Chapter 5: Nokia Responsibility

  Beazlebubbah was fuming with malodorous vapors wafting from his scalp as he walked down the corridor with a roll of papers smashed into his armpit like an unwanted stepchild that has made it clear their needs come first. The fumes coming off his faintly glowing head were peeling the ceiling paint as he passed.

  The demon muttered to himself as he stalked down the halls toward the filing wing.

  “Damnable interloper. Thinks he can just hijack a motivational session because the new kid is…”

  Beazlebubbah trailed off as he turned a corner and was met with the enormous, winged, grey-furred backside of a boar that stood at the back end of a line of fantastical creatures that stretched down the hall in front of him out of sight. The offending blockage of another living creature impeding his progress stood at face height to the demon.

  An uncomfortable, detailed view of the entire business district of the pig was glaring him in the face with a prominent brown eye, accompanying dangly bits, with a tail draped casually to the side.

  He snarled and swatted at the offending furry rump, and the creature let out an indignant snort before a soft rumbling noise of distress closely followed.

  The unfortunately prominent evidence of the creature’s sex and its back side quivered. A gurgling grumble emanated from the beast as the tail shot erect and shook in time with the quaking pig rump. Beazlebubbah’s slitted eyes narrowed in alarmed distaste. He started to take a step back to escape around the corner to run from the consequences of his actions.

  “Don’t you dare!”

  An echoing thunderous explosion of clapping fuzzy cheeks slapped him in the face with an odor that overpowered the fumes wafting from his still-glowing skull. The mixing of the gases from the creature and the frustration cloud of his toxic thoughts caused a spark to erupt, igniting the cloud enveloping his head.

  The resulting fireball slammed him backward against the wall of the corridor, cracking the plaster. He tumbled to the floor as the wayward stepchild of bureaucracy under his arm escaped its confinement and skittered free to the ground in front of him. He groaned in annoyed rage at the event as he spotted the camera in one corner of the ceiling.

  Beazlebubbah knew the blinking red light on the device that showed it was operational was mocking him, and the clip would show up in the end of the quarter gag reel. The snarling shout of displeasure he uttered as he scrambled back to his feet was somewhat ineffective at establishing his dominance due to the leftover mixture of fumes causing his eyes to water uncontrollably.

  “What the hell!? Why did you do that?”

  The grey-furred winged boar had turned around with an embarrassed expression on his piggy face.

  “Sorry, you startled me, and I’m not a young warthog anymore.”

  A meerkat wearing dark sunglasses and wielding a white mobility cane stepped around the winged boar in front of Beazlebubbah with a sneer directed vaguely toward the demon. A small document tube was slung off one of the smaller creatures’ shoulders by a thin leather strap.

  “Easy, pal. I heard everything. You started this, and the cameras will agree.”

  Beazlebubbah opened his fanged mouth to refute the facts presented, then he snapped his mouth closed as he heard the camera behind him in the corner of the ceiling whir as it zoomed in on the conversation. He nodded with curt anger to the warthog and leaned to one side, gazing down the corridor toward his destination, the filing wing.

  The end of the corridor could not be spotted past the line of creatures of myth and legend lining it. A few creatures down the line, a chimera idled playing cat’s cradle with a hippogryph who had at least the spirit of the game showing in its efforts. Farther down, a nuisance of goblins sporting green accountant visors argued heatedly over a card game with a pile of human teeth in the center of their grouping.

  An anthropomorphic mini hippo played with a ball and cup toy nearby. Farther down the line, an elderly pixie in a checkered bathrobe with a shower cap holding back only most of its blue hair harangued a family member, trying to get them to drink from a small breakfast bottle labeled unsure.

  Beazlebubbah sighed.

  “It shouldn’t be this busy. It’s toward the end of fourth shift.”

  The blind meerkat leaned against one leg of the winged boar and scoffed as he waggled the mobility cane at the demon.

  “On a Tuesday? Are you kidding?”

  Beazlebubbah let out a snort of his own with the extra pizzaz of different colored bursts of flame shooting from his nostrils. He leaned down closer to the meerkat and snidely said,

  “It’s always Tuesday around here, stinkrat.”

  The winged boar’s contrite but congenial expression soured as he leaned forward between the pair. The grey bristles on his snout fluttered in threat from his snort at the demon.

