Satan Loves You

The grove of the suicides was dark and smelt like wet cigarettes. A light rain was falling through the dirty air. Occasionally, in the distance, they heard the howling of wild dogs as they caught one of the profligate whom they chased through the thorny undergrowth. Apart from that, the grove was completely silent because, after all, what do suicides have to say anymore? Apart from the creaking of their ropes, there was no sound but the clattering of dead branches. Every tree was the soul of a suicide and their useless, empty husks hung limply from their own branches. Mary led the way, crashing ahead through the briars, her eyes fixed on the corpses dangling from each tree.

“We could just ask someone,” Satan said, struggling to keep up.

“I have to find her,” Mary called back.

“Who’s her? I thought we were looking for Bishop Tutu,” Satan said, but Mary had already disappeared through a wall of thorns. Satan sighed and followed. If it wasn’t so important that he keep her alive he would have let her go, but right now she and this Bishop Tutu were his only two advantages over Heaven.

Bishop Tutu...

Wait a minute.

A dim memory of walking through a hospital lobby rose through his mind, like a bubble rising through a bucket of syrup. A long-out-of-date magazine cover...TIME Magazine...a smiling black man and the headline, “Archbishop Tutu Leads South Africa Into the Light.”

He felt stupid. He felt like an idiot. He had been played.

Satan blundered after her through the thorns.

“Mary!” he yelled. “Mary.”

He hated yelling, but she was taking advantage. He had to catch up with her and let her know that he was nobody’s fool.

He suddenly fell over her, kneeling beneath a suicide tree that grew dangerously close to the edge of a cliff that plunged down further than the eye could see. The chasm dropped straight down past the Seventh Circle and almost all the way to the Eighth. A filthy wind was blowing up from the lower Bolgias and it was making the tree branches clack together. Mary was praying to one of the trees, and that threw Satan for a minute.

“Do Catholics pray to trees?” he said to himself. “I thought that was druids?”

He walked closer and Mary stood quickly, backing away from him in alarm.

“Bishop Tutu is still alive, I think,” Satan said. “Anyways, I know he’s not here.”

Mary shook her head.

“You lied,” he said.

“Get away from me,” she said. And then she placed a hand on the sodden foot of a suicide’s corpse and looked up at its face, talking under her breath, passionately and fervently.

Satan got closer and looked at the body. Water-logged, fly-infested, devoid of life but still...the family resemblance was clear.

“Your sister?” he asked.

“Don’t talk to me,” Mary said.

“She’s just about your age, so I thought she was your sister,” Satan said. “We have to go.”

Mary kept talking to the body.

“If you’re trying to communicate, her soul is in the tree. The body’s just a decoration.”

Not even a thank you.

“Come on,” Satan said. “We need to get going.”

Mary jerked her shoulder away from his touch and she pressed her folded hands to her forehead and prayed for the fate of her immortal soul.

“Mom,” she prayed. “I want you to hear me. Saint Jude told me that I needed to forgive the one who had done me the most harm, and so I came here, I came to Hell, because I want you to know that I forgive you. I was so scared when you left me. I thought your suicide was like a sickness and that I could catch it if I thought about you, or if I went to your funeral, or if I touched your things and so I scrubbed you out of my mind. But I forgive you. I forgive you with all my soul and with all my heart.”

She had a beatific expression on her face as she walked to the edge of the cliff. None of it made any sense to Satan and because he didn’t understand what was going on he didn’t move quickly enough. Not when she reached the edge of the cliff. Not when she turned her face up towards Heaven. Not even when she said, “I’m ready to be received into your arms, O Lord.” And not when she stepped off the cliff and into thin air. Her entire attitude was directed upwards, as if she expected to ascend, but she didn’t. Gravity grabbed her and yanked her down, hard and fast, and she disappeared into the chasm like she was being sucked down a straw.

“No!” Satan shouted. “No! No! No.”

He wanted to run after her but there was no path down the cliff, just the howling wind surging up. So he went in the other direction to get help, but after a step he realized that there was no time, and so he went back to the edge of the cliff to maybe jump after her, but he could land anywhere, so he took two steps to the side but there was nothing over there and so he did a crazy little futility dance on the edge of the chasm.

