If you are unfamiliar with Steve and Carl, more on them can be found here and here.
“Hey Steve,” I said as I opened the door to see the Demon Inspiration standing in the entryway, tapping his foot impatiently.
“Where have you been?” He snapped at me.
“Um, the hospital. I’d like you to meet Zachariah.” I nodded down at the car seat I held in my left hand, hanging the keys up next to the door with my right.
“What is that?” He spat.
I ignored him, “Where’s Carl?”
“In here,” came a muffled voice from the direction of my desk.
“Check the drawers, he’s been in there all day.” Steve smirked.
“Well, he can wait then. I have to bring in our bags.” I turned around and ran out to the truck, where my wife was still gingerly trying to get out. I walked over to her and she waved me off. I nodded, it was important to her that she do this on her own. I grabbed our bags out of the truck’s bed and walked back to the front door, where Steve now stood.
“What’s her problem?”
I wanted to reach out and slap him.
“You better not.” Inspiration was in my head. Again.
I set our bags down and picked up the car seat again, noticing that a black, pencil thin mustache had been drawn on the baby contained within.
“Really Steve? What are you like five?”
“One thousand two hundred and fifty three to be exact.”
“Then act it. Now where’s Carl?”
“Your desk, like I said. Check the drawers.”
Carrying Zachariah, I walked to my desk and opened the right-most drawer, exposing Carl, covered in wood shavings and black specks. I looked past him into the drawer, which was now full of the same.
“What’s all this?” I asked.
“What’s that?” He asked.
“I asked first!”
Carl looked at me sheepishly, but did not utter a word, so I reached into the drawer he was standing in and after fishing around for a moment, pulled out what was left of a pencil.
“Seriously, you chewed the tips off of the pencils?” I was beginning to get irate.
Steve, who had followed me to my desk, chuckled. “You should see what else he did.”
Carl and I both shot Steve the same look. It said I’ll kill you, albeit undoubtedly for different reasons.
I looked back at Carl, who had climbed out of the drawer and was now sitting on the return key of my keyboard. But it wasn’t the return key. “Carl, you re-arranged the keys on the keyboard? Damn it.”
“Now, you have the answer to your question, answer mine,” Carl mustered all he swagger he had in his one inch frame and looked again at Zachariah. “What. Is. That?”
“Well Carl, minus the mustache,” I shot Steve the same look I had given him earlier, “This is my son, Zachariah.”
“And what’s it, um, do?”
“Well,” I thought carefully about the answer. “It eats, cries, and poops a lot.”
“So it’s a bit like Steve?”
It was Steve’s turn to glare at Carl, but Carl ignored him, instead focusing on me.
“Is that it? And where’s your lovely wife?”
I had heard the front door shut, so I knew she was inside. “She’s probably in our bedroom, she’s tired. Let me go check, besides, she has the camera and I want to show you guys a picture.”
I walked across the house and sure enough, found my wife in the bedroom, sitting on the bed.
“Hey honey, you doing okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, just resting.”
“OK.” I reached into her purse and grabbed the camera, showing it to her, justifying why I was in her purse.
I walked back to where my desk stood, to find Steve shooting rubber bands at Carl, who was putting white out on my monitors with his hands. The cap and brush to the bottle lay on the desk next to a trail of white footprints, and it took me a moment to realize that the brush was actually bigger than he was. Shooing Carl out of the way, I hit the power button on the computer and tethered the camera. While everything was starting up, I grabbed a soda and sat down, breathing a sigh of relief at the comfort of my own chair, in my own home. Scratching off some of the white out with my fingernail, I pulled up a picture.
“So, um,” unsure of how to broach the subject, “Carl, what would happen if I stopped believing in you?”
“Well,” he began, resting his hands, which were covered in white out, in his lap, and again sitting on the caps lock key, which was where the enter key should have been, “I would just disappear I guess.”
“You would just go back, um, down there, right?”
“Yeah, but look at all of the work I’ve done. You won’t be able to write for weeks.” He flung his arms out wide, spraying still drying white out everywhere.
“About that, look at this picture, see how he is asleep on my hands. I can’t type like that, but it sure is sweet, I would rather have him as an angel of writer’s block than you as the demon of it.”
“But, really, we get along so…” With an audible *POOF* he was gone.
I turned to the other demon residing in my house, a sudden look of fear dawning across his features, even managing to encompass his horns. “So, Steve…”
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1 comment:
First, that picture is adorable (and congratulations again)!
Second, this: I turned to the other demon residing in my house, a sudden look of fear dawning across his features, even managing to encompass his horns. is great because I can picture Steve's horns curling in on themselves in fear.
Also, I like how put off the demons are by the baby.
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