Devil Said Bang

When he comes back at me, I kick, sending the helmet into his face like a cannonball. I hear bones crunch and he spins around before landing on his face. I stand over him, kick the sword out of his hand, and shove his pistol in my pocket. I grab him by the lapels, spin and slam him headfirst into a pile of rubble. While he’s busy trying to breathe through a crushed face, I rifle his dead friends’ pockets. Empty. They don’t even have dog tags, so I can’t tell what part of the legion they’re from.

Their boots and body armor are the heavy kind issued to frontline infantry who are basically cannon fodder. But since the war with Heaven is over, clowns like this aren’t supposed to have time on their hands. Avoiding this kind of fucking mess is why I’m going slow with the rebuilding. Why aren’t these pricks with the rest of the grunts, clearing rubble or rebuilding roads? Did they think if they killed me, one of them would be the new Lucifer? Maybe they were going to share the title—Moe, Larry, and Curly, the Three Infernal Stooges. But not one of this bunch had the imagination or balls to try something like that on their own. Someone put them up to it. The one I clocked with the helmet is coming around, so I go back to him.

I pick up the unbroken long sword and press it against his throat.

“You awake, sunshine?”

He grunts. Shakes his head, trying to clear it.

“Who sent you?”

“No one. I don’t need permission to slaughter mortals.”

I lean forward, using my weight to press the tip of the sword into him until he bleeds.

“This mortal signs your paychecks, ugly. Guess who’s not getting a Christmas bonus?”

He grimaces and spits.

“A mortal will never be the true Lucifer. Mortals are spirits, good for nothing but torture and chores you could teach an animal. I curse you and the mortal Mason Faim. At least he promised us Heaven. What have you given us?”

“I haven’t cut off your arms and legs and made you into a throw pillow. How’s that?”

He tenses. Even with the sword at his throat he wants to lunge at me. This guy is the real deal. A true believer. His type built Auschwitz and had lynching parties back home. Who knows what games he and his friends are playing with souls down here?

I take the sword away from his throat and smack his mangled face with the broad side. He groans and doubles over. Lucky bastard. I’d like to be lying down groaning too. My bruised ribs hurt. I toss both of his swords into the nearby sinkhole.

“You still haven’t answered my question. Who sent you here?”

He catches his breath and says, “We came on our own to kill the false Lord of Perdition.”

I grab his head and press it back into the rubble. I’ve always been good at telling when people are lying, but Lucifer can see things I can’t and the armor gives me bits and pieces of his powers. It’s mostly sideshow-level tricks so far but I can tell if someone is wearing a glamour to conceal themselves or if they’ve been hexed. I look all the way to the back of the assassin’s eyes. There’s a fluttering inside, like a microscopic strobe light. That’s it. He’s hexed. Someone sent him and his friends out hunting for me and erased their memories so the fuckwits would think it was their idea. I let go of him and sit above him on the rubble.

“What’s your name?”

He looks at me hard. He really hates being questioned by a mortal.

“Ukobach.”

I could take Ukobach back to the palace, hand him over to the witches, and let them take his mind apart. They might be able to find something useful inside, but I’m not sure about this guy. Whoever picked these three chose them because they didn’t have an overabundance of brain cells. With an intelligent Hellion or human, even after a memory wipe there’s usually some residual impressions left. Sometimes you can find it if you dig deep enough and aren’t worried about killing them or leaving them a vegetable. But with the power of the hex I saw in Ukobach’s eyes, there isn’t going to be anything useful inside him. I can’t throw him in the asylum or jail. I’m Lucifer, after all. Whoever sent him needs a statement.

“Okay, Ukobach, here’s where things stand. You ambushed me and you blew it. Your friends are dead and I don’t think you’re much use for information. Plus, your goddamn sword ripped my jacket.”

He stares at me.

“I’ll make it simple. I can kill you now or I can let you live, but it’s going to hurt. You choose.”

Ukobach shifts his weight. He wants to take one last kamikaze shot at me. I finger the rip in my jacket sleeve. It’s not too bad. I can probably get it fixed. I’m kind of hard on clothes. It’s all the stabbing and shooting.

“I’d kill you and every mortal in the universe if I could,” he rasps. “When your souls reached Hell, I’d spend eternity weaving your guts into tapestries of glorious agony and hang them from every wall and parapet in Pandemonium.”