“Geryon!” he shouted. “Geryon!!!”

And the abomination swooped up out of the abyss and hovered before him, lazily flapping its enormous leathery wings. Its body was that of an engorged lion, crusty with rot and scabs. A serpent’s tail, with a single fang dripping poison from the tip, unfurled beneath Geryon’s fat ass. But he had the face of a really nice guy.

“Whassup?” he asked.

“Get me down there,” Satan practically screamed and clambered onto his back. One of his feet slipped and Geryon dipped to catch him.

“Whoa,” he said. “Whatever happened to ‘please’?”

“Just get me down there!” Satan shouted.

Geryon spiraled down slowly.

“Were you with that nun? I was washing myself on a ledge and it was the craziest thing. I said to myself, ‘Geryon, did a nun just go past you?’ and I said back to myself, ‘Yep, Geryon, it sure did. I wonder what that tastes like.’ And then you’re all up here dancing around like a nut so I assume you pushed her, right? That’s cold, brother, even for you.”

Satan didn’t answer. The dank wind slammed into his face.

“Just fly,” he said.

It took almost an hour, but finally Geryon’s claws gripped the gravel next to where Sister Mary lay cracked and broken on the flinty surface of the upper Bolgia. No one had killed her yet, and she was making little sounds and trying to move. Satan knelt by her head.

“What did you do?” he asked. “What did you do?”

“Saint Jude...told me...atonement...ascend to Heaven...if I...” and then she gagged as she swallowed part of her hard palate.

“And you believed him?” Satan cried in frustration.

Satan had seen a lot of stupid things done in the name of faith – the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Communal Riots, suicide bombings – but this topped them all. This was a sucker getting rolled for her soul. It was a waste. It was cruelty.

“She’s not dead, dude,” Geryon observed. “That is gross.”

Mary was mewling, wracked with more pain than the human body was meant to bear. She tried feebly to crawl away from her pain, to escape the nest of splintered bones and crushed flesh her body had become. Her broken fingers pulled uselessly at the gravel.

“Put her out of her misery, man,” Geryon whined.

“Go away,” Satan snapped, and Geryon, hurt, shambled off and flopped down on some rocks.

What should he do? What should he do? What should he do? She wasn’t dead, she wouldn’t die until he or one of Death’s Minions turned her off. And as long as she didn’t die then the will of Heaven was stymied. A long, keening sound rose from the shattered hole in Mary’s face that had been her mouth. Her throat had been crushed and now it was swelling. She couldn’t force air through it anymore, but still she did not die. Death had to claim her.

Satan looked down at her. This stumpy little nun who had done nothing but curse him and lie to him. She was gagging on her own soft tissues as they filled up with subdermal blood and swelled to twice their normal size. It would be a mercy to kill her, but she had to live. If she died, Hell was doomed. Satan felt the forces of Creation all around him, like great gears and spring-loaded iron jaws, tensed in anticipation of what he would do next. Mary’s eyes rolled up and seemed to fix on him. They reminded him of the eyes of a dog that had been hit by a car: dumb, not comprehending where all this pain was coming from, not understanding why it hurt so bad.

Finally, he stopped resisting and he stepped into the trap Heaven had prepared for him and he reached inside Sister Mary and he extinguished her life, and the life of her baby.

The gears began to move. The jaws clamped shut.



Nero found him six hours later, sitting next to the nun’s corpse. Geryon was sprawled over to the side, licking his balls.

“Hey, dude,” Geryon drawled. “I been waiting for someone to show. He’s totally non-conversational. Were they doing it? Like, him with a nun? That’d be messed up, you know what I’m saying?

And he made a crude gesture with his talons, forming a circle with his foreclaw and thumb, and then plunging another claw in and out of it. Nero ignored the idiotic demon and trotted to Satan’s side.

“Sir, is that the nun? That’s a very cruel way to kill her.”

Satan looked up.

