What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [0]
Anthony Miller
Copyright © 2011 Anthony Miller,
Brother Maynard Publishing
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0615540023
ISBN-13: 978-0615540023
Dedication
To my partner for life and the three mini-mees.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my wife and partner, Meggie. Thank you to my writer friends, Peazy, Kris, Heather, Jeb, Don, Elizabeth, Joan, Carol, and all the other Lessers. Thank you to my encouragers and first readers, Bob, Beth, Ryan, Steve, Mom, Gary and Jaye. Thank you to the person who said, “Go for it!” – Tina.
Chapter 1. The Apostles Were Dirty Cannibals
There are days when it is appropriate to stomp the hell out of a frog, and days when it is just better not to. The trick is to know which is which.
Satan shot an evil look at the creature on the sidewalk. Fuck frogs, he thought, using the new vernacular he hadn’t quite got the hang of yet. Fuck them to fucking Hell.
He had on his favorite Italian shoes – made out of baby cats or something really nice he couldn’t remember – and they were no good for stomping much of anything, let alone juicy amphibians. But the little bastards were everywhere, just begging to be obliterated and, in the case of a few particularly cheeky ones, having their innards ground into the pavement.
The frog croaked and Satan snapped – Italian shoes be damned, this frog was going to die. He raised his leg high, preparing to stomp down. But then the clock tower tolled, and he realized he was late for class. When he looked back, the frog had hopped away, thereby narrowly escaping stompy, cat-shoe death.
He heaved a weary sigh. His shoulders slumped. After a few strange looks from passersby, he also put his foot down and stalked off to class.
The day had started so well. He wasn’t sure why – yesterday’s therapy session had, after all, been a complete waste of time. The woman hadn’t told him anything helpful. She’d been too busy screaming after he had set her on fire. He’d liked her though – what was her name? Dr. something or other. Whatever. He’d still felt pretty good when he’d woken up this morning.
He’d been having too many anger management episodes lately, too many things he’d had to explode, light on fire, or evaporate – the man on the street, that other man on the street, the lady standing next to the man on the street, the movie theater, all those people inside the movie theater, Pennsylvania Avenue between M and H Streets – the list was really longer than it ought to have been. But then, this morning, he’d woken up feeling like this was it; like he was really going to be able to change this time.
It hadn’t taken very long for his optimism to fade, though. He’d only gone a few steps from the parking garage when he’d seen his first frog of the day. And then he’d seen about fifty of that frog’s slimy, froggy friends, at which point the morning’s cool demeanor had checked out, leaving the Devil teetering on the edge.
You might think that, of all God’s creatures, frogs probably wouldn’t be particularly high up on the list of what irked the Prince of Darkness, but each of us has his Kryptonite. Of course, it wasn’t just the sliminess, croakiness, or hoppiness of the frogs that set him off. It was what the frogs represented – or what they seemed to represent. Maybe. Hopefully not, but maybe.
A bitch fuck ass shit fucker fucker bitch plague, thought Satan.
He practiced his anger-management respiration exercises as he clomped off toward the be-spired edifice of Healy Hall. He wasn’t very good at it, but soldiered onward with gusto, and the other pedestrians gave him a wide berth on account of the horsey breathing sounds he was making.
Healy Hall is a fancy place. It has lots of pointy bits made of serious-looking gray stone that give it a slightly ominous, gothic appearance, and the whole thing should probably be in a museum. But it isn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact – its historied halls are instead used as the place where Georgetown students go to get their forms and papers stamped, and where they attend boring survey courses with titles