“If wishes were horses we’d all have shit on our boots. Choose, Chuck. A quiet death or a messy life.”

“I choose life. Any chance to return and kill you for murdering my comrades is worth whatever feeble punishment a mortal can muster.”

I nod.

“I thought so. If I were you, I might have gone the other way.”

He kicks low, trying to sweep my ankle. I take his Glock from my pocket and shoot him in the knee. He howls and rolls around, holding his leg. It gives him something to do while I get to work.

I cut six long strips of material from Hobnail’s overalls. I use four around his and his dead friends’ wrists. Then I get the Harley on its wheels and roll it back so I can tie the dead men to the rear shocks. I take the last two strips and tie Ukobach too. He kicks at me and swings his fists as I haul him to the bike, but when he moves, it hurts him more than it does me. I loop my arm through the front of the helmet so I can hold it while I ride. There’s no sense in hiding who I am now. Before I get on the bike, I look down at Ukobach.

“This isn’t the kind of thing I normally do, you understand. Back home I’m a bad person but I’m not this kind of bad. Before he left, Samael told me I was going to have to be ruthless to survive, and he was right. People have to understand that if you dance with the Devil you better not step on his toes.”

Ukobach looks up at me. I don’t know if it’s pain or fear or general boneheadedness but he has no idea what I’m saying. I get on the bike and start the engine.

“And away we go.”

The bike creeps forward like it wants to tip over in quicksand. Even a Hellion motorcycle isn’t geared to drag three full-grown bodies behind it. I give the bike some throttle. It straightens and moves forward. Slowly at first, but it picks up speed as I twist the throttle. When it feels stable, I kick the bike hard and we shoot down Santa Monica Boulevard to the palace. I don’t turn around. I don’t want to see what it looks like behind me.

THE CLOSER WE GET to Beverly Hills, the more Hellions there are on the street. They stare and point as I cruise by. I’m tempted to stop and make a joke about how this is how I always tenderize meat, but I keep rolling without meeting any of their eyes. I don’t have to. Seeing their ruler covered in blood and dirt, hauling a few hundred pounds of bleeding bologna behind him, is all they need. The story will be all over town in an hour. By tomorrow there will be rumors that it wasn’t three. It’ll be a dozen men. Fifty. I killed them with a bitch slap and dragged them with my pinkie.

The guards around the palace see me coming and step out of the way like the Red Sea parting for Charlton Heston. I stop the bike by the palace lawn, heel down the kickstand, and get off. A hundred Hellion soldiers watch me in dead silence.

I say, “This is what happens to assassins.”

Soldiers crane their necks or climb onto jeeps and Unimogs for a better look at what I’ve hauled in.

An officer walks over. I don’t know his name and I don’t ask. He looks scared.

“I killed two where they jumped me. One was alive when I started back. Gibbet all three. If the live one is still alive after two days, let him go. Alive and skinless, he’ll still be an object lesson for others.”

“Yes, my lord,” says the officer.

I start into the palace but turn after a few steps. I can’t tell the condition of the bodies from here. There isn’t much of a blood trail behind the bike. That’s probably not a good sign for Ukobach. The guards stare at me.

“One of you take my bike into the garage and have it cleaned and polished.” Not that I’m ever going to get to ride it again now that everyone knows what it looks like.

I head inside wondering what Candy would think about what I just did. I’m pretty sure she’d understand. She might even approve. She won’t have to, though, because this goes on the long list of things I’m never going to tell her.

IN THIS FUNNY CONVERGENCE HELL, Lucifer’s palace is the penthouse of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. I’m not saying my digs are nice, but I am saying that my rooms make Versailles look like an outhouse.

Palace security guards ring the inside of the lobby. I give them a nod while tracking dirt, road grime, and blood across the carpets. I head straight for my private elevator. Slap my hand over a brass plate on the wall and the elevator doors roll open. Inside I touch another plate and whisper a Hellion hoodoo code. The car starts up, the pulley and wires humming overhead, gently rocking the compartment. It feels good. A Magic Fingers motel massage loosening the tension knots in my shoulders. I move my arms and legs. Rotate my head. The palms of my hands are scraped raw from the fall off the bike, but there’s no real damage to anything but my damned jacket.

The car stops at the penthouse. I touch the brass plate again and step out onto the cool polished marble floor. The penthouse is a sight. Like Architectural Digest climbed to the top of the hotel roof and shit out a Hollywood movie mogul’s château. Windows everywhere. Expensive handmade furniture. Pricey art. And enough bedrooms and bathrooms for all the cowgirls in Montana to stop by for a pillow fight.

