The Customer Is Always Right

Streams of dying light wedged through the curtain slats, the dust motes parting and swirling as she fled through the barely furnished living room. Her sneakers pounded the ill-kempt wooden floor, her rationale a distant thing as black and white photos of figures blurred past her, unsmiling and vacant.

She reached the door and wrenched the brass knob, stifling her cries of frustration as the keylock defied her. She backed up and kicked, her leg pumping as she tried to bring down the door. It didn’t budge.

A phlegm-drenched cackle closed in from behind her. She searched for a weapon but found the corridor bare as the old woman hobbled closer to her. The witch’s lips peeled back into a rictus, teeth chipped and grayed. “What did I tell you?”

The young woman reared toward the witch, her clenched fist aimed at her face. It stopped an inch from the old woman’s nose, an unseen force keeping her in place. The witch bobbed with another bout of laughter. “Now, tell me young lady: what did I tell you?”

The woman bared her teeth as she struggled against the paranormal shackles. “The fuck is wrong with you?” Her neck snapped back, as if someone had taken hold of her hair.

The witch’s smile soured. She raised a long, crusted fingernail and shook it. “Tell. Me.”

The woman’s lips thinned, jaw tensing. “You asked for a latte.”

The witch’s face shifted to angry crags. “Tell. Me.”

“You specifically asked for a latte.”

“Say it, child.”

“LATTES ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE MILK YOU BITCH-FILLED RAISIN!”

“No, I specifically asked for a latte, no milk.”

“THAT’S FUCKING STUPID.”

The witch trembled with swelling anger, white-knuckled hand unfurling. She gestured it at the floor, the woman crumpling onto her back, extremities locked into place.

The barista stewed in impotent fury and terror as the witch circled around her. “I am not a woman to be reasoned with without my scalding elixir.”

“You could have asked for black coffee.”

“SCALDING ELIXIR!” The witch kicked her, though the barista didn’t register it. “It is a ritual, one you ruined with your incompetence.” She stood over her, moth-eaten rags swaying, her gray mane greasing down over her face. “There is only one punishment for you.”

The floor began to rumble as crimson light seethed from between the cracks of the wooden panels, the innards of the earth rending asunder with the sound of scraping and squealing. The barista’s clipped screams punctuated the witch’s cackling as leathery, clawed hands burst from the floor and clamped her extremities, and with a radiating plume of cinnabar flame she was pulled down into a cavernous pit, the rocks below glowing with embers like burning jewels upon basalt.

After a moment, the destroyed floorboards reassembled, splinter by splinter, panel by panel, back to their respective places. The witch’s rictus remained as she stared down where the barista once was. Satisfied with herself, she started hobbling away when a sudden weightlessness took her, her vision blackening as the sensation of free falling sent her organs near her throat.

It lasted a few seconds.

She came to a stop, sitting, her eyes wincing against the fluorescent lights of a dingy office room. Outside the room was the murmur of conversation and the chorus of ringing landline phones. Before her was a vaguely humanoid shape. As her eyes adjusted, he came into focus.

Sitting at a desk was a hulking red figure in a white button-up collar shirt, his giant clawed hands folded. His amber eyes regarded her with an air of boredom and mild annoyance. At the left of the desk was a white marble plaque with a name engraved in gold filigree: Leo Ludovic. He brushed something off his ram horns and sniffed, muzzle furrowing. “Ms. Chandler, I presume?”

Dumbfoundedness had stricken the witch, her jaw slackening as she processed. Leo cleared his throat and swiveled his chair to his computer monitor, claws delicately flitting across the keyboard. “Ms. Chandler, do you know why you’re here?” The witch gave the demon a delayed shake of her head. Leo grunted and swiveled back to her. “You don’t even know where you are, do you?”

Another delayed shake of her head.

Leo closed his eyes and breathed deeply, fingers drumming on the table. “Of course you don’t. If you did, that would imply a sense of accountability, so I will start with one of the Ws. My name is Leo Ludovic, Head Assessor of Infernal Affairs. You are in hell, Ms. Chandler. You are in hell because, largely due to a leyline anomaly and some . . .,” his nostrils flared, leaking threads of inky smoke that danced through the air, “miscreants, you sent an ineligible human to our realm under the allegation of . . .”

