Back to School

Monica IRL

by Monica Marier

There’s nothing quite so jarring to a child as being brutally torn from the warm comforting womb of kindergarten to be dumped in the grey antiseptic hell that is First Grade. I remember walking into the classroom and noting how grey everything was. Of course, things were always grey in 1987 Warsaw , the coal dust clouds in the air turned everything in the city into shades of mud and charcoal, but this room really was grey and I longed for my Kindergarten classroom. The cheerless walls full of rules for spelling and math replaced the happy pictures of teddies and children playing. The cold grey linoleum replaced the soft, if somewhat stained, red carpet. Instead of group tables that I shared with the classmates I loved, there were only grey metal desks of solitude.

I shivered in my Kangaroo high-tops as I entered. There was no love, no mercy, no escape. A thin brisk woman ushered us into the class. Her lips were pinched and pruney, and they did not smile at us. She patted her cropped wiry hair which stood up on her head like a sergeant’s beret.

“Welcome back to school, first graders. I am your teacher. My name is Mrs. Virginia Fünke.”

I’m not kidding. That was her name.

Even as a kid I knew this was an absurd name, and under other circumstances I would have laughed a good hour over it. But there was no titter of giggles, no one even cracked a smile. We were as sober and scared as if she had just said, “I am Satan, Prince of Darkness.”

“And this is our class aide, Mr. Lowe,” she continued gesturing to the back of the room.

The ground shook as suddenly from the dark recesses of the classroom came a cyclopean nightmare. A six foot seven giant of a man made of solid muscle. His beefy face was red, his lips screwed into a frown.  He glared at us through tinted glasses in aviator frames as the fluorescent lights glinted on his sparsely-covered head.

“HULLO,” he barked in a deep Australian accent. “I'M MISTER LOWE.”

Those of us with dry pants gazed up in abject terror. He seemed to sense this for his frown deepened and he said no more. Mrs. Fünke called the role but most of us had forgotten our names by now and had to be asked twice.

“Now look at the worksheet on your desk,” Mrs. Fünke said in her clipped tones.

We looked down at a black and white Xerox. It was supposed to be a jolly picture of a circus train, each train containing happy animals or something. The joy was sucked out, however, by the dingy light filtering through the barred windows.

“Fill in the train cars with the alphabet,” said Mrs. Fünke, and we scrambled for our pencil boxes, frantic to obey her.

“… in pen,” she added.

The world stopped dead.

In pen? Was she serious? Pen was—well it was indelible! Pen was an accident waiting to happen. Most of us, at this point had never even been allowed to wield one let alone do school work with one.

With shaking fingers I pulled out my standard issue ballpoint pen and pulled the cap off. The unfamiliar smell of cheap ink turned my stomach as my chubby fingers gripped the implement. Slowly, with the care of a jeweler cutting a priceless diamond, I dug the pen into the paper. I could feel Mr. Lowe staring at me, and knew instinctively (quite accurately I might add) that he was waiting for an excuse to pounce. After I completed an uppercase and lowercase “Aa” I allowed myself to breathe.

The “Bb” and the “Cc” came easier and by the “Ff” I’d hit my stride. I was beginning to ignore the cold sweat on my neck and the piercing eyes of Mr. Lowe as they glinted behind his dark glasses, watching our every movement. I had just finished the “Zz” when I realized with a horrible shudder that something was wrong. There was an extra box at the end. Feeling feverish I searched the worksheet and discovered to my horror that I had completely skipped the letter “M.” How did I miss “M”? It was the first letter of my name, for God’s sake! But there it was,” Ll…Nn…Oo,” permanently scribed in noxious blue ink. I saw a shadow loom over my desk and I my insides froze. Fearing it was the titanic Mr. Lowe, I hunched up, trying to make myself small and unappetizing.

“How are we getting on?” came Mrs. Fünke’s low voice over my head. I felt only a little relieved. I looked up into her gimlet stare and knew I was dead woman.

“I umsle bumble num,” I stammered in a barely perceptible voice.

“What was that?” she asked coldly.

“I made a mistake, see?” I confessed, showing her the extra box and the missing “M”.

“I see,” said Mrs. Fünke eyeing my childish scrawls critically. “I guess you’ll just have to do it again.”

She then placed a new blank sheet on my desk and I felt her words burn me.

DO. IT. AGAIN.

