Part 1

29 days, 8 hours, 43 minutes

Nathan sat bolt upright where he had fallen asleep on his couch. The television was still on, and the cigarette he had been smoking was just a trail of ash that had burned down through the collar of his favorite shirt, and onto his skin. It hurt, much as it should have, but with so many other things on his mind, the slight discomfort of a day-old burn was far from the top of the list. He had been actually in a high point in his life, so to speak. He finally accepted the monotony of working his desk job at the bureau of human-demon relations, he even was beginning to enjoy it, and Jennifer, the cute girl in the cubicle across the hall, who always wore those lovely turtlenecks had agreed to go on a date with him Saturday.

Of course, life never seems that bright when a demon busts through your front door and tells you you’re their next meal. Nathan reached down to the crushed pack and pulled out another smoke. He’d never even smoked before yesterday – never even entertained the idea that he wanted to – but seven minutes less of natural life didn’t really seem to matter anymore. He was planning to try and beat the clock anyway. A few million camels in thirty days might get to him before Gilgabesh did. And if not, oh well.

He leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling. Maybe he was depressed. He had toyed with the idea for a while, but it didn’t really suit him. However, staring death right in the slavering maw tended to alter one’s perception of the ‘way things were supposed to be’. There was nothing really worthwhile on the television to see, just more reports of demons taking over corporations and a bulletin regarding a rash of evening robberies in his part of town. Nathan dropped his hand to his side and patted around on the cushion below him. Nothing was really that interesting to look at anymore, even the antique zippo lighter, worth a small fortune, which he bought and slept on last night. He found the lighter, warmth on its surface from his body heat quickly dwindling, opened it with his thumb, and struck it on the back of his sleeve the way he had practiced. The dancing orange flame set the end of his fifth cigarette ever ablaze, and he took a deep breath.

He was actually starting to like the way it felt, filling his lungs with hot smoke; it was liberating in a way for someone who until the day before wouldn’t stay in the same room with a smoker. He closed his eyes, and coughed, catching the cigarette before he dropped it on himself. It was at that time that he noticed every joint in his body aching, contracting and twisting with his every move. He was beginning to regret his daily trips to the gym now that he had slept on a couch that was meant for two people at most to sit upright.

The phone rang.

Hardly did it seem to matter that someone was calling him, it was probably another telemarketer trying to refinance his home for him, or someone at work wondering why he wasn’t there and hadn’t called. It rang again, and a third time before he stood up, and walked over to the cellphone which lay on his coffee table. He listlessly lifted it to his ear and pressed the “talk” button.

“Huh.” He mumbled into the mouthpiece.

“Hello? Is Nathan there?” the voice in his ear questioned.

“Hm.”

“Hello? Is that you, Nathan?”

Realizing that allowing his conversation skills to degenerate to neanderthalesque grunts would no sooner end the conversation, Nathan cleared his throat and offered, “Speaking.”

“Sorry, Nate, you sound different.” It was unmistakably his boss, Keith.

“No, it’s me.”

“Right, are you okay?”

“I’ve been better.” He coughed through the butt of his cigarette onto his sleeve.

“Man, Nate, you sound like shit. What’s going on?”

Sighing with gusto, Nathan offered, “I’m dying, Keith. I think I’m going to use my vacation days for the rest of the month. I think I’ve got a few years’ worth saved up at this point.”

Keith was silent on the other end of the line for some time before talking again. “Dying? Why? What happened to you?”

Nate contemplated. In the time since the demon arrived, he still hadn’t told anyone. “Keith, a demon came to my door last night. He said I had thirty days to live and then I was elemental demon chow. I don’t mean to sound condescending, but I’d rather not spend the last days of my life at my desk. If you want any of my stuff, I probably won’t be back for any of it.”

Again, Keith was silent.

