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  “I am here to free you, daughter, by killing you!”

  Jessica dropped back and stared at the deranged man. Priests were supposed to save lives! “What kind of father are you?”

  “One that had you, knowing that you were not destined for this world. Your mother was a voudon priestess I met in Africa. I gave up the missionary work to be with her. She divined that you would be special, and we both sought to take you back here, where you could grow up protected and loved.”

  Sad music began to play, and Jessica chanced to look over her shoulder, searching for Satina. Then she had to hold back a gasp of disbelief. Satina was running at them, there was no doubt about that, but she was moving at a tenth of normal speed.

  Jessica looked at her father rambling on about ships and storms, down at her own hands that she waved, testing time as it were. But she was moving normally. Her father was moving normally. She looked back at the demon, who still appeared to be running full tilt, huge cock swinging between its legs, but at a fraction of normal speed.

  “Nooooooooo…” she appeared to be wailing, but that too was a loud, overly deep, drawn out affair.

  “Pay attention!” her father snapped, and she reluctantly turned away from the spectacle of the slow motion demon and back to the real time one.

  “As I was saying, the storm destroyed our ship. Your mother was cast overboard into the briny deep and you, my child, were lost to us, trapped on a piece of driftwood and taken down the Tigris. I was helpless to do anything but watch.”

  “You could have swum after me, you know.” She felt the need to correct him even as she glanced back at the demon. Yup, still moving at a fraction of normal speed and dragging out that “no.”

  “As I was saying, you were lost and --”

  “You could have tossed a life preserver or something.”

  “I was saying!” he bellowed, cutting off any further comment. “That I watched you carried away and knew you were safer lost at sea. It was Satina --” he gestured to the slow moving demon, “who caused the storm. She wanted you back then. And now the only way to save you is to kill you.”

  “Wait, you let your heirs hire a demon lawyer for your company?”

  “Of course. Shrewd negotiators and litigators, demons are. Very convincing, and they work at reasonable rates.”

  “Oh.” Made sense to her.

  “So now, daughter,” he intoned, reaching into a sheath and pulling out a huge dagger, “I must kill you to free you from the demon’s clutches.”

  Jessica looked behind her where the demon was gaining fast, then at her father, who was now moving in slow motion with his dagger in its downward motion, and gasped, “Nuts to this!”

  She ducked and dodged around the slow motion father and demon and ran straight into the arms of Darious, the assassin. Great!

  “Assassinate those asses,” she screamed, clutching at his arm.

  “Um, I can’t, Jessica.”

  What? “Um, Darious, you’re an assassin!”

  “Well, about that assassin gig… It was just a temporary thing.”

  “Then what are you and why are you here?”

  At this point, the priest and the demon were turning in their direction, and neither looked happy about their slow motion state.

  “Jessica, I am… an angel!”

  A heavenly sounding chorus “ahh’ed” and a light began to shine on Darious, illuminating his skin as he seemed to take on a glow from inside.

  Jessica watched as huge fluffy white wings exploded from his back and a halo formed over his head. “I’ve been screwing an angel?” she asked in disbelief. Well, that would explain the great sex.

  Wait! Weren’t angels asexual?

  She didn’t realize she had spoken out loud until he answered her. “Usually, but I am a fallen kind of angel. When I fell for you, I was given the job of protecting you, my love.”

  She pointed to the slow motion scourges and snapped, “Protect then, dammit!”

  “I can’t kill anymore, Jessica. I was an angel of defense and death -- now I am just a fool in love. But I am praying for the best outcome.”

  He grinned at her. The slow movers were almost upon them, and death started looking real good.

  “I wanna go home!” she wailed. She turned and raced back to the altar where she climbed on top and made her last stance.

  “I want these souls off of my feet! I want some real clothes! I want this makeup off and these rollers out! I want to go home! My name is Shaquandra and I want to go home!”

  She dropped to her knees and began slamming her head against the rough stone of the altar. “Home, home, home, home, home!” she chanted, tears running down her face as the music swelled to a tension-building climax.

  They were all reaching for her. There was no way out. The priest was slamming the dagger toward her back, the demon licking her chops, the angel crossing his palms to pray. The first hand touched her arm and then…

  Everything froze.

  “Cut! Strike the sets!”

  Huh?

  Jessica looked up and around to see things slowly disappearing, revealing nothing but a wall of white.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, tears in her eyes and confusion in her voice.

  “You! You are what’s going on!” Carter and his three clones marched over to her, furious, wands waving high. “Do you know what you did?”

  “I did?”

  “The screaming and crying, the whining and beating your head on the sacrificial altar? You turned our comedy, our beautiful comedy, into a damned drama!”

  “Huh?”

  “We’ve been cancelled! Are you happy now? Cancelled!”

  “Huh?”

  “Get out!” he shrieked, face red with anger as he hefted his wand up high. The other three lifted theirs in tandem. “Cancelled!”

  And then all four wands slammed on top of her head, taking her into the darkness of nothing before she could even say a word.

  Chapter Eleven

  Shaquandra woke in a rush, her head pounding and the television droning on. She jerked into a sitting position, spreading her snack friends all around her and spilling her medicinal tequila in her lap.

