Day 4—The Mouth of the Rat

 

Perhaps I made a mistake.

 

Retirement is boring.

 

Granted, I did not have much of a choice in the matter but—in my defense—I had no idea how endlessly dull it would be. It was the same thing every day: the sun rises, the earth boils, I patrol the grounds, check on the status of the stakes, note the troop movements across the neighboring borders.

 

An hour later and I’m pacing the floor wondering how to fill the rest of my day. When I was in Hell, I had an endless parade of subjects lining up to be tortured. The most I had in the lavish sunscape was an endless parade of small dogs that wanted to shit on my lawn.

 

Also lawns? What’s the point of them? They didn’t deter anyone. A moat would be much more effective. Too bad I didn’t have a country full of useless, disloyal nobles to build me one. I’d have to look into finding suitable replacements. As of now, I’d had the imps line up the stakes-flamingos in a line at the border of the lawn and sidewalk. The dogs, not being burdened with higher brain function that allowed for the flamingo illusion to work, recognized the warning and steered clear of my property, although they did pee on the stakes with alarming regularity.

 

I stood in the front yard, surveying my little pocket of this neighborhood this morning. The sun was still low in the sky, the heat a simmering wave rather than its typical boil. I sipped from a dark bitter drink that Lucifer swore by, housed in a mug that Anastasia was very fond of that read World’s Okayest Dad. It had been a housewarming gift from the Lightbringer himself.

 

As I watched, mug in hand and arms crossed in front of my body, one of the small dogs—a white puff ball named Cinnamon—and its owner, Jerry Greenlaw, approached. Cinnamon gave the hellhounds in Dis a run for their money. For all that it weighed less than one of my boots, it had the ferociousness and intractability of a much larger creature.

 

Jerry Greenlaw did not appreciate the horror he held at the end of his leash. He kept a plastic baggie full of bacon-flavored snacks in the pocket of his pressed golf shorts. Golf, I discovered, is an utterly incomprehensible game where several people hit tiny, dimpled balls with crooked sticks in the direction of a hole in the ground and then walk after it. Then they hit it again. And again until, eventually, they hit it into the hole, collect the ball, and then do it all over once more. And they pay for the privilege!

 

The community we live in bordered a golf course where one goes to play this inane game. I do not understand the allure.

 

Jerry frowned as he and Cinnamon drew closer. Cinnamon began barking almost immediately and began pulling on the leash. All of the muscles in its small body tensed in effort as it tried to go for one of the stakes disguised as a pink lawn flamingo.

 

Or rather, Cinnamon went for one of the bodies impaled upon said stake.

 

As I began to cross the yard, Cinnamon grabbed the leg of the body impaled on the stake and pulled. I shouted as the little fluff demon kept on pulling until a leg ripped free from the body.

 

As Lucifer is my witness, I will punt that dog into the sun.