by Tim Hawken
A rage was building inside me, I needed to make things right before I lost control. I had to get out of Hell; I had to get back at Gideon for what he had done.
“What do I do?” I asked hurriedly. “How do I see Charlotte?”
“You must bring Gideon to justice,” Satan answered slowly. “You cannot just forgive what he did, what they did.” He sighed. “Once those responsible for her death are down here where they belong, then your need for revenge will be satisfied. Only then will you no longer feel the need to sin. Then, and only then, will you be able to see Charlotte. Now get off me.”
He waved his hand and I sailed back across the room like a paper plane, hammering into the far wall and sliding to the floor. The impact jolted me back to my senses and I composed myself. Shaking my head clear, I got back to my feet. My wife might have been taken from me, but there was hope that I could see her again. She was not lost to me forever and that thought gave me some comfort. I knew what had to be done: avenge Lotte. I would do it, with The Devil on my side.
“That’s right, my boy!” Satan exclaimed, “I am on your side, and we’re a team.” He walked over to me and slid his arm around my shoulders. “Together, we will avenge Charlotte.”
There was still a burning question in my mind. I pushed myself away from Satan. I needed to know the truth.
“Gideon said to me just before he murdered me that he had been sent by God to kill us. Could that be true? Could he have been sent by God?”
Satan looked down to his feet in silence.
“Could he?” I roared. Satan looked up at me again with hate in his eyes.
“God is capable of murder just like everyone else, Michael,” he said. “I don’t know for sure, but yes, God could have sent Gideon to kill you. God will often reach down with his powerful hand and alter the lives of his creations. He does sometimes make judgment on souls before they die. If he thought you had tainted a soul he considered pure, I wouldn’t put it past him to destroy you both.”
I almost lashed out at Satan again for what he was telling me, but he continued before I could react.
“One thing I definitely know is that this Gideon believes that he is God’s messenger. He has been bragging to his followers that he is God’s confidant, that he does God’s work on earth. He also believes that he is the keeper of a terrible secret that could destroy God forever.”
Something clicked in my mind; a big missing piece of the jigsaw had fallen out of Satan’s mouth. So, this was why Satan was helping me. He was really just using me to help himself. He didn’t care about me, about Charlotte. Satan wanted Gideon. He wanted this secret. I was a pawn in a larger game.
“This is true, Michael,” Satan conceded quickly. “You are a convenient ally for me, but does it make any difference? You’re always part of a bigger picture. It’s how you paint your individual story that makes all the difference. If Gideon is telling the truth, and God has instructed him to kill you because you have tainted Charlotte’s soul, then you have even more reason to help me destroy both of them. The truth is, I don’t know why Gideon killed you, but that doesn’t change what he did. Charlotte’s soul is in limbo because of him, and you have a chance to make it right. I can help you do this.”
Satan was right, of course. I didn’t care if he was using me. I should count myself lucky he wanted Gideon in Hell as much as I did. I could bring him to justice because I had the power and knowledge of Satan on my side.
“That’s right,” The Devil said, interrupting my thoughts again. “You have my knowledge and my influence. I can help you to learn powers down here that will transcend all realms. I can guide you to demons who will lead you on the path to avenging Charlotte, demons who are almost as powerful as I!”
“The powers of other demons?” I asked. “What about your powers?”
“You forget,” Satan said, tapping his temple. “My powers don’t translate onto earth. Once I leave Hell my talents are minimal. I can only change form and read minds. I cannot govern the same forces of nature that I can down here.”
“But how will other demons’ powers work on earth if yours cannot?” I asked.
“Because all of the demons in Hell were once from earth, they are of the earth if you like, so their powers originate from there. They have simply had the time to learn how to use their skills properly down here. Some have had thousands of years and the greatest teachers in existence helping them to amass their dark tricks. Many of their talents are unique and terrifying, even I cannot mimic them.”
“You say some are almost as powerful as you. Why should they help me? What do they have to gain from helping someone so insignificant?”
