Satan Loves You (34 page)

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,” Raphael babbled in a panic. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

By the ring, Minos and Nero held on to the ropes as the air was churned into a hurricane by a thousand, thousand flapping wings.

“Sir, we must get to Hell and protect the Gates,” Nero shouted.

But Satan ignored him. He was sitting on the edge of the ring watching the chaos, seemingly unconcerned. He drummed his heels and hummed a tuneless little melody to himself.

“Sir?” Nero cried.

Minos was trying to direct the demons, who lacked the advantage of flight, trying to get them to follow the angels into Hell and join the battle there. He was hoping to head them off at the Gates. Nero struggled over to Satan and pulled his sleeve.

“Sir, we must hold the beachhead,” he said. “Come on! Bring the Minotaur!”

Satan looked back at the Minotaur who was totaling up his points. The Pope had kept careful score and the Minotaur looked like he was satisfied with his clear victory.

“Did we win?” Satan shouted to him.

“Minotaur win big!” the happy Minotaur snorted back.

Satan smiled.

“Sir?!?” Nero said.

“Relax, Nero,” Satan said. “It’s all under control. They’ve forgotten just what it was that got me thrown out of Heaven in the first place.”

“But they’re going to take Hell,” Nero said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Satan said.“And tell Minos to stop panicking. They may get to Hell, but I don’t think they’re going to want it.”

“Onward, Christian soldiers!” Gabriel called as the Heavenly Host smashed into Hell’s Vestibule.

The vanguard of the avenging Heavenly Host were led by Michael and next to him was Gabriel. A little further back, Barachiel brandished his twenty-foot sword of fire. Phanuel hung a good way back, more of an observer than a participant this time. And then the flying column of angels ran smack into the mountain of cargo containers. They fluttered in disarray for a moment as more angels poured down behind them and began to jam up the Vestibule.

“What are those?” Gabriel asked.

“Care you not!” Michael proclaimed. “Destroy them in the name of the Lord!”

He raised his mighty sword and brought it down on the containers, and such was the power of his will that it split the first door in two, cleaved the second and then the shockwaves of his willpower burst the locks on all the rest. As one, all two hundred doors opened and a smelly tide poured forth.

At first the angels were confused. They fluttered and flapped backwards instinctively recoiling from the avalanche of jeggings, pomade and body odor that seemed to spill out in an unending flow. And then they saw what Michael had accidentally unleashed.

“Hipsters!” Gabriel screamed, in a panic. “Don’t let them touch you.”

What is it about the hipster that inspires such panic in the hearts of angels? Perhaps it is their devotion to all that is ugly and cheap? Perhaps it is their trendy cynicism or their inattention to personal hygiene? Those may all play a part, but really it is much simpler than that: hipsters are a negation of God. They worship a false idol called Trendiness, and their god is the God of Emptiness. The God of Nothing. The God of Plastic. Why is there a Creation? Why is there something instead of nothing? If the hipsters had their way, there would only be nothing. They are poison for all that is holy. Their very existence is a slap in the face of God. They are the darkness. They are unclean. They are horror.

And here was a horde of them. A human avalanche of hipsters, none of whom believed in God, all of them angry and maddened at being locked in tractor-trailers for so long, all of them dead. Zombie hipsters, hand manufactured by Death and his minions in their final act of loyalty to Satan. A boiling, writhing, churning sea of hipsters rising up to drown the Heavenly Host.

The angels were separated from one another, they were pushed back and the bulk of them panicked and tried to flee. The sky was filled with feathers set alight by flicked American Spirit and Parliament Light butts. Barachiel laid about him with his sword but he was overcome and they held him down and gave him a fauxhawk and pierced his nose, rendering him ridiculous even to himself. Phanuel tried to escape but hipster hands dragged him down and turned him into a wagon wheel coffee table. He spun and chimed desperately but to no avail. Michael saw Gabriel just make it out of the Vestibule before a hundred hands with ironically applied black nail polish dragged him back by his wings.

