1. Futon Demon

            My name is Craig Nym, Craig as in ‘List’ because I use it regularly in my (unofficial) line of work, and Nym as in ‘Pseudo’ because it is.   So what I’m saying is, my name isn’t actually Craig Nym, but that’s what I’m going to refer to myself as, and unless you’re a lawyer representing Craigslist, it’d probably be best if you do the same.

            But enough about me.  Let’s talk about the futon.  Which is mine.

            Daisy has been hassling me for weeks to get off my ass and sell some of the redundant furniture in the house.  Trevor (some guy working on the dig with her) says that our failure to sell off duplicate belongings indicates that we aren’t really committed to our relationship.  I’m not really sure why Trevor’s opinion matters, but Daisy’s certainly does.  After all, she’s the one bringing in the petrified bacon with all of her archeological career progress while I futz about, dabbling with my writing while swinging pendulously from one minimum wage job to the next.  It’s not my fault that I’m a creative genius, and therefore unsuited to conventional schedules.

            But about the futon, this far-away feng-shui shift happened three months into Daisy’s six-month stint on the excavation, which puts it two months after my whole-hearted (albeit not entirely willing) dive into my newfound hobby. 

            Had Trevor unwittingly redesigned my house sooner, I would possibly have found a buyer rather quickly on Craigslist for the old American Flag patterned futon, or more likely, I wouldn’t have bothered to list the thing at all.  But now I’m becoming a bit of a Craigslist connoisseur, and I vet potential buyers pretty thoroughly before I consent to a sale.

            Sure, of the millions of people in the southeast United States, there are probably at least a dozen with taste as bad as mine was in college, but would all of these prospective futon buyers suit my other needs?  I think not.  I have now rejected half a dozen email offers from local collegiate patriots, while insisting to Daisy that if we are really going to sell my futon instead of her furry egg-shaped chair thing (Trevor thought this best) then at least I am going to get a fair price for it.  America!  But that was a lie.  So now I’m pulling my minivan – long story – up in front of Pamela Fierson’s house.

            I know what you’re thinking, Fierson seems like an obvious last name.  Son of fire?  I mean, come on!  But I’d like you to know that the obvious indicators are almost never valid, and can therefore be employed as a deceptive tactic.  If you see a guy with ‘Hail the Dark Lord’ tattooed on his throat, don’t mess with that guy.  Obviously.  But if you see a guy with The Hobbit Trilogy sleeves, well… don’t mess with that guy either, but maybe give me a call.

            So why Pamela Fierson if not for her last name?  There were a couple of clues that made me suspect she’d be the perfect person to take my star spangled sleeper.

            A middle-aged woman’s interest in patterned fold-out furniture should be indication enough, but it isn’t, not in today’s tasteless world.  Brief aside - when I Google street-viewed her house, I was expecting a trailer, proving that I am apparently redneckist, but instead I saw… a totally normal suburban three or four bedroom home.  Suspicious, right?

            I thought so – unless maybe she has a son who is roughly the age I was when I bought the blasted thing – so in my response email, I casually invaded her privacy by mentioning that I have some other hideous belongings that her - just guessing - high school senior - speculating - male child might like.

            She responded no thank you, that the futon wasn’t for anyone in her family, but rather for the Social Studies corner of the 5^th grade classroom in which she teaches.  She then explained that she’d like to get the futon by next Monday as she would soon be commencing her lesson on conquistadors.  And she concluded that she’d be available to get it from me on tomorrow.

            That’s right, this elementary school teacher not only wants to teach about conquistadors from atop a Proud to be an American throne (which she must assume has been the sight of numerous sexual conquests) but also uses the phrase ‘on tomorrow’ in writing.

            If she isn’t what I think she is, then some of her teachers must have been, because this travesty of an excuse for an educational professional is almost certainly going to tilt the next generation of Americans just a smidge more towards evil.  And I don’t like to imagine demons controlling the world of on tomorrow.

            It’s worth mentioning that in the past I’ve had much more convincing evidence and still been wrong, but I try to block my history of failure from my mind as I walk up the front lawn towards Pamela Fierson’s house.

            Guess who answers on the sixth knock?  Pamela Fierson.

            I smile, and she looks a little pissed off.  Maybe because she fell into my sixth knock trap – that tendency towards the number six is a giveaway as well.  My favorite number was six growing up, but that’s beside the point.

            “I was in the bathroom,” says Pamela, as if I need that kind of information.

            I tilt my head from side to side.   I’m trying to find a hint of National Treasure or The Rock in her, but I’m not seeing it, and I guess she mistakes my bobble-heading for confusion regarding her last statement because she follows it up with, “I heard the first couple knocks.  But I was in the bathroom.”

            I wonder if she speaks to her students in the same condescending tone.

