Satan Loves You

Sister Mary felt panic rising in her chest as she wondered for the five hundredth time what was going to happen to her. She had been a nun for fourteen years, being obedient, making lists, doing chores, avoiding overstimulation, being chaste, humble and kind. She had done it all so that she could avoid ending up exactly where she was right now: sitting in a Red Roof Inn out by the airport, pregnant and alone.

“This must be how floozies feel,” she thought to herself.

As soon as Sister Helen’s death had been reported to the archdiocese, the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women had sent an utterly useless grief therapist and the Catholic Finance Corporation had sent a scarily competent assessor to repossess the monastery. Before the day was over, Clergy Services had assigned Sister Barbara to a Nicaraguan school for colorblind children and while she hadn’t been able to find the time to say goodbye to Sister Mary before she left she had managed to find the time to tell the Director of Priestly Life about Sister Mary’s “condition.” The Director arranged for a discrete ultrasound technician to drive out to the monastery and examine Sister Mary. The technician was brusque and businesslike and Sister Mary tried her best to endure the examination. The technician hadn’t spoken, she had merely scanned Sister Mary’s stomach in surly silence. After a few minutes, however, the technician uttered her first and only words:

“Holy f*ck.”

Sister Mary had reeled as if slapped: no one had ever said the f-word in front of her before. She was a nun. You didn’t say the f-word in front of a nun. Even worse, the word was being used to describe the contents of her womb. She began to cry. The ultrasound technician was no comfort whatsoever because she immediately ran outside, got on her cellular phone and called the Director of Priestly Life who called the Chancellor for Canonical Affairs who called the Vicar General and told him the bad news: they had a pregnant nun whose hymen was intact and whose baby seemed to be, inexplicably, ten weeks along. It was their worst nightmare. It was Agnes of God all over again.

Before Sister Mary had even stopped crying, a van with tinted windows arrived at the monastery and she was bundled inside and taken to a Red Roof Inn out near the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. The Vicar General called her on a secure cellular phone and told her that if she valued the work of the Church and the reputation of the archdiocese then she must not speak to anybody about her condition and she must only leave her room to go to the snack machines down the hall. Sister Mary valued the work of the Church and the reputation of the Archdiocese and so she agreed, but after three days it was becoming harder and harder to stay inside. Since everything she owned belonged to the Church, and since the Church currently didn’t know what to do with her, and since they had taken her out of the monastery without even giving her a chance to pack, she had nothing with her. She was bored and depressed.

Sister Mary did not watch TV, and she did not listen to secular music. She did not read for pleasure, nor did she partake of frivolous activities such as crosswords or Sudoku. So all day, every day, she sat in a chair by the window, dressed in the habit she had been wearing the day of her ultrasound, and she read from the Gideon Bible that she had found in the drawer of the bedside table. And she prayed, very hard, for her ordeal to end.

She had started reading with the curtains open, but so many children had pressed their faces up against he window, pointing and staring, that eventually she pulled them shut. This meant that she had to have the lights on all day in order to read, and she hated wasting electricity. Even more, she hated feeling like some kind of fallen woman, trapped behind glass in a zoo of iniquity, a cautionary exhibit for the saved souls who passed by.

And then, on Tuesday, her prayers were answered and her ordeal ended in the worst way possible.

She had just started the Bible over again and was on her least favorite book (Leviticus) when someone knocked on the door. Sister Mary stood up, her heart in her throat. They were here to tell her something bad. To throw her out. To excommunicate her. She would no longer be a nun. She would be nothing. She would be alone. It was all over. Sister Mary left the door on the chain and opened it a crack.

“Yes?” she said to the man on the other side.

“Mary Renfro?” he asked.

Instantly, she recognized him: it was the man from the airport of horrors. This was he. He had finally come for her. She slammed the door in his face, and backed away. A million conflicting thoughts raced through her head. Most involved running away, but they all insisted on running in different directions and so the end result was that she short circuited and stood in the middle of the room making a sound like, “Err, err, err...”

Satan took the passkey he’d lifted and swiped it through the magnetic lock. CHUNK. He pushed the door open but it stopped at the chain.

“Are you really going to be like this?” he asked.

Mary stared at the face of evil, pressed into the gap in the door and she started to hyperventilate.

“Fine,” Satan said, taking her panic as an answer.

Grabbing his right wrist with his left hand, he braced himself and began to pull as hard as he could. His face turned red with exertion. He gritted his teeth. Reset his grip. And slowly, horribly he stretched his arm. The bones in his right arm made a soft pop, and then a muffled cracking as his right arm slowly, painfully stretched another inch. Agony flared in his shoulder. His skin was on fire. But still he pulled, and groaned and ripped, and finally his right arm was six inches longer than his left.

