Satan Loves You

He stopped to collect a distracted Sister Mary from the reception area and then Gabriel loaded she and Satan back onto the electric cart and they whizzed back to the lobby.

“Still sulking?” Gabriel asked Satan.

“You’ve been behind this all along, haven’t you?” Satan said. “It’s that ‘I’d rather be a king in Hell than serve in Heaven’ thing?”

“I’m merely a servant of The Creator’s will,” Gabriel said. “You’re the one who let things get embarrassing down there. You left us with no choice but to annex Hell.”

“It’s not going to happen.”

“The only decision you can make is whether it’ll happen the hard way or the easy way.”

“Hard way,” Satan said.

“I know you’re all into fighting the Creator’s will and rebelling and not going along with the plan, but you need to grow up. You may be as ageless as the rest of us but you’ve got the emotional maturity of a hyperactive four-year-old. He’s turned a blind eye to the mess you’ve made, but no more. Fires going out? Death going missing? Dead people backed up on Earth waiting to die? You haven’t designed a new torment in almost two thousand years.”

“I keep trying,” Satan said. “But I have to take care of every single thing every single minute of every single day and so I don’t have a lot of time to lie on my back in a meadow and stare up at the clouds and dream up new torments. Some of us don’t have a bunch of assistants and slave labor to make it all go easy.”

“Touchy, touchy,” Gabriel said. “Why don’t you go on vacation and let me take over early? It’ll earn you some goodwill up here.”

The electric cart purred to a stop in the lobby. Satan stalked over to the elevators but somehow, no matter how quickly he walked, Gabriel was always a step ahead of him. Sister Mary shuffled along glumly in their wake.

“You don’t have a wing to flap with,” Satan said. “You’ve had me running in circles but you haven’t won the Ultimate Death Match yet. And if you don’t, all your plans go up in smoke.”

Gabriel pushed the call button.

“Who’s going to wrestle for you? Her.”

He indicated Mary Renfro who was lost in her own world.

“Oh, we’ve got someone,” Satan said. “I think you’ll be surprised. I’m the Prince of Lies – a secret wrestler would be just my style.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Maybe. But what if I’m not? Besides, you’ve left a chink in your plan and when you’re dealing with me a chink is all I need.”

“What chink?”

“If they don’t serve me the subpoena, I don’t go to court. And if I don’t go to court how am I embarrassing Heaven? And if I’m not embarrassing Heaven, then why would you need to take over Hell?”

The elevator doors dinged open. A heavy-set black woman stepped out. In her hand was a clipboard. She looked at it and then looked at Satan.

“I’ve got a winning lottery ticket here for one Mr. Satan. Do you have any ID?”

Satan smirked at Gabriel.

“Looks like my luck is turning around.”

He turned back to the woman.

“I don’t carry ID.”

“But are you Lucifer, Father of Lies, also known as Satan, Beelzebub, the Horned Goat, Lord of Darkness, God of the Pit, Leviathan, Pluto, Azmodeus, Servant of Evil, the Fallen Angel, and Baphomet?”

“That’s what they say.”

“Then consider yourself served,” she said and with a flourish she handed Satan a subpoena. “Sign here, and here’s your receipt.”

She got back on the elevator and the doors rolled shut. Satan stared at the subpoena in his hand.

“Oh, tough luck,” Gabriel said. “I wonder how that happened? Have a nice ride.”

He herded the stunned Satan and the distracted Sister Mary into another elevator, then he lowered his voice and pointed at Mary behind his hand.

“And by the way,” he stage whispered. “You really need to kill her before you really piss everyone off. Buh-bye.”

The last thing they saw as the doors closed was Gabriel waggling his fingers at them and giving a great, big corn-eating grin.



The ride back down to Earth was as long and boring as the ride up and, despite the hatred Sister Mary felt for Satan, boredom has a way of breaking down barriers. After a while, she had to ask:

“What’s that for?”

She was pointing at the subpoena.

“Nothing.”

“It didn’t look like nothing to me.”

“It’s stupid, okay? It’s that woman suing me because she says that I had sex with her when she was in one of those dumb Me Worshipping cults.”

“Satan worshipping? She was one of your minions?”

“I don’t have minions and I try to have as little to do with those cults as I can. Have you seen the kind of people who join up?”

“But did you have sex with her?”

“It was the Eighties. Everyone was on coke. She probably went to an Ozzy Osbourne show or something and got confused.”

“You’re disgusting.”

Satan had had enough.

“I’m disgusting? Is that the best you can do? Really? According to you, I’m the Antichrist, the guy who gave birth to Hitler, designed the nuclear missile, invented serial killers, started all those earthquakes in China, caused 9/11 and made the Middle East volatile. Cancer is all my fault, alcoholism is my favorite party trick and I’m the source of all your problems, and the best you can come up with is that I’m disgusting? You can do better than that. Come on. I’m waiting. Let me have it.”

Sister Mary loathed the Devil with every atom of her being, but right now they were in an elevator together and he looked human and it was hard to keep her rage stoked to a roaring blaze.

