GRIM

An excerpt from a future publication by yours truly. It was going to be a short story, but the things in it have taken on a life of their own…

Do me a favour; next time the words I’d sell my soul… cross your mind, don’t say them out loud.

Seriously. Just fucking don’t.

It’s not that I don’t understand the desperation that comes along with wanting to bang that hot piece of ass on the other side of the bar, or needing to own that kick-ass never-in-a-million-years-could-you-afford-it new car. Been there, done that. I get it.

It’s not that I give a damn about you risking an all expense paid trip to hell, either. Fact is, when you utter those four words it’s like a dog whistle for the folks I answer to, and it’s a lot of fucking work doing the follow-up.

I don’t have anything against work. It’s just that I like the time off to worry about my own so-called life, which is pretty hard to do when I wake up to an inbox choked with the equivalent of three months’ worth of requests and assignments. And, in all honesty, from what I’ve seen it’s not really worth the hassle. Pussy and dick, regardless on your preference, is all the same in the end – no pun intended – and that hotrod is going to end up costing you more that it’s worth. Especially if the damn parts have to be imported. Been there done that, too.

For the record, no, I’m not one of the idiots that bargained my immortal soul away for an otherwise impossible fix. Nope, I ended up with this tour of duty because the guy that had this job before me screwed up large. Huge as in The Biggest Loser massive. Yet, when all was said and done and his head exploded like a hammer-impacted watermelon, somehow I ended up paying for his mistake. And I’m still paying for it.

I’m what’s known in the circles I travel these days as a Grim. Nifty little title dreamed up by some douche-nozzle with a warped sense of humour because he thought it was appropriate given the job description. Which, simply put, is me sending morons like you to Beelzebub’s Bed & Breakfast because your lust-crossed eyes are bigger than your metaphorically distended belly.

Guaranteed, within two minutes of someone blabbing his or her mouth off about giving it all up for just that One Thing, I have a damn message on my Blackberry telling me some pinhead has won the lottery.

In all fairness, I should point out that all variations of the phrase are accepted, so don’t bother splitting hairs when you finally meet Them. Any comment about giving or lending or pimping or bartering your soul will get you a one way trip, courtesy of the Grim. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. Just doing my job.

And who are Them? There are a bunch of ‘em – Lucifer, Satan, Thanatos, Eugene, and a sweet little psycho bitch name Penelope – but it’s really any high profile demonic sort that happens to have the shelf space for your spiritual energy, or whatever the hell you wanna call it, that’ll welcome you with open arms. They used to do the whole sign-on-the-dotted-line thing themselves, but when the world started getting uglier a couple thousand years ago they embraced the whole idea of outsourcing.

Lucky me.

Actually, you should count yourselves lucky, because I’m one of the nice guys. I shower every day, I’m punctual, I cook a mean jerk chicken, and nine times out of ten I make sure you don’t know what hit you when I finally send you on your way. There are other Grim that don’t share my scruples about having you kicking and screaming on the way out.

Now, those of you paying attention are questioning the level of bullshit you’re currently wading through, considering I’m talking about offing people before they’ve actually agreed to commit themselves to an eternity with the Brimstone Brigade. Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret; once you’ve made up your mind to go for it… bang, you’re dead. Your physical body is, at any rate, since you have to go to Them. They’ll live up to their part of whatever bargain you make, but it’ll be on their terms starting with wiping out the life you were living before you decided to cut corners.

Food for thought, eh.

Not everybody who babbles about selling their soul gets the Grim treatment, of course. Thank god with a small “g” for that. Which brings me to the point of all this…

My job is to weed out the tough talkers from the real deals, and that takes time. I have to find a way into your life, earn your trust, and then find out how serious you are about taking that big next step. Not in a lame-ass weepy Meet Joe Black or City Of Angels kinda way, because most folks are easy to sort out within a week. Others take a day or two. Alcohol is great for the tougher cases or for cutting my flying time because it strips away the crap and reveals the real you. And then there are the hard-asses who drive me mental because they’re indecisive and / or neurotic. It’s a huge risk making a judgement call on people like that. Fortunately, I haven’t been wrong yet.

Hmph. Considering where I am today and what happened to the jerk-off who put me here, I guess I was one of the folks in that last group.

You’d think musicians and actors would be the most common clients / victims. Nope. It’s the mid-life crisis guys and image issue women that take up most of my working hours; the whiniest and laziest fuckers you never want to meet, trust me. And teenagers…. pfffffff… you’d swear they buy varying shades of stupid off the rack at Hot Topic to match their fucking iPods. It’s those moments, when I’m seriously considering giving Junior his first and last skydiving lesson off the CN Tower, that I beg for some washed-up coked-up screwed up over-the-hill glam rock reject to put in a call for a better tomorrow.

So yeah, it’s a grim job indeed. But, nine more kills and I’m done. Then it’s back to real life.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to see an idiot three blocks over about a soul…

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