Devil
By somewhat popular request, a tale from the F&PW portfolio that you may not have seen before:
Devil
Satan sighed as another mound of paperwork fell upon his desk. Would it ever end? Form after form went past His Evilness, all tedious, all horribly complicated. He longed for the old days, when he had free reign over the darker side of men's souls. Oh, how he would tempt the righteous ones, deceive the gullible ones, and generally have a good time making others miserable.
It has been discovered, however, by powers even higher than God himself, that the universe and its laws are dictated largely by irony. Satan found this out the hard way. Now he suffered like a common mortal, slaving away at forms and procedural documents, and he didn't even get paid for it. An unexpected outcome of the Apocalypse, for anyone who wasn't properly informed.
Human beings, in their lowly state, see God and Satan as two giants constantly fighting it out, with motives beyond mortal understanding. And for the most part, this is true, at least from their point of view. However, as is usually the case with humans, they have the right idea but manage to mess it up in horrible ways. For example, they consistently delude themselves into thinking that God, as the representative of all that is Good and Holy, is always the winner. This is not exactly true. It just so happens that being evil lends one to making stupid mistakes which often cause nothing but trouble for the evil one in question. The good side, of course, makes stupid mistakes as well, but these tend to be smaller and less catastrophic.
Humans also make the mistake of assuming that the final battle between Good and Evil will be a spectacular supernatural clash of the titans, bringing a final end to one side and eternal victory to the other. They presume God to be the victor, of course (see above). This particular mistake can largely be attributed to the movie industry, which has trained their audiences to expect that sort of thing at the end of any conflict. What really happened at the Apocalypse was much simpler, and so subtle that no one batted an eye. Even the Pope missed it, and it was his job to be looking out for that sort of thing.
God simply outsourced the job of being Supremely Evil. Instead of one supernatural being, now thousands of businessmen and women, CEOs, and politicians were responsible for causing misery among the human race. Satan himself was pushed into a small cubicle deep in Hell and forced to process paperwork for Heaven for the rest of eternity.
And so here he was, years later, still doing the same thing. Up there all those mortals were having fun ruining other people's lives, and he was stuck here. He thought about giving the Angel of Death a call. They had always had a good time together, although in Satan's personal opinion Death did not have any capacity for subtlety. It was always kill, kill, kill with him. No pranks, no tricks. It must have just been his nature.
A single form dropped on top of the huge pile already in front of him. Odd. They always came in impossibly huge loads, as if to emphasize the difficulty of his new job. Curious, Satan carefully pulled it from the top of the tall pile. "Possible Order for Total Destruction."
He read the form. A look of astonishment began to spread across his face. This was no ordinary act of evil. No wonder this had fallen to him. This was a job for a supernatural being. A demon. The demon.
Satan grabbed his hat and pitchfork. This would have to be dealt with personally.
Finally! A chance to get out of that stinking cubicle! Satan practically jumped for joy as he stood in the elevator. But wait. He had to compose himself. He hadn't been out in a long time. Obviously he couldn't let the Earth just get destroyed. There would be no fun for him after he escaped from his prison of paperwork. But that didn't mean that he couldn't have some fun in the meantime.
The elevator came out, for various reasons, in a small elementary school in Kansas. Perfect, Satan thought to himself. He decided to start small and warm up by frustrating some children.
He went outside to the playground, where the third grade class was having recess. He found a kid sitting by himself reading a book. Satan suddenly had an idea. He'd thought of this one about 20 years ago, while watching Brady Bunch reruns. It was quite possibly his most frustrating creation.
"Hey kid. Solve this thing in, oh, an hour, otherwise the Earth will be destroyed." He put on his most menacing grin as he handed the cube over to the startled child.
"Sure," the kid replied, as he took the colorful object. Satan watched in amazement as he quickly and deftly manipulated the sides, and solid colors began to form, starting on top and quickly spreading towards the bottom. After a minute of fiddling, the kid tossed the cube back to Satan. "I learned how to solve Rubik's cubes last year. The three by three ones are easy. The five by five ones are trickier."
Satan gaped at the child for a moment, then quickly vanished to avoid any more embarrassment. But not before he changed the trajectory of a football towards a certain smart-aleck kid's head.
