What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [18]
“You keep reciting that as if it were some kind of mystical incantation that will make me go away. Do you really think that I didn’t hear you the first five times you said it? Or that I was somehow unable to understand? Oh wait, I’m sorry. Are you, perchance, a complete fucking idiot? Is that the problem?”
“You’re just being rude,” she said. Shirley didn’t like these snooty foreign guys.
“Yes, but you see, you madam, are a moron. And I am having to cope simultaneously with freezing my backside off and your profound stupidity. My rudeness is therefore excused. I am afraid, however, that your stupidity is not. It is, in fact, inexcusable. So I must insist that you cease your idiotic prattling and TURN ON MY FUCKING HEAT ALREADY!” Satan sat down and crossed his legs. He felt calm and in control.
“Hold, please.” Some light jazz came on as Shirley put the Prince of Darkness on hold.
He stood up and began pacing. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. The Dark Lord of the Underworld did not look good in sweaters. Not frumpy brown ones anyway.
The phone continued to play hold music at him while he waited. He held the handset out at arm’s length again, glaring at it with an evil eye, and was just about to fling it at the wall when he remembered the last time he’d been put on hold. He glanced over to where his old telephone was still embedded in the sheetrock and sighed. The ingenuity and deviousness of humans was astounding – hold music was like a cheese grater for the soul. Forget all the fire and brimstone, they really needed to start piping this stuff in down in Hell.
He sighed again. Was it worth this? Was eternal damnation really any worse than sitting on hold, listening to Muzak?
I should just go back, he thought.
It was an odd thing, this nagging sense that he should be back in Hell. He’d been there in rebellion after all. The original and most profound rebellion. And it was strange and uncomfortable to think of rebelling as something he had to do. But then, he’d felt compelled to rebel against God. Driven. Like it was something he couldn’t not do. And it took him a while to understand, but by giving in and succumbing to that compulsion, he was actually serving a purpose set out for him – and for which he’d been designed and created – by God. So, the reality of the situation was that he wasn’t a rebel at all. He was a pawn in God’s big plan. God needed a patsy, a chump – someone to set up as a straw man in His weird, self-serving battle between good and evil.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if the deck hadn’t been stacked; if it had been set up as a fair fight; if he were something more than a pawn in the Lord Almighty’s ineffable f’ed up, dumbass plan. God had created Satan to fulfill a role – to rebel and then get his Satanic ass kicked on Judgment Day. It was such a stupid plan, and yet, it was a nut that Satan couldn’t crack.
He’d always assumed that an idea would come to him; that, when the time came, he’d figure out some way to emerge victorious. The minions had asked him about it constantly, the nagging, incessant shits that they were.
“Master, how will we defeat Him, when it is written that … uh … we will not … uh … defeat … Him?” Belial had asked.
And Satan always responded the same way. “I cannot speak of these things, for He is always listening, but rest assured, I have a plan.”
But he hadn’t. He had no friggin’ idea what he was going to do. And as the time drew closer; as the Day of Judgment crept up, he began to realize that a plan wasn’t going to arrive in his miraculous brain. He’d never figure it out.
And then, one day, he realized, That was the bloody point. It was God’s perfect plan. A plan in which Satan and his followers, his entire army of fallen angels, were all just pawns. It was totally, blindingly obvious, but his rebellion – the Fall – it was all planned, intended, part of His great scheme. He wasn’t the Lord of Hell. He was God’s scapegoat