Practical Demonkeeping Read Online Free PDF

Greetings from the heart of anguish .
    Awake, the dream-pain in his chest replaced by a real pain in his head. Light is the enemy. It’s out there waiting for you to open your eyes. No. No way.
    Thirst—brave the light to slake the thirst—it must be done.
    He opened his eyes to a dim, forgiving light. Must be cloudy out. He looked around. Pillows, full ashtrays, empty wine bottles, a chair, a calendar from the wrong year with a picture of a surfer riding a huge swell, pizza boxes. This wasn’t home. He didn’t live like this. Humans don’t live like this.
    He was on someone’s couch. Where?
    He sat up and waited in vertigo until his brain snapped back into his head, which it did with a vengeful impact. Ah, yes, he knew where he was. This was Hangover—Hangover, California. Pine Cove, where he was thrown out of the house by his wife. Heartbreak, California.
    Jenny, call Jenny. Tell her that humans don’t live this way. No one lives this way. Except The Breeze. He was in The Breeze’s trailer.
    He looked around for water. There was the kitchen, fourteen miles away, over there at the end of the couch. Water was in the kitchen.
    He crawled naked off the couch, across the floor of the kitchen to the sink, and pulled himself up. The faucet was gone, or at least buried under a stack of dirty dishes. He reached into an opening, cautiously searching for the faucet like a diver reaching into an underwater crevice for a moray eel. Plates skidded down the pile and crashed on the floor. He looked at the china shards scattered around his knees and spotted the mirage of a Coors minikeg. He managed a controlled fall toward the mirage and his hand struck the nozzle. It was real. Salvation: hair of the dog in a handy, five-liter disposable package.
    He started to drink from the nozzle and instantly filled his mouth, throat, sinuses, aural cavity, and chest hair with foam.
    â€œUse a glass,” Jenny would say. “What are you, an animal?” He must call Jenny and apologize as soon as the thirst was gone.
    First, a glass. Dirty dishes were strewn across every horizontalsurface in the kitchen: the counter, stove, table, breakfast bar, and the top of the refrigerator. The oven was filled with dirty dishes.
    Nobody lives like this . He spotted a glass among the miasma. The Holy Grail. He grabbed it and filled it with beer. Mold floated on the settling foam. He threw the glass into the oven and slammed the door before an avalanche could gain momentum.
    A clean glass, perhaps. He checked the cupboard where the dishes had once been kept. A single cereal bowl stared out at him. From the bottom of the bowl Fred Flintstone congratulated him, “Good kid! You’re a clean-plater!” Robert filled the bowl and sat cross-legged on the floor amid the broken dishes while he drank.
    Fred Flintstone congratulated him three times before his thirst abated. Good old Fred. The man’s a saint. Saint Fred of Bedrock.
    â€œFred, how could she do this to me? Nobody can live like this.”
    â€œGood kid! You’re a clean-plater!” Fred said.
    â€œCall Jenny,” Robert said, reminding himself. He stood and staggered through the offal toward the phone. Nausea swept over him and he bounced back through the trailer’s narrow hallway and fell into the bathroom, where he retched into the toilet until he passed out. The Breeze called it “talking to Ralph on the Big White Phone.” This one was a toll call.
    Five minutes later he came to and found the phone. It seemed a superhuman effort to hit the right buttons. Why did they have to keep moving? At last he connected and someone answered on the first ring. “Jenny, honey, I’m sorry. Can I—”
    â€œThank you for calling Pizza on Wheels. We will open at eleven A.M . and deliveries begin at four P.M . Why cook when—”
    Robert hung up. He’d dialed the number written on the phone’s emergency numbers