  “Home?” she gasped, her hands going to her tangled mass of hair and finding no rollers. She looked around at her Switzerland neutral colored living room, and her ugly couch and her disgustingly seventies Laverne and Shirley robe, and began to laugh!

  She was home!

  No sex changing demon, no Fathers who were fathers and trying to kill her for her own good, no more assassin lovers who turned out to be angels -- well, she would miss the damn good sex -- who stood there praying over her instead of helping!

  She was home, gloriously home!

  And her next act was to reach for the remote and turn off those damn soap operas.

  No more soaps for her! In fact, no more talk shows, judges’ courts, music videos… hell, she was giving up TV altogether. Think of the money she would save on her cable bill.

  From now on, she was reading, and reading nothing more exciting than the Sears catalogue. Being lost in furniture and plastic sexless models didn’t sound too bad.

  “Home!” she sang, springing to her feet and…

  Her feet!

  The souls were gone! Those God-awful red stilettos teeming with souls were no longer on her feet. She was barefoot, and badly in need of a pedicure, and that was the way she liked it.

  “I think I’m in the mood for some music,” she crowed, dancing over to her stereo and hitting the play button.

  Ludacris blared to life screaming, “Get back! Motherfucker, you don’t know me like that!”

  “My new theme song!” she sang, catching the chorus. “Make one false move, I’ll take you down. Get back, motherfucker, you don’t know me like that!”

  She was belting the lyrics out so loudly she almost didn’t hear her doorbell ring. Realizing she had someone waiting at the door, she turned down her volume and danced to the door.
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  “Yes?” she sang, swinging it open, only to shriek and slam it shut. “Go away!” she screamed. “You are a figment of my somewhat intoxicated imagination!”

  “Actually,” the deep, familiar, yet muffled voice called through the door, “I’m your new neighbor.”

  “Darious?”

  “No, but not too bad a guess. Jamari.”

  “Jamari?”

  “Open the door,” he called. “And I’ll even give you a hand to shake.”

  Shaquandra opened the door very slowly and peeked around the jamb.

  It was Darious… but he seemed… more three-dimensional.

  Both men stood at the same height, had the same dark wavy hair, both looked like the Rock, Jr., but where Darious always looked harried and disturbed, this man actually smiled.

  And he was smiling at her.

  “We get into our partying, I see,” he joked, and her hands went to her hair and her robe, remembering the state she was in.

  “Um… well, it was a hard night.” She swung the door fully open and thrust out her hand. She could face the new neighbor looking like a three-day bender gone wrong. Hell, she’d faced demons, and mad priests, and tutu-wearing fairy-flies. This was a cakewalk.

  “Next time invite me to the party.” He held out the promised hand. “We can get lit together.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be doing this ever again,” she sighed, shaking her head ruefully. “One trip like this is enough.”

  “Good,” Jamari chuckled. “I’d hate to date a drunk.”

  “Date?”

  Was he as blind as he was handsome? Her hair was a rat’s nest, her clothes were soaked in liquor, and she was sure she smelled like relapse week at Betty Ford.

  “Yes, date. You’re cute and I think you and I have a lot in common. We both seem to be single and available, and I have that exact same robe, only in black.” Jamari smiled.

  “I am throwing it into the nearest incinerator after I take a shower,” she informed him, arching one eyebrow and wondering what game this one was playing.

  “I’ll join you,” he laughed. “And I’ll chuck mine into the flames as well. How about in… two hours?”

  “You want a date?”

  “Hey, I kind of like your style. You seem to be, you know, real. Not like something out of a soap opera.”

  Not out of a soap opera.

  “Make it two and a half hours and you have a date.”

  “Done.” He smiled, making attractive dimples pop out on his cheeks. “Oh, and the mailman dropped this off at my place by accident. I believe it is yours, Ms. Shaquandra Jackson.” He handed her the small box and blew her a kiss. “See you in two and one half hours.”

  Shaquandra was grinning as she closed the door. Looked like she had a date. Now all she needed was to get hired and her day would be complete.

  Looking down at the package, she noted it was a small box covered in brown paper and tape. Her name was printed neatly with no return address.

  Shrugging, she peeled it open to reveal a shoebox. She opened it and dropped it on the floor, her hands clutching her heart.

  “Lest you forget, darling,” a quiet, rough voice whispered in her ear -- Carter’s voice, “how good reality could be.”

  Lying on her carpet was a pair of gaudy rhinestone red stiletto heels.

  From that moment on, Shaquandra decided that maybe life got rough at times, but it was a hell of a lot better than living a lie. She showered, got dressed for her date, and decided to live her life, to play the hand she’d been dealt.

  It wasn’t a perfect life, but then nothing was ever perfect, including Prefect City.

  The End

  Stephanie Burke

  Stephanie Burke, known to friends and readers as Flash, has a warped, twisted sense of humor, and she isn’t afraid to let it show. From pregnant men to six-foot cockroaches, she’s covered the gamut of the weird, the unusual, and the just plain strange. She has about five million books currently in publication with one house or another, all under the name of Stephanie Burke. She says she won’t use a pen name -- she’d have to learn how to spell it. Too much like work. Be sure to join Flash’s “Flame Keeper” loop at Yahoo Groups -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FlameKeeper/join.