Devil's Tongue

By Steve Myers

Unemployed dishwasher Larry Brady befriends a large black cat, really a miniature black jaguar. The jaguar is the familiar of Lily, a lovely “goddess” from a Caribbean island. Lily informs Brady that he is the father of her child and a descendant of the Black Jaguar, the spiritual father of her tribe. Suddenly Brady is living a modern Romantic fairy tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spero Publishing
• Release date: Jan 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781944956516

Book preview

Devil's Tongue

Book One of the Voodoo Lily series

By Steve Myers

Devil’s Tongue

By: Steve Myers

Eternal Press

A division of Caliburn Press, LLC.

P.O. Box 8747

Madison, WI 53714

www.eternalpress.biz

Digital ISBN:

Print ISBN:

Cover art by: Artist

Copyright 2016 Steve Myers

Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights

Worldwide English Language Print Rights

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To the goddess disguised as my personal Lily.

Chapter One

On that warm summer night Brady thought it was a cat. He heard scratching on the wood landing outside and opened the main door, then the screen door to see a solidly built black feline looking up at him. It didn't meow or purr, but only stared with bright yellow eyes.

Brady said, You're in luck, cat. I just opened a can of tuna—or maybe you invited yourself?

He shut the screen door, got a plastic bowl, and spooned a large portion of tuna into the bowl. He stood at the screen and watched the cat eat. First it stuck out its tongue to taste the tuna, then it quickly devoured it and looked up at him.

That's all for now. I have to eat too.

It opened its mouth in a wide yawn and displayed long, sharp canines. He looked at it closely and saw something like dull leopard spots under the black. The head, too, looked more like a panther's than a house cat.

Well, good night.

As he went to shut the main door the panther-cat turned and leaped down the steps to the ground. He stepped out onto the landing and saw it rush to the tall wood fence, leap to the top of the gate to the lane, and disappear into the night.

A bright woman's voice from the dark below called, "Larry, did you see that?"

Mrs. Winter?

It's I, not some demon in the dark. But did you see that animal?

Larry took a few steps down the outside stairs and Violet Winter, the woman who owned the house, appeared at the foot of the stairs. She was a thin, short woman with short hair dyed platinum blond and in her early forties. Her husband of fifty had died from a sudden heart attack nearly ten years before. She was a professor in botany at the local university.

Larry rented a three room apartment in the second floor of the house. There were inner stairs to his rooms but the outside set gave him a private entrance. The rent was ridiculously low and Larry thought Mrs. Winter felt sorry for him and gave him a break. Often she would ask him to have Sunday dinner with her when her daughter Heather wasn't home. Often Heather would leave on excursions for months.

Yes, it was a good sized cat.

Cat? I guess you could call it one but I never saw one to leap that way before. I am willing to bet that animal is responsible for the decline in the bird population here. I haven't seen any of those little chickadees around for weeks.

What are you doing out so late?

Checking on my evening primroses. Even with only that sliver of a moon they're blooming. You? You just get home?

Yeah. By the time the place closes and I finish cleaning up it's midnight.

Well, you better get to bed and get your rest.

Yeah, I better. Good night, Mrs. Winter.

Night, Larry.

He stayed on the landing for some time looking into the night before going inside. He said, That was some cat.

* * * *

Larry Brady was so small time a poet that he couldn't even be considered minor. On his father's side, a descendant of Samuel Brady, the man who leaped a gorge to escape a band of Wyandots; on his mother's side, there was John Chapman, the man known as Johnny Appleseed, who scattered apple seeds across the land to leave a legacy of orchards. So he had some of the genes of heroes but you wouldn't know it to look at him. His clothes and shoes were from the thrift store; he had to junk his last car when the transmission went; he had to use a razor blade until it scraped rather than shaved his beard; and he could only afford beer on payday.

He washed dishes at the Garden of the Falling Moon restaurant on Melville Avenue a block from the college. He didn't mind the noise or the steam-heated water that much nor the contempt of Victor Brodinski, kitchen manager and chef. Sometimes the waitresses would even nod to him. Besides, he did get one free meal every day he worked (the place was closed on Mondays). He spent Monday mornings walking along the narrow river, even when it rained. In the afternoon he went to the library where, depending on mood, he read poetry or philosophy or history or fiction (no novels later than Tristram Shandy; Moll Flanders was his favorite).

In the summer he picked up an extra twenty dollars cutting grass for his ex-wife. Her husband, Perce Wadsworth, felt sorry for him or guilty. Larry's wife cheated on him the last year before the divorce—Perce taught an evening course on creative nonfiction that Elaine took. He said she had an authentic voice. As editor of the New Poldovia Literary Review, he published her piece on her first sexual encounter. Now she was writing a memoir on being raised by a schizophrenic mother and an alcoholic father (both now dead).

When they first met, Elaine—who had a BA in English—was impressed that Larry wrote poetry, but she soon thought it was either too crude or lacked gravitas. Larry admitted as much—in fact, he thought his best stuff was the limericks he scribbled on the backs of used envelopes, receipts, and scraps of paper. He copied them into a notebook he titled Lemon & Lime Ricks.

Examples:

Six wives mourned a drowned English ship

Until this thought caused the women to flip:

The only survivor

Was a practiced muff diver

Because of his stiff upper lip.

There once was a lady refined

Who valued only the things of the mind,

But after the spasms

Of many orgasms

To the flesh she was much more inclined.

So when he lay in bed that night he tried to think of a limerick for the cat. But he was too tired and quickly fell asleep. He dreamed he walked through a garden full of yellow flowers on stalks that grew taller and taller and taller until he was lost in a jungle of flowers. He heard something coming toward him. First a ripple then a wave ran through the stalks and swept over him. In front of him, teeth bared, yellow eyes glowing was a black panther. Larry stood frozen by the panther's eyes. Trembling, unable to move, he waited. His heart beat loudly and he felt his brain would explode. Then the panther smiled. The large whiskered mouth formed an ear-to-ear grin showing its glistening canines.

Brady woke sweating, his tee-shirt soaked. Hovering in the dark above him was the panther's face with the yellow eyes shining in the dark and that absurd grin. Brady shook his head and blinked. The eyes and the grin slowly faded away.

Chapter Two

Violet Winter, irritated about that damn cat, knew she wouldn't be able