The devil thought for a moment, looking in the distance for an answer that didn’t seem to be there. For a full minute he stood, thinking. He finally turned to me with a plastic smile. “Remember who you are talking to here, Michael. I am the ruler of this place; you have my name in your corner; it will hold a lot of weight to many.”
“But not all?” I pushed.
“No, not all,” he said, the smile fading to a snarl. “You can’t expect me to hand everything to you on a platter. You’ll have to sacrifice or pay something to get the power you’ll need. I will help all I can, Michael, but in the end it will have to be you who helps yourself. I’m too busy running this paradise to give all my energy to you. That is, after all, my true purpose for being here. I am here to rehabilitate the damned, and help find them a way to Heaven. I’m in the soul laundering business. The Armageddon thing is something I believe will make things better for us in the future. I cannot neglect the present, lest my plans fail and Hell becomes too over populated to manage efficiently.”
I began to feel afraid, scared that the Devil would be of no help at all and that I’d never be able to see Charlotte again.
“Oh come now, Michael,” Satan said, sounding like a wounded star. “I have one thing in particular that will be very helpful indeed.”
“Really?” I said, doubtful. “And what’s that?”
“This!” he said flourishing his fingers over his palm as an apple appeared in his hand. “Knowledge, dear boy! The fruit of which will help you on your quest for revenge!”
two
“DON’T YOU REMEMBER YOUR BIBLE CLASS from the orphanage, Michael?” The Devil taunted, tossing the apple toward me.
I caught it and looked in my hands. It was gone. I looked up and Satan grinned as he twisted three apples in one hand, like crystal balls. I stood transfixed at how the apples spun, as if floating around his palm. I did remember bible class.
“You fed Eve the fruit of knowledge in The Garden of Eden,” I said, as if in a trance.
“No, I did not,” he snapped, jerking me out of my daze from watching the spinning fruit in his hand. “Eve ate it herself. I just tempted her to do it. You see, when God created ‘man’ he gave you the potential of intellect. He didn’t necessarily want you to become intelligent, because intelligence leads to questions, which is what got me exiled from Heaven to Hell -- questioning his authority.” Satan’s eyes flashed in anger, but he continued. “Now, God put all the right chemicals there inside the brain, they just needed one final catalyst. This last ingredient happened to be inside the fruit of knowledge.
“He…” Satan said, pointing his clawed finger toward the sky, “conveniently put this fruit onto a tree in the middle of The Garden and then told Adam and Eve not to eat it. A sick mind game if you ask me. Why the hell would you put it there in the first place if you didn’t want them to eat it? Why wouldn’t you just not put it there?” He didn’t give me time to respond. “God was testing his creations to see if his other grand gift to you worked. The cracker of a present I like to call Free Will: The luxury to choose what you do and don’t do.
“See, God believed you would make the right choice, according to him anyway, and not eat the fruit. What an idiot! Temptation is a powerful thing, especially to the ignorant. Ironic, that if they’d been smarter they probably wouldn’t have lis
tened to me and eaten the fruit, which, by the way, wasn’t a freaking apple!”
The apples in Satan’s hand instantly turned to silver orbs of light, pulsating luminance up his arm. The fruit now looked amazing, like little tasty moons levitating in his palm.
“That’s right,” Satan laughed. “He even made the fruit look attractive, all the incentive in the world to give it a try. Just a little poke from me, in the guise of a serpent, and Eve scoffed one of these bad boys down like a cop eating a donut! Bam!”
The Devil clicked his fingers and a thunder clap erupted about our heads, rolling through the air.
“She became aware. Aware of good, aware of evil, aware of her nudity and aware of Adam’s. She then talked Adam into eating the fruit and he learnt also. With the knowledge of good and evil, came the knowledge of sin. They had sinned by eating the fruit. God had told them not to and they had disobeyed his word. God became so furious that he kicked them out of paradise into the deadly, real world.
