Finally!
Me: About time you got your lazy ass to work, bitch.
Amy: Maybe you should learn some manners, Cix, before I forget you for good. Hmmm?
Me: Yes, Mistress.
Amy: That's better.
Me: *mutter* Whore.
*beam* Amy finally played with me! Look at the fruits of our labor! Go look NOW!
()
It was a typical Monday morning, which meant I was late for work. Again. I had a raging hangover that made the prospect of an eternity in the customer service department of Hell seem like a cakewalk, and if you haven't seen it, then trust me. It had to have been one hellacious hangover to beat that.
Then if that wasn't enough, hay fever was making me feel as if I'd been punched repeatedly in the face by a three hundred pound biker named Horace. My ears were plugged, I could barely see, and to add insult to injury, when I trudged into the lobby of work, I couldn't find my wallet. This was not a good day.
The putz of a security guard stopped me. He always stops me. You think by now he'd have figured out that this happens every Monday morning and take a little pity on me, but I doubt a word like pity is actually in his vocabulary. The phrase 'pain in the ass' had to be, though, because that's what he was. A big fat pain in my ass. Like the human equivalent of my hangover.
So he waved his hands when I tried to slip through the check point, and I stopped and hissed in a very passable imitation of a rattlesnake while he hauled his pony keg of a gut over to where I waited. Alright, so maybe less waiting than impatiently tapping my foot and clicking my fingernails and rolling my eyes with huffy breaths, but I was definitely not moving. And like every Monday morning he folded his fat, greasy lips into a frown and furrowed that monstrous unibrow at me and clucked disapprovingly.
"You know I'm not supposed to allow un-ID's persons past security, miss." Yeah, Phil, I know. You tell me the same thing every fucking Monday, and I've worked here for five years. Least you could do is remember my name, but that's probably just a little too complex for your Apple II of a brain. Maybe if I brought you a six-pack and some donuts you'd lay off my case. Or a few girlie magazines, since your attempts to take all your pent-up frustration out on me are probably the result of you not getting any pu-- okay, so I couldn't say that. Even I had my limits. But I thought it.
Instead I put on my best innocent face and was going to go for the helpless female act, but... then he nodded at me. Nodded. With his big bald combed-over head. That was all it took to make me forget my irritation, because I was using every single braincell I had to concentrate on not looking. I tried not to look, I swear. I really did.
Unfortunately, as my dad is fond of saying, trying isn't quite the same as doing. I just couldn't resist. It was like driving down the highway and knowing there was a car accident up ahead; you just have to slow down and peek. Morbid curiosity at its best. My eyes moved of their own accord and slid over to focus on him, and the longer I stared, the more I was entranced. How a comb-over is supposed to hide a bald spot the size of Canada is beyond me. Do men really think it makes them look as if they have hair? I pondered over that idea for a moment, chewing thoughtfully on the edge of a nail as I stood there frozen and oggling. Hmm. Maybe if I tilted my head this way and looked at it from another angle, it could work. Nope. Maybe if I unfocused my eyes. Better. Just a little more...
Next thing I knew he was tapping me on the arm. I guess he probably must have still been talking to me, but I sure hadn't been paying attention. How could I, with that long, stringy hair com-- "Miss!" I was so surprised I squeaked. Hell! People shouldn't be sneaking up on me like that! I had to blink to focus again, and he was watching me when I finally gathered myself enough to sigh at him. "Err, what? Oh. I know. Look, Phil, I had a rough night. Just let me in... please?" That 'please' got me a smug smile, if a man with an overgrown moustache can be said to look smug, instead of just plain leering. It gave me the creeps. Sure, I'd never said please to him before, and I suppose there's a first time for everything, but I wasn't going to be nice more than I had to. "I really wouldn't want to have to call Franky and ask him to tell you to let me in."
Phil lost the grin and visibly paled, and I barely managed to hide a smug little smile of my own. That showed him. I had the childish impulse to stick my tongue out at him and blow a raspberry, because I'd just done the adult equivalent of threatening to tell Mom. Tattle to the big bad boss. Of course, I didn't want to talk to Franky any more than I'm sure Phil did, even in friendly conversation, so I wouldn't make good on my taunt. But Phil didn't know that, and it felt damn good.
The metal detector even beeped when I sauntered thrugh, but Phil still didn't protest, and by that time I was definitely smirking to myself. If I had known that threat would get me so much clout, I'd have used it before. I really had to remember that for future reference. Note to self.
I was three stories up and moving in the elevator when I noticed a ringing in my ears. Four stories. Five. Now it was less of a ringing and more of a screeching. What the hell was that? Six. Seven. Eight. I couldn't believe I hadn't heard it in the lobby, or maybe I had just been too involved in the comb-over and idle threats to notice it. Nine stories. It was starting to sound like a cross between a wailing banshee and a very off-tune violin, and I mentally added it to my list of the most annoying sounds in the world. Sweet Satan. Ten. The closer I got, the louder it was, and the more I cringed.