I felt tears rising in my eyes and knew there was no holding them back. My lip trembled and my nose ran as my face prickled and stung. Then the damn broke. Wet hot tears rolled down my face, contorted with the effort of not making a sound, and splashed onto the virgin paper. Despite my efforts, little whimpers escaped my lips, alerting my classmates to my predicament. Most were probably sympathetic, but all I could hear was the whispers of my hated nickname that I earned last year.

Crybaby. Look crybaby is crying. Teacher made crybaby cry.

I went blind at that point, the tears blurring everything around me as I stared fixedly at my desk. The next thing I could hear was Mr. Lowe looming over me and roaring: “STOP CRYIN’! FOR GOD’S SAKE, GIRL! STOP CRYIN’!”

I remember very little of the rest of that day. I only remember that the rest of the year was just as awful and as was the longing I felt for Kind Miss Szewicki and her Kindergarten classroom.

This entire memory flashed into life again as I took my trembling son to meet his first grade teacher. Granted, it wasn’t so bleak as my old classroom; there were toys and paint pots and pictures of Winnie the Pooh. But there were also grey walls and grey floors and solitary grey desks.

My son whimpered next to me. “I don’t like it. It’s scary here.”

“It will be fine. There’s nothing awful about first grade,” I lied.

Campus Spirit

By MONICA MARIER

“You’re a witch?” I asked, goggle-eyed.

Sandy just shrugged and pulled a lock of ash blond hair away from her mouth.

“Yeah,” she said.

It took a while before I could say anything else. One fact kept poking me in the back of the head like a pencil.

“BUT YOU’RE A REPUBLICAN!” I blurted out.

Sandy snorted and rolled her eyes. “So? Doesn’t matter.”

“I thought you couldn’t be both,” I insisted. There was something about Sarah Palin the NRA paired with incense and crystals that didn’t mesh.

“Look, you’re born a witch. It’s not a lifestyle choice like who you vote for or what color socks you wear,” she told me.

I shrugged, but I tried to thoroughly examine my roommate without staring.

It still looked like Sandy Parks: a skinny but rather plain-jane physical therapy major, with horsey teeth and freckles. She still had a drawl after moving here from Norfolk VA —not that it mattered. Her genuine snakeskin boots (that had seen better days) and straw cowboy hat was a dead giveaway.

She told me that she envied my “striking features” and overflowing EE cup, but I didn’t believe it for a second. Who’d want to be a big fat marshmallow when they were a size 2? You can fix bland features with a little makeup (which Sandy never tried to do) but you can’t fix fat.

And then this happened. We were on the floor, eating Milanos (hers) and watching The Last Unicorn (also her movie on her TV) when we suddenly announced she was a witch.

“Alright prove it,” I said, REALLY hoping she wouldn’t.

“’Kay,” she said. She pointed to a box of Pop Tarts (hers) on the shelf and said, “Cthinos h’yel meh taftut.”

 If anyone ELSE had said it without a thick Southern Accent it probably would have sounded really cool.

The box flopped over and remained on its side.

“Pshh. Is that it?” I asked.

“Just wait,” she said and my eyes returned to the box. A rustling sound indicated that something was happening to one of the shiny foil packages. I stared as the rustling got louder and louder until—

“HIT THE DECK!” shouted Sandy suddenly.

 Sandy and I ate the carpet as two shapes went whizzing overhead. There was a dull thudding sound as the room shook and I tentatively got up.

“Sorry,” said Sandy looking abashed. She rose and straightened her denim skirt. “I lost control a little.”

“A LITTLE?” I asked looking at the white cold walls.

Sticking out of the cinderblocks, like ninja throwing stars, were two perfectly toasted s’mores-flavored Pop Tarts.  I gingerly pulled one out of the wall, after it was cool enough to touch. The icing was now a caramelized brulee, but otherwise intact. How it managed to fly into the rock-hard wall without crumbling and showering us with molten sugar was beyond me. Gingerly I bit off a corner that wasn’t covered in plaster. It tasted fine.

“Cool,” I said warily. “So what else can you do, other than fire ballistic pastries?” I asked.

She winced at my comment and I felt ashamed of myself.

“Sorry. I can’t turn the snark off sometimes,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, I know,” she said shaking her head indulgently.  “Well, there’s a reason I told you I’m a witch, now that you ask me.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” I asked.

“I need your help with something.”

“Like what?” I asked, uncertainly. I was worried this was going to get uncomfortable and fast.

“I need you to help me get to a book,” she said.

Oh, thank GOD. She doesn’t want me to do something dumb with colored candles and silver knives, I thought.

