“Your whisperings will not sway me.”
“I’m not trying to sway you.”
“Of course you’re not.”
“I’m not,” Satan said.
“It’s okay,” Sister Mary said. “It’s in your nature to lie.”
“I’m not lying.”
Sister Mary gave a knowing chuckle.
“Cut that out,” Satan said. “It’s creepy.”
“Old Serpent, I am deaf to your murmurings. Your evil words fall on stony ground. I am strong in Christ and nothing you do can claim me for your own.”
“You know what?” Satan said. “Let’s just not talk to each other for the rest of the ride.
And they didn’t.
In Heaven’s Lobby, Satan speed walked to one of Saint Peter’s desks. It didn’t matter which one. Saint Peter was at all the desks at once in this room. It was a kind of limited omnipresence. The air smelt of freshly washed babies.
“Finally!” Saint Peter said. “What did you do? Stop off at Dillard’s to buy uglier clothes.”
He buzzed open the security gate.
“Quick, quick, quick. As fast as your fat little legs can carry you.”
Satan pulled Sister Mary through. She jerked her arm out of his grasp but followed him to an electric cart parked near the exit.
“Primum Mobile Wing,” Saint Peter said, and Satan sat down. Mary took a seat far enough away that her habit wouldn’t touch his cursed flesh and the cart zipped off through the forgettable halls, mile after mile of gray carpet unrolling beneath its bouncy rubber wheels. Sister Mary couldn’t help but notice that the soul who drove the cart wore a shapeless brown tunic.
“Of course,” she thought to herself. “A pinch of truth makes the Prince of Hell’s lies easier to swallow.”
But as the electric cart surged down the unending corridors of Heaven she noticed that souls wearing brown tunics were everywhere: emptying trashcans, polishing doorknobs, dusting picture frames, changing light bulbs. As the electric cart hummed past she studied their postures and facial expressions and tried to determine if they were joyful here in the house of their Lord, if their steps were lighter and their burdens less burdensome here in the presence of their Heavenly Father. They were doing janitorial work, but perhaps in Heaven their labor was a form of joyful worship?
She tried to see joy in the way they pushed their dust mops, in the way they emptied garbage cans, and if she squinted she could imagine that they were on the verge of breaking into hymns of praise. But if she didn’t squint they looked like any other minimum wage workers, cleaning up other people’s messes and dusting someone else’s house. John 14:2 sounded in her mind:
“In my Father’s house there are many rooms,” she thought to herself.
And then, unbidden, a cynical addition, “And all of them need to be vacuumed.”
The corridor smelt like toasted coconut, but Sister Mary’s heart was uneasy. Was Heaven just an endless minimum wage job? Were there people here telling you what to do and how to act? Could you still be fired? Disposed of? Rejected the same way the Church had rejected her? Did they have Red Roof Inns in Heaven?
She tried to silence her doubts, but they gnawed at her brain like worms. She had always assumed that once she died she would ascend into Heaven and sit on the right hand of God the Father Almighty and the uncertainties of the world would be wiped away. But what if the doubts and uncertainties of the world were wiped away only to be replaced by another set of doubts and uncertainties? What if doubts and uncertainties were eternal? When would she finally be allowed certainty? When would the struggle cease? Because if it didn’t stop when she reached Heaven, then when?
She looked at Satan, hunched over in his seat, staring at his shoes, trying to look innocent and uninterested in the turmoil in her soul and she remembered that this was the most evil man in all of Creation. He would welcome her uncertainty. He would revel in her despair. The worms that chewed her mind were his creatures. So Sister Mary steeled her heart against him and ignored the brown tuniced workers they passed, and she put her steadfast faith again in the wisdom of her God, just in time for the electric cart to come to a stop outside a plain wooden door.
“Come on,” Satan said, and led her inside.
The reception area was bland. Anonymous waiting room furniture was lined up against the walls. Satan walked over to a pair of blonde wooden doors.
“Wait out here,” he said.
