Brimstone
David immediately realises his mistake.
In an aspiringly quaint café five minutes east of the freeway, David begins the conversation with, “Hey, remember that time I set your couch on fire?” and immediately realises his mistake.
Emma raises her eyes from the crossword, and several emotions twist her face in close succession. First, disgruntlement at being disturbed, closely followed by recognition, alarm, and the strong inclination to immediately flee as quickly and as far away as three inch red pumps can carry her.
Seeing this, David slides into the booth next to her in order to make escape marginally more inconvenient, and says in what he attempts to be a reasonable tone, “Just hear me out, okay? The world’s ending and we should get back together.”
By exhaling several befuddling and objectionable concepts on a single breath, he manages to extinguish any response, and continue rambling. “Okay, so here’s the thing. We never talked about the, the uh, the combustible couch. I mean, I understand that you were upset, but kicking me out of the apartment immediately was a bit of an inconvenience because I had a very logical explanation and you didn’t let me-“
“You set my cat on fire,” Emma reminds him.
“Well, your cat who happened to be on the couch; I can’t be responsible for everything. But just let me explain, okay?”
“Yes, we’ve been through this, right before you slammed the door in my face, actually. We never got past that point, which has been a constant source of frustration for me over the past few months. But here’s my explanation: I’m a god.”
Within seconds, she’s on her feet. “It was nice seeing you again, David. Now, get out of my way. I’m leaving.”
Fifteen miles outside of Hoboken, a brown SUV cruises down a driveway, exhaust mixing with the scent of golden rod and freshly mown grass. The vehicle coasts to a halt near the edge of the main road, flips on its turn signal, idles for a moment, then spontaneously combusts in a spectacular eruption of red and gold. The crows, previously peacefully perched on the wire above, peer down at the smoking scrap pile and decided to shuffle a few feet to the right.
In the café, a line of cold sweat trails down David’s spine, and he has the faint suspicion that things were quickly getting out of hand.
“Move,” Emma repeats, and raises a two inch red heel above his toes.
He stumbles to his feet, just out of her range, and tugs at his collar. “I’m sorry about your cat, I truly am. Is he alright?”
“The hair on his legs won’t grow back,” she says, red lips in a thin line, “But he’ll live.”
He nods. “Good, that’s good. Now, please sit down. Listen. That’s all I ask.”
Emma hesitates, struck with an inconvenient reminder of the David she used to know, and detest significantly less. She sighs. She sits.
“Okay.” He heaves a great breath. “Okay, I’m a god. Not the God, just one. It’s why I set your couch on fire. And your cat. Well, the couch was on purpose, the cat was not, and again, I’m sorry.”
“The two things are related, I swear. Also the end of the world, that’s a big part of it, and it’s very, very soon… I apologize, I’m not making sense. I’ll start over.”
Meanwhile, somewhere in northern New Zealand, a lone goat herder exhales heavily, and sets down the milk buckets that have been digging red creases into his fingers. The moments they brush the fresh green grass, the ground beneath his feet crumbles away, dumping the stupefied herder, a shack, a water well, and an entire field of pitifully bleating sheep into the yawning abyss.
“So, my name’s not David. It’s, it’s uh, D’mekhizurig’istoal, Supreme Overlord and Emperor of Hellfire and Eternal Damnation Etcetera.Yeah, hard to make friends, you understand why I changed it.” She stares, he waves his hand. “What’s important is that, in between lording over all the hell demons and making sure they have enough beer and HBO on Demand, I visit earth and raise the occasional corpses for giggles — No, my job isn’t entirely vital to the clockwork of the universe. There are a lot of gods, alright? Not all of them are consequential. One of us, all he does is change the colour of leaves, but everyone loves him.”
He pauses to take a swig of her iced tea. She snatches the glass back.
“Anyway, one of these times I meet you, and, well… those heels.”
David fidgets. “Okay, I’m beginning to think that this is a much longer story than we have time for. And you probably think I’m a pyromaniac –”
“I’m starting to strongly suspect –”
“… and you don’t know why you’re staying because I’ve made your life a misery and you made it clear that you never wanted to see me again, which I’ve blatantly disregarded, and you’re going to throw your hands up and leave for good if I don’t change your mind, and quickly. Am I right?”
“But here’s the thing — if you leave now the world is going to end. Wait, sorry, I phrased that like causation. No, I mean, the world is going to end. Period. No matter what you do. Which is why I would much rather we made up and got back together in the matter of…uh, minutes, actually…that we have left. Mutually beneficial. Okay?”
“How do I put this?” Emma stands, and whacks his shoulder with her considerably hefty handbag. “Move. I’m leaving.”
As she pulls back her bag for another swing, David, out of desperation, sets her newspaper on fire with a brief flick of his hands.
In the time it takes her to utter a small astonished shriek, he has doused the miniature blue inferno with the remnants of her iced tea. Emma’s knees give out and she sinks back into her seat, her face wearing an expression most often observed on those experiencing an intensely disorienting acid trip.
