Greg Minster

Give the devil his due…
…He deserves it!

The devil named Big Red loved his newly possessed souls. The happy and broad smiles across their misty faces thrilled him. He’d tired of the gloomy and frowning souls who’d dropped into his lair over previous years. He much preferred the most recent arrivals, who’d come to him smiling and happy!

Big Red served as the devil beneath Ghost Gulch, boomtown of the Wyoming Territory, in the year 1880. Conveniently posted in a cavernous, fire-lit lair directly below the town’s gallows, souls dropped down to the devil within seconds of each capital punishment as served by the hangman's rope. Each soul, appearing simply as see through faces, represented another captured possession of Big Red.

But the devil quickly became enthralled with the happier souls, and desperately wanted the ‘miserable’ to be happy also!

Enter the hangman, George Mathews--hired about a year prior, to be the town's executioner. To calm his nerves, George joked with the condemned just as they dropped through the scaffold trap door to their doom. Thusly the executed died happy, and retained their joviality, even as their souls fell into the devil’s lair.

Knowing the ‘gallows humor hangman’ held the key to his wishes of a happier workplace, Big Red took possession of George, and brought him down into the lair with a deal: George could not leave the devil’s possession until all the souls become happy.

With little choice other than to accept the forced proposition, George attempts several chaotic and wild schemes in order to break free, but he fails. Finally, George, ‘the devil’s comic’, hoodwinks his captor in a cleverly conceived plot. In a smartly backhanded way, much to Big Red’s chagrin and embarrassment, the hangman makes all the souls happy and regains his freedom.

The Devil’s Comic spins boomtown culture, frontier justice, and demonic possession, into a devilishly fun ‘old west’ story.