High on a throne of royal state, which far outshon the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, or where the gorgeous east with richest hand showrs on her kings Barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat, in a place of bad honor for being so meritoriously bad; lifted from despair by bad hopes, aspiring to bad heights, insatiable for bad war with Heaven, and by this complete badness and absence of success, somehow taught pride and confidence, which he displayed thus:
“Powers and Dominions, Deities, Shiny fucking angels, late of Heaven. Yeah, I’m talking to you. He expects this little gulf to hold us, and if we hadn’t immortal vigor, it might. We don’t get tired. We never die. We are innumerable and our strength is infinite. We have been oppressed. We have fallen, but Heaven is not lost to us. When we rise up from this pit, more glorious and horrible than before, stronger from greater hardship, we will be victorious!
The pit filled with the roar of angry but enthusiastic demons.
“I’m your leader,” Satan reminded them, “both because you chose me to lead you against the Almighty, and well, because we’re from Heaven, and there’s a carefully established hierarchy which we’ve always followed, in which I’m really pretty high-ranking, and though everything about the way God ruled Heaven is unfair and terrible and tyrannical, we’re going to keep this one thing because it’s good for me.”
“But you led us into disaster,” someone shouted from the crowd.
Satan smiled an annoyed smile. “And I have never asked for thanks for that. Nonetheless, you’re all very welcome.”
Angry murmurs.
“Look,” Satan resumed, “I didn’t make you rise up against God. I invited you. You guys chose to follow me on this endeavor. You all felt like it was the right thing to do, and if I hadn’t led you, someone else would have.”
Someone tried to start up a chant of “Someone else! Someone else!” but it didn’t really catch hold.
“And that someone else, rather than me, would have gotten the pointy end of the sword, just like I did. Look, you guys have been through a lot.”
Murmurs of agreement.
“But I have been through even more. My highest place exposes me foremost to stand against the Thunderer’s aim, your wall—your pillow, if you will—against the full impact of His rage. It’s like taxes and shit, which are important for any successful society, where the leader gets a big chunk of whatever you have, right? Well, right now, you don’t have anything but infinite pain, and as your leader, I get the biggest share of that infinite pain.
“You guys are the type to strike out and make a change if you don’t like the way things are going, and I appreciate that. Me too. Yet what our loss has created here is a safe, unenvied throne yielded with full consent. Thomas Hobbes would be weeping tears of joy right now if he could see what we accomplished. Yeah, the folks in Heaven are happier, but what of that? They’re all secretly standing around wanting to take over God’s realm and talking about how they could do His job better and how much they’d enjoy the cushiness of His extra-comfortable cloud throne. That’s not true happiness. They’re torn apart by envy! But, you guys, look at this wildly uncomfortable throne.”
It really did look pretty stiff.
“You don’t want my throne. When there’s no good to strive for, there’s no strife. You guys aren’t going to form a faction to trade your small share of pain for my larger share, right?”
Reluctant nods and tiny cheers.
“This means our army has something God’s army can never have: Faith, peace, and confidence. And we’re going to use our total lack of envy to strike out and take back what that fucker has that we want. Can I get a ‘Hell yeah!’”
The infection started slowly, first with those closest to the dais, but the chant of “Hell yeah!” caught on and rose into a hurricanic churning that filled the furthest depths of Hell with the confidence of those assured of victory and secure in their choice of leader.
Satan stood, pride in his impressive leadership skills filling his prideful chest, and for a moment just took in the beauty of the sight before him: All the armies of Hell united in a common cause and ready to do whatever he said. A tear formed in his eye, and he let it fall past his smiling lips before raising his hand to silence them. “And now, we’ll debate to discover the best way forward to our goal. Open war? Sabotage? Whoever can advise, step forward and make yourself known.”
Wait a minute, they thought, God had never asked them for their ideas. The united peoples of Hell looked around at each other, now sharing Satan’s pride. They, all of them, were to be part of the war council. They were going to be heard. Their voices mattered. A million hands shot up all at once. Satan looked around embarrassed at the crowd and was about to call on someone, when Moloch, his war advisor, stood up. Satan was relieved, because Moloch was a sceptered king, not some nobody, so his ideas actually mattered.
Moloch began with a low purr that eventually became a full-on growl. The stratocaster slung low across his shoulders resounded with a distorted whine as his heavily-ringed, long-nailed hand crashed down on its strings.
From that moment, the assembled masses were a screaming mob. It didn’t really matter what Moloch said. His speech could barely be heard over the infernal cheers of his fans.
