“Handyman”

It was the day from Hell. Not literally of course. Things that terrible surely must announce themselves first, right? Anyway, as I was saying, it was the day from Hell; at least it was already starting to feel that way, and it was only 11am. Work was piling up and in the blink of a bat’s eye, my fucking electricity went out. It had been raining outside since 5am, and I guess Mother Nature felt like kicking it up a notch was only necessary as I was on a deadline. Just as I had started to make a dent in the reports I had to file while attempting to ignore the crackling rain and Zeus-esque bolts of lightening outside: SNAP! Everything went dark: the computer, the lights, the fridge. Blip. Everything was without light, except for the glorious glow of my cell phone, which is what I used to call my local electrician immediately.

“Fred, I know you’re backed up today, but I’m on a deadline and I think the power is completely out. Please could you come and help me get things running again? My agent is going to blow a gasket if I don’t get these fucking reports in, and NOTHING is working!”

“Damn, I’m sorry Mr. Haines, but I have about 15 people I have to make trips to see today. I know the storm is messing everyone up.”

“Jesus, Fred, I pay you twice what most of the hicks out here give you. I’m surprised they don’t pay you in chickens half the time. I’ll double whatever it is; I really need to get back in business. Plus the 8 hundred billion pounds of shrimp Miranda got for her work gala is not going to be pretty in this heat.”

“Mr. Haines, I am deeply sorry for the inconvenience. You know, I always try to make you guys a priority, but I really have no time today. I am fully booked.”

“Are you fucking kidding me Fred?”

“Serious as Cancer, Mr. Haines.”

“Do you at least have someone else you could refer me to? I’m up the creek here.”

“Well, I don’t usually lend my work out to other folks, but there is a guy not too far from you who is semi-retired, but I’ll see if I can get him out there to help you.”

“”Semi-retired?” You’re not sending me some half-witted Mr. Magoo are you?”

“*coughs* No, no sir, Mr. Haines. He’s a good man. He’s a little long in the tooth, but he can help you out.”

“Fine. Thank you.”

So I spent the better part of an hour and half fishing out the millions of shrimp my wife had stuffed in the fridge and freezer and putting them into garbage bag full of all the ice we had. Because the AC wasn’t working, I was probably pouring in as much sweat into the bag as the ice was. This was definitely not how I had planned to spend a hot, stormy Wednesday morning.

Shoveling shrimp in the disgusting heat as I waited for the Methuselah electrician Fred had weakly offered up made my anger itch. With each ticking minute that went by, with each batch of arthropods I shoved into the bag, with each droplet of sweat that riveted down my nose and onto the floor, I started to become enraged. I had been using Fred for my repair work and electrical needs for over 18 years. This was absurd! He had NEVER canceled on me before. NEVER. Not a single solitary time. How dare he pawn off some has-been retiree on me when he knew I had important shit to do? He knew I only got paid if I met my deadline for the reports, I always made that clear whenever I had to call him for some debacle like this one.

Why would he farm some hack out to me instead of dumping one of his obviously less important calls? They could easily reschedule, they couldn’t possibly be all emergencies. Most of Fred’s clientele consisted of single parents who not only clearly didn’t know what birth control was, and they also didn’t seem to know that if you don’t pay the electrical bill, your house goes dark. Or farmers. It’s a small rural area with a few select sections (such as my neighborhood) that had beautiful, well-kept homes, and then of course there were the people with dead cars on their lawn and their laundry on a pole out in the front of the house; like it was some kind of Christmas display they wanted everyone to see. How could Fred possibly have put these people ahead of me? My work is managing millions for high-profile clients. If he put fixing some accidentally un-plugged wire at the house of the lady who lets chickens run coop-less and amuck down the road instead of helping me I am never going to tip him again, so help me God. Fucking CHICKENS, for Christ’s sake! You might as well put Golden Arches on their goddamn doorway. This neighborhood used to be prized territory. It used to stand for something. Now look what we have: fucking disgusting nuggets with wings crawling all over the lawn and running into the road. God Bless America.

The doorbell finally rang after what felt like a long time even for Rip Van Winkle.