The demon pursed his lips and checked his computer again. His massive shoulders slouched as he read aloud, “An incorrect coffee order.” His chair squealed as he jerked back to her and reclined, lips thinning as he gripped the armrests. “Can you . . .” He flourished a hand. “See how this could be, oh, I don’t know, disproportionate?”

Ms. Chandler found her voice, and a rust-caked gear in her head squeaked and clunked into place. Her eyes widened, voice low with reverence. “My lord-”

“Oh not this again,” Leo groaned, pinching his brow.

“I did not anticipate such an honor. I only wished to swell your flock.”

Leo blinked at her. “My what?”

“Your fetid flock!” she said with rising fervor. “Servants to the putrescent.”

“We have hygiene down here.”

“Cattle among the fields of brimstone to quench and feed the unending hunger of the iniquitous.”

“Mam, I think you’re milking this . . .” He closed his eyes and sighed in frustration. “You made me say it. Look, I understand you have some preconceived notions about hell as a construct, one that’s been misinterpreted over the centuries, but I’d like to inform you that-”

Ms. Chandler burst from her chair, arms spreading. “IMMOLATED SANDWICHES STUFFED WITH THE MEATY WRITHING OF THE DAMNED!”

“OH COME ON!” Leo roared, slamming his fist on his obsidian desk. He sulked at the subsequent crater he left. He sputtered his lips, and with a slow and deliberate motion, pressed the red button on a small intercom at the corner. “Martha, could you come in please?” He glowered at her. “You can sit down now.”

Chagrinned, Ms. Chandler settled back into her chair and shifted her attention to the room. There wasn’t much else to it. The cerulean carpet was well-kempt, the walls made of unblemished white plaster. There was a single inspirational poster behind Leo: it was a tabby cat with crimson eyes sitting atop a pile of charred corpses. The text read:

RELAX
IT’S A WRITE-OFF SOMEPLACE

The pristine glass door opened, and an azure demoness in a pencil skirt and blouse sauntered into the room. She tossed her silken, ebony air over their shoulder and freed some strands from her forward-swept horns. “You called?” She had a vague Brooklyn accent.

Leo slackened in his seat upon Martha’s arrival. “Yes, sorry to bother you. I wanted to know how the barista was doing and if there was any word on the culprits.” Leo glowered at Ms. Chandler. “Besides this one.”

Martha shot an arched eyebrow at Ms. Chandler. “So this is the stupid fuckin’ broad.”

“Professionalism, Martha,” Leo gently admonished, “difficult as that may be.”

Martha rolled her eyes, her spiked tail swishing in agitation. She verbally clamped down on Ms. Chandler. Professionally. As possible. “You know what kind of trouble you caused? That poor barista is going to have to have a complete corporeal reconstruction. That takes serious resources, lady, not to mention overhauling her amygdala, which let me tell you, does not do a budget well. You know how hard it is to erase a memory? Human brains are a fuckin’ - sorry, Leo - municipal landfill. Y’all got junk lyin’ around everywhere with a bunch of squatters named Mandela tellin’ you a latte don’t come with milk. Unbelievable.”

Martha allowed herself a final huff and refocused on Leo. “Sorry. To answer your question, the barista is going to be fine. They had a few biomancers cobble up somethin’ pretty close to the original, though she’s gonna be wondering where that beauty mark on her ass went. As for the brain bits they got her thinkin’ she’s Bayonetta in Sex and the City while they fix her up.”

Leo nodded in approval, his finger tracing around the crater he had left in his desk. “And the others?”

“Oh, they’re going to be coming in here soon. I figure Ms. Chandler ought to know what a crock she is.”

Leo hummed contemplatively. “Not our usual operating procedure but you’ll hear no contention from me.”

From the down hall came a yowl like a belt sander over a used condom pile. “Hey! You mind? Just ‘cause they’re internal don’t mean they ain’t got feelings!”

Leo’s face soured again. “Ah. That must be them now.”

Two smaller, lithe demons entered the room, escorted by what appeared to be a taller, white-maned gargoyle in a loincloth, his build indicative of one who has spent centuries using his extremities — and an honorary fifth — as pistons. The two smaller demons hunched upon nearing Leo, impish heads down and gangly hands wringing.

