Rose didn't know how many times she stabbed Roddy with the knife they also used to slit open the boxes, but she did note his blood splattered just like hers over the boxes, papers, and desk. "Give piece a chance, Roddy. Think different."

After a few gurgling gasps, Roddy's deep blue eyes froze in a stare at something far away, past Rose, past Roddy's terrible burdens.

A heady whiff of meat roasting and the crackling of a campfire confused Rose when she opened her eyes. "Ellie Bug?"

"Buenos dias, Senorita." The man's face seemed to be more large white teeth than anything else, though his dark eyes actually glowed, reflecting the nearby fire. "Tu hables Espanol?"

Behind the man stood more people, all with darker skin than Rose's and all with straight black hair. Their garb was rough and simple, but of st.u.r.dy, coa.r.s.e fabric.

"If you do not speak our language, we do speak yours." Strange how he could continue smiling even when he spoke.

"Are you the Ungatosonrisas?"

"You are Bachyrita, no? But one the serpientes seek."

Rose nodded.

"What have you done that the serpientes would chase you with antorchas? We could see them coming for a long time."

When Rose sat up quickly, her head boomed its disagreement with being upright.

"You jumped, Senorita. Did you mean to do that? The water here is not that deep. This is not Acapulco." This time when the man laughed, several others joined him.

As Rose rubbed her head, she fought to remember everything that had happened and why she had wanted to find the Ungatosonrisas. Roddy's last look flitted through her mind just before she remembered her precious cargo. She reached inside her shirt for the case with John Lennon's gla.s.ses. It wasn't there.

"This is what you now search for?" The man held out the case, which, though wet, looked no worse for its moonlight bath in the river.

Though the man's smile remained, his eyes were less friendly. Gently he handed her the case. No tricks, no resistance.

"Why are you still fighting the Bachyritas?" Rose asked.

"Who said we were?"

"Everybody knows you are."

"Everybody?" The man sat down hard on the ground neat to Rose. He sighed deeply as though he were exhaling a breath for thousands of decades.

"Why would the pit vipers, the serpientes, need to continue to exist if there weren't still resistance to the Bachyrita way? You're the resistance."

"They were not hunting any of us with BrainPorts and antorchas."

Boldly, Rose foisted the gla.s.ses case out to the man. "This. They want this."

The man opened the case, unfolded the gla.s.ses as he examined them closely. "A pair of gla.s.ses? It has come to this where espectaculos are forbidden?"

"No, but not everyone can afford them. These aren't ordinary gla.s.ses, though. They're special."

"Magico?" The man's Cheshire Cat grin had faded into a puzzled look.

"No, not magical. Real. Before I looked through them, I believed the lies of the Bachyritas. I believed my life was happy and full. I believed peace was the absence of war. But after I put these on, I saw the truth."

"Verdad?"

"Yes."

All of the others handled John Lennon's gla.s.ses, holding them every which way, getting a better look near the fire. Rose, still a bit disconcerted from all that had happened, retrieved the gla.s.ses, blew a puff of steam on the lenses, and then set them on the man's nose. "See for yourself, Senor. See the truth. Think different."

After all of the Ungatosonrisas tried wearing John Lennon's spectacles, the man returned them to the case. He handed it back to Rose. "We did not see this magico, Senorita. Maybe it works for you only." His smile had faded fully away.

"Then you were trying to see through them. Lennon never did that. He imagined peace despite what he saw through his eyes, through his gla.s.ses." Rose handed the man the gla.s.ses again. "Look again. Imagine peace. Real peace. The Bachyritas can see with their eyes and their tongues, and yet they see nothing."

Once more the man sat down, facing the open s.p.a.ce just beyond the camp where the sky had begun turning a hopeful blue. Soon the sun would rise again. Soon it would be another day with all its possibilities.

"Imagine..." Rose whispered in his ear. "Imagine."

CURSORY REVIEW.

by Donald J. Bingle.

Kim Wa.s.serman's eyes scanned the neatly hung and folded clothes in the master bedroom closet. Two months of Jenny Craig meals, and she was about to show off the sizzling results at the DeMarco's annual Fourth of July barbecue.

"C'mon, Kimbo, we're going to be late," called her husband, Ken, who, as usual, was twitching to leave when she had barely even started getting ready.

She rolled her eyes and smiled. "You know, you're going to call me Kimbo in public some day, and then I will have to kill you." She headed toward the back of the closet, where she had hidden all of her favorite outfits that had no longer fit back when her weight had started creeping up. "Just because you don't care about your appearance doesn't mean I don't have to take a few minutes to get ready."

