“ Hava nagila
Hava nagila
Hava nagila v’nismeha.”
It was a catchy interpretation of the wedding reception classic, and some of the souls couldn’t help but nod to the rhythm. Their feet began to tap as she repeated the first verse, and then the music took over and they were all clapping.
“ Hava neranenah
Hava neranenah
Hava neranenah v’nismeha!”
By now the boat was rocking as it cut through the slimy black water and the far shore hove into view. Souls were shouting out the lyrics with Charo now, banging their heads rock concert style, totally surrendering themselves to her groove.
“Come on, all peoples! Let’s songing together.” Charo shouted. And they all joined in.
“ Uru, uru ahim!
Uru ahim b’lev sameah
Uru ahim b’lev sameah
Uru ahim b’lev sameah
Uru ahim b’lev sameah”
By the time the boat docked on the far side of the Acheron it was officially Hell’s own party boat. Souls disembarked, smiling and chatting with each other and a few paused to hug Charo as they went.
“Bye bye now,” she called after them. “You stay fabulous!”
But Sister Mary was not fabulous. Sister Mary was melancholy and lost in thought. She stopped to take a flier from a forlorn woman standing at the end of the dock. Sister Mary’s fingers were just closing over the flier, and the woman’s face was just breaking into a beaming smile, when Satan swatted her hand away.
“Don’t touch that,” he said.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“That’s her torment. To hand out fliers no one wants for all eternity. She’s been standing there at the end of that dock for forty-five years and she hasn’t been able to get rid of a single one. Come on, we’ve got to stop by the Mall of the Unbaptized. I need to talk to the philosophers, figure out a game plan.”
Ahead of them the black mud stretched to the horizon, an infinite, barren plain. There was nothing on it except for the Mall of the Unbaptized. It would have been at home in Waterbury or Burbank, the suburbs of Cleveland or outer-ring DC. But here, on this blank, bleak, black-soiled plain it stood out like a freak.
Just then, a tinny voice rang out over the mall intercom system.
“Paging Satan, Lord of Darkness. Paging Satan, Lord of Darkness. Please make your way to the business offices located on the Fifth Circle of Hell.”
Satan looked embarrassed.
“I hate it when they page me,” he said.
“You said the suicides are on the Seventh Circle?” Mary asked.
“Paging Satan, Lord of Darkness,” the voice started again, echoing through the cavern. “Satan? Lord of Darkness?”
“Okay, okay,” Satan said. “I heard you.”
“The suicides?” Mary repeated.
“On the Seventh Circle,” Satan said. “But we’re taking the monorail to Five. It’s faster than walking. Slightly.”
“I want to go to the Seventh Circle,” Mary said.
“We have to get to the business offices.”
“Can I go alone?”
“No, you can’t go alone. You’re a living human being in Hell. It is the least safe place for you in all of Creation. One misstep and you will wind up experiencing pain and horror the likes of which you’ve never dreamed. You are surrounded by creatures whose existences are devoted to causing you misery and suffering. Unsane eyes are watching your every move, waiting for an opportunity to torture you.”
“So I can’t go?”
“No!”
“But I’ve been really impressed with all of this,” she said, mustering a smile. “I really have. I’m rethinking everything I was taught about you. It would mean a lot for me to see the Seventh Circle. It would really shake my faith.”
“Paging Satan, Prince of Darkness,” the amplified voice started over again.
“That’s not something I really care about right now,” Satan said.
“But I think there’s someone on Seven who could help you,” Mary said.
“They’re suicides,” Satan said. “They couldn’t even help themselves.”
Mary was not a good liar, but she gave it her all.
“One of my Bishops told me that he knew of a plan by Heaven to destroy Hell,” she said.
Satan stopped and stared at her.
“He...he said that he had prayed and it had been revealed to him by the Archangel Gabriel who told him that he had a part to play in the destruction of Hell.”
“What part?” Satan asked.
