Satan Loves You (32 page)

“For a woman who was ritually abused in my name she doesn’t seem too concerned to be near me,” Satan said.

“She’s had her pills,” Ted Hunter replied.

“Come on, Ted,” Satan said. “It’s just us now. The cameras are all off. You’ve already won. Who is she? An actress? Someone you planted a long time ago? A musical theater triple threat from Minnesota with a diet pill addiction?”

Ted Hunter grinned and poured himself some minibar Scotch.

“She’s just some random damaged goods that I came across while traveling through Terre Haute, Indiana,” he said.

“I wouldn’t have guessed Indiana.”

“Sure, sure. That state’s nothing but walking daddy issues doped up to the gills on Klonopin. It took me all of thirty minutes to convince her that she had been terribly abused by Satan as a child. But, then again, I think we all feel that way to some extent. You are Satan, after all. You screw everyone up.”

“That’s probably true,” Satan said.

“You’ve come here to threaten me, I assume,” Ted Hunter said, settling down on the love seat. “Tell me all the awful things you’ll do to me if I don’t settle the suit.”

“No,” Satan said. “I’ve come here to ask you to drop your claim.”

Ted couldn’t help himself. He threw his head back and roared with laughter.

“You think I’ll do anything for you after I’ve already got you by the nuts?” Ted Hunter said. “You are an even bigger fool than I thought.”

“Please,” Satan said. “I’m immortal. Hell is eternal. You don’t know what kind of forces you’re unleashing by enforcing this judgment. I’m asking you to let it go.”

“Here’s your Oscar, Ms. Spacek,” Ted Hunter said. “I’m a business man. I look at this deal and I don’t see a single reason to drop it.”

“You’re going to spend the rest of your life trying to collect money we don’t have,” Satan said.

“Exactly,” Ted Hunter said. “You won’t be able to pay, so you’ll be ordered to work out a binding settlement. They’re going to look at your assets and there’s really only one of them: Hell.”

“You want to own Hell?” Satan asked.

“Real estate deal of the century,” Ted Hunter said. “And you know what they say about real estate? They just don’t make it anymore.”

He laughed.

“You’re crazy,” Satan said. “What’re you going to do with Hell?”

 “I might get someone new to run it for me, or maybe I’ll just sell it to a third party. I bet there are folks out there who’ll pay top dollar for Hell. As for Frita here, she’ll get endorsement deals for Bibles, antidepressants, electric cars and all kinds of crap, and as her manager I’ll get a fifteen percent slice of everything. Plus, my media platforms are already out-grossing last year’s month-to-month figures by five points. I’m in the catbird seat. I’ve got it all, baby. You, on the other hand, are an unemployed jerk.”

“I didn’t want it to come to this,” Satan said. “I loathe melodrama. But you might want to read this.”

He pulled two folded pink invoices from his inside jacket pocket and passed them to Ted Hunter.

“What’re these? Invoices for your bruised feelings and ruffled sensibilities?” Ted Hunter sneered, opening them.

“No,” Satan said. “They’re not.”

Ted Hunter scanned the first invoice and then flipped to the second one. He flipped back to the first. Then he turned them both over. He read the fine print. His face fell.

“This just isn’t true,” he said. “It’s an outright lie, a fabrication, a falsehood. It’s grotesque. It’s un-American.”

“There’s clearly been a clerical error,” Satan said. “We’ve been experiencing a work stoppage and there’s been a bit of a backlog but I’m taking care of that now. It won’t last forever. And in a few months it’ll be rectified. We’ll get to those invoices sooner or later. But I could lose them. We’ll eventually issue new ones, but that should be years down the road. You could both live twenty to thirty more years, easily. But if you insist on enforcing your judgment I’ll have to produce those in a court of appeals. And I don’t think that any court in the world will uphold a judgment awarded to two people who are already dead.”

On QVC, the hosts were hawking Little MissMatched girl’s leg warmers.

“How’d it happen?” Ted Hunter croaked.

“Food poisoning,” Satan said. “There were some really egregious food handling violations on Continental flight one-oh-eight. You two both had the fish.”

“I thought it smelled funny,” Ted Hunter said.

“Should have gone with your gut,” Satan said. And then he plucked the two flimsy, pink papers out of Hunter’s hands. “I’ll hold on to these while you make up your mind.”

