Satan Loves You (28 page)

“Do we have a phone? Do any of us have a phone? Sir? Wake up.”

Satan’s breathing was fast and shallow. Nero shook his shoulder for a minute but Satan was non-responsive.

“I think something’s wrong,” Nero said.

Mary and Minos came over.

“Hey,” Mary said, slapping Satan’s gray, putty-colored face. “Wake up!”

“Do you really think hitting him will work?” Nero asked.

“No, but I like doing it,” she said and smacked Satan again.

Minos poked Satan in the tummy with one enormous claw.

“He don’t move when I poke him,” he observed.

“I think...” Nero began, then wet his lips, nervously. “I think I need to do that mouth-to-mouth respiration. Or the Heimlich. I’m not sure which. Do either of you know which? I need to do something.”

Before their eyes, Satan was fading. Color had left his skin, his eyes flicked feverishly behind their lids, even his hair was limp and lifeless. Nero rolled him over onto his back.

“Okay,” Mary said. “This isn’t funny anymore. Is he dying? Can he die?”

“None of us die,” Nero said. “But we do become irrelevant.”

“What happens then?” Mary asked.

“We shouldn’t talk about dat,” Minos said.

“She deserves to know,” Nero said. “You know Zeus? Odin? The Great Spirit? They all became irrelevant. They just faded away into nothing.”

“Is that what he’s doing?”

“I’ve never seen it before, okay?” Nero said. “This is my first time watching a deity die.”

Mary shoved him aside and began CPR. Minos and Nero watched as she delivered efficient chest compressions, one-two-three, rest, one-two-three, rest.

“I think yer hurting him,” Minos said.

“What do you want me to do?” Mary snapped.

“Please,” Nero said. “Don’t let him die.”

Nero looked at his lord and master with frightened, wide eyes, full of despair.

“We need to come up with a plan,” Mary said, as she continued CPR. “Can we stall them at the Death Match? And get that money from the defense fund to pay off the judgment?”

“Maybe?” Nero said. “I don’t know? Yes?”

“Which is it?” she shouted.

“Stop shouting!” Nero squealed.

“I’m going to punch both’a ya if ya don’t calm down!” Minos yelled.

And then the cave was full of smoke. Mary collapsed to the floor, her lungs aching, unable to draw a breath. The three of them were hurled to the front of the cave by a great, concussive blast. Mary turned her streaming eyes to follow Nero’s horrified gaze. At the back of the cave, looming over Satan, was a hooded, cloaked figure sitting on a Rascal scooter. It spread its arms wide and its intention was clear: it had come for Satan. And then, with a flourish and another billow of smoke, it was gone and, with it, Satan.

“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 responsibility.”

“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.”