Underestimated Again

99.

98

99

100

Gilbert looked went over the number in his head, it had been a very busy day indeed. The air smelled like sulfur and gun powder. Gilbert had actually had to use some of the weirder demon exorcism rituals he knew after he ran out of bullets. He was pretty much out of just about everything. All he had left was a pen and some invoices, so he sat down and started to add up all the stuff he'd done in the church. Gilbert started chuckling to himself amidst the demon carnage.

"What are you doing?" The last demon would have been scary to Gilbert if he hadn't literally killed/banished over a hundred of them already. It was a body made of different piece of flesh and its face was a mishappen mix of several peoples, grotesque like a picasso.

"Math right now, almost finished, we take cash check or charge, though only visa or mastercard, amex and discover are not welcome."

"HOW DARE YOU?"

"Look you guys had a hell of a demon problem, but with some fire recovery and some beam support you could probably get this church up and running again, I mean the location is shit, but eh its Idaho everything sucks here." Gilbert stood up and handed the flesh demon his bill.

"Are you joking? Ten thousand dollars?"

"Gave you a discount even, could have charged more." The demon looked genuinely offended at the amount.

"I'm not going to pay this, like frankly you're kind of a dick no one invited you in here, nor did we agree to this extermination, you just showed up and started killing people, and yes its killing were demons but we're sentient you monster."

"If you want we can take this to litigation."

"Right yeah sure the american court system is going to give a demon a break, bullshit, look just get out of here you jerk." Gilbert didn't hesitate to get out of the church's basement. He sprinted out of the building just as the demon must have read the back of the bill and realized Gilbert had put an exorcism ritual there.

"YOU'LL BURN DUNKLEY!" The creature shouted as the church building itself collapsed on itself. Gilbert walked calmly to his van and left, making note to give a real bill to Timms later.

****

"So my parents have effectively disowned me." Clarissa was crestfallen at home, Gilbert had barely gotten into the door when she loudly started to inform him of her disastrous Thanksgiving. Gilbert was going to say something about how he had just gotten home, and he wanted to shower, but he could tell the optimal thing would be to listen and empathize even when he just direly wanted not to.

"Oh it went badly?"

"Badly? Oh god it was worse than bad first my dad..."