“Yeah, hellfire god,” David says, blowing out his fingers like birthday candles. “Now that you believe me, will you listen to the rest?”
He notes that she is now shrinking against the wall rather than bruising his shoulder and trying to leave, and takes this as an acceptable victory.
“Right, so. Long story short, I meet you, you’re gorgeous, we move in together — you know all this, I’ll skip ahead. While all this romance is blossoming, I’m neglecting my duties as the Supreme Overlord of Darkness. This is all fine and dandy for the rest of the world, because it just means that they don’t have to deal with random zombie uprisings, so no complaints on most fronts. But, you see, I still have this kingdom to deal with, and they’re not particularly happy that the first season of Game of Thrones has ended, and I’m not around to purchase the next one for them. So after spectacularly trashing my place, they leave the hell dimension and seek me out on the mortal plane. You understand why this might be a slight problem.”
“I mean, visiting Earth is fine for me because frankly, I’m all powerful and have a certain measure of subtlety, but the demons? Stand out like a sore thumb with fiery goat horns. Not exactly delicate creatures either. One day — you know the day — they come around to our apartment when you’re out. Knock on the door, absolutely smashed on Heineken, hooting and burping ash something awful. I open the door…”
“I have to, because otherwise they’d probably burn it down. They demand that I come back, but I refused since inter-dimensional travel could take any number of your Earth years, and I didn’t want to come back from a stupid errand and find your grandkids or something instead of you. I tried explaining this; they started spitting embers at me — petulant lot — it got messy, and… well, your couch and cat paid for it.”
He becomes uncomfortably aware that Emma’s expression has not been brightening.
“So, uh. I just wanted to clarify: I didn’t actually set your couch on fire. Well, I did, but it wasn’t my fault. I had to scare the hell demons back to their dimension so they wouldn’t trash the place since you just put up new curtains and I knew you were really happy with them. So what I mean to say is, I’m not quite the lunatic you think I am.”
He’s peering at her expectantly. She opens and closes her mouth, once, twice. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to …”
“Like I said, the world is ending. Right now. It’s quiet at the moment, but I can feel it happening — explosions and sinkholes, and the power in this half of the globe is going to go out in approximately four and a half minutes. It’s this guy Evan of the Eternal Sleep — never liked him — just a bad stroke of luck that he chose this star system for target practice, and for the second time I’m terribly sorry for the fate of your cat, but there is nothing to be done about it, we can’t interfere with the work of others. I came as soon as I found out because…”
“I know, you want to get back together. Okay,” Emma says, “My turn to talk.”
“I’m not sure you’re conscious of how pressing this situation –”
“David, I didn’t break up with you because you set my couch on fire.”
“I also didn’t break up with you because you managed to scorch and permanently traumatize my cat, yet couldn’t offer up a single explanation –”
“Well, I mean, you didn’t exactly give me a chance to –”
“No, David, stop. I’ve listened to you, now you listen to me. Okay? I broke up with you because it was a long time coming, and the disaster in my apartment was the clincher. It’s not about your alternate dimension or your hell demons or even the stupid couch. We were never right, David — as two people, we were just never enough. Do you understand?”
David’s eyes widen, and for once, he is silent.
“I’m sorry that I never explained this to you,” she says. “I guess it wasn’t obvious to you like it was to me. But during the time you spent trying to get back, I needed space. Afterwards, you just disappeared.”
“…had to download the next season of… my hell demons were…”
“And then you show up here after all this time and tell me all these things, and while I’m struggling to even accept any of it, you practically demand that we get back together? David, that’s not how people work.”
Through cracks in the window, a fierce wind whistles, tugging faintly at her hair, and tossing the ashy remains of the newspaper. A heavy blanket of storm clouds is rolling in, stirring with electricity. Sky and earth rumble in unison, and David swallows hard.
He says quietly, “Okay. Okay, I hear you. But I, uh, right now I still need to say my piece. I’ll do it quickly, alright?” He clears his throat. “So, there’s this custom in the, in the hell dimension, that, uh… if you declare yourself to another being, you may be… bonded. They may join you in your own world, and come and go as you do throughout the universe, and blah blah bound for all eternity blah… It sounds stupid, but Emma, your world is dying, and I can’t leave you here, because I…” He bites his lip. “The ‘bound for eternity’ thing is just part of the scripture, it doesn’t mean anything. If you don’t want to — you clearly don’t want to — you don’t have to be anywhere near me. The universe is a pretty big place. I… I admit my reasons are a bit selfish, I just need you to, please, not die yet.”
With a mournful hum, every light in the diner fades out, the dusty jukebox stutters then goes quiet. No disturbance among the sleepily blinking patrons, instead, a silence that envelopes the room like a warm blanket — peace, inhaling and exhaling. For a moment, her eyes flutter closed and she inhales a heavy fragrance of rainclouds and ashes.
He tells her, “We can’t stay here.”
Her gaze fixes on him, and she sighs heavily, and she nods. She reaches out, and takes his hand, skin prickling with perspiration and a slow burn like brimstone.
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