first exposure to this boy, but it was not the last. Like I said, I like my chests hairy (well, not mine, of course) and everyone–everyone–kept talking about how epic he is in the sack, so I thought, hey, why not? Get to know him a little.

So yeah, so I fell in love and, like, whatever. You know this story. You really like him, so you don’t want to sleep with him, because then he has all the power? And it worked, of course, ‘cause, like, he’s a guy, hello! Putty in my hands. But then, like, once we’re together, I start thinking, like…

Well, OK, it’s like this–the whole breasts thing? He’s a breast man and, like, I’ve always been, like, you know. But he kept, like, saying all the right things, making all the right noises, and so, in the end, I got over it.

That was when the pants thing started bothering me. “That’s different,” he kept saying. And it wasn’t just the pants, it was his shoes, too, he wouldn’t take his shoes off, he’d just dangle them over the bed. “That’s different,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with your boobs.”

“So what’s wrong with your legs? Are they, like, robotic? Are they covered in, like, scars? ‘Cause that’s actually kinda hot.” But, like, he didn’t even like me touching his ass, and it was freaking me out.

So finally, he’s like, “Do you really wanna know?”

And I’m, like, “Yeah, asshole, I really want to fucking know what my boyfriend looks like with no pants on!”

Yeah, that might have been a mistake. I mean, sure, yeah, it’s better knowing, but…

So he starts pulling his pants down and his legs are, like, really hairy and I remember thinking, like, having a flash of, like, oh my God, is he a dog? So he gets them all the way down and finally, he takes off his shoes.

OK, so you know when you’re looking at a naked foot how you know that it’s a naked foot you’re looking at? Well… not with him.

His foot, I swear to God, has an opposable fucking thumb on it. Like, not completely, but, like, he could grab onto stuff, that was long enough.

And I’m, like, going, holy shit, no wonder he’s embarrassed, he’s, like, deformed or something.

And then I felt something long and hairy crawling up my back and I saw that it was coming from, like, under his ass, where he was sitting. And it tapped me on the shoulder and, like, rubbed me a little there–rubbed me so totally the wrong way.

Not that there’s a right way for your boyfriend’s tail–actual tail!–to rub you.

Well, I mean, honestly, what would you do? What would you do if you found out you’d been fucking a monkey?

I ran. I ran clear out the room, into the hall, running down the stairs. Running for my life, right? Running for my sanity! Who is this guy? What is this guy? Is he even a guy? He’s a Monkey! OH MY GOD I’M DATING A FUCKING MONKEY!

And then down two of the three flights of stairs, I hear him calling after me, and then hear a weird whooshing and clanging. He’s not running down the stairs, he’s not even leaping over every flight, he is actually using his hands–the ones on his arms and the ones on his *shudder* feet–to swing and flip from one railing to the other, just skipping right over the stairs part.

So I get to the door and he’s caught up to me–’cause not all of us can fucking brachiate–and just as I’m reaching for the door, that creepy fucking tail comes out of nowhere and slams it back shut and then he’s dangling from the pipes on the ceiling by his arms and his feet–those feet! The ones with the thumbs!–are on my face, covering my mouth.

“Shh! Shhh!” he tells me, “Shhhh!”

And fuck if I don’t calm right down when he says it. It’s those cute fucking puppy-dog eyes. It’s that beautiful hairy chest, that charm, and… I don’t know, it’s like I just know this… guy. This boy. My boyfriend.

“Shhhh,” he says. “It’s me,” he says. “It’s still me.”

And fuck if I don’t believe him. And fuck if I don’t fall right back in love with him.

Fucking monkey.

I wrote this to send to a magazine where they give you the first line of a story and you have to tell the rest. I thought this was intriguing, so I tried it out. It didn’t go anywhere, but my parents liked it and it gave me a cool character to work with.  So here he is.

Working for God is never easy. You’d think that people like me would have it easier, you know, being able to talk to the guy, but it turns out, the whole “God works in mysterious ways” thing, that’s really just code for “God likes to fuck with you, no matter how close to him you are.”