Entirely too soon, the elevator beeped my floor. I could hear the siren call on the other side of the door, and closed my eyes. Don't open. Trap me in here. Kill me. Let there be a terrorist like in Speed, and have him blow the cable to the elevator and drop me into the basement. Please. Anything. I'll stop eating Cheetohs if you put me out of my misery now. I won't steal office supplies anymore. I'll be nice to my landlady... well, nicer. Please.
It didn't work. The door opened to complete and utter chaos.
The public relations department of Hell is a very busy place, even on a typical day. People running everywhere, copy machines not working, deadlines too close for comfort, all the normal insanity of an office. We're busy little bees here; do you really think that evil propoganda has been spreading itself ro the last Satan-knows-how-many centuries? And oops, I guess I forgot to tell you. Slight detour in my storytelling. Sit back and listen.
My name is Cix, and I work in Hell. No, it's not some inferno deep within the Earth, guarded by demons with pitchforks and a horned Dark Lord. Sorry if it bursts your bubble, but the real deal is a lot more mundane. We daemons-- just ordinary humans with one hell of a job, pardon the pun-- come to work in a nice tall skyscraper in downtown Chicago. We have wages and taxes and drive home in our mid-sized cars to spend time with our nuclear families just like the rest of America. Of course, we have to front a little; we operate under a false corporation name, and we can't really threaten anyone we dislike with eternal damnation, no matter how much we wish we could. But hey. You can't beat a benefits package that includes immortality, or the closest thing to it.
Another shocker for you; Satan isn't red with a pointy goatee. I wish he was, because he'd be a lot more interesting. Instead he's this lecherous old coot, with a stomach that hangs over his belt-- when he wears one-- and greasy hair that we all think hasn't been washed since he took office a good three hundred years ago. Franklin London. We call him Franky behind his back. To his face it's nothing but "Yes, Lucifer," or "No, Beezlebub, sir." He's a traditionalist, that Franky. Likes the good old time titles.
In case you're wondering, the same goes for God. Heaven is some scrappy brick building in Europe somewhere. We're not really allowed to know where exactly, although the bosses have an idea. We haven't figured out why they get to know and we don't. What do they think we're going to do, egg His car? Leave flaming bags of dog shit on the front steps of Heaven? Please. We've got much more important things to do, thankyouverymuch. Corrupt mankind, for instance.
Anyway, back on track. The department was in chaos. I was afraid to move from the elevator for fear I'd get trampled. On one side a group of secretaries stood huddled around the TV; I couldn't hear what the newscaster was saying, but it couldn't have been good, because every few moments someone else would throw one of their little potted marigolds or macaroni-shelled picture frames and screech. If you haven't seen the fury of a pissed off secretary, then man, you ain't seen nothing. That wasn't even the worst of it. People were throwing stacks of reports at one another, the phones were ringing off the hooks, and over the noise of it all was that Satan-awful screaming.
Just what I needed, when there was already a heavy metal band playing drum solos in my skull. I flinched and winced some more and beelined toward my office. I swear I was this close to making it into the safety of my private sanctuary when this chump David from the tech division spotted me. Great. I took a deep breath and steeled myself for more of a hangover as he threw up his hands at me and began the tirade.
"Trust you to be late on the worst day in centuries! Do you have any idea what we're going through here?! It's already in the news, and all those religious buggers are throwing fits, and the stat department says Jesus sighting are through the roof, and Jonna won't stop screaming, the poor girl, only her second week on the job and she finds this, and Isaac has his hands full because we all know He'll be on this like a duck on a June bug, and--"
He kept talking as I slowly slid closer to the door. It must have taken him awhile to realize that I was trying to slink away, because I already had my hand on the handle before he narrowed his eyes at me and frowned. I smiled back with my best imitation of friendliness and was inside with the door slammed before he could continue his rant. Ahhh, relative silence. No no, wait. The ranting started all over again. I closed my eyes and attempted to figure out what was going on, but all I could think of was ducks. Ducks and June bugs. Like a duck on a June bug. What the hell was a June bug?
Someone knocked on my door, and I tried to ignore it, but a voice filtered through. "Cix? We need to talk." Uh oh. Isaac. "Now." Double uh-oh. Isaac was definitely pissing about something, and a man who has lived through four consecutive Dark Lords as the head advisor doesn't get pissy easily. I hoped it wasn't something I'd done, and opened the door. He was looking angry and unsettled, but shaky, very shaky. A man that old doesn't get shaky easily, either. Please Lucifer, don't let it be something I did. Please please please please please.