            “I’ve got the futon in my van,” I say. “Could you give me a hand carrying it in?”

            She sighs as though she didn’t expect to have to help carry it, as if she thought one guy could carry a futon by himself, as if she’s never owned a futon before.  And who buys their first futon in their 40s?  I think the answer is obvious.

            A few minutes later, we’re waddling up the driveway, exactly according to my plan, except that I’m leading and walking backwards, which is dumb, but oh well.

            As we slog through gravity I ask, “So, what price did we agree to?”

            “Sixty dollars, right?”  Yes, exactly.  I glance up and down the street.  Not a soul in sight, and none of her kind either.

            I shift the futon’s weight to my left hand, so Pamela Fierson has to shift her hold to the right.

            “Oh, I thought it was sixty six,” I say, and glance back at Nicholas Cage as he frowns and struggles to support the futon.

            “Are you sure?” Nic asks in Pam’s voice.  He’s making eye contact and… I admit it… I hesitate.

            I should explain… I fucking hate Nicholas Cage.  Why?  Because I’ve always thought he looks a bit like my dad, except that my dad is awesome, and if he were a leading actor instead of a supporting father and talented carpenter, he would choose considerably better projects than the ones baby Coppola has based his career on.  No, Dad would do great diCaprio-type work. 

So is Nicholas Cage a demon?  No, or at least I don’t think so, but he is what my mind thinks demons should look like, and he is what they briefly become, at least to me, when they let their disguises slip for a moment.

And now I know for sure.  My suspicions of her freaky over-zealous patriotism, her weirdly anachronistic grammar, and her peculiar approach to teaching were completely valid.  She is Nicholas Cage.  She is a demon.

But I hesitate, and Pamela Fierson, now herself again, sees it in my eyes.  I drop the lighter side of the futon and wrap my right hand around my back, groping for the Glock I ‘borrowed’ from Cassie.

The plan was that I would have the weapon out and leveled before the Pamela demon had the chance to drop the futon, but I am hindered both by my prior hesitation and by the futon itself, which has now landed on my right foot.

I let out a howl of pain as Pamela lets out a howl of demoniness and bounds forward like a wolf, springing off the center of the futon, and forcing me to drop my end completely.

Fortunately her wolfish movement wakes my catlike reflexes from hibernation and as I fall backwards, banging my shins on the underside of the futon, my hand produces, not the Glock from my boxers, but rather the wicked looking sacrificial dagger that was tucked there as well.

Pamela demon sees the dagger as she clears the blue field of stars, but she’s already got momentum and it’s too late for her to change direction.  She arcs Nicholas Cage’s neck away from me, creating a nice sinewy talentless target into which I sink the dagger all the way to its hilt.

I keep the dagger extended as Pamela rolls past me, whimpering on the ground.  Then she touches her neck… no blood… but then, there wouldn’t be, but she’s not dissolving yet either, and that’s not good.  She eyes me skeptically, and my eyes bounce off of hers to look at the dagger.  Totally clean.

I sit up and stab the futon, but it too is unaffected by the weapon.  The magic of American patriotism?  No.  I depress the knife slowly this time and the blade retracts back into the hilt.  What the fuck?  I’m gonna kill Cassie.

Pamela grins Cage-ishly and lunges for me, but I’m ready.  I throw the dummy knife at her, which only buys me a moment as she knocks it aside, but that moment is all I need to produce the handgun that I should have used in the first place.

Pamela adjusts her approach and springs not at me, but rather at the back of the futon, bouncing off it like a vertical trampoline even as it tips over onto it’s Star Spangled back.  I guess we’ll have to burn it now, but that’s fine.  Daisy certainly won’t mind.

I aim the handgun at Pamela, but not quickly enough.  One leap later and she’s back inside her completely unassuming house.  This brief reprieve gives me just enough time to examine the clip in the Glock.  Good, it’s still loaded with the bullets Cassie 'gave' me.  Just checking.

Standing up, I dust myself off and hesitantly approach the front of the Fierson household, glancing up and down the street once more before entering the edifice, very Bond-ish.  I can practically taste the steel where the registration number has been scraped off of my weapon as I hold it in two hands close to my face and round the corner into a completely typical middle-class suburban home. 

In fact, it’s too typical.  The walls are decorated with a Hobby Lobby clearance rack’s worth of motel-art.  And I’m not exaggerating.  A Hobby Lobby tag is still visible hanging from the corner of a yellow-green field on a cloudy day.  I wonder what this awful gallery displayed here in a demon’s abode, has to say about the moral compass of Hobby Lobby, of if this is just representative of Pamela Fierson’s urgency to create a realistic looking human dwelling.

