Lucifer stares at me from our Colonial Williamsburg colonial rowhouse, the Victorian bird plumage on the old tea-stained wallpaper with bits of newspaper padding sticking through the peeled back portions framing his golden hair as if he is a drunk Rococo painting.
"Shannon," he asks, blushing.
"Yes?" I ask, looking up from the newspaper.
"Today, you are twenty."
The look on my face was one of a harridan of hell. "I – what? No way! It can't be! I've been so busy, I forgot my birthday."
"Shannon, I am a simple man."
His hair was a violet and platinum aureole, and his eyes shone like crystal. He was dressed in an Armani suit with red piping and black lam'e. A bit of marabou down coated him like a cape – whether it was a designer coat, or molting wings, I could never be quite sure.
"And a man, when he comes of age, is in need of a wife. In human years… I'm 32. That makes me a spinster, if I were anything but King of Hell."
