“My Lord,” Nero cried rushing to the empty space where Satan had been just moments before.
Mary managed to drag herself outside, her lungs desperate for clean air. She fell to her knees on the rocky slope, sending a miniature avalanche down the hill. She drew in great whooping breaths, and thought to herself:
“What was that thing? Why did it take Satan? Was that Death? Has Satan become irrelevant? Whose foot is this?”
She looked up and learned the answer to at least one of her questions: the foot belonged to an angel named Mahiel. He stood over her in golden armor that glittered like lightning in the dim half-light of Hell. In one of his hands was a flaming sword, in the other was the orange extension cord. Standing behind him were roughly two dozen other angels. They looked very happy to have found Mary.
“Anyone else in there with you?” Mahiel asked.
Mary shook her head.
“I’m all alone,” she said.
The sound of Nero wailing drifted out of the cave.
“My Lord! My Lord! Where have you gone?”
“Who’s that?” Mahiel asked.
“Just a soul,” Mary said. “Getting tortured. It’s totally normal.”
“My Lord Satan,” they clearly heard Nero wail. “I will kill Michael, I will destroy Gabriel. My Lord, My Satan, why have you abandoned me?”
“There are some weird echoes in these rocks,” Mary said. “You hear all kinds of things.”
But it was too late. The cohort of angels were marching into the cave.
Satan lay on the ground underneath the burning desert sun. On a distant hill, rocks had been painted white and lined up to spell out the enormous letters “BM.” The air was still, it was quiet, it was lifeless. An electric motor whined and moved away, then it whined and came closer. Death was riding his Rascal Mobility Scooter. In his hand he had a big stick. He poked Satan with it.
“I know you can hear me,” he said, in his normal voice.
Satan didn’t move.
“Battle Mountain, Nevada,” Death proclaimed, spreading his arms wide. “Isn’t it horrible?”
They were in a parking lot with a failed mining town spread out around them, devoid of character, charm or residents. Death pushed the end of his stick underneath Satan and tried to roll him over. Satan moaned.
“Up you go,” Death said.
Up Satan did not go.
Death began to whack on him with the stick.
“Come on,” he said. “I’m going to keep whacking you until you get up.”
He kept whacking Satan. The limp Evil One rolled over on his side. Death whacked his ribs. Satan hunched over on himself and Death whacked his head. Feebly, Satan lifted his arms to protect his head. Death whacked his elbows. Finally, Satan sat up.
“Enough,” he said.
Death jabbed him with his stick.
“Up you go.”
This time, Satan got up.
“Follow me,” Death said. “I need to tell you some things.”
He began to whir away on his Rascal, then he noticed that Satan was not following him. He made a big loop back and drove in a tight little circle around Satan, poking him with his stick.
“I can do this all day,” he said. “ Can you?”
Reluctantly, Satan began to trudge after him.
They stepped out onto the sidewalk and took a right.
“I love it here,” Death said. “I haven’t been back in years, but it’s even worse than I remembered. The few dozen people who live here could move out anytime. They could go to Las Vegas and look at naked ladies and drink yard-long margaritas and become blackjack dealers, but for some reason they just hang on here. No good reason. Just habit, I guess.”
They passed a row of dark storefronts, some covered with plywood, all giving off an air of failure and poorly thought out business plans. Whatever monster of awfulness had this tiny town in its teeth, it wasn’t going to spit it out anytime soon. None of these stores were coming back. No young hipsters were going to move in and open coffee shops and second hand bookstores. No jewelry makers were going to be tricked into opening studios here, lured by the cheap rents. There was no one left to pay rent to, the town had slipped below even that level. It had been abandoned to its fate, and fate was not being kind.
“After you fired me, I realized that I was Death,” Death said, rolling along by Satan’s elbow. “I could go anywhere, do anything, no angel could stop me. That whole Speedway incident, I think I wanted to be stopped. I barely even wrestled with that angel, I just saw him there, went through the motions and went crawling back to Hell. I realize now that I had just stopped caring. Kind of like you.”
