To Rouse Leviathan by Matt Cardin

Author:Matt Cardin [Cardin, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9781614982708
Publisher: Hippocampus Press
Published: 2019-07-31T14:00:00+00:00

The Devil and One Lump

I woke up that morning and stepped right into a story that I might have written myself—back when I could still write, that is. And even then I only would have written such a story if I were a hack who dealt in shameless clichés instead of a serious student of the dark self.

For the Devil himself sat waiting for me in my living room on that beautiful, sunny morning. And he looked like he had been dispatched to my house right from central casting.

Here’s how it happened: I crawled out of bed all fuzzy-eyed and disappointed that the daylight had come so quickly, since I had spent the night sitting up late by myself and imbibing vast quantities of wine in the very same chair where you-know-who would greet me a few hours later. My television had sat silent and my bookcases unmolested. And the damned computer had stayed locked in the closet. No entertainment for me. The plan had been to devote the entire evening to indulging deliberately in my private misery, exploring each shading of its symptoms and every cranny of its causes. It had ended up a magnificent success, all things considered.

And of course I paid for it the morning after, as I had known full well I would. Catharsis wasn’t something I sought; I had given up on that long ago. The emotional hangover from the night’s excess of self-pity was actually worse than the alcohol-induced one, a truth that glared at me in the wretched light of a despicable sun as it squeezed its violating rays through loathsomely disloyal window blinds. (See what I mean?) So as soon as my feet hit the berber, I raced straightway for the kitchen—or rather stumbled on legs made of some miraculous hybrid substance, part gelatin, part rubber—to get the coffee started. The holy liquid blast of caffeine was set to be my savior that day, and I was eager to begin the worship service.

As I stood filling the carafe with tap water and earnestly striving to achieve total cognitive annihilation through sheer force of will, I heard somebody clear his throat. If ever I heard a dignified realignment of mucus, it was in the cultured sound of that musical ahem. Later, after the incident was over, I thought back and realized that everything that came afterward had already been previewed in that single, phlegm-filled sound.

Not that I knew this consciously at the time, what with the outer world coming to me through a perceptual filter of extreme ugliness while my craving for coffee ramped upward toward junkie level. At the time, I was simply startled to hear that I was not alone. So I whirled around to see who was there, and when my head stopped spinning a few seconds after my body, what should I see but a man in a dark business suit, exquisitely tailored, sitting in the sun room off the kitchen. That room faces east, so at 7 a.m. it was flooded with golden light from the overeager sun.

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