What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [81]
Today, he was yelling at an old man. “Get moving, old man!”
A frail, weather-beaten, and weary-looking old man staggered past, struggling underneath the weight of an old mattress. Each step he took, as he made his way toward an old truck, looked as if it might be his last.
“Come on, old man! I haven’t got all day!”
The old man stumbled and staggered, but managed to take the last few steps to the back of the truck. He turned sideways, letting the mattress slide off his back and onto the ground, and he leaned back against the truck, panting.
The Tank was too busy yelling to notice as Eli and the Devil approached. “Move your ass, old man! Get back up there and get the rest of it!”
An elderly woman sat on the edge of a window sill, looking at her husband with hopeless eyes. Eli sidled up to her and asked what was going on.
“We’ve been evicted. They want to build condominiums for the college students. We’re old. Social Security isn’t enough.” She waved a crooked, boney finger in the general direction of The Tank. “He raised our rent. It’s just too much. Too much.” She let her arm drop.
The Tank noticed the old woman. “Quit your yammering, grandma.” She leveled a baleful gaze at him. In her eyes was a standard dose of old-aged wisdom, and quite a bit of weariness, but there was no fear. So he yelled at her some more. “You better get your crap out of there by five.”
Satan glanced and saw that the woman’s husband was back on his feet, wheezing and coughing as he tried to lift the mattress into the back of the truck. He grunted and strained and finally got the mattress up and over the rail of the truck’s bed. He turned and, with his back up against the truck, slumped back down onto the ground in a heap of very tired old man.
Even The Tank seemed to be put off a little by the sight of the man collapsing so pathetically. He quickly turned to try to shift the blame to the wife. “Why don’t you get off your wrinkly old ass, grandma, and go and help him?” He pointed a stubby finger in the direction of the old man, who had slumped further and was now lying on his side on the ground.
Eli stepped forward to address the Tank. “You, sir, should reconsider—”
“Who the fuck are you?” The Tank got right up into Eli’s face – as all Napoleon Complex sufferers apparently must – and gave Eli a shove, or attempted to, rather. Eli was not an insubstantial individual, dainty floral bathrobe notwithstanding, and the be-robed prophet didn’t move. The Tank tried again. “Get the hell out of here, you smelly vagrant fuck.” He shoved harder this time, and succeeded in moving Eli back a couple of steps.
That was when the Devil chose to intervene. He put his hand on Eli’s shoulder, and spoke in a quiet voice. “Please allow me,” he said.
Chapter 30. Satan Remembers that He Is Awesome
“Who the fuck are you?” The Tank sneered and ran his eyes down to Satan’s ratty shoes and back up again.
Satan paused, mid-stride. “Well, I—”
“It was a rhetorical question, dumbass.” The Tank had no idea that the individual he’d just insulted was the Devil. Of course, neither did the Devil. If the Tank had known who he was talking to, he probably would have been nicer, maybe a little bit obsequious even. And if Satan had realized who he really was, the Tank’s head would probably have been on a stick. But they were both blissfully ignorant. So the Tank lobbed another sneer in the Devil’s direction, and then called the Lord of the Underworld an asshole.
Satan scowled. “That’s not very—” And then something clicked, as if somebody had flipped a switch inside his head. And suddenly he knew. He knew exactly who he was.
“I,” he said, “am an angel of the Lord’s Vengeance.”
Yes, that’s how it was. He was an angel. The Devil let it roll around in his mind a bit. An angel. And not just any angel. He was special.