What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [3]
“What floods? What earthquakes? What on Earth are you talking about?” Satan shooed his hands, as if he could wave away such utter nonsense. He didn’t really care much for the news. He’d found that he much preferred watching science fiction and adventure stories.
“Well—” said the student, gathering himself up.
Another student – who’d apparently grown up in a part of the country where folks talk faster – interrupted. “What about those tornadoes last year – the one in New York and the one in England – on the same day even? And all that weird stuff happening down in Texas?”
“Right, that’s what I’m talking about,” said the be-sweatered Southerner. “Do you think it’s the end of the world as we know it?” The other students started nodding and yeahing at each other.
Satan seethed for a moment, and then burst. “I had nothing to do with any of that!” he screamed. “Nothing! And if I didn’t do it, it can’t be happening! So it’s nothing!” He paused, wide eyed, and scanned his stunned and silent audience.
One student was neither stunned nor silent. She had on a burlap sack. “But I thought—” she started to say, but didn’t finish on account of the fact that, at that instant, there was an abrupt step change in the amount of entropy in the room. All of the atoms that had made up the stage at the front of Gaston Hall for the hundred or so years of its existence spontaneously rearranged themselves into a diffuse, unstructured array. This they accomplished with the assistance of a great deal of heat, some flames, a lot of noise, and a shockwave that lifted the first few rows of students (along with their seats and various personal belongings) into the air, depositing them approximately fifteen feet backward in the auditorium.
The students’ reaction to the explosion was fairly normal, which is to say that there was a lot of screaming and hollering and falling over or lying very still under fiery debris.
Satan stood, seething amidst clouds of swirling, settling dust, and muttered to himself.
“Oh, God!” said one student.
The Devil’s head snapped up. “Where?”
“I think she’s dead!” said another. “Oh my God, she’s dead!”
The earnestly-sweatered Southerner lurched out from underneath a pile of debris. He stood, wiped at a line of blood that trickled down his forehead, and surveyed the mayhem with wide eyes. Fortunately, his sweater seemed to have escaped the blast unharmed. “Professor?”
Satan didn’t notice. He’d gone back to his ranting. “How dare He?! It’s my job! Mine! And if I choose not to do it…” He turned, started to pace, stopped, and turned again.
“Professor?”
“He can’t just start it without me! That’s the whole reason I came here!” The fancy paintings on the walls burst into flames, one-by-one. He threw up his arms, and the glass in the windows shattered and sprayed into the room.
There was some more screaming. The student who’d been making startled statements about the deceased state of one of his fellow students encountered more fallen comrades, and lamented their passing as well.
From out of nowhere, a frog zipped through the air and splattered against the wall. Satan let slip a tiny smirk, and swept over to the young man in the sweater. “It’s not happening,” he said.
“What? What?”
“None of it,” said the Devil. He shrugged and smiled.
Sirens outside announced the arrival of one or more emergency vehicles.
“I—I don’t understand what—”
“This!” Satan grabbed the student by the collar, and flung his free arm out to indicate all of this. He smiled broadly, but then let go, jerking back at the sound of a distressed cry from the squirrely girl, whose hand he’d apparently been standing on. He took a moment to kick her and turned back to face the student in the sweater.
The young man made a confused, squinty face at the Devil.
“Nope,” said Satan, surveying the damage he’d done. “Not happening.” He spun, his eyes wide and defiant, and grabbed the young man by the sweater again, this time with more enthusiasm. “But what if it is?”
Chapter 2. Behold: Megachurch
Pastor William Earl Cadmon stood on the stage of his