“No,” he screamed. “Nooooo.”

The hipsters had no respect for authority. He felt them ripping his wings from his back.

“I’m going to mount these over my absinthe bar,” he heard one of them say. “Near the rack from that ten point buck I bought at Goodwill.”

Michael struggled mightily, but no one could stop the hipsters. They were merciless.

It was a total rout. And somewhere in the confusion, Satan slipped away. Nero, Minos, Mary and the rest would not see him again for some time.

Hell’s victory celebration was just like every other party since the dawn of time. It started with refreshments and blender drinks and some awkward standing around, and then someone shoved someone else, and there was a fight, and the food ran out and the mixers went next and soon the blender drinks were just ice and tequila and then someone was crying in the bathroom, and the music got turned up really loud and before you knew it the whole place was trashed and a full-blown party was in swing.

Fortunately, they were in Hell, on the banks of the Acheron River, and a little trashing was hardly going to be noticed. All of Hell was a wreck. The Mall of the Unbaptized was a shattered ruin, the piers where Charo’s pink inboard had ferried the souls of the damned was a jagged series of leaning pilings, the Reeducation Camps had been lit on fire by drunk demons. The sky was dark with smoke. Everyone felt right at home. Even the Minotaur seemed happy.

Nero looked around. Over on one side of the party, Mary sat in a wheelchair, drunk for one of the first times in her life. Minos was introducing her to the demons who were all, now that they were freed from Heaven’s influence, acting extra-demonic. Mary tried to pay attention, but her jaw was wired shut, she was on her third pina colada and her second Demerol and she only had one limb that wasn’t in a cast. She let her mind float along on top of Minos’s words like a happy little raft drifting on the ocean.

The Minotaur was taking on all comers in Yahtzee, and his bellows of, “Yahtzee!” split the air. But he could barely be heard over the J-pop stylings of the Seven Deadly Sins. They had rolled up that morning, fresh from their Japanese tour.

“What happened?” Envy had asked. “This place is a wreck.”

They’d brought back presents: disgusting and inedible candy from Japan that no one wanted. Later that afternoon, two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had called and they were coming home early.

“So, I guesh it all worked outh,” Mary slurred, wheeling her way over to Nero. “‘Cept fer the whole Hell being totally destroyed thing.”

“We have one hundred million dollars,” Nero said. “All sitting in the Prince of Darkness Defense Fund. Satan hinted that he had a way to get it for us before he vanished. Can you imagine what we could do with one hundred million dollars?”

“Lemme rebuild it,” Mary said. “With thash much money I woan haveta go to Home Depot and pick up a bunsha Mexithans. I can hire good people. Do it right.”

“Give me a proposal tomorrow and we’ll talk.” Nero said. “If you remember this conversation after you wake up.”

They looked out over the mosh pit where hundreds of hipsters were nodding their heads ever-so-slightly in time with the music.

“Whas’ gonna happen to them?” Mary asked.

“I’ve been talking to Death about it,” Nero said. “While he swore never to be Death again, he didn’t say anything about not training new Deaths. Frankly, I can’t think of anything more horrible than an army of undead hipster Deaths.”

Minos joined them and shuddered.

“Hundreds of th’ horrible things running around.” he said. “Makes me wanna puke.”

“I think we can turn them into a real workforce,” Nero said. “You know, I never thought I’d say this but things are starting to turn around for us. It’s a good day to be in Hell.”

And just like that, a demon brought Nero the phone.

“Hell speaking.”

“Nero, it’s me,” Satan said.

“Sir! Where are you? Things are going wonderfully down here, we’ve got – ”

“Listen,” Satan said. “I’m going to disappear for a while.”

“But, sir, you can’t. We have to rebuild.”

“I need to get out of the rat race,” Satan said. “Recharge my batteries. Do you know how long it’s been since I designed a new torment? I’m going to Cleveland. Or maybe Darfur.”

