Once Upon a Time in Hell (27 page)

"No. That's not true. There was one thing. Harmonium. My wife. The one good thing in my life. She helped me find this place. Always by my side. Then I lost her. And I have to think...

I have to consider... who exactly is to blame for all that? I thought I'd find her here. Dead maybe, but I didn't care about that. I'd die too if that's what it took to be with her again. No problem. But she isn't here. I'm still without her. And I wonder to myself... who's to blame for that?"

"Blame God," said the little girl, pushing her wooden train along the table cloth.

"Exactly," said Jones. "Exactly that. Yes. Blame God." He looked right at her. "Only God's not in his right mind is He? He's playing another game. He's pretending to be one of us. A little, living, breathing mortal. Because He wants to see how we live."

"And how you die," she added, sitting back in her chair, a bored look on her face.

"Yeah," he agreed, "how we die. I'm thinking that might just be the message I always wanted to pass on to God when I met Him." He stood up, pulled out his pistol and pointed it at the little girl. The table erupted in panic.

She turned to look at me. "Told you I didn't have time to learn the piano," she said.

And Henry Jones shot God right in the head.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Guy Adams is a no-good, pen-toting son of a bitch. Responsible for over twenty penny-dreadfuls and scientific romances such as
The World House
and the
Deadbeat
series. He has also worked with the Hammer Books Gang creating novelisations of their foul kinematographs and has been known to operate under the alias of John Watson M.D. writing novels featuring that pansy-ass detective Sherlock Holmes. He is wanted in several states and a reward is offered for anyone quick enough to slip a noose around his crooked neck. Further evidence of his crimes can be found on his Wild Western Waystation:

www.guyadamsauthor.com