Nate reached over and rapped his knuckles on the small wooden side table next to the love seat, and said, “Sorry, Keith, I gotta go, someone’s at the door.” He pressed the ‘hang up’ button and dropped the phone on the floor. Sitting back down, he stretched, and exhaled a thin cloud of smoke that he had been attempting to savor. Of all of the shitty ways to spend the last days of his life, he couldn’t think of anything better than sleeping and smoking. It was one of the things he hadn’t done before: It was on his ‘bucket list’ of things to do in his golden years… Of course, a pack of Camel wides didn’t quite amount up to smoking expensive Cuban cigars on a tropical beach, ogling girls much too young for him, but he had spent all of the money in his wallet on the zippo. He was getting much better at smoking now, he thought. It wasn’t making him cough anymore every time he took a breath, and the taste of nicotine and paper in his mouth didn’t really get to him since the second one.

29 days, 8 hours, 7 minutes

He needed to stretch. It wasn’t so much of a preference as a pressing need; his muscles were tight, no doubt from pre-mastication stress, but either way, it was there. He placed one hand on the phone’s hook, and one on the arm of the chair opposite, and kicked his legs out into the side of his stylish circular glass table. It should have toppled and shattered - that's what it would've done in the movies - but it was just his luck that the first bit of destruction he had meant to cause today was just not happening. Instead, the table skidded across the varnished wood floor and defiantly came to an undamaged halt next to his television. He grunted and slumped until his body slid off of the couch, and on to the floor. Being slothful was really underrated, he thought, one of the simpler joys of life that for so many years he despised.

Again, his gaze drifted to the ceiling. Flat and dull, with a few well-maintained light fixtures. The only things truly worth staring at were the wispy curls of smoke that crawled through the empty spaces above, entertaining enough for a dying man. It was breakfast time. Maybe even lunch time. That was what his body told him; on any other day, he would have just been leaving his desk to get a bran muffin and a refill of coffee before wandering off for an end-of-day meeting. Today, though, there was no desk, just a misplaced glass table and the smoke that he so enjoyed watching, and his coffee mug was in pieces, strewn about the hall outside his front door.

For a Friday, this was turning out to be not so much of a good day. Unceremoniously, Nate dragged himself up to his feet; deciding that moping around on the floor wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Instead, he ventured to mope in the kitchen.

His kitchen had always fallen short of spectacular. The linoleum floor was clean and smooth, and the ceiling was still white, even miraculously above the old-fashioned gas oven. Plates were stacked neatly where he hadn’t ventured to destroy them the night before, and the groceries were still in the bags from the previous night’s shopping… Before Gilgabesh showed up. Nate stepped over shattered flatware, to the sink, to take a look at himself.

If there was any real experience that had a tendency to age someone prematurely, the thought of being stuck on some giant slavering creature’s toothpick had to be it… Coupled with the five cigarettes he’d already had in the last two days, he thought, he had turned a perfectly normal 26 year old man into a tired old wreck. He had dark oblongs below his eyes, cigarette ash burning holes into his lapels, dirty fingernails and a slept-in, one-sleeved black suit jacket. It was the suit that really made him take notice. Despite all of the things that happened, he still was disappointed that he let such a nice jacket lose a sleeve.

It wasn’t particularly of any fault of his, really; it struck him to run upon seeing that hungry look in the demon’s eyes, but he had obviously underestimated the reach of a creature from the plane of wind… Not to mention the rather sad stitching on the left shoulder of his Gucci jacket. The sad thing was that despite all of the times he had dealt with demons face-to-face at the bureau, he had never been forced to let himself become lunch; he was a caseworker, not a pork rind. Pulling at his face, Nathan looked about for a cup. His mug, the one he got for graduating college was in pieces in the hall. A gift from his parents that was wholly inexpensive, but still the favorite of any gifts he’d received before.

“Nathan Reese: Aiming for the stars” It said; and had his constellation, Orion on it... Or at least, it used to.

Instead of his mug, he had to settle for a metal thermos given to him at some dealership he almost bought a car from. He walked over to his brewmaster and turned it on, listening to the operatic drum roll of heating coffee. First a low, half-hearted hum, then a wheezing cough, and a gurgling noise followed by the rugged, black liquid, which started to trickle into the cracked carafe below. Slowly, his blue-gray eyes began to lose focus. Standing in a zombie-like state, Nathan did what could only be described as “spacing out” in front of the coffee machine.