“What kind of book. Is it expensive?” I asked.

“It’s priceless,” she said nodding. “It’s kept under lock and key at the library and only certain majors can get access to it.”

I nodded. There were a few of those. Our University was one of the oldest in America, which was really one of our only claims to fame these days apart from a champion ping-pong team.

“So where do I come in?” I asked.

“Well you’re a history major, minoring in archaic lore, right?”

“Yeah…” I said, growing nervous again.

“The book I need to get access to is the Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred. I think MU has a copy of it in the Library.”

“Oh,” I said my stomach sinking. Maybe colored candles wouldn’t have been so bad. “Well, see, that’s going to be tricky. They kind of don’t let any students see that book anymore.”

“But they used to!” she cried.

“Yeah, but every time they did someone went bonkers! I think they were theorizing that the book had lead ink or fungoid spores in it — something that was making people go nuts. It’s sealed up in storage now.”

“Shit,” Sandy cursed a rare thing in itself. “Now what.”

“Well, they sell the English version in the campus bookstore,” I said.

Sandy looked up. “That might work,” she said, her eyes hopeful. “We can try anyway.”

“Well, okay. Let’s go — I could use a latte. What do you want it for any way?”

“Well you know how kids have been attacked on campus at night?” she said slowly.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I think the book might give me some clue as to how to stop it.”

I stopped dead as I strung the two factors together. Kids were getting attacked on Miskatonic campus behind the science buildings and Sandy wanted access to occult literature.

“What… are you saying something …weird is attacking students?”

“Rosemary West, what do you know about the reanimated?” Sandy asked me.

CHICKEN SH*TFACED PART 2 of 2

By Monica Marier

This is the conclusion of last week’s story, which can be found  HERE

A special thanks goes to PJ Kaiser for helping me post this on her blog today in a time of techno-drama.

The night was in full swing when the two men trod shivering through the black soup of darkness. The lantern swung erratically in large arcs casting ghostly fairy lights and demonic shadows across gnarled trees. He and Vilori had followed the tracks as they led with distinct purpose to apple orchard that marked the edge of Uncle Red’s farm.

“Think the chickens got peckish and decided to have a late tea of apples?”

“Chickens don’t eat apples, Vilori,” said Harcourt. A thought suddenly occurred to him. “But I hope for our sakes they’re trying.”

“Why’s that?”

“Cause if they haven’t stopped at the orchard, and they’re headed due South… that means that they went into The Terrible Woods.”

“Which terrible woods would that be?” asked Vilori.

“That one! The Terrible Woods! Capital ‘T’—The Terrible Woods.”

“Is that really its name? How unimaginative!” cried Vilori in disgust.

“Yes. It was named by a town of very unimaginative people… WHO KEPT DYIN’ in the woods,” hissed Harcourt.

“What, is it Haunted? Do the ghosts come out at night?” asked Vilori with a snort.

“Ghost nothing! It’s full of dense bracken, sudden drops, peat bogs, wolves, bears, griffons, and dragons, AND poisonous spiders.”

Vilori stopped dead.

“How big are the poisonous spiders?” he asked in a hollow voice.

“They’re poisonous! Does it really matter how big they are?” replied Harcourt.

Vilori nodded. “I concede your point.”

They walked a few more yards in silence, following the razor straight lines of chicken feet and trying not to think of spiders. 

“Oh bugger,” sighed Harcourt. The lantern light bounced in his hand, but Vilori plainly saw the chicken tracks leave the soft earth of the orchard and trail into the tall grass bordering it. The grass had been trodden and bent in a tiny thin path no wider than an arm’s length. It led with mathematical precision to the forest. Vilori snatched up the lantern to examine the tracks.

“Well it looks like this wasn’t done by any man, Har,” said Vilori agog. “There’s no signs in the grass that anything bigger than a chicken has gone through here.

“Which means what?”

“Um… the chickens are in on it?” supplied Vilori uncertainly.

“What, like they’re?” asked Harcourt in disgust.

“Well, I don’t know!” mobilzin’ cried Vilori, waving his free arm in exasperation. “What other explanation have we got?

“A spell?” asked Harcourt.

“….yessss,” nodded Vilori nodding his head. “I’ve never heard of chicken magic before.”

“I have,” said Harcourt seriously. “I heard of men in the hot islands that puts paint on their faces and dances around fires and sacrifices chickens. ‘Hoo-doo’ they calls is. Barbaric,” he added.