As I opened the door, trying desperately not to roll my eyes or sigh haughtily in well-earned exasperation at how long this replacement asshole took to get here, I looked down. The ancient retiree before me didn’t look as old or incompetent as I had been anticipating. He was about my height, which is just below 6’1. He did have some salt and pepper hair tucked under a John Deere cap, but it looked like he kept it in place. He wasn’t wearing overalls and he didn’t speak with a Southern accent and did not appear to be chewing tobacco. He had crystal clear blue eyes and a slight, well-trimmed beard. He was at least White, nothing shady about him. Ok, good. Now lets get this shit shaking.

“Hi, I’m Astor Haines. C’mon in, I need help like yesterday.”

The gentleman looked at me with an almost amused expression. Great, a smug old asshole.

“Hello Astor. I’m Cornelius Abacus. Glad to meet you, Fred said you were a very important guy around here!”

“Well, that’s true. Ok, so my electricity went out and-“

The man with the ridiculous name and non-overalls not only doesn’t shake my hand when I offer it, he fucking smirks and interrupts me sentence!

“Pretty scary out there right now! Almost feels like the way the world is at the moment, with everyone at each other’s throats.”

“Um…yeah, okay, I’m going to need you to go to where the generator is and-“

“I sometimes wonder if it’s that nasty Lucifer causing all those people to fight with each other.”

Ok, there was a definite pause here. A long, hard one. Lucifer? Seriously? This dude is in my house after being nearly an hour and half late during an emergency and he’s shoehorning Satan into the conversation? What the ever-loving fuck?!

“I’m…I’m sorry, did you just say ‘Lucifer’?”

“Oh yes. The one and only. He’s a wily one!”

“Lucifer? As in…as in the Devil?”

“Well who else did you think I meant, son? There is only one Lucifer.”

“Yeah, I’m going to have to pass on the Lucifer conversion. Could you please just fix my electricity?”

“Oh I can fix it, but you know…he’s just going to mess it up again! Days like this are like candy for him.” This guy was positively giddy at the idea. He didn’t sound afraid, he sounded excited. Was he high?

“Days like this? For…we’re still actually talking about this?”

“Sorry, son. Sometimes it just has to be said. Come, let’s take a look at your generator.”

“That would be great, thanks.”

So after a lot of annoying whistling, fussing, and ruminating on how the world is probably going to end soon, the old bag finally got my electricity up and running again. If he hadn’t, I would have bitched to high heaven to Fred about his Satanizing. Why in the name of Mitt Romney did Fred send this fruitcake to me?

“Oh, just one more thing son, I’m sorry to have upset you when I talked about Lucifer. I know he can be upsetting to many people, as he should be. I’m not trying to get you to believe in Jesus or save your soul. I just want all the people I work for to keep an eye out for evil. It’s very real, and this world feels like it’s just getting worse, which is exactly what the Dev — “

“Ok, thank you Cornrow, or whatever the fuck your name is. You can go now. No tip for you. BYE.” I said this as I slammed the door in his face as quickly and loudly as I was humanly capable of.

It was after this that it became the literal day from Hell. The electricity was indeed back up, but my keyboard wouldn’t type. I nearly chucked the whole computer out the damn window, but didn’t want to have to clean up the mess, so I stopped short. Then when I tried to close the upstairs window when I saw that water from the storm outside was starting to pour in, the windows wouldn’t shut. Water went all over my brand new Italian loafers! Then as I was attempting to type again, I felt small drops of water falling on my head. I looked up at the ceiling, and there directly above me was water dripping from the upstairs floor. The bathroom? What the actual fuck?!

When I went upstairs to check the bathroom, I saw the tub had been filled with red water. I came closer. The tub was overflowing with water mixed with, I could only assume blood. I leaned in to smell the stuff, but only got the faintest whiff of copper. I am not going to say I threw up, but a verp definitely made itself known. As I ran down the stairs, my foot hit something and I went down bag-of-bricks-style. I must have been out for a while, because when I finally opened my eyes, I could see from the windows it was dark outside. I hurt all over. I mean fucking ACHED. This was worse than the time I played racquetball with the CEO of my company for 5 hours. This was serious pain.

As I tried to move, fighting the urge to just curl up in a ball and die, I heard strange scratching sounds, along with a sloshing. At first I thought it was the bloody water in the tub, but the sounds were coming from the kitchen. I got up, and felt around for cuts or broken bones. Stumbling, I looked in the mirror. There was dried blood all over my mouth. I tried to look at my teeth. Two of my front teeth were just gone. As I tried to walk towards the kitchen as the sounds intensified, I felt something like a pebble under my shoe. I lifted my shoe up. Yup, there they were: my two front teeth. Christmas is set. When I walked into the kitchen, I noticed the light was on, which made no sense, as it was daytime when the Coronation motherfucker, or whatever the hell his stupid name was, was here, before I went up to the bathroom. Why was the light on? Had Miranda come back early from her work trip?

