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Hoppy Spake lurked in the bushes, watching as his friend Jake Morrison was handcuffed and placed, none too gently, in the back of the black and white. The officers eventually switched off the cruiser's searchlight, got in, slammed the doors and drove off.

"Well, that was interesting; can't say you didn't show me an interesting time, that's for sure."

Hoppy slapped the Imp hard on his head. "You utter bastard, Beethee! You said whatever we did, whatever we showed you, there'd be no trouble."

"Yeah … well, I'm an Imp, trouble is what I live for, and I should bite you for that. Hitting kids is bad … it's bulithing, told me so yourself only yesterday."

Hoppy sighed, "It's 'bullying', you stupid …." He wasn't sure what to call the Imp so he added "fool" under his breath, though that didn't seem quite right either. He was pondering the point when Beethee transmogrified. Now the Imp was wearing the appearance of the boy of Hoppy's dreams, and Hoppy could feel himself getting inadvertently aroused. "Look, you've got to stop doing that … it's so not fair."

Beethee grinned at him and ran his tongue lightly over his upper lip. "Like that, don't you, Hoppy, and don't tell me you don't, you're keeming out with repressed thingy."

Hoppy rolled his eyes.

"Shit, Beethee, for an Imp with such a dastardly brain you're remarkably daft. First off, it's 'screaming' not 'keeming', and as for the rest, you know I do, 'cause you can read my fucking mind. So don't. Let's just get Jake out and go home, ok?"

"How we gonna do that then, Hops?"

Hoppy clipped the Imp on the head again, and the boy of his dreams started crying pathetically.

"Oh, stop it, Beethee, for goodness sake …."

"Noooo!" Beethee butted in, putting his hand over Hoppy's mouth and stopping him in mid-flow. They stared at each other for what seemed to Hoppy an eternity, and as Beethee took his hand away, he traced Hoppy's lips with his forefinger.

"N … no?" Hoppy was shocked, though he did his best to hide it. The Imp had never said 'no' to anything before. "'No' what?"

Beethee looked guilty and then grinned. "Oh, I just felt like saying 'no', is all."

Hoppy knew he was lying, but he was damned if he could think of why.

"I like your lips, by the way," Beethee added, sauntering off around the bushes they had been hiding behind.

Hoppy ran to catch up with him. "Where are we going, then?"

"Oh, I just thought we'd go and get your boyfriend out of jayelee."

"It's jail," Hoppy said absentmindedly, looking at Beethee's bottom that seemed just wonderful in tight black 501s, "and he's not my boyfriend, Beethee, I've told you that, Go …."

Beethee spun on his heel and startled Hoppy into silence, his crystal blue eyes flaring red for a split second.

"Please, Hoppy, not the 'G' word, otherwise all this fun we're having is gonna come to a stop, a screeching and very probably painful stop."

"Fun? You have a strange idea of fun, Beethee." But Hoppy couldn't be cross with the Imp, not looking the way he did, anyway. "So what about the 'B' word then?"

"Ya mean Buddha?"

"There, you said it yourself!" Hoppy said.

"Nope, not a problem, say it as much as you want, he was a man not a … umm … you know … deity … and actually quite a decent one, too."

"You knew the Buddha?" Hoppy said conversationally, knowing he would be putting this in his blog sooner or later and preferring to be truthful and called a liar than creating trumped up twaddle about a visitation from an Imp that no one in their right minds would ever believe.

"Honestly, no. Not personally … I knew Muhammad though."

"But I thought …. " Hoppy trailed off, not quite sure what he thought. "So how old are you then?" he asked hopefully; but Beethee just ignored the question.

"Muhammad was also a man and not a deity … a prophet, you see. There's only one of them, actually."

"One what?" Hoppy was definitely confused. Somehow, they'd travelled from the graveyard where Jake had been arrested and carted off to the center of town, and they were now only a hundred yards from the front door of the Police station.

"One bloddy deity! … sorry: bloody."

"See, I knew you'd get it sooner or later," Hoppy said, grinning, and wondered why on earth he was congratulating the Imp. Beethee laughed, and it was the laugh Hoppy had imagined in his dreams for the last year and more. A laugh that sent a shiver down his spine, and a warm tingle straight to his groin.

"So you did, Hoppy, so you did, and I'll bet you'd like to get it sooner or later, too." They stopped in the shadows between two street lights, and Hoppy, red with embarrassment, found himself face to face with Beethee.

He couldn't see him as an Imp any more; he could only see him as the boy of his dreams, could smell his minty breath, see the roguish twinkle in his eyes and the freckles around his nose.

As their lips touched for the first time, Hoppy wrapped his arms around the boy and knew he'd found true love. He was in heaven, Blissful, utter heaven, and at the split second he had that thought, he heard a bell and an otherworldly bubble of pure light surrounded them. Beethee started to shimmer and become translucent.

"Beethee …!"

Beginning to panic, Hoppy tried pushing Beethee away, but the bubble held them close together. As hard as Hoppy pushed, the harder he was thrown back against the transmogrified Imp, whose expression, it seemed to Hoppy, was one of astonishment mingled with what he could only describe as joy.

The outside world vanished, and, open-mouthed, Hoppy saw Beethee's body begin to glow and come apart as flecks of scintillating colour began to spiral off him.

In his wildest dreams Hoppy had never seen or imagined colours like these. Colours that contained emotion and feeling, that tore through him bringing simultaneous heartache, joy and tears; colours that showed him pain and suffering, questioned his deepest fears, his hopes and dreams.

Darkness and silence.

The bell sounded again, and the fabric of the bubble that held them imploded as Beethee became truly transparent, and the blood red aspect of his being that had for millennia ruled his soul vanished, along with Beethee the Imp.

Their souls merged into a pure white spirit that soared to the heavens before returning in a blink of an eye to hover, spinning slowly over the wet pavement.

The bell sounded for a third time as their unified souls separated into two distinct beings once more, and Beethee screamed and shuddered with joy, as for the first time ever in recorded history, an Imp became truly human.

In the shadows between two street lights, Beethee took Hoppy in his arms. They kissed, and their kiss grew deeper and more passionate than passion itself.

"Beethee?"

"Yes … and no. Yes and no, Hoppy, my love."

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