I kick off my boots by the elevator. Fuck the lobby carpet. Wash it. Burn it. I don’t care. But I don’t want blood all over my apartment.

My apartment.

It still feels funny to say, but I have to admit that after the three months the place is starting to feel like home. I used to run a video store in L.A. If I could move the inventory and a wall-size TV in here, I might go totally Howard Hughes and never leave. If I got Candy a day pass, I could definitely get used to the Hellion high life. Up here, surrounded by tinted glass and silk-covered furniture, I’m Sinatra with horns and Pandemonium is my boneyard Vegas.

I go to the bedroom and glance at the peepers I’ve scattered around the apartment. None are twitching and nothing looks out of place. I can relax. The truth is, I’m less worried about getting into another fight than I am about snoops. I need one place in Hell where I don’t have to look over my shoulder 24/7.

In the bedroom I strip off my clothes, dropping them in a heap at the foot of the bed. The ripped jacket I ball up and throw into the closet. I could get it fixed but I’m goddamn Lucifer. I’ll tell the tailors to run me off a new one.

I lock the bedroom door and run my hand over the top of the lintel. The protective runes I carved are still there. I get under a hot shower and stay there for a long time.

I might have gotten used to the apartment but I’ll never get used to showering in Lucifer’s armor. I never take the stuff off. The moment it’s gone, I’m vulnerable to any kind of attack. Knife, hoodoo, or a squirrel with a zip gun. I know I look schizo soaping down in this Versace tuna can but I don’t have to look at me.

When I’m done I pull on black suit pants, a silk T-shirt, and a hotel robe thick enough to stop bullets. The black blade goes in one pocket and Ukobach’s gun in the other. Then over to the dresser for a quick check of the bottom drawer. There’s the singularity, Mr. Muninn’s secret weapon to restart the universe if Mason or I broke it. There’s my na’at, my favorite weapon when I was fighting in the arena. And there’s the little snub-nose .38 I brought with me from L.A. One bullet is missing from the cylinder. The one I tricked Mason Faim into blowing through his head three months ago. That’s when Saint James, my angel half, took the key I need to leave Hell and left me stranded here. To tell the truth, I’m glad the goody-goody prick is out of my head. But I’d take him back in a second if it would get me the key.

The bedroom doors swing open and Brimborion walks in with a fistful of envelopes and messages. He’s something else I never wanted in my life. A personal assistant, which is to say a professional asshole who knows more about me than I do.

“What did I tell you about barging in here without knocking?”

“If I didn’t barge in, I’d never find you.”

“That’s the idea.”

Brimborion looks fairly human except he’s as skinny as a grasshopper, with limbs and fingers long enough to pluck a quarter from the bottom of a fifth of Jack. He dresses in dark high-collar suits like he fell out of a Dickens story right onto the stick up his ass. He also wears round wire-rim glasses. I think it’s those glasses that really make me hate him. What a weird choice for an affectation. I mean, whoever heard of a nearsighted angel?

I say, “How did you even get in here?”

He rolls his eyes heavenward.

“You mean those pretty doodads you scratched above the doors? I’m your personal assistant. I need to be able to follow you anywhere.”

He unbuttons his shirt and pulls out a heavy gold talisman hanging from a chain around his neck.

“I have a passkey. It opens any door in the palace no matter how many wards or enchantments are on it.”

“Nice. Where can I get one?”

“I’m afraid this is the only one.”

“Maybe I should take it.”

“Feel free, my lord,” he says. “And don’t worry. I’ll do my best to suppress the scandal.”

“What scandal?”

“The one about how the Lord of the Underworld, the Archfiend, the Great Beast is afraid of a glorified secretary. I hate to think what your enemies would make of that.”

I want to stack cinder blocks on this four-eyed fuckpop until he explodes. He opens his eyes a tiny bit wider behind the fake glass in his fake glasses and stares.

But the little prick has a point. Until I’m up to Samael’s full strength, I don’t want ambitious peasants storming the castle with pitchforks and torches.

I reach for the letters and messages, closing my hand around his. I squeeze. Not hard enough to break bone. Just enough to remind him I could if I wanted.

I let up and take my messages. He massages his fingers but doesn’t say anything.