“He committed suicide,” Mary lied. “There were some altar boys and he, um, was not very priestly with them. But he said that was part of the plan, to get him into Hell. He was going to be a double agent. No, wait. A mole. A sleeper agent?”
Satan regarded her for a minute. He was just desperate enough to believe her bizarre story. After all, there had been stranger coincidences. He thought back to George W. Bush’s memoirs, Decision Points, which he had recently finished. Right now, Satan needed to be The Decider too, and so he made up his mind.
“Okay, we’ll stop at Seven really fast and pull this Bishop out and then we’ll take him with us to Five. I want to see the look on Nero’s face when I show him that maybe I’m still a step ahead of the game.
He rushed towards the dirty, decrepit monorail that was just pulling into the station on the far side of the Mall, and Mary unclenched her sweaty hands and ran after him.
As expected, it was the worst monorail ever. The track vibrated like it was going to shake itself apart and the monorail flung itself from side to side like a lunatic in a padded cell. The seats were slashed and dirty, the lights flickered, the heat was turned up so high you could barely breathe and a suspicious yellow liquid kept rushing from one end of the car to the other whenever the monorail slowed down or sped up.
The intercom was all crackle and almost impossible to understand.
“Second Circle: the Wanton and Lustful. All Members of Parliament, Senators and Representatives please disembark here. Third Circle: the Gluttonous. All those wishing to be mauled by Cerberus, the three-headed dog, this is your final destination.”
“We don’t actually have a three-headed dog anymore,” Satan said, falling into the role of tour guide. “This is an old recording.”
“Mm,” Mary said, her mind on other things.
“It ate too much so we had to replace it,” Satan said.
Mary didn’t say anything.
“Don’t ask me what we replaced it with because it’s a little bit embarrassing.”
Mary was silent.
“Alright, you’re twisting my arm,” Satan said. “A three-headed rabbit. It’s much smaller, so it eats way less.”
“Mm-hm,” Mary said.
“I’m not thrilled about it either,” Satan said. “But you work with what you have.”
Mary didn’t respond.
The car was packed with silent, miserable souls. Satan and Sister Mary sat squeezed in next to each other in silence. After a while, the recording slurred to life again.
“Fourth Circle: the Avaricious and the Prodigal. Connecting stop for Fortune and her Ever-Turning Wheel. Fifth Circle: the Irascible and the Sullen. Connecting trains for the River Styx Reclamation Project and Blue Line Trains with connections to the Iron City of Dis.”
“Two more stops,” Satan said. “Are you sure this Bishop will be there?”
“He’ll be there,” Mary said.
“What’s his name?”
“It’s Bishop...Tutu.”
“That doesn’t sound like a real name to me,” Satan said.
“Sixth Circle: Heretics.”
Most of the passengers cleared out at this stop. When the doors closed Satan and Sister Mary were almost the only ones left on the train.
“It’s a popular stop,” Satan said. “The way the rules are written technically most people are heretics, so we’re always having overcrowdi
ng problems down here on Six. Great food, though. There’re some wonderful Indian restaurants and a lot of good dim sum. So I’m told.”
The monorail jerked out of the station and then suddenly pointed its nose straight down.
“Now entering Lower Hell, all sins of violence and maliciousness. Next stop: Seventh Circle, the Violent.”
The monorail plunged directly down, making a beeline for the center of the Earth. Mary was reminded uncomfortably of the elevator plunge and she gripped her seat. At least it would all be over soon and she would be safe in Heaven.
The grove of the suicides was dark and smelt like wet cigarettes. A light rain was falling through the dirty air. Occasionally, in the distance, they heard the howling of wild dogs as they caught one of the profligate whom they chased through the thorny undergrowth. Apart from that, the grove was completely silent because, after all, what do suicides have to say anymore? Apart from the creaking of their ropes, there was no sound but the clattering of dead branches. Every tree was the soul of a suicide and their useless, empty husks hung limply from their own branches. Mary led the way, crashing ahead through the briars, her eyes fixed on the corpses dangling from each tree.