“Are you really going to kill me?” she asked.

“No,” Satan said. “I don’t think so. I’m outgunned here and I need every advantage I can get. So if everyone in Heaven wants you dead, then it’s in my best interests to keep you alive. At least until the Ultimate Death Match.”

“Is that something important?”

“It didn’t used to be,” Satan said. “Every century, Heaven, Hell and Purgatory had a company get-together. Fair rides, petting zoos, cotton candy, and an informal wrestling match: Heaven versus Hell, winner takes on Purgatory. Whoever lost had to sit in the dunking booth. Everyone used to be a really good sport about it but then, about two thousand years ago, Heaven got really competitive. Maybe it was the Nazarene going to Earth, or that whole Bible smear job that came out. No one really knows. But the stakes got higher. No more petting zoo. No more pony rides. Just wrestling. And Purgatory hasn’t been allowed to enter the ring in ages. Now it’s just a Heaven vs. Hell smackdown and if they win they get Hell. If we win, we keep it.”

“So if you lose, they get everything and if you win everything stays the same?” asked Sister Mary.

“No one said it was fair, but who’m I going to complain to?”

“Have you ever lost?”

“Not once. War usually wrestled tag team with Death, and if professional wrestling was ballet they were dancing Swan Lake. The archangels always considered it beneath them to get in the ring and most angels are giant wimps anyways. They talk tough but take away their swords of fire and give them a Mongolian Chop and they fold like a rental chair.”

“Who’s wrestling for Heaven this time.”

“Michael. He’s never done it before.”

“And you’ve got a secret wrestler?”

“What? That? No, I was bluffing. I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

“I don’t want to have your baby,” Sister Mary blurted out.

“That makes two of us,” Satan said. “But it’s not really my baby.”

“You made it happen. It’s your baby.”

“I can get rid of it for you,” Satan said.

“I don’t believe in abortion.”

“I’ll think of something,” Satan said. “I’ve got eleven days. That’s plenty of time.”

They lapsed into silence again.

And then the cable snapped.

Sister Mary screamed.

The elevator plunged straight down at a sickening speed. Just when it felt like it should stop it kept plunging, and plunging, and plunging. Every time Sister Mary thought it was plunging as fast as it could plunge it would plunge faster. The noise of the elevator car scraping and bumping the sides of the shaft was deafening. Sister Mary’s fear was overwhelming. Her brain felt like it was trying to claw its way out of her skull.

“I’m going to die!” she yelled, and knowing that dying before she could forgive the one who had wronged her the most, knowing that this would damn her to Hell for eternity, knowing that death would make a mockery of her life caused panic to bubble up out of her throat, and she screamed louder.

Satan grabbed her by the habit and pulled her face to his.

“You won’t die,” he shouted.

“I’m going to die!”

“I won’t let you!” he shouted.

“You’ll save me?”

“I’ll save you.”

“At the cost of my soul!” she screamed, realization suddenly dawning on her.

“I don’t want your soul!”

“Promise?”

“Yes, but you have to do what I say.”

“Alright. But I’m not going to desecrate any Bibles.”

Nothing happened. They continued to fall, the elevator screaming down the shaft.

“Do something!” she yelled when she couldn’t stand it any longer. “Save me!”

“I am,” Satan said.

“How?”

“When I say ‘jump’ I need you to jump.”

Her stomach hit the back of her throat, bile flooded her sinuses, her eyes dilated so fast she almost blacked out. It was the “Jump in a Falling Elevator” trick, the one that everyone over the age of five knew didn’t work.

“No,” she said in a panic. “No, no, no, no, no...”

“Trust me,” Satan said. “It’ll work.”

“The momentum, the velocity, falling objects, mass and speed and force and gravity and kinetic energy and don’t be stupid! It won’t work!”

“Trust me!” he said.

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head wildly back and forth.

“Jump!” Satan screamed at her.

And he jumped, and he pulled her tightly to him, shielding her face against his chest, and she had to jump too and the elevator smashed into the ground and debris shrapneled through the air like a bomb going off and the noise was like a metal wave pushing her underwater and the air was thick with the taste of hot steel and burning engine grease and then it got still again and her ankles hurt badly and that must mean...

“I’m alive?” she said in disbelief. She was on all fours on the ground. “I’m alive? I’m alive. I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive!”

The Quiznos was a crater. It looked less like an underperforming fast food franchise and more like the target of a hurricane, with whole-wheat buns and fifteen-gallon condiment jugs smeared across the parking lot like a Jackson Pollock. All you’d need to do was shrink it, shellac it and mount it on the wall to have a kinetic piece of modern art.

Sister Mary hobbled around in circles, stumping back and forth on her bruised ankles as fast as she could, laughing like a crazy person with the sheer joy of being alive. Satan sat on a flattened reach-in fridge and shook rubble out of his shoes. Then Sister Mary tripped over the smashed body of Quiznos Team Member Carson, crushed beneath a ten-foot-long particleboard counter. The smile froze on Sister Mary’s lips and she knelt at the side of the dying girl. She held her broken hand and leaned in to listen to her gasps.