Vilori sniffed in similar suspicion. “Ah, well that’s foreigners for you. Sacrificin’ all manner of things. As if pidgeons and goats and virgins aren’t good enough.”

“Goats was good enough for me granddad.”

“Indeed. So you think it’s some foreign hoo-doo thingummy stealing chickens with magic?”

Harcourt scratched his sandy chin. “Dunno. It’s better than your idea of mobilizin’ chickens.”

“Yeah, that was stupid, sorry,” sighed Vilori, flushing red.

“S’alright. I know it’s just ‘cause you’re pissed.”

“And how,” mumbled Vilori stifling a belch. “Well, into The Terrible Woods then,” he said tramping through the tall grass for the tree-line.

“You coming?” he asked when he noticed Harcourt lingering behing.

Harcourt nodded. “Yuh. Alright,” he said in a high voice. “Only be careful. The sudden drops in there can break your neck... and the spiders…”

“What do the spiders look like?” asked Vilori warily.

“They look like leaves.”

“Grand.”

***

“Is that a spider?”

“No.”

“Is that a spider?”

“No.”

“Is that a spider?”

“Would you give over already, Vilori!” Harcourt said through clenched teeth. He was trying to keep his voice down, but with Vilori buzzing around him like a gnat it was hard.

“Is that a —”

“SHH!” Harcourt waved at Vilori to shut up. “DO you hear something?”

The men strained their ears for the slightest sound when they both heard it. It was a warbling susurration, like the sound of hundreds of tiny voices having hushed conversations.

“What is that?” asked Vilori.

“It’s chickens! Must be hundreds of em,” said Harcourt advancing slowly. Vilori observed sweat trickling off his friend’s brow in the growing light. “There’s a light up ahead,” he said.

 “Someone’s got a fire lit, I reckon.”

“You were right! There’s Hoo-dooing and dancing afoot, no doubt!” hissed Vilori.

“Well the chicken noise is coming from there, so we’ll see.”

“Good. I’m ready to finish up and get to bed,” yawned Vilori. The night was getting colder and a thick mist was starting to rise from the forest floor, undulating in ghostly shapes in front of the lantern. They grew closer to the fire, and unsheathed their swords. Swords could only do so much in the face of magic, but they could generally sever a head from a neck, which was sometimes enough.

Cautiously, they peered over a bramble thicket to see what they were dealing with.

Both men dropped their swords in shock.

“Is that…?”

“It looks like…”

“Dear GODS.”

A large clearing was occupied entirely by chickens.

There wasn’t the slightest sign of human involvement; only avian. They weren’t milling about in typical chicken fashion, but they were evenly spaced in a circle, five deep around a ring of standing stones. Large fires had been lit in key places around the field casting a weird orange glow on the perfectly still birds. In the middle of the ring was a large flat rock lying lengthwise on the ground.

It was currently empty.

“How do chickens light fires?” wondered Harcourt aloud.

“What is this place?” Vilori managed in a terrified voice.

“It’s the faerie ring! It’s older than…than… really old stuff! It probably predates the word ‘old’,” Harcourt stammered, his face ghostly white.

“The chickens aren’t doing anything! They’re just standing there!” squeaked Vilori.

“No, see. They’re all looking outside the ring on the southwest side…. They’re waiting for something!”

“For what?”

As if in answer a loud roar shook the air and made each man cower with his face in the dirt. It sounded like someone trying to saw a bottle in half with cello string.

Vilori and Harcourt gibbered momentarily before rounding up enough sanity to look at what was approaching. Their swords were still on the forest floor, untouched.

A dark shape sillouetted in the firelight descended on the avian crowd. It walked upright like a bird, but there was something distinctly mammalian about it. It had a snout full of cruel teeth despite its coat of feathers, and its feet were definitely paws. It let loose another shriek, similar to a dog’s howl, but there was no mistaking the consonant and resounding “BWARRRRRK!” that shook the tree tops.

 Harcourt and Vilori were suddenly more sober than a teacher on Monday.

“It’s a cock-a-doodle,” said Harcourt.

“A what?” asked Vilori.

“Part dog-part rooster. Distant relative of the cockatrice.”

“Cor,” said Vilori. “What’s it got there in its paws?”

Squinting in the gloom the men could make out something round and flat with something lumpy on it. It was clutched awkwardly in the cock-a-doodles forepaws as it approached the flat stone in the middle of the ring. The beast then lay the object in the middle of the stone.

“I don’t like this…” said Harcourt, trembling.

“Why what’s he got?” asked Vilori, trying to make heads or tails of the dim shapes.

