Satan Loves You

The Heavenly Host smashed into Hell like a sledgehammer shattering a watermelon at a Gallagher concert. They came pouring down the escalators, got bottlenecked in Hell’s Vestibule, broke the Gates wide open, then flooded the Nine Circles. The first demons to encounter the Host backed off, confused, and the angels pressed their advantage. It was an utter rout. By the time any demons tried to fight back it was already too late. The Iron City of Dis was occupied, the Mall of the Unbaptized was burning, the infinite stone bridges of the Malebolge were smoking rubble.

Minos had grabbed fleeing demons by the scruffs of their necks and tried to intimidate them into launching a counterattack. Through main force he formed them into a small unit, armed them with rocket launchers and had them take up positions near the entrance to the Second Circle, counting on the Whirlwind of Lust to even the odds, keeping the Heavenly Host unbalanced and cutting down their air advantage.

Instead, the angels flew high above the ripping winds and sliced Minos’s band of demons to ribbons by dropping grenades and throwing their ground-to-air missiles back at them. Angelic infantry, in golden armor and wielding swords of holy fire, mopped up the survivors, and Minos only managed to escape at the last minute when Cerberus, the enormous three-headed bunny of Hell, loomed up out of the shadows and nibbled a flock of angels to death.

There were other pockets of resistance, but they were thin and disorganized and were crushed almost as soon as they sprung up. In the middle of the Acheron, Charo’s hot pink speedboat rocked gently as Charo herself strode to the stern and whipped a drop cloth off a mounted fifty caliber Browning. While King Paimon drove the inboard through the angelic bombardment, Charo hung from the hand grips of the mounted machine gun and blew angels from the sky. Their feathered bodies pin-wheeled into the Acheron as she pumped them full of lead. King Paimon weaved the boat crazily through the water, zooming around plumes of detonating bombs, weaving through the muddy waters of the river as Charo worked her machine gun of demonic retribution. In minutes, a cloud of angels was in hot pursuit.

“Ha ha!” Charo yelled. “I am not thinking we can bang-bang the flying bastards much longer, sweetie! It is timing for Plan B.”

“Watch the edges!” King Paimon growled as he cut the wheel and made a tight U-turn so that they were facing the onrushing horde of angels who were skimming low over the surface of the Acheron. They bobbed quietly in the water for a moment, the wave lapping gently against the hull and the engine growled to itself.

“Sugar horns,” Charo said. “You are never letting one soul fall in the river. Thank you for all that.”

“Um...watch the edges, ” King Paimon mumbled. But what he really meant was, “I love you.”

Charo understood. She blew him a tiny kiss and underneath his scaly, scab-encrusted, rock-hard hide, King Paimon blushed.

Then he dropped the throttle and the boat rocketed forward like a missile, skipping over the light chop, headed straight for the angels.

“We are all having to die again sometime!” Charo laughed, and she depressed the firing button and fired and fired and fired as Paimon screamed his fury and the two of them disappeared into the flock of angels.

Seconds later, from deep inside the swirling, whirling, swooping, soaring horde, there came a flash of orange fire and a muffled explosion. Then the flock of angels organized themselves, circled once, and flew away, leaving charred chunks of pink fiberglass bobbing on the gasoline-slicked surface of the Acheron River. Of Charo and King Paimon there was no sign.



Deep inside the Fifth Circle of Hell, Gabriel and a phalanx of angels were kicking down doors and sweeping the offices of Hell as efficiently as a SWAT team. Cowering demons were taken prisoner, shackled and marched up to the ruins of the Mall of the Unbaptized, where they would be processed in the temporary Retraining and Attitude Adjustment Facility.

The final door was kicked open, and angels rushed in to the darkened room: Satan’s office. The inner sanctum of Hell.

“Clear!” an angel yelled.

“Clear!” another called.

The overhead fluorescents were switched on. The room was empty. Gabriel, needless to say, was peeved.

“Where are they?” he asked.

No one knew.

“Bring me someone who knows where they are!” he shouted.

No one was quite sure what to do, and so they shifted nervously from foot to foot.

“How did they get out of here?” Gabriel yelled, at no one in particular and at absolutely everyone.

“I found this guy,” an angel said entering from the room next door and throwing the hipster to the floor.

