A STORY by JACKK N. KILLINGTON
Humphrey and the Tasty Demon
Humphrey held the spade in one hand and jangled the cloth bag of runes that he held in the other. He had called it forth. Aghirell, the creature lord. Infernal master to the Stank Pits of Evenmore and the Loogie Fields of Lukinofinjubilushia. He had done so upon his grandfather’s request. “Humphrey,” he had said. “When you throw bones that be the devils debacle, cause for all the spam jam that fucker can create. Nothing can be further from a devils mind then a known future,” he had smiled at Humphrey then, before Hal, Humphrey’s father, and his grandfather’s son let the men with the clipboards and the gas masks have him. They would take him to where it’s always shiny. They would take him to that warm cream soda heaven where you wouldn’t ever wanna come back from, even if you wanted to. So he had called Aghirell. He had thrown the bones.
Aghirell came through in a cloud of dust, a fart, and a coughing fit. “I am the great all powerful Aghirell,” he said between coughs. He waved at the dusty smoke that was trying to choke him. “The Fuck you want?” His horns may have been bone, but they looked like ice cream cones. One mint green and the other butter pecan sticking to a head made of licorice muscle peeking out in places where the fondant skin had either broken or ripped off his face. The creature smiled at him and he saw candy corn instead of teeth. “Oh, you have the runes. You must be Perkins' kid, huh?”
“Grandson,” Humphrey said.
“Anyway, I asked a question. What do you want? I was giving my lady friend the best three and a half seconds of her life and you popped me out at two,” Humphrey had been too scared to notice that the demon was naked before. Now he wished he did not notice at all. “I want my grandfather’s locket.” It was the one thing that his grandfather said that he had wished he had gotten before he went to the shiny. Well, that and something that he knew he was far too young to understand about the nurse. The way grampy kept calling her the head nurse was a little unsettling.
“Shit. I ain’t got that old thing anymore. I gave it to some wino years ago back in the war of the fruit slayers,” Aghirell smiled. “Best grape smasher I ever had.”
“Liar.” Humphrey ran up to the demon where it stood.
“Do you really think-?” Humphrey did. The demon did not think to move as Humphrey swung his magically enchanted shovel at the neck of the creature. With wide eyes the monsters head fell backwards and to the side, landing on the ground with a squish rather than a thud. “Eat me,” Aghirell said.
Humphrey ate him. It was the only way to get back the locket. Then he buried what was left of the fucker and called it a day.
Jackk N. Killington lives in Missouri where he writes, works, and loves on his love and their two cats.