I got my wish. "Haven't you heard the news?" I shook my head. David's incoherent rambling hadn't counted as any sort of information, and I was back to thinking about ducks when Isaac handed me the morning paper. I read the headline, and blinked. Then I read it again. And one more time, for good measure. I shouldn't have made that wish. I looked up at Isaac.
"It can't be true." I glanced past him and out into the main office, searching for support, but everyone had stopped in their pointless fluttering about and were now standing there staring at Isaac and I. The nearly dead silence was almost as bad as the constant high-pitched chatter. Didn't these people have work to do? Maybe it normally wouldn't have bothered but, but someone was still screaming bloody murder, and my headache was definitely not getting better. I should have stayed home. There was ice cream at home. Freezer-burned Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie was sounding mighty good right now.
"Jonna found him this morning, Cix, right before you got there. We're not quite sure what the cause is, but he's definitely..." Isaac held up his hands in a helpless gesture. "He's dead."
Shit.
Being me, I just had to get belligerent. "I thought he couldn't just up and die! What about all this immortality bullshit we've all been fed?!"
"You've read the manual, same as we have. Technically none of us are immortal, even him. It's in Section 5, Paragraph 4 of the--"
I was so not hearing this. See, Isaac is right. Technically we aren't immortal, because that's just pretty damn impossible. Our bodies just stop growing older; the cells don't decline in their reproductive rate, our metabolisms don't slow down, and basically, we just stop maturing. We can still get sick, although we're a lot less likely to than normal humans, because our immune systems are running like a hyperactive toddler. But there are some things even that can't stop, like anaphylactic shock or decapitation or a nice big shotgun blast to the chest. I heard that one year God choked on his steak dinner, and even the Heimlich couldn't save him. The vegans sure had a hey-day with that one.
Damn, I'm getting sidetracked again from my real point. Focus, Cix, focus. Back to the story.
"I know, I know. Alright. So Franky's dead." Isaac didn't even correct me. Usually he's a hardass about respect toward the Dark Lord, but I guess with Franky dead he could cut me some slack. "You're his second in command, sir. Can't you take over or something?"
Not the right thing to ask. I already knew the answer. Why had I asked? Fuck. "It's already in the Purgatory Times, you saw it yourself. It's all over the news. Two minutes after Jonna found Lucifer, and He was already on the phone. He's sending a special delegation of peace lobbyists here to oversee The Rule, Cix. You know The Rule. You're the personnel manager. We need a new Satan, and we've only got ten days."
The Rule. Ten days. "Peace lobbying" angels from Heaven. I was wrong about today. I said it wasn't a good day, and that had been before all this. When Franky was still alive and my only duties were hiring new secretaries and the occasional foray to get Chinese take-out for the department. Yeah, I had been so very wrong.
I waved a hand at him idly, not out of dismissal but because I really couldn't think of anything to say. Nothing beyond a grunt of acknowledgement. "Nnn, yeah." A more reassuring response was probably in order, but I really wasn't coherent enough for that. You don't just lay bombshells down on people like this and expect them to be all happy chirpy. Or hell, even just happy.
You see, this was bad news. Very bad news. I mean, this all seems pretty darn normal to me. Daemons, angels, garbagemen and politicians; the same everyday Joe's on the streets. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that it is just a bit different, I guess you could say. It'd be a little hard for me to tell you the specifics of all this if you didn't even know the generalities, so I suppose it's time for the real history behind all this.
A long, long time ago, the Earth was created. No one knows how, really. All that hooplah about God alone spending seven days to make the trees and rivers and happy butterflies is a bunch of baloney. Maybe there was a Big Bang, or maybe it was just supposed to happen, but it's still all a mystery. Point is, we got a planet, and we got a God, and in the ultimate irony, we got a Satan. They built the world together. They even used to be buddies. I know a bunch of religious fanatics out there are going to be on my ass for saying that, but it's Hell's honest truth, plain and simple.
Afer all the bits and pieces were assembled, God and Satan decided that they didn't like eachother one whit anymore, and so they were going to fight over who got the Earth. Like two toddlers squabbling over a toy, they squabbled over the world. Neither of them won. It took a few thousand years for them to finally figure out that neither of them would ever win if they kept it up, so they made a gentlemanly agreement.
Thus, the Good-Bad Rule was created. Today we just call it The Rule.
It's simple, really. God can have his armies of angels, and Satan gets his hoards of daemons. Most of the time they'll leave the other alone and go about their own business. Obviously, though-- like I found out when Franky kicked the bucket-- something had to be done if one of them booted it. That's where The Rule came in.
