“You are such a fuck up, Nathan!” Lou said, watching him with cold and lifeless eyes, though her chins, lined with age, were stretched into a grimace of a smile. Nathan could do nothing but groan, wiping some of the blood and saliva from his mouth, as he tried to struggle to his feet again.
“I can pay you back, I just have to get the cash.” His grey suit was ruined, his hat trampled in the mud. Her goons held him back as he made a step towards Lou. One of them shook his head, sadness in his eyes. This man did not like his job.
“Come on, Lou! Don’t be like that! You know I am good for it!”
She tsked and crossed her arms. “Are you? As I recall I heard those words once before. Hmm, where was that?” She snapped her fingers. “Ohh yes! It was you, wasn’t it? Last month? After you lost that game at the high rollers table?”
Nathan shrunk, his shoulders slumping, while his eyes raced around in his weasely face, looking for a way out. There was none.
“Fuck you, Nathan. I trusted you. I had plans for you. There is one thing I hate more than a fuck up, and that is a fuck up I did not see coming.” Lou swore, a perfectly manicured finger pointing at his chest in accusation.
Silence stretched between them until even the two gorillas in suits exchanged uncomfortable looks.
“Lou…”
“Don’t.” She held up a finger. “Don’t you dare say a word about that night.”
“But…”
“Shut up, Nathan. If the next words coming out of your mouth are not ‘Here is your money, Lou!’ It will be your end.” She swallowed. Hard. There once had been a girl deep down in the heart of this hard woman, long gone, stretched thin on the streets of New Babylon. That girl would have liked Nathan for what he was, even if he was a fuck up. Rogueish, mischievous, daring…and not afraid to go out there and try to do his thing. That girl was dead. One betrayal too much.
“Lou…I…I…I can get you the money. I have this thing lined up, a huge gig. The kind that gets you off the street. The kind that lets you move up in this damn city. I can take you with me to the lights. I promise!”
“Wrong answer.” She smiled again, sadly. It had not been what she had wanted to hear. The little girl in her shed a tear. The woman in the dirty back alley just made a move with her head. “Send him to the mud.”
“No, please! Don’t…Lou! Louuu!” Nathan cried as he got dragged away until a black sack got put over his head and his world got shattered by the impact trauma of a blunt weapon. Repeatedly.
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“You are such a fuck up, Nathaniel.” Bernie`s voice was insultingly calm, given that Nathaniel had just died and been sent back to the literal gates of hell, in this case, the backdoor of the shoe-shop in the Bowltastic Bowling Alley on the outskirts of town.
“Fuck you Bernie, you have no idea.” Nathaniel said, afraid to look down. Afraid to see what he would look like without a human Sleeve to wear.
“Oh, I know. I am not a broker for nothing. You died. That much is obvious. Let’s see what your report says: Souls (0). Gifts: Binge drinking (5), Barfly (7). That is not even enough to pay your debt to me. You promised me a soul for the Sleeve you just ruined.”
“Come on, Bernie. We are friends. Surely you can do something for me?”
“We are not friends. And…” he pointed up to a sign above the racks of bowling shoes that said: No more loans.
“Well, what now?” Nathaniel sighed, laying his head back down on the bench, which was uncomfortable because of the, you know, horns and stuff.
“Now you are telling me why I should not end your sorry existence on this earth and send you back to the mines of hell.”
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“We both know that is not going to happen.” Nathaniel said, closing his eyes.
“What? Why? Because your sister is going to come down from heaven and give you what you need to start over? That is unlikely.” There was an edge to Bernie’s voice. An Edge Nathan did not like in the slightest.
“She did it before. She will do it again.”
Bernie had one of those shit-eating grins on his stubbled face, one of those telling the other that he had said exactly what he wanted. “Well, she would need to be in heaven for that, doesn’t she?”
Now Nathaniel sat up, suddenly wide awake. “What is it? What happened to her.”
“Ahh, I love this part.” Bernie began to rummage in his drawers, pulling out a yellowed paper and dragging his filthy spectacles down from his grimy hair-do.