“You are a douche,” the hipster said, sitting up and rubbing his bruised elbows.

“Heavenly Father!” one of the angels gasped.

“What is it?” Gabriel shrieked.

“It’s hideous!” another angel said, recoiling.

“Your mother’s hideous,” the hipster said.

“Shoot it!” Gabriel cried. “Get that horror out of my sight!”

“Excuse me, sir,” one of the angels said. “Michael is coming.”

“Oh, crap,” Gabriel said. “Everyone look busy.”

Two angels used their spears to lift the protesting hipster and stuff him into a filing cabinet drawer, which they promptly locked. They weren’t about to risk touching that thing. Who knows where it had been? The rest of the angels began tearing open filing cabinets and throwing papers around, ripping back the wood paneling on the walls, pulling up the carpet (which, despite having a little poo on it, was in the best shape of anything in the office). They wanted to give the appearance that they were leaving no stone unturned in their search for Satan, hoping that this would distract Michael from the fact that they did not actually have him in their custody.

“Where is he?” Michael asked, striding through the door, his wings folded as low as he could get them so that they wouldn’t brush against the stained acoustic tile ceiling.

“We almost had him, but he got away,” Gabriel said. “He was right in our grip and then he gave us the slip.”

“Don’t lie to me, Gabriel,” Michael said.

“I’m not lying.”

Michael gave him a pitying look.

“All right,” Gabriel said, folding his hand. “Stop ransacking.”

The angels stopped their busy work.

“We can’t find him anywhere,” Gabriel admitted to Michael.

“As I expected,” Michael said.

“You’re not angry?”

“Why should I be angry?” Michael asked. “Never for a moment did I expect that you would be a match for the Lord of Lies.”

“Oh, thanks,” Gabriel said.

“He is far too devious for you,” Michael continued. “There is only one way we will be able to lure Satan into daylight and then remove him as King of Hell.”

“Please share, oh great one,” Gabriel said.

“The Ultimate Death Match,” Michael said. “He will not miss it.”

“You might have said something before we invaded Hell then,” Gabriel said. “It hasn’t exactly been pain-free. Do you know how many angels that Spanish hussy took out? If we could have just waited for the Ultimate Death Match then I don’t see the point.”

“Earliness is next to godliness,” Michael said. “And besides, you’ll be installed as temporary regent here. There is no such thing as starting the transition too early.”

Gabriel liked the sound of this. He bowed.

“Thy will be done.”

“Yes,” Michael said. “My will be done. Now,” he walked over to the filing cabinets. “What is that knocking sound?”

“Don’t open it,” Gabriel shouted, but it was already too late.



Outside the razed Mall of the Unbaptized, on the vast muddy plains of the First Circle of Hell, a temporary city had sprung up. This was stage one in Heaven’s takeover of Hell: the Retraining and Attitude Adjustment Facility. Hundreds of tents and trailers stretched to the dark and gloomy horizon and inside of them, lit only by the subterranean half-light of Hell, demons had their attitudes adjusted. One tent was for the Greeters Workshop. Here, demons were given green vests featuring twelve flair points and received instruction on how to properly welcome souls to Hell. This course was for the demons that Heaven’s Demonic Resource Managers had determined were familiar with the layout and resources of Hell. These brand new Demon Greeters of Hell would assist newly-arrived “clients” in finding the right department while keeping an eye out for potential troublemakers. The three-headed rabbit, Cerberus, was no longer considered an appropriate face of Hell and was relegated to an enormous, and enormously uncomfortable, hutch on one of the lower circles.

Throughout the Retraining and Attitude Adjustment Facility there were tents devoted to all the new aspects of Hell. Formerly a realm of eternal torment, Hell would now focus on client satisfaction, which would result in higher client value. The happier clients were, the more money they could be encouraged to spend once the new pricing models went into place. The more money they spent the wealthier Heaven would become. The wealthier Heaven became, well, the greater the glory of God? Or something like that?

An enormous number of temporary teaching structures were devoted to remedial client interaction and customer service training.

“Our Demonic Resource Managers teach by doing, with less than fifteen percent lecture and eighty-five percent hands-on activities,” Gabriel said. “Demons will learn through personal experience and not by being told. We’ll give them group training exercises that are practical, realistic, skill-based and fun.”