Most Prophets have “Hallelujah” as God’s own personal ringtone on their cell-phones. Not the one from Händel’s Messiah, though, no, most of them have that other one by Leonard Cohen, which it turns out is actually about some guy finally getting to sleep with his girlfriend or something. When I heard that, I thought that just wasn’t the right song for God. So now, anytime I hear “Baby Got Back” playing full volume at the back of my head, I know that the biggest butt in the Universe is dialing up every cell in my body trying to talk to me.

“What’s up, big guy?”

“You watching the game?” asks God.

“No,” I lie. “I was just uh… reading the Bible.”

“Put that shit down. It’s antiquated. Haven’t I told you about the new edition coming out? That old crap doesn’t include anything about not wearing white after Labor Day.”

“Sorry, big guy.”

“Anyway, I got a job for you.”

“Oh?”

“You’re gonna love it.”

“Uh-oh.” Didn’t like the sound of that.

“I need you to go to the old abandoned school on Patton.”

“And?”

“You’ll know what to do.”

I should’ve known better than to question.

“What?” says God. “You’re just gonna leave it at that?”

“That’s usually all I get.”

“I’ll give you a hint: playdate.”

I did not like the sound of that, either.

But I went over to the abandoned schoolyard because, hey, what are you gonna do, right? God blitzes you over the Psychic Weave and tells you to jump, you jump. Hell, that’s what the Weave was built for, to get us closer to God. Right?

What the hell am I doing in this abandoned school-ground?

I was expecting to see, like, oh, I don’t know, broken-down swings and slides and jungle-gyms. Turns out this used to be a high school. I never knew that. Hell, place has been shut down long as I can remember, right?

It’s got everything, though. It’s got classrooms, it’s got a cafeteria, a gym.

It’s got a football field.

You’d be surprised the creepy shit you could find at a football field late at night, especially one that’s been abandoned for upwards of thirty years. And especially if you go looking for it under the stands. It’s not just the used condoms your parents very well could have used, or the bums who break in there. You look around long enough, there are cigarette butts, candy wrappers, dead hookers, robot parts, you wouldn’t believe. Not to mention little bits of shoelace.

Little bits of shoelace. There’s this thing that happens to you when you’re on a mission from God: see, some people pick up a shoelace and go “hey, why the fuck am I holding a lousy little piece of shoelace? Ew.” Whereas I, in my Prophetic capacity, look at what essentially is a useless piece of glorified string between my fingers and suddenly I know that what I’m looking for is that way. That’s right, it’s that way, behind the half-a-tricycle, hiding over in those shadows over there, which I cleverly realize means it has to be really small, so it’s probably a kid.

I don’t like games. You’ll learn this about me. “All right,” I say. “Show’s over. Mission from God. Come out and assume the position.” But instead of falling to her knees and supplicating and repenting like a good little kid, this kid starts to speak from the shadows.

“And on the third day,” says the kid, “the oceans shall rise up against the whale. The meek shall once again inherit the Earth. And a little child shall lead them.”

Talk about mixing up Biblical verses. “What are you, kidding me?”

Something starts to stir. And from the way all the other shadows are moving, I can tell they’re scared of what that little girl can do. Kid says: “Your shadow at morning striding behind you or your shadow at evening rising to meet you.”

I say: “Come on, kid, let’s go.”

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

And that’s when I figure out why papa bear sent me. Suddenly, every cigarette butt and half-digested teddy bear lifts up off the ground and starts coming after me. No child is capable of wielding telekinesis strong enough for something like that. Hell, kid that small shouldn’t be able to lift it at all. I couldn’t even lift all that and I’ve been studying this stuff since I was ten. What I could do, though, once it’s coming at me, is deflect it all away.

And that, in case you were wondering, is my own and not a gift from God. At least not in the sense that he was helping me cheat.