“Adam grew resentful of Eve, angry that she had talked him into tasting the fruit which led to their exile from Eden. Adam, the idiot, didn’t accept that he actually made the decision to eat it of his own freewill. He blamed Eve for his failure. In turn, Eve grew bitter with Adam for blaming her. They were both angry, hating each other but unable to separate for fear of dying. God had given them no knowledge of the afterlife. Soon their hate and anger turned into another emotion, another ‘sin’. Lust! Adam’s awareness of Eve’s glorious nudity led to sinful, lusty urges to have sex with her, despite the fact he loathed her with every fiber of his being. He knew having sex with Eve despite his hate was wrong, but he did it anyway. Knowledge begot sin, for if you don’t know you are doing wrong, how can it be a real sin?
“Eve felt the same lustful urges, because it was the dawn of time and no-one had invented football to keep the mind off sex! So, they fucked, a lot. Then came the babies: Cain, Abel and the rest. The birth of the human race through carnal sin. So really, if you think about it, by tempting Eve to eat that fruit I am largely responsible for humanity as we know it!”
Satan giggled again, looking at my disbelieving expression.
“What?” he asked. “Doesn’t that make perfect sense?”
He was right, I couldn’t really argue with him.
“Anyway,” Satan pressed on. “I’ve gone off on a tangent and now we are back to how I can help you. Knowledge!”
He handed me one of the plump, moon-like fruits. This time it remained solid in my hand.
“I can give you the knowledge of who you want revenge on, knowledge of how to gain the power to defeat them, and knowledge of how to find out that dirty little secret about God.” He smiled. “It seems we’re all after a little bit of knowledge.”
I closed my eyes and bit into the fruit. Waves of pleasure shuddered through my tongue and into my body. It was the best taste I’d ever experienced, the taste of power. I waited for the waves of pleasure to stop, and the wave of knowledge to begin. As the feeling subsided, I waited with eyes closed for the thoughts to come and The Devil roared with laughter. I opened my eyes and he was rolling on the ground in stitches. I stood above him, my hands on my hips waiting for his laughter to die. He eventually stopped. Wiping a tear from his eye, he chuckled.
“Since when did actual knowledge come from a piece of fruit? I told you that it simply contained a chemical that helped Adam and Eve become aware. Since then, that chemical has been passed down genetically from them to you -- through a very long line of incest, might I add. You are already aware, you just need to learn, exactly like you’ve always done, through people teaching you, or figuring it out for yourself. I can only teach you what I know, the rest you’ll have to do the old-fashioned way.”
By now I was getting very impatient. “So then, Satan,” I said through gritted teeth. “What can you teach me? What do I need to know about these scum, and how am I going to kill them?”
Wickedness filled The Devil’s eyes. He motioned for me to take a seat as a chair grew up from the floor beneath me. I sat down as The Devil began to pace back and forth in front of me.
“Let me begin with Gideon,” he said.
three
“GIDEON,” The Devil began, “believes that God has shared with him, and only him, the one secret that could defeat God. What a moron! God I mean, not Gideon. For if Gideon is telling the truth, and I believe he is, then God has gone for one of his mind games again and has left the temptation for Gideon to tell the secret.”
“So why don’t you tempt him yourself, mighty Satan?” I asked mockingly.
“I can tell by your tone, you know I’ve tried,” he snapped. “Gideon is not tempted by the normal things like women or money, and God has already given him power.”
Satan’s claws clenched into fists, blood seeping from his palm, where sharp nails had dug through his scaly flesh.
“His first power is to see through my disguises,” Satan said as he smeared the blood in his hand over his face. He transformed into a gorgeous woman, with flowing black hair and blood-red lips. His forked tongued flickered out from between them as he smiled and winked. Satan’s deep, crooning voice contrasted starkly with his appearance.
“He also has the power of mind control over the weak-willed and so has a small army of disciples at his call who he has named ‘The Brethren’. He cannot be harmed by blades or bullets and he has the strength of God in him; no physical barrier will hold him.”
