can tell you the future! I can tell you how you die, so you might know and avoid it, but you must let me stay.”
“First,” Ha says, “I don’t trust you. Second, for to me, to live is Christ...”
Ouch.
“...and to die is gain. I already know my future.” He steps closer to Bub - closer than I feel comfortable with. “You can see the future? Then you know that your side loses. Your entire existence must be filled with crippling self-doubt.”
Bub hisses. “We can be like Him. You’ve been drinking the Patmos Kool-aid.” Ha takes another step. “Get back!” screams the demon. “I’ll kill you!”
“You can’t touch me,” says Ha, and it’s hard to believe he’s never done this before. Bub raises his hand to his open mouth to bite off another finger, but this time I’m ready. I speed to him and lock his arms behind his head, interspacing a pillow between my grip on his body. I’m strong enough to crush human bone, and if Ha is successful, this possessed man won’t have the demoniac strength that lets him now resist me. Before the pastor can wonder how I’m so fast, I yell at him.
“Now, Ha, now!”
“In the name of Jesus the Christ, I compel you to come out of this man!” He says it three times, and between his invocation and the demon’s screams, my eardrums feel like they’ve been passed through a meatgrinder. I almost can’t believe it. Ha is winning.
“Wait, wait!” sobs Bub. “Cast me into something! Anything!”
Ha hesitates.
“Like what?” I ask.
“Umm...do you have any pigs?”
No, no pigs, but I have another idea. I send a mental command to Benjamin.
Half an hour later, the asylum is once again drama-free. The staff has eaten its fill of the Thanksgiving feast, Jorge has a clean bill of health, and the patient formerly known as “Bub” is stable in surgery. Pastor Ha, Benjamin, and I are eating leftover pie (what else?) in the kitchen.
“Really, call me Nathan,” says the pastor. He’s picking on his slice of pie, but I suspect it’s out of politeness. He seemed like he lost his appetite when the demon departed; when it did so, the man it was possessing vomited a truly enormous amount of barely-digested pie right in front of us.
“It’s funny,” Nathan says. “Besides ‘Lord of the High Places,’ another translation of ‘Beelzebub’ is ‘Lord of the Flies.’”
Benjamin chuckles and takes a big bite of pecan pie.
“Mr. Benjamin, I still don’t understand why you had a fly trap,” says Nathan.
Benjamin looks at him and chews.
“In your car.”
Benjamin stares in silence.
“Full of live flies.”
Benjamin swallows. “I didn’t hear a question in there.”
“Why was there a fly trap full of live flies in your car?”
“Well now. They have to be live, don’t they?” says Benjamin. “To be able to crawl into the trap. They can’t do that if they’re dead.”
Nathan shakes his head. “I just can’t wait to tell my youth group guys that I cast out an actual demon into a big jar of flies.”
“Oooh, I’m afraid I’m going to insist you don’t do that,” says Benjamin, patting his jacket pocket. “If you’ll recall...”
A quick perusal of Benjamin’s mind: he had Nathan sign a non-disclosure agreement on the drive to the asylum. He really is a useful fellow.
Nathan is quiet for a second. “Listen, I don’t exactly know what’s going on with either of you, but...”
I look at him impassively.
“...I’m going to pray for you, okay?”
“Thank you,” I say. “And thank you for everything you’ve done tonight.”
At my prompting, Benjamin asks, “Time to go?” I walk them to Benjamin’s car. The fly trap, its lid sealed to prevent egress, is secured in the car’s trunk. Its insect inhabitants buzz a bit more fiercely than before, when we loaded it in, but none of them are going anywhere.
Nathan turns to me. “This has certainly been...an experience, Dr. Pierce.”
I shake his hand with my ice-cold grip.
“Feel free to visit our church any time,” Nathan says. “Maybe this Sunday?”
I smile at him. “Thank you, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it.”
He smiles back, sadly. “No, I don’t suppose you will.”
I wave goodbye as they drive through the asylum’s open iron gates. I decide I’ll instruct Benjamin to write a sizable check to Calvary Lutheran Church. When I touch his mind, he’s thinking hungry thoughts, all centered around his trunk’s cargo. I ask him what he plans on doing with several dozen demon-possessed flies, and he sends me an image of himself in the kitchen.
He’s baking a pie.
Special thanks to Katharina Netolitzky for the cover design
katharina-netolitzky.blogspot.com
Other works by R. M. Huffman
Novels
ANTEDILUVIAN
BOOK 2 - Coming 2014
BOOK 3 - Coming 2015
www.antediluvianworld.com
Short stories
Sweet Tooth
Sweet Tooth: Lord of the Pies
A Very Christmas Sweet Tooth
Sweet Tooth: Heartstaker
Sweet Tooth: Raise the Dad
Sweet Tooth: Rebirthday Boy
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