He slid his newly-stretched arm through the gap in the door and unhooked the chain. Then he pushed it open and he was standing right in front of Sister Mary.

“I hate doing that,” he said. “It really – ”

But the horror of his transformation had had a galvanizing effect on Sister Mary and she kicked him in the crotch. She’d learned this maneuver in high school during a self-defense class their gym teacher had claimed was a requirement. It was the only move she remembered and she was taken off guard by how effective it was. Satan doubled over and dropped to his knees. She lost a few valuable seconds gawping at her handiwork, but then she recovered her senses and fled to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

The bathroom door was flimsy, like a big piece of construction paper with a cheap, plastic knob. She took the heavy porcelain lid off the back of the toilet tank and held it over one shoulder like a baseball bat, ready to let this drug dealer, this reality perverter, this metaphysical criminal know that he’d tangled with the wrong Poor Clare. This time, Satan didn’t bother with anything fancy, he just popped the handle lock and walked right into Mary swinging the porcelain toilet lid as hard as she could into his face. Her blow was so powerful that the lid shattered.

“Ow!” Satan said, clutching his face.

Mary tried to go for his crotch again, but he grabbed her foot and tipped her backwards into the tub and then clambered on top of her. Mary panicked. Apart from some firm handshakes this was the most physical contact she’d ever had with a man in her entire life and it was worse than she could possibly imagine. Horrified, she scrambled out from under Satan and pushed herself as far as she could into the corner of the tub.

Then she started to scream.

“Stop that,” Satan said, trying to put his hands over her mouth. “Quit it!”

“What are you?” Mary sobbed.

“I’m Satan,” Satan said. “I’m here to kill you.”

Mary started screaming again.

“Look,” he said. “The sooner you simmer down and let me kill you the sooner they can get you processed and get you settled into Hell. It’s really not so bad.”

“Hell?” she wailed. “I’ve been a Poor Clare since I was nineteen. I can’t be going to Hell.”

“Mary Renfro, right?” Satan said. She nodded. “Yeah, you’re definitely going to Hell.”

“Is it because I’m a floozie?”

“It’s because you’re a card-carrying atheist. Where did you think you were going?”

“I’m not an atheist. I’m a Roman Catholic.”

“Not according to this,” Satan said, pulling a tattered membership card from the Society for Constructive Atheism from his pocket.

Mary Renfro went to touch it and then stopped as if it might curse her.

“Go ahead,” Satan said. “You’re already damned.”

Hesitantly, she took it. Her name was typed clearly across the front.

“I haven’t belonged to this since I was thirteen years old. I canceled my membership.”

“No, you didn’t,” Satan said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“I sent in the form to cancel my membership. It was really long and you had to write an essay about why you were giving up and becoming a soft minded religionist. I know I sent it in. I’m sure of it.”

“You prepaid forty-five dollars for a lifetime membership. That precedes and supercedes membership in any other theological or religious organization. Sorry, but you’re an atheist and you’re going to Hell.”

“No, that’s not right,” she said. “Fifteen years as a Poor Clare in service to the less fortunate is canceled out by a mail order membership in a society of atheists that I signed up for when I was thirteen years old and had just read Ayn Rand for the first time?”

“That’s pretty much it,” Satan said.

“God does not make mistakes,” Sister Mary said. “His Creation is not the Department of Motor Vehicles. It is beautiful and perfect in its order and arrangement, every atom a part of God’s ever-unfolding plan.”

“No, it’s actually exactly like the Department of Motor Vehicles,” Satan said. “Except less efficient. Now, just relax. I have to kill you immediately.”

“I don’t want to die!” she sobbed.

“No one does,” Satan said. “But it’s not so bad. A lot of people find death very relaxing.”

“Why?”

“Well, they’re not so worried about dying anymore, for one thing,” Satan said.

Sister Mary began to cry again.

Satan was at a loss. He couldn’t just reach into Mary Renfro and extinguish her life, she had to be distracted first. That’s why people die in accidents so often. You’re driving along, you take a corner a bit too fast and the next thing you know you’ve got the steering wheel stuck through your chest. This is so startling that it’s quite easy for one of Death’s minions to reach in at this exact moment and extinguish your life. Being alive is something that most human beings are committed to in a passionate kind of way. But sudden shocks can make you lose your focus and when your metaphysical immune system is lowered like this it’s easy to catch a cold, if by “catch a cold” you mean “die.” Then, after the soul marinates in its lifeless corpse for a few days it comes to realize that it’s not very comfortable and it’s ready to move on to whatever is coming next. That’s when a demon reaches in, pulls it out and processes it into Hell or Heaven. It’s not an exact science but then again nothing is. Not even the exact sciences.