In the untimely event that either God or Satan dies, the institution to which they belong-- either Heaven or Hell, respectively-- has ten days in which to fill the empty position. Purgatory, the P.R. in-between for Earth's two kingdoms, helps out a little here. They're mostly in charge of the news, but just in case something like this happens, they also keep track of potential candidates. Time-consuming job, really. Some poor sap, probably a personnel manager just like me, gets to go around and keep a list of who'd make a good God or Satan if anything should happen. Then if The Rule has to be implemented, the even more pathetic sap-- in this case, moi-- has at least some semblance of a chance.
That's all fine and dandy, if it works. It all the bajillions of years since the Earth was created, we've managed to uphold the status quo. So far so good. But there's also a rule if the personnel manager fails; if no new ruler can be found, then the Earth defaults to whichever side still holds its ruler.
Say, for example, that Hank died. If I haven't mentioned it already-- and I probably forgot to-- God's name is Hank. Okay, so it's not. It's actually Henry, but we all call him Hank, even his angels, and it pisses him off something Satanawful. Rather funny. He has a mullet, too, which makes it even worse. Like those mullets you see on hockey fans in Canada. Big and foofy. I thought they were illegal; in fact, I think they must be in the States. Maybe that explains why Hank has been hiding out in Europe. There are all those stereotypes about Frenchies not shaving their armpits; maybe they don't mind mullets either. Even shoulder-length stringy God mullets.
Hell, I get distracted easily. You have to remind me to stay on topic. Where was I? The Rule? Okay, so say that Hank dies. Ten days later, no new God. It'd mean that the world would fall into the nice grubby hands of Satan. Don't get so scared thinking about it; it wouldn't be all that bad. Just a sort of sinful global warming. But if Satan were to die and God took over, can you imagine? All those happy people... all that sunshine and peace and love... the complete lack of lawyers and pimps and evil... all those mullets... it's just too frightening of a prospect to think over for too long. I'm shaking right now, just imagining it.
So anyway, that's The Rule. It sounds nice and reasonable, but let me tell you; it's fucking intimidating. I mean, what if I failed? What if I was the first person in all of the world's hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of years of existence to screw up and let it all go to default? What if... what if God got the world? Sheesh, talk about pressure.
Now you can understand why this was turning out to be such a bad day; bad also meaning terrible, catastrophic, Earth-shattering, Hell-raising, and Satandamn horrific. Me, little Cixer, the flighty, irresponsible personnel manager hired by Franky because I wore a miniskirt to my interview, me, the Queen of Procrastination and quite possibly one of the most spazzy daemonds in hell-- damnit, I lost my train of thought again. It derailed somewhere in all that bitching and moaning.
I think that the original point to all that was that I was going to have to find a new Satan.
This wasn't going to be easy. Understatement of the day. The world is an awfully big place, and even with Purgatory's candidate list, it was going to take days of flying, hours of wheedling, and maybe a sexual favor or two for me to even begin to figure out who to pick. If some stranger were to come up to you and ask you to become the new Dark Lord of the Underworld, you'd laugh your ass off. I was anticipating a lot of laughing. Probably a lot of "This so-called daemon chick is off her rocker" looks, too.
And if that wasn't hard enough alone, I was going to have to deal with Hank's winged bitches. The last time he sent a delegation of angels to us it was because some dimwit-- okay, so we all paid him to try it, but that's not the point here-- tried to hack into Heaven's server. I think his name was Clay; "was" being the word of emphasis here. For all us calling them pansies, those angels are pretty tough. Clay screamed until they knocked him out and dragged him from our office. I heard they took him back to Heaven, and for a daemon, that's the worst punishment of all.
I'd like to say that was the only reason I was nervous about the angels, but it's not.
If Hank was going to send angels to oversee The Rule, then he was going to send angels. Archangels. The big, bad hands of God himself. And that meant Gabriel and Micheal. Gabe and Miche. If it were Gabriel alone I could handle this situation easy schmeesy. The man was an asshole, and I'm a certified bitch, so we'd probably hate eachother and get along just fine. But if Miche came then there, to state a cliche, would be Hell to pay. Why? Let's just say that I know what Miche looks like naked, and that I used to have a big fat rock on my finger, and we'll leave it at that for now. Don't ask questions.
Archangels were coming. The Rule was in effect. And now I had ten days to fight the angels off, to scour the Earth, to find my candidates and interview them all and somehow convince one of them that they were Satan. The more I thought about my task, the more I wanted to die. But I was going to do it. Come Hell or high water, I was going to find Lucifer.
After all this, right when I finally decided that I could do it, Isaac disturbed my dazed reverie. I looked around with a start, only to find that I was still standing in the middle of the office. Everyone was quietly watching me, waiting for a reaction. I guess I'd kinda dozed off there or something, what with all that deep thinking. I knew I should have said something along the lines of "Yes, I will save the world from good!," but all I managed was a blank stare at Isaac said the two words that, despite my resolve, I would have given anything not to hear.