“It’s all over,” he said. “Heaven wanted her dead and I was keeping her alive to give me an edge, and then she jumped. I brought her here to keep her safe and even in my own realm they convinced her to jump. I couldn’t watch her suffer so I killed her. And now it’s all over.”

“Bear up, sir,” Nero said. “You are the Prince of Darkness. We’ll find a way to turn this to our advantage.”

“No, we won’t,” Satan said. “They beat me once and they’ve been beating me ever since. Before we even started to fight they had me beaten. Every time I think I’ve beaten them I find out they’ve gotten there ahead of me.”

Nero watched as Satan’s spine took on the consistency of spaghetti and his boss slumped down until his chin almost touched the ground. Once upon a time, when Nero was alive, if someone was not doing what Nero had instructed them to do he would have had that person sewn into the skin of a wild beast and then had them torn apart by pain-crazed dogs. Or he would have soaked the noncompliant individual in paraffin and set him or her alight to serve as illumination for one of his garden parties. But a thousand years of unspeakable torture can change a man and now Satan’s despair merely stirred sympathy in Nero’s breast. He knew all too well what it was like to feel that the whole world was against you. For much of his reign the whole world had, in fact, been against him.

“Sir, come back up to the Fifth Circle. You’re doing no one any good here. I’ll have them bring the woman’s soul when it’s ready to be extracted.”

“What does it matter?” Satan said. “If I go up, they’ll defeat us. If I stay here, they’ll defeat us. They’re coming to take over Hell, Nero. That’s what they told me. That’s what they want. To annex Hell and turn us into their employees.”

“Let’s discuss this in the business office,” Nero suggested. “It’s quieter there.”

“No,” Satan said. “I brought her here to keep her safe and I failed. If I can’t keep one nun safe in my own realm, how can I protect any of us from Heaven? I’m staying here.”

“You’re needed, sir.”

“For what?” Satan asked. “To screw up even more?”

Nero couldn’t budge him. The Archfiend was determined to stay with the nun until her spirit was loose enough to be extracted and then...who knew what would happen then? Nero sat with Satan for a while, but there was a feeling of oppression in the air, as if some great, invisible plan was coming to fruition all around them. It made Nero feel claustrophobic and he eventually left, instructing Geryon to come find him the instant Satan stirred.



Gabriel burst in on Michael who was either contemplating the beauty and majesty of God’s creation, or just staring at some orchids while getting a massage from two Work-Stay souls.

“He killed her,” Gabriel said.

Michael looked up from his orchids.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“This is no time to be mistaken.”

“She did what Jude said she would. She’s dead.”

“At Satan’s hand?”

“No question.”

Michael unfurled his wings and stood. The Work-Stay souls prostrated themselves.

“I will journey to the Empyrean then, and tell The Creator of Satan’s latest outrage. Begin the Great Plan without me. I will return as quickly as I can.”

“Yes, my lord,” Gabriel said.

Michael left his chambers and walked down the halls of Heaven until he came to the door that led to The Stairwell. Opening it he walked up The Stairs for many hours until he reached The Door at The Top. He entered, and walked down The Hallway until he reached The Final Door, which led into The Room, beyond which lay the Empyrean, the realm that was the source of the physical Creation, in which dwelt his God.

“Smell you later, dude,” Geryon said and flapped away leaving Satan all alone with Sister Mary.

Satan didn’t particularly like Sister Mary. He didn’t particularly dislike her either, but for some strange reason her pathetic, pointless death had broken something inside of him. You never knew what was going to be the last straw.

Out of curiosity, Satan had had dinner with Hitler when he’d first arrived in Hell. It was pretty awkward. Throughout the meal, Hitler kept asking him what all these Jews were doing in Heaven. Satan was fascinated by self-destructive behavior at the time, for obvious reasons, and he only wanted to know one thing: why hadn’t Hitler invaded England? It was vulnerable to a sea attack and if Hitler had just put some boots on the ground he could have stabilized Europe, deprived the Allies of a staging area for their ground invasion and turned his full attention to the Russian front. It was a major strategic blunder. Satan had thought that Hitler might not be forthcoming, but the dead dictator was only too happy to finally get it off his chest.

