What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [80]
“I sometimes feel the same way, my friend.” Eli held his arm out, and patted the Devil on the back. “It’s normal to feel such things in days like these.”
Satan shook his head, arched his eyebrows, and made kind of a cockeyed grimace. “Days like these?”
“The End Times,” said Eli.
“Ah, yes.”
In front of them the fracas between the soldiers and the naked guys had grown. Two more naked guys showed up to try to liberate the first. But now all three were face down on the ground, and had been mounted by the soldiers – solely, one assumes, for the purpose of applying handcuffs and preparing the men for transport to some place where they could be sodomized by folks who were not actually on the state payroll.
“I think we should move on,” said Eli.
They walked together for a while. Eli identified the buildings and offered little anecdotes. “I once saw a man being intimate with a dog behind that dumpster.” He scratched his chin and then pointed to the building behind the dumpster. “That’s the Governor’s Mansion.”
Satan felt very odd for a moment. Shadowy, flickering thoughts teased and flitted through his brain and taunted him. What was it? He felt … angry. Intensely angry. It was a strange sensation, not because it was anger, but because there just seemed to be so much of it, and it seemed, for whatever reason, to be entirely focused on the giant, white house in front of him. He felt it build and roil and boil over itself until he felt as if his body might rip or explode even. And then the Governor’s Mansion burst into flames.
“Huh,” said Eli. “Isn’t that something. Quite unusual.” They stood together for a moment, staring at the flames. “Right,” said Eli. “Let us be off on our journey.” He strode off, or shuffled rather, with dignity, confidence, and a sense of purpose – down the street.
Satan stayed for a moment to watch the flames, but then hurried to catch up. “I’m going to need some new clothes,” he said. A buzzer sounded behind them, followed shortly by sirens.
“Why?” asked Eli. “Those seem to fit you well. I’ll grant you that they’re torn up a bit, and maybe a little stained, but they seem perfectly usable to me.” He stared at Satan as they walked. “If you’re uncomfortable, you should ask yourself why. Figure that out before you go hunting new threads.”
“I am uncomfortable,” said the Devil, “because these clothes are dirty and shredded.” He held up his arm and tugged at his sleeve to make the dirtiness and shreddedness more clearly apparent. “And anyway, they just don’t seem … quite right or something.”
“Trifling matters.” Eli waved his hand dismissively and returned to his shuffling. “Despite what they say, the clothes do not make the man. They merely determine the set of assumptions others make about the man.”
Satan felt the odd, angry feeling again. But this time it was less of a volcanic swelling, than kind of a low grade, electrical crackling. He regarded the sensation as if from a distance. It was strange and a little bit interesting – he seemed to be buzzing very slightly – but he was unsure what to make of it other than to note its strangeness. He sighed a weary, frustrated sigh.
“Where are we going?”
Eli offered another dismissive wave. “West. Thar be grub thataway.”
They walked together for several quiet minutes and passed into the more neighborhoody bits of town. They happened upon a vertically-challenged man on the sidewalk in front of an old, run-down apartment building. The man seemed to be in the middle of – or causing – a commotion, and this, to Eli and the Devil at least, offered the hope of some entertainment, in much the same way that a smattering of smashed up cars and recently-separated body parts offers drivers a break from the monotony of actually getting to where they were going. So they paused to watch.
The man on the sidewalk was called Arnie. At least, that’s what he was called by his mother and his aunts and his boss. He actually preferred to be called “The Tank,” but nobody ever called him that. They