"They're here."
And that's how this all began.
Amy: Maybe you should learn some manners, Cix, before I forget you for good. Hmmm?
Me: Yes, Mistress.
Amy: That's better.
Me: *mutter* Whore.
*beam* Amy finally played with me! Look at the fruits of our labor! Go look NOW!
()
It was a typical Monday morning, which meant I was late for work. Again. I had a raging hangover that made the prospect of an eternity in the customer service department of Hell seem like a cakewalk, and if you haven't seen it, then trust me. It had to have been one hellacious hangover to beat that.
Then if that wasn't enough, hay fever was making me feel as if I'd been punched repeatedly in the face by a three hundred pound biker named Horace. My ears were plugged, I could barely see, and to add insult to injury, when I trudged into the lobby of work, I couldn't find my wallet. This was not a good day.
The putz of a security guard stopped me. He always stops me. You think by now he'd have figured out that this happens every Monday morning and take a little pity on me, but I doubt a word like pity is actually in his vocabulary. The phrase 'pain in the ass' had to be, though, because that's what he was. A big fat pain in my ass. Like the human equivalent of my hangover.
So he waved his hands when I tried to slip through the check point, and I stopped and hissed in a very passable imitation of a rattlesnake while he hauled his pony keg of a gut over to where I waited. Alright, so maybe less waiting than impatiently tapping my foot and clicking my fingernails and rolling my eyes with huffy breaths, but I was definitely not moving. And like every Monday morning he folded his fat, greasy lips into a frown and furrowed that monstrous unibrow at me and clucked disapprovingly.
"You know I'm not supposed to allow un-ID's persons past security, miss." Yeah, Phil, I know. You tell me the same thing every fucking Monday, and I've worked here for five years. Least you could do is remember my name, but that's probably just a little too complex for your Apple II of a brain. Maybe if I brought you a six-pack and some donuts you'd lay off my case. Or a few girlie magazines, since your attempts to take all your pent-up frustration out on me are probably the result of you not getting any pu-- okay, so I couldn't say that. Even I had my limits. But I thought it.
Instead I put on my best innocent face and was going to go for the helpless female act, but... then he nodded at me. Nodded. With his big bald combed-over head. That was all it took to make me forget my irritation, because I was using every single braincell I had to concentrate on not looking. I tried not to look, I swear. I really did.
Unfortunately, as my dad is fond of saying, trying isn't quite the same as doing. I just couldn't resist. It was like driving down the highway and knowing there was a car accident up ahead; you just have to slow down and peek. Morbid curiosity at its best. My eyes moved of their own accord and slid over to focus on him, and the longer I stared, the more I was entranced. How a comb-over is supposed to hide a bald spot the size of Canada is beyond me. Do men really think it makes them look as if they have hair? I pondered over that idea for a moment, chewing thoughtfully on the edge of a nail as I stood there frozen and oggling. Hmm. Maybe if I tilted my head this way and looked at it from another angle, it could work. Nope. Maybe if I unfocused my eyes. Better. Just a little more...
Next thing I knew he was tapping me on the arm. I guess he probably must have still been talking to me, but I sure hadn't been paying attention. How could I, with that long, stringy hair com-- "Miss!" I was so surprised I squeaked. Hell! People shouldn't be sneaking up on me like that! I had to blink to focus again, and he was watching me when I finally gathered myself enough to sigh at him. "Err, what? Oh. I know. Look, Phil, I had a rough night. Just let me in... please?" That 'please' got me a smug smile, if a man with an overgrown moustache can be said to look smug, instead of just plain leering. It gave me the creeps. Sure, I'd never said please to him before, and I suppose there's a first time for everything, but I wasn't going to be nice more than I had to. "I really wouldn't want to have to call Franky and ask him to tell you to let me in."
Phil lost the grin and visibly paled, and I barely managed to hide a smug little smile of my own. That showed him. I had the childish impulse to stick my tongue out at him and blow a raspberry, because I'd just done the adult equivalent of threatening to tell Mom. Tattle to the big bad boss. Of course, I didn't want to talk to Franky any more than I'm sure Phil did, even in friendly conversation, so I wouldn't make good on my taunt. But Phil didn't know that, and it felt damn good.
The metal detector even beeped when I sauntered thrugh, but Phil still didn't protest, and by that time I was definitely smirking to myself. If I had known that threat would get me so much clout, I'd have used it before. I really had to remember that for future reference. Note to self.
I was three stories up and moving in the elevator when I noticed a ringing in my ears. Four stories. Five. Now it was less of a ringing and more of a screeching. What the hell was that? Six. Seven. Eight. I couldn't believe I hadn't heard it in the lobby, or maybe I had just been too involved in the comb-over and idle threats to notice it. Nine stories. It was starting to sound like a cross between a wailing banshee and a very off-tune violin, and I mentally added it to my list of the most annoying sounds in the world. Sweet Satan. Ten. The closer I got, the louder it was, and the more I cringed.