  “Let’s keep things civil, bub.”

  “It’s Beazlebubbah, pig.”

  The boar’s eyes flashed and he pawed at the ground in rage at the affront. The movement of his hoof knocked over the meerkat, sending him sprawling forward. The white mobility cane of the small creature slapped down as he fell, landing with a thwack against the rolled-up sheaf of papers Beazlebubbah had been carrying. A wicked grin grew on the meerkat’s face as he tapped a few times on the papers with his cane and took a deep sniff.

  The trio of entities froze as a warning beep came from the camera, still demonstrating how to hide blatantly in the corner of the ceiling.

  The meerkat sniffed again audibly and the sharp-toothed smile across his features grew,

  “They call him Mr. Pig. Be more careful, Demon. It would be a shame if that were misplaced or damaged.”

  The meerkat lifted his mobility cane as he lay prone in front of the winged boar and pressed a button on the side of his cane. The meerkat let out an exaggerated, dramatic statement of regret.

  “Oops, my finger slipped!”

  The length of the mobility aid burst into a condensed bar of fiery light with the obnoxious noise of an Ikea store employee exclaiming about Bjorn. He swung it at the papers curled innocently against the floor.

  Beazlebubbah’s skin paled to a faint pink and dove to protect the papers. The saber of fiery light sparked off the back of Beazlebubbah’s suit as he let out a hiss of pain. The bar of light struck him just above his ass. The winged boar laughed,

  “Oh! That’s gotta hurt! Ha!”

  The meerkat professed fake remorse at the unfortunate incident as Beazlebubbah glared at him from his position of a protective curl around the documents. He scrambled to his feet and carefully tucked the rolled tube of papers into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. He cut off the false words of commiseration the meerkat was offering.

  “Enough, we will all wait politely, without interacting further. Mistakes usually happen to others. It’s been a shitty day. Let’s just forget the whole thing.”

  The meerkat smiled toothedly at the demon and tapped back toward his place in line with his cane as he tugged on the foreleg of the winged boar. The grey-furred boar reluctantly allowed himself to be turned around to wait in the line with a last snort of contempt at the demon.

  Beazlebubbah went back to fuming as he waited in line. The now sulfurous vapors wafting from his head went back to peeling the paint off the ceiling. The meerkat sniffed softly and made a disgusted face but said nothing. The demon smirked.

  The line of creatures crawled forward over the next few hours. Beazlebubbah gritted his teeth hard while waiting. Grinding them hard enough that a few times during the wait, he had to pull a pair of pliers from his coat pocket and yank the ground-down nubs of his teeth out, allowing them to grow back in.

  The meerkat seemed annoyed by the sound of the damaged teeth clattering to the ground, so Beazlebubbah did it more often. He relished the annoyance of the stinkrat and the pain soothed him.

  The monotony of the wait was occasionally broken up by a fanciful creature coming back down the hallway as they left the filing wing. A sapient, Maserati power wheel rolled by. Its softly growling engine accompanying the eye rolls of its headlights with its candy apple red paint job standing out against the stark white of the hallway, observing the creatures in the line as it escaped the sentence of bureaucracy.

  The animated conversations of a mischief of pixies gave Beazlebubbah a wide berth as they passed, briefly stimulating his instincts to cause harm before they scurried past to safety. The leader of that mischief kept a wary eye on the demon as they swiftly winged past. Beazlebubbah smiled wickedly at the mischief leader, but his little black heart wasn’t in it.

  The elderly librarian magician a few spots down the line from Beazlebubbah observed the interaction and made notes in a leather-bound tome. His pointed hat, covered with nonsensical mystical symbols, bobbled as he nodded to himself. His observations that some demons could inflict pain in others, but struggled when bored were laughed at by a mustachioed spider clinging to the wall and peeking over his shoulder.

  When the magician kindly asked the spider not to judge the methodology of collecting data for his thesis on the nature of demons, the spider, in turn, pointed out that some of the symbols on the magician’s hat were obvious logos from only open late-at-night gas stations. When the spider reasonably pointed out that any paper published by someone sponsored by such dubious backers should be questioned for professional quality, a fight broke out between them to the delight of the other creatures in the queue.