Anyways, however the process works surprise is key: a sudden illness, a pack of feral cats, an out-of-control wood chipper, anything for which most people are completely unprepared. Confronted by the sobbing Mary Renfro, Satan did not know how to regain the element of surprise, so he slapped her.

“What are you doing?” she cried.

“Trying to surprise you,” Satan said. “Did it work?”

“Why do I have to die?” Mary Renfro moaned. She grabbed Satan’s collar and began to rock back and forth. “I’m only thirty-four. I’ve led a good life. Is it because I’m pregnant?”

“A pregnant nun?” Satan said. “Why does nothing surprise me anymore? No, you’re dying because of what you saw in the airport. Humans weren’t meant to see things like that, they aren’t equipped to see my face. The angels wiped the memories of most of the people there, but somehow you slipped past them.”

“I couldn’t have,” Mary said. “God’s servants are infallible.”

“Not so much,” Satan said.

“Can I get out of this bathtub?” Mary asked. “If you’re going to kill me then I’d like to die with some dignity.”

“Fine.”

Satan pushed himself up and helped Mary out of the tub. Whereupon she promptly picked up the biggest shard of porcelain from the floor and jammed it into his chest.

“Die, demon!” she shouted.

“Stop it,” Satan said, pulling out the long, porcelain splinter. “I’m glad you’re going to Hell. You’re a very violent nun.”

Mary Renfro began to cry again.

“Why does everyone tell me I’m a bad nun.” she wailed.

“Let’s just get you dead,” Satan said, trying to think through his surprise options. A gas main explosion? A single-engine plane smashing through the ceiling? Dinosaur stampede?

“I am a bad nun,” she said, interrupting his train of thought. “I kill people with my prayers. And I am a victim of violent passions. And I am pregnant with the Devil’s baby.”

“Whoa,” Satan said. “What was that last part?”

“If you are the author of the atrocity in the airport, then you are also the father of my child.”

“How do you figure?”

“That’s when I became with child.”

Satan thought about it. When he was on Earth and let his mind wander the way he had in Charlotte his evil was unleashed like an offensive personal odor. It was a stupid thing, his evil, with an over-developed sense of irony, dedicated to dredging up the worst nightmares a human being could conceive of and turning them into reality. It would make sense that the worst thing it could do to a celibate, virginal nun was to impregnate her. And since it was his evil doing the impregnating, it was technically his child.

Satan felt faint. Just when he thought things were as absolutely terrible as possible, they got worse.

At that moment, there was a tapping at the window. Satan looked up and saw a cherub hovering outside, his chubby body supported by his improbably tiny wings. The cherub smiled, pointed at Mary Renfro and then drew his finger across his neck and tapped his wrist.

“Alright, alright,” Satan said. “I’m killing her. I’m killing her.”

Mary fell to her knees, gawping at the cherub. This was a big moment for her: physical proof of the existence of a God. She had believed in God all of her life, but this angel of the Heavenly Host was a glorious revelation. The cherub balanced on the narrow windowsill and pressed its fat face up against the window, staring at her hungrily, drooling from its rubbery lips. Satan thumped the window hard and the startled cherub flew away.

“Oh, Lord, thank you for your intervention, delivering unto me proof of your glory. That you would take an interest in a sinner such as myself is a sign that no one is fallen so far from your flock that they cannot be saved,” Mary prayed.

Satan thought about this for a moment. Why did the Heavenly Host care so much about this pregnant nun? Why had they sent a cherub to give him the hurry up? When his attention had wandered that time on the Hindenburg they had just crashed the thing. Same with Tunguska. But now they were trying way too hard. In fact, everything was kind of weird right now. Death had screwed up in an uncharacteristic way. Funds were low. Demons were mutinous. He was the subject of a major lawsuit. Every time he saw Gabriel he had to listen to some kind of smack talk about the Ultimate Death Match. And now he was being pushed into killing a nun who said she was carrying his child.

He went into the other room and picked up the phone.

“Nero? Hi,” he said.

“Did you kill the nun yet?” Nero asked.

“They just sent a cherub to see if I’d done it already. Why are they micromanaging this thing?”

“Heaven seems to be specializing in angelic intercessions this month,” Nero said. “One of Death’s minions tells me that an angel met Death over the Summerville Speedway and wrestled him away from that Nascar accident.”

“Do you believe him?”

“It does bear further investigation.”

“What is going on?” Satan asked.