“Are you afraid I’ll see your true nature if I follow you?” Sister Mary asked, being nasty about it on principle.
“If it was up to me, I’d have you in,” Satan said. “But since we’re in Heaven, they’re going to insist on speaking True Enochian, the Celestial language. You really don’t want to hear that.”
“Because it will reveal you as a filthy liar and as the corruptor of all mankind?” Sister Mary snarled. She felt slightly conspicuous, talking so violently to Satan who had a perpetual hangdog expression on his face, but she knew that even his expression was probably some kind of trick to force her into lowering her guard and she was determined to reject him in thought, word and deed.
“No,” Satan said. “Because it makes most humans suffer brain aneurisms. But you can come in if you want.”
Mary almost said “yes” just to be contrary about it, but then she realized that if he was asking her to come in she should do the opposite.
“I will stay here,” she said. To what? To wait on him like a handmaiden? “Until my Lord no longer wants me to stay here.”
Satan shook his head and went through the double doors, while Sister Mary sat on the surprisingly comfortable furniture and pondered the turmoil in her heart.
The conference room was designed by someone who fancied himself a master strategist. Pinpoint spotlights picked up the meeting participants arranged around the enormous oval table, leaving the rest of the room deep in dramatic darkness. Satan didn’t even have to look: it was all the usual suspects, all seated in what they felt were the most intimidating power positions. To the right of the Meeting Leader Chair sat Gabriel, and to the left sat Raphael. The other seats around the table were taken by the remaining archangels: Metatron, Jegudiel and Barachiel. Phanuel, Prince of the Ophan, was a spinning wheel of fire and so he didn’t really fit in chairs. He had to hover by the wall. The Meeting Leader Chair was empty. Satan almost took it, just to be annoying, but he didn’t want to push his luck. He took the Opponent’s Chair.
Being near all of them again made Satan’s skin itch. For an eternity they had been closer than lovers, bound to one another like the fingers of a hand and then suddenly there had been rift and dissolution, The Fall and the carving up of Creation into kingdoms. Division of labor is not a concept that sits easily with eternal beings and Satan could tell that they, like him, had been warped by their temporal responsibilities. No one would make eye contact with him. No one talked to him. They all just sat and glared elsewhere. After a while the door behind Satan opened and the archangels all sat up a little straighter. Satan resisted the urge to turn around – he had a pretty good idea of who it was.
“Lucifer,” the Archangel Michael said, taking the Meeting Leader Chair directly across from Satan. “How does it feel to walk the corridors of Heaven once more?”
Satan was careful to keep his face expressionless. To hear his former name, especially from the mouth of this jumped-up halo-polisher, to be reminded of his Fall, to have the pain of being exiled from the Creator’s presence sliced into him anew, it was like being flayed alive. But he managed to keep his face blank.
“Looks about like I remember it,” he said.
“Of course,” Michael purred. “It’s perfect. And perfection need never change.”
In the corner, Phanuel spun faster, releasing a series of musical chimes that sounded like crystal glasses being played in an empty opera house. The archangels spoke True Enochian, a language that moved simultaneously backwards and forwards in time so that the end of each sentence was also its
beginning, thereby rendering every expression of angelic thought perfect and complete in and of itself. Because Phanuel was prince of the physical laws that bound Creation and gave it shape he alone was subject to the passage of time and could not converse in True Enochian. Instead, he spoke in a language of musical mathematics that the other archangels, except Satan, had long ago learned to understand.
“I agree with Phanuel,” Barachiel said.“Roll this stupid tape so that we can be finished here. While you two swap chit chat my responsibilities and obligations go neglected.”
“Gabriel,” Michael murmured. “Show Lucifer why we have asked him to join us.”
“You’re here because you’re embarrassing yourself,” Gabriel said. “And, by extension, you’re embarrassing us. Have you seen this?”
A projector screen came down at one end of the room. Paused footage from a twenty-four hour news channel came on, but it was washed out by the light of Phanuel’s flames.
