Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t speak Arabic. Yet I understood you. You did say, ‘May the IRS find that you deduct your pet sheep as an entertainment expense,’ didn’t you?”
    â€œI can be most colorful and inventive when I am angry.” The Arab flashed a bright grin of pride. His teeth were pointed and saw-edged like a shark’s. “You have been chosen, Augustus Brine.”
    â€œWhy me?” Somehow Brine had suspended his disbelief and denied the absurdity of the situation. If there was no order in the universe, then why should it be out of order to be sitting on the beach talking to an Arab dwarf who claimed to be king of the Djinn, whatever the hell that was? Strangely enough, Brine took comfortin the fact that this experience was invalidating every assumption he had ever made about the nature of the world. He had tapped into the Zen of ignorance, the enlightenment of absurdity.
    Gian Hen Gian laughed. “I have chosen you because you are a fisherman who catches no fish. I have had an affinity for such men since I was fished from the sea a thousand years ago and released from Solomon’s jar. One gets ever so cramped passing the centuries inside a jar.”
    â€œAnd ever so wrinkled, it would seem,” Brine said.
    Gian Hen Gian ignored Brine’s comment. “I found you here, Augustus Brine, listening to the noise of the universe, holding in your heart a spark of hope, like all fishermen, but resolved to be disappointed. You have no love, no faith, and no purpose. You shall be my instrument, and in return, you shall gain the things you lack.”
    Brine wanted to protest the Arab’s judgment, but he realized that it was true. He’d been enlightened for exactly thirty seconds and already he was back on the path of desire and karma. Postenlightenment depression, he thought.

6
THE DJINN’S STORY
    Brine said, “Excuse me, O King, but what exactly is a Djinn?”
    Gian Hen Gian spit into the surf and cursed, but this time Brine did not understand the language and no blue swirls cut the air.
    â€œI am Djinn. The Djinn were the first people. This was our world long before the first human. Have you not read the tales of Scheherazade?”
    â€œI thought those were just stories.”
    â€œBy Aladdin’s lamplit scrotum, man! Everything is a story. What is there but stories? Stories are the only truth. The Djinn knew this. We had power over our own stories. We shaped our world as we wished it to be. It was our glory. We were created by Jehovah as a race of creators, and he became jealous of us.
    â€œHe sent Satan and an army of angels against us. We were banished to the netherworld, where we could not make our stories. Then he created a race who could not create and so would stand in awe of the Creator.”
    â€œMan?” Brine asked.
    The Djinn nodded. “When Satan drove us into the netherworld, he saw our power. He saw that he was no more than a servant, while Jehovah had given the Djinn the power of gods. He returned to Jehovah demanding the same power. He proclaimed that he and his army would not serve until they were given the power to create.
    â€œJehovah was sorely angered. He banished Satan to hell, where the angel might have the power he wished, but only over his own army of rebels. To further humiliate Satan, Jehovah created a new race of beings and gave them control over their own destinies, made them masters of their own world. And he made Satan watch it all from hell.
    â€œThese beings were parodies of the angels, resembling them physically, but with none of the angels’ grace or intelligence. And because he had made two mistakes before, Jehovah made these creatures mortal to keep them humble.”
    â€œAre you saying,” Brine interrupted, “that the human race was created to irritate Satan?”
    â€œThat is correct. Jehovah is infinite in his snottiness.”
    Brine reflected on this for a moment and regretted that he had