“I’ll do it,” Ted Hunter said.

“Good choice, but I’m still holding on to these,” Satan said. “You might decide to go to Terre Haute again.”

Satan was feeling good. He still had an overwhelming list of things to check off, each of them a bigger risk than the one before, but the first item on his list had gone off flawlessly. He’d even gotten to sound tough, which was new for him. He checked his watch: his next secret weapon should be in place by now. And then he just had to hope that Death had done his part.

“Be seeing you,” he said to Ted Hunter and gave a little wave.

Hunter was slumped on the love seat while Frita stared, mindlessly, at the TV set where two QVC hosts showed all the different settings available for the Bethlehem Lights Battery Operated Window Candles. Satan let himself out.

Mary ripped off her mask so that she could breathe. A fine spray of blood and sweat splashed onto the floor of the ring. She was doubled over, trying to get air into her burning lungs.

“Please...” she tried to say, but it came out instead as a blubbering little “Pllsss...” sound. More blood, sweat and spit spattered the canvas. She just wanted to go home. She just wanted to get away from all this pain. She just wanted to cease to exist.

Michael pulled her up by the hair.

“Don’t I know you?” he asked. “You were that little soul who was following Satan around, weren’t you?”

He dropped her to the floor, where Mary lay on her side, gasping. Gabriel handed Michael a towel through the ropes and the archangel wiped the touch of mortal from his enormous hands.

“Violation!” Minos yelled, but no one cared.

Michael knelt down next to Mary’s head.

“I just thought you should know that this is all your fault. You must be the unluckiest, unholiest, most accursed nun in all of Creation. I hope you can appreciate the irony. I know I do.”

He stood up and kicked Mary so hard in the stomach that she slid halfway across the ring, leaving a snail trail of bloody spit in her wake. Lying still, she moved her numb mouth.

“...end it...” she mumbled, and tried to smile through her split lips.

“Here comes the big one,” Michael said, and he grabbed Mary by the scruff of her neck and lifted her up off the floor, dangling her in the air like a sack of old laundry. He drew back one of his massive, sledgehammer fists, ready to drive it into her face. Nero looked away.

 “Repent, sinner!” Michael cried.

Suddenly he was dancing from foot to foot. He craned his neck, looking at his feet, dropping Mary to the ground. Slowly, she dragged her broken body to safety and then looked back. There was a beige and brown blur on the floor zipping between Michael’s legs. Michael was squealing as if something was nipping at his ankles. The crowd rustled as everyone strained to get a better look. On principle, several hundred angels began to boo.

Mary hauled herself up by the ropes. The blur was coming at her and then it screeched to a stop and she saw Delilah, Charo’s Chihuahua, standing between she and Michael. Delilah’s needle-like teeth were barred, a tiny soprano growl vibrated in its throat. Michael stared at it, dumbfounded. This animal was small, but it was clearly possessed. Something resembling hope spread its wings in Mary’s chest.

And then Michael kicked Delilah so hard the tiny beast went sailing out of the ring in a perfect arc, heading towards the top tier seats.

“Yiiiiiiiiiiiipppppppp...” it dopplered.

The crowd went wild.

“Do unto others!” They chanted. “Do unto others!”

“Now do you comprehend the forces you have unleashed?” Michael said, turning his attention once more to Mary. He drew himself up until he was massive and unstoppable. He snapped his wings open to their full, fifteen-foot span and they blotted out the lights. He spread his feathers and they got even bigger, the tips of his primaries brushing against the floor of the ring. He advanced on Mary who tried to ward him off with wild swings. Michael easily swatted aside her feeble blows, and then he seized her by the collar and the belt. He lifted her up above his head and then he dropped down onto one knee, slamming Mary’s back across the other. Her spine bent itself into a backwards “C” and she screamed in agony. Casually, Michael threw her to the ground and walked away. He pumped his fists, working the crowd up into a frenzy.

Mary was nothing more than a bag of pain now. How had she come to this? Through her swollen eyes she saw Michael stand on the ropes and rile up the crowd.

“Yeah!” he shouted. “Yeeeaaahhh.”

That was how she came to this, Mary realized. That was how she always came to this. She had wanted nothing more than to live a good life and be left alone in peace and quiet and then came the assholes with their big plans and their perverted conspiracies and their hidden agendas and suddenly she was a pawn in their machinations. How had she come to this? It was the assholes. It was always the assholes.