My view of every LaQuinta Inn lobby in the country is briefly disrupted when my phone rings, blasting out the Aretha Franklin ringtone that Daisy programed in to let me know when my better half was calling.  I wouldn’t change it if I loved her.  And I didn’t.  Change it, I mean.  Awww.

I have just enough time to fumble in my pocket for the ignore button before Pamela Fierson darts across the collage of public domain ‘artwork’ and escapes into what I can only assume is the kitchen.

I manage to squeeze off two quick shots as she disappears from view, but they don’t do shit.  In part, this is because I fired way too late.  Thanks, Daisy, for that one!  But there’s more to it than that.  My shots didn’t even damage the babbling brooks and rundown farmhouses that cover the entire wall.  The pseudo-antique cuckoo clock and the pedestal-mounted sundial (which is nowhere near a window) are totally undamaged.  The power of Hobby Lobby’s moral conviction?  No.  Unless New Balance is similarly protected.

Because next I point the gun at my head, then, realizing I’m not an idiot, I shoot myself in the foot instead.  Only metaphorically though, because apparently this fucking ‘weapon’ is full of blanks.  I’m gonna kill Cassie.  For real now.  Maybe Daisy is right; maybe I do have a habit of blaming women for all of my problems.  Probably my mom’s fault.

After all, if she had just taught me more about cooking, I wouldn’t be so confused about why Pamela Fierson is now hiding in the kitchen.  Even if stressful situations - like this one hopefully is - make her hungry, I doubt she’d have any food on hand.  As everyone knows, and/or I suspect, demons don’t eat except to deceive humans.  No, I assume they are sated on the knowledge that they have swayed humanity a tad more towards evil.  But I don’t get to finish my thought, as I am interrupted by Adele singing the single word ‘Hello…’ from my pocket, signaling that Daisy has now texted me.  I know if I don’t answer swiftly, she’ll get upset.  Trevor has no doubt explained to her that slow text responses indicate a lack of enthusiasm from the tardy respondee.  So with my totally useless weapon (except as a deterrent) still raised into the kitchen, I fish my phone out of my pocket and try ineffectively to key in 6666 without looking.

Perhaps attracted by the numerical attempt, Pamela Fierson emerges from behind the fridge wielding a monstrous butcher’s knife.  To be clear, I mean that the knife itself is monstrous, not that the butcher to whom it could belong would necessarily be, though frankly that wouldn’t surprise me either.  Pamela certainly is, and now I know why she was in the kitchen.  Because that’s where the pointy things are. 

The trained professional that I am, I stagger backwards into the half-height Doric columned shadedial, dropping the gun but hanging onto my phone, which is even now reminding me of Daisy’s message.  Hello… How do you feel about this degree of dedication, Trevor?

My shoulder knocks the cuckoo clock off the wall, and it chirps in automated agony as it intercepts the knife intended for my chest.  Pamela screams some sort of onomatopoeia and winds up for another stab, this time downward as I am sliding down the column towards the floor.

I stare upwards, sad that I’m going to die in exactly the manner of a shopper in a crafts store art aisle on black Friday, and wondering if I have time to call Daisy quickly enough for her to hear my demise and feel horribly guilty for the rest of her life.  Or at least until Trevor talks her out of it.  No, that would take too long.  He would no doubt criticize me for not having her saved as a speed dial… dial…

That’s it!  I reach upward and tilt the pedestal forward over me as Pamela Fierson brings the knife crashing down.  And though it has absolutely nothing to do with the power of the sun (these aren’t vampires, silly) the pointed part of the decorative sundial does a damn good job of stopping Nicholas Cage dead as it skewers his/her throat.

I breathe deeply then crab-walk out from under the grotesque archway made of Doric column and Satanic demon.

I’ve just gotten to my feet when Pamela Fierson bursts into a fiery sun of light, which only I – I’ve learned – am able to see.  The tremendously satisfying pulse of illumination gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside but it also casts a shadow from the sundial stand across the room to where a real clock (which I’m guessing makes bird sounds on the hour) reminds me that it’s after eight, which is probably why Daisy was calling me.

Once the demon ash is wiped off the face of my phone and I’ve successfully sixed my way in, I read the text which informs me that Daisy is pissed, and that I shouldn’t bother calling her back until tomorrow.  I sigh.  This is not the first time demon-slaying has gotten in the way of me maintaining my long-distance relationship the way I’m ‘supposed’ to.

‘Sorry babe,’ I text, ‘I love you, and I’ll call you in the morning.’  I try to add a heart-eyed emoticon to the end of this, but I’m still a bit shaky from the night’s events, and I accidentally send one with ocular dollar signs instead.  Which reminds me…

After a moment’s reflection that Pamela Fierson’s wallet, if she even had one, may have been vaporized along with her school teacher body, and that I might have to search the house to find some cash, I send Daisy a second text.

‘Good news though!  I sold the futon!’