A Short Story a Day

by David Michael

“The betrayer betrayed,” Paul Campbell said, his voice flat. “And the betrayer spared.”

The Old Man nodded. He whistled through the gap between his human and infernal teeth and tapped the polished obsidian surface of his desk with the claws of his left hand as he flipped back and forth between Sumerian pictographs and English language translation with his right hand.

The pictographs were enlarged from a photograph of the tablets that rested in bulletproof, hermetically sealed display cases in a corner of his desk. Ancient Sumerian had no living, native speakers. That had become less of a problem once the Old Man utilized the unique opportunities presented by Hell on Earth and found a workaround for “living”. In the other corner of his desk rested the pen-and-inkwell set he had forged from the soul of one of the Sumerian scholars who helped him with the translation.

The tuneless whistling and the no-beat, random as possible tapping annoyed Campbell, he knew, which was why he did it. Campbell, his chief of staff, stood on the other side of the desk, looking at him, face impassive except for a tic under his left eye that would spasm when the trill and tapping hit a particularly grating harmony or cadence. Musicians were easy to torture.

The Old Man let out a long breath, stopped both whistling and tapping and pulled the tablet cases over next to the transcripts so that he could look at all three versions, original, photo, and translation, at the same time.

Campbell leaned forward to look as well, but since his shoulders were level with the top of the desk, which had been built to accommodate the Old Man, the Old Man doubted he could see much.

“Summoned,” the Old Man said, pointing to the first pictograph. “By burning the blood.” His finger traced the pictographs as he repeated their translations. “Of the betrayer betrayed.” The pictograph for this was the one that had caused him the most trouble–and the most torment for the souls of the long dead Sumerians he had been able to dig up and put to work. The pictograph showed two men, reflected as if in a mirror, one stabbing the other in the back. But in the reflection, the positions of the men were reversed.

He moved his finger to the next line on the tablet. “Speaking,” he continued. “Its true name. It must attend.” He stopped and looked at Campbell. “So that is one. The betrayer betrayed.”

Campbell nodded.

He looked back at the tablet. “Bound. To this world. By dowsing the flames. Of blood. With the blood. Of the betrayer spared.” Once the “betrayer betrayed” pictograph had been interpreted properly, this one had been easier. Though still painful. Because pain improved everything in the Old Man’s view. This pictograph showed another pair of men, one backstabbing the other like before, but the reflection was different. Now the man being backstabbed held the dagger pointing down, not killing the betrayer. “And that’s the second. The betrayer spared.”

“Why spared?” Campbell asked.

“An escape clause,” the Old Man said, repeating what he had learned just the week before in a special trip into the Pit. Campbell raised an eyebrow, but the Old Man ignored the implied question. “And that is why it had to be both of them, from beginning to end. They were almost made to order.”

A buzzer sounded and the Old Man flipped the switch. “What?” he asked.

“Mr. Berrydigger on the line, sir,” said the voice of his secretary. “From Rent-a-Rotter. He wants to know if it’s OK if some of the zombies he provides you with include … well … former employees. He says he collected some useable bodies from the botched–I mean, from that incident last week.”

“That will be fine,” the Old Man said. “But tell him that the … former employees … are at discount.”

“I will do that, sir. He told me to tell you that he didn’t want to surprise you with those, so he called–”

“Yes. That will be fine.” He switched off the speaker.

“Shall I have someone sent over to talk to him?” Campbell asked.

“Yes. But not right away. Give him a couple days to worry about it.”

Campbell nodded. Then asked, “So which one gets to be the fire?” Campbell asked. “And which one spared?”

The Old Man chuckled and leaned back from the desk, settling his full weight on the padding of the tall seat he had had made at the same time as the desk. His left hand kneaded the cramped muscles of his left leg, enjoying the feel of his own fur on his fingertips, and even the scraping of his claws across his hide. “It is the sparing that poses the most difficult choice,” he said.

Campbell nodded.

The Old Man watched his lieutenant’s face as he said, “Sam is the most the dangerous. But Reese is the most … unpredictable.” Campbell’s expression showed nothing, though, gave away no sign of which the man wanted to give up least. “Either one could be a serious threat.”

“They’re an asset we’re going to miss,” Campbell said.

The Old Man admired the way Campbell didn’t disagree, even when he disagreed.

“They did betray us, Paul Campbell.”

That elicited a response from Campbell, the Old Man saw, and smiled. The tic under Campbell’s eye spasmed, and the muscles of his jaw clenched as he refused to disagree, as he chose not to remind the Old Man that Sam and Reese had been setup to betray them. By the Old Man himself.

