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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

I was on indefinite leave from work and didn’t need to let Heaven know where I’d be, so that bit was all right. Besides, I was going to trust Temuel to run that interference for me if necessary, since he knew a lot more about Heaven than I did. I didn’t want the folks at the Compasses asking too many questions, though, so I called both Monica and young Clarence to tell them I was going out of town. I hinted I wanted to get lost for a while, just think things through, and that I’d get in touch when I got back.

While I was on the phone with them I had a look through the latest stuff Fatback had sent me, but it was mostly a rehash of what I already knew, the original murders in the 1970s and then Smyler’s Greatest Hits tour when he came back and we finally (as I’d thought) finished him. There was nothing about him more recent than a year or so old, and the only new information consisted of a few rumors about his first return culled from various spooky internet backwaters. None of it advanced my knowledge one damn bit about why he was now trying to perforate me or why he wouldn’t stay dead.

There wasn’t any need to pack to go to Hell, since I wasn’t going to be able to carry any actual baggage. Only my soul was going, not my Earth body, though I did have to think of something to do with that body while I wasn’t using it. I’d put the first and last down on my current apartment, but the landlord was a nosy older guy, and I could just imagine him letting himself in to “inspect,” finding my apparently lifeless corpse, and then calling the police. Even if I got back before somebody decided to cremate my remains, it was still going to be hard to explain. What I needed to do was stash my body where it would be safe until I could get back into it.

Here my options were limited. It wasn’t that the body itself needed any care. It was one of Heaven’s special production numbers, and would stay alive and motionless and perfectly healthy for as long as I was out of it. Where to leave it, though, was the hard part: I wouldn’t know what was happening to it, and I wouldn’t be able to return to it suddenly even if I did. I needed a protector—a Renfield, if you know what I mean, somebody to protect my physical shell while I wasn’t using it.