“That’s the carcass of the chicken we had for tea tonight,” he said.

Now that he knew what he was looking at, Vilori could indeed see a former chicken picked clean with bits of sage still stuck to its insides. It was even on the willow-ware patterned platter Harcourt’s Aunt had served it on and surrounded by wrinkly cold potatoes.

The cock-a-doodle roared again, and the susurration of idle chickens stopped. Silence blanketed the clearing, and even the crackle of the fires seemed to have stopped.

Then the cock-a-doodle began to utter strange sounds in a low monotone drone. After he began the chickens would answer him, all clucking in perfect unison to a strange rhythm.

“BWAARK BWARRK BWARRRK”

“Bok-bok bok-bok b-bok bwaark!”

“BWAARK BWARRK BWARRRK”

“Bok-bok bok-bok b-bok bwaark!”

“It looks like…” began Harcourt, afraid to finish.

“It looks like a ritual,” answered Vilori.

Harcourt and he exchanged glances of pure horror, before watching the birds and their master again, helplessly captivated by their own curiosities and the mounting terror of events.

The standing stones began to glow an unearthly green and the light channeled by the outlandish carvings in the stones fed into the oblong stone table where the sad remains of dinner sat. The boks and bwarrks grew louder, faster, more fervent as the light grew brighter. Vilori felt the hairs on his arm stand up and felt his ears block up as an oppressive cloud of energy grew around them. Just as the chickens were so frenzied that they seemed about to break out of their orderly ranks the last of the light flowed into the now-glowing dead chicken. Silence reined again.

The men held their breaths as they stared at the carcass. If birds could hold their breaths, it was very likely the chickens were doing the same. Only the cock-a-doodle seemed cooly confidant.

Then it happened.

It was subtle, but every eye, beady or otherwise, caught it.

One of the naked wings began to twitch.

Harcourt and Vilori didn’t know how they got back to Uncle Red’s farm. To Vilori it was all a blur, and if Harcourt remembered, he wasn’t saying anything. Uncle Red and Aunt Primula took it with the resigned attitude of “boys will be boys,” assuming it all to be a drunk hallucination and were kind enough to never bring it up again. It didn’t seem there was any harm done anyways, since all the chickens were back in their coops the following morning.

Although… and this was the strange thing…

…It seemed there was one extra bird.

Friday Flash Anthology

Assuming I haven't already missed the deadline for this,
I've been wondering which story to submit for the BEST OF FRIDAY FLASH 2 Anthology. As John W. already posted, authors are CRAP at picking their best stuff so I thought I would narrow it down to 3 stories and let you guys pick. I know you're all busy, so I've stated the premise of each story next to the title if you don't have time to read or re-read it.

Three Finalists:

1. Joe Milgrave and the Devil: Joe summons the Devil (who doesn't REMOTELY look like Burt Reynolds) to beg one favor: Make Mrs. Milgrave agree with him.

2. Mr. Peterson's Tale
A wizened old exterminator tells of his harrowing encounter with "Ol' blinky."

3. Doctor Frankenstein's House of Pancakes The good Doctor F, his promethean construct, Igor and Stephanie are the staff at your not-too-average breakfast joint. "Try the thrcrapple."

Please vote for you favorite by leaving a comment with the number or title of your favorite story. If you've liked a different story that you think deserves submission, feel free to state as such.

I REALLY appreciate you taking the time to read this and vote. SUPER thanks in advance.

Joe Milgrave and the Devil

I always loved those little Faustian Exchange stories and wanted to take a crack at one. I read the name Joe Milgrave in one of my books and the title jumped into my head. I liked the meter.

“Wow. You went through a lot of trouble for this,” said the Devil, straightening up. Joe couldn’t see him very clearly in the dim candlelight. It was the body of a trim muscular (if a little short) man of indeterminate age. Joe watched the man’s head turn from side to side, taking in the slaughtered pig, the pentagram drawn in swine blood, the smelly candles that gave off a choking smoke, and the crowning glory; the ram’s skull.

“Geez, son,” said the figure stepping idly across the circle that was supposed to be keeping him prisoner. “Most people just shout out, ‘hey Devil!’ They don’t turn their barn into a movie set from ‘Carrie’.”