“I can’t see a thing with all that glare,” Barachiel snapped.
“Do something about your flames, brother,” said Gabriel.
Phanuel folded himself into a shape that couldn’t be described and slipped through the wall, leaving the meeting by way of a graceful fourth-dimensional back flip.
“Interesting,” Metatron said. “He manipulates time and space in such a way that his form extends infinitely in all directions and he merely recalls this projection of his consciousness back to his Ur-self at will. Do you not find this elegance fascinating, my brothers?”
“Yeah, it’s amazing,” Gabriel said and pressed ‘Play.’
The CNN crawl frozen across the bottom of the frame leapt to life and the camera shook. It was outside an impressive set of courthouse steps. A trim, fifty-ish man with a gray moustache and a feral grin strode down them. Tucked under his arm was a tear-streaked Frita Babbit.
Reporters rushed the duo and clamored questions. The man held up his hand.
“I am here today because it ain’t cheap or easy to go up against the Devil in a court of law,” he said. “This little lady has done the right thing by taking on old Scratch and I can’t let her do it all by her lonesome. Wouldn’t be manly. So Ted Hunter has decided to foot the bill.”
“Why are you involved?” a reporter shouted.
“Ted Hunter is in this for the little man,” Ted Hunter said. “Ted Hunter has built his corporate family on two principles: responsibility and responsibility. We got dead people unable to die because Satan is too busy sexting our children on Facebook. Ted Hunter is against evil, and for children. Ted Hunter is for responsibility and against internet predators.”
“My journey is at an end,” Frita Babbit said, bravely lifting her tear-stained face to the cameras. “I will be silent no more.”
“Mr. Hunter, what will your next move be?”
“This trial will be the very definition of swift justice,” he said and then the picture changed and the familiar Nancy Grace layout hit the screen. On the left, the big, blonde bubblehead of Nancy Grace. On the right, a postage-stamp-sized insert of a female guest commentator trying to find a comfortable expression to show the camera when she wasn’t talking. She finally settled for The Furrowed Eyebrows of Concern. Vaguely related video footage danced around the screen, wrestling for viewer attention with streaming lines of random text.
Nancy Grace looked directly into the camera.
“The very definition of swift justice. Media Expert, Tina Vetch. Tina, what does it all mean?”
“Ted Hunter,” the guest commentator’s head said. “One of the wealthiest men in America, and his involvement with the Devil Made Me Do It lawsuit is going to kick things up a notch. This is no longer a nuisance suit – ”
“It was never a nuisance suit,” Nancy Grace snapped. “You think evil is a nuisance?”
“Well, no, but – ” Tina tried.
“This is the Devil. The Holocaust. Abortion. Dead puppies. Ring a bell, Tina? That doesn’t sound like a nuisance to me.”
“I’m sorry,” Tina said. There was an awkward silence while Nancy Grace glowered at her. Then Tina continued. “This suit is now backed by Ted Hunter and his money is going to make sure that this is the lawsuit that takes down evil. Just today, a legal dream team, hired by Ted Hunter, got the judge to issue a subpoena for the Devil. So it looks like he’s going to have his day in court.”
Unrelated footage from Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist played behind Nancy Grace.
“I know there are other witnesses who are going to come forward. Could this become a class action case?”
“It could, Nancy. It could.”
“Satan has done nothing to show that he is remorseful, by deed or act. Nothing to show that he is committed to not raping children. Frita Babbit, victim, she will, I’m sure, be with us at a later date. Now, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, toughest sheriff in America, from Arizona, being with us live. Sheriff Joe, once we catch Satan, what are we going to do with him?”
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s wrinkly blockhead appeared above Tina’s. The loose skin on his neck oozed over his collar.
“Nancy, we need to send a message to demons and supernatural entities all over the world: we’re mad as Hell and we’re not going to take it anymore. If they give the Devil to me, if they put Satan in my custody, I have the first all-female chain gang in the country and my inmates live in tents because I don’t believe in coddling criminals and giving them more rights than decent, law-abiding American citizens. If Satan came here I’d show him Hell.”