As unfocused eyes stared into what he vaguely recognized as a pot of coffee, the entire world melded together, into one monochrome, formless mass that Nathan Reese was the center of, and didn’t really care to be.

29 days, 3 hours, 22 minutes

Snapping out of his catatonic trance wasn’t exactly a difficult procedure, but it did take a few tries before he accepted that standing in one spot wasn’t getting him anywhere. The pot of coffee had filled, beeped for a while, and finally gone silent. Then it got cold. Having never even tasted the coffee, Nathan sighed and reached to the carafe’s handle, lifting it with just enough effort for the weight to bother him. He half expected the side of the container to burn his knuckles when he lifted, like every other time ever before. When it didn’t, it was the slap of reality he needed to finally pop out of his coma completely.

Various things went through his mind at that time; least of which was the exuberant amount of time that he had just spent staring at a brewing drink, completely oblivious to the rest of the universe. He had imagined that the phone seemed to ring once or twice in that five hour span, but it made little difference. Again, his cigarette had retreated until there was nothing left, leaving a small, brown bubble in the linoleum. Nathan set the full carafe in the sink, resolving to pour it out and make a new pot later in the day; then kneeled down to get a closer look at the remnants of his most recent cigarette.

It was as if someone had hidden a straw underneath the floor, and while Nathan was distracted, blown hard enough to create a little globe, that quickly exploded and collapsed upon itself, leaving a perfectly round crater at his feet, with a gray speck of ash in the center. The burn on his chest wasn’t half as interesting, looking more like a piece of badly cooked chicken, without any colorful spices. If it had time to heal before he was eaten, it would probably develop into a rather interesting scar.

He really didn’t have any other scars to speak of, come to think of it. Once upon a time, he had even prided himself in never having gotten into a situation that would’ve led to him developing one. It was kind of sad, really, in retrospect: A man in the prime of his life considered one of his greater achievements in life to be that he had never risked getting cut really badly.

This, he thought, should change. If smoking wasn’t going to kill him, then picking a fight might.

Nate pulled off his jacket and threw it on the counter, next to a shattered plate. Finally, then, he turned toward the door finding the resolve, at least, to leave the apartment. The door grudgingly gave way to Nathan’s half-hearted pushing, having no longer the brisk swing it once proclaimed with a hinge completely removed from the wall.

Out in the hall, he paused to mourn the loss of his mug. It was still strewn rather helter-skelter about the hall, broken rather violently upon the back of the demon he was soon to be nourishing. Hindsight being twenty-twenty as it always was, he thought it a sad waste of his favorite cup. If he was to die, he would want it to be buried with him anyway… At least, whatever was left after Gilgabesh had finished. He wandered to one corner, and picked up a piece of shattered ceramic. It was black, and bore the inscription, “han Re” A reasonably large chunk of his name.

Though simple, the task seemed like a rather weighty one. Nate laboriously padded up and down the hall, hunched over and collecting the chunks of black enamel. Part of the base here, the handle there, all the time waiting to have to explain his actions to the first person that came up those stairs asking what the ruckus was all about.

Placing the shards in one of the unbroken bowls in his kitchen, he sighed, and looked at the remnants of his most prized possession. Just as broken as he felt.

28 days, 23 hours, 51 minutes

The few people who wandered the late-night streets of the city stared as a broken man made his way down the sidewalk. He walked with all the purpose of a death row inmate to the electric chair, and looked like he had been mugged. Scuffed, damaged shoes and torn black slacks; a nice dressy shirt that had a rather unfortunate hole in the collar… He looked like the same kind of has-been that Nathan only a day before would have pitied. Now the dodging stares that he remembered handing out were now on his plate, in a district he had never been to. Four hours of aimless walking had yet to reveal anyone that seemed like the type he wanted to fight, so he had walked as far from the upscale apartment complexes of his own home district as he could muster, toward a more ‘rough’ part of town.

Nate ambled along in his private, miserable world, lit by the dying light of the fluorescent street lamps above. He had completely missed the daylight hours, where he was safe, and taken to the night: Dark and foreboding. Just the kind of formula that he believed would lead him into distraction from the impending doom that already loomed over his head.

