What You Pay For
by Aeryn Rudel
When Angelos Hasapi woke, the demon sat in a chair next to his bed. It had been there every day since he’d entered hospice care, proving you can get used to anything: demons, pain, impending death.
Angelos swallowed and turned his head toward his infernal visitor. “It’ll be today.”
The demon, a blood red mockery of the human form with curling goat horns, eyes like black marbles, and a mouth filled with shark teeth, grinned. “Yeah, that’s our intel too, Angie.”
“Good. I’m ready for the pain to end.” The cancer had been eating him alive for the better part of three years.
The demon laughed. “Oh, you think you know pain, do ya? Well, Angie, you ain’t seen nothin’.” The demon waved a dagger-clawed hand at Angelos’ shriveled body. “This is little-league hurt. You, my friend, are going pro.”
Angelos chuckled, sending rivers of agony through his entire body. He couldn’t breathe for a moment. When he could finally suck enough air to speak, he said, “I’m not going with you.”
The demon snorted. “What? You think that priest that came and blessed you the other day makes one bit of difference? Come on, Angie; you’re not stupid. It takes more than a little Latin and holy water to wipe away a life of sin.”
“The priest was for my mother,” Angie said, his throat as dry as sunbaked desert. Dying was thirsty business. “I let him perform the blessing to help her get over my death.” His mother had wanted him to go into the priesthood of the Greek Orthodox Church, but a life of piety and service was never in the cards. He’d started running guns for the head of the so-called Greek mafia in Baltimore at the age of nineteen. After that, Angelos had proven himself a reliable smuggler, then an even more reliable contract killer. He paid his dues in blood and bribes and became one of the most feared men in the city. He’d finally met his match in the two packs of Marlboros he smoked every day since he was sixteen, proving again that you get what you pay for.
“If you don’t think the priest saved you, what keeps me from taking your shit-stained soul the very second you shuffle off the mortal coil?” The demon pantomimed looking at a wristwatch. “Which I’d say is in about fifteen minutes.”
“I made . . . other arrangements,” Angelos said. Hard to speak now. The demon’s fifteen minutes were likely optimistic.
“Uh-huh,” the demon said. “You know, making an emergency conversion to Buddhism or Scientology or whatever is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
“No . . . older,” Angelos said. The strength was leaving his body like the heat from a dying star. That frightened him. Not because death was imminent but because he had one more thing to do, and it would require every bit of life remaining to him.
“Older?” the demon leaned forward. Its piranha mouth hung in a frown. “Ain’t nothin’ older than us, Angie.”
Not quite right, Angelos thought and gripped the coin in his right hand beneath the covers. The metal was cold, always cold, no matter how long he held it. He ran a finger over the rough inscription on its surface, an inscription in a language no one had spoken in thousands of years. He’d paid four million dollars for the coin, and it had taken him two years to track down.
“Getting close now, Angie,” the demon crooned. “Any minute.”
Angelos agreed. His vision darkened and each heartbeat boomed like a bass drum in his head. He brought his hand out from beneath the covers, shaking with the effort of one last herculean task.
“What is that?” the demon asked, the first hint of concern in its voice.
Angie smiled, opened his mouth, and put the ancient bronze coin on his tongue. His final breath hissed around the obolus, and everything went dark.
The darkness lasted for only a moment. When the lights came back on, Angelos stood in front of the hospital bed looking down at his own corpse.
The demon stared at something behind Angelos, its horrible mouth gaping in stupefied awe. “What the fuck did you do?”
Angelos turned and saw the north wall of the room had become hazy and translucent. Beyond it stretched a river of black water moving sluggishly off into oblivion. The sight of it filled him with cold dread . . . and something else. He felt a surge of satisfaction, pride even. Angelos Hasapi had never been unprepared in life, and he would not be in death.
A shape appeared in the distance, floating on that inky water. It grew in size rapidly as it approached, a simple skiff of onyx wood, piloted by a hooded figure, hunched and terrible.
The skiff stopped just on the other side of the wall. The boatman pulled back his hood, exposing a withered face with maggot-pale skin and eyes the color of rotten teeth. “Angelos Hasapi,” the boatman said in a rasping hiss. “Have you the obolus?” He extended one hand, palm up. The fingers were too long and had too many joints.
Angelos started to panic, then realized his mouth was still full. He spat the obolus out, stepped forward, and put the coin into Charon’s hand.
“Come aboard,” Charon said. The skiff rocked gently as Angie clambered over the gunwale.
“You crafty motherfucker,” the demon said, an amused smirk on its monstrous face. “But how do you know he’s not gonna take you someplace worse?”
“I don’t,” Angelos said as the skiff began to drift away. “But I know this. You get what you pay for, and to a Greek, Hades sounds a lot better than Hell.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aeryn Rudel is a writer from Tacoma, Washington. He is the author of the Acts of War novels by Privateer Press, and his short fiction has appeared in The Arcanist, On Spec, and Pseudopod, among others. Learn more about Aeryn’s work at www.rejectomancy.com or on Twitter @Aeryn-Rudel.