But now I knew for sure what was going on. See, half-remembered Bible verses and broken TS Eliot is all good and well, but shit flying at your head can mean only one thing: a Rogue Angel. The Psychic Weave equivalent of an Internet virus had hacked its way into this girl’s mind and now it was using her to manipulate reality. Great. This was just what I needed on my day off. Way to go, God.

There are certain words you can use, most of them are, like, Hebrew sounding, that can make things behave the way they’re supposed to. Well, I use one of them and, sure enough, everything drops to the ground. And the girl starts crying.

“Finita la commedia,” I said. Which I knew was either the Italian for “the comedy is over” or a really funny-looking Mexican dish. I finally have the sense to take out my flashlight and shine it in her face. She’s all huddled up in the corner right where she was supposed to be and looks as though she was dressed for church on Sunday, but of course it’s Thursday now under an abandoned football stadium so she’s looking pretty grim. And there’s also the little matter of her being still possessed by a demon.

All right, I’ll bite, I say to myself. “Hey, there,” I say, in my softest little voice for talking to little girls. (I don’t like kids. You’ll learn this about me.) “Hey, don’t cry, little girl. Everything’s gonna be OK.” OK, I’m starting to creep myself out.

I inch my way over to her, pretending, of course, that I’m being real careful for her feelings because I don’t want her freaking out when really, I’m just waiting for that thing inside her to come out and play. “You don’t have to be scared, little girl. Come to daddy—“ Yes, that is in fact what I said. I don’t like kids. I’m not used to them. “Come on now, that’s it, come on, you can do it, just look at me—“

And about six inches from my fingertips, the beast comes alive, glowing out of her eyes, and starts biting. Fortunately, I was ready and I hit her with the Psychic Disruptor in my other hand before she could do anything else. Psychic Disruptor, by the way, is a kind of low-level taser that makes the brain forget to go online for just long enough that things like this get confused and can’t find them for a bit. What makes the PD so attractive to Exorcists, though, is the fact that it’s shaped kind of like a cross. I know that’s what I like about it.

The girl’s eyes get just a little bit dimmer and start to get really confused. She says something in a language I don’t recognize, which is weird, because most languages that are spoken anywhere on the planet should be on the Weave. I hate it when the tech’s not up-to-date. Anyway, she looks really confused and helpless and, shit, I don’t know, like a kid? Like a kid who’s scared? So I do what you’re supposed to do, you know, I take her in my arms and try my best to shush her even though I really don’t like hugging, that’s something you’ll learn about me.

So then bitch tries to bite my ear off.

Serves me right for trying to buddy-up to some post-possessed brat under an abandoned football stadium. What was I thinking?

“He will rise!” she started screeching. “The time has come! He will rise and bring about the reckoning at last!”

“Oh, could you be any more cheesy?”

I’ve had it up to here with this Demonic idiocy. I wrench her off my chest, put my hands either side of her head, stare deep into her eyes and dive right in.

What generally happens then is that you end up in an empty room together with the person who’s possessed and the demon who’s holding them captive. Possessee, last time I did this, was strapped to a chair in the middle of the room and the Possessor was made to look like his third grade teacher.

That’s not the case right now. The inside of this girl’s head is a cathedral.

The demon in question stands at the altar, and see here’s where things start to get surreal, because this particular demon looks like an angel.

Something is seriously wrong with this girl.

So the angel, thinking he’s important just because he’s the center of attention and all standing on the altar and all that, starts preaching, starts saying that same “on the third day” crap he had the little girl saying earlier.

“Yeah, yeah, save it,” I tell him, and draw out my fiery sword. No, it’s not that I’m particularly special. Really, anyone can have a fiery sword if they’re inside a little girl’s head. Especially if they’re there to save her.

Which reminds me. Uh. Where, exactly, is that little girl?

“Hey, ugly,” I call out to the most beautiful creature in the room. “Where’s the brat? What’d you do to her?”