This part of the city held a certain charm for many of the less savory types, as a haven for the predatory kinds that would no doubt just as soon kill a man for his watch than look him in the eye. Seldom would anyone in a suit ever even contemplate gracing this land traversed by the dregs of humanity. Of course, this was just the kind of territory that depressed idiots would go to get hurt. At this point, Nathan wasn’t sure whether he fit more into the dregs, or the idiots category, or if he was just an amalgamation of both.

Either way, he was going to make the worst of a bad situation, by getting himself drunk - yet another of the vices he often denied himself - and starting a fight he couldn’t win.

The sidewalk banked quickly westward with the street, but the southbound Nathan kept his course. The sound of screeching tires, and a rather unhappy man shouting from his window and honking his horn fell upon Nate’s deaf ears. In a few hours, the man in the car would either have forgotten about it all, or be complaining to someone else that ‘some moron’ had jumped out in front of his car and nearly got themselves killed. They would hail themselves a hero, or a humanitarian for having the naturally catlike reflexes to hit the brakes, and spare a poor innocent man’s life.

Nathan harrumphed, and trudged the rest of the way across the street. Greeted on the other side by a cheerfully bright flashing stickman who was safely crossing the street, much in the way he hadn’t.

It couldn’t be said that Nathan was suicidal. It wasn’t his goal to die, so much as to see how long he could live if he continued to jeopardize his life. No fate could be worse than getting eaten, anyway. Not after all of the knowledge that Nate had about the care that the Bureau bothered to put into tracking down and informing the next of kin of some poor, eaten soul. If he survived the night, Nathan decided, he would have to stop by the Bureau and input all of his information to save someone else the trouble. He had no next of kin to speak of, so he decided he’d just fill out the paperwork to have it sent to charity.

It was becoming decidedly more difficult to make out his surroundings in the dim light of the lamps above. The black asphalt did nothing to reflect any more light up into his eyes, as he stared down at the cracked pavement.

Steam rose from a sewer grate as he passed it, followed by the telltale growling noise of running water below. The curling steam of whatever happened to be down there reminded Nathan that he wasn’t living up to his quota of at least a pack of cigarettes a day. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, fishing around in his pockets for the less-and-less intact pack of Camels. Finding it in something of a sorry state, he pulled out his seventh cigarette, and placed it loosely between his lips.

As usual, the taste of the cigarettes left a little to be desired. He surmised that the people who made it a habit to smoke must have long since burnt away a good portion of their taste buds, as no sane person would smoke the damned things otherwise. This being known, he figured that he had best light up, and try to work on numbing his tongue for a while. He patted about his pockets for some time, before realizing that his antique zippo was still in the pocket of his jacket.

Now he needed a light.

A neon sign caught his eye. It said nothing more eloquent than “Beer” and gave off a tortured, replace-me whine. This was his ticket. Nate reached up to straighten his collar, and walked through the Newspaper-covered doors. The first thing that really struck him about the bar was that despite its chaos, it was remarkably more clean than the state he had left his apartment in. Considering only about half of the damage was done while the demon was there, and the rest in an embarrassingly destructive fit of anger shortly afterward. He was working on another one of those, but needed a little encouragement.

Wading through the haze of smoke, he found his way to the bar. It had all the makings of a real countertop, but the wood was so alcohol-soaked and warped that it would’ve served better as a canoe by the time Nathan found his way to it. The bartender was a wholly unpleasant-looking man, with more hair on his chin than atop his head who, with a dropped-on-the-head as a child drawl, asked Nathan what he’d have to drink tonight.

“What do you have that’d make someone drunk and violent?” Nathan queried, hoping that one of the many poisonous elixirs in the sticky, old bottles on the back shelf would do the trick to rid him of the small amount of lingering fear that the old, showered and shaven Nathan Reese was urging into the back of his spinal cord.

The greasy excuse for a human being behind the counter eyed the even poorer excuse for a living being before him, frowning as if an odd smell had worked itself among the already less-than-savory scents of the bar. He appraised Nathan with the eye of an experienced alcohol jockey, and said “You been drinkin’, pal?”