“But sir,” Nero said. “All the money for rebuilding. You never told us how to access it.”

“Right,” Satan said. “About that money.”

“Yes?”

“I embezzled it.”

“Pardon me?”

“I’m Satan. It’s what I do. If there’s any left when I come back I’ll give it to you. But I don’t think there’ll be any left. I’m flying first class.”

Nero felt a headache beginning.

“You’ll find a way, Nero,” Satan said. “Besides, when have we ever needed money? Hell has always been about shoddy workmanship and poor construction.”

“Sir, this is all so sudden.”

“I’ll see you around. Good luck with Hell. You’re in charge until I get back.”

Satan hung up. Nero stared at the phone for a minute.

“Wha?” Mary asked. “Wha? Wha?”

“He embezzled all the money. Now he’s run away. We’re broke.”

“So I’ll go to Home Depot an’ hire alla Mexithans,” Mary said. “They do alla construction everywhere, anyways.”

“What are you so happy about?” Nero grumbled.

“Imma ex-nun who was impregnated by Satan, committed suicide, got beaten up by the Archangel Michael and I can still drink pina coladas,” Mary said. “The glass is startin’ to look half full to me.”

“Childish,” Nero grumbled.

“Hello, cutie pies,” a voice sang out.

They all looked up.

Crawling out of the Archeron river, burned and oil-covered, drenched and wounded, disheveled and looking like twenty miles of bad country road, was the unmistakable figure of Charo.

“I am back from the bottom of the big bad river,” she said. “And boy are my arms tired! Ha ha!”

“They killed ya,” Minos said.

“It take more than that to kill pretty Charo,” Charo said. “I work county fairs in the Midwest for long time in the Eighties. After that, this is kid stuff.”

She noticed Nero.

“What is problem with little fat Roman emperor? Why he make the sad poopy face?”

“Satan embezzled all our money and took off,” Nero said. “Hell is in ruins. We’ve replaced Death’s minions with an army of hipsters and we’ve got two million backlogged souls that we have to process.”

“You know what that sounds like?” Charo said.

“What?” he asked.

“It sounds like time for a songing!”

She put her fingers to her mouth and let out a loud whistle. There was a yipping from far away and the ranks of drunk demons parted to let through Delilah, her Chihuahua, who came charging across the rocky plains carrying a guitar in her mouth.

“Hello, little puppy,” Charo cooed, taking up her guitar. “Who wants some
‘
Hava Nagila’?”

And she began to play. It didn’t take long for all the demons to join in, and by the time they were singing it the second time around they had Nero up over their heads in a lawn chair and were carrying him around the smoldering, burnt ruins of the Reeducation Camp and things didn’t look quite so bad, after all.

Satan leaned back in his first class chair and smiled. He’d never been in first class before and it was absolutely, wonderfully horrible. It wasn’t so much the pina coladas they brought him before take off, and it wasn’t the fact that he got to eat off of real plates with real silverware. What really elevated the experience was that all the economy passengers had to troop past him on the way to their seats with envy churning in their guts.

A sudden idea for a new torment seized him and he called for a pen and paper. For the envious, he could restructure their tortures so that they were split into two groups. Having their tongues crushed by sharp rocks would feel so much worse if other, randomly chosen, envious were getting Swedish massages nearby. The envious getting Swedish massage would become all stressed out from watching the tongue crushing, and the ones getting their tongues crushed would be envious of the ones who were getting Swedish massage. It was too horrible for words, and it was the first new torment he’d come up with in centuries. Just like that, his brain relaxed and unclenched like it had just been lowered into a warm bath.

The Captain announced that they were ready for take-off and the enormous 747 taxied down the runway as the sun set all pink and gold. In the overhead compartment were two bags containing a hundred million dollars, and in Satan’s head new ideas for torments were gushing like a slot machine payout. And somewhere, if he strained, he could hear an angel crying. He’d spanked their butts and won, mostly by cheating. It made him smile.