Chapter 26
431 Words
Chapter 26
So, chatting with the devil is too scary for the guy who wrote Chraze?
Too scary? That might describe the sweat on his palms despite wandering around the room, dodging between the brawling immortals to get a Coke from the bar, and washing his hands six times.
It was just suddenly too real. He wasn’t tinkering inside his own game. He was tinkering with the Software that Runs the Universe. Okay, chatting with it. But still.
The Devil on the line.
From St. Peter’s house.
And he was sitting in Hell.
The Hell.
How much was a guy supposed to swallow before lunch after spending all night in the back seat of a car?
Okay, I can do this. It’s just a machine, right? He sat back at the keyboard and cracked a couple of his knuckles for good measure.
Iii’m okkay.
His hands were twitching so badly he couldn’t key properly.
Kid, let me give you a download of advice.
If one more being, electronic or otherwise, called him ‘Kid,’ he might have to unleash a spam attack on their e-mail account. But, because it was the self-aware Software that Runs the Universe, he’d let it go this time.
“Yeah?”
Fuck ‘em!
He waited.
He waited a while longer.
He looked at Cassandra, who simply shrugged.
“That’s it?”
Yup! Best advice I’ve got. If they can’t take a joke, f**k ‘em.
“Maybe it has a point.” Cassandra whispered. “I try to get everything right, to make up for my, you know.”
“Inability to be believed?”
“Yeah, that.”
“So how is it that Virgil and I can hear what you say, but your own brother can’t?”
“Virgil,” who was now roaring his way through an ancient Greek drinking song with Loki, “spent too long in Hell. First Hades, the boatman of Hell, accidentally shoved him overboard into the River Styx. Then the Christians came along and dumped him into the Inferno and left him there to steam dry. By the time he got the hell out of Hell, he was willing to believe anything.”
“How about me?” Jeremy sipped his Coke, at least that seemed real and normal. The thin can, crinkling slightly in his hand. The sharp caramel fizz tickling down his throat.
“I’ve been wondering that myself.”
He rolled the can back and forth between his palms. The carbonation responded with a thousand bright little pings against the aluminum.
“I haven’t had a lot of practice at trusting things. My parent’s breakup. The joke that my game is presently consuming thirteen percent of the planet’s Internet bandwidth. Living alone in that house for far too long. I dunno.”
The prophetess Cassandra rested a hand on his arm for a moment and looked at him with her piercing blue eyes.
“Maybe you just needed something to believe in.”
- Writer
