Requiem for the Devil

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “I would never lie to you—”

  “—lied about everything else—”

  “—about anything important—”

  “—like that crime bill, you never told me—”

  “—like the way I feel about you.”

  “—you were working on that, you kept it hidden—”

  “Gianna—”

  “—like all the other secrets, and now you’re—”

  “Gianna—”

  “—someone I don’t even know anymore, and you—”

  “Gianna, would you put your fucking seat belt on!” I screeched to a halt in the middle of Constitution Avenue. “There are some very bad drivers in this town, and they are all out there on the icy road tonight. I don’t want to lose you, so I’m not moving until you do as I ask.” I turned my hazard lights on.

  Without taking her eyes off me, Gianna reached across her shoulder and pulled her seat belt across her. As soon as it clicked, I put the car in gear and sped away.

  In the ensuing silence, I tried to concoct a plan. What would I do with Gianna when I had her alone in my apartment? Explain the whole story? Convince her that I’m really the Devil but that she should love me anyway?

  Or turn back the clock in her mind to erase the last hour? She’d wake up tomorrow as my happy fiancée, a bit hung over but cozy in her ignorance.

  I glanced at her shivering form beside me and felt tempted to peek inside her mind. I needed any advantage I could gain at this point.

  But she wasn’t an opponent; she was my lover. I wanted her whole and fierce, independent of my or anyone else’s control. Manipulating her mind or her memory would turn her into my pet. There had to be another way.

  We didn’t speak any more until we got to my apartment building. Once in the elevator, Gianna said, “You told me you would explain later. I’m waiting.”

  I wiped my hand over my forehead, which was slick with sweat. “Can’t we just drop it?”

  “No!”

  “Don’t make me lie to you, Gianna.”

  “I don’t want you to lie to me. I want the truth.”

  “I can’t tell you the truth.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would destroy us.”

  “I refuse to believe that.” Gianna laid her hand on my arm. “Louis, when I thought you were dead back there, I didn’t care whether he killed me, too. I love you, and there’s nothing you could tell me that would change that.”

  I turned to look in her eyes. They were clear and bright and intense.

  “Do you really mean that?” I said.

  “Yes. I swear it.”

  I wanted to believe her, so I did.

  “Gianna . . . I . . . I’m the Devil.”

  The elevator chimed and the door opened. Gianna just stared at me, blinking.

  “Would you like to come inside?” I said.

  “Lou, on any other day, this would be funny, but not after what just happened.”

  “I’m not joking.” I crossed the hallway and opened my door. “Are you coming or not?”

  She hesitated for a moment, then clenched her jaw and strode past me into my apartment. “I don’t believe this.”

  I followed her in. “Will you at least admit that I’m not human?”

  “Maybe you’re just insane,” she said. “A schizophrenic psychopath whose delusions are so intense that you’ve somehow acquired these unusual powers.”

  “Gianna, this isn’t a comic book, and I’m not a superhero.” I reached for her coat, but she pulled it close around her. “You can believe I’m some kind of fire-breathing mutant, but not the Devil?”

  “You can’t be the Devil. You’re not even . . . you know . . .”

  “What? I’m not even what?”

  “You’re not evil.”

  I flinched and tottered back as if she had struck me. My mouth hung open, a protest lodged between my tonsils.

  “Wh—what? What do you mean, I’m not evil? Of course I’m evil!”

  “You’re not. You took care of me when I was sick, you took me to the Grand Canyon, you came home with me for Christmas.” She pointed at me. “Aha! Christmas! You couldn’t have done that if you were the Devil. Your head would explode.”

  “Remember that sinus attack I had during Midnight Mass?”

  “You said you were allergic to incense.”

  “That was a lie.”

  “You love me. Is that a lie, too?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I do love you.”

  “How can you love me and still be the Devil?”

  “I ask myself that question every day. Look, this isn’t easy for me, either. I lived ten billion years thinking that love was a sick joke played by my sadistic father, then one day discovered I was the butt of that very same joke.”

  “Your father . . .”

  “My father. Your father. Our father, who art in Heaven, or so they claim.”

  “All those things you said about him, about your rebellion and him disowning you.” She took a step backward. “You really do think you’re the Devil, don’t you?”

  “I am the Devil!”

  “Stop saying that! You’re scaring me.”

  “I don’t want to scare you, Gianna.” I reached to touch her face. She recoiled, and I realized my hands were still bloody. “Sorry.” I gestured down the hall. “Let’s go in so I can clean up, okay?”

  Gianna slunk into the living room and looked around her as if she were there for the first time.

  “Let me get you a drink,” I said.

  “I’ll get it myself.”

  I went into the hallway bathroom and closed the door. When I looked in the mirror, I saw that blood had smeared onto my new shirt. I removed it and scrubbed my skin until it was clean.

  When I entered the living room, Gianna was sitting in the armchair on the edge of the seat. She turned her head to look at me, then jumped at the sight of my bare chest.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “Your body . . . it’s so perfect,” she whispered. “Is that why?”

  “Is what why?”

