Satan Loves You

To get to Hell, you have to go to the most depressing place on Earth. Detroit International Airport, Concourse A. Satan and Sister Mary stood outside Terminal Relaxation, the exciting new concept in airport massage spas.

“Airport spas?” Sister Mary asked.

“The one business no one uses,” Satan said, leading her inside. “Ever. That’s why they’re a perfect place to put our escalators to Hell.”

“Namaste,” Natalie, the relaxation technician said as they entered. “If travel’s got you down, try our Swedish Oxygen Therapy. You both look like you could use chair massage. Today the first three minutes are complimentary.”

Satan and Sister Mary ignored her, walked past a rice paper screen from Ikea, and Satan swiped his magnetic card on a reader. The utilitarian door in the back buzzed open and they went through. Natalie watched them go and then went back to her book on acupressure. One day, before she retired, someone would want her to give them a chair massage. One day, a paying customer would come through the doors of Terminal Relaxation. And when that day came she would be ready to give them the best fifteen-minute massage followed by a free Japanese aromatherapy session they had ever received. She knew it. She just had to keep waiting.



They rode the escalators down to Hell for a long time, but not as long as it took to get to Heaven. Hell is always closer than you think. At the bottom they walked through the Gates of Hell and into the vast, rough expanse of Hell’s Vestibule. Satan stopped short and blinked stupidly at the thousands of portable outdoor grills that dotted the endless floor of the cavern. There were grills everywhere, most of them cheap, cut from tin or treated aluminum and giving off rosy glows. He grabbed a demon who was slapping around a confused soul. He thought the demon’s name was probably Samignia. Or maybe Amdusias.

“Why does the Vestibule look like a picnic area?” he asked.

“We thought it’d lend a little ambiance. Minos said it was bad that new souls wouldn’t see our Hellish caverns lit with flickering flames. He said you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.”

“Are people making fun of them?” Satan asked.

“No one’s said anything.”

“All right then,” Satan said. “Good thinking. Tell Minos I said ‘good thinking,’ okay?”

“Okay. You want I should process her?” the demon, who may have been Samignia but who might also have been Amdusias, said, indicating Sister Mary.

“No,” Satan said. “She’s with me.”

They walked away. Samignia/Amdusias turned to the demon Furfur, who had been sitting on a pile of groaning souls watching the exchange.

“It’s another Rosemary,” he sighed, and the two of them shook their many heads, sadly.

“Do you want to know what their first plan was for Hell?” Satan asked as they walked through the Vestibule. “It was just going to be an enormous lake of fire and they’d pitch sinners in. Heaven didn’t care that eleven-year-old shoplifters and Bosnian war criminals would all be getting the same eternal torment. Michael just shrugged his shoulders when I brought it up and said, ‘Oh, well. They shouldn’t have sinned in the first place.’ I made something out of this place. I didn’t have to do that.”

They passed beneath the mighty Gates of Hell and then ducked through a service door that let them out onto the muddy banks of a polluted, slow-moving river. The ceiling was so high that this massive cavern had its own weather system and right now its weather was foul. A stinking wind sent black, tattered clouds rolling across the subterranean sky. The tarry water gurgled and swirled dangerously and the river’s opposite shore was too far away to be seen. Everything smelled like wet tennis shoes. Sister Mary’s feet squelched in the muck as she plodded along beside Satan.

“I stratified the torments,” Satan went on. “Made them fair. Liars got nailed to trees by their tongues, heretics get bolted inside burning tombs, suicides were transformed into trees with their own discarded corpses hanging from their branches. It’s irony, see? It makes sense. It’s fair.”

A crowd of dazed souls stood on a short, crumbling dock that jutted out into the brackish, syrupy water. Satan led Sister Mary through them to the end of the dock.

“Watch the edges, watch the edges,” King Paimon said. The demon had eaten his legendary dromedary one day after the two of them had gotten into a long and complicated argument over what keeps the land from falling into the sea. No one had blamed King Paimon, he was known to have a bad temper. That dromedary had been asking for it by talking back, to be honest. Ever since then, however, he’d been a different demon, more subdued and depressed. Now he worked the docks, making sure no one fell in the river and got sucked away before they could reach their eternal torment. Like most demons, he just wanted to be useful.

“This is my life’s work,” Satan continued. “It was nothing, and I made it into something and now they want to take it away from me and turn it into nothing again. I fought Heaven once and it was...it was hard for me. But I’ll do it again to keep them from ruining all this.”

Mary wasn’t really listening.

“The suicides are trees?” she asked.

“Down on the Seventh Circle,” Satan said. “I know this looks like a giant underground garbage dump, but it would have been a lot worse if they’d had their way.”

“Ferry’s coming through,” King Paimon said. “Watch the edges, watch the edges.”