“We could just ask someone,” Satan said, struggling to keep up.
“I have to find her,” Mary called back.
“Who’s her? I thought we were looking for Bishop Tutu,” Satan said, but Mary had already disappeared through a wall of thorns. Satan sighed and followed. If it wasn’t so important that he keep her alive he would have let her go, but right now she and this Bishop Tutu were his only two advantages over Heaven.
Bishop Tutu...
Wait a minute.
A dim memory of walking through a hospital lobby rose through his mind, like a bubble rising through a bucket of syrup. A long-out-of-date magazine cover...TIME Magazine...a smiling black man and the headline, “Archbishop Tutu Leads South Africa Into the Light.”
He felt stupid. He felt like an idiot. He had been played.
Satan blundered after her through the thorns.
“Mary!” he yelled. “Mary.”
He hated yelling, but she was taking advantage. He had to catch up with her and let her know that he was nobody’s fool.
He suddenly fell over her, kneeling beneath a suicide tree that grew dangerously close to the edge of a cliff that plunged down further than the eye could see. The chasm dropped straight down past the Seventh Circle and almost all the way to the Eighth. A filthy wind was blowing up from the lower Bolgias and it was making the tree branches clack together. Mary was praying to one of the trees, and that threw Satan for a minute.
“Do Catholics pray to trees?” he said to himself. “I thought that was druids?”
He walked closer and Mary stood quickly, backing away from him in alarm.
“Bishop Tutu is still alive, I think,” Satan said. “Anyways, I know he’s not here.”
Mary shook her head.
“You lied,” he said.
“Get away from me,” she said. And then she placed a hand on the sodden foot of a suicide’s corpse and looked up at its face, talking under her breath, passionately and fervently.
Satan got closer and looked at the body. Water-logged, fly-infested, devoid of life but still...the family resemblance was clear.
“Your sister?” he asked.
“Don’t talk to me,” Mary said.
“She’s just about your age, so I thought she was your sister,” Satan said. “We have to go.”
Mary kept talking to the body.
“If you’re trying to communicate, her soul is in the tree. The body’s just a decoration.”
Not even a thank you.
“Come on,” Satan said. “We need to get going.”
Mary jerked her shoulder away from his touch and she pressed her folded hands to her forehead and prayed for the fate of her immortal soul.
“Mom,” she prayed. “I want you to hear me. Saint Jude told me that I needed to forgive the one who had done me the most harm, and so I came here, I came to Hell, because I want you to know that I forgive you. I was so scared when you left me. I thought your suicide was like a sickness and that I could catch it if I thought about you, or if I went to your funeral, or if I touched your things and so I scrubbed you out of my mind. But I forgive you. I forgive you with all my soul and with all my heart.”
She had a beatific expression on her face as she walked to the edge of the cliff. None of it made any sense to Satan and because he didn’t understand what was going on he didn’t move quickly enough. Not when she reached the edge of the cliff. Not when she turned her face up towards Heaven. Not even when she said, “I’m ready to be received into your arms, O Lord.” And not when she stepped off the cliff and into thin air. Her entire attitude was directed upwards, as if she expected to ascend, but she didn’t. Gravity grabbed her and yanked her down, hard and fast, and she disappeared into the chasm like she was being sucked down a straw.
“No!” Satan shouted. “No! No! No.”
He wanted to run after her but there was no path down the cliff, just the howling wind surging up. So he went in the other direction to get help, but after a step he realized that there was no time, and so he went back to the edge of the cliff to maybe jump after her, but he could land anywhere, so he took two steps to the side but there was nothing over there and so he did a crazy little futility dance on the edge of the chasm.
“Geryon!” he shouted. “Geryon!!!”
And the abomination swooped up out of the abyss and hovered before him, lazily flapping its enormous leathery wings. Its body was that of an engorged lion, crusty with rot and scabs. A serpent’s tail, with a single fang dripping poison from the tip, unfurled beneath Geryon’s fat ass. But he had the face of a really nice guy.