“Honey?”

Flies. I heard flies buzzing. Louder as I walked further into the room.

“Miranda are you here? I hurt myself pretty bad. Fell down the damn stairs. You will not believe the fucking day I have had. It-“

There. On the table. A biblical swarm of flies in a mass. I nearly jumped out of my bruised skin. There was a huge lump on the table where the mass of flies were circling. Trying to gin up my courage, I waved and swatted at them, and as they cleared, I could see what the lump was. Horror climbed into my mouth and could not escape.

There in a tangle of limbs and a torn dress, was my Miranda. Her porcelain skin matted thick with blood. Bones were sticking out. Her hair, once flowing down her shoulders like a shiny black waterfall was a rat’s nest. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run out of the room and never come back, but I was rooted there to the floor, an iceberg frozen to the spot. I started to tremble, and as I did, I saw movement coming out of Miranda’s hair. Things were crawling out of it. I started to shake uncontrollably. Then, as if from out of thin air, the things emerged in the hundreds to swallow up my wife’s face. The shrimp. The shrimp started to eat at the lump that was my wife on the table. I turned to see them crawling out of the bag, hungry for flesh and ready for action. They began to flood the floor, the table, everything. I could smell the rot from their dead bodies. I could hear them chewing away at what was left of my life. And yet I could not move. I could not utter a goddamn sound. Not even a whisper.

The backdoor creaked. I tried to swing around to see, but I couldn’t. Out of the corner of my eye, a glint of green bounced off one of the kitchen chairs. The John Deere hat. Son of a BITCH!

Footsteps. I heard them making their way in back of me. I still couldn’t move or speak, but I could feel an itching sensation from the inside out, much like the anger that had consumed me earlier in what felt like another lifetime ago. A soft chuckle floated into my ears.

“Well son, it looks like you are in an even bigger pickle than this morning!”

I tried to communicate my complete and utter rage through my eyes, but he didn’t look impressed.

“I see you’ve met my little pets.” He waved nonchalantly to the scads of creeping shrimp that had started to chitter as they glided across the room, looking for more meat.

“Now I wasn’t going to come back at all, but I forgot my lucky hat. You weren’t very kind to me when I came to help you in your hour of need. I know you are big and important, but you’ve got to give the Devil his due. I did fix your electricity when Fred couldn’t, did I not?”

I blinked at him furiously.

“Ahh, I forgot, you can’t talk, can ya? Let’s fix that right up.” He snapped his miserable fingers, and I felt speech flooding back into my brain like an electric shock.

“You snarly old son of a bitch! You killed my wife! You destroyed everything! What the hell, man?!!”

“Oh, now, now! I did nothing of the sort. You did that to yourself. You have a nasty attitude. And I could feel your contempt, your crude racism, your superiority all just oozing out of you. Satan never makes anyone do anything they don’t already want to do themselves. I didn’t make you this way. It was all a matter of choice.”

“Oh will you quit it with the fucking “Satan” shit?! All of this happened after you left this house. I swear to God you fucking set this all up!”

“Exactly. I wasn’t here for all this. You brought it on yourself. You see son, the idea of the Satan in the Judeo-Christian sense is really quite antiquated. Evil doesn’t come from God or Hell. It comes from within.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? What is this, some kind of goddamned after-school special?”

He chuckled again, softly, not unlike a loving Grandfather. What a cunt.

“No son, it’s just that you didn’t tip me. That was the consequence you brought on yourself. I don’t take well to being treated like that. I did you a serious solid, and you couldn’t even bother to pay me for my services.”

“You greedy old hack! That’s what this is about?!”

“Oh Mr. Haines, you forget yourself! It’s about common courtesy. It’s what binds us all together, or some happy horseshit like that. In any case, I’m pissed, and you, YOU did that.”

Before I could speak another thing, the shrimp began merging and moving towards me. The electrician looked directly in my eyes and curled his mouth into a twisty smile that spoke more volumes than I could ever hope to read.

“You must always tip the Devil, motherfucker.”

Cornelius Abacus snapped his fingers. The shrimp moved in one fell swoop, rose up like a tidal wave, and everything went black.