A shrill boat horn playing “La Cucaracha” cut through the air, jolting Sister Mary out of her reverie. A large, pink, inboard motorboat was cutting across the river towards them, moving way too fast. Its gold fittings sparkled in the dim, underground light.

“This is the river Styx?” Mary asked. “With Charon, the skeletal boatman of the dead?”

“Actually it’s the Acheron river. The Styx is more like a stagnant marsh down on the Fifth circle.”

“But that’s not – ” Mary said.

“No,” Satan said. “That’s not Charon. That’s Charo.”

A woman in a form-fitting pink jumpsuit with an enormous bouffant of red hair piloted the motorboat. As Sister Mary stared, a tiny Chihuahua wearing prescription sunglasses and a little straw hat leapt onto the bow, yipping furiously.

“Ola!” the woman called to the cluster of souls as the boat got nearer. “My name is Charo and I am your driving, boating cutie pie. Coochie coochie!”

The pink monstrosity bumped up against the dock, rocking it crazily on its rotten pilings. Souls crowded onto the throbbing inboard. Sister Mary stared at it in horror.

“Charon quit a few years ago,” Satan tried to explain. “And, well...Charo...their names were pretty similar and she seemed enthusiastic.”

“Charo is not dead,” Sister Mary said. “She has a restaurant in Hawaii and was on the Jerry Lewis Telethon last year.” It was the one piece of television programming Sister Mary had watched all the way through with Sister Barbara.

“That’s a Charo impersonator,” Satan said, climbing on board. He helped Sister Mary into the boat. “The real Charo had a heart attack in her sleep back in ‘86. Her dog...um, it was pretty gruesome actually. But she’s been nothing but an asset down here.”

When everyone was aboard, Charo threw the inboard into reverse and blew a kiss to King Paimon, who blushed.

“Careful of itsy Delilah!” Charo sang out in her bright, clear voice. “She is being a – ha, ha – jumping doggie. Hey, just cause you in Hell that’s no reason to be sad and make a serious long face all the time even if you have a nasty death which is sure not nice but is something I don’t even know, you know?”

She turned the boat around and aimed it at the farther shore, then she sat back and pulled out a guitar. While she steered with one high-heeled foot she began to strum.

“When I feel sad and low a songing is what I need. You think I’m right?”

“Maybe?” a soul piped up from the back of the boat.

“You right I’m right!” Charo beamed, and she began to sing ‘Hava Nagila.’

“ Hava nagila

Hava nagila

Hava nagila v’nismeha.”

It was a catchy interpretation of the wedding reception classic, and some of the souls couldn’t help but nod to the rhythm. Their feet began to tap as she repeated the first verse, and then the music took over and they were all clapping.

“ Hava neranenah

Hava neranenah

Hava neranenah v’nismeha!”

By now the boat was rocking as it cut through the slimy black water and the far shore hove into view. Souls were shouting out the lyrics with Charo now, banging their heads rock concert style, totally surrendering themselves to her groove.

“Come on, all peoples! Let’s songing together.” Charo shouted. And they all joined in.

“ Uru, uru ahim!

Uru ahim b’lev sameah

Uru ahim b’lev sameah

Uru ahim b’lev sameah

Uru ahim b’lev sameah”

By the time the boat docked on the far side of the Acheron it was officially Hell’s own party boat. Souls disembarked, smiling and chatting with each other and a few paused to hug Charo as they went.

“Bye bye now,” she called after them. “You stay fabulous!”

But Sister Mary was not fabulous. Sister Mary was melancholy and lost in thought. She stopped to take a flier from a forlorn woman standing at the end of the dock. Sister Mary’s fingers were just closing over the flier, and the woman’s face was just breaking into a beaming smile, when Satan swatted her hand away.

“Don’t touch that,” he said.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“That’s her torment. To hand out fliers no one wants for all eternity. She’s been standing there at the end of that dock for forty-five years and she hasn’t been able to get rid of a single one. Come on, we’ve got to stop by the Mall of the Unbaptized. I need to talk to the philosophers, figure out a game plan.”

Ahead of them the black mud stretched to the horizon, an infinite, barren plain. There was nothing on it except for the Mall of the Unbaptized. It would have been at home in Waterbury or Burbank, the suburbs of Cleveland or outer-ring DC. But here, on this blank, bleak, black-soiled plain it stood out like a freak.

Just then, a tinny voice rang out over the mall intercom system.

“Paging Satan, Lord of Darkness. Paging Satan, Lord of Darkness. Please make your way to the business offices located on the Fifth Circle of Hell.”

Satan looked embarrassed.

“I hate it when they page me,” he said.

“You said the suicides are on the Seventh Circle?” Mary asked.

“Paging Satan, Lord of Darkness,” the voice started again, echoing through the cavern. “Satan? Lord of Darkness?”

“Okay, okay,” Satan said. “I heard you.”

“The suicides?” Mary repeated.

