The Unintentional Curse

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

The Unintentional Curse

By Plot Roach

Witches, wizards and Santeria Priestesses are pretty heavy handed with curses. But when you piss off a priest, be prepared for the consequences. The littlest of things can make a person angry and make them say things that they would never in a millions years wish on even the lowest scoundrel that was ever born a human. So when Father Jacob, a good old fashioned, god fearing priest loses his temper, he does not say ‘Damn it!’, ‘Shoot!’ or some other explanative found in current culture. No he goes beyond that and says something so simple that even a toddler would take no offense, yet it opens the gates of Hell.

It was at a church function, a picnic of sorts, when he unleashed the unholy offspring of Satan. He was busy regaling members of the church with tales of his youth when he traveled to distant lands, bringing the word of the Lord to heathen and savage alike. What he failed to tell them was of how happy the native people were before he came, and how he introduced hate, greed and guilt into their society, poisoning them forever.

In the middle of this tirade against the past, he trips on a leash and falls down on his righteous butt. Someone had tied their dog to the edge of the picnic table and the mutt, in order to get a handout from a child, stretched his leash to the fullest extent and it entangled the priest’s leg, sending him to the ground. So, with clothes streaked with potato salad and fruit punch, he utters an epithet to the mongrel: “Demons, take you!”

And that’s all we need to get through, really. A bit of anger, an unexpected curse and all of it coming from a man who posses the power to wield magic (even if it is from ‘the Lord‘). And here we come, like hungry mutts ourselves, pouring through tiny cracks in the earth. Called by accident, surely. But called, none the less.

The skies darken, the sun blotted out by blood red clouds and teeming with flies. It was beautiful work, some of the best that our leader, Mogglebog has done in AGES. We don’t get a chance to get out much among you humans, so we are forced to practice in the underworld. And despite what you might think, while we do have tons of maggots, flies are harder to come by. There’s not a lot of places for them to fly around and they tend to be eaten as a food source when we’ve run out of rotting flesh. They are awfully good pan-fried with a bit of garlic.

But as I was saying… with the skies blotted out, the priest and his congregation escape to the church, thinking themselves safe from our torment. Which they would have been, if the church had been constructed in the old manner of the cathedrals and other places of worship. But you silly humans do not bury clergyman or other true believers alive before laying the foundation to a new place of sanctuary. What you find squeamish, is really quite necessary, if you want the departed’s soul to watch over the building and protect you from the likes of us.

That and the holy runes. A few lines of angelic script on the walls, floor and ceiling and any building can be zipped up tight against our assault. But the building father Jacob and the rest fled into had no such protections, the only things buried there were cans of lead based paint that the building contractor didn’t want to pay the recycling fee on, and the only writing was a telephone number written on drywall of a local whore who gave the caller a severe case of crabs. So we were free to enter as we wished. Leaving, however, was not so easy a task. For the prey we had been summoned to dispatch fled, trailing its leash behind it, and was well out of the space in which we had been summoned. We were given a diameter of fifty feet in which to do our demonic duties, generous by some standards, but the mutt was already outside that border when we first made our appearance, scared off by Father Jacob when he tripped over the beast.

So we made do with the humans instead.

I will not bore you with the grimy little details, but I will admit that the blood splatter analyst that they send to study this crime scene will need a nice long vacation in a padded cell, if he does not commit suicide on the spot. Our little game of hide and seek with the humans was over before we knew it. Though why father Jacob did not save himself and the others by banishing us, I cannot say. Unless, of course, he was not the true believer that he claimed to be, in which his words had little power over us. It is easy to unlock the cage of a lion and set him loose upon the sheep. It is not, however, so easy to cage the beast once he has gotten a taste of blood.

Our bloodlust satiated, we sat and waited for the curse to run its course. And from past experience, we knew that we could be waiting for years. Unless the dog could be lured back to the scene or we were dispatched by an actual man of the cloth, we were stuck. Symbols, invisible to the human eye, were set into the walls of the building, the wood of the nearby trees and the dirt on the ground. We could neither touch them nor pass over them. I left my foul brothers in the church, as they fought over odd bits of ’devout follower’, and wandered the front lot of the church. It gets so crowded in Hell, I like to get out on my own once in a while. I like the feeling of grass under my gnarled feet. Its coolness so different from the burning hot coals of the land of my birth. I squatted next to a wooden picnic table, still laden with foodstuffs and experimented with what humans called food. I found that some of it was palatable indeed, when covered with a substance called ’Tabasco sauce’. I tipped a pitcher of fruit punch over in my eagerness to get at a piece of fried chicken that had been visited by ants -delectable little things that wiggle down the gullet, and noticed that the liquid had disturbed the ground next to the bench. And had, in fact, obliterated the symbol that had been set into the dirt. I passes a foot over the spot and felt no resistance. The barrier was weak in this spot and could be easily crossed over.

I opened my mouth to call to the others and clamped it shut, almost biting my tongue off in the process. Sure, I could tell my brothers about the escape route. Or…I could finally have the world to myself, if only until the dog could be found and killed. And if I should just so happen to see that the dog found a new safe haven, and lived to a good, old age. Hey, more time for me to explore the world and buffet it had to offer… Right?