Joe didn’t answer, however, as the Devil’s appearance suddenly rang a bell.
“BURT REYNOLDS?” he gasped.
The Devil only shrugged and looked quizzical, his handsome mustache twitching to one side as his thick brows arched. “You must be the millionth person to say that,” he said. “This Burt Reynolds fellah must be a handsome devil… get it?” he joked. He threw his head back for a high-pitched mirthful laugh that sure as HELL sounded like Burt Reynolds. Joe, being a “Cannonball Run” fan was that much more in awe of him now.

“Okey-dokey, Joe. So what did you drag me here for? Didja want proof I existed? Didja want to do the soul-for-favor exchange, or should we chalk this up to ‘dicking around with shit we don’t understand?” The Devil regarded Joe’s trembling knees, and the fervent look in his eyes. “I’d say it was all three, right Joe?”

“I need you to do something for me,” said Joe nodding.

“And what’s that, son?” said the Devil amiably.

“I want you to make my wife agree with me.”

Joe had never met the Devil or Burt Reynolds before, but got the distinct impression that this imposing man was seldom non-plussed. Yet, here it was, the drooping mustache, the eyes wide open and round as golf-balls.

“Mind running that by me again, Joe?”

“I’ve been married to Lida for twenty-six years,” said Joe in a low even voice, “…and she has never EVER agreed with me.”

“Chee whiz, son. I must admit that’s a first. Just agree with you? Why not have me make her obedient? It’s kinda the same thing?”

“No thanks, that’s not a problem.”

“Please elaborate, Joe. Enquiring minds want to know.”
“You know the passage from Corinthians: ‘Wives Be submissive to your husband?’”

“I think it was from Colossians, but go on.”

“Well, Lida always took that passage very seriously. But while she always gave into me, whether I wanted her to or not, she’s never agreed with me. She’d always call me an idiot, or a fool, or she’d just nod and say, ‘well I leave it to your conscience, Joe’.”

The Devil flinched. “Damn, son. You really won the lottery with that one.”

“Even if it’s just for a day, I just want to hear her say, “yes, Joe,” or “you’re right, Joe.”

“And you want that in exchange for your immortal soul??” asked the Devil incredulously. “A day? Son, you’re no poker player. Never go all-in on the first round.”

“How long’d you give me?”

“A little thing like that? How bout until the end of your natural life?”

“You’d do that??” asked Joe agape.

“Well not so fast now. This is kind of like getting a loan. There’s an approval process. Let me just pull out the Milton Index and see how you figure.”

“Milton Index?”

“It tells where you are soul-wise and how likely you are to go to heaven or hell. The way we figured it, there’s no point in giving out freebies for people who are going to end up in Hell anyway,” The Devil finished with a charming grin. Joe blanched a little.

The Devil pulled an oblong box from his pocket and consulted it. To Joe, it looked like an elaborate stud-finder. The Devil waved it at Joe and then shook the device and banged on the side in frustration.

“Well, shoot, Joe! You barely register on this thing.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Joe.

“What it means is that apart from our little meeting here, you are a pious man. And I don’t mean pious in that sense that makes you want to puke. You are a lawful, considerate, caring, God-fearing man!”

“I am?”

“The only real blot on your soul is your desire to get back at your wife. But you suffer quietly and are a good husband to her. What gives, Joe? You’re not a papist; divorce her! Live a good life and go to heaven like the goody-two-shoes you are.”

“But I love her,” said Joe sadly.

“You’re a piece of work, and no mistake, Joe. Alright. You got it. For the rest of your life (or hers, whichever comes first) your wife will agree with everything you say.”

There was a cloud of acrid smoke and the Devil was gone. Shaking and sweating, Joe cleaned up the barn as best he could, so he could be composed when he rejoined Lida in the kitchen.

“And where have you been?” asked Lida acidly. “And why do you stink like dead meat?”
“I’m going to lie down, Lida. I don’t feel so good,” said Joe.
To his amazement, Lida said, “You’re right, Joe. You look terrible.”
Did Lida actually agree with him? No snide comments? No trying to one-up him with an account of her problems? Joe smiled, but it was short-lived. He was now dimly aware of a numbness in his left arm that was rolling over his body and a painful throbbing in his chest.

“Lida…I do believe I’m having a heart-attack,” he mumbled through rubbery lips.

“Joe I think you’re right!” said Lida, agreeing with him again. She ran for the phone. “I’ll call 911.”

Joe was dead before the EMTs arrived, but as they rolled out the zippered bag to the ambulance, no one noticed the shadowy figure in the barn looking out and smoking a cigarette. The figure stomped out the smoldering butt and kicked the ground moodily.

“Shit. I hadn’t done it yet!” spat the Devil.