What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [2]
Satan spun around. “Yes? What? What is it?”
It was the squirrely girl. The one with frizzy hair who always interrupted with her stupid questions. She had a mousey face, wore Beatnik glasses, and had on a shapeless brown bag of a dress that looked as if it had been made from a burlap sack, probably because it had, in fact, been made from a burlap sack.
“What’s the deal with all the frogs?” she asked.
“What?” Satan squinted at the girl as if she’d just invited him to find the interloping amphibian and give it a good, ice-cream-worthy lick. “How should I know? What on Earth gave you the impression that I’m some kind of expert on slimy, disgusting things?”
“It’s just that—”
“What? Spit it out!”
“It’s just that there’ve been, you know, a lot of weird things going on lately,” she said. Like so many young people, she was incapable of uttering a simple declarative statement, and instead allowed everything she said to taper off as if it were a question. “I mean, there was that crazy storm? You know?” A quiet murmur of agreement rose up in the auditorium. She turned to look at a couple of other students, eliciting nods and, further back in the room, a quiet, “Yeah.”
Satan answered her question by ignoring it entirely. “What you all did not know,” he said, “was that later that night, in a fit of apostolic fervor, some of those same attentive disciples snuck into the tomb and, taking the ‘this is my body’ tripe far too literally, went to town.” He turned to the audience, his eyes wide. “That’s right – they ate him, the dirty cannibals.”
There were a couple of gasps, and one guy in the back harrumphed, gathered his stuff up, and stormed out. But mostly the students were unmoved by this revelation. This wasn’t their first rodeo with the Devil.
He continued in a quieter, more conspiratorial tone. “Later, when Luke and Mark and all the other tossers wrote the Gospels, they invented the whole we-found-the-tomb-empty bit to cover up the cannibalistic nastiness.” He struck a dignified, remorseful pose, and stared off into the distance. “It was a shameful, inauspicious way for the Church to start, and I can hardly blame them for leaving it out.”
“Professor?” It was the squirrely girl again.
“How many of you have heard of the Shroud of Turin?” asked Satan. He scanned the audience for hands, pointedly ignoring the inquisitive student in a potato sack.
The girl pressed on. “I … heard on the radio this morning … that these are all signs of the Apocalypse?”
“The Shroud of Turin was their tablecloth,” said Satan, holding his hands out wide like a showman.
“And all the frogs?” said the girl. “Well, they called it—they called it ‘a plague’?”
Satan’s hands dropped. He shifted his eyes—all glowy again—and locked them on the girl while the rest of him stayed perfectly still. “What—?” he asked.
“Well, it’s just that it’s all a little —”
“—is your problem?”
“—too coincidental.”
The Devil thought about exploding her. Right there. In front of the whole class. It would be so easy. He stood perfectly still for a moment, picking at some invisible lint on the lapel of his pinstriped jacket as he imagined her head going “Pop!” It would be so very easy. But no. He would maintain control.
“Nonsense,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. He beamed. “Now, as I was saying.”
An earnest-looking student wearing an earnest-looking sweater raised his hand. Satan turned to stare at the young man. “Yes,” he said. “What is your problem?”
The student spoke with a slowness that was either the result of some neurological deficiency or having been raised in the South. “Well, sir, I was also wondering whether you have any thoughts about the string of earthquakes and storms and floods, and all of that?”
“What has that got to do with what I’ve been talking about?” asked Satan. “And anyway, what on Earth is a ‘strang’ of earthquakes?”
“Well,” said the young man, “it’s been all over the news. There’s been a whole ton of earthquakes and floods and volcanoes and things – for months, I—even right here, in—in Washington. Surely you’re aware