Shaken by his failure in Kansas, by a little kid no less, Satan decided to up the ante a bit. He teleported himself to a random house, and found a man sitting at a computer playing some video game. With all his might, Satan created a fiery glow around him and used his deepest and most evil voice. "I demand of you, mere mortal! Tell me the the exact area of Australia, or the Earth will be destroyed! And, I want it in square furlongs! Muahahaha!"
The man jumped and turned to look at Satan in all his fiery glory. He rubbed his eyes and muttered, "Too much Diablo 2," before facing his computer again and typing at the keys again.
Satan was not happy with this reaction. "I grow impatient! Answer me! Or the Earth will be destroyed!"
"Yeah, yeah, hang on a sec, here it is." He pointed to his screen. Satan was dismayed to see the correct answer staring back in front of him. "But...but...how?"
"It's called the Information Age for a reason. Google knows everything. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a character to level up. Hey, wait a minute, Diablo's not on this level! He killed my character!" The man turned back towards Satan, but he had already disappeared again in a cloud of disgust.
The entire day continued to be unfulfilling for Satan. To be sure, he always got his revenge on those who dared complete his impossibly difficult challenges. The problem was that they weren't proving to be as impossible as he had hoped. As the day dragged on, he placed the weight of the world on dozens of people's shoulders, only to see them causally shrug it off.
Finally the deadline came. The Possible Order for Total Destruction form had to be filled out, and Satan had to decide whether or not to let the asteroid headed strait for Earth to hit or not. Sitting on a park bench, after watching a man successfully eat 30 hot dogs in two minutes (saving the Earth once again, but suffering some supernatural indigestion afterwards) he ticked the little box next to the word "Denied" and casually put the asteroid on a new path, which would cause problems on another world in a few hundred years. The Earth, however, would live to see another day.
Pausing only to knock a nearby child's ice cream off of its cone, Satan headed back to Kansas to catch his elevator. His return to triumph would come soon enough. But for now, there was work to be done.
I still think it's pretty good, although there are a number of things I would change/add now that I read it again. The weirdest thing is that I read it, and it seemed like something I would like to read, not something that I would actually write. Hmm.
Devil
Satan sighed as another mound of paperwork fell upon his desk. Would it ever end? Form after form went past His Evilness, all tedious, all horribly complicated. He longed for the old days, when he had free reign over the darker side of men's souls. Oh, how he would tempt the righteous ones, deceive the gullible ones, and generally have a good time making others miserable.
It has been discovered, however, by powers even higher than God himself, that the universe and its laws are dictated largely by irony. Satan found this out the hard way. Now he suffered like a common mortal, slaving away at forms and procedural documents, and he didn't even get paid for it. An unexpected outcome of the Apocalypse, for anyone who wasn't properly informed.
Human beings, in their lowly state, see God and Satan as two giants constantly fighting it out, with motives beyond mortal understanding. And for the most part, this is true, at least from their point of view. However, as is usually the case with humans, they have the right idea but manage to mess it up in horrible ways. For example, they consistently delude themselves into thinking that God, as the representative of all that is Good and Holy, is always the winner. This is not exactly true. It just so happens that being evil lends one to making stupid mistakes which often cause nothing but trouble for the evil one in question. The good side, of course, makes stupid mistakes as well, but these tend to be smaller and less catastrophic.
Humans also make the mistake of assuming that the final battle between Good and Evil will be a spectacular supernatural clash of the titans, bringing a final end to one side and eternal victory to the other. They presume God to be the victor, of course (see above). This particular mistake can largely be attributed to the movie industry, which has trained their audiences to expect that sort of thing at the end of any conflict. What really happened at the Apocalypse was much simpler, and so subtle that no one batted an eye. Even the Pope missed it, and it was his job to be looking out for that sort of thing.
God simply outsourced the job of being Supremely Evil. Instead of one supernatural being, now thousands of businessmen and women, CEOs, and politicians were responsible for causing misery among the human race. Satan himself was pushed into a small cubicle deep in Hell and forced to process paperwork for Heaven for the rest of eternity.
