“Mammon and Beelzebub have some old hangups about sex from when they were angels. The rest of them got over it. Everyone has sex. Having sex for pleasure relieves stress and releases endorphins and there’s nothing wrong with it. Everyone here knows this. But Mammon and Beelzebub went on this campaign during the early days when we were first created that we were filthy creatures and lower than dirt. It kind of stuck.”
Sorry, but why was my father allowing any of this before he left? No one should feel lesser over how they were born. It was idiotic back on Earth and it was stupid here, too.
“You,” I said, pointing at Kujo. “Are the furies shat on, too? All I know is the furies from Greek mythology.”
“Those were fury demons during a different time. Furies are on the upper end of the hierarchy. They get away with anything. Their magic is powerful, but they’ve got piss-poor tempers they don’t try to rein in. They are all about purity, so they only mate with other furies. If theydohappen to have a kid that isn’t pure fury, they want nothing to do with them. Fuck the furies.”
“I agree with you. Fuck them.”
“What about you? Tell us about you,” Nero asked.
“Mom raised me with no help. Her parents died when she was a teenager. I put myself through nursing school and met my ex. We got married, and I found out I couldn’t have kids. I?—”
“Yet,” Celix said. “You will when you’re older. You wouldn’t have been able to before.”
“Well, shit. Hell had better have excellent birth control because I thought that wasn’t going to be a problem.”
“We do. We had it long before you did on Earth.”
“Okay, good. Anyway, my ex said he didn’t want kids, either, so it wasn’t a problem. Then, it all went to shit. I got an idea for a romance book. I wrote and self-published it in secret. My ex taught literature at the local college and he was ahugesnob about books. Basically, if it was written in this century and in English, he thought it was trash. He hadbigopinions about romance books.”
“Nero does, too,” Celix said. “He loves them. Not the dark ones, though. He won’t read anything with trigger warnings or the dog dies.”
“Oh, my god, right? I’m okay with a few trigger warnings, but if there’s a dog or cat, nothing bad had better happen to it.”
“Only fucking psychopaths kill the dog,” Kujo growled.
“I want to read your books,” Nero said, bouncing on his seat.
“Uh, you can get them at most online stores on Earth, but I’m not sure about here. Anyway, I kept writing in secret, but eventually, I was making alotmore money writing than I was nursing and I was starting to get tired of the hours and some of the abuse.
“I quit my nursing job and had to have an explanation. I told him the truth, and that was when everything changed. Karl had been working on his novel since college, but hadn’t finished it. Sometimes, he’d get it up his ass to work on it and spend all his time at the coffee shop because I guess he thought that was what he was supposed to do. Then, it would fizzle out and he’d stop working on it.
“He acted like I wrote my books to spite him because he never finished his. According to him, I didn’tearnthe right to bea writer because I didn’t go to college for it and had never taken a creative writing class. He said my books must appeal to barely literate women who just wanted to read porn. And for some reason, I didn’t leave him for all of that.”
“You didn’t kick him in the nuts?”
“No, but I should have. He deserved it more than you, but you had it coming, too.”
“That’s fair,” Nero said. “You shouldn’t grab people when they are naked without their permission.”
“I’m going to remember that when she smashesyournuts.”
“I can’t imagine Nero doing anything that would deserve a testicle smash.”
“Continue with your story. Kujo is half fury. He’s going to be raging about his nuts and that pizza all year.”
“You’d be ruminating on it, too, if the child of Lucifer tried to kick your nuts through your throat.”
I cleared my throat.
“Anyway, Karl got bitter and miserable to live with. We grew apart. I really should have left because I checked out of the relationship a while ago. I pretty much didn’t care when he announced he was leaving me for some young girl. I guess he’s never getting that alimony now. I’d updated my will to leave everything to charity and my catalogue to a friend way before he left me. Ha! He’s probably going to be a suspect in my disappearance.”
“We could kill him,” Kujo said.
“What? Why would you do that?”
Kujo just shrugged like I was supposed to know. Psycho.
