Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish (36 page)

The quaint little bistro where Heinrich worked vanished from the face of the Earth. Nigel and Gerald had returned to see Heinrich not even a week after the bombing, only to find the bistro boarded up, and no one in the vicinity could ever remember there being a bistro there in the first place.

Gerald received a phone call from Death once a month to see how things were going. Gerald asked Death about Heinrich but the Angel simply replied that he didn't know what Gerald was talking about.

Celina and Nigel had become very close over the last six months, with only one big fight which had occurred when the two of them were discussing their days in college where it would seem they had both partaken in similar games of Hide the Kipper. Celina claimed her high score to be better than Nigel's and a pointless fight had erupted. The fight lasted all of three minutes, the apologies took another twenty seconds, and the making up took a little over four hours and included a large pizza somewhere in the middle.

Nigel's captain accepted a generous cheque covering the cost of the helicopter Nigel had lost at the poker tables inVegas, and then offered him his job back. Nigel refused, claiming that he had no wish to work for a large, over-reacting walrus and he was considering opening up his own private detective firm that would soon put the entire police force out of business. This was all lies, but it sounded good at the time. Gerald had been working on retrieving the parts of Raymond's memory that he really needed, and with Nigel's help, they had managed to sort out where exactly all the money was located and how they could access it, if need be. Gerald had moved in with Nigel who triedto teach him the finer points of being human and how to play
Hide the Kipper
.

Celina decided to keep Eggnog at her apartment and see if there was any way to stop him from dancing all the time, but that seemed next to impossible without wiping his entire database, which she just couldn't bring herself to do. The little elf had developed his own personality and was very content to bounce between Celina and Nigel's apartment and, due to his size and limited knowledge, could be passed offeasily as a child with a growth deficiency.

And so, along with Eggnog, with Nigel and Celina fiercely dating, and with Gerald living with Nigel, the four became inseparable friends. Celina no longer wished to work for Majestic Technologies and had resigned, much to the disappointment of the company, which already had enough trouble as its owner had vanished into thin air, quite literally.

The problem of money, thanks to Gerald, was no longer a problem at all. Gerald had insisted on helping his new friends with any financial difficulty they were experiencing, or had experienced, or would ever experience. He asked only to be friends and that they go on another adventure much like the last one, but without the bomb at the end. After the enquiry over the explosion was laid to rest and any suspicion dropped, Nigel, Celina, Eggnog, and Gerald booked a flight to Europe with the intention of backpacking around for a while.

The Entity grew weary, many moons had passed, and it had traveled a great distance. The journey neared its end, and after swimming the English Channel, the Entity made its way toward London. It had crossed over so many miles, they were hard to count and only once, at the foothills of Tibet, had the Entity been spotted. This was no mean feat, as the Entity stood at least seven feet tall.

After much searching and sneaking around, the Entity came to find what it was looking for. It entered the building, ripping the front door off its hinges in the process, and proceeded to the fourth floor. Moments later the Entity removed the hood of its cloak and politely knocked on the door of apartment 3B.

The flight was set to leave at seven in the evening, and Celina and Eggnog had gone back to her apartment to pack a few things. Gerald ran out to buy some travel toothpaste as Nigel packed his suitcase. He tried to decide whether he would have any use for his slippers while backpacking around Europe when there was a loud knock at his apartment door.

Funny. I don't remember buzzing anyone up.

Nigel stuck a finger in Jeremiah's fish bowl and swished it around, much to the enjoyment of the little fish. Nigel had bought a good-sized jam jar, which would allow Jeremiah to come with them to Europe. Following Death's instructions, he planned to take good care of the fish. There was another knock on the door, a little less patient than the first.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," said Nigel and opened the door.

Whatever Nigel had expected to see when he opened his door, it was definitely nothing like the thing that stood before him. To call it a man would be a profound understatement, and thinking back to his high school mythology and history classes, Nigel could think of only one way to describe the thing standing in his doorway.

A Minotaur stood in his doorway. A seven-foot creature with a man's muscular upper body, the enormous legs and head of a bull, with a large gold ring through its nostrils, dark eyes, dressed in a dark cloak, with a golden chest plate, and two long horns stared down at Nigel with absolutely no readable expression.

The Minotaur snorted. It pulled a small slip of paper from somewhere withinits cloak and read in a deep gutturalvoice.

"Nigel Amadeus Reinhardt?"

"Umm, yes," managed Nigel.

"I'm here for the fish," said the Minotaur matter-of-factly.

The last thing Nigel remembered before becoming unconscious was being smashed in the head by a very large fist. Twenty minutes later, when Nigel awoke to a worried Gerald shaking him violently, the seven-foot creature was gone. And so was Jeremiah.

THE END . . .

                    for now . . .

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Andrew Buckley
has been writing steadily since he was six years old when he wrote a story about a big blue dinosaur and received a gold star from his elementary school teacher. He had the good fortune to grow up in England where the sense of humor is rather silly.

In 1997 he moved to Canada because the thought of a country run entirely by beavers was amusing. He attended the Vancouver Film School’s Writing for Film and Television program where he graduated with excellence. After pitching and developing several screenplay projects for film and television he worked in marketing and public relations for several years before venturing into a number of content writing contracts. During this time he abandoned screenwriting altogether and began writing his first novel.

Andrew now dwells happily in the Okanagan Valley, BC with 3 kids, 2 cats, 1 beautiful wife, and a multitude of voices that live comfortably in his head. His debut novel
The Death, The Devil, and the Goldfish
is published by
Curiosity Quills Press
.

A Division of
Whampa, LLC
P.O. Box 2540
Dulles, VA 20101
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©2012 Andrew Buckley
http://www.planetkibi.com

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ISBN: 978-1-62007-124-3 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-62007-125-0 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-62007-126-7 (hardcover)

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