Ahh, there were those cute jeans she had gotten at that adorable little shop in San Juan on their honeymoon. They'd been a bit snug, but she had bought them anyway. She'd never worn them. She had gotten them when she was at her wedding weight, fifteen pounds below her high-weight mark. Now she was twenty-two and a half pounds lighter than her high, thanks to Jenny. Seven and a half pounds below her wedding weight. The jeans, with their colorful, intricately embroidered pockets and cuffs, would be perfect for the barbecue.

She grabbed the jeans and headed out into the bedroom. Ken was waiting with arms crossed, his head tilted to the right, chin down, eyebrows raised. He unfolded his arms and tapped his watch. "No, still working," he mumbled.

Kim tried to give him a stern look, but a mischievous grin crept through. "I'll be ready before you are," she declared, continuing before he could protest, "because there is no way in h.e.l.l you are wearing that Hawaiian shirt."

Ken dropped his arms and sighed. "Yes, ma'am."

Kim quickly slipped on a white, peasant-style blouse and stepped into her jeans. They didn't slip on as easily as she had expected. She tugged at the waistband and sucked in her now smaller tummy, not that it really made a difference for the hip-huggers. Finally, she got the pants pulled up and the zipper closed. Tight jeans were fashionable, but she felt like a boa constrictor was swallowing her.

Ken stepped out of the closet with a clean rugby shirt on. "Do these jeans look too tight to you?" Kim asked, her mouth in a frown.

Ken froze, his eyes darting down and up her figure and then up and to the right, searching the heavens for the right answer, if there possibly could be a right answer to such spousal inquiries.

"Uh... er... m-m-my wife is right," he stammered.

She pursed her lips and gave him an icy glare. "Nice try, bucko. Now, what's the real answer?" She folded her arms and thrust her hip to one side to await his answer, when the b.u.t.ton holding the jeans closed popped, bouncing along the floor and under the bed.

d.a.m.n it. She was down twenty-two and a half pounds. How could the jeans not fit? Ken better not have been monkeying with the bathroom scale...

Grznarb snarled, his yellowed fangs dripping sulphuric saliva onto the inst.i.tutional, metal desktop.

"I transfer you in from another department to head up the Cursed Clothing and Frivolous Fashion Accessories Division and this is what I get? Something that could be accomplished with a 3-for-1 sale on Haagen Dazs or accidentally washing the jeans in hot water?"

Threkma was sweating profusely, and it wasn't just from the typically infernal heat. His horn-nubs glowed red from embarra.s.sment and stress. "No, no, your Unholy Toadliness. It's not just that the pants have shrunk or the woman has not lost weight. The jeans are cursed. No matter who tries them on or when or where, they will always be just one size too small. It's actually a variation of the cursed camera gambit, the one which automatically adds a double-chin and twenty pounds to everyone in the picture, back from when I worked in the Cursed Electronics and Other Incomprehensible Technology Division."

"Fah!" yelled Grznarb, a bit of h.e.l.lfire bursting forth from his mouth and singeing off Threkma's eyelashes. Grznarb had always found singed eyelashes to be a particularly effective management technique. He couldn't imagine how humans had never stumbled upon it. "And what does this cursed clothing get us? Mild aggravation on the part of the would-be wearer?" He knew his saliva was still steaming from the burst of h.e.l.lfire, distracting the underling, but he liked his minions terrified and confused, especially during their performance reviews.

"M-m-much more than that, sir. Diet failure, or at least perceived diet failure, can lead to bingeing. I think gluttony is the cla.s.sic word, your Pus-Filled Putrescence."

"Gluttony!" roared Grznarb, a glob of still steaming saliva spewing forth onto the desktop and starting to eat away at the tally sheets and memoranda, then the metal beneath. "What kind of penny-ante curse-works are you running here? Your latest curse produces occasional gluttony? Who in h.e.l.l cares? As if gluttony wasn't endemic in human population anyway!"

Threkma swallowed hard. "More than that, your Unclean Maggotness. The cursed jeans can lead to domestic quarrels, displaced anger, depression, and, in a small number of cases, suicide. That's a mortal sin, there, your Vomitous Abomination. A mortal sin."

Grznarb snarled. "Even the little black dress thing was better than this."

Threkma straightened his thrice-broken spine at Grznarb's words. "The little black dress of infidelity did have some good results."

