The Christmas MEGAPACK ®. Nina Kiriki Hoffman

he scrunched his mouth together and said, “How about a spelling bee contest?”

      “Interesting—a very interesting idea. What the hell,” Satan said putting the soul-sucking vacuum cleaner down. “Are you a good speller?”

      “I came in second place in a spelling bee contest in school once,” Danny said proudly.

      “Second place?” Satan said with a smile. “Being it is Christmas tomorrow, and I am all-giving.... Here are the rules: I will give you three words—if you spell each of them correctly, you keep your soul. If you spell one wrong, I get your soul. Sound fair?”

      Danny nodded.

      “The first word is spectrophotofluorometrically.”

      “What’s that?” Danny asked.

      Satan sighed. “Hell if I know. I just know how to spell—I don’t know what it means. Kinda of ironic, wouldn’t you agree kid?”

      “I guess so.”

      The boy scratched his head.

      “I’m waiting.”

      “S-p-e-c-t-r-o-p-h-o-t-o-f-l-u-o-r-o-m-e-t-r-i-c-a-l-l-y.”

      “Damn it to hell—scratch that, that is where I live. Damn it to Cleveland.” The Devil grumbled. “Unfortunately that is correct.” He paused for a moment. “This next one is a little harder—floccinaucinihilipilification.”

      “Is that a made-up word?”

      “It is often cited as the longest word in the English language, but there are longer ones. I can tell you are no science-fiction fan—Robert A. Heinlein used a variation of the word floccinaucinihilipilificatrix in his book The Number of the Beast. I wish Heinlein would have came down to hell, but he went up to heaven—hell is for horror writers and heaven is for sci-fi writers. Well, at least we still have Edgar Allan Poe,” the devil said with a laugh.

      “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

      “It is an easy word, that comes up in everyday conversation—it is so easy that even a fifth grader should know it.”

      “I am in fifth grade and I never heard of it,” Danny said. “What does it mean?”

      Satan sighed. “It means to make something out to be useless or irrelevant by depreciation—like that last question you asked.”

      “This is just a guess—f-l-o-c-c-i-n-a-u-c-i-n-i-h-i-l-i-p-i-l-i-f-i-c-a-t-i-o-n.”

      “That is a hell of a guess. And it is correct. Are you being coached by the big guy upstairs?” he points to the ceiling.

      “My dad?”

      “Never mind. If the last word was spelled correctly, you will win this contest and probably win any game of Scrabble. The word is,” Satan cleared his throat. “The word is pseudohypoparathyroidism.”

      “Can you use it in a sentence.”

      “Yes, if you don’t spell pseudohypoparathyroidism correct, I will get your soul.”

      Danny paused and thought about it. “That’s a hard one.”

      “Chop-chop, I have other souls to collect.”

      “I’ll give it a shot—p-s-e-u-d-o-h-y-p-o-p-a-r-a-t-h-y-r-o-i-d-i-s-m.”

      Satan’s wicked smile quickly turned into a frown. “Young Danny Webster, you are a walking dictionary.”

      “Well, that is what I want to be when I grow up, an author of a dictionary.”

      “You won.”

      “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!!!”

      Then Satan took out his soul-sucking vacuum cleaner and put it in front of Danny’s face.

      “But I won,” Danny cried out.

      “Sorry kid, I don’t play fair.” Satan then flicked the switch; in a matter of seconds Danny’s soul was sucked up. He emptied the soul into his black bag.

      Danny crumbled into dust and the Devil vacuumed up the dust. He then grabbed his black bag and crawled back up the chimney. It was a Hell of a Christmas after all.

      THE CHRISTMAS BANE, by S. Clayton Rhodes

      Lefty Bohach lay on his back staring at the empty bunk above him, wishing for a smoke.

      The only thing breaking the silence was the scuff of footsteps coming down the short hallway.

      “How ya doin’, Myron?” Beyond the cream-painted bars Carbon Hill’s Chief of Police, Dalton Strecker, pulled up a chair. The grate of wooden legs on tile was like nails on a chalkboard.

      “Name’s Lefty,” Bohach corrected.

      “Oh, yeah. Lefty. Tough guy like you, course you gotta have a good, strong name.”

      “’S’right,” Lefty agreed, hoping the cop was finished but somehow knowing he wasn’t.

      Strecker leaned forward. “Tell me something, Bohach, you ever consider another line of work?”

      Sensing this wasn’t going to end any time soon, Lefty sat up and gulped from the mostly cold cup of coffee from the sink edge.

      “See, I been lookin’ at your record. Printed out your whole life story.” Strecker snapped the manila file with the back of one hand. “Every convenience store you knocked over, every car you heisted, all the times you were picked up for possession, it’s all here.”

      “I’m sure there’s a point to this.”

      “Sure. The point is sewer water always runs deep.” The cop let loose a laugh every bit as grating as the scraping chair legs had been a moment before. “Seriously, though, this file...it paints a picture. It says, ‘Strecker, this here’s one hapless crook who couldn’t do worse if he tried.’”

      An understatement if ever there was one, Lefty had to admit. He’d been passing through town this morning and what should happen but they stopped him for a busted brake-light, of all things. When the patrolman called in, dispatch ran a routine check and learned Lefty was wanted for a whole slew of misdemeanors. These were in addition, of course, to the two counts of armed robbery. He was promptly put on ice until he could be transferred after the holiday.

      “If it’s any consolation,” Strecker went on, “they’da nabbed you sooner or later if not here. Guys like you always trip up.”

      Lefty pretended to inspect a hangnail. Maybe if he continued acting bored, Strecker would eventually get the hint. No such luck. The cop kept yakking until Lefty finally lost it and told him to piss off.

      “Easy, tiger. Just making conversation. Still, I do hafta wonder...with all the times you’ve been caught, jailed, and let back out, did it ever cross your mind there could be an easier way to make a buck?”

      In addition to getting under Lefty’s skin, the cop had an uncanny talent for zeroing in on the sore spots. “I, I don’t know how to do anything.” Lefty instantly hated himself for showing any sign of weakness.

      Strecker laughed again—that rattling, gut-busting laughter. “Well, isn’t that the saddest thing? You can’t learn to push a mop, so you fall into a life of crime.

      Chowtime’s in twenty, slick. Have any special requests for your Christmas Eve dinner, seeing as how it may be your last?”

      “Huh?”

      “Never mind. I’ll bring you something nice.”

      * * * *

      The “something nice” turned out to be a two-piece meal from KFC. The chicken was stringy, the biscuit dry. Lefty flushed the potatoes, which were as tasty as wallpaper paste, down the toilet.

      Later, a little after ten o’clock, based on the bonging of the courthouse tower clock, Strecker