The Interview by JR Gershen-Siegel

“So, how long have you wanted to hunt demons?”

The question hung in the air for a second.

The job interview was being conducted over lunch and I had just taken in a big forkful of Fettuccine Alfredo. I washed it down with iced tea, swallowed, wiped my mouth, and tried not to look stupid. “It’s since I was just out of school. My classmates didn’t see them. But I did.”

“Where did you see them?” My interviewer was the head of the agency. She was a pale woman with a seriously large afro and seemed to be oblivious to how uncommon that looked. She tucked into her Chicken Marsala.

“Behind filing cabinets, under park benches, next to rain gutters–at least that’s how it was to start. Then they seemed to get bolder and I started to see them sitting in front of me at the movies or at the next machine at the gym on the lift circuit. There was one of them driving the bus I took to get here.”

“I see. That means your sight is developing better. They aren’t getting bolder; you’re just seeing the better disguised ones with more clarity. Pass the pepper, please.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” I flipped a lock of red hair from my face and complied. “Where do you see them?”

“They’re all over the place. Like in that booth over there.” She gestured subtly with her fork.

I turned my head slightly to make sure I wasn’t giving away that we knew. “The wine steward, too.”

“Yes. It’s funny; people think demons will look scary. But they tend to have the pleasantest disguises, don’t you think?”

“It’s true. You see some little old lady feeding the pigeons and then she turns and you get the vibe and can see the aura.”

“Precisely.”

We finished the rest of the meal in silence and our demon waiter brought over the check.

“We can use you,” my interviewer said. She looked up and smiled at the waiter as she handed him her card without looking at the bill.

“That’s, that’s great.” I stammered and almost spilled my iced tea. “I do have a question.”

“Oh?”

“Why are there so many of them?”

The waiter returned with her card and she signed quickly, and then put her card back into her wallet. “There’s that hole in the earth, near Sausalito. They climb up through there.”

“I thought there were other holes,” I said as we got up and left the restaurant for the overly bright late winter sunshine. There was glare, and I put my hand over my forehead, like a salute, to try to shield my eyes from it. The parking lot was mostly empty; we had been talking long enough that most of the lunch crowd had very likely come and gone a while ago.

“No; it’s just the one.” She smiled tightly and I got the distinct impression that that was, if not a lie, then at least a selective omission. She turned a little and I felt the air undulate and vibrate. “So, do we have a deal?” She extended her right hand.

With my shaded eyes, I saw the aura which I had missed in the dim restaurant. It had also been covered by her afro. I backed away slowly, subtly checked for moving cars in the parking lot, and started to run.

—

JR Gershen-Siegel is a Lambda Literary Award nominee (2014, Untrustworthy, under SF/F/Horror https://www.lambdaliterary.org/current-submissions/). Her work is published by Riverdale Avenue Books and Writers’ Colony Press.