“Learn to knock and we can go back to being BFFs. Got it?”

“Of course, my lord.”

He does a tiny bow and leaves.

I remember when I was out drinking with Vidocq in L.A. he introduced me to another old-time thief. He said the best way to deal with lock pickers is the simplest. You take all the furniture you can and stack it up so it’s perfectly balanced against the top of the door. Anyone who tries to get in will get a dresser or a rocking chair on their head. If you want to fancy things up, you can add a bucket of lye dissolved in water. The real trick is remembering to tell the maid before she comes in the next morning.

I take the na’at out of the dresser and put it under the pillows at the head of the bed. Stacking furniture sounds like too much work.

I toss the messages in the fireplace. Infernal bureaucrats can kiss my ass.

I head down to the library.

THIS IS MY FORT KNOX, my office, and my panic room. I’ve laid the heaviest protective hoodoo I know around this place. Of all the hideouts I ever thought of running to when things got weird, a library was right behind a leper colony and a burning garbage truck. But here I am.

I haven’t paced the place off, but the library looks about a football field long, lined with two floors of books in hundred-foot stretches of ornate dark wood shelves. The ceiling is domed and painted with scenes illustrating the three tenets of the Hellion church. The Thought: God and Lucifer arguing that if humans have free will so should angels. The Act: the war. It’s pretty but stiff and trying too hard to look noble, like a Soviet propaganda poster. The New World: Lucifer and his defeated, punch-drunk Bowery boys in Hell. He looks like a tent revival preacher selling snake oil to rubes, but in his own fucked-up way, the slippery son of a bitch is trying to do right by his people.

I’ve made myself a comfortable squat over by a wall of the Greek wall, the stuff Samael told me to read. In a copy of a half-falling-apart Reader’s Digest–condensed large-print book on Greek history, I found his notes. (It’s embarrassing that he knows me well enough that he left the info in a book written for shut-ins and half-blind grandmas.) He included names of people I could think about for the Council. If they’re the Hellions I can trust, I’m not ready to meet the ones I can’t.

I dragged a plush red sofa trimmed in gold, a big partner’s desk, and a few chairs over to my squat. Sometimes I even let people in to use the chairs. Not many and not often, but anyone who comes in is on my turf. I know which carpets cover binding circles. I know which books are hollowed out and stuffed with knives and killing potions.

The desk and nearby shelves are covered with books, paper, pens, and weird little machines. Stuff you can only find at an Office Depot doubling as a night school for amateur torturers. There’s a spongy red clamshell that growls when you squeeze it and spits out what I think pass for Hellion staples. They’re sharp and thick, like they’re designed to punish the paper and not just hold it together. There’s something that looks like a set of brass teeth. The teeth chatter sometimes. Sometimes they don’t do anything for days. There’s a gyroscope that when you spin it talks in a deep monster-movie voice in a language I’ve never heard before. On one of the bookshelves is a gold armillary sphere. When I touch any of the golden rings, I feel like I’ve fallen out of myself. Like I’m nowhere and being pushed through empty space by a freezing hurricane. There are stars far away and beyond them a mass of pale boiling vapor streaked with lighting. I think it’s the chaos at the edge of the universe and that this is the deep void that separates Hell and Heaven. Wherever and whatever it is, it’s a lonely and desolate place.

In L.A., I lived with a dead man named Kasabian who worked for Lucifer and could see into parts of Hell. I don’t know if he can see me here, but sometimes I scrawl notes and leave them on the desk for days. Some are to friends. Most are to Candy. We’re a lot alike. Neither of us is quite human. And we’re both killers. We try to forget about the first as much as possible and try to avoid the second as much as we can, which, the way things are, usually isn’t long.

There’s a click behind me. I put my hand on my knife and turn.

Two Hellions come in through a false section of bookcase that slides away like Japanese paper doors.

Merihim, the priest, bows. He’s in sleeveless black robes. Every inch of his pale face and arms is tattooed with sacred Hellion script. Spells, prayers, and, for all I know, a recipe for chicken vindaloo.

The guy with him, Ipos, is big and blunt. Like a walking fire hydrant in gray rubber overalls. The heavy leather belt around his waist holds tools that range from barbarian crushers to delicate surgical-quality instruments. From a distance you can’t tell if he’s the palace’s maintenance chief or head torturer. His job in the palace makes him a useful agent. No one pays attention to the janitor.

