The ringing of the telephone coincided with the braying of the alarm clock. Lawrence sat up and swung his legs out of bed. He used the tips of his fingers to dig the sleep from his eyes. He reached out and pressed the SNOOZE button on the clock, and the annoying beep, beep, beep, was cut off in an instant. With the same hand, he grabbed the handset of the telephone and lifted it from its cradle to his ear.

"Hello," he said, his voice raucous from being a committed smoker for more than twenty years (thankfully, he'd quit, so far successfully, three months ago). When he did not get a reply from the caller, he cleared his throat and repeated, more distinctly this time, "Hello."

"Today," a pleasant female voice said, and then Lawrence heard a click through the earpiece, and he knew that the woman had hung up.

He replaced the handset on its cradle, cupped his hands as if to hold water, and put his face into them. He sat like this for approximately thirty seconds, took a deep breath, exhaled hugely, and rubbed his fingertips into his eyes. He stood up and walked down the hall to the bathroom, and nearly collapsed on the way there. His energy had suddenly been sucked away from him.

"God damn it," he whispered to himself, "why does it have to be today?" With an effort that he barely had in him, he managed to get himself into the bathroom, and had to balance himself against the wall. He stared at his reflection in the mirror, and was not surprised to see that his color had left him, and that his skin could be compared to the white belly of a fish.

Stupendous hesitation was running rampant through his body, and he almost decided not to go on with the day. What was the point? He could easily go downstairs, grab a knife from the wooden block, and take care of it himself; he would very much prefer it that way. But deep down, buried beneath that hesitation, he knew that his daily routine must go on. And of course, there was his daughter, Abigail (which in Hebrew meant a father's joy) to think about. She was the point. She was the reason for all of this, and that's all that mattered.

Thinking about his daughter, Lawrence stood tall, taking his weight on his own two feet again, and stepped into the shower. While soaping himself, he thought he saw the shape of a person on the other side of the clouded shower glass, but it turned out to be only his imagination. Back in his room, while he dressed in his suit, he heard screeching tires on pavement; he ran to his window, looking down at the street in front of his house. Nothing there, but he could have sworn that it had come from right outside.

"My God," he said to himself, "it's going to be like this all day. I don't know if I can hack it." But of course he could, he'd made a deal.

He left his house and walked the three blocks to the bus stop. Checking his watch, he knew that the bus would not arrive for at least another couple of minutes. Another five, if it's that damned longhaired hippy driving, he thought. While he stood there, glancing up the street, a man walked up and stopped beside him. Perspiration set in immediately, and Lawrence could feel a bead of sweat drop down into the crack of his ass.

"Nice day, isn't it?" The man asked, and Lawrence simply could not reply. He was so afraid of the man that his vocal chords had seized up on him. He turned and looked into the man's face, and he nodded. The muscles in his neck were tight, and he must have looked something funny, because the man gave him a strange look and stepped a few feet away.

All the better, Lawrence thought, I'd rather not be too close to anyone.

The bus arrived shortly after the man moved away, and Lawrence saw that it was not the longhaired hippy driving the bus. It was the bald-headed feminist. She gave him the normal sickened look that she always had as he boarded the bus, and he couldn't help thinking that maybe she was the one that would do it. He was so sure of it for a moment, that he dropped his bus-coins into the machine and strolled by her at a speed that was almost inhuman. After a few seconds, he allowed the muscles in his body to relax a little, sure now that the bus driver was not to be the one to do the deed. He walked all the way to the back, which was empty, so that he could keep an eye on his immediate surroundings.

"Why do you want to see it?" He asked himself silently. "Seeing it could only make it worse, right?" But he couldn't help it. He watched every movement in the bus like a hungry hawk watching the movement on the ground below him.

When the bus arrived at 73rd Street, he got out, using the back door to exit, and stepped onto the crowded sidewalk of the downtown area. Jesus, it could be any of these people, he thought, taking tiny glances at each person that passed by him.

