- Chapter 16
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Chapter 16
Agonostis leaned over his trunk and whispered into the air, "Is everything ready?"
Earwax was not present in body, but his voice filtered out of the engine as if he had been. "Oh, hail, Mighty Seducer of Virgins and Deflowerer of the Pure and Innocent. The Devils' Engineering Corps just finished tapping into the main lines, and our telephone guy has us hooked into the eight-hundred system. What number did you give her?
"1-800-462-4355."
"Okay. Got it." Agonostis heard him repeating the number to someone nearby. "Strange number. How did you choose that one?"
"Because it's 1-800-GO2-HELL." Agonostis chuckled. "I thought it was pretty funny."
There was a long, wary silence from Earwax. Then, tentatively, it said, "I thought you guys didn't have senses of humor."
Agonostis stopped chuckling and stared into the motor. The Fallen didn't have senses of humor. The Lower Orders—devils, demons, imps and so on—occasionally did, though the humor tended to the dark and the sadistic. The Fallen, though, when an angry God had ripped them from the glorious embrace of Heaven and thrown them into damnation and torture, had lost any semblance of humor from their make-ups.
That Agonostis had come forth with something resembling humor, at least in its outward appearance, and worse, that he had failed to notice he'd done so, unnerved him. After millennia of feeling sure he knew himself perfectly, he looked at that single error as if it were a door opening into a long, twisting, secret passage. He didn't have the nerve to follow it to see where it led.
He said, "It probably wasn't funny anyway."
Earwax, strangely, said nothing at all.
Back | Next
Contents
Framed
- Chapter 16
Back | Next
Contents
Chapter 16
Agonostis leaned over his trunk and whispered into the air, "Is everything ready?"
Earwax was not present in body, but his voice filtered out of the engine as if he had been. "Oh, hail, Mighty Seducer of Virgins and Deflowerer of the Pure and Innocent. The Devils' Engineering Corps just finished tapping into the main lines, and our telephone guy has us hooked into the eight-hundred system. What number did you give her?
"1-800-462-4355."
"Okay. Got it." Agonostis heard him repeating the number to someone nearby. "Strange number. How did you choose that one?"
"Because it's 1-800-GO2-HELL." Agonostis chuckled. "I thought it was pretty funny."
There was a long, wary silence from Earwax. Then, tentatively, it said, "I thought you guys didn't have senses of humor."
Agonostis stopped chuckling and stared into the motor. The Fallen didn't have senses of humor. The Lower Orders—devils, demons, imps and so on—occasionally did, though the humor tended to the dark and the sadistic. The Fallen, though, when an angry God had ripped them from the glorious embrace of Heaven and thrown them into damnation and torture, had lost any semblance of humor from their make-ups.
That Agonostis had come forth with something resembling humor, at least in its outward appearance, and worse, that he had failed to notice he'd done so, unnerved him. After millennia of feeling sure he knew himself perfectly, he looked at that single error as if it were a door opening into a long, twisting, secret passage. He didn't have the nerve to follow it to see where it led.
He said, "It probably wasn't funny anyway."
Earwax, strangely, said nothing at all.
Back | Next
Contents
Framed