Satan Loves You (35 page)

Satan leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and let the feeling of satisfaction ooze down his spine and out into Creation. It was broadcast across the planet like radio waves, penetrating all the dark, forgotten, miserable places, reaching all the dark, forgotten, miserable people. It went out to all the blasphemers, from the Roman Catholic schoolboys in Ireland putting on their first condoms, to the Muslim girls wearing bathing suits in Saudi Arabia; from the unhappy Sudanese women illegally selling millet beer to send their children to school, to the Orthodox Jews sneaking a piece of bacon; from the Southern Baptists cruising gay bars to the Pentecostal lesbians holding hands with their secret girlfriends, they all felt it.

In the hearts of all these sinners, and in the hearts of all the heretics, and the blasphemers, and the con men, and the strippers, and the furries, and the freaks, and the Goths, and the leather daddies and the sugar mommies, and the divorced and the damned and the difficult and the stupid and the surly and the losers and the unforgiven and the unforgivable and the felons and the vandals and the tortured and their torturers and the abortionists and the pot smokers and the licentious and the envious and the slothful and the gluttonous and the angry and the vain.

In all of their hearts a tiny sun blossomed for one brief moment, just a split second of succor in their cursed lives, and all of these heathens heard a message whispered in their ears. A tiny message that let them know that no matter how hopeless things seemed, they had not been forgotten, they were not alone. No matter how often they had failed, they had not been abandoned. It was a simple message, and it was only four words long.

“Smile,” it said. “Satan loves you.”