The two of them made their way along the cracked sidewalk that would never be repaired, lined by shops that would never be re-opened on one side and a road that would never be re-paved on the other. They came to a small building on the corner with a faded neon sign outside that read, “Dona’ Diner.” The broken “S” was lying on the asphalt beneath it. Death pushed open the door with the front wheel of his scooter and rolled inside.
“Come on,” he said. “It’s not like you’ve got anyplace better to go.”
Satan followed. The interior was dim and covered with a fine layer of grit. Death rolled over to a booth by the window and hoisted himself onto the bench.
“Have a seat,” he said, indicating the opposite side of the booth.
Satan sat down across from Death. Then he turned his head. An enormously obese woman was sitting in the corner of the room, hidden in the shadows. She was staring down at the tabletop, her long hair hiding her face. She was a pale blue color, the color of the recently asphyxiated.
“Don’t mind her,” Death said.“That’s the Blue Woman, she’s a ghost. She just sits there. I tried to talk to her once but she wasn’t having any of it. So...”
He trailed off. Satan looked down at the tabletop. Death seemed to be figuring out how to get started. The silence lengthened. Finally, Death spoke again.
“You know what I like to watch?” he said. “The Home Shopping Network. Also, game shows. And the talk shows are good, too. You really freed me up for all that. I guess I was feeling a lot of pressure in my job. I spent the last five hundred years just being hated so much that I started to believe what they said about me. Back in the old days people liked me, or at least they didn’t make a big deal out of me, but now they spend their entire lives scared of me, figuring out how to avoid me, ignoring me as best they can. It got to me after a while. I got burnt out. So now I watch the TV.”
A beige SUV raced down the street outside. With no stoplights and no police giving speeding tickets, it appeared and was gone in less than a second.
“I like the TV because it’s full of dumb people, wasting their time, selling each other dumb things, buying things they don’t need, having fights that don’t matter, winning prizes that are terrible. It reminded me that taking them away was a good thing to do. Death was probably the best thing to happen to a lot of them. They needed me, because without me they would have gone on forever, just frittering away their lives, a long, endless highway of mediocrity. It’s only the fact that they die that puts some fire in their pants. Death is what gives them meaning. Because they don’t have much meaning otherwise. So I love watching them on their TV, it’s a reminder to me of how useless they were and that no matter how much they hated me, I was what gave their lives some form and structure.”
Death gave a big, skeleton grin.
“You should try it sometime.”
Satan had looked up from the table and was staring out the window now. A stray dog trotted down the abandoned street. It might have been a coyote.
“I heard about what happened in Hell,” Death said. “You can’t let this go on.”
Satan kept staring out the window.
“Hey!” Death said, slapping the tabletop with one bony hand. Satan turned and looked at him.
“You can’t let this go on. They can’t take Hell. You have a responsi
bility.”
“No, I don’t,” Satan said. His voice was thick and scratchy.
“How do you figure?” Death said.
“They wanted it, so they took it from me.”
“Who? The angels? You’re going to let a bunch of angels push you around?”
“It’s God’s will,” Satan said.
“You really think that?” Death asked. “Have you talked to him? Did you see him? Did the Creator come down and say that to you?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know? All you’ve got are a bunch of uppity angels taking over Hell because they’re greedy. You’re part of the balance, you’re an essential part of the Creation, and just because you’re burnt out you’re going to let them take it away from you? Pathetic.”
“What do you want me to do?” Satan asked. “I don’t have any options.”
“I want you to get it together,” Death said.“When you fired me it was the wake-up call that I needed and now I’m giving you a wake-up call. You quit? You can’t do that. You’re Satan. No one pushes you around if you don’t let them.”
“I can’t do anything,” Satan said. “They’ve got me from all sides. The legal settlement, the Death Match, everything.”