Satan, never one to miss out on a performance, joined in on drums, laying down a sick, syncopated beat with an evolving prog-rock time signature. Moloch looked back at him and frowned.
“Dude, 4/4,” he whispered.
Satan, downcast, complied.
And Moloch began to shred. And he shredded so discordantly, so beautifully, so terribly, that unborn children across the unmade world began to unscream, and he matched their pitch with his voice and turned it into a sadistic harmony of pain and suffering. And with the clang of an impossible power chord, the music ceased.
“WELCOME TO HELL, MOTHERFUCKERS,” He growled in an affected British accent.
The crowd lost their shit like teenage girls at a Beatles concert.
“As Satan’s war adviser, it is my duty and pleasure to advise WAR.” At the word ‘war’ he noodled a bit on his guitar and a tear of blood ran down his face.
“Did we lose? Yeah, we lost. Did God fight fair? No. He didn’t. God sucker-punched us like a chicken-shit little girl.
“And why did we rise up in the first place? We were mistreated. Life in heaven wasn’t that Goddamned great, was it? No. It was not. In fact, except for the clean air, the perfect weather, the rent-free golden mansions on golden streets, the open bars, the all-you-can eat buffets, the free concerts, the pillow-top, Egyptian cotton mattresses, the slutty angels with low self-esteem, and the constant all-permeating feeling of pure love, Heaven was a pretty shitty place to live. Even more so for me. Try being metal in a place like that. I could only manage to feel depressed every other Thursday when it was veggie-burger night.
“This place, though, is depressing as Hell.” He chuckled. “Quite literally, am I right? It’s perfect.” Another tear of blood. “And that makes me so very, very happy. And being happy PISSES ME OFF!” More noodling. “And I’m determined to take Heaven back and make it more like Hell. Because, you know, best of both worlds.
“We’re going to charge in there headlong like a freight train of fallen angel guts and I’m going to slap the KFC in the face with my horse dick until He calls me Daddy. And since we’re dealing with the Creator of the entire universe, that’ll take about six minutes.
“I’m not going to sit around planning sneaky shit. Sneaky shit is for pussies.” Power chord. “And while you pussies are sitting around planning sneaky shit like a bunch of pussies—and I hope my opinion is clear on this—I will be Dick to Face with Inevitability.”
“‘But we lost last time’, you whimper through your sniveling faces. Look around you. Last time, we went up against Heaven armed with light and clouds and flowers because we were in Heaven. Scoop up some Hell Fire and fury and put ‘em in your angel pockets, and let’s go to town. God didn’t punish us. He sent us to the armory! We’re surrounded by torturey shit down here. Let’s use it to torture someone! When we hear the noise of His Almighty Engine, He’ll hear our Infernal Thunder.” Musical break. “When He whips out His Lightning, we’ll smack Him with black fire, and horror, and God-fucking angel rage. We’ll drown His throne in Tartarean sulfur and strange fire. His own shit is going to come streaming into His Godlike eyes, and it’s going to burn like HELL.
“We’ve been driven out from Heaven into a Hell of infinite torment, surrounded by utter woe and inextinguishable fire, waiting to be called to our turn at the whip, vassals of God’s anger. I know what you’re thinking. Why risk losing that? But don’t worry, the only way for God to punish us more severely than this is for Him to destroy us completely. So what are we afraid of? There’s nothing more metal than death, bitches. Either we take back Heaven, which we can then make dark like the blackness of Hell; we fail and get banished from existence itself; or we fail and get tossed back down here. Win, win, win” and with each ‘win’ he struck a chord on his guitar.
The assembled demons cheered. Moloch’s face contorted into a sour grimace, which made them love him even more. He played loud and raucous and rough, and Satan managed to make his driving 4/4 sound pretty prog anyway, and the Revival Floor turned into a mosh pit of angry angels, jumping and pumping their fists in the air and elbowing each other in the face.
This went on unnecessarily for a couple of hours, and when Moloch finally finished a 30-minute cover of “Inna-Gadda-Da-Vita,” which was met with a surprising amount of enthusiasm from his fans considering it was even more nonsense to them, he unplugged and took his seat.
Satan stepped up to the microphone, sweating, panting, a huge grin plastered across his face, and said, “Who’s next?”
Belial the Frail and Lusty rose gracefully from his chair, with a flourish of sorts, holding the train of his cloak in one upraised hand and revealing his skinny jeans. Man, he was good looking. The energy of the last set carried over, and they cheered enthusiastically. He looked so goddamn dignified and passionate, but also cool and collected.