  “And the scratches I left on your back that night . . .” A terrible truth had finally poked its way through to her consciousness. She stood slowly. “Prove it.”

  “Prove what?”

  “Prove to me that you’re the Devil.”

  “Do you think I have a license hanging on my wall? A board-certified demon? There’s nothing here to prove who I am. There can’t be. If I had to leave everything behind and move away for any reason, no one would suspect. That’s the way we have to live.”

  “We?”

  Uh-oh.

  “We who?” she said.

  “We . . . uh . . . my fellow . . . my associates and I.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Your brother? Is Bob in on this hallucination, too?”

  “Please don’t make me go into it.” She didn’t move. I sank onto the couch and took a deep breath. “If you must know . . . Bob is actually Beelzebub, Malcolm is Mephistopheles, and Bill is Belial. We’re all what you might call . . . Hell’s angels.” It sounded so stupid.

  She stared at me for a second, then hurled her glass at the fireplace. It shattered and scattered its pieces across the floor.

  “No!” Her hands curled into fists. “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “No, I—”

  “Don’t lie to me, Louis!” She advanced on me with tears of fury coursing down her cheeks. “Tell me who you really are, and don’t tell me you’re Satan!”

  I rose to my full height and glared at her.

  “My name is Lucifer,” I said in a low, tense voice. “Never call me by that other name. It’s a name of disgrace . . . Satan.” The word hissed through my teeth.

  “You’re insane, you know that?” She shoved me in the chest. “You’re a fucking maniac!”

  I grabbed her shoulders. “Look at me, Gianna! Look into my eyes and tell
me I’m crazy, that I’m not who I say I am.”

  Gianna stared for a few moments. “I can’t. I can’t see into your eyes. There’s nothing there.” She pushed herself out of my grip and stood trembling with her back to me. “I always knew there was something about you that wasn’t quite right. A voice inside of me kept hinting at it, even that first night, in your bedroom. There was always something strange . . .” She lifted her head, then spun to face me. “That feather . . .”

  I sprung to my feet. “The feather! Yes!” I raced into my bedroom, retrieved the feather, and presented her with it. “From my wings. Scorched during the fall from Heaven.”

  She took it with quivering hands and held it at arm’s length. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “You don’t understand . . . what?”

  She stared at the feather in her hands. “Why would this make me believe you?”

  My heart slammed against my ribs. “Does it . . . make you believe me?”

  She looked up at me and nodded.

  “Now what?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  I started to move toward her.

  “Gianna . . .”

  She jumped back a few feet and dropped the feather.

  “Please don’t be afraid of me,” I said.

  “I’m not.” Her eyes darted toward the door.

  “You can go if you want. I won’t stop you.” I didn’t realize it was a lie until after it had left my mouth.

  “When were you planning to tell me?” she said.

  “Never.”

  “Never? You would have carried this lie the rest of our lives?”

  “The rest of your life, you mean. Gianna, there’s nothing about my life with you that’s a lie. I am who I am, in my work, and with the others. But with you, I’m just a man.”

  “A man who corrupts and defiles everything he touches.” She gasped and put her hands to her chest. “Including me . . .”

  “No . . . I never—”

  “What have you done to me?” She bolted for my hallway. Before she could reach the door, I threw myself in front of it.

  “Don’t go.”

  “You said I could leave if I—”

  “Just listen to me—”

  “Lou, please let me go.”

  “No.”

  She stepped towards me. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “I know you’re not. That’s why I—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t,” she said. “You only love yourself. That’s a fact.”

  “It was a fact, until I met you.”

  “I know how you work. You tell lies, and you seduce the weak for your own pleasure and to spite God.”

  “Yes, but you—”

  “I’m an exception, of course. That’s probably what you tell all your victims.”

  “Gianna, listen to me!”

  “No, I won’t listen to you. Your words mean nothing.”

  “Then watch.” I sank to my knees before her. My body howled at the unnatural posture, but I forced myself to remain there, my eyes fixed upon her feet. “Never, in my entire existence—and I am very, very old—have I knelt before anyone, even my Creator.”

  My pulse pounded in my ears as I waited for her to speak.

  “Lou, why are you doing this? What do you want with me?”

  “Nothing.” I shook my head. “Everything.”

  “No.” She gasped. “You spent Christmas with me. Even though . . . it made you sick, didn’t it?”

  “You might say I’m allergic to all things holy. Usually I spend Christmas in Vegas.”

  “But why did you do that to yourself? You even gave me this cross. I don’t understand. Why would you do all this for me?”

  “You know why, Gianna.” I took her hand, drew it to my lips, and lifted my eyes to hers.

  “Don’t do this,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t prostrate yourself. It’s not who you are.”

  “Then you’d better come down here,” I said, “because I’m not getting up.” I pulled gently on her hand. “You said you weren’t afraid.”

  “Not of you.”

  “Then come here.” I pulled her hand again until she knelt in front of me. Gianna touched my face, my hair, tentatively, thoroughly, as a blind person would. Her hands were cold, and they faltered when they reached my bare shoulders.

