A Short Story By Mike Soika

I thought I could dance with the devil and just walk away; maybe with a little singe, but never did I imagine things would end up like this.

Like most things, this started out with a phone call from my friend, Jon. Jon is an ex-Catholic priest who married a Quaker girl, had two kids, and moved to Philadelphia. After exchanging pleasantries and stories of how our families are faring, Jon got to the point of his call. “Mike, can you look in on my nephew, Raphael? He called and pleaded for me to come get him.”

I knew about Raphael from the stories Jon shared about him. He’s a 28 year old “kid” who – like many of his millennial peers – is cobbling together a life of side jobs just to get by. He is a local DJ and he drives for Uber. Being a DJ and an Uber driver, Raphael gets to see a part of life that most of us choose to ignore. According to Jon, Raphael skirted in and out of the drug scene, got mixed up with guys who rob mail carriers to steal government checks, and who can be relied upon to find a “party” for those who come looking for one.

“Sure.” I told Jon, “text me his phone number and I’ll give him a call.” Knowing about Raphael, I thought this was a big ask. But Jon is my best friend. As a priest he married us and baptized our children. He was there for me when I went through a nasty divorce from my first wife and I want to be there for him now.
Jon texted me Raphael’s number as soon as we hung up. I decided I’d wait a day before I called. While I want to help Jon, I’m not in any hurry to get mixed up in whatever Raphael has going on. I was hoping things would settle themselves out.

As it turns out, Raphael called me that same afternoon. I recognized his number when the call came in and answered the phone thinking, “This can’t be good.”

There were no introductions or pleasantries from Raphal, he jumped right in. “Is this Mike? This is Raphael. My uncle Jon gave me your number and said you can help me. Where do you live, I can be at your house within an hour.”

This sounded worse than I feared. There was no way I was going to let this guy anywhere near my home and my family. We agreed to meet at a bar near downtown. I told him I could be there by 7 pm. He texted me his picture so I could recognize him.

I arrived 15 minutes early, wanting to scope out the street and the bar. I’m a Quaker and I think of myself as a nice guy, but I grew up believing that people and places aren’t always what they seem.

I got this from my dad, who was a twice wounded Marine Corps Master Sargent in WWII. Once, when I was about 14, I was with my dad in the alley behind our house. We were going to change the oil in our faded red Ford station wagon. I noticed there was a bulging, brown paper grocery bag near the alley and I started to walk over to it. My dad yelled “Stop. Leave the bag alone. You don’t know what’s in there. There could be a dead baby in the bag.” “A dead baby?” I thought. “Who would say that? What kind of evil has he seen that would make him imagine such a thing?” So, at an impressionable age, I learned to be cautious. But, not cautious enough.

When Raphael suggested we meet at a bar, I was expecting something seedy in a risky part of town. But that wasn’t what I found. McBob’s is a neighborhood bar where folks go to drink, to mingle, to play trivia, or to watch sports. I walked past two couples drinking beer and sharing a plate of onion rings at a sidewalk table. When I got inside, It was bright with the sun shining in from the large storefront windows, one on each side of the door. Maybe there were another 8 people in the bar on a Tuesday evening in June, all who looked like they could have walked here from the blue-collar neighborhood where the joint is located.

I found an empty table where I could sit and watch the front door, with a bonus that it was close to a rear exit – just in case I needed to leave quickly. Raphael was prompt. He walked about four feet into the bar and stopped to scan the room. I raised my hand to get his attention. When he arrived at the table, I stood up and offered my hand in greeting. He seemed surprised at that, gave me a wimpy handshake that felt like I was grabbing a dead fish, and sat down.

“What’ll you have. I’m buying.” He said to my surprise. I thought maybe I should pay, but didn’t want to insult him. “I’ll have a bourbon, neat – two ice cubes” I said. He chose a local Hazy IPA brew.

He went to the bar to get the drinks, which gave me an opportunity to check him out. He wasn’t furtive and looking around. He was dressed in jeans and wearing a clean T Shirt touting a local band. He wore black high-top tennis shoes, but nothing flashy or trendy. There was nothing about his cloths or outward demeanor that gave a hint that he was in enough trouble to plead with his uncle to come and get him. I was starting to feel a little more at ease with the situation. “Maybe things just got blown out of proportion” I thought to myself. But I would quickly find that not to be the case.

When Raphael came back with the drinks and settled into his seat, I asked him to explain his problem to me; that his uncle got the impression he was facing a situation with dire consequences; enough to want to be spirited out of town immediately. “You don’t look so desperate to me right now, so I’m curious what’s going on” I told him.

He took a drink from his beer, looked me steady in the eyes and said “If I don’t fix this, I will be dead and banished to hell by this time tomorrow.” It was the “banished to hell” part that made me lean across the table and ask for details.

And with that, Raphael unwound a story about picking up a couple from his Uber gig at local club at closing time, how the woman seemed to be in charge and flirted with him, asking if he wanted to come to a “party” at her lakeview apartment. “There wasn’t anything suspicious about her” Raphael said, “I just thought she was some rich lady looking for a good time, so I said yes, let’s do it and drove to her building. You’d be surprised how often something like this comes up.”

The details about the debauchery of the evening that Raphael relayed aren’t important. What is important is how Raphael said the woman rose naked from the bed and sauntered to a nearby desk where she opened a drawer and pulled out a gun. She walked back to the bed “with her eyes dark and wide” and said to Raphael, “watch this, sweetie.” She quickly put the gun to the middle of the other guy’s forehead and pulled the trigger. Blood and brains splattered all over the bed and over Raphale. The lady just laughed. Raphael jumped out of bed screaming, “What did you do? What did you do?”

“Nothing. I did nothing.” She said as she hovered over the body that was splayed out, limp and naked with the top of the head oozing blood and mush, surveying her work. She laid face down on the body, rubbing her face into the mess of flesh and brains, growling like a bear in heat. And then suddenly the body began to steam or smoke and it just disappeared, as if it was absorbed into the woman. “She looked at me with those dead animal eyes,” said Raphael “her face was covered in brains and blood, her chest was heaving. As she reached out and touched my cheek, her hand was so cold it felt as if my face was being burnt.” She said “I have a job for you sweetie” In a voice that was no longer soft and feminine, but was heated and guttural.”

“You’ve seen what I can do” she boasted. “You can figure out what I am, and now I have a task for you. I want you to find the nicest and kindest person you can and bring them to me. I will take care of the rest. And if you don’t…..well…..you will do nicely.”

My Quaker sensibilities made me skeptical. I don’t believe in an evil presence roaming the world. What I do believe is that humans either ignore or can’t hear the voice of God calling them to the light and instead, they allow their ego to dominate. And their actions often look like evil.

My instinct was that Raphale was telling me an outlandish tale as a set up to ask me to fund his “getaway” from the evil presence. I wasn’t buying it, but I didn’t say anything, waiting for the pitch I was sure would come.

At that point Raphael looked at me and looked down into his now empty beer glass. “I’m sorry” he muttered.

I looked up just as this beautiful raven haired lady with coal black eyes and a hungry smile was walking to our table.