"Fah. You have been spending too much time around humans. Your speech offends me and not in a good way. Call the thing by its true name."

Threkma's spine began to curl, the previously broken vertebrae grinding against each other with excruciating pain. "The micro-mini of s.l.u.ttishness, you mean, your Diseased Ferretbreathness?"

"Yes," grumbled Grznarb, "but even it had limited effectiveness. The problem with cursed clothing is that the curse begins to fade too quickly when you take it off. Extended foreplay can lead to second thoughts. That's a real structural dilemma in dealing with fornication fabrics."

"Still," squeaked Threkma, "we did have that high profile political success with the little blue dress variant made out of f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o fabric..."

"Fah! You can't rest on old successes for eternity." Grznarb nested his pointed chin in his scabby hand, letting a talon hover just a millimeter from his own eyeball, just to unnerve his unworthy subordinate. "What we need is something people wear every day, like the old eyegla.s.ses of impure thoughts. Why aren't we making them anymore?"

Threkma trembled. "People switched to contacts, so we had to miniaturize and increase the potency of the cursed material. Then the humans switched to disposable contacts, creating a black hole in our supply and production budgets. Lately, they've started flocking to laser eye surgery. We rigged a few of the lasers to malfunction and boil the insides of the eyes 'til they exploded, you know, just to try to buck the trend, but the whole subgroup has completely fallen apart, your Metastasizing Worminess."

"So, just what are you doing?" demanded Grznarb. "You keep requesting more and more of h.e.l.l's powers of d.a.m.nation for your department, but I'm just not convinced it's being used well. The Dark One's power to curse is finite, you know. Not like the infinite blessings of our... compet.i.tor."

"Yes, your Festering Warthogness, but curses do last forever, so the total d.a.m.nation in the world increases at all times. That should please you and The Horned Slayer."

Grznarb tapped his talon on his eyeball lightly, causing a yellow trail of bubbling ichor to ooze out and eat through the scabs on his cheek. "The total d.a.m.nation increases, but so does the population. Besides, these fabric curses are especially problematic. The power of the curse dissipates as the item wears, fiber by fiber, leaving the item ultimately ineffective and a level of d.a.m.nation in most lint filters that swallows errant socks whole."

The sock-less Threkma did not respond to the revelation of the answer to one of life's great mysteries, so Grznarb continued. "That's why hard items work the best-the curse can last for centuries, undissipated, especially with gems and gold. Why aren't we using our limited power of d.a.m.nation for the old cla.s.sics, like the cursed sword that damages whoever the wielder loves most in all the world equal to the damage inflicted by the sword in battle? Death to kings and comrades, wives and wenches. Now, there was a good time."

Threkma shuffled his feet, the claws clacking audibly on the rough stone floor. "Although occasionally used as fashion accessories, swords are really in the Cursed Weapons and Things That Blow Up Real Good Division, your Oozing Snotfaceness. In that vein, we did produce some wedding rings (in contemporary styles in both gold and platinum) of infidelity... er... s.l.u.ttishness. Cursed diamonds really are forever, your Drooling Hideousness. But the humans took the d.a.m.ned rings off whenever the urge to be promiscuous took hold, generally well in advance of removing their clothes to rut. The rings were, accordingly, no more effective than the fornication fabrics and matching fetish footwear."

Grznarb snarled.

Threkma blathered on. "Wedding rings of shrewish-ness and wife-beating have been much more successful in eliciting the behavior sought to be induced."

Grznarb's snarl turned into a full-throated roar, sending a glob of glowing phlegm onto Threkma's foot. The minion endured the pain as it melted through to the floor. "Then why aren't we producing more of those?"

"Unfortunately, the effectiveness is high, but the overall duration tends to be short, failing to justify the expenditure of curse power needed to infuse the precious metal. Women's shelters, high divorce rates, and increasingly effective law enforcement in the area of domestic violence have all been an issue. And, once the ring is removed, whether because of divorce or incarceration, it is essentially a wasted curse. No one pa.s.ses down family heirlooms anymore. High precious metal prices have resulted in the rings being melted down and the power of the curse diluted and spread across newly manufactured jewelry and electrical components, leading to hardware freeze-ups in most major computer brands and a general low-level of irritation across the population, but no more."

Grznarb picked his nose with his tongue. "So, jewelry no longer is effective?"

Threkma brightened a bit, whether from the question or because the glob that had been on his foot had finally eaten its way deep into the stone floor. "We have had some success with bling."

"Bling?" Grznarb hated human slang.

