The Necromancer by Joshua Moses

Sick of the world’s many ills, and bored by conventional means of fixing them, I resolved upon necromancy. Having acquired a number of dusty old tomes by various and sundry means (a garage sale in Porter, Indiana; an occult club of like-minded individuals; a cheerfully wrapped birthday present from Aunt Margaret; etc,) I began to call upon members of the esteemed demon community. The first I channeled from the netherworld was a beast named Uz.

Uz was only too eager to help, having taken out a half-page ad in a regional demonology magazine, and was full of ideas. Unfortunately, he took the form of a flicker of light in a glass of water, which was not very useful in resolving the issues of poverty or childhood illnesses. At my behest, he did lead to the suicide of my neighbor’s cat – a mean fat orange thing named Charlie – but felicide was not the primary focus of my research. Being that our goals and abilities seemed mutually incompatible, Uz left my service with no hard feelings, and I paid him with the carcass of one young castrated male goat.

Before returning to the Pit, Uz recommended that I call upon Quddus, a demon whom I gathered was both more capable and more corporeal. I slit the throat of a chicken on a moonless night (I took the precaution of using a whole pre-dead Chinatown chicken, head intact), and Quddus appeared in a puff of crimson smoke with two tickets for the following evening’s White Sox/Red Sox game. I was a Cubs fan, but I agreed to go, and Quddus proceeded to drink eleven beers and vomit on a family of four in town from Massachusetts, calling them “vermin.” Having been to Massachusetts I did not entirely disagree.

Post-game, at the only bar in Bridgeport, I requested of Quddus that he deliver this world from sin and make of it a paradise. Sadly, he demurred, claiming that his collective bargaining agreement would prohibit such an arrangement. This devolved into a back-and-forth whereby I suggested this, that, or the other thing, and he curtly declined, granting that he would be more than perfectly happy to do so were he free to act of his own accord, but that the union would simply not allow it. We argued and fought, me taking, to my own surprise, the position that organized labor had become bloated and corrupt, and him contradicting me by way of a river of blood.

We ultimately agreed that one child who would otherwise have starved would be fed. He gesticulated and rent the sky in exchange for six drops of my blood. Success! But brief it was, as said starving Hottentot now trots boldly through space and time to devour my liver fortnightly. This has done no favors for my pursuit of a better and more just world, but Quddus now seems to screen his calls and the courts in my jurisdiction are hopelessly backlogged…

© 2012 Joshusa Moses

Employed in all the world’s most hated professions, J is not that bad a person once you get to know him.

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