“I’d like to see him in your world famous pink underwear,” Nancy Grace chuckled.
“It’s been my experience that my pink underwear program takes the fight right out of perps. Try doing evil in pink underpants,” Sheriff Joe said. “Can’t be done.”
The video feed was now showing footage of children killed in drunk driving accidents. Photos of smiling, now-dead toddlers were flashing on and off the screen, each shot stamped with their age, name and date of death superimposed.
“This is one of the most bizarre lawsuits in modern history,” Nancy Grace said. “And one of the most important. Peter Skeffield, attorney, he’s here to share with us his thoughts. Peter, will Satan get a defense lawyer?”
Peter’s head appeared below Tina and Joe’s. The screen was getting crowded.
“Nancy, this suit is filed in a United States court, so yes, he is entitled to a defense attorney,” Peter said.
“Of course he is,” Nancy says. “So is Osama bin Laden. Does that make it right? A lot of Americans feel we don’t even need a trial. Just turn him over to Sheriff Joe and let’s get rid of Satan once and for all.”
“Well, Nancy, we do live in America and we have the legal system for a reason, even if we don’t always agree with it. Satan is going to get his day in court.”
“Disgusting,” Nancy said. “Trial of the century. Satan: subpoenaed. Long story short: he’s going down.”
The video cut out.
Everyone turned to Satan, who wiped the sweat from his upper lip.
“Well?” Michael said, finally.
“What can they do?” Satan said. “I’m Satan. I live in Hell. How’re they going to serve me papers?”
“I told you he was going to act like this,” Gabriel said.
“Are you talking back? Are you talking back to us.” Barachiel shouted. “You don’t get to talk back! You’ve been cast out! We tell you what to do!”
“This is no longer an issue of what you want to do or don’t want to do,” Michael said. “This is an issue of what you will do. Things are changing, O Lucifer. And today you have one choice to make. Change, or die.”
In the reception area, Sister Mary was lost. Not physically, because she was quite clearly sitting on a functional seating arrangement in a reception area in Heaven. But everything that she thought was true had come unmoored and now her soul wandered, lost in the metaphorical wilderness.
She tried praying, but there were so many conflicting thoughts ra
cing through her head that she got confused and while her prayers started strong (“Dear God, My Lord and Savior, hear my prayer...”) they got lost somewhere along the way and became meandering and meaningless long before they reached “Amen.” Quiet reflection wasn’t working, either. Every nugget of information, every packet of knowledge, every bright and shining fact she thought was true could also be a lie, a Satanic deception, diabolical misinformation. Even worse, what if they were all true? Or what if Satan wanted her to think they were misinformation so that she would doubt and doubt was like poison for the soul?
She emptied her mind and tried peaceful meditation. She was just starting to realize it wasn’t going to work either when someone sat down next to her.
“Sister,” the someone said. “I sense that your heart is troubled.”
Sister Mary opened her eyes. The man who sat next to her had flames dancing around his head and a black leather book resting on his knees. He wore a threadbare brown robe and leaning against the wall next to him was a heavy wooden club, knotted and gnarled. His face was lined, his head was bald and a long white beard reached to the middle of his stomach. There was such grave concern, such kindness, in his expression that Mary felt her throat contract painfully.
“Saint Jude,” she said. “Why?”
“I go where I am needed, child,” he said. “As the patron saint of lost causes and desperate situations, I could find no cause more lost than yours. No situation more desperate.”
“I’m so confused,” Sister Mary said. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“Tell me what confuses you,” Saint Jude said. “I can’t promise that I will be able to help you, but I can promise that I won’t make it worse.”
And so Sister Mary opened her heart to Saint Jude, the patron saint of hospitals and terminally ill children, of the Chicago Police Department and of Rio’s Regatas dos Flamengos football club. And as she unburdened her heart, a lightness entered her soul.
Satan Loves You Page 9