“On the Seventh Circle,” Satan said. “But we’re taking the monorail to Five. It’s faster than walking. Slightly.”

“I want to go to the Seventh Circle,” Mary said.

“We have to get to the business offices.”

“Can I go alone?”

“No, you can’t go alone. You’re a living human being in Hell. It is the least safe place for you in all of Creation. One misstep and you will wind up experiencing pain and horror the likes of which you’ve never dreamed. You are surrounded by creatures whose existences are devoted to causing you misery and suffering. Unsane eyes are watching your every move, waiting for an opportunity to torture you.”

“So I can’t go?”

“No!”

“But I’ve been really impressed with all of this,” she said, mustering a smile. “I really have. I’m rethinking everything I was taught about you. It would mean a lot for me to see the Seventh Circle. It would really shake my faith.”

“Paging Satan, Prince of Darkness,” the amplified voice started over again.

“That’s not something I really care about right now,” Satan said.

“But I think there’s someone on Seven who could help you,” Mary said.

“They’re suicides,” Satan said. “They couldn’t even help themselves.”

Mary was not a good liar, but she gave it her all.

“One of my Bishops told me that he knew of a plan by Heaven to destroy Hell,” she said.

Satan stopped and stared at her.

“He...he said that he had prayed and it had been revealed to him by the Archangel Gabriel who told him that he had a part to play in the destruction of Hell.”

“What part?” Satan asked.

“He committed suicide,” Mary lied. “There were some altar boys and he, um, was not very priestly with them. But he said that was part of the plan, to get him into Hell. He was going to be a double agent. No, wait. A mole. A sleeper agent?”

Satan regarded her for a minute. He was just desperate enough to believe her bizarre story. After all, there had been stranger coincidences. He thought back to George W. Bush’s memoirs, Decision Points, which he had recently finished. Right now, Satan needed to be The Decider too, and so he made up his mind.

“Okay, we’ll stop at Seven really fast and pull this Bishop out and then we’ll take him with us to Five. I want to see the look on Nero’s face when I show him that maybe I’m still a step ahead of the game.

He rushed towards the dirty, decrepit monorail that was just pulling into the station on the far side of the Mall, and Mary unclenched her sweaty hands and ran after him.



As expected, it was the worst monorail ever. The track vibrated like it was going to shake itself apart and the monorail flung itself from side to side like a lunatic in a padded cell. The seats were slashed and dirty, the lights flickered, the heat was turned up so high you could barely breathe and a suspicious yellow liquid kept rushing from one end of the car to the other whenever the monorail slowed down or sped up.

The intercom was all crackle and almost impossible to understand.

“Second Circle: the Wanton and Lustful. All Members of Parliament, Senators and Representatives please disembark here. Third Circle: the Gluttonous. All those wishing to be mauled by Cerberus, the three-headed dog, this is your final destination.”

“We don’t actually have a three-headed dog anymore,” Satan said, falling into the role of tour guide. “This is an old recording.”

“Mm,” Mary said, her mind on other things.

“It ate too much so we had to replace it,” Satan said.

Mary didn’t say anything.

“Don’t ask me what we replaced it with because it’s a little bit embarrassing.”

Mary was silent.

“Alright, you’re twisting my arm,” Satan said. “A three-headed rabbit. It’s much smaller, so it eats way less.”

“Mm-hm,” Mary said.

“I’m not thrilled about it either,” Satan said. “But you work with what you have.”

Mary didn’t respond.

The car was packed with silent, miserable souls. Satan and Sister Mary sat squeezed in next to each other in silence. After a while, the recording slurred to life again.

“Fourth Circle: the Avaricious and the Prodigal. Connecting stop for Fortune and her Ever-Turning Wheel. Fifth Circle: the Irascible and the Sullen. Connecting trains for the River Styx Reclamation Project and Blue Line Trains with connections to the Iron City of Dis.”

“Two more stops,” Satan said. “Are you sure this Bishop will be there?”

“He’ll be there,” Mary said.

“What’s his name?”

“It’s Bishop...Tutu.”

“That doesn’t sound like a real name to me,” Satan said.

“Sixth Circle: Heretics.”

Most of the passengers cleared out at this stop. When the doors closed Satan and Sister Mary were almost the only ones left on the train.

“It’s a popular stop,” Satan said. “The way the rules are written technically most people are heretics, so we’re always having overcrowding problems down here on Six. Great food, though. There’re some wonderful Indian restaurants and a lot of good dim sum. So I’m told.”

The monorail jerked out of the station and then suddenly pointed its nose straight down.

“Now entering Lower Hell, all sins of violence and maliciousness. Next stop: Seventh Circle, the Violent.”

The monorail plunged directly down, making a beeline for the center of the Earth. Mary was reminded uncomfortably of the elevator plunge and she gripped her seat. At least it would all be over soon and she would be safe in Heaven.