“I don’t know,” Nero said. “But might I suggest that you kill that nun and then get back here as quickly as possible?”

“I don’t think I’m going to kill her,” Satan said.

“Sir! What are you saying?”

“I don’t know. I’m just sort of making it up as I go along.”

“Sir, I strongly suggest that now is not the time to antagonize the Heavenly Host. They clearly want this nun dead.”

“I just have a sneaking suspicion that things aren’t what they seem,” Satan said. “And if they want her dead so badly, maybe I should keep her alive.”

“I encourage you to think strategically,” Nero said.

“I don’t know what that means,” Satan said and hung up.

He sat on the bed and tried to think.

“The war isn’t going well?” Mary asked, poking her head out of the bathroom.

“What war?” Satan asked.

“The war between Heaven and Hell,” Mary said.

“That was a long time ago. Now, we’ve got synergy. If we didn’t cooperate with Heaven on a regular basis and share the logistical duties it would be a bureaucratic nightmare. You’d never be able to find anything out. Omnipotence would be a joke.”

“Prince of Lies!” Mary said.

“Give it a rest,” Satan said. “ Things haven’t been going well lately. Profits are down more than usual. A lot of our creditors are demanding payment. We’re having problems with our gas lines, I’m getting sued by some woman who wrote a book claiming I molested her, and while it sounds like the kind of thing I could have done I assure you that fornicating with a human is about as attractive to me as fornicating with a ham sandwich, and now I find out that I may have fired Death over something that wasn’t even his fault.”

“And you’re having a baby,” Mary said.

Satan nodded, glumly.

“And I’m having a baby,” he agreed.

“Sounds like the Heavenly Host has you on the ropes,” Mary said.

“I hadn’t thought about it that way until now,” Satan said, and stood up. “Come on.”

“I go nowhere with you, Deceiver.”

“Not even to Heaven?”

“What should I wear?” Mary asked. “Something formal? My habit? Casual wear?”

“Don’t bother,” Satan said. “Whatever you wear it won’t be good enough. Now come on, where’s your nearest Quiznos?”



Satan found one in the phonebook and once they were in the cab he explained.

“Have you ever eaten at a Quiznos?” he asked. Mary shook her head. “Right. No one eats at Quiznos, and yet they’re everywhere. There’s a reason for that. Heaven leases space from them for their express elevators.

Mary didn’t say anything. Her insides were vibrating. She was nervous. She was about to go to Heaven. Even if she had to go there with Satan, it was still Heaven. How many Poor Clares got this opportunity? She felt like she was about to burst, but that might just have been the baby pressing against her bladder. Was it that big yet? She really didn’t know anything about pregnancy or the human reproductive system.

“What are we going to do there?” she asked.

“I’m going to try to find out why they really want you dead,” Satan said. “I have a hard time believing that there’s some kind of conspiracy going on. Heaven doesn’t go for conspiracies. Most likely it’s nothing and I’ll just wind up killing you after all. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Nero it’s that you can never be too paranoid. Or too rich.”

“So if it’s nothing, I’ll die?” Sister Mary asked.

“Right,” Satan said.

He was thinking a shark attack. That ought to take her by surprise.

“And then I’ll go to Hell?” Mary asked.

“For all eternity,” Satan said.

And all of a sudden, in the cab, all alone, fated to die and burn in Hell for all eternity, Mary Renfro started to cry.

“What’d you do to her?” the cabbie snarled. “What’d you say to her, you bastid. Makin’ a nun cry?”

He pulled the cab over and threw one beefy forearm over the back seat.

“Sister, you wannme to come back there an’ kick ‘is ass? This sumbitch say something nasty to you? Something perverted?”

“Would you do something before this gets ugly?” Satan hissed at Sister Mary.

“I’m fine,” Mary said. “Just...take us to Quiznos.”

“You’re not fine, you’re crying.”

“I’m crying because I’m so happy,” she said. He looked at her quizzically. “I’m so happy about...the toasted sandwiches.” she said. “Really.”

The cabbie shrugged and drove on.



They pulled up outside a Quiznos. It anchored the corner of a bleak strip mall and, like all Quiznos, when you walked inside you entered a universe of sadness. Curling, laminated signs advertising products that no one was interested in dangled from the ceiling by strings like cardboard suicides. A neon sign over the counter reminded non-existent customers that the food they weren’t eating was, “Mmmm...tasty...” Two employees who had long ago abandoned any expectation of ever serving actual customers listlessly wiped sanitized rags across cutting boards that no one had ever used. No one ordered a toasty sandwich. No one asked for the key to the bathroom. No one paid for a refill. In their bins, tasteless tomato slices and piles of shredded iceberg lettuce slowly oxidized and turned brown.