“They are angels,” Death said. “You are Satan. Don’t ever forget that.”
“So what?”
“I’m going to give you something,” Death said. “This is the one chance you get. And either you’ll make something of it, or you won’t. I hope you do.”
He reached into his tattered robes and pulled out two pink invoice slips and slid them across the dusty tabletop.
“Go on,” he said. “Read them.”
Satan unfolded the flimsy invoices and scanned the pages, quickly. Then he stopped and re-read them slowly.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“With the work stoppage they never got claimed. Totally overlooked. My minions are still keeping an eye on things and one of them brought these to me. They’re only clerical errors but they’re clerical errors you can take advantage of.”
“I don’t know,” Satan said.“Maybe it’s time for me to be done. Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m losing Hell.”
“Really?” Death asked. “You’re just going to roll over? What would you be without your job?”
Satan thought about it for a minute, then he stood up and walked to the back of the restaurant. He approached the Blue Woman’s table and stopped beside it.
“Hey, ghost?” he said. “What do you think I should do? Try to get my old job back? Or just let it go?”
The Blue Woman kept staring at her dusty table top and then, to Death’s great surprise, she spoke.
“I wish...I had...a job...” she said, softly. “Eternity...is so long...”
Satan turned that over in his mind for a minute, and then he nodded.
“Thank you,” he said.
He came back to the table.
“I need you to do two things for me,” Satan said. “I need you to give me a lift and I need you do me a favor.”
“What kind of favor?” Death asked.
And Satan told him.
“I don’t do that anymore,” Death said.
“I know. But just this once. For old time’s sake. I’ve even got some tractor trailer containers where you can store them.”
“That’s asking a lot,” Death said.
“Then I guess I’m not asking,” Satan said. “I’m ordering you to do it.”
“Where do you get off ordering me to do anything?” Death asked.
“Because I’m Satan, and you are eternally obligated to me.”
Death smiled and nodded.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
“Thank you,” Satan said. “I got so used to things being the way they were that I needed a reminder.”
“Of what?”
“That eternity is a very long time and it helps if you have a job.”
“That’s the Satan I remember,” Death said.
“Oh,” Satan smiled. “I’m just getting started.”
Gabriel sat behind Satan’s old desk and smiled at Nero, Minos and Mary Renfro. They were huddled on the other side and they weren’t smiling, mostly because they were in shackles and surrounded by the biggest, angriest, most heavily armed angels in the Heavenly Host.
“It is so good to see the three of you,” Gabriel said. “I’ve met the little nun before, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually had a chance to say ‘hello’ to the other two.”
“We can’t tell you where Satan is,” Nero said.
“That’s all right,” Gabriel replied. “I’m not interested. In fact, I’m going to let the three of you go free.”
Minos and Nero exchanged sidelong glances.
“Why?” Nero asked, suspiciously.
“Because there’s nothing you can do to us anymore,” Gabriel said. “We have occupied Hell. There is a judgment against Satan for four hundred million dollars. It’s over, except for the Ultimate Death Match and I need you three free for that.”
“Why?” Nero asked again, starting to feel like a parrot.
“Because Michael wants there to be a show,” Gabriel said. “He wants to take on your best wrestler. He wants to pound the crud out of them in the ring. On live TV. That way there will be no doubt that our takeover of Hell is totally and completely legitimate.”
“Don’t be so sure of yourself,” Mary said.
“The little nun speaks,” Gabriel said.“Might I add a belated ‘thank you?’ We wouldn’t all be standing here if you hadn’t killed yourself so predictably. Offing Satan’s baby was exactly what we needed to get God on our side for this invasion. You people. You will do anything to get into Heaven. It’s sad, really. I mean, look at you. You could never afford it.”
Mary’s face turned red and she stared at the soiled carpet in shame. She felt like a fool.