“How do I fight someone like that?” I asked. My life as a fighter had taught me a great deal about combat, but my mind couldn’t fathom such an adversary.
“Does he have a weakness?” I wondered aloud.
The Devil answered by slashing a claw across his feminine wrist. Black blood gushed from the wound, forming a pool on the carpet at our feet. He licked the gash he’d made, stemming the blood flow as his flesh began to knit itself. I looked down and saw his true face reflected in the ghoulish puddle, grinning up at me. The Devil’s facade faded to a vision of Gideon sitting in a room, empty except for a pristine bed that he knelt at in prayer.
My skin crawled watching that evil creature who took so much pleasure in killing my darling Charlotte. Gideon’s grating voice filled my ears as he prayed. It felt like daggers being driven into my skull. His head hung against his chest, blonde hair falling over his face. I couldn’t see his lips move, only hear the words inside my head, beating at my temples.
“I have done your work my lord,” he prayed. “I have done what you asked of me, but forgive me that I enjoyed it. I have sinned and in taking pleasure in this sin I have fouled my soul. I am unclean.”
The vision faded back to Satan’s reflection grinning up at me again. I looked up to see him rubbing his clawed, black hands together. It was clear he had a plan. However, it was unclear to me what it was. I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
“Don’t you see?” The Devil asked. “He admits that his soul is tainted, which means if he dies then his soul comes to Hell, to me.” His eyes glazed into a fixated stare as he looked down into the pool of his own blood on the ground. Satan began to chant in a strong voice, as if reading a prophecy of biblical proportions.
“You will be re-born to earth, Michael. You will kill Gideon, bringing his soul to Hell where you will have free reign to reap your revenge upon him, and I will be able to discover God’s secret. Together, we will overthrow God’s power and free all existence from his rule. This is the beginning of Armageddon.”
Satan’s words were like music to my ears. My mind was fixed on revenge. I could torture Gideon over and over. I could wring Charlotte’s suffering from his soul and devour his mind. There would be no secrets left once I had avenged my love.
Purpose filled my every pore and motivation flowed like electricity inside me. Looking over Hell City to the boiling red sky, I knew that one day I would have justice. One day soon I would be reborn. However, unlike most highly motivated people, I had patience. I would prepare to confront Gid
eon. He had God’s power on his side, but I had The Devil.
I turned to Satan, ready to do what I must.
“When do I start my training?” I asked solemnly.
“Right away,” he said turning around, walking back toward the elevator.
four
THE DEVIL PRESSED THE GROUND-FLOOR BUTTON. Its red glow lit up his face.
“You must go into the city and find the best path to take in getting back to earth, to defeat Gideon,” he said. I could tell by his tone that he would not be coming. I opened my mouth to ask why he would not be joining me, but he cut me off.
“Go to the Prophet Casino in Smoking Gun and seek out a man called Phineus. He will show you the way.” The elevator slowed to a halt and the doors slid open. I stepped out, while Satan remained inside. “I will do something else to help you, Michael, because in doing this you are helping me,” he said as I turned to look back at him. “I will spare you ‘The Guilt’. You won’t suffer down here as others do. You are free to do whatever you wish to get what I want. What we want,” he corrected himself. “Good luck, Michael. I will see you when you know your path.”
Before I could speak, the elevator doors closed, leaving me alone in Hell. I had only one thing on my mind: avenge Charlotte.
I walked across the marbled floor toward the exit. Clytemnestra was not at her desk. A lone doorman stood waiting, with his hands clasped behind his back. He was only four feet high, hideously deformed with green eyebrows that covered most of his face and a hooked nose so long that it touched his wart covered chin.
“Good evening, Michael,” he croaked, like a frog. I wasn’t surprised he knew my name. “The Dark Lord has provided his limousine for your pleasure. Good luck with Phineus,” he laughed.
I turned to him, furious that this little toad of a being knew more than I did about the underworld outside. I hissed through clenched teeth.