  Slowly I moved my face toward hers. She leaned away from me, her eyes full of fear and fascination. My left hand touched her cheek and seemed to soothe her. I slipped my other arm around her back and pulled her to kiss me.

  Gianna succumbed to my passion for a moment, then I felt her shudder. She cried out and shoved herself away from me.

  “No!” She backed up until she hit the wall. “I can’t. I can’t do that.”

  I crawled to her. “Gianna, I’m still the same man I was three hours ago. I haven’t changed. It’s only the way you look at me, your feelings about me, that have changed.”

  “But my feelings haven’t changed, and that’s the problem.” Fresh tears flowed down her cheeks. “I still love you. I know what you are, and I still love you. What does that make me?”

  I reached for her, but she lurched to her feet toward the door. I followed.

  “Gianna . . .” I placed my hand on her arm. “I’m afraid that if you walk out that door, you’ll never return.”

  “I will.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Lie?!” She yanked her arm out of my grip. “You want to talk about lies? You would have let me marry you. You would have let me have your children, not knowing what they were. You would have gladly let me live that lie, would have let me be as damned as you are. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Can you blame me for pretending to be something I’m not, when what I am is the worst thing in the world?”

  Her eyes filled with cold despair. “I’ve spent my life trying to serve God’s will. I know I haven’t been perfect, but I’ve tried to be good. Now that’s all for nothing, thanks to you.”

  Gianna opened the door and slammed it behind her. When I heard the elevator doors open and close again, I turned away.

  The snow outside was changing to rain. Its silent slaps against the wide window became soft patters. There was no other sound. The upper edges of the city gleamed against a sodden sky.

  I went to the sliding door of the balcony and pressed my right temple and cheek against the cold smooth window. My palm slid down the glass, leaving a wet trail in the condensation.

  “Gianna . . .”

  Her name had escaped my lips without my consent. The heat in my blood rose. I touched my finger to the glass and watched the water sizzle and steam.

  How dare she. I saved her life, and she had fled from me in horror, as if I were the monster.

  I am a monster. But before tonight I had never seen that monstrosity reflected in her eyes.

  My stomach flipped. The possibility that Gianna might never return, that I would never feel her eyes, her hands, upon me again, struck me so hard that I sank to the floor with an incoherent oath. How had I fallen so far that a mere human could skewer me like this?

  My fingers itched to regain control. I crawled to the piano. At my touch, it spewed forth a thunderous rant that shook the floor under my feet.

  After perhaps half an hour of maniacal musical raving, I stopped. The last notes bounced off the ceiling and walls and faded as I sat there panting. I curled my trembling hands into fists, raised them above my head, and slammed the keys with a final punch. A string snapped. It wobbled in the air, twanging a single strangled note.

  There was no way to release this torment. I needed to erase myself.

  I went to the bar and grabbed the first bottle I could reach. In less than a minute, it was empty. Another bottle of pale brown liquid found its way down my throat as the rain slammed harder against the window. The third bottle’s seal was unbroken. I took it with me
to the sofa and held it between my knees while my nearly numb fingers struggled with the cap.

  Finally I smashed the neck of the bottle against the coffee table. Glass and whiskey spilled onto the floor before I raised the broken neck to my mouth and drank. I could barely feel the glass slice my lips and tongue, but I tasted the blood mingling with the scotch as it flowed into me.

  When I stopped to breathe for a moment, I looked around my apartment and had an overwhelming urge to set everything on fire.

  Fortunately, this was when I passed out.

  28

  Cor Contritum Quasi Cinis

  My day was filled with distorted dreams. I was plagued with a recurring sensation of falling back into my body as I half woke.

  I was flat on my face when I heard the sounds. I opened my eyes to see nothing but black, the leather of my sofa. My head screamed when I shifted it to hear better. There was someone in the kitchen. A cupboard door closed with a click of its magnet.

  I lurched off the couch towards the noise. My legs shook, but I forced them to keep moving. At the kitchen threshold, I spoke her name in meekest hope.

  “Gianna . . .”

  “Sorry. It’s only me.”

  I gaped at Beelzebub for a bleary moment, felt brief shame at my pathetic desperation, then looked over my shoulder towards the front door.

  “She’s not here,” he said.

  I turned away from him with a grunt and staggered back to the sofa where my (somehow) still upright bottle of scotch waited for me. Beelzebub followed me and handed me a glass. I tried to hold the bottle in one shaky hand and the glass in the other, but they refused to make contact, so I set the glass on the table and aimed the jagged mouth of the bottle towards it. As a result of intense concentration, the glass became full, at least until I reached for it and knocked it off the table.

  “Damn.”

  “Here, let me.” Beelzebub poured the drink and handed it to me. He regarded the broken neck of the bottle before setting it back on the table.

  “Thanks. You’re a real pal.” I crossed my legs and sipped the drink with exaggerated propriety. “So, my good man, what brings you out on this ghastly morning?”

  “Dude, it’s six-thirty at night.”

  “Is it still January first?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then Happy New Year. Have a drink with me, won’t you? Celebrate new beginnings.”