Seven Demons Aidan Truhen (reading an ebook TXT) 📖

is totally calm even when his BFF is putting an iron spike in someone’s brain. Be like Mr. Friday. Do not be like the person with the double-vented head parts.

Doc says that I get along with Mr. Friday on some kind of deep psychological level she does not think is rational. Doc says that some aspect of my self-expression speaks to Mr. Friday’s suppressed desires and he responds to my wishes in ways he would normally refuse to contemplate.

I do not think this is true but Doc has charts so it must be that is science.

Mr. Friday stands in front of a smoking hole in the ground, which is evidently his house. I say:

“This was absolutely nothing to do with me Friday hand on heart.”

Mr. Friday looks round.

“O Hallo Mr. Price! I had heard that you were now deceased.”

“I have also heard that but I do not think it is true.”

“Oh ho ho oho yes oh oho.”

(Do not laugh like Mr. Friday. That laugh is just fucking creepy like going to an empty house in a storm and the woman who owns it is entirely hairless and dresses in black net and she says to come in and that’s when you notice she’s had that thing done where they bifurcate your tongue and you can never quite see her feet and when you wake up you find a man-size-shed snake skin on the second bed. Which is completely unfair on Mr. Friday who I think is a genuinely moral person in an imperfect world.)

“Do not worry Mr. Price I know this was not you it is an aspect of our geology here. From time to time there is a movement in the earth and the strata of rock change. Yesterday there was water in my basement that was the wrong kind of water. So I moved my furniture out into the street and went to stay with friends and last night my house exploded.”

“It did.”

“O yes. Superheated steam from the bowels of the planet. It is invigorating. We will build a new house at the end of the road and put my furniture in it. That is Iceland. It is how we do. Oh hoho hohohoh. What can I do for you?”

“I am seeking your wisdom Mr. Friday.”

“I am happy to offer professional help of course.”

“Aw that is very sweet. I miss you guys also.”

“It is a form of words Mr. Price you are not absolutely at the top of our list of preferred customers on account that you are a fissure in the strata of society and also a bad egg.”

“I—wait—a bad egg?”

“Indeed.”

“A bad egg.”

“Yes Mr. Price.”

“O well excuse me the Duchess of Croquet called and I believe she would like her idiom back.”

“…Now inexplicably I feel remorse. Oh very well. Come and we will walk to my new house.”

We walk to Friday’s new house. It is also a hole in the ground but it is not smoking and there are people doing things that look like things that will make a house happen quite soon.

“What do you need Mr. Price?”

“I need to find a programmer. In Switzerland.”

(Obviously you do not list the precise name and address of the programmer of your fortress for exactly this reason but there is a limited number of firms operating in Switzerland who handle this kind of work and programmers are not in general humble monkish types they are programmers and that means they are a kind of artist whose art winkies are so engorged that they require canvases costing millions of euros. Every programmer is waiting for a Great Pyramid.)

Mr. Friday says that he will not help me hurt anyone.

I say that I am not going to hurt the programmer all I want is to have a perfectly nice conversation.

“Why do you want this information Mr. Price?”

“Aw Mr. Friday I wish you would not ask me that or if I would tell you that would have to be you know just between friends.”

“We are not friends Mr. Price.”

“We’re not but all the same man we got history is what. Like deep history.”

“Horrible history.”

“Yeah but Mr. Friday in this world you know sometimes that is the most reassuring kind.”

“…that is both true and appalling.”

“Yeah well I’m an artist now.”

“You are?”

“Yes I am known as Banjo Telemark—”

“O really I have seen your work in—wait that means it has never in fact existed—”

“That is the genius of my ambiguity Mr. Friday—”

“Mr. Price?”

“Yes?”

“You are proposing to crack Die Festung.”

“No I mean that would be entirely no of course not also too Jack Price is deceased I am an artist why do you ask?”

“You are.”

“If I was going to do that, is it something you would be upset about?”

“In fact we do not like them. We believe in freedom, they in perpetuation. We are in fact a revolutionary movement albeit an incremental one they are deeply conservative to the point of stasis. It is an incompatibility. Mr. Eiger and his ilk—”

“Ilk.”

“Yes his ilk. Cornflower men. He and his sort—they appear to be Swiss but they are not like true Swiss who are compassionate in surprising moments and directions. They are the other thing. The closed door and the sneer. The cancer that hides in the body of the Gemeinde there is a similar issue elsewhere even here. When people are afraid they espouse severity. The Cornflower Men make them afraid and then offer them answers.”

“That was real stirring but I am not entirely—”

“They are a little bit Fascists.”

“How little?”

“Quite a lot actually.”

“I’m going to do me things to these guys.”

“…”

“…”

“…It seems I am constantly in the position of helping you because you are pointed at monsters more horrible than yourself. And yet each time I do this you become more…you.”

“Seriously man I have a job I just want to get it done and they are being unreasonable is all like they—Friday they killed Volodya the sniper I mean that guy…”

“He was appalling. He made ham from the dead.”

“Man don’t start with that he absolutely did not it was just ham we had this whole running joke about that it used to make him laugh.”

“You cannot actually believe that.”

“O shit