Satan Loves You (29 page)

“Of what?”

“That eternity is a very long time and it helps if you have a job.”

“That’s the Satan I remember,” Death said.

“Oh,” Satan smiled. “I’m just getting started.”

Gabriel sat behind Satan’s old desk and smiled at Nero, Minos and Mary Renfro. They were huddled on the other side and they weren’t smiling, mostly because they were in shackles and surrounded by the biggest, angriest, most heavily armed angels in the Heavenly Host.

“It is so good to see the three of you,” Gabriel said. “I’ve met the little nun before, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually had a chance to say
‘
hello’ to the other two.”

“We can’t tell you where Satan is,” Nero said.

“That’s all right,” Gabriel replied. “I’m not interested. In fact, I’m going to let the three of you go free.”

Minos and Nero exchanged sidelong glances.

“Why?” Nero asked, suspiciously.

“Because there’s nothing you can do to us anymore,” Gabriel said. “We have occupied Hell. There is a judgment against Satan for four hundred million dollars. It’s over, except for the Ultimate Death Match and I need you three free for that.”

“Why?” Nero asked again, starting to feel like a parrot.

“Because Michael wants there to be a show,” Gabriel said. “He wants to take on your best wrestler. He wants to pound the crud out of them in the ring. On live TV. That way there will be no doubt that our takeover of Hell is totally and completely legitimate.”

“Don’t be so sure of yourself,” Mary said.

“The little nun speaks,” Gabriel said.“Might I add a belated
‘
thank you?’ We wouldn’t all be standing here if you hadn’t killed yourself so predictably. Offing Satan’s baby was exactly what we needed to get God on our side for this invasion. You people. You will do anything to get into Heaven. It’s sad, really. I mean, look at you. You could never afford it.”

Mary’s face turned red and she stared at the soiled carpet in shame. She felt like a fool.

“So go forth,” Gabriel said. “Train a wrestler. Give us some kind of a fight. It’ll be cute. And don’t worry about holding back. There’s not one of you who could possibly hurt us now. Not one.”

The Minotaur was playing Solitaire, but he wasn’t having much fun. All the souls had been reassigned to more traditional punishments when the angels came, and the demons had all been rounded up and sent to the Retraining and Attitude Adjustment Facility. A squad of angels had come to force the Minotaur to attend Training Workshops but they had mysteriously disappeared. The Heavenly Host had sent another squad and they had surrounded the Minotaur, who was doing a Word Scramble.

“Where are the angels we sent here to bring you into the light.” one of the angels, Mehumet, demanded.

The Minotaur had leaned to one side and farted out a fistful of feathers. The angels backed off and, after that, the Host had decided to simply leave the Minotaur alone.

But still, the Minotaur was not having very much fun playing Solitaire.

A shadow crept over the rock where his cards were spread.

“Minotaur,” a familiar voice said. “You are needed.”

“You just need to accept the fact that I am never coming back,” Death said.

He sat in his Rascal in the middle of the frozen field where lines of radioactive trucks and helicopters marched off into the distance. They were all ugly and utilitarian and all undeniably Soviet, broken down and abandoned. Around him stood hundreds of his ex-minions, men and women in sensible shoes and business casual attire. They all wore white gloves. Their meeting was taking place in the middle of the Rassoha Dump in the Zone of Alienation that surrounded Chernobyl. They wouldn’t be disturbed here. After they had stopped work and gone on strike, most of Death’s minions had retreated here where there was peace and quiet and zero chance of encountering any living beings. They passed their time playing chess, which Death thought was very pretentious but he wasn’t going to call them on it because right now he needed their help.

“We made a vow,” the head minion said. “And we’re as serious about our vows as you are about yours.”

“I am asking you to break your vow,” Death said.

“We couldn’t possibly do that,” the minion said. “Not even for you.”

“Look,” Death said. “I understand that you’re serious about your vows. So let me make you a deal. You won’t do the killing. You’ll just do the gathering and the training. I’ll be the one who actually extinguishes their lives.”

The minions pondered this for a long time. Finally, one spoke.

“And this would only be in Brooklyn?” she asked.

“Brooklyn, Portland, Austin and San Francisco,” Death said. “And maybe Berlin. But that’s all.”

“We’ll have to think it over,” the elected spokesminion said. But Death could see in his eyes that this was just an attempt to make it look good. His minions had already made up their minds. Death and Company would ride together one last time.

“It’s absolutely impossible,” Johnn Sharp, the executive director of the Satan Prince of Darkness Defense Fund said to his shadowy visitor, who was seated in the interview chair of Sharp’s well-appointed office done up in deceptively expensive Danish Moderne.

“Even for me?” the shadowy visitor asked.

“Even if you are who you claim to be, I cannot disperse these monies,” Johnn Sharp said. “We are barely staying afloat as it is.”

“I heard you’re taking in close to twenty million dollars per day,” the visitor said. “It’s been almost a week. You’ve got money.”

“I only wish that were the case,” Johnn Sharp said. “First, you have to factor in our overhead. This office and this staff do not come free. We knew from the beginning that talent attracts talent and so we have spent a great deal of money hiring the best and the brightest for positions here in marketing, development, outreach and education.”

“Those are a lot of departments,” the shadowy visitor said.