  Jack-booted security pixies quickly arrived on the scene from a vent that slid open on the ceiling and hauled the pair away to the cheers of the creatures behind them in the queue. The short celebration faded as the line shuffled forward.

  The stark white eggshell-finished walls began to have a feathered texture as Beazlebubbah progressed further into the wing as he waited. The line shortened and feathers began sprouting from the walls in concentric circles scattered up and down the hallway. As trhe demon progressed down the hallway the disconnected circles of feathers became more uniform.

  The line thinned as the queue approached the end of the hallway. The feathered circles merged slowly into a spiral that centered on a doorway portal set into the wall. It was lined with a light-colored metal, bracing the entrance with a glowing display over the top.

  The doorway was closed by a large spiral of feathered carotin that irised open to release the previous victim of the que before allowing entrance to the next employee. The display announced cheerfully in eye-searing colored neon that the employee in front of you is now being serviced.

  Beazlebubbah shuffled in place at the front of the line as he agitated about other duties he had yet to complete for his mother before the end of his shift when he remembered what he was supposed to be doing. Glancing around in what he thought of as a casual way, he spied his surroundings, looking for potential observers.

  Behind him in line, the family of bespeckled and disheveled gnomes pushing their crying child in a bedraggled helicopter shaped stroller focused on the smaller version of themselves. The gnome child was demanding the injustice of existence be stopped with all the might its tiny lungs could muster.

  Beazlebubbah did not see any of the cameras with their mocking blinking lights taunting him with their watchful existence. He slowly withdrew the roll of papers from the pocket he had secreted them within. Glancing around one more time, he quickly rifled through the papers, reading as fast as his demonic eyes could move.

  He took one of the pages from the documents and ate it. Smiling around the paper as he chewed, he continued the shuffling of papers as he searched. Spotting the page he was looking for, he withdrew an unnaturally red pen from his pinstriped shirt’s breast pocket and began making changes.

  The changes were swift as his pen flew across the paper with a soft scribble of sound. He swallowed his illicitly pulpy meal then capped the pen and put it back in place as the display over the door let out a soft chime.

  The winged warthog and blind meerkat trotted past him as they exited. The meerkat gave him a rude gesture that was somewhat ruined by the gesture being aimed at the wall opposite the demon. The warthog helpfully nudged the offending arm so it was pointed at the demon.

  Beazlebubbah rolled his demonic eyes and returned the gesture as courtesy demanded. The pair left as the display over the door announced in its garish light that the next person could be serviced or sent to the back of the line. He snapped his fingers, and the red ink faded to a color matching the rest of the text on the papers as it shifted the words he had altered.

  The gnome child behind Beazlebubbah stopped crying and jerked its head at the noise of the snap. The parents of the gnomish child looked baffled for a moment at the sudden lack of crying and whipped their heads around to stare at the demon. To throw off suspicion Beazlebubbah blew a raspberry at the child while giving the same gesture he had gifted to the meerkat.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  The child started crying again immediately. The gnomish parents took turns yelling at Beazlebubbah and trying to comfort the child as the demon laughed and walked through the door into the filing department. The shouts of the gnomes faded to nothing as the iris of the portal spiraled closed behind him.

  Beazlebubbah found himself in a starkly lit, beige linoleum floored office. A dirty white drop ceiling with inexplicable coffee stains on random tiles gave the hopeless boredom impression that most bureaucratic institutions of the mortal world thrived upon. Long tubular, fluorescent lights evenly spaced along the stained tile ceiling burned mildly into his eyes. The dry air of the room sucked at his dully burning eyeballs enough to start them watering.

  Beazlebubbah quite liked this place.

  A single desk squatted in the center of the room with a blue-haired old woman in a grey cardigan. She had red spectacles perched on her wrinkled nose while she smoked a cigarette impatiently. An ancient, tancolored computer sat on one side of the desk, making the occasional beep at the woman who scowled at it as she typed.

  She glanced up from her conversation of derisive expressions with the computer to peer over her glasses at him. Beazlebubbah smiled in what he thought was a disarming way. She snorted and slapped a big red button on the desk next to her computer.

  Several of the stained tiles of the ceiling slid open and turrets of rather intimidating weaponry dropped into position, focusing on the demon in the room. Beazlebubbah eyed the spinning barrels of the Gatlin guns with derision but his confidence withered as several mice dressed in tactical bishop outfits dropped from the darkness of the openings above the turrets. They began softly muttering blessings onto the weapons while swinging small censers of holy incense.