Apparently a glowing dwarf named Bargy had appeared to him three times and warned that if Hitler invaded England the Reich would be destroyed. This dwarf first materialized during a particularly stressful period in Hitler’s life and it had been more than he could take. The thing had freaked him right out of his mind, and Bargy became his secret terror. Hitler spent the rest of his life living in fear that the glowing dwarf was constantly watching him, hiding behind doors, drapes and shrubberies, waiting for Hitler to lower his guard so that he could jump out and accost him in public. Upon further questioning, Hitler revealed that Bargy only appeared to him after he had taken an especially large dose of amphetamines. Hitler was adamant that the two were not connected.

One hallucination and Hitler lost the war.

Or take the case of Stanley Gerwitz, in Cincinnati, who had lost his wife to a murder-suicide at the hands of her lover back in the 80’ s. His oldest daughter was his boss’s mistress and his youngest daughter was a Scientologist. His parents had died in a tragic zoo accident when he was eleven. But through it all, Stanley kept smiling. Nothing seemed to get him down, until some kid had smashed his jack o’lantern. Stanley had spent six hours carving a photorealistic Darth Vader onto this particular pumpkin and when it was smashed that was his last straw. He never left his house again. Some neighborhood children found his body seven years later when they broke in looking for a place to get high.

You never could tell what would finally break someone.

For Hitler it was Bargy. For Stanley Gerwitz it was that jack o’lantern.

For Satan it was Sister Mary’s suicide.

He stayed by her body and kept the goblins away. He would shoo off the flapping things that occasionally landed and stalked in circles around her corpse, waiting to eat it. He removed the bugs that tried to lay eggs in her ears. He dusted her. He kept her clean. He did all the things that most people hired a professional to do.



Michael entered The Room. To the untrained eye it looked exactly like an empty hotel event room with gray wall-to-wall carpeting sporting a neutral geometric pattern. Folding chairs leaned against the wall, tables were stacked up at one end. On the far wall was a door and over it was an illuminated exit sign. Michael began to walk towards it. Five hours later, he was still in the same place. He kept walking. Slowly, inch by inch, hour by hour, almost imperceptibly, the distance between the angel and the exit sign got smaller.



On the third day, some imps came to investigate Mary’s body. Imps were small, single-minded creatures who were usually the incarnation of a bad idea. These imps were all about unwise real estate speculation. They gurgled to each other and bumbled towards Mary, sniffing at the air, excited to have a human host to infect, even if it was a dead one. They didn’t notice Satan sitting next to her until he was kicking them away and making scary noises. They scrambled back to their boulders and gargled horribly at him for a while before going in search of easier prey.

Nero came by again a few hours later, but Satan didn’t respond to anything he said. Nero was convinced that this was depression of the worst kind, and that was not an entirely bad thing. For years he had worried that Satan had never properly mourned his Fall from Heaven. Satan seemed stuck at the second stage of grief: anger. But now he seemed to have moved on to stage four: depression. That was only natural. However, Nero was concerned that Satan had skipped stage three: bargaining. But after depression came stage five: acceptance. And for Nero, that was the best stage of all. He just had to stick by Satan until he made the transition from stage four to five and it would all be okay.

Nero was a great believer in self-improvement. After all, a few hundred years of torture had changed him for the better so he didn’t see why it wouldn’t work for everyone else. He came to visit Satan ready to listen, to offer advice, to recite a few choice quotes he’d copied from Tuesdays with Morrie. He was prepared for emotions. Instead, it was an anticlimax. Satan just sat there. Sister Mary’s corpse just moldered. No one asked Nero to share his own experiences with grief. Nero tried to start the conversation a few times but he felt awkward talking to himself and his words trailed off into silence. There was no indication that Satan even heard him. After a while, Nero felt silly for trying and he stopped talking. Satan didn’t even notice when he left.

A swarm of black flies hovered over Sister Mary’s body, just out of Satan’s reach. Eventually, it began to rain warm blood.

All was quiet on the Seventh Circle of Hell.