Entirely too soon, the elevator beeped my floor. I could hear the siren call on the other side of the door, and closed my eyes. Don't open. Trap me in here. Kill me. Let there be a terrorist like in Speed, and have him blow the cable to the elevator and drop me into the basement. Please. Anything. I'll stop eating Cheetohs if you put me out of my misery now. I won't steal office supplies anymore. I'll be nice to my landlady... well, nicer. Please.
It didn't work. The door opened to complete and utter chaos.
The public relations department of Hell is a very busy place, even on a typical day. People running everywhere, copy machines not working, deadlines too close for comfort, all the normal insanity of an office. We're busy little bees here; do you really think that evil propoganda has been spreading itself ro the last Satan-knows-how-many centuries? And oops, I guess I forgot to tell you. Slight detour in my storytelling. Sit back and listen.
My name is Cix, and I work in Hell. No, it's not some inferno deep within the Earth, guarded by demons with pitchforks and a horned Dark Lord. Sorry if it bursts your bubble, but the real deal is a lot more mundane. We daemons-- just ordinary humans with one hell of a job, pardon the pun-- come to work in a nice tall skyscraper in downtown Chicago. We have wages and taxes and drive home in our mid-sized cars to spend time with our nuclear families just like the rest of America. Of course, we have to front a little; we operate under a false corporation name, and we can't really threaten anyone we dislike with eternal damnation, no matter how much we wish we could. But hey. You can't beat a benefits package that includes immortality, or the closest thing to it.
Another shocker for you; Satan isn't red with a pointy goatee. I wish he was, because he'd be a lot more interesting. Instead he's this lecherous old coot, with a stomach that hangs over his belt-- when he wears one-- and greasy hair that we all think hasn't been washed since he took office a good three hundred years ago. Franklin London. We call him Franky behind his back. To his face it's nothing but "Yes, Lucifer," or "No, Beezlebub, sir." He's a traditionalist, that Franky. Likes the good old time titles.
In case you're wondering, the same goes for God. Heaven is some scrappy brick building in Europe somewhere. We're not really allowed to know where exactly, although the bosses have an idea. We haven't figured out why they get to know and we don't. What do they think we're going to do, egg His car? Leave flaming bags of dog shit on the front steps of Heaven? Please. We've got much more important things to do, thankyouverymuch. Corrupt mankind, for instance.
Anyway, back on track. The department was in chaos. I was afraid to move from the elevator for fear I'd get trampled. On one side a group of secretaries stood huddled around the TV; I couldn't hear what the newscaster was saying, but it couldn't have been good, because every few moments someone else would throw one of their little potted marigolds or macaroni-shelled picture frames and screech. If you haven't seen the fury of a pissed off secretary, then man, you ain't seen nothing. That wasn't even the worst of it. People were throwing stacks of reports at one another, the phones were ringing off the hooks, and over the noise of it all was that Satan-awful screaming.
Just what I needed, when there was already a heavy metal band playing drum solos in my skull. I flinched and winced some more and beelined toward my office. I swear I was this close to making it into the safety of my private sanctuary when this chump David from the tech division spotted me. Great. I took a deep breath and steeled myself for more of a hangover as he threw up his hands at me and began the tirade.
"Trust you to be late on the worst day in centuries! Do you have any idea what we're going through here?! It's already in the news, and all those religious buggers are throwing fits, and the stat department says Jesus sighting are through the roof, and Jonna won't stop screaming, the poor girl, only her second week on the job and she finds this, and Isaac has his hands full because we all know He'll be on this like a duck on a June bug, and--"
He kept talking as I slowly slid closer to the door. It must have taken him awhile to realize that I was trying to slink away, because I already had my hand on the handle before he narrowed his eyes at me and frowned. I smiled back with my best imitation of friendliness and was inside with the door slammed before he could continue his rant. Ahhh, relative silence. No no, wait. The ranting started all over again. I closed my eyes and attempted to figure out what was going on, but all I could think of was ducks. Ducks and June bugs. Like a duck on a June bug. What the hell was a June bug?
Someone knocked on my door, and I tried to ignore it, but a voice filtered through. "Cix? We need to talk." Uh oh. Isaac. "Now." Double uh-oh. Isaac was definitely pissing about something, and a man who has lived through four consecutive Dark Lords as the head advisor doesn't get pissy easily. I hoped it wasn't something I'd done, and opened the door. He was looking angry and unsettled, but shaky, very shaky. A man that old doesn't get shaky easily, either. Please Lucifer, don't let it be something I did. Please please please please please.