  The woman took a long drag off of her cigarette and tapped the resulting ash of the cancer stick into a tray near the big red button on her desk. A small panel on the surface of the desk in front of her keyboard slid open, allowing a joystick to slide into position. She placed her hand upon it lightly, causing the turrets to start whirring ominously as they were brought up to speed. Her thumb hovered over the red button atop the controlling device.

  Beazlebubbah carefully raised his red, clawed hands in a slow motion and coughed nervously over the noise of the whirring barrels.

  “Now Agatha. Let’s not be hasty. I have already apologized. You and Mr. Habit made it quite clear the consequences of not following procedure last time I was here.”

  Agatha’s clipped, gravelly voice replied.

  “Good. Papers.”

  Beazlebubbah slowly approached the desk as the tactical bishop mice atop the turrets deployed small crossbows that gleamed with holy light as they aimed them at him. He carefully placed the papers he had brought with him on the desk and backed away as the turrets tracked his movement.

  Agatha eyed him with distaste for a few moments, her wrinkled thumb caressing the button on her joystick of imminent death. She snorted again and snatched up the papers. She began going through them and tapping commands into her keyboard with one hand as she kept an eye on the demon in the room with her.

  After a few minutes of the tense silence, only broken by Agatha’s grunts of displeasure and keys clacking, she paused in shuffling the papers one-handed. She frowned down at the pile and flipped back and forth a few times. She looked up at the demon suspiciously,

  “Where’s the missing page?”

  The demon glared defiantly.

  “I swear on my momma’s unfilled grave that all forms I was given regarding Jeremy Thorson are in this room with us.”

  Agatha snorted,

  “Not good enough. Strip.”

  “What?”

  Agatha snapped her wrinkled fingers and shouted,

  “Strip!”

  One of the tactical bishop mice shouted something in Latin and fired its crossbow. The bolt flew through the air, gleaming with holy light. The bolt of divine retribution grazed the demon’s ear and he started screaming as the ear disintegrated. He quickly disrobed down to his skivvies.

  “Fuck! Damnit! Okay!”

  Agatha laughed in a rasping caterwaul as the demon before her stripped. A pile of a now rumpled suit with Beazlebubbah’s pin-striped white dress shirt mixed in grew next to the demon as he did. His red suspenders lay atop the pile like deflated snakes of failed dreams and disappointment.

  She eyed the last two articles of clothing remaining on the demon, a pair of tighty whitey’s sporting a koala on the crotch with a speech bubble reading, “won’t you be my mate?”. The demon was also sporting a garter on one leg, holding a rather wicked looking stiletto knife.

  “Odd choice, but I won’t kink shame. You’ve got the figure for it. Bishosopher’s, check the suit.”

  Three of the tactical bishop mice rappelled down from their perches while the remainder of the holy strike force kept their weapons trained on the demon. They approached the pile of clothing and two dove into it after placing clothespins on their little black noses.

  Beazlebubbah looked offended at the clothespins, but said nothing. The third bishop mouse kept its crossbow pointed at the demon, standing guard against inevitable betrayal. After a short time, the two bishop mice emerged gasping from the clothes piled on the floor and squeaked at Agatha. She frowned, but looked back to the demon.

  “They haven’t found the missing page. You’re off the hook, for now. The paperwork can’t be filed until the employee signs the missing consent page. I can print out another copy here and I’ll notify Mr. Brown to expect you shortly. You will be tracked.”

  Agatha typed a few keys and a single sheet of paper extruded from the side of the computer with the noise of a printer from the late 1900’s.

  One of the mice on the floor retrieved it then shuttled it across to the demon. Beazlebubbah bent down to retrieve it. He leaned over to grab his clothing. Beazlebubbah sighed in relief as his hands hovered towards the pile of clothing.

  “Good, I’ll just-”

  Agatha cleared her throat, interrupting the demon.

  “Go.”

  “But what about-”

  The blue-haired woman cackled in derision and pressed the button on the joystick of devilish destruction. The turrets began to whir faster as the barrels spun, preparing to eradicate the demon. Beazlebubbah turned and sprinted for the exit with glowing tracer rounds lighting up the ground behind him and a single sheet of paper clutched in one clawed fist.

