"FWLS34" - читать интересную книгу автора (A Future We'd Like to See)

really rag-tag. Her hair was a mess, too... she looked at me
That way. It was a common look in all the hell denizens, That
look of someone really near the edge. The eyes screamed out with
a mix of pleading, sadness, and terror. I had stepped over that
edge once, when I was poking around town hall centuries back.
Took quite a bit to climb back up. I've climbed a few real
cliffs in my time... some of the hell slopes are really hard
compared to the weak ones on Terra, but nothing really compares
to clawing you way back to sanity. Sorta like scaling up the
angle of a number 7 to the top.

"Can I buy you a drink?" I asked, pulling out my wallet and
sifting through the few red hellbills I had. Paper currency.
And they thought I was a barbarian.

"F...f.." she sputtered. Malnutrition, gotta be.

"Food it is," I said. "Hey, bartender!"

The brownish spiky demon sneered at me. They may act all
tough, but the hellspawn that run the realm aren't that bad once
you get to know them. They're just not that bright.

"She'll have two of whatever today's special is. I'll have
some brew," I ordered. "Make it snappy, will you?"

*

I spent a few months getting the girl back to decent
standards of living. Hey, I had nothing better to do except
stare at hell's holovids all day. Nothing but game shows and
shopping channels. Can't afford any of the chia pets and crap
items on those anyway.

She still didn't talk much, other than basic nouns like
'food' and 'drink' and 'hot'. I was guessing she was still
travelling along the acute angles of mental cliffs.

There was a knock at my door one day after I had gotten home
from one of my many minimum wage jobs. Hell Cop, with the girl
in tow.

"This belong to you?" the pink, stubby demon snarled,
holding up the girl with a mammoth fist.

"Sort of," I replied, carefully easing her into the house.
No consciousness. Not good. You could still slip into comas
here, and comas were sometimes worse than living... "Why?"

"Neighbors complained of screaming and yelling, and we