What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [106]
“Hello,” he said, and took a step forward, nudging his human body back behind him gently with the sole of his sandaled foot.
The old man in the center, who’d let his gun hand fall, now raised it up again.
“Don’t bother,” said Satan. He held up his free hand – the other was busy holding the ice cream cone to his lips – and wind started to blow. The old men started glancing around, this way and that, trying to figure out where the wind was coming from. The man in the center reached up to touch the top of his head, and let out a soft, surprised grunt. The other men turned their heads at the sound, and saw streams of dust that appeared to be coming off of their leader’s melon. After a second, it became clear that it wasn’t dust at all. In fact, the man’s head appeared to be disintegrating, piece by tiny piece, and blowing away in the weird, hot breeze.
“Help me!” A panicked look came over the man’s face. The other men stepped away.
Satan watched and ate his ice cream. His wings continued to beat slowly.
The disintegrating man stumbled backward, his head jerking right and left as he looked to his companions. He grabbed the arm of the man next to him. “Help m—” but then his head had disintegrated entirely. His body continued to move, and his hand remained gripped on the other man’s arm. The other man jumped and shook his arm as if he’d just spotted a spider, and the hand turned into dust.
“This is tedious,” said Satan. There was a soft pop, and the disintegrating man exploded in a cloud of dust. The wind subsided.
The men stood very still, their eyes and eyebrows making them look as if someone had gone man to man with cellophane tape, taping each pair up and open.
“I’m going to get another ice cream cone,” said Satan. “Would any of you like one?”
The old men, unsure of what they’d just witnessed, continued to stare wide-eyed at the Dark Lord of the Underworld. The man with the walker raised his hand.
“Ooh, good! Chocolate, vanilla, or swirl?” asked Satan.
“Are you … an angel?”
Satan’s smile faded. His wings drooped a little. “Wait, you don’t want an ice cream?”
The man shook his head.
“It’s soft serve,” said Satan with a tempting lilt to his voice and a little hand flourish in the direction of the machine.
“Um…”
“Listen, you know you want one. Just give in.” Satan stared expectantly and then nodded to himself. “Be right back.”
The old men watched Satan scoot over to the soft serve machine, and then spent the next few moments looking back and forth and making bewildered faces at one another.
Satan came back with two cones, one of which had frozen yogurt piled nearly a foot high. “Here,” he said, handing the smaller one to the man with the walker. “I got you a swirl.”
“Um, thank you?” said the man.
“Okay. Now.” Satan paused to bite the curlicue swirl off the top of his dessert. When he spoke again, it was with the consonant-free, garbled speech of someone who is attempting to eat cold ice cream without using his teeth. “I wan kno whooz in char.”
“What?” said an old guy who had a goatee.
Satan shook his head to try to get rid of the cold. “Brr,” he said, smiling. He rolled his shoulders, causing his wings to kind of rotate and flutter. “I want to know who is in charge here.”
The men turned to look at each other, and then resumed their startled staring at the angel.
Satan stuck out his tongue and rotated the cone to slurp up the melty bits that might otherwise drip down onto his hand. He smacked his lips. “I guess it’s none