  His shapely demonic ass jiggled the back of the tighty whitey’s as he ran with his tail flailing around randomly in panic. A picture of an open door covered in cartoonish pictures of smiling leather gimps with balloon bubbles saying bottoms up on the back of the underwear featured prominently as he ran.

  He dove for the exit. A single round of blazing fire grazed the garter belt holding his dagger in place. The fabric snapped and the dagger clattered to the floor.

  As Beazlebubbah flew toward the door in panic, it irised open then shut with a mocking snap as he passed through. The sound of heavy, highspeed impacts against the inside startled the gnome couple who had just gotten their toddler to stop crying.

  The noise startled the child into a fresh fit of caterwauling as the demon got to his feet in his obscene underwear, dusting himself off with one hand as he checked for holes in his red flesh. The glowing sign over the door flashed to inform those still waiting to please wait while the office is reloading.

  The gnomish father started yelling at the demon as the mother rolled her eyes and went back to trying to get her child calmed again. Beazlebubbah finished dusting himself off, gave the gnomish father an obscene gesture and swaggered off with overconfidence, in his underwear.

  The line of fantastical creatures eyed the striding demon as he traveled back down the corridor. He calmly ignored the eyes that followed him and hurried from the filing wing.

  Approaching the elevators, he pressed the call button. While waiting for the doors to open, he performed the knock of shave and a haircut next to the control panel, causing another keypad to slide from a hidden compartment. He typed in a series of numbers found to be childish, offensive, and sometimes funny to any who witnessed it then slapped the keypad back into its hidden alcove.

  The elevator doors dinged and opened. Snapping his tail in satisfaction, he stepped into the elevator. It trundled upward as he was inflicted with another clarinet song he hated as it permeated the air of the elevator.

  After enough time had passed that the impatience of the journey started to get to him, a ding sounded out over the song and the doors slid open. They revealed a short minotaur in a blue uniform stood waiting with a cardboard box clutched in his arms and a Nokia cellphone grasped in one hand, stood in front of the elevator.

  The walls of the hallway were made of the cheap wood paneling. The kind one could find everywhere. The were a statement that anyone can just give up and go with a cheap veneer to hide stains and damage.

  The demon commented after he checked there were no cameras silently watching the events of the poorly paneled hallway,

  “Great, a mini-taur. She does like looking down on so many, I suppose.”

  The mocked mini-taur ignored the comment while straightening with nonchalance.

  “Beazlebubbah? The miss sends her regards.”

  Beazlebubbah snorted in derision but took the box and cellphone from the uniformed bovine. The uniformed mini-taur held out one hand. Beazlebubbah looked down at the inquiring and presumptuous hand. The mini-taur raised an eyebrow. A snide smile crossed the demon’s face,

  “Here’s your tip, stop being a finely dressed goomba and you’ll make more. It’s beneath your stature to beg for handouts.”

  The mini-taur’s eyes became bloodshot and he pawed at the ground with one hoof before taking a deep breath and calming.

  “Good day, sir.”

  The Minotaur clip-clopped away the bigger man after all, and the demon sneered after him until the Nokia in his hand started ringing an ominous slavic tune. He fumbled the box which dropped to the floor with a thump of doom as he rushed to answer the phone. He tried to hide the embarrassment of his fumble and the echoing snicker of the minotaur with false bravado as he answered the phone.

  “Miss G! Bein’ Beazy ain’t easy. What’s up?”

  The voice coming from the phone crackled with static and displeasure. It was the old and shattered husk of womanly charms long disused.

  “Now, Bubbah. We’ve talked about this. Is that any way to display manners and etiquette when answering an important phone call?”

  Beazlebubbah’s horns wilted at the familiar and dreaded voice coming from the phone. The flesh all over his body paled to a sickly pink, only comforting to those struggling with stomach problems. His voice was weak and contrite as he responded instead of throwing the phone into the elevator before the doors closed.

  “Yes, Momma Yaga. No, Momma Yaga. I’m sorry, Mommah Yaga.”

  “That’s better, bubbah dear. Now, inside that box is a replacement suit for you. You will put it on, get that page signed by Jeremy, and continue with what we have planned to assist our client. Don’t screw anything else up. She is quite upset with you.”

