What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [43]
“Who sent you?” growled Satan. He grabbed Parker’s arm and pulled it backward, yanking it upwards so that Parker’s hand was up at the level of his shoulder blades. “Who sent you?”
Parker twisted, trying to free himself, but the Devil, still holding onto the man’s arm, rushed forward to smash Parker face-first into the wall.
“Who—?” Satan began again, but Parker continued to try to fight back, so Satan twisted Parker’s arm harder, further up the man’s back, until it made a nasty cracking sound.
Parker screamed.
“Shut up!” said Satan.
Parker did not shut up, and so, after a further bit of struggling, some swearing, and a couple more screams, the tough-as-nails cowboy found himself upside down in a bathroom, smacking his head on a porcelain bowl and swallowing water.
“How is it that you found me?” demanded Satan. His voice had changed. The refined British aristocrat had gone, and now he sounded like more than one voice; like a group of horrible, angry undead things, all trying to talk at the same time through Eddie Van Halen’s guitar amplifier.
“I s-s-saw you—” Parker stammered and swallowed a mouthful of water. He started to choke. Satan pulled him up and shook, causing Parker’s head to bang against the toilet bowl again.
Parker coughed and sputtered and regained his breath. “I saw you at the FBI building,” he said. He was surprised how difficult it was to talk while getting a swirly. Here he was, a man of so many talents, including resisting torture, but he hadn’t been prepared for this. Speaking coherently while having his head jammed into a flushing toilet was just not something he’d ever anticipated doing.
The toilet flushed again, and Satan pulled the man up, just out of the water.
“Let me see if I have this straight,” said the Devil. “You saw what happened today; what I did, and you thought it seemed like a good idea to follow me?”
“I didn’t,” but Parker’s words turned to gurgles as Satan plunged the man back into the commode and flushed again.
“You did!” Satan insisted as he pulled the man up.
Parker caught his breath. “No, I didn’t have any other leads!”
Satan stopped, curious. “Leads for what?”
“Please! Please just put me down, and I’ll explain!”
Satan hesitated, leaving Parker hanging. Parker reached out, grabbing the lip of the bowl to stop from hitting his head again as he dangled.
“Oh, all right.” He dipped Parker back into the bowl, flushing once more, and then dropped the man’s feet to the floor. He grabbed some towels out of the cabinet. When he turned to hand them to Parker, the civilized Brit had returned. “Dry yourself,” he said, “and then wipe everything off very thoroughly. If there’s even a droplet of water, I’ll kill you in a slow and horribly painful way. Do you understand?”
Parker grabbed a towel off the top of the stack, grunted, and started toweling his hair.
“Excuse me! I asked you a question! You can at least do me the courtesy of giving me an answer.”
Parker let his hands fall and stared at Satan in disbelief. “Yes.”
He spent the next ten minutes cleaning Satan’s bathroom.
When he finished, he gathered up the towels and took a few cautious steps out into the living room.
Satan was relaxing on an expensive-looking sofa, apparently contemplating his scotch. “Put the towels down and have a seat there,” he said, pointing to a stool he’d placed in front of the fireplace.
Parker was still damp and was grateful for the small fire. He hadn’t even sat down though when the interrogation began. “Why are you here?” asked Satan.
Parker hesitated, and Satan’s crystal tumbler flew across the room, smacking the cowboy in the head, and smashed to bits on the fireplace behind him. He grabbed his head and hunched over.
Satan did not wait before asking again. “What does Mr. Whitford want?”
Still crouched and holding his head, Parker answered, “I— I’m not entirely sure.”
Satan leapt off the sofa and stepped to the fireplace. He pulled an iron poker from the