Authors: Paul Di Filippo
Little Doors (44 page)
tongue and unless she submits to her
allotted punishments then she will
never get a chance to be reborn
boss i can t tell you how this lifted
my heart knowing mehitabel had maintained
even in hell her indomitable courage
and piss pardon my french
but at the same time i was worried
because who wants to be an eternal rebel
in hell when with just a little
submission
contrition
and endurance
over a subjective eternity or two
you can be reborn into this sad yet delightful
old world of ours maybe as a persian
lapcat gangster s moll or nautch dancer
any one of which roles i could easily
envision mehitabel filling and excelling in
clarence i inquired further what will happen
to mehitabel question mark must she give in
or is there another way out for her question mark
the ghost paused and wavered an indication
i knew of deep thought and in fact i could see
firefly neurons firing inside his transparent
head in elaborate cascades of reasoning
well clarence finally said there is me
you i queried
yes me a ghost obviously
i died yet was not reborn
into a mortal carcass
that is an option for some
an escape clause in the celestial
infernal contract inked eons ago
between adam and eve and pinch me
to leave behind either heaven or hell
and stalk the earth in less substantial form
for an indefinite time
i cogitated myself on this option
for a time but something just didn t
jibe between this possibility
and mehitabel s essential nature
then of course it hit me colon
mehitabel was such a carnal creature
a thing of sinews and hormones
juices and bones that existence
as a ghost among mortals double dash
herself airy and nontactile yet
perpetually taunted
with the pleasures
of the flesh double dash
would be a punishment
more cruel than anything old nick
had in store for my friend
i explained all this to clarence and after
some more luminous pinball style mental
efforts on his part he volunteered that there
were other kinds of boggles than ghosts
enumerate i ordered and he did
stop i yelled when he uttered a term
i recognized from my poetaster days
a term we bards were fond of using
for certain super seductive inamoratas
that s perfect exclamation point
clarence can you intervene as mediator
between old nick and mehitabel
for friendship s sake and try to strike
this deal i think they’ll both agree
happy to be out of each other s hair
sure said clarence and i ll report back
tomorrow night
boss that twenty four hours crawled by
like a beetle down an endless drain
but somehow i survived the anxiety
and made it back to my planchette
and when i got clarence all focused
on our earthly plane i held my breath
it s a done deal he said
and so you see boss
i am ultimately the one responsible
for all those spooky headlines in your own
newspaper lately to wit colon
devil cat alarms midnight frolickers
epidemic of missing felines
dogs frightened barkless
et demonically cetera
for mehitabel you see is now a feline
succubus as corporeal as they come
her fur is lush and seductive her eyes
burning garnets her sleek haunches
perpetually raised high in lordosis
luring tomcats everywhere into
frenzied matings impossible to resist
which leave them pitiful shells
of their former tough yegg selves
and when she s not sexing it up
mehitabel is happily raising cain among all her
old enemies such as phonies swells canines
politicians and cheapskates
Oh yes one final thing colon
the oddest feature of succubi wombs is that
they gestate really quickly
like in about a day so that mehitabel is
regularly dumping half mortal half infernal kittens
by the bushel basket full
and so i would be very careful
boss if you go to adopt any strays
in this town better check first
for a certain sparkle in the eyes
and a tendency to spit acid
archy
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