“Did we interrupt playtime with your toys, my lord?” asks Merihim.

“Go harass an altar boy, preacher. I’m working.”

On a table near the sofa there’s a line of peepers projecting images from around the palace onto an old-fashioned home movie screen I found in a storeroom. I pop out my right eye, drop it into a glass of water, and stick a peeper in the empty socket, rolling back the images the eye picked up like a video rewinding. Like I said, I have a few of Lucifer’s powers but mostly Vegas magic-act stuff.

“What are you looking for?” asks Ipos. His voice is a low rumble, like an idling sixteen-wheeler.

“The front of the palace where I dumped the bodies of three bushwhacking assholes. I want to see what happened after I came inside.”

Merihim and Ipos are the only two Hellions who can walk in here on their own. They were Samael’s confidants and spies and I inherited them with the gig. I don’t think Samael would have lasted as long as he did without them. I know I wouldn’t still be here.

I roll back to where I came inside and let the peeper play. The officer I talked to barks orders at the troops who are about thirty seconds from a soccer riot trying to get a look at Ukobach and his dead friends. The officer orders most back to their duties and others to take the three bodies to the gibbets. A young officer comes over. They walk along the gory trail where I dragged in the bodies. I try to read their lips but they’re too damned far away.

“I see by your hands you were hurt in the attack,” says Merihim. “I’ll send for a healer from the tabernacle. I daresay they’re more discreet than the palace medical staff.”

“I’m fine. All the bastards did was murder my jacket. It was a nice one too.”

I switch my eyes back, pour myself a shot of Aqua Regia, and hold out the bottle. Merihim shakes his head and walks away. He does that. Prowls the room when we meet. I’ve never seen the guy sit down. Ipos nods for a drink and picks up a glass with his big bratwurst fingers. When I start to pour, he flinches.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and nods in my direction.

“The arm, my lord. Would you mind? It’s … distracting.”

I flex my prosthetic Kissi hand. The Kissi were a race of deformed, half-finished angels that lived in the chaos on the edge of Creation. One of God’s first great fuckups while creating the universe. Kissis give Hellions the shakes. I think they see themselves in those other failed angels. It reminds them that even in Hell you can always fall lower.

I dig around in the desk and find a glove. This time he takes a drink. He carries it to the sofa and sits down. I sit on the desk. Merihim prowls.

“Thank you, my lord,” says Ipos.

“Stop with the ‘my lord’ stuff. It bugs me.”

“Sorry.”

Merihim smiles, leaning over the peepers. Projected images from around the palace flicker on the screen like a silent movie.

“What’s up with you?” I ask.

“Nothing. It’s always amusing watching you pretend you’re not who you really are.”

“I’m only interning in Hell for college credit. When I find the right replacement, I’m gone, Daddy, gone.”

“Of course you are. Why would you want any influence over the creation of a new Hell? Or care about the welfare of the millions of mortal souls you’ll be leaving behind? I wonder if Mr. Hickok will be allowed to keep his tavern or will he be thrown back into Butcher Valley? But what do you care? ‘All are equal in the grave.’ Isn’t that what you living mortals say?”

“Keep talking, smart guy. I’ll fake a heart attack and make you Lucifer. Let’s see how you like whitewashing this outhouse with a target painted on the back of your bald head.”

Ipos glances at the priest.

“It would probably look better than all the scribbling.”

Merihim gives him a sharp look, flips through the pages of an ancient Hellion medical book, and sets it down.

“Someone has found out about your habit of riding alone and what routes you take. You can’t ever ride like that again.”

“I know. There’s something else.”

I take out the Glock and set it on the desk.

“Where did these pricks get guns? Only officers get to carry weapons these days.”

Merihim frowns and crosses his arms.

“We need to find out—very discreetly—if there are any officers who can’t account for their weapons.”

“There are merchants who sell stolen weapons in the street markets. I can get people on the road repair crews. They might see or hear something,” Ipos says.

Merihim nods.

“Good.”

“Wait. It gets even better. I checked the attacker who lived. He’d been hexed. He might not have even known what he was doing.”

“An enthrallment?” says Merihim. That gets his attention. He comes back to the desk. “That’s not a power many in Pandemonium would possess. I doubt that any of the officers could do it.”

“Maybe the bastard bribed one of the palace witches,” says Ipos.

