The Devil wanted the bright and lovely Cassy for a bride. Instead, he got a neurotic trickster as a roommate for six months out of the year. He's not happy about it, and neither is Louie.
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"Is it true?" The Devil tips his chair back, resting his leather oxfords on the foot of the bed. "What these creatures said to you?"
I've told him about the terrifying things that've torn into our world and promised to destroy our universe. I've told him about my new tattoo and how it gave me the ability to see strange and awful things. But he doesn't focus on that. He stares me dead in the eyes. "Is it true that you're happier now as my prisoner than you were before?"
My mouth hangs open for a moment. But he continues.
"You've never spoken to me about your childhood. Which is a shame, considering you can spin a lovely tale."
"Our world is going to be destroyed and you want me to tell you about my childhood?"
"I do."
I push my hair out of my face. Why do I even bother? "Fine. Okay. Whatever. Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Lainey. Her father was a door-to-door salesman. It was a dying art, but her father made good money regardless. A salesman lives and dies off his words, and the girl's father spun beautiful descriptions with them. Handsome watches. Sharp knives. Silk red scarves."
The words fade away as I speak to him. No longer words but transportation devices to another world of brilliant green trees and waves of yellow wheat. I'm looking into those golden eyes as I talk. "The girl had a secret, though."
"The girl was no girl at all?"
"Who's story is this?" I laugh. "But yes. That's true. The girl was no girl at all. Lainey, aw, hell, I was sustained by adventure stories and our year-round carnival. I buzzed my hair with Dad's razor when he wasn't home and picked fights with the boys at school. At that age, nine or ten, you only fight with other boys for so long. We became friends, wrestling and climbing trees together, stealing pumpkin pies resting on window sills. A veritable band of hoodlums."
"So it seems things were good."
"It was, for a while. My dad fell in love with a visiting woman from New York who brought her daughter with her. The girl was my age, and she was everything I wasn't. Pretty. Polite. She quickly became popular at school, and the woman became my stepmother. She convinced my father that he wasn't cut out to raise a daughter, and that's why I had become the way I had. Without a mother or any women in my life, I couldn't help it."
"I see. And how did you take that?"
"Bad. She chased all my friends away, and though girls wear pants anyway, she tossed mine out in an attempt to force me to become a 'proper young lady.' When Dad left for his work, it only became worse. I was embarrassed, friendless, and pissed. One day, my father left and didn't come back, and to my own horror, my stepmother was gleeful."
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"It became obvious to me that the housework she gave me was no longer an attempt to turn me into a proper young lady, though maybe that's how she rationalized it to herself, I don't know. As a teenager, I worked all the time, what with home and the carnival, convincing people to spend just another buck. I hate to say it, but the only time I spoke at all was when I was swindling people. My silver tongue was my only connection to my father." I take a breath.
"It all changed one day, when I was seventeen and a few days out from my birthday. My stepmother had already told me she would disown me and throw me out; her attempts to make me a becoming young lady had failed. But I didn't have enough for a place of my own. That was when the washing machine broke, and my stepmother threw me a washboard and sent me to the river."
"Did her red scarf float away?"
"Yes. But I didn't want it for her. It was one of my dad's wares. I chased it down the river and ended up at a cottage I'd never seen before. I knocked on the door, and an old woman came out that made me feel all chilly. You know that feeling, when you're around something you don't understand?"
He shakes his head. Of course, he wouldn't.
"I don't remember her face, I just remember that she smiled and said, 'hello, young man.' For the scarf, she hadn't even asked me to do chores, though I did them anyway. I'm not heartless. She asked me to tell her a story, a story kind of like this one. She offered me one of three pumpkins along with the scarf, and I took the smaller one. She told me not to open it until I went home, and I thought, sure, what the hell. Pumpkin pie's my favorite."
"And the pumpkin was filled with jewels."
"No, dollar bills. Shush. This is my story, remember."
"Sorry, it just sounded familiar."
"Well, my stepmother was livid that I had taken the smaller pumpkin. She left with my stepsister and the washboard. They never came back. I was told later that they spent months in the hospital, all of my father's money spent on their medical care. Poisonous snake bites, something or other. But I was already gone."
He nods, his eyes glittering.
"Me and the pumpkin departed for New York, and that's where I met Cassy. So I guess I haven't had the best time of it, but I have been lucky."
"Or, if you look at it from another angle, unlucky."
"No. Lucky."
"You tell a story like this to the being you're eternally bound to and call yourself lucky?"
"I am lucky because I've learned that nothing, not them, not you, will ever make me something other than myself." I smirk.
But this feels almost as fake as my mostly bullshit story.