“So go forth,” Gabriel said. “Train a wrestler. Give us some kind of a fight. It’ll be cute. And don’t worry about holding back. There’s not one of you who could possibly hurt us now. Not one.”
The Minotaur was playing Solitaire, but he wasn’t having much fun. All the souls had been reassigned to more traditional punishments when the angels came, and the demons had all been rounded up and sent to the Retraining and Attitude Adjustment Facility. A squad of angels had come to force the Minotaur to attend Training Workshops but they had mysteriously disappeared. The Heavenly Host had sent another squad and they had surrounded the Minotaur, who was doing a Word Scramble.
“Where are the angels we sent here to bring you into the light.” one of the angels, Mehumet, demanded.
The Minotaur had leaned to one side and farted out a fistful of feathers. The angels backed off and, after that, the Host had decided to simply leave the Minotaur alone.
But still, the Minotaur was not having very much fun playing Solitaire.
A shadow crept over the rock where his cards were spread.
“Minotaur,” a familiar voice said. “You are needed.”
“You just need to accept the fact that I am never coming back,” Death said.
He sat in his Rascal in the middle of the frozen field where lines of radioactive trucks and helicopters marched off into the distance. They were all ugly and utilitarian and all undeniably Soviet, broken down and abandoned. Around him stood hundreds of his ex-minions, men and women in sensible shoes and business casual attire. They all wore white gloves. Their meeting was taking place in the middle of the Rassoha Dump in the Zone of Alienation that surrounded Chernobyl. They wouldn’t be disturbed here. After they had stopped work and gone on strike, most of Death’s minions had retreated here where there was peace and quiet and zero chance of encountering any living beings. They passed their time playing chess, which Death thought was very pretentious but he wasn’t going to call them on it because right now he needed their help.
“We made a vow,” the head minion said. “And we’re as serious about our vows as y
ou are about yours.”
“I am asking you to break your vow,” Death said.
“We couldn’t possibly do that,” the minion said. “Not even for you.”
“Look,” Death said. “I understand that you’re serious about your vows. So let me make you a deal. You won’t do the killing. You’ll just do the gathering and the training. I’ll be the one who actually extinguishes their lives.”
The minions pondered this for a long time. Finally, one spoke.
“And this would only be in Brooklyn?” she asked.
“Brooklyn, Portland, Austin and San Francisco,” Death said. “And maybe Berlin. But that’s all.”
“We’ll have to think it over,” the elected spokesminion said. But Death could see in his eyes that this was just an attempt to make it look good. His minions had already made up their minds. Death and Company would ride together one last time.
“It’s absolutely impossible,” Johnn Sharp, the executive director of the Satan Prince of Darkness Defense Fund said to his shadowy visitor, who was seated in the interview chair of Sharp’s well-appointed office done up in deceptively expensive Danish Moderne.
“Even for me?” the shadowy visitor asked.
“Even if you are who you claim to be, I cannot disperse these monies,” Johnn Sharp said. “We are barely staying afloat as it is.”
“I heard you’re taking in close to twenty million dollars per day,” the visitor said. “It’s been almost a week. You’ve got money.”
“I only wish that were the case,” Johnn Sharp said. “First, you have to factor in our overhead. This office and this staff do not come free. We knew from the beginning that talent attracts talent and so we have spent a great deal of money hiring the best and the brightest for positions here in marketing, development, outreach and education.”
“Those are a lot of departments,” the shadowy visitor said.
“It takes money to make money,” Johnn Sharp replied. “This office attracts a huge number of donors but we are operating on a shoestring. I mean, really we are functioning on nothing more than the barest necessities. We need Nespresso pods for our coffee machines, and fresh bagels brought in from Montreal for our team. We need to pay our in-office massage and bodywork therapists. We need to pay the classical quartet who perform at our networking gatherings. The hand towel budget alone is massive, but we believe that our team members perform best when they’re given the proper support, and I think you’d agree that we really are asking a lot of them.”
Satan Loves You Page 22