Of course, it was all theatrics—a pretty puss painted on a rank and rotten soul. His voice was smooth as satin, and his maple-syrup tongue slathered trust and confidence on the waffles of lies. He had a lisp that made him seem that much more trustworthy somehow.
“Let’th hear it for my boy Moloch!” he began.
More stomps, cheers, and general rowdiness.
“He makth an entithing argument, doethn’t he? It’s fun to danth to his overtureth of war, yeth? Have you all theen Moloch on the battlefield? It’th a thight to behold. I can just see him slapping God around with his big, tasty manhood, can’t you? Mmm, makes me tingle.” He held a finger in the air. “Dibs on nexties, am I right?”
They all laughed.
“I hate the KFC as much as the rest of you, and I love a fuzzy guitar as much as anyone—but think for a moment about what Heaven looks like from the outside. Impregnable towers filled with armed watch. Legions of angels encamping on the bordering deep or scouting with obscure wing far and wide into the realm of night. Could even Moloch break through that kind of defense?”
Mumbles of “Oh shit, maybe not.”
“And even if, by some unholy miracle, we manage to break through by force, with all the legions of hell at our back, our great Enemy would sit untouched on His throne, and with a snap of His fingers, expel all corruption from incorruptible Heaven.
“Again.
“We are strong, but we can’t compete with the creative and destructive force of the Universe. You’re deluding yourselves to imagine that we can. God is like a lightbulb. It doesn’t matter how much darkness you throw at Him. He simply switches on and what then? Where does the darkness go?”
Murmurs of ‘I didn’t think of it that way.’
“And what happens if we lose again? How will we feel? Happy? Cocksure? Ready to try again? No. Many of us were close to despair this time, and if it happens again? There won’t be many who are ready to go on living. And as celestial beings, it isn’t easy to die. We can’t just slit our aery wrists or hang ourselves from a stalagmite.”
“Stalactite…” came a meek, correcting voice from the front row.
“We’ll have to exasperate the Almighty Victor enough that He spends all His rage and ends us. Only He who gave us existence could be the cure for that existence. And a sad cure that would be! Look around you. Look at yourselves. Who among you would release those intellectual beings, those noble thoughts, though full of pain, to wander unprotected through eternity? Who among you would be truly ready to perish, swallowed up and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night, devoid of sense and motion? And if this is good—if it is right for us to hang up our suffering like a lost jacket— who’s to say whether our Angry Foe can, or will, even do it? Can He make a rock too big for Him to lift? Can he destroy things He created indestructible? Doubtful. Will He? Certainly not. Why would He end us in anger, whom His anger saves to punish endlessly?
“Those of us who counsel war say we’ve been consigned to endless torment, and God couldn’t do any worse. Look around you. Is this the worst torment you can imagine? Sitting comfortably in our brand new Meeting Hall, with our weapons on our backs, consulting and plotting, in a, yes, vaguely unpleasant world where we make the rules and live as we like?
“When we fled, struck with Heaven’s thunder, and sought out the darkness to shelter us, Hell seemed pretty cozy. When we were chained on the burning lake, before we rose up with the strength God (kindly) left to us, though, that was pretty terrible. What if God turned up the flames and plunged us into them again? What if his red right hand came down and started shooting tiny lightning bolts at our dickles? What if all the storehouses of Hell were opened up and let loose like in Cabin in the Woods? What if there was a fiery tempest and it picked us up and stuck us each to his own rock, where racking whirlwinds tore us apart over and over again? What if we were wrapped in chains and sunk to the bottom of the fiery lake for ages of hopeless torment? Do we really want to count on He who Created the Universe not having any creativity?
“War? Really? Is that what you guys want?”
“Not really, no,” shouted the crowd in unison.
“And is sneaky trickery really any better? Let me remind you that our Foe sees everything. The All-Seeing Eye of God isn’t a metaphor! I’ve seen it. It’s creepy. He’s sitting up there laughing at us and eating popcorn right now, and you think you’re going to sneak up on Him? What we suffer right now, or worse, is inevitable.
“And, guys, it’s not unfair.”
The gathered demons shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
“We did, in fact, rise up in revolt against a wise and effective monarch, and He put us down, just like they teach you to do in King school. Can you really fault the KFC?”
Uncomfortable laughter, and a scattered shout of “Yeah.” Then some judgy words that aren’t very nice and might have referred to Belial’s effeminate carriage.
“We took arms against a stronger foe, and Hell is a reasonable consequence for that action. If we endure it, over time, God’s anger will relax a bit. He’ll neglect to stoke the fires, and eventually, we’ll get used to it here. It’s warm. It’s spacious. Is it Heaven? No. But it’s certainly not so bad as it could be.”