“Not yet, but you’re going to help me with that” Nathan stated in a matter of fact way, while looking around the bar for someone suitably brutal-looking. “I think I want whiskey… or rum.” He turned back to the bartender, “Or both. Bring me both.”

The bartender looked at Nathan incredulously for a moment, then shrugged, turning around to fetch a bottle of Captain Morgan and another of Jack off the shelf. He put the two bottles down on the bar, grabbed two glasses and set them in front of an indifferent Nathan. Nathan watched the dark liquids spill into the glasses, and began to feel himself space out again on them. He shook his head to clear his mind, and took the two glasses, and walked away from the bar, to stand under one of the abundant neon beer signs on the wall. He raised the whiskey to his mouth, and took a mighty draught, pausing only to cough and sneer as the bitterness brought him back to the real world. He could really barely stand anything harder than a fine white wine, and rarely even then drank much of it. He had had his share of beer in college, but never really took to the harder spirits. He chased the whiskey with a mouthful of rum, and continued to alternate until he had drained his glasses.

His cheeks were hot, and he was starting to feel dizzy, decent signs that the buzz he was looking for had shown up. Sadly, buzz had brought his downer cousin nausea. He decided that if he was going to fight anyone, he should do it before his lunch came back up to greet him. With little interest in being particularly choosy about his opponent, he walked up to the first beefy tattooed man he set eyes upon, hauled back his arm and threw what he was sure would be at least a passable punch directly at his unsuspecting foe’s jaw.

No sooner had his punch connected, as Nathan realized that he was a rank amateur at brawling. A quick shock worked its way up his arm, followed by searing pain in his hand, and numbness around the rest of his arm. He drew back in pain, looking from his hand up at a surprised, angry man shouting profanities at the top of his voice. Nathan had little time to regret his decision as a fist the size of a grapefruit bored into his collarbone. There was a bright flash in Nathan’s vision, followed by a blurry and somewhat surreal vision of the bar around him. He was losing and the fight hadn’t even started. He tried in vain to throw another punch, this time with his other fist. He connected limply with the man’s arm, then flailed again with his right. Something hard connected with his forehead, and then all was black.

28 days, 20 hours, 42 minutes

Nate jerked up from where he lay; making an indistinguishable yelp, then lay back on what felt like rough, cold stone. It was dark, and the sounds of the bar were no longer around him, wherever he was now. His chest felt hot where the larger man had hit him, and he knew that even if he hadn’t broken anything, he was sure to have a huge, swollen purple bruise. He tried to move an arm up to feel his head, and was glad that at least he was able to move his limbs. His face was generously basted with a thick film of something that felt like drying paint. Opening an eye and taking a look at his hand revealed it to be dark, crusty blood, and a decent amount of it at that. He brought his hand up to his forehead, and winced when he felt it. He had a gash on his head, just above one eyebrow about the length of a quarter, which was still open and sticky with coagulating blood. He moaned and felt the effects of not only the aftermath of a fight, but a quickly growing hangover, the product of mixing straight hard liquors in the stomach of a pitiable lightweight.

He lay still, and took in his surroundings. Tall building walls were on either side of him, the night sky above. It seemed as though nobody had thought a trip to the hospital was necessary for him, which in a way was comforting, but the fact that he had been deposited in an alleyway was hardly cause for celebration. The sound of footsteps from the direction of his feet were the signal he needed to try to get up. He floundered a bit, unsuccessful at first in sitting up outright, so he rolled on to his unbruised side and pushed himself into a crumpled sitting position.

A smooth, male voice with an implacable accent called to him from down the alley, “You alright, then, pal? Guess you just aren’t the fightin’ type, are you?” Nathan lolled his head, and looked up at a familiar tattooed arm. The voice continued, “Nice right hook, but piss poor footwork”

Nate frowned to himself, recalling the events leading up to his current predicament, and decided to offer a neighborly "Thanks. Are you going to fuck me up now?"

The laugh that followed was less an entertained chortle as the pained grimacing laugh of one who's embarrassed for the spectacle before them. "No, my friend, you've been fucked up enough for tonight."