“It takes money to make money,” Johnn Sharp replied. “This office attracts a huge number of donors but we are operating on a shoestring. I mean, really we are functioning on nothing more than the barest necessities. We need Nespresso pods for our coffee machines, and fresh bagels brought in from Montreal for our team. We need to pay our in-office massage and bodywork therapists. We need to pay the classical quartet who perform at our networking gatherings. The hand towel budget alone is massive, but we believe that our team members perform best when they’re given the proper support, and I think you’d agree that we really are asking a lot of them.”

“Of course,” the visitor said.

“We’ve got a click-and-mortar environment to handle,” Johnn continued, getting on a roll now. “And we view ourselves not just as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization but as a portal and central clearinghouse for all things Satanic.”

“That’s a big job,” the shadowy visitor said.

“But I think you’d approve. Not only do I give facetime at various meetings and conferences on a global scale but we have a webinar team performing online videoconferencing and giving guidance to potential donors. We are big, but the cause is large. However, you can see that we are running a tight ship. Salaries alone run to the hundreds of thousands per day. It’s not easy. We take in almost exactly what we need to survive.”

“It must be very difficult for you,” the visitor said.

“It is. I don’t think you know how hard it is,” Johnn Sharp said, suddenly feeling very sorry for himself. “Would you like to see my executive bathroom? It’s the only tiny bit of luxury I allow myself. It’s that door there, right next to my meditation chamber. No, no, that’s my recording studio. I’ve been learning how to play the hammered dulcimer and the mixer and playback system really help me track my own progress. Yes, that’s right. That’s the door.”

With the visitor safely inside Johnn Sharpe’s private executive washroom, Sharp allowed himself to look out the wall-to-wall window over the parking lot of Prius’s and Hummers. Just a few weeks ago this building had belonged to Exxon Mobile, but he had been willing to pay top dollar and they had happily abandoned it. Good vibes remained. It had been a struggle and a race to the finish, but he had managed to have the entire building gutted, renovated and landscaped in just one week. No one could possibly understand the stress he felt every single day. A few small luxuries for himself, that’s all he had. Who could possibly object to that? Certainly not his shadowy visitor who seemed to be coming around to his point of view. That’s something Johnn Sharpe prided himself on, the ability to show other people the correct perspective.

He would have been surprised to know that at that very moment, his shadowy visitor had exited through the back entrance of his private bathroom, walked across an empty conference room, gone down the hall and was now on the next floor up where the accountants sat. No one questioned the visitor because they thought he was there to shoot a promotional video. But he wasn’t. He was there to watch them type in their passwords. He was there to steal access to their accounts. He was there to do evil.

It’s not hard to empty out Madison Square Garden for a private event without paying a cent. All you have to do change the sign outside to read:

Hootie & the Blowfish Reunion

One Night Only

Playing the Music of

Edvard Grieg

Exactly twenty tickets were sold, and those people were prevented from actually attending when certain celestial powers ensured that a live John Tesh concert was on Pay-Per-View that very same night. Inside the abandoned Madison Square Garden, the Arena was dark. Safety lights were on throughout the six tiers of seating but there was not a single sign of life. The massive room, capable of seating twenty thousand spectators was ominously quiet.

The food court staff had been sent home early that day. The custodial and maintenance staff had been quietly bribed and sent back to their apartments in Queens. Security guards had been replaced with a private company brought in for one night only. It was a private security group that employed the deaf and blind exclusively for events such as Senate orgies, Goldman Sachs people-hunting retreats and other private functions, like this one, which required total discretion. Entrances were sealed. Sweeps for hidden recording and listening devices were made. Webcast cameras were turned off. Closed circuit cameras were disconnected. Work started at six in the morning and by three in the afternoon the arena was completely sealed off from the outside world.

In the basement of the Garden an enormous series of doors were unlocked, elevators had pass keys inserted in hidden slots and were sent to floors one hundred levels above where they had previously stopped. Emergency halt buttons were pressed for all the escalators and their maintenance hatches were opened and secret gears were inserted into their machinery. When they were restarted they plunged deep into the bowels of the Earth, all the way down to Hell.

At five o’clock that afternoon the crowd started to file in. Chief amongst them were demons, thousands of them squeezed into tiny red devil suits. Depressed and with heavy hearts they had been released from the Reeducation Camps and allowed up for this special night. They were glum and silent, herded along by arrogant, grinning angels. The only noise they made came from the swishing of their polyester-encased thighs.

Down the elevators came thousands of angels, tens of thousands of them, the entire Heavenly Host. They were fluttering and chattering, thrilled and excited, flush and enthusiastic for their victory. Finally, the great dream, long deferred, had been achieved and Heaven would have dominion over all.

Neither Heaven nor Hell had ever broadcast these events to the souls in their perpetual care before. Hell because it could not afford the facilities. Heaven because it had lost every single match to Hell and it really didn’t want to brag about it. But this time was different, and Heaven wanted everyone to witness their triumph. Hell was full of confused souls who couldn’t figure out why they were suddenly not being tortured. The Heavenly Host had distributed pamphlets stressing the importance of the match, impressing upon the damned that they were about to see the ultimate expression of Heaven’s will and the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Vast TV screens had been installed to beam down live broadcast of the Ultimate Death Match for the first time ever, but no one had hooked them up properly and so they mostly broadcast static.

Heaven was full of souls clustered around TV screens and packed into indoor amphitheaters and multiplexes. Normally reserved for screenings of footage of playful kittens and puppies, along with the occasional snuff film for the high rollers, these private rooms had been hastily converted into screening centers where, for the first time in history, the souls of the blessed would be able to watch the Ultimate Death Match.

By nine o’clock that night, the arena was packed.