“I think whoever set up the attack tried to hex me too. After I dumped the bike, I couldn’t think or fight or defend myself. I’ve been in plenty of wrecks and it didn’t feel like a concussion. It felt like someone was trying to get inside my head.”

Merihim starts wandering again.

“It makes sense. One, Mason Faim created a key that allows him to possess bodies. Two, the key is missing. Three, according to you, it works on mortals. Four, there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t work on Hellions too. That means whoever arranged your attack either has the key or is in league with whoever does.”

Ipos says, “I suppose if any of us would be hard to possess, it would be Lucifer. They probably won’t try it on you again.”

“This might not be an assassination attempt at all,” says Merihim. “An isolated ambush would be a good way to cover up a psychic experiment. If your attackers killed you, all the better. If you killed your attackers, the only evidence would be the corpses of a few rogue soldiers.”

“That makes sense. It’s one thing to kill Lucifer but another to spellbind him,” says Ipos. “You could make him do anything. Something unforgivable.”

“Which means I get to live this little drama all over again.”

Ipos nods. Merihim picks up the gyroscope from the desk and spins it the wrong way. The ominous voice comes out high and weird. A demonic Alvin and the Chipmunks.

“Definitely,” says Ipos.

“And it will be both subtler and more serious. We have access to potion makings in the tabernacle. I’ll personally prepare some draughts to protect you from psychic attack.”

“What I want to know is why now?” say Ipos. “After all this time, why would someone attack you?”

I shrug.

“Maybe someone caught me counting cards.”

Merihim says, “Something has changed. They’ve discovered something or they’re afraid you will, and they need to kill you before you discover it too.”

I say, “It’s the possession key. Mason wasn’t exactly generous with information. He created the key and wouldn’t want anyone else using it, so it’s not like there’s going to be a user manual lying around. Maybe it’s taken this long for whoever has it to figure out how it works.”

Merihim waves off the comment.

“Perhaps. Speculation is pointless. We need to contact our operatives among the legions and the palace thaumaturgy staff to see what they can find.”

“Did anything interesting happen at the Council meeting?” says Ipos.

“Not really. Marchosias wanted to fuck me in her limo to annoy the others. I called Buer a Nazi and sent them all home to watch a silent movie about good architecture and a mad scientist.”

“It sounds charming,” says Merihim.

“There’s even a robot.”

“A masterpiece, then.”

Ipos says, “We should get to work.”

He sets his glass on the desk, holds it there, and pushes on it. The desk rocks a fraction of an inch up and down.

“I thought so. You wore down one of the legs dragging it over. I’ll fix that the next time we meet.”

“I can just stick a matchbook under it.”

He looks at me.

“No, you can’t. You might run the kingdom but I maintain the palace. This is my domain.”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Wizard.”

After they’re gone, I sit down at the desk and light a Malediction. Toss the Glock into the bottom drawer of the desk. I don’t like Glocks. They’re the gun equivalent of a middle-aged guy buying a Porsche.

From the top drawer I take out a shiny silver Veritas. The coin is a useful little pocket oracle. Another Veritas helped me survive my first few days when I first escaped back to L.A. The Veritas sees the present and the near future and never lies, though sometimes it’s a little shit about it.

I flip it and think, What now?

It comes down showing the image of a man pouring money into a woman’s hands. I’ve seen the symbol before. A hooker and her customer. Around the coin’s edge, in perfect Hellion script, it reads, Don’t make any long-term investments. Have a good time now. That’s what I mean. The little prick could have just said, You’re doomed, but it likes showing off.

I toss the Veritas back in the desk, pick up a book, and lie down on the sofa. I’m reading a chapter about a Greek philosopher named Epicurus. The guy was a kind of depressed swinger. Imagine the Playboy Mansion run by Mr. Rogers. Epicurus was all about pleasure but in a stingy eat-your-vegetables-or-you-won’t-get-any-dessert kind of way.

A lot of this philosophy stuff puts me right to sleep, but Epicurus must have been able to see into the future when people like me can’t read more than a paragraph without checking our e-mail because he spit out the important stuff short and sweet. It’s called the Tetrapharmakos and it’s a kind of a PowerPoint list to fix whatever ails you. It goes:

Don’t fear God

Don’t worry about death

What is good is easy to get and

What is terrible is easy to endure

He got it at least half right. That’s better than most people.

“Don’t fear God.” No problem. I met the guy. He had a nervous breakdown and is broken into more pieces than me.