So far, the Resource Management counselors were reporting that none of the demons were finding the customer service and team building exercises “fun.”

“They’re predisposed to complain,” Gabriel said. “They like being unhappy. Our metric of success is not based on how much complaining they do. It’s based on my satisfaction with their progress on this mutual journey we're all undertaking towards making Hell a fun, productive and profitable place to work, live and share.”

No one knew what he was talking about, just as no one understood where all of these Demonic Resource Management counselors came from. Why did the Heavenly Host just happen to have a highly trained team ready to assist with the transition of Hell? And why were they all available to be dropped into place at a moment’s notice? But they were. Hundreds and thousands of angels all devoted to making the demons less demonic and more like your average Wal-Mart employee were on the ground within hours. And within two days there were dozens of mobile teaching trailers devoted to classes in “Complaint Resolution with a Smile” and “Overcoming Challenges the Right Way” and “Improving Torturer/Torturee Chemistry” and “Making Every Violence-Based Interaction a Richer Experience” jammed up against one another across the vast First Circle of Hell. The demons had almost no idea what was going on or what they were being taught, but without any leader they shuffled along and did what they were told.

In one of the classroom trailers, far over on the edge of the great plain of cinders and woe that was the First Circle of Hell, there was an electrical outlet. The outlet was at the back of the trailer where demons were being taught how to “Create Value-Added Options for Clients Spending an Eternity in Hell.” The demons who attended this class were so confused by the concepts being presented to them that none of them noticed the orange extension cord plugged into the outlet at the back of the room. None of them noticed that it ran along the base of the floor and out the rear window.

The extension cord ran down from the rear window and into the cinders and continued on until it reached the edge of a rocky crevasse. From there it dropped into the dark chasm through which a foul, black wind screamed. The extension cord swayed gently in the wind until it touched down on the sandy ground at the bottom and continued on. This was the Second Circle of Hell, where the lustful were blown about by a biting wind. Since the arrival of the Heavenly Host the wind had been made even colder and ice was added so that the torments of the lustful were multiplied. Heaven really hated lust.

The orange extension cord ran across the wind-scourged ground of the Second Circle until it eventually disappeared into a tiny hole, ran through a tight, icy tunnel and emerged on an ice choked cliff in the Third Circle. Here, an icy rain pelted down on the gluttonous, who probably would have eaten, or at least gnawed on, the extension cord if they could have seen it. But it was too well hidden. It ran for miles across the Third Circle, hidden beneath slush and mud. Eventually it disappeared into an icy spring, only to emerge even deeper in Hell, running down a waterfall to the Fourth Circle. Here it passed between the lumpen bodies of the avaricious, who were pressed down flat to the rocky soil with great weights tied to their chests. Flat on their backs they lay, and the few who could see the extension cord tried to grab it, to possess it and make it their own, but none succeeded.

The cord eventually left the Fourth Circle through a dark crack and emerged again in the swamps of the river Styx on the Fifth Circle. It ran across the muddy Styx, winding through its reeds with their razor-sharp leaves and iron hard roots until it reached a rocky slope far, far to one side of the swampy Styx. There the extension cord began its climb, wending its way over toe-cracking rocks and foot-shredding volcanic shards of hardened lava, running up and up until finally it reached a television set. The television set was being carried by Minos, who was picking his way up the treacherous mountainside, scrambling to find purchase for his hooves.

After a long, hard slog uphill he reached a level patch of rocks near the top of the slope where an enormous boulder rested. Minos walked around the boulder which was hiding a crack in the mountain. He entered the crack and there beheld a picture of utter and complete despair. Nero sat to one side of the crowded cave, slumped against the wall, while Mary Renfro stoked a miserable, greasy little fire in the middle of the floor. A few feet away, Satan lay on his side with his face to the wall. Occasionally he moaned and that was how they knew he was alive.

“I brought da TV,” Minos announced.

“Planning on watching sitcoms while everything collapses around our heads?” Nero asked.

“Hardy har,” Minos said, lowering the TV to the dirt floor. “You need ta see dis. It’s what I wuz tellin’ you about.”

“Why bother?” Nero said. “It’s all over.”

“They aren’t allowed to do this,” Mary Renfro said. “Are they?”

“Why don’t you go down and tell them,” Nero said. “I went through this once before when Rome burned. Now I don’t even have my cithara.”

