they could clean the palace until suitable hairless replacements can be bribed.”
“Hairless?” I asked, even though I didn’t want the answer.
“If we find hairless Demons, Mammy can’t trim them,” Lizard pointed out with a smirk.
“What about Dino, Darby and Dagwood?” I asked with a put-upon sigh. “Are they not in danger from Mammy’s disgusting need to render the Universe as clean as a whistle?”
“Not for a few weeks,” Lizard assured me, rolling his baseball bat in his hands. “The blaze from the anal explosion singed all the hair off the bastard’s bodies. They’re a little scabby at the moment, but no hair to be found.”
I didn’t get paid enough to deal with this shit.
“Fine,” I ground out. The day was going south fast. “Hire them and let them know my office and suite stink. That shall be first on the agenda.”
“You have a meeting in thirty minutes,” Lizard said, smacking on his ever-present wad of gum. “And Astrid is due later this afternoon to go over the details of your birthday party.”
“How do you know this?” I asked, perplexed.
I had a damned Demon who kept my schedule for me. His name escaped me at the moment, but that was irrelevant.
“Thamuz quit, so I took over.”
“Mammy?” I questioned, wondering if the fucking beans-n-franks were worth it.
“Yep, she nailed him. Rumor has it, she was goin’ for his pit hair and blew both his arms off his body,” Lizard said, shaking his head and laughing.
“None of this is funny,” I shouted, setting my desk on fire. “My womb eviction celebration is days away, and the celebration is in Hell. As of right now, the menu will consist of beans-n-franks and the Dark Palace will be filled with dust bunnies. This is not working for me.”
“The beans-n-franks are killer,” Lizard said, walking right into the blaze and trying to put out the fire with his blood-stained beret.
Snapping my fingers, I snuffed out the small inferno and blew up a computer that was annoying me. It wasn’t a large loss since there were twenty more in the office supply closet that I’d pilfered last week. It was better than blowing Lizard sky high. I didn’t have time for Lizard to go to the infirmary due to my tantrum. It seemed my staff was non-existent. Incinerating the last man standing was a bad plan.
“Speaking of killers,” I growled as I picked up my favorite stolen stapler and smiled with relief that it hadn’t melted in the fire. “Were you aware that Mammy is an assassin?”
“Holy shit on a sharp stick,” Lizard said, suitably impressed. “Mammy is that Mammy?”
“According to my mother, yes.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, placing the blood-encrusted, fire-damaged beret back on his head.
“You already are,” I pointed out, wondering if he’d be offended if I insisted he change his outfit on a semi-regular basis.
“Already am what?” he asked, confused.
“Damned,” I replied.
Lizard chuckled and gave me a thumbs up. “You got me there, my liege.”
“Yes. I do,” I said. “And Mammy? You’ve heard of her?”
“I have, but I didn’t put it together,” Lizard replied, sitting on the edge of my charred desk. “She might come in handy if we can find the piece of crap who wants to end you and mess with your uterus day.”
I didn’t correct him. If I did, I’d have to electrocute him. Since I was short on manpower, I decided to ignore his faux pas.
“She might,” I said, waving my hand and repairing the damage I’d caused. “She might also empty Hell of all Demons in twenty-four hours.”
That certainly wouldn’t go over well to have all my Demons roaming Earth. Not that they weren’t allowed out of Hell. They were. And despite the general public believing all Demons created evil, they were wrong. Demons thrived on evil. We did not create it. Yes, we stole, lied and cheated, but we subsisted on the evil of man.
Free will gave mankind ample opportunity to be bad. And mankind could be very bad indeed. The irony was that in the end, evil was my brother’s fault. God had been the one to grant mankind free will, and it bit him in his do-gooder ass regularly. This fact warmed my black heart tremendously.
“Let me gather myself for a moment,” I said, mulling over the appalling state of Hell. “Send whomever I’m meeting with in when they arrive.”
“You’ve got it, boss,” Lizard said with a bow then quietly exited.
It was going to go up from here. It simply had to. I’d have Mammy