He stood directly across the street from the building he worked in. Staring at it, he wondered if it would take place while he sat in his office, trying to concentrate on his job. Please, he thought, don't let it wait that long. Get it over with. Do it now. Please.

Trying his best to stick to his daily routine, he walked half a block down and entered the coffee shop. He had half an hour to kill before work started, and this is where he always spent it. He walked from the door to the back of the room where a middle-aged woman named Martha served coffee and donuts over the counter. On his way, he looked at everyone in the place-currently four others-sipping their coffee and reading different sections of today's newspaper.

They'll be reading about me in tomorrow's edition, he thought, and a dark chill went down his spine as he heard the bell on the door give a jingle. Someone had just entered the coffee shop. Lawrence spun around, and he came close to losing his balance when the man who'd just come in bumped into him on his way to the counter.

"Oh, sorry about that," the man said, reaching out and grabbing Lawrence's arm, attempting to steady him.

Lawrence screamed. "Don't touch me. Get away from me." He looked into the man's face and saw a shocked expression. He looked over at Martha, standing behind the counter, coffee pot in her hand, and she was staring at him.

"I'm sorry, sir," the man said, alarm evident in his voice, "I didn't mean any harm." He stepped back a few steps, and then spun toward the door of the shop and hurriedly walked out.

Lawrence looked at the others in the coffee shop and saw them all peering over their newspapers at him. My God, he thought, they think I've gone crazy, but they don't understand. He looked again at Martha, and saw that she'd gone over and stood by the wall phone, just in case she needed to call the police.

"I'm sorry," Lawrence said, and left the coffee shop.

He didn't know where to go, so he walked a little farther down the street. He was not surprised to realize that his entire body was shaking-he was so scared. He came to the front of a decrepit looking bookstore, and too afraid to think, he swung the front door open and entered it. It was very dark inside. There were sconces lined along the walls of the room, but very few of the lights were burning. In the center of the room, waist-high bookshelves lined up in rows, and Lawrence could see dust on their tops. Nobody sees much need in cleaning, apparently, he thought. The walls were painted a deep burgundy color, and the wallpaper was peeling away in large jagged pieces here and there, exposing dark rotten wood behind it.

"Can I help you?" An old voice called from somewhere, and Lawrence gave a start. He spun around, looking in all directions, trying to locate where it had come from. He didn't see anybody. Suddenly, he felt a hand drop lightly on his shoulder, and he screamed.

"Jesus Christ," he said, nearly breathless. He turned and stared into the face of an elderly man. The skin on the man's face was sagging and didn't look very healthy. Lawrence couldn't say for sure because of the dim lighting, but it seemed that the man's flesh had a greenish tint to it.

"I didn't mean to startle you," the elderly man said, his voice terrible sounding, and his breath smelled like rotting meat. "Welcome to my bookshop; feel free to look around. We have chairs toward the back, in case you want to rest your bones while you peruse the pages of a book." He turned and walked away from Lawrence.

You're the one who needs to rest his bones, Lawrence thought, permanently, by the looks of it. He wanted to get the hell out of here, but after a moment, he realized again why he'd come inside. He'd had to get off of the street, or he'd probably die of a heart attack, brought on by anxiety. He didn't think his daughter would get the money if that happened. No sir. In fact, they'd probably kill her out of anger. That seemed the type of people they were. What he needed to do was take a moment to collect himself. He couldn't hide from them; he'd made a deal, and he planned to stick to it, but he had to calm down.

He walked into the first row of bookcases, pulled an old book from one of the dusty shelves, and proceeded toward the back of the room to sit in one of the old man's chairs. He found one with its back against the side of the last bookcase in the last row. It was very dark in this part of the room, but he didn't need the light. He was just going to use the time to think.

This whole thing started, he remembered, just after the divorce. He and Melanie had split due to irreconcilable differences, and she had got custody of Abigail. There was never a battle over their daughter; both of them decided it would be best for the girl to live with her mother.