"Good." Nate wasn't sure he wanted his companion to finish the job, but the idea of another smack to the temple that might put him out long enough for his body to get by the hangover which had decided to come by and say hello at that moment appealed to his inner wimp. He turned to dry-heave at the pavement below him for a moment then looked over his own bent frame at his assailant. "Then why'd you come back?"

"To settle your tab. Michael in the bar said you haven't paid yet, and I sure as shit don't intend to pay for the same drinks that got your sorry ass wound up enough to try that."

Nate attempted to laugh, but all that really came out was an awkward combination of a smile and a wince of pain, since it hurt to move. "Okay. How much do I owe... what was his name?"

"Michael, and twelve bucks for the drinks, eight more for the glasses you broke."

Nathan patted the pockets of his slacks, and found that much to his surprise, his unconscious body hadn't been looted while he was out to lunch. He looked up at the man, who despite his overall gruff appearance, didn't appear much older than he himself, and said. "Should I give it to you?"

The tattooed gent shook his head. "I'd take it, but you'd best get in there and apologize to Michael, he's having a fit that you started a bar fight."

That rang nicely in Nate's post traumatic head. A bar fight. He put a mental check next to the item at the top of his list of 'things to do before getting eaten'. In a purely testosterone-induced way, he was proud of himself. He'd punched someone, they'd punched him back, and he'd gotten his ass whooped thoroughly. Not many of his friends could say that, and he planned to let them know, perhaps leaving out the bit about going down in two.

 He pawed around for something to steady himself as he made his way to his feet. Slipping halfway, he fell ungracefully, banging his knee in the process, and let his companion know that it hurt with a poignant "Fuck." Cursing was another thing he was beginning to get a taste for. He'd avoided saying anything soap-in-the-mouth-worthy most of his life, but the sensibilities of those around him seemed relatively trivial at the moment. He repeated it to himself in a matter-of-fact way a few times, while staggering to his feet, and met his assailant face-to-face. "Hi. I'm Nathaniel"

"'Lo, Nathaniel, I'm Stan."

And with that, Stan walked out of the alley, and watched Nathaniel plod stiffly around the corner, and back through the front door of the bar. This time, when he entered, he was greeted with a tense hush: Another amoral victory, as far as he was concerned. He had entered the first time and was regarded simply as some cubicle monkey who was out of his element had too much to drink and wasn't worth the time of day. Now he was the crazy drunk guy who started a fight with Stan and got his ass kicked. Maybe not as heroic as he could've hoped, but it'd do.

He walked straight to the bar, followed by the looks of those around him, and addressed Michael, the bartender. "Sorry about before... I was kind of out of my mind... I guess." He could've mustered a more eloquent apology given time, but it seemed to him like he'd done his part.

"What the hell is wrong with you, man? Do you know that I could get canned for that kind of shit in my bar? I could lose my license."

Nate wasn't genuinely sorry, but he did feel he had a valid excuse. "Yeah, I'm gonna get eaten by a demon in a month. I'm kinda not myself."

Michael paused, frowning. Ever since the planar gates had opened and a few dozen demons had made Earth their semi-permanent home, it wasn't an unheard-of story, but few people had really ever come face-to-face with would-be demon fodder. Most people weren't afforded the benefit of a month's notice, and were kinda lunched upon on the spot. The police had originally tried to do something about it, but the simple fact was that demons were a fact of life, and the guy who'd made the deal with them limiting their on-planet population had agreed to the stipulation that each demon, to maintain their foothold on the material plane, could consume one human per month, and as long as they didn't exceed their limit, they were untouchable. It was unfortunate and no doubt that politician had gotten himself canned if not offered up as the first breadstick, but people'd learned to cope with time. Some demon-worshipping cults even offered their own ranks up in tribute, making it easier for the average Joe.

"Man... Tough break."

Nate nodded. "Tell me about it. I even work for the BDHR."

Stan, who'd joined Nate at the bar, looked taken aback. "Man, that's shite. Let me buy you a drink."

Nate shook his head, not ready for anything harder than a V8. "Thanks, but I've had enough."