"Heavy, gaudy necklaces and rings worn by youthful enthusiasts of hip-hop music."

Grznarb tapped his foot on the stone floor. "Get on with it. What sin is this 'bling' cursed with?"

Threkma smiled weakly. "It was meant to increase the popularity of the... er... singers."

Grznarb's brow furrowed. Threkma rushed on. "The so-called music is truly horrendous to hear, your Decomposing Vileness. It was hoped that insanity and ma.s.s suicide would result."

"And did it?"

"No. We did achieve some midlevel chaos and sin, however." Threkma didn't look at Grznarb as he continued sheepishly. "Moderate hearing loss and theft of digital music."

Grznarb thrust two razor-sharp talons into the nostrils of the minion and hefted him off his feet, blood flowing down Grznarb's scarred and scaly arm as the talons bit deep. "There is something you are not telling me. You are not the Prince of Lies! You, underling, cannot fool me."

"There was a production error," gasped Threkma with a nasal gurgle from Grznarb's talons and the blood flowing down the back of his throat.

Grznarb twisted his hand. "Yes?"

"Instead of cursing the bling, the bling causes the wearer to curse. It's... it's proven quite effective at that. Hip-hop music is full of emphatic and descriptive cursing of all types, including all known and several unidentified forms of d.a.m.nation and graphic representations of all bodily functions. And a sin is a sin, your Cancerous Moldiness."

Grznarb flung Threkma down into the minion's desk chair. "Have you nothing else?"

"Just the usual. Post Office uniforms with the curse of rage, Mont Blanc pens cursed with arrogance, pretension, and condescension, adult diapers cursed with incontinence, and candy striper uniforms cursed with kleptomania and/or nymphomania. We did some cigarette lighters of pyromania, but everyone uses disposables now, so fireb.a.l.l.s have declined noticeably." Threkma seemed to tense for a more localized fireball and the resulting incineration that he, no doubt, thought was coming.

Instead, Grznarb shook his head. Lice and sloughed skin spattered to either side. "When I brought you from the Cursed Furniture and Decorative Lawn Ornament Division, I thought you would shake things up here, Threkma. The cursed couch of false confession you placed in psychotherapists' offices really caught my good eye. And using the skin of Chinese dissidents to upholster it was an especially loathsome touch. Lots of guilt, a steady stream of suicides, some sprees of murderous mayhem, and trafficking in human parts sewn together in sweat shops by slave labor. All evil work."

Threkma managed a half-smirk of pride and self-satisfaction as Grznarb continued. "Of course, the straight-back inst.i.tutional chair of false confession placed into police interrogation rooms was the big highlight of your stay. Anger, guilt, depression, false witness, suicide... the list of sin is infinite."

Grznarb approached the minion, looming over him. "Your stay here in The Lower Realms is infinite, but your job-security is not. One four-letter word from me and you could be chewed for all eternity by an Arch-Demon with breath that makes mine smell like peppermint schnapps."

Threkma quaked in fear, or maybe it was just another of the aftershocks of Beelzebub's Fall from Grace.

Grznarb jabbed the d.a.m.ned bureaucrat in the chest with a b.l.o.o.d.y talon. "Tell me what you were going to use this latest allocation of eternal d.a.m.nation to curse now, right now. And it had better be good. I want a cursed wearable that has enormous impact but does not wear out and get tossed in a box for Goodwill. Something that pa.s.ses from generation to generation. Something insidious. Something delicious. And by delicious, I mean truly evil."

Threkma made no attempt to stem the bleeding that now flowed from both his snout and his chest, as he replied. "I did find an old recipe, almost a half-century since its last use. It has a tremendous impact not only on the wearer but also on his victims, the victims' extended families for generations to come, and on the misguidedly faithful."

"Why haven't you produced these to date?"

"They take an incredible amount of evil, your Rancid Hatefulness. They have to ward off constant blessings and that is not easy."

Father Breen returned to his room once most of the parishioners had left. He took off the stole that lay across his shoulders, kissed it, and placed it reverently on his desk. He sat down at the same desk with a weary slump and put his face in his hands. When he had first been called, he had been counseled by the monks who had trained him that celibacy was no easy task but that he must put his mind and his energies to holy work instead. So many years had pa.s.sed since that day, and his normal s.e.xual urgings had lessened with each pa.s.sing year. He had performed well in his duties and had moved up the church hierarchy. Celibacy was no longer a struggle. His s.e.xual feelings were a faint and distant memory.