She put the shot glass down. It was a healthy bout of whiskey some clown six stools over with a platinum crucifix and crooked cap had slid over with a wink and the dropped thumb-hammer of a finger gun. It was tacky, certainly, exponentially so, but playing the field in the advent of single-status wasn't supposed to be easy. One would say to be thankful for any attention at all, to be humble, cork a nod, raise the glass and drink with a secret smile. But she wasn't having it, would not satiate such the Tool of a man under the flag of cordiality.
She knifed her elbow, raised her palm and sat her chin atop it. And it was then, with her chin somberly nuzzled in that comfy palm, that she felt a prick on her bare shoulder, something that instantly reminded her of lit match against her flesh. Two eyes of brown dolled over, and there, sitting on her shoulder cross-legged in a tight dress of red, was a bite-sized demonic sprite with high, feisty eyebrows.
The girl rolled her eyes away from the little sprite, but the devil would not be denied, hopping right up onto her microscopic heels just to stamp a point into her patron's shoulder. "Hey!" cried the toy-like demon. "I don't take kindly to such ignorance!---You should know by now, little Sophie."
The girl sighed, dropped her chin and reluctantly returned her eyes. "How many times have I told you not to call me that? Go back to hell, damn you, the last time you appeared during happy hour I spent a hundred-damn-dollars on tequila, licked some girl's neck and gave her boyfriend a black eye. So please," objected Sophie, hoisting a pausing palm. "just go."
The little devil puckered her lips and dolled-up her chin. "And yet when have you had more fun? What have we done since then?"
"Stop saying 'we'."
"I'm being serious, Little Sophie, you need a little demon in your life---you're single now, yes? Why not give that handsome bro' down the bar a go? What is there to lose?"
Sophie evened her gaze over the bar where the silver-chained, tip-capped Tool was banging his fist against the bar as his skinny, idiot eyes droned into the television fixed above the bottlerows of the backbar. Sophie said in sigh, "My dignity? Perhaps my life?---Just look at him smashing his fists like an animal just over a football game, what the hell would he do if I scratched his car or got dirt on his rug? No thanks, demon. Buzz off now, please."
Sophie felt a slight breeze on her opposite shoulder, a comforting touch that reminded her of soft, luxurious feathers. She was about to turn to face the newest apparition when the little Devil objected with few stomps of her toy-like spiked heels. "No!" the hellion charged. "To hell with that goody-two-shoes! What has she ever done for you, mm? Mmm, Little Sophie?"
Sophie squinted and contemplated. "Well, I can't say her advice often leads to anything fun," Sophie said. "But she's always there with words of wisdom---I mean, she's a fucking Angel, you know?"
"I do know," said the Devil. "I've known that little brat for eight-hundred generations, and she's always been a bore. At least when she's' not drinking."
With wide eyes, Sophie's jaw fell apart. "Drinking! You lie, Devil."
And the Devil smiled mysteriously, stood with arms folded and slanted her head to the right as to conduct Sophie's eyes. Sophie obliged with neither volition nor expectation, moved without consciousness as she was on the Devil's wire. When her eyes turned over to her opposite shoulder she found there a hunched little angel in a robe of white and a mane of gold, bent over with her hands planted and her rear-end hoisted. In one doll-like hand she clutched an oversized bottle of brown glass with a white-band 'XXX' label stuck to it's wide hip. The tender angel's body writhed and quirked and, from above, Sophie's face kind of netted in on itself, shrunk and wrinkled as she struggled to understand the little angel's dilemma.
Next came a new sensation to the flesh of her shoulder where the angel was hunched, like with the burning match of the devil and the subsequent feathers of the Godly mistress she was currently observing: it came with heaves and hacks and a score of the most detestable little groans from Sophie's little angel. "Oh my god," Sophie hosted in shock as a pool of moisture collected beneath the heaving angel.
And the little goddess turned over her shoulder to look up at her Sophie with a massively disrupted and crooked smile and a band of rosy drunkenness staining her nose and cheeks.The angel lifted her other hand, while the bottle-hand propped her wracked little body up, and in this raised hand she held a dirty halo and, still grinning like the wilds, waved it around as her flag of content, signalling the passage of her turned stomach and the genesis of a (hopefully) more stable hour. She then wiped stains off the corner of her mouth with the back of her wrist, laughed once more and returned to her pitiful hunch.
Sophie mouthed a sharp bar of inaudible invective, looked to the devil on the left shoulder ( she was fetal, curled in a hysteria of laughter ) then rolled her eyes.
She picked up the shot glass.