Instead of an answer, smoke starts to come out of the angel’s mouth.

“Is that a fact?” I said. “Well, maybe I should just go in and get her.” See, because there’s fairy tale weird and then there’s inside a little kid’s head weird.

I leap through the air at the altar, double somersaulting, flaming sword in hand, and slash at the demon, but he, being what he is, flies up into the air.

Oh, that’s how you’re playing it, is it? Well, all right then. So I sprout some wings of my own, bitch, that’s right, come and get it.

Flaming arrows? Piece of cake. The doves of peace I happen to have in my back pocket will swallow them whole. Cannons? Bazookas? I’ll ride in on a heat seeking missile and take them out. “There’s nothing you have that I haven’t seen,” I explain to the Angel/Demon. “Anything you do, you do with God’s permission and I’m His guy. You got that?”

We’re in the dome, now. Every Cathedral has a dome—why is that? Demon-boy perches himself on the inside of the curve and casually turns himself into a Dragon.

A Dragon? Seriously? I turn myself into St. Michael. What he’s gained in size, he’s lost in dexterity, so I ride in under his belly and put my flaming sword to work carving up a way for the little girl to get out. Dragon screams, I keep cutting. Dragon rubs his belly, my wings get in the way. Dragon tries to clutch at my wings, electric shocks push him back.

And I’m into the stomach and, what the crap, there’s a whole other Cathedral.

Well, you know what they say: when life gives you lemons, you suck it up and eat them. I dive right in and I guess now I’m in the Demon’s head? And there’s the little girl, sleeping on the altar.

Except this girl’s not that little. She’s gotta be about, what, eighteen? I’m gonna go with seventeen just to be on the safe side, how about that? And she’s hot. At least in the sense that flames have suddenly sprouted out, either side of the coffin. (As well they should around seventeen-year-old girls trapped in ten-year-old bodies.) The girl opens her eyes and looks around her, starts screaming for help, sees me.

I reach for my handy-dandy fire extinguisher.

Why is this not working anymore?

And where are my wings?

Oh, well, I tell myself. Guess I’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way.

Still clutching my sword, I cut the chord of a banister like a saw in an old swashbuckler movie about Pirates or something and come swinging in, only to end up with my feet on the edge of the altar and my ass on the fire. Shit.

“Kid!” I yell over the flames, “Hey, kid, grab onto me, will you?” I’ll give her this, kid ain’t stupid. She grabs on and I let go of the altar and swing back. We land right on top of the pews and go tumbling.

I start to straighten myself out. “You mind telling me,” I say, since it’s the most important thing that comes to mind, “why you look so much older in here?”

She doesn’t answer. Probably because we’re interrupted by a full swat team, all of them with their guns trained on us. This just went from weird to worse. And me stuck here without the ability to shape-change or anything. Why’d this girl have to be so damn complicated?

The whole swat team all folds together into the same body and turns into the original angel. He, still not understanding that he’s not impressing anyone, says “There are none can stop the reckoning.”

For a moment, I just look at him. Then I look down at the sword I’ve still got in my hand. I’m so sick of this idiot, I just bury the sword in his chest. End of story.

Kid keeps looking at me. “You see,” I explain to her, “Just gotta show these demons who’s boss.”

We come out of it back under the stadium. Thank God that kid’s herself again.

Then it hits me: now I’m stuck with this kid.

I knew working for God couldn’t be that easy.

“Welcome back,” I say casually. She looks around. I suddenly remember she was speaking some gibberish earlier, might not actually understand me. So I put my hand to my mouth, hoping she’ll get the message that I want to know if she’d like a bite to eat. She’s still too out of it, though. Can’t say I blame her. Even for a demon, that was a tricky one.

I find myself wondering, as I’m leading her out of the school, what exactly makes her put a Cathedral on the inside of her head. I wonder what makes her so important to God that he sent me to get her. But most importantly, I try to figure out what the hell God meant when he told me this was a “playdate”? Kids aren’t any fun.