But Melanie had since taken a turn for the worse with an addiction to alcohol. Her new boyfriend had a criminal rap sheet the length of a football field, and Lawrence had a growing suspicion that the guy was growing a little too fond of Abigail, now nine years old.

Lawrence could have gone to the courts and gotten custody of his daughter. He nearly did, in fact, but he was approached by a gentleman just over a year ago that made him an offer he couldn't refuse. This gentleman-he called himself Cozbi-convinced Lawrence that if he sacrificed himself, Cozbi and his partners would make sure that Abigail would be financially secure for the rest of her life, and never face ill will from any source, and that would go for any children she might have, as well. It was strange, Lawrence remembered, because the man had a charisma about him that was quite intoxicating. Lawrence agreed; he signed a contract attesting that he would do everything he was told.

Now the odd thing was that until the phone call this morning, Lawrence had forgotten ever meeting Cozbi. But when he heard that pleasant female voice say "Today," it all came back to him. He had agreed to give his life so that his daughter would be given riches and safety. He remembered what the contract said: he would get a call the day that his murder was to happen. He was to go about the day as he would any other, and he would not know when or how it was to come.

"My God," Lawrence said as he sat there, remembering. "What have I done?"

"You've made a deal, that's what you've done." A cold, dead voice said from in front of him.

Lawrence looked up. The old man was standing before him-more like suddenly appeared in front of him-and his eyes were gone. The sockets were empty, except for the blood that was gushing from them.

How fucking obvious, Lawrence thought, this place, and this old man. How could I not have known?

The old man reached toward him with both hands, his fingers hooked into claws, the fingernails black. He grabbed Lawrence by the ears, and with a quick downward motion, ripped them clean away from his head. Lawrence felt instant, burning pain, and felt blood trickling down the backs of his jaw line and down the sides of his neck.

He screamed and the old man laughed, and Lawrence was up out of the chair. He used both hands to swing the book he'd been holding, and bashed the old man square in the face. A legion of screams, some from the old man, and others, it seemed from the very walls of the bookstore, surrounded Lawrence at once (thankfully he couldn't hear it, the only sound he experienced-if you could call it a sound-was a piercing whine in each cavity on the sides of his head). The old man's face burst open, and a brilliant white light emanated from behind it.

Lawrence shielded his eyes with his forearm and ran to the front of the store. He shoved his way through the door of the bookshop and ran into the middle of the street, narrowly avoiding traffic. When he got to the other side, he tripped on the curb and went sprawling face-first onto the sidewalk. He rolled over and reached immediately for his mouth. He'd shattered a few of his teeth on the concrete, and blood came away on his hand.

And then something caught his eye.

Twenty feet away, on the sidewalk coming toward him, was the man who had introduced himself as Cozbi. He was throwing people aside-literally throwing them, some of them so far and so fiercely that their bodies exploded in a red splash against the sides of the buildings at either side of the street-as he stalked forward. When he reached him, he thrust his fist deep down into Lawrence's throat, and began moving it about, trying to grab hold of the soul.

You ought not to have tried to run, Lawrence, Cozbi's voice sounded in his head, now your soul will have to face the gravest punishment.

You better keep your end of the bargain, shit-heel, Lawrence thought at Cozbi, and the creature seemed to hear him. You better take care of my daughter.

You're daughter's dead, Lawrence, Cozbi thought back, I paid her a visit this morning; her and that alcoholic ex-wife of yours, and oh, how they screamed. It was a pleasure killing them. And it's been a pleasure doing business with you!

An unimaginable pain seized Lawrence as the demon grabbed his soul and squeezed. He didn't have time to curse the creature's name with his thoughts, and it wouldn't have done any good, anyway. The creature was already cursed indeed.

Lawrence had named his daughter Abigail because he liked its Hebrew meaning: a father's joy. If only he'd known the meaning of Cozbi before he'd signed the damned contract. Cozbi meant a liar in Hebrew.