Stiltskin (Andrew Buckley) (46 page)

The Devil stretched as his senses came into play.

A door opened off to his side and a pair of legs in badly wrinkled stockings appeared and dropped a plate of food in front of him.

The Devil looked down at the plate of brown mush and then up to see a little old lady grinning down at him.

She opened her mouth and cooed.

"Aww, who's a cute puddycat, Fuzzbucket?"

The Devil mustered all his strength and cried, "What?"

What actually came out was
meow
.

I don't believe it
.
I'm in a cat! How the hell did I end up in a cat?

The Devil didn't know what to do. The Devil, the Prince of Darkness, Beelzebub, the Deceiver himself, trapped in a cat for an entire week. And not just any cat: a cat called Fuzzbucket. He suddenly had a strong urge to systematically clean himself, and being in complete shock and not knowing what else to do, went ahead and did so.

Down in the depths of Hell's Administration office, a lowly demon examined the contract she'd just received to file. She made a
tsk tsk
sort of noise and shook her head as she read the fine print through a magnifying glass.

Please Note: If by any chance the above noted chosen body is unavailable due to death, dismemberment, or divine intervention, the party of the second part (being Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness) will waive all possession rights and will be deposited into a body of the party of the first part's (being God) choosing.

The demon lifted a large metal stamp and branded the word
received
into the contract with a satisfying
hissssss.

The evening air was close and the heat, relentless. It beat at every passerby in the small town of Obidos, located somewhere in the west of Portugal.

Sweat escaped from every available pore on the body of Raymond Miller as he wandered down tight, quaint streets.

He loved Obidos at this time of year. Not so much for the heat, as no one really loved the town for its heat. But because Obidos was so quiet, hardly anyone around, no tourists, just the locals. The locals left him alone; they didn't like the strange visitor who appeared out of nowhere for a few weeks every year and then vanished without a trace. It became a favorite pastime of the locals to stand completely still with a fixed frown whenever Raymond would appear on the street. They would watch him walk down the street, moving only their heads until he disappeared into a shop or around a corner. Shopkeepers wouldn't talk to him except to tell him how much he owed them. They would answer any pleasantries or questions with a severe
umph
, all the time frowning like their lives depended on it.

They didn't like Raymond because he didn't follow the tourist trend. He always turned up out of season, and he kept himself to himself, not to mention he'd built a ghastly, great big mansion on the outskirts of town.

Raymond was in fact a billionaire who had quite methodically worked out when the off-season occurred for every beautiful place on Earth. He would travel round all year to these places, then build a house where he could stay for a couple of weeks, and that was his life, day in and day out. All he ever wanted was a quiet life, and when his one-hundred-fourteen-year-old grandmother died, she left Raymond, her only living relative, all her money. Although on the surface a quiet and very innocent-looking lady, she had made her money by running drugs from the United States to Japan. She was a little old lady with too much time on her hands, and she liked traveling to the Orient. Or that's what all the security people at the airports thought as they helped her off the plane and even carried her drug-filled luggage for her. Her drug-running name was
Silent Grasshopper
. Raymond had no knowledge of this, as she told him that she won all her money on the lottery, and so he remained blissfully unaware.

Raymond had been an Olympic swimmer before the inheritance, and although he remained in good physical condition, he no longer swam. When he got the money from his grandmother, he decided to follow up on his high school dream to do absolutely nothing. He traveled around the world, spending the vast amount of money he'd acquired. He partied occasionally, hired women to satisfy his carnal pleasures, hired people to cook for him, but really did nothing of any importance. If he vanished off the face of the Earth, the only person who would miss him would be his bank manager, who talked to him every few days and who could have been considered to be Raymond’s only friend.

As Raymond walked out onto the bridge that crossed the local river, he stopped and admired the sunset. He could see a couple of children playing soccer at the other end of the bridge, a little too close to the road, he thought. There really wasn't that much traffic in the town, so there was probably nothing to worry about. At least, that's what Raymond thought right up until he saw the bus.

The bus driver's name was Dante and he was on the last route of the evening. He was, however, currently preoccupied with the sudden appearance of what appeared to be an orange object descending from the sky. Dante was so enamored with the strange object that he failed to see the young boy who ran out into the road after his run-away ball.

Raymond started sprinting before he even knew why. The urge hit him in the form of one simple word that felt very strangely as if someone had spoken it directly into his head.
Run!

Everything happened very quickly. Raymond reached the boy just in time to push him out of the way; he looked up at the last minute to see an orange swirly thing plummeting toward him.

The orange swirly thing, consequently, was the last thing Raymond Miller saw in his life, as a millisecond later he was hit by the bus that killed him.

Moments later, the soul of Raymond Miller came face to face with a disgruntled-looking man dressed in a black robe standing next to a large neon sign that pointed
up
.

A various amount of blood, sweat, tears, and a number of other fluids (including Mountain Dew… shameless product placement, send money) went into writing this book. Most of all I want to thank my family for being supportive of my insane writing endeavors, especially my wife who is, above all else, a constant inspiration to me. I’d also like to thank Ricky Gunawan for his amazing cover art, Lisa and Eugene at Curiosity Quills Press for continuing to accept bribes in order to publish my work, and my amazing editor, Mary Harris. Without Mary, every single word in this book would be in a different order, separated by a comma, and preceded by an inappropriately placed ellipsis…