“It’s okay, I won’t leave you,” she said. “Do you know the Act of Contrition? We’ll say an Act of Contrition together and then take Communion. There’s bread here, I’ll bless it. It won’t be exactly right but it’ll – ”

Carson pulled her closer to her bloody lips.

“I’m...a UU...” she said.

A UU. A Unitarian Universalist.

“Might as well be a Communist,” Sister Mary thought, but she kept it to herself. The girl was dying. It really wasn’t the time.

“My...hair?” Carson asked. “It looks...okay?” She had always been proud of her hair. It was the one thing in her life she’d been able to control.

Sister Mary smoothed the girl’s bangs away from her forehead.

“You have great hair,” she said. “I always wanted mine to be this thick. You’ll have to tell me how – ”

But Carson was already dead.

“Come on,” Satan said. “We’ve got to get to Hell right away.”

“What happened?” Sister Mary asked.

“I think they tried to get a jump on having me kill you,” Satan said.

“That girl didn’t get an Act of Contrition,” Sister Mary said. “I was going to do it but she just died.”

“Then you’ll be seeing her in Hell soon enough,” Satan said, pulling her away.

Sister Mary looked back at the smoking crater.

“How did I survive?” she asked. “Basic physics says I should have died.

“Basic physics tend to get all wonky when I’m around,” Satan said, pulling her along behind him. “Come on, we’re going to make a pit stop along the way.”



The cab pulled up outside the Welcome Center for the Detroit Sunrise/Sunset Maturity Village. It was a singularly uninspiring place to die, little more than a giant brick container full of old, unwanted people. To Sister Mary, it looked exactly like Shadow Grove.

“I’m not going inside a retirement home,” Sister Mary said. “I’ve got a history with those places.”

“Then stay here,” Satan said. “I won’t be long.”

He pushed open the glass front doors and found the name he wanted on the directory. A shiny linoleum hallway took him to the Rainbow Wing, room RW-12. He knocked, but there was no answer. He tried the doorknob and it opened immediately. He stepped inside the darkened room. It was warm and stuffy and smelled like skin. The curtains were drawn and it was packed with furniture that was far too large for the miserly amount of floor space. A gloomy figure was sitting in a La-Z-Boy Reclina-Rocker planted right in front of the TV, which was going full blast. The Price Is Right was on.

“Hello, Death,” Satan said.

Death turned up the volume.

“I don’t apologize very often,” Satan said. “So just hear me out.”

Death didn’t move. Drew Carey’s voice brayed. Satan walked over to the Reclina-Rocker and tried to pull the remote control out of Death’s hand, but Death’s grip was too strong. Satan had to settle for pressing the “Mute” button.

“I’m sorry for firing you,” he said, then waited for Death to say something. After almost a full minute he realized that Death was going to play hard-to-get.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he continued. “What you did was sloppy but I overreacted. And I need your help. It’s all falling apart without you. I need you to come back.”

Death just watched Drew Carey silently mugging and grinning.

“Please,” Satan said, unaccustomed to begging.

Death gave no indication that an answer was forthcoming. Satan decided to try another tack.

“Are you going to just sit here for eternity watching daytime television?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Death mumbled.

“It’s a waste,” Satan said, happy to be getting somewhere.

“I’ve got satellite,” Death said. “I watch TCM. I never got to watch TV when I was working for you. I never got to watch anything. I was always working.”

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Satan said. “It’ll be different this time, I promise.”

“No it won’t,” Death said. “You aren’t capable of making it different. You keep things the same, all the time.”

“I can change,” Satan said.

“No you can’t.”

“You’re probably right,” Satan admitted. “Won’t you just come to Hell and see what’s going on? Talk to your minions? Get them back on the job. They’re not working.”

“Why?”

“To protest you being fired.”

“Good for them.”

“But the dying are stacking up,” Satan said. “We’re getting backlogged. Already we’re three days behind on mass deaths.”

“Not my problem anymore,” Death said. “Besides, I’m sick of walking. I’ve vowed never to walk again. I spent millennia walking and what did it get me? Fired. That’s what it got me.”

“You didn’t make that vow,” Satan said.

“Oh, yes I did,” Death protested, indignantly.

This had Satan worried. Death was serious about one thing and that was vows. If Death made a vow, Satan knew he was pretty much sticking to it. A vow to never walk again? There was no way he could make him break it. Sure, Death could do a lot online or by phone but he needed him to come to Hell and kick some of his minions in the butt. If Death was refusing to walk there was no way he was ever going to get him down there. Hell wasn’t handicapped accessible.

“You seriously made that vow?” Satan asked.

“I seriously did,” Death said.

Satan sighed.

“I guess there’s no point in further discussion,” Satan said.

Death turned the volume back up. Drew Carey was jumping up and down.

“Thank you for firing me,” Death said as Satan reached the door. “I needed a break.”

Satan didn’t answer. He went out into the hall. He was going to slam the door behind him but then he stopped himself. What was the point? Death wasn’t coming back.