“Thas why you gotta watch dis,” Minos said. “Somethin’s happenin’.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It’s on the TV,” Minos said.“An’ if the TV says it’s happenin’ then you know it’s happenin’.”

“Unless it’s a miracle, I don’t want to see it,” Nero groused.

The burly demon turned on New York One, local news. The slightly orange face of an inept local anchorwoman filled the screen.

“In what people are calling a ‘Satanic Miracle’ it looks like the entire country is coming together for the Devil,” she said.

The camera cut to a bake sale at a school. Rice Krispie treats, oatmeal raisin cookies in plastic sandwich bags and overly baked, nearly black chocolate chips cookies were changing hands at a surprisingly brisk pace.

“Since the verdict was passed down in the Babbit vs. the Devil court case last week, bake sales like this one have sprung up at schools across the country,” a field reporter said.

On the front of the table was taped a piece of poster board that read, “Satan Prince of Darkness Defense Fund.” The reporter pushed his microphone into the face of the pimply middle school girl with thick glasses who was running the cash box.

“Sam Soto, New York One,” he said. “Sweetie, why are you selling cookies for the Devil?”

She smiled shyly.

“Because I think he’s cute.”

Sam Soto turned to the camera.

“And it’s not just at schools, Sara.”

The camera cut to the outside of a bank. Sam Soto approached an elderly woman, just emerging.

“Excuse me, Sam Soto, NY 1,” he said. “Did you just donate money to the Satan Prince of Darkness Defense Fund?”

“I did,” she said, primly.

“What motivated you to do that?” he asked.

“I saw that Satan on television and he reminded me of my George,” she said. “George didn’t like working for the paper company but he did it all his life. Never complained once. Then when he passed, not one of those people came to his funeral. That’s a shame.”

Sam Soto turned to the camera again.

“One did it because he’s ‘cute.’ This one does it for George,” he said. “Who are the Americans giving their money to Satan’s Defense Fund?”

Now the camera was showing a bunch of high school girls in bikinis conducting a car wash in a Quiznos parking lot. The big sandwich board on the corner read, “We feel your pain: Satan Prince of Darkness Defense Fund.”

“And it’s not just your average Americans,” Sam Soto said. “Celebrities are getting in on the act, too.”

Cut to: a giant coliseum somewhere in the New Jersey Meadowlands. The capacity crowd was cheering and screaming and snapping their lighters. Onstage, the lead singers of Iron Maiden, Queensryche, Quiet Riot and Ratt were singing earnestly into a microphone. Behind them, an enormous banner read, “Satan Prince of Darkness Defense Fund.”

“The Satan Prince of Darkness Gods of Hair Metal benefit show sold out the Meadowlands last night,” Sam Soto said. “With the leaders of four of the biggest metal acts saying that Satan was a ‘special guy’ who had ‘done a lot for their careers’ and it was time for them to give something back. And in Portland, musicians of a different stripe gathered.”

An outdoor stage in Portland with a “Satan Prince of Darkness Defense Fund” banner and a Tibetan flag hanging from it. The Indigo Girls were playing.

“The Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine and the Indigo Girls gave a benefit performance for the fund, as well.”

Emily Saliers stepped up to the microphone as the last notes of “ Galileo” faded into the summertime air.

“I don’t believe in Satan,” she said to the crowd. “But there comes a time when an artist just needs to say ‘Enough is enough.’ And that time is now. Free Satan and Tibet!”

The crowd roared.

“I feel so close to the Indigo Girls,” Minos said.

“With over sixty million dollars raised in only three days, the Satan Prince of Darkness Defense Fund is one of the most successful charities in American history,” Sam Soto said. “But what does that say about us? And what will they do with the money? Questions that can only be answered by the fund’s managers, who at this time declined to comment. This is Sam Soto, NY 1 News. Anne?”

“We’re back in business,” Nero said. “Sixty million dollars in three days? I’ve got to get in touch with these people. Maybe we can pay off the judgment without going broke. Sir? Sir?”

“I never thought that the world would come together for Satan,” Mary said. “This is a miracle.”

“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.”

“Of what?”

“That eternity is a very long time and it helps if you have a job.”

“That’s the Satan I remember,” Death said.

“Oh,” Satan smiled. “I’m just getting started.”