I got my wish. "Haven't you heard the news?" I shook my head. David's incoherent rambling hadn't counted as any sort of information, and I was back to thinking about ducks when Isaac handed me the morning paper. I read the headline, and blinked. Then I read it again. And one more time, for good measure. I shouldn't have made that wish. I looked up at Isaac.
"It can't be true." I glanced past him and out into the main office, searching for support, but everyone had stopped in their pointless fluttering about and were now standing there staring at Isaac and I. The nearly dead silence was almost as bad as the constant high-pitched chatter. Didn't these people have work to do? Maybe it normally wouldn't have bothered but, but someone was still screaming bloody murder, and my headache was definitely not getting better. I should have stayed home. There was ice cream at home. Freezer-burned Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie was sounding mighty good right now.
"Jonna found him this morning, Cix, right before you got there. We're not quite sure what the cause is, but he's definitely..." Isaac held up his hands in a helpless gesture. "He's dead."
Shit.
Being me, I just had to get belligerent. "I thought he couldn't just up and die! What about all this immortality bullshit we've all been fed?!"
"You've read the manual, same as we have. Technically none of us are immortal, even him. It's in Section 5, Paragraph 4 of the--"
I was so not hearing this. See, Isaac is right. Technically we aren't immortal, because that's just pretty damn impossible. Our bodies just stop growing older; the cells don't decline in their reproductive rate, our metabolisms don't slow down, and basically, we just stop maturing. We can still get sick, although we're a lot less likely to than normal humans, because our immune systems are running like a hyperactive toddler. But there are some things even that can't stop, like anaphylactic shock or decapitation or a nice big shotgun blast to the chest. I heard that one year God choked on his steak dinner, and even the Heimlich couldn't save him. The vegans sure had a hey-day with that one.
Damn, I'm getting sidetracked again from my real point. Focus, Cix, focus. Back to the story.
"I know, I know. Alright. So Franky's dead." Isaac didn't even correct me. Usually he's a hardass about respect toward the Dark Lord, but I guess with Franky dead he could cut me some slack. "You're his second in command, sir. Can't you take over or something?"
Not the right thing to ask. I already knew the answer. Why had I asked? Fuck. "It's already in the Purgatory Times, you saw it yourself. It's all over the news. Two minutes after Jonna found Lucifer, and He was already on the phone. He's sending a special delegation of peace lobbyists here to oversee The Rule, Cix. You know The Rule. You're the personnel manager. We need a new Satan, and we've only got ten days."
The Rule. Ten days. "Peace lobbying" angels from Heaven. I was wrong about today. I said it wasn't a good day, and that had been before all this. When Franky was still alive and my only duties were hiring new secretaries and the occasional foray to get Chinese take-out for the department. Yeah, I had been so very wrong.
I waved a hand at him idly, not out of dismissal but because I really couldn't think of anything to say. Nothing beyond a grunt of acknowledgement. "Nnn, yeah." A more reassuring response was probably in order, but I really wasn't coherent enough for that. You don't just lay bombshells down on people like this and expect them to be all happy chirpy. Or hell, even just happy.
You see, this was bad news. Very bad news. I mean, this all seems pretty darn normal to me. Daemons, angels, garbagemen and politicians; the same everyday Joe's on the streets. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that it is just a bit different, I guess you could say. It'd be a little hard for me to tell you the specifics of all this if you didn't even know the generalities, so I suppose it's time for the real history behind all this.
A long, long time ago, the Earth was created. No one knows how, really. All that hooplah about God alone spending seven days to make the trees and rivers and happy butterflies is a bunch of baloney. Maybe there was a Big Bang, or maybe it was just supposed to happen, but it's still all a mystery. Point is, we got a planet, and we got a God, and in the ultimate irony, we got a Satan. They built the world together. They even used to be buddies. I know a bunch of religious fanatics out there are going to be on my ass for saying that, but it's Hell's honest truth, plain and simple.
Afer all the bits and pieces were assembled, God and Satan decided that they didn't like eachother one whit anymore, and so they were going to fight over who got the Earth. Like two toddlers squabbling over a toy, they squabbled over the world. Neither of them won. It took a few thousand years for them to finally figure out that neither of them would ever win if they kept it up, so they made a gentlemanly agreement.
Thus, the Good-Bad Rule was created. Today we just call it The Rule.
It's simple, really. God can have his armies of angels, and Satan gets his hoards of daemons. Most of the time they'll leave the other alone and go about their own business. Obviously, though-- like I found out when Franky kicked the bucket-- something had to be done if one of them booted it. That's where The Rule came in.