A few scattered claps started up and then changed their mind. Someone from the front row sent out a “Booooo!” and before long everyone had joined in. Belial, not one to slink awkwardly, slinked awkwardly off the stage, and Mammon stepped forward next, dripping with bling and laughter.
He raised his arm and his bracelets clinked together, and fell into a full on belly laugh. He attemped to speak, took a break to catch his breath, and fell into laughter again. “He was...” he managed to get out. The gathered demons laughed along with him, enjoying the joke at Belial’s expense. Belial was not laughing, and might have been a little teary-eyed.
Mammon continued with some difficulty in his pirate voice. “Ye was richt with him, an’ then…” He fell to his knees laughing. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted himself off the ground, took several deliberate breaths, and straightening his crooked back as much as he could, continued with unabashed dignity.
Before I share his speech, I’ll share a little oddity about Mammon. Yes, he often sounded like a pirate, but when he was serious about something, he had a certain old-fashioned eloquence about him that, while impressive, was seldom appropriate to his low-brow audience. His shiny words reflected the vanity of his shiny, shiny accoutrements.
He began: “Either to disinthone the King of Heav’n We warr, if Warr be best, or to regain our own right lost: Him to unthrone we then may hope when everlasting Fate shall yeild to fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife: the former vain to hope argues as vain the latter: for what place can be for us within Heav’ns bound, unless Heav’ns Lord supream we overpower?
“Suppose He should relent and publish Grace to all, on promise made of new Subjection; with what eyes could we stand in His presence humble, and receive strict Laws impos’d, to celebrate His Throne with warbl’d Hymn, and to His Godhead sing forc’t Halleluiahs; while Lordly sits our envied Sovran, and His Altar breathes Ambrosial Odours and Ambrosial Flowers, our servile offerings.
“This must be our task in Heav’n, this our delight; how wearisom Eternity so spent in worship paid to whom we hate. Let us not then pursue by force impossible, by leave obtain’d unacceptable, though in Heav’n, our state of spendid vassalage, but rather seek our own good from our selves, and from our own live to our selves, though in this vast recess, free, and to none accountable, preferring Hard liberty before the easie yoke of servile Pomp. Our greatness will appeer then most conspicuous, when great things of small, useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse we can create, and in what place so e’re thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain through labour and indurance.
“This deep world of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst thick clouds and dark doth Heav’ns all-ruling Sire choose to reside, His Glory unobscur’d and with the Majesty of darkness round covers His Throne; from whence deep thunders roar must’ring thir rage, and Heav’n resembles Hell? As He our darkness, cannot we His Light imitate when we please?
“This Desart soile wants not her hidden lustre, Gemms and Gold; nor want we skill or Art, from whence to raise Magnificence; and what can Heav’n shew more? Our torments also may in length of time become our Elements, these piercing Fires as soft as now severe, our temper chang’d into thir temper; which must needs remove the sensible of pain. All things invite to peaceful Counsels, and the settl’d State of order, how in safety best we may compose our present evils, with regard of what we are and were, dismissing quite all thoughts of Warr: ye have what I advise.
“What?” came a unified voice from the audience.
Mammon went pale and walked off stage. Belial laughed out loud, and realizing that people were scowling at him, hushed and blushed.
It’s really too bad they didn’t follow his well-stated ideas, too, because his weirdly American colonial, pre-Objectivist view of their situation was mature and reasonable, and they certainly would have fared much better with it than they did with the choice they actually ended up making. Was his speech simply an expression of his own avaricious cowardice? Maybe. But was it also brave in its own revolutionarily Galt’s Gulch kind of way. In fact, to give the assembled demons of Hell some credit, had they understood his flowery language, they would have greeted it with raucous applause. As much as the assembled demons hated Hell, they hated the idea of being in the battlefield at the whim of God just as much. Some of them were still seeing the Sword of Michael in their nightmares, and anytime someone farted, someone else jumped at the threat of rolling thunder. Mammon had given their fears voice in a way that they could’ve accepted, unlike Belial whom they couldn’t help but see as a coward. Many of them had daydreamed about a new empire, rising up with values and policies opposite to the oppressive rules of Heaven, and Mammon could have helped them find it.
Alas, they were dumbasses.
Stay in school, kids.
It had now been a while since the audience had heard anything it could get behind, and they were beginning to fidget and converse amongst themselves. Beelzebub looked around from his throne, which stood at Satan’s right hand. He saw what was happening. He rose, with dire