  “Yes, Momma yaga.”

  Clutching the phone to his ear with one shoulder, Beazlebubbah crouched to open the box, revealing the suit of a sailor that one would dress a child in. He noted with rage that the suit was missing pants, and a large rainbow-striped spiral lollipop was sitting atop the coat. His skin flushed back to a deep red and his horns grew to wicked points as they stiffened in anger. He gritted his teeth and spoke into the phone.

  “With respect, Momma Yaga. Is this necessary?”

  A bolt of lightning erupted from the phone, blasting into the side of Beazlebubbah’s head and sending him careening toward the wall. The Nokia clattered to the floor near the box, leaving a dent in the linoleum. The box sat innocently near the dent.

  His newly sharpened and hardened horns stuck into the plaster at the end of his stumble. He tore his head free leaving a long gouge in the wall and fell to his ass scrambling away from the box and phone on the floor. His panic had returned and he was panting.

  Momma Yaga’s voice came out of the phone, somewhat smoothed from the light magical exercise of disciplining her son.

  “We’ve talked about me repeating myself, Bubbah. Her attorney deemed this outfit the worst she could do during the court proceedings. Be happy, she wanted you destroyed.”

  Beazlebubbah’s obscene underwear were a thin protection against the cold linoleum of the floor as he sat panting, trying to recover from a lightning bolt to the side of his head. He stared in fear at the Nokia on the floor as he started to whimper. A few moments of silence ended when the phone started to crackle with electricity coming out of the speaker again.

  Yaga’s voice held a sizzling edge of displeasure.

  “Answer me, Bubbah.”

  Bubbah scrambled to the box, resting on the floor. His whimpers grew to a fearful, ugly cry, sobbing as he struggled to answer. He pulled the sailor outfit from the box and wriggled into it as he attempted to respond to the voice.

  “Yes, M-m-momma Y-y-yaga.”

  The Nokia sputtered with electricity for a few more seconds as the sound of the sobbing demon wrestling himself into the outfit whispered throughout the hallway in front of the elevators. The demon’s head popped up through the neckhole of the outfit as the sparks faded and Yaga’s voice sounded again.

  “Good, doobie. I wish you would just follow my instructions, Bubbah. I hate hurting you. You know that, right? I love you.”

  Bubbah stood, his sobs fading back to whimpers as he straightened the sailors coat that barely covered the ass of his innapropriately labeled underwear. The shiny buttons were a stark contrast of unearned dignity against the demon’s nonsensical appearance. He glared hate at the phone as only a demon could, but answered with contrition in his hiccuping voice.

  “Y-y-yes, Momma Yaga.”

  “Good, now, what are you going to do next?”

  “Get the mortal to sign the consent page and continue with the plan.”

  “Good. Go.”

  The Nokia quivered on the floor and burst into flame as the casing grew red hot. The discarded cardboard box nearby quickly burnt to ash from the heat. Beazlebubbah backed away from the intense heat of the device’s self destruct.

  After a few seconds of the phone sitting there glowing with destructive heat, starting to melt the floor, but showing no other damage, Yaga’s voice came from the phone with a heavy sigh,

  “It’s not breaking is it?”

  “No, Momma Yaga.”

  “Damn, Finns. Why did they ever put this much effort into making a cellphone? Don’t answer that, just get rid of it before you confront Jeremy.”

  A distinct beep came from the device as Momma Yaga ended the call. Beazlebubbah gritted his fanged teeth but bent to retrieve the still glowing phone from the melted floor. The searing heat of the plastic case burned into his palm and he let out a hiss of pain.

  “Fucking, finns!”

  He juggled the painfully hot phone from hand to hand as he scurried down the hall toward a ladderwell leading back to the scheduling department. Just before the door was a watercooler he used to douse the phone, cooling it enough that he was sure it wouldn’t start any fires when it landed in its destined location.

  Beazlebubbah stood glaring at the dripping phone in one hand as he knocked a pattern into the wall next to the door with the other. Another keyboard slid out of the wall where he knocked, and he tapped in a code.

  A nearby panel of the faux woode walls slid open and a garbage shoot slid forward out of the it. He ripped the keypad off the wall and threw it and the phone into the chute as it slammed closed.