Wracked with pain, she slowly sat up. Michael caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and he hopped down off the ropes.

“You want more?” he asked. And then to the crowd. “Does she want more??!?!?”

They roared back at him.

Mary pulled her lips back to show her teeth, smeared with blood. Her whole face hurt. Her pupils were dilated to two different sizes but she turned them on Michael, and then she raised one broken middle finger.

 “Assholes...like you...make me glad...I quit...the church...”

Michael’s face turned dangerous. He ran at her and leapt into the air with both feet outstretched, perfectly positioned to take her head off of her shoulders with the soles of his boots. The crowd exploded into cheers, sounding like a bag of rocks being violently shaken. They had come for blood and they were going to get it. Michael was thrilled. He had never kicked anyone’s head off before. This was going to be one of those rare new experiences for him. His body sailed through the air like a missile...

...and came crashing down. A searing pain ran through his left wing. He rolled over and looked back. Standing behind him, with one foot mashing his primary feathers to the mat, stood Satan.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I had some business to take care of.”

Michael scrambled to get back on his feet and untangle himself from his overextended left wing. Feathers flew everywhere. Satan knelt next to Mary. Minos and Nero reached for her through the ropes. Satan lifted her beneath her armpits and slid her back to them across the canvas slick with her sweat and blood and a few things that looked, disturbingly, like her teeth.

“Y’r’u...?” she mumbled.

“Good job,” Satan said to her. “ Thanks for stalling him for me, but I’ve got this now.”

Mary smiled and passed out.

“Sir – !” Nero began.

“Sorry,” Satan said. “I’m a little busy right now. Let me wrap this up.”

Then he stood and turned to face Michael.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” the archangel said.

“And rob you of your big moment?” Satan asked. “This is as good as it gets for you, isn’t it? The Ten Thousand Year Plan? Heaven uniting all the celestial spheres with you at the helm? The Creator will be so very proud of you.”

“Do not use His name in vain,” Michael said, his face black with fury.

The violence radiated from Michael in thick waves, saturating the brains of the spectators. The archangel had hated Satan for so long, had planned his downfall so carefully, had readied himself for victory so thoroughly that now, faced with the Adversary himself, Michael was the very embodiment of righteous violence.

“I’m going to unmake you,” he growled. “You are going to be destroyed.”

“Of course you’re going to destroy me,” Satan said. “We’re wrestling. You can beat me in wrestling with your hands tied behind your back.”

“Then take your beating like a proper deity.”

“You’re lucky it’s wrestling. You couldn’t beat me in anything else,” Satan said, loudly. The stands quieted down so that everyone could hear. Satan was insulting the Archangel Michael? “You couldn’t beat me in judo, say. Or karate. Or even Krav Maga.”

Michael blinked at Satan in disbelief.

“You can beat me in wrestling, but so what?” Satan shouted, addressing the crowd. “You wouldn’t stand a chance against me in tae kwon do, or boxing, or capoeira or ninjitsu. You’d go down like a punk if we were kickboxing. You’re too chicken to go up against me in Indian leg wrestling, or one-armed boxing.”

He was jeering now, practically thumbing his nose at Michael. And if there was one thing that Michael could not tolerate, it was disrespect.

“I could beat you in kickboxing,” he said.

“Could not,” Satan said, dismissively.

“Could too.”

“You wouldn’t stand a chance,” Satan said. “Not if you went up against me in wing chun, or wushu, or tai chi. I’d mop the floor with you in muay thai. Or silat. Or Zulu stick fighting.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Michael yelled, his face turning from red to black. “You can’t fight. I’d beat you in any one of those.”

“Oh, BS. Everyone knows you’re lying.”

“I am not lying.”

“I could beat you in savate.”

“I’d win at savate!”

“I could beat you with rapiers, or quarterstaffs, thang-ta, gymkata, Nuba fighting, jeet kune do, Defendo or kenpo.”

“I could beat you at all of those,” Michael yelled. “I could beat you at anything. ANYTHING!!!!”

“Alright then,” Satan said. “Then I challenge you – ”

“Challenge me to anything! I’ll beat you!”

“I challenge you – ”

“Bring it. Briiiing it!!!”