“Whassup?” he asked.
“Get me down there,” Satan practically screamed and clambered onto his back. One of his feet slipped and Geryon dipped to catch him.
“Whoa,” he said. “Whatever happened to ‘please’?”
“Just get me down there!” Satan shouted.
Geryon spiraled down slowly.
“Were you with that nun? I was washing myself on a ledge and it was the craziest thing. I said to myself, ‘Geryon, did a nun just go past you?’ and I said back to myself, ‘Yep, Geryon, it sure did. I wonder what that tastes like.’ And then you’re all up here dancing around like a nut so I assume you pushed her, right? That’s cold, brother, even for you.”
Satan didn’t answer. The dank wind slammed into his face.
“Just fly,” he said.
It took almost an hour, but finally Geryon’s claws gripped the gravel next to where Sister Mary lay cracked and broken on the flinty surface of the upper Bolgia. No one had killed her yet, and she was making little sounds and trying to move. Satan knelt by her head.
“What did you do?” he asked. “What did you do?”
“Saint Jude...told me...atonement...ascend to Heaven...if I...” and then she gagged as she swallowed part of her hard palate.
“And you believed him?” Satan cried in frustration.
Satan had seen a lot of stupid things done in the name of faith – the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Communal Riots, suicide bombings – but this topped them all. This was a sucker getting rolled for her soul. It was a waste. It was cruelty.
“She’s not dead, dude,” Geryon observed. “That is gross.”
Mary was mewling, wracked with more pain than the human body was meant to bear. She tried feebly to crawl away from her pain, to escape the nest of splintered bones and crushed flesh her body had become. Her broken fingers pulled uselessly at the gravel.
“Put her out of her misery, man,” Geryon whined.
“Go away,” Satan snapped, and Geryon, hurt, shambled off and flopped down on some rocks.
What should he do? What should he do? What should he do? She wasn’t dead, she wouldn’t die until he or one of Death’s Minions turned her off. And as long as she d
idn’t die then the will of Heaven was stymied. A long, keening sound rose from the shattered hole in Mary’s face that had been her mouth. Her throat had been crushed and now it was swelling. She couldn’t force air through it anymore, but still she did not die. Death had to claim her.
Satan looked down at her. This stumpy little nun who had done nothing but curse him and lie to him. She was gagging on her own soft tissues as they filled up with subdermal blood and swelled to twice their normal size. It would be a mercy to kill her, but she had to live. If she died, Hell was doomed. Satan felt the forces of Creation all around him, like great gears and spring-loaded iron jaws, tensed in anticipation of what he would do next. Mary’s eyes rolled up and seemed to fix on him. They reminded him of the eyes of a dog that had been hit by a car: dumb, not comprehending where all this pain was coming from, not understanding why it hurt so bad.
Finally, he stopped resisting and he stepped into the trap Heaven had prepared for him and he reached inside Sister Mary and he extinguished her life, and the life of her baby.
The gears began to move. The jaws clamped shut.
Nero found him six hours later, sitting next to the nun’s corpse. Geryon was sprawled over to the side, licking his balls.
“Hey, dude,” Geryon drawled. “I been waiting for someone to show. He’s totally non-conversational. Were they doing it? Like, him with a nun? That’d be messed up, you know what I’m saying?
And he made a crude gesture with his talons, forming a circle with his foreclaw and thumb, and then plunging another claw in and out of it. Nero ignored the idiotic demon and trotted to Satan’s side.
“Sir, is that the nun? That’s a very cruel way to kill her.”
Satan looked up.
“It’s all over,” he said. “Heaven wanted her dead and I was keeping her alive to give me an edge, and then she jumped. I brought her here to keep her safe and even in my own realm they convinced her to jump. I couldn’t watch her suffer so I killed her. And now it’s all over.”
“Bear up, sir,” Nero said. “You are the Prince of Darkness. We’ll find a way to turn this to our advantage.”
Satan Loves You Page 12