Leo folded his arms, jaw shifting. “Rono,” he clipped to the imp to the left. “Malcath,” to the right. “Would you care to formally introduce yourself to Ms. Chandler?”

The pair of demons, standing no taller than four feet, gave the witch an awkward wave. They said in disinterested unison, “Hi, Ms. Chandler.”

The witch’s demonic veneration had waned, her wrinkled hand reciprocating the gesture, her rheumy eyes turning to Leo with unspoken questions. Leo allowed himself a little fang with his smile. “Confused? Just nod. Very good. Now before I begin, can you recall when your so-called ‘powers’ came to be?”

“Uh, well . . . I-I suppose maybe a little less than a year ago?”

“And would you care to venture a guess as to where these powers came from?”

Blinking, Ms. Chandler turned her head to the impish demons, who gave her another awkward wave. Leo gave her a patronizing nod. “Catching on now, are we? Now let me fill in the blanks: these two malefactors, unseen, decided to have a bit of fun at your expense. They were the reason for your alleged abilities, so while you did indeed receive your powers from . . .,” he raised two giant pairs of finger quotes, “‘dark forces’, it was not at any time screened or approved by the usual channels. Combined with the aforementioned leyline anomalies and the subsequent interference and you can better understand why we hadn’t brought you in sooner.”

Malcath raised a taloned hand. Leo’s eyes darted to him. “Why are you doing that?”

Malcath ignored the question and cleared his throat. “I just wanted to point out that, in the end, no one was really hurt, at least not permanently. I think that’s something we really need to bear in mind. At the end of the day, we were just trying to give an old lady a smidge of can-do, ya know?”

Leo’s unflinching stare fixated on Malcath for a spell. He shifted his head to the gargoyle. “Kick him.”

The gargoyle’s muscled leg snapped to Malcath’s groin and launched him into the ceiling, his head and neck lodging with an eruption of cracking plaster and dust. Rono took note and vacuum-sealed his lips for fear of having his genitals launched through his eye sockets.

Leo cocked his head up at the dangling imp, a tiny grin pulling at his cheeks. “Thank you, Brook.”

“`Tis’ a small thing,” Brook said with a smooth tenor. “Sorry about the mess. Need anything else?”

“No, Brook, you’ve been a delight.”

“Excellent. Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to get stoned.”

Ms. Chandler lips peeled back into a humored smile. “Ah! I see! For you are a gargoyle!”

Leo, Martha, and Brook rotated their heads down at the witch. The gargoyle’s wings twitched in indignance. “No. It’s because I have a pound of Acapulco Gold and a company orgy to attend.” He asked Leo, “May I kick her?”

“Regrettably, no. I could shibari an entire squadron with the amount of red tape I’m dealing with as it is.”

“Pity,” Brook sighed. “Will you be going after work?”

The big demon drooped at his desk, pouting. “No. The tyranny of salary wins for today. Do say hi to Gothail for me, though. I was really wanting to try that Fresco Piledriver.”

“I’ll relay the message,” Brook said, making his way out. “Martha, always a pleasure.”

“Back at ya, Brooky boy.” Martha and Leo gave Brook an illicit glance as he exited.

Leo’s wistfulness melted away as he refocused on Ms. Chandler. “Now that you have a better understanding of the situation, I suppose the question in your head is ‘what happens now’?” He spread his arms, letting the question hang for a moment. “Well, we have a few options for you. I’d say no harm, no foul, but you have cost this department significant funding, as well as a few more anger management classes.”

His lips tightened at the crater in his desk. Malcath mumbled something from within the ceiling, to which Leo took his stapler and chucked it at the dangling imp, hitting him squarely on the rump. “I did not ask for your input, Malcath.” He took a quick breath and put on a cardboard smile. “As for you, I am delighted to inform you that we have a robust rehabilitation program, physically and mentally.”

Ms. Chandler beamed. “You can grant me my youth?”

Leo sputtered his lips. “Not in those words. We can have one of our biomancers refurbish some joints and tendons, but it’s only because you’ll need them.”

Confusion crossed the pseudo-witch’s lips. “What will I be needing them for?”

Leo had to keep himself from bouncing in his seat with glee. His folded hands slid across the desk toward her, his smirk widening. “Tell me, Ms. Chandler: how much experience do you have in the service industry?"