“La la la, uninteresting….ah here. Cherubim Furiel is to be reprimanded for interfering in the great game on the site of the adversary…and so on and so forth. It is in the newsletter.” Bernie read.
“No! That cannot be. She is second rank. No one would dare the wrath of Father.”
“That is the best part, Nathan. Father himself demoted her.”
“She is falling?”
“Yes. Looks like it. No more freebies for you, Nathaniel.”
“She is falling because of me? Because she helped me?”
Bernie lived for this moment, gloated in all the petty wins he was making right now. An eternity of having to put up with me culminating in this one, glorious moment.
“Yes, Nathaniel. You are a fuck-up.”
Nathaniel was on his feet, grabbing burnie with red, horn-plated claws, shoving him back.
“Where is she? Where?” He roared.
Bernie just grinned and a force slammed the demon back into the racks of shoes, which fell all over him. “What do you have to offer?”
“Take everything.” Nathan groaned, still shaken by the slam.
“Don’t you get it? You have nothing. I’ll take your two gifts because I am just that nice. But that does not even cover a new Sleeve. You have nothing left. It was purged with your last body.”
Nathan’s mind began to race. He did not care about himself, not much, not ever. But now, things were different. Now his sweet little sister, the most innocent creature to ever smile upon the world, had fallen. Because she was too good to see the evil, the wrong in Nathan. Because she would always help him, no matter the consequences. Now she had fallen and would perish in the shark-infested waters of New Babylon. If he did not find her first, that was.
“Not nothing. There is one thing left.” Nathan said, watching for a reaction in the eyes of Bernie.
“You mean…your demon body? You would not be able to return to hell and you would die the final death in your new Sleeve.”
“Exactly. My demon body for a new Sleeve. And we are even.”
Bernie grinned, shaking the claw of Nathaniel. “Your debt is paid off. We have a deal.”
“So, give me a Sleeve. Quick.”
“I only have one. Take it or leave it.”
Nathan had no choice but to take the offer. He was a beggar and everybody knew it. He took the Sleeve that would be his last chance. For his sister, he would do anything.
Bernie gave him the file describing his new Sleeve. After a brief moment of studying the papers, Nathan sighed a deep and very defeated sigh. “Fuck you, Bernie.” He said calmly.
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“You are such a fuck-up, Nate.” The homeless man growled as he sat up. He just had a fatal heart attack and died, but he was too drunk to even suffer. Nathan raised his new Sleeve from the ground, fighting with the enormous amount of cheap alcohol in his systems.
“Fuck Bernie! And father, and everyone...,” the homeless man cried, as he stumbled through the mass of other men and women huddling around burning oil drums for warmth. He randomly stopped at one of them, as he felt the cold seeping under his tattered clothes.
Let’s see what I have to work with. Sleeves, if won through a deal, contained skills and memories of the former owner. It was a system designed to help demons easily fit in society with their stolen bodies and not immediately be uncovered.
(Gifts: Card throwing (7), Sleight of Hand (8), Brawling (4))
What the fuck was that? Why would a homeless man be any good in card…stuff? Nathan looked down, seeing the mangled remains of a badly broken and wrongly healed hand. The man had been caught cheating and had paid dearly for it, Nathan knew instinctively. Obviously, judging by the most important gifts the Sleeve had retained, the man had no back-up plan to his life at the card table and had fallen on hard times after his hands had been destroyed.
This is just beautiful. Nathan swore.
“Hard day, huh?” A warm voice, but cracked at the edges by the cold and the booze, addressed Nathan from the side. A man, white-bearded and ragged, held a small glass bottle of vodka, offering Nathan a swig. “We all have those, from time to time. My church father always said, take the bad so the good days can shine.”
Suddenly, Nathan’s anger was blown away and he was wide awake when he looked at the homeless man beside him. “You are a man of faith, are you?” He said, barely able to hide his excitement. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
Men of faith were rare, to begin with…and very useful, if you knew how to use them. Because in New Babylon, souls of the other side were worth as much as you could get for them. Which could be little, could be a lot - but never would be nothing.
And the devil made a deal that day and the future seemed that much less bleak.