As soon as Satan and Sister Mary entered the two employees stopped what they were doing and looked up expectantly.

“Welcome to Quiznos,” one managed to stammer, but by then Satan had led Sister Mary to a door marked “Employees Only” and swiped a key card. It clicked open and he led her into a tiny storage area. The two employee’s shoulders slumped. Even the people who actually came through the door weren’t customers. Carson, the older of the two, looked at her watch: her shift had only started forty-five minutes ago. It felt like forty-five years.

In the storage area, as promised, there was an elevator. Satan pushed the call button. There was a chime and the doors slid open. Inside there were only two buttons, one marked “Up” and the other marked “Down.” He pushed “Up,” the doors rumbled shut and the elevator began to ascend at a ridiculous rate of speed. Sister Mary knelt on the floor and began praying while Satan did his best to ignore her. They rode in silence for a while.

“Would you cut that out?” he finally said.

Sister Mary prayed harder.

“You can suck up all you want,” Satan said. “But you’re still going to Hell.”

“Deceiver,” she hissed, opening her eyes. “I have finally figured it out. You’re here to test my faith.”

“You’re right,” Satan said. “I’m testing you. It’s all a great big test. You’re actually going to win a giant golden banana and stay in Heaven forever when we get there. You got me.”

“I know what’s going on here,” she said.

“I don’t,” he said. “I have no idea what’s going on here, and it’s making me very irritable.”

“I’m talking about my sin.”

“Oh,” Satan said. “That.”

“My turning away from God and towards the false idol of atheism is not a mortal sin. It is a venial sin.”

“I can’t really tell them apart.”

“I must spend time in Purgatory away from the presence of My Lord in order to be cleansed of my apostasy,” Mary said. “And once cleansed I will ascend into the presence of my Creator.”

“Actually no,” Satan said.

“I will not debate theology with Satan,” Mary said.

“I’m just saying, there is no Purgatory. So you probably won’t be spending any time in it.”

“There is a Purgatory,” Mary said. “And I expect to be spending time there atoning for my venial sin.”

“You can believe me or not,” Satan said. “But Purgatory was never that profitable, so back in the 50’s Heaven figured it would be more cost effective to chop it up into parcels and lease it out. There are pieces of Purgatory everywhere. They leased a chunk of it to the Port Authority of New York back in ‘51 to use as a bus station, they leased parts of it to city governments all over the world to use as permit and licensing offices, a lot of it went to the old Soviet Union. The last piece of it was actually leased to FEMA after Hurricane Katrina for emergency housing. It generates some pretty hefty rental revenue for Heaven.”

Sister Mary narrowed her eyes

“Mock not my beliefs, O Satan.”

“Have it your way,” he said.

Sister Mary went back to praying. The elevator kept ascending. It ascended for a long time. It ascended for so long that finally Mary got bored. It takes a lot to bore a nun. They wear the same clothes every day and they love nothing more than praying for hours on end, but this elevator ride was that long.

“Is Heaven wonderful?” she finally asked.

“What?”

“Is it glorious to be in the presence of the Creator?”

“It’s alright,” Satan said.

“Hell is a terrible place, isn’t it?”

“Pretty awful.”

“What will happen if I go?”

“Well, if you must know, you’re probably going down to the Seventh Circle which is where blasphemers are punished. You’ll have to lie in a desert of burning sand while fire rains down on you.”

“And I’ll wander?”

“No, you’ll lie down. The sodomites get to wander. I don’t know why that is.”

Sister Mary began to cry.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” she said. “I failed my Lord. I blasphemed and now I’ll be burned in the fires of Hell for eternity and I deserve it.”

“Look,” Satan said. “I don’t think ‘deserve’ has much to do with it. I’ve been around pretty much since the beginning and there are a lot of things that make the Universe go round – gravity, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, feng shui – but nowhere on that list are you going to find ‘deserve.’ That concept exists nowhere except in the minds of men. So give up on this deserve business. You’re going to Hell because you forgot to cancel an automatically renewing membership in an atheist society. That’s all. You were probably a great nun.”

“No,” Sister Mary said. “I wasn’t. I was fearful and cowardly and I killed a lot of people.”

“Come again?”

“I killed people with my prayers,” Sister Mary said. “Every time I prayed for someone they passed. Now I see that it was the atheism that made my prayers toxic.”

“Yeah,” Satan said. “That actually sounds just petty and ridiculous enough to be true.”

Then the elevator bumped to a stop, the doors dinged open and they found themselves in Heaven.