In the untimely event that either God or Satan dies, the institution to which they belong-- either Heaven or Hell, respectively-- has ten days in which to fill the empty position. Purgatory, the P.R. in-between for Earth's two kingdoms, helps out a little here. They're mostly in charge of the news, but just in case something like this happens, they also keep track of potential candidates. Time-consuming job, really. Some poor sap, probably a personnel manager just like me, gets to go around and keep a list of who'd make a good God or Satan if anything should happen. Then if The Rule has to be implemented, the even more pathetic sap-- in this case, moi-- has at least some semblance of a chance.
That's all fine and dandy, if it works. It all the bajillions of years since the Earth was created, we've managed to uphold the status quo. So far so good. But there's also a rule if the personnel manager fails; if no new ruler can be found, then the Earth defaults to whichever side still holds its ruler.
Say, for example, that Hank died. If I haven't mentioned it already-- and I probably forgot to-- God's name is Hank. Okay, so it's not. It's actually Henry, but we all call him Hank, even his angels, and it pisses him off something Satanawful. Rather funny. He has a mullet, too, which makes it even worse. Like those mullets you see on hockey fans in Canada. Big and foofy. I thought they were illegal; in fact, I think they must be in the States. Maybe that explains why Hank has been hiding out in Europe. There are all those stereotypes about Frenchies not shaving their armpits; maybe they don't mind mullets either. Even shoulder-length stringy God mullets.
Hell, I get distracted easily. You have to remind me to stay on topic. Where was I? The Rule? Okay, so say that Hank dies. Ten days later, no new God. It'd mean that the world would fall into the nice grubby hands of Satan. Don't get so scared thinking about it; it wouldn't be all that bad. Just a sort of sinful global warming. But if Satan were to die and God took over, can you imagine? All those happy people... all that sunshine and peace and love... the complete lack of lawyers and pimps and evil... all those mullets... it's just too frightening of a prospect to think over for too long. I'm shaking right now, just imagining it.
So anyway, that's The Rule. It sounds nice and reasonable, but let me tell you; it's fucking intimidating. I mean, what if I failed? What if I was the first person in all of the world's hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of years of existence to screw up and let it all go to default? What if... what if God got the world? Sheesh, talk about pressure.
Now you can understand why this was turning out to be such a bad day; bad also meaning terrible, catastrophic, Earth-shattering, Hell-raising, and Satandamn horrific. Me, little Cixer, the flighty, irresponsible personnel manager hired by Franky because I wore a miniskirt to my interview, me, the Queen of Procrastination and quite possibly one of the most spazzy daemonds in hell-- damnit, I lost my train of thought again. It derailed somewhere in all that bitching and moaning.
I think that the original point to all that was that I was going to have to find a new Satan.
This wasn't going to be easy. Understatement of the day. The world is an awfully big place, and even with Purgatory's candidate list, it was going to take days of flying, hours of wheedling, and maybe a sexual favor or two for me to even begin to figure out who to pick. If some stranger were to come up to you and ask you to become the new Dark Lord of the Underworld, you'd laugh your ass off. I was anticipating a lot of laughing. Probably a lot of "This so-called daemon chick is off her rocker" looks, too.
And if that wasn't hard enough alone, I was going to have to deal with Hank's winged bitches. The last time he sent a delegation of angels to us it was because some dimwit-- okay, so we all paid him to try it, but that's not the point here-- tried to hack into Heaven's server. I think his name was Clay; "was" being the word of emphasis here. For all us calling them pansies, those angels are pretty tough. Clay screamed until they knocked him out and dragged him from our office. I heard they took him back to Heaven, and for a daemon, that's the worst punishment of all.
I'd like to say that was the only reason I was nervous about the angels, but it's not.
If Hank was going to send angels to oversee The Rule, then he was going to send angels. Archangels. The big, bad hands of God himself. And that meant Gabriel and Micheal. Gabe and Miche. If it were Gabriel alone I could handle this situation easy schmeesy. The man was an asshole, and I'm a certified bitch, so we'd probably hate eachother and get along just fine. But if Miche came then there, to state a cliche, would be Hell to pay. Why? Let's just say that I know what Miche looks like naked, and that I used to have a big fat rock on my finger, and we'll leave it at that for now. Don't ask questions.
Archangels were coming. The Rule was in effect. And now I had ten days to fight the angels off, to scour the Earth, to find my candidates and interview them all and somehow convince one of them that they were Satan. The more I thought about my task, the more I wanted to die. But I was going to do it. Come Hell or high water, I was going to find Lucifer.
After all this, right when I finally decided that I could do it, Isaac disturbed my dazed reverie. I looked around with a start, only to find that I was still standing in the middle of the office. Everyone was quietly watching me, waiting for a reaction. I guess I'd kinda dozed off there or something, what with all that deep thinking. I knew I should have said something along the lines of "Yes, I will save the world from good!," but all I managed was a blank stare at Isaac said the two words that, despite my resolve, I would have given anything not to hear.
"They're here."
And that's how this all began.