Arrashareth's Bad Day.

When Arrashareth woke, he knew it wasn't going to be his night. No. It just wasn't going to be his night.

His hair was caught in the metal bolt where the bed met the backboard. It wasn't long hair, so how could it possibly have gotten caught? And while he was wearing an Immortal form, and he'd heal, it would still hurt, and he tended to slow up the Immortal healing enough to make it uncomfortable.

His head hurt far more than that minor pain, however, and when he rose, the world was blurry.

Damn! This Immortal had never dealt with magic. He had a hangover from channeling too much through it.

He went to take a shower, and woke up two hours later, gasping for breath, his neck and back aching. The bar of soap he'd slipped on winked white and innocent at him.

The phone was ringing.

Wrapped in merely a towel, he answered it. "WHAT?"

"Good afternoon, sir. Would you be interested in buying some vinyl siding for your house? It's at an excellent price and if you buy now, installation is half off!" Did the mortal even breathe?

"NO!" He slammed the phone down. It began ringing again. It had better be Rapheal this time.

"What?" He growled it softer.

This one was a female. "Hello, I'm calling on behalf of Mobilo Corp Telephones! We have an excellent new long distance plan, available to all people in your area. It's only five cents a minute for any call, anywhere in the US!"

He repeated the hang up of the first. The phone rang again.

After the tenth successive call, he threw the phone across the room, punching a hole in the wall.

"Why the hell are these people calling me?!" What was with these mortals? They acted like he was one of them!

He grabbed the newspaper from the floor, and snarled at it. Throwing out the items wholesale, he found one that was a shiny little round object. He flipped it into the air, chuckling. At least until he tripped over the trash can, and started falling. The little disk was spinning straight towards him, and he was tangled in the bag.

When he finally rolled over, the CD buried itself into the floor with a chunk. Right where his neck would have been.

He tested.

The edge was sharpened.

Demons On Line, The Browser That's Fast as Hell.

"That's *not* funny." He growled. "Almost beheaded by a fucking CD-ROM. *Not* funny."

"I'll go out. That's it. I'll go out. The Satanists are having the last night of their raffia doll roast. I think I'll go to that. I've got to kill time until midnight." He went to stand up, and only then remembered he'd been holding the mail.

With a yelp, he glared at the injured hand. One could almost see bone! "I hate modern things. I hate this modern world. And I hate fucking junk mail!" He gave the trash can a good hard kick, ignoring the little bits of parakeet that fell out of it as it rolled.

He made up some breakfast, and tripped over one of the items that had fallen out of the trashcan. As he fell, he scrambled to catch anything.

The hilt snapped off his favorite sacrificial knife.

Words could not begin to express how bad his day was turning out to be. "I've got to get out of this apartment before it kills me!"

As the sky got darker, he walked out, shrouded in black, not an ounce of skin showing. With sufficient duct tape, he'd managed to only just repair his sacrificial knife. Maybe if he found someone he could have a little impromptu breakfast.

Why was it that the bucket toppled off the ledge just when he walked under it, and *he* was the only one soaked by the damn white wash?

At last, he saw her. Slender, vulnerable, an image in white and blue. A young maiden, smiling and bright. It was no hard matter to lure her down the alley, mewing softly like a wounded kitten. But when he went to stab her, he felt a blinding pain, and curled around his injured manhood, as the girl fled.

"Little girls have gotten a lot meaner since my day." He whimpered, barely managing to get out of there before the girl found police and warned them of the rapist in the alley.

While he hid in yet another alley, and the pounding footsteps of the police retreated into the distance, he dared to hope his luck was changing.

There was a noise from overhead.

When he woke up, a bloody concrete block at least his own weight and size laid on the ground before him.

His hat, well, it had been a hat.

His hair was blood streaked and the edges were still white from the blasted white wash.

And boy, did he ache.

"Hey, my bike!" An angry growl made him aware of the bike laying under the tumbled stone. Of the bikes knocked over.

And of the dozen angry men coming out of the alley bar, eyes glinting furiously.

By the time he got away from them, little white wisps were in numerous wounds, and he felt like he'd been stampeded by a herd of wild mastodons, back in his first incarnation.

He heard angry shouting, and coming on the situation, he saw people waving signboards.

"Which way… the raffia roast." He croaked.

"It's one of them!" Shrilled the bitch he'd asked, and suddenly he was being whacked by large flat signs.

He was tossed up, helplessly, his sunglasses missing somewhere, on the steps. Crawling, and leaving a bloody streak behind him, he managed to get into the building.

"Raffia roast?" he croaked.

He was surrounded by darkness, he could feel the evil nature of these folks, like balm for his wounds. Sparks of black lightning knit his wounds.

"Well, what cheap two-bit wanna be do we have here?" A cold, impersonal voice. "Look, his knife's even wrapped with duct tape. What a loser."

"You puny little mortal, you have no idea whom you're facing!" He growled.

"Oh really?"

When they tossed him out of the car, laughing, he was in a junk yard somewhere.

He was tempted to cry. Very tempted to cry. But he stood, after his body finished healing the knife wounds. He struggled to get through the mud and oil, and debris. Halfway to the exit, and the pay phone he saw teasing him there, he heard a noise.

The tire descended with all speed, bouncing right off his skull, making him crumple to his feet.

He was groggy, seeing stars, and he was vaguely aware of someone touching him. When he came around, the figure was fleeing. He patted his pockets. "FUCK!" He'd been robbed. Not even money for the phone. "GOD FUCKING DAMN IT ALL!"

1-8-0-0-C-A-L-L-A-T-T.

"Yo. This is Rapheal. What do you want?"

"Rapheal this is Arrashareth. I need you to…"

"Sorry, I'm not in right now, so leave your sorry little message on the machine, and I might get back to you. Sometime next week, probably."

"NO! GOD DAMN FUCKING NO! THIS DAY CAN'T GET ANY FUCKING WORSE!" Arrashareth wept, slamming the phone down.

He made it home just before the sun, to find Rapheal inside the place, straightening up.

"Yo, boss, you've been robbed. Looks like vandals ripped through here as well." He said, before turning. "Woah. Boss, you look like shit."

"Well, yeah. I feel like shit." He growled. "Just put me someplace dark, so this fucking day can finally end!"

"Bad day, boss?"

"You've no fucking idea."

Rapheal blinked. "Shame. You missed a nice raffia roast. There was one section where the admin said some loser tried to get in, so they were gone for an hour, but otherwise it was really cool."

He was *not* going to cry. He was *not* going to cry. He just settled for slamming the door behind him as he crawled into the small windowless closet he saw.

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*No anvil, maybe, but how was that, Shade? If you want more of the demon boy, try Ghosts of the Past. In that one, he's winning. Mostly. He thinks so. I'm not going to let him, though. The author always wins, doesn't she?*

"That was you? You… you… you demon!"

*No, I'm an author. It's my job to make the bad guys pay.*

"But that was just abuse, upon abuse, upon abuse! Just you wait until I get my claws on you, you puny mortal! You're toast! You, and that little morsel, and Methos, and that damn student of Conner MacLeod! Dead! Do you hear me? Dead!"

*That's what you think, demon boy. I know better.*

Enough of the shameless self promotion. Thanks for reading, and as always, I'm making no money off the idea of Immortals. Danke.