And so here he was, years later, still doing the same thing. Up there all those mortals were having fun ruining other people's lives, and he was stuck here. He thought about giving the Angel of Death a call. They had always had a good time together, although in Satan's personal opinion Death did not have any capacity for subtlety. It was always kill, kill, kill with him. No pranks, no tricks. It must have just been his nature.
A single form dropped on top of the huge pile already in front of him. Odd. They always came in impossibly huge loads, as if to emphasize the difficulty of his new job. Curious, Satan carefully pulled it from the top of the tall pile. "Possible Order for Total Destruction."
He read the form. A look of astonishment began to spread across his face. This was no ordinary act of evil. No wonder this had fallen to him. This was a job for a supernatural being. A demon. The demon.
Satan grabbed his hat and pitchfork. This would have to be dealt with personally.
Finally! A chance to get out of that stinking cubicle! Satan practically jumped for joy as he stood in the elevator. But wait. He had to compose himself. He hadn't been out in a long time. Obviously he couldn't let the Earth just get destroyed. There would be no fun for him after he escaped from his prison of paperwork. But that didn't mean that he couldn't have some fun in the meantime.
The elevator came out, for various reasons, in a small elementary school in Kansas. Perfect, Satan thought to himself. He decided to start small and warm up by frustrating some children.
He went outside to the playground, where the third grade class was having recess. He found a kid sitting by himself reading a book. Satan suddenly had an idea. He'd thought of this one about 20 years ago, while watching Brady Bunch reruns. It was quite possibly his most frustrating creation.
"Hey kid. Solve this thing in, oh, an hour, otherwise the Earth will be destroyed." He put on his most menacing grin as he handed the cube over to the startled child.
"Sure," the kid replied, as he took the colorful object. Satan watched in amazement as he quickly and deftly manipulated the sides, and solid colors began to form, starting on top and quickly spreading towards the bottom. After a minute of fiddling, the kid tossed the cube back to Satan. "I learned how to solve Rubik's cubes last year. The three by three ones are easy. The five by five ones are trickier."
Satan gaped at the child for a moment, then quickly vanished to avoid any more embarrassment. But not before he changed the trajectory of a football towards a certain smart-aleck kid's head.
Shaken by his failure in Kansas, by a little kid no less, Satan decided to up the ante a bit. He teleported himself to a random house, and found a man sitting at a computer playing some video game. With all his might, Satan created a fiery glow around him and used his deepest and most evil voice. "I demand of you, mere mortal! Tell me the the exact area of Australia, or the Earth will be destroyed! And, I want it in square furlongs! Muahahaha!"
The man jumped and turned to look at Satan in all his fiery glory. He rubbed his eyes and muttered, "Too much Diablo 2," before facing his computer again and typing at the keys again.
Satan was not happy with this reaction. "I grow impatient! Answer me! Or the Earth will be destroyed!"
"Yeah, yeah, hang on a sec, here it is." He pointed to his screen. Satan was dismayed to see the correct answer staring back in front of him. "But...but...how?"
"It's called the Information Age for a reason. Google knows everything. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a character to level up. Hey, wait a minute, Diablo's not on this level! He killed my character!" The man turned back towards Satan, but he had already disappeared again in a cloud of disgust.
The entire day continued to be unfulfilling for Satan. To be sure, he always got his revenge on those who dared complete his impossibly difficult challenges. The problem was that they weren't proving to be as impossible as he had hoped. As the day dragged on, he placed the weight of the world on dozens of people's shoulders, only to see them causally shrug it off.
Finally the deadline came. The Possible Order for Total Destruction form had to be filled out, and Satan had to decide whether or not to let the asteroid headed strait for Earth to hit or not. Sitting on a park bench, after watching a man successfully eat 30 hot dogs in two minutes (saving the Earth once again, but suffering some supernatural indigestion afterwards) he ticked the little box next to the word "Denied" and casually put the asteroid on a new path, which would cause problems on another world in a few hundred years. The Earth, however, would live to see another day.
Pausing only to knock a nearby child's ice cream off of its cone, Satan headed back to Kansas to catch his elevator. His return to triumph would come soon enough. But for now, there was work to be done.
I still think it's pretty good, although there are a number of things I would change/add now that I read it again. The weirdest thing is that I read it, and it seemed like something I would like to read, not something that I would actually write. Hmm.