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Back Happy Hour In Hell
Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

All this was swirling through my brain as I began to feel awake and connected enough to pull the sheet off my face and, Lazarus-like, rise from the tomb. Okay, rise from under the bed in the second guest room, the bed with the catalog coverlets and floral-print pillows, but you get the idea. I had already noted idly that the sheet wrapping me seemed to be a bit rougher and heavier than I remembered (not to mention quite a bit tighter) because of how it lay on my face, but as I tried to rise I realized that my problem was more complicated than that: it wasn’t a sheet on me at all, it was a tarp, and it wasn’t draped over me, it was wrapped around me from head to foot, so that my arms were pinned at my sides. This was not the situation I’d been in when I had last lived in this body. Not to mention that I could feel that something was moving me, bouncing me, even tilting me a bit from time to time, as though I were lying in the palm of a very, very large creature, and was being tilted at different angles while it decided which end to start eating first. (I had definitely been in Hell too long.)

Of course I kept my cool, because I knew the worst thing to do was start freaking out before I knew the facts. I calmly began shouting, “What the Jeezly fucking Christ is going on here? Somebody help me!” loudly and repeatedly. Okay, “calmly” isn’t quite the right word, but I didn’t only yell, I started pushing and scratching at the heavy tarp big time, inflating my chest and shoving outward with my arms, until I finally made enough space to get my hands up to my face.

Hands, plural. That was the first good news. Whatever else had happened to me, I had the full set of grasping implements in working order again, one attached to each wrist, with lovely bouquets of functioning fingers at the end. I could tell this because I was busily palpating my face, trying to tell if I was Bobby again, or still in the Snakestaff body. There were no stony lumps over my eyebrows or on my cheeks, and my skin felt much less sandpapery than it had in Hell, so I seemed to have returned to being B. Dollar, slightly itinerant angel. A probe of the back of my head found nothing but scalp and hair. No Doctor Teddy surgery scars either, so I was definitely out of the demon body. That calmed me down a little.