The Old Man continued to smile, letting Campbell stew, and thought again about the night Sam and Reese came to kill him. He had thought about that night often the past months, beginning when at last he fully understood the Rite of Summoning the Beast Without Form.

Looking back over the four years the two women had worked for him, and how those years overlapped the  period he had been collecting ancient artifacts and ancient souls to interpret them for him, it was as if Sam and Reese, exactly those two in all of Hell on Earth–maybe even the entire world–had been sent to him for exactly this purpose. He no longer wondered how they had been able to endure, a feat that still amazed him and aroused him. Betrayed even then, like a karmic clue of what was in store for them now, it could only have been their destiny to endure.

Sam, bristling with envenomed knives and a specially made sword–both venom and sword guaranteed to kill devils–and Reese, carrying enough firepower–including concussion grenades which atomized a virulent acid–to topple at least one of the rings of Hell had stormed the Old Man’s offices at the Smoking Pit Club, killing patrons and staff both. Between them, with their mix of chaos and planning, stealth and outright  attack, managed to do what no one had been able to do since the Old Man had made his Bargain and been Fused.

He had known they were coming, tipped off by a mole in the organization of the rival that hired Sam and Reese to kill him, and been prepared for them, but they had cut him and burned him. They had nearly killed him. The scars had healed, but the memory of the pain they had caused him had not abated.

The Old Man wasn’t one to forget pain. Or to let it go unanswered.

Though his wounds had screamed with the effort, he stripped them himself, one at a time, barely controlling himself, almost killing them prematurely. Then he broke and crushed and smashed their weapons in front of them. Finally, because they had impressed him, he offered them a choice. The sort of choice he loved to offer.

His erection huge and hard in anticipation, he looked down at the two women. And he saw that they held hands.

“I will have you both,” he said. “Each while the other watches,” he added, looking at their clasped hands.

Like Campbell now, the women had looked back at him with blank faces, stoic, unimpressed. A challenge. He liked a challenge.

“If you enjoy that kind of pain,” he went on, “and I assure you there will be pain. Then I will add you to my private harem until you die of my pleasure. If you acknowledge the pain, though, even so much as whimper, I will enjoy you one last way when I have finished. I will sew closed every orifice on your body, beginning with your vagina, ending with your eyes. And then I, and whoever was … lucky? … enough to go second, will watch you die of asphyxiation as you claw at your mouth and nose and try to rip out your own throat just for one last breath of air. I will content myself with watching the second one die alone.”

He paused, stroking himself, absorbing the panic that came from the younger one–Reese–visible only in the way her hand clenched the other’s, in the whiteness that showed on the knuckles. Her eyes, bright green, remained unfocused, though, looking at the wall behind him, not acknowledging him.

He continued. “But if you accept what is happening as inevitable, as the way it has to be, with neither moan nor whimper nor scream, then you will be mine. I will protect you and you will protect me. You will work for me.”

He waited, still stroking himself, hoping they would give in to their fear. But they continued to impress him. And arouse him. The pain of his erection was delicious. He licked his lips as he watched them suppress their fear and rage and hatred, compact it into something almost tangible, something he could almost taste.

After a long minute, the older one–Sam–met his eye. “Me first,” she said.

Reese started to protest, but stopped with a look from Sam. No sign of emotion showed on either of their faces, but the Old Man sensed something pass between them, through their eyes and through the clasped fingers.

Sam disengaged her fingers from Reese and stood up. “Show me what you got, big boy.”

The Old Man smiled, still remembering, feeling the arousal even four years later. Both of them had, one after the other, bent over in front of him and, with only one sharp gasp by Reese when he entered her that he decided not to count, had accepted their fates.

The fates that had led them here. To him.

The Old Man looked across his desk at Paul Campbell. The man, the former musician who had discovered too late that some contracts can never be burned up or canceled, still stood there, but the tenseness in his jaw line had been relieved. The tic under his eye had smoothed out.

Smiling, the Old Man resumed his tapping on the desk top, the claws of his left hand scritch-scratch-tapping erratically.

Sam and Reese, partners in killing, partners in rape, partners in betrayal. At the precise time he needed two people to betray him.

And so he had set them up to betray him. So that, one more time, he could betray them.

“We gave them protection,” he said aloud to Campbell, the cadence of his voice deliberately out of sync with his fingers. “Respect. And look how they repaid us. By stabbing us in the back.”

He watched the waves of indignation crash through Campbell’s face, but the man didn’t crack. Like Sam and Reese, Campbell had learned to accept what he could not prevent.

The Old Man loved Paul Campbell, just like he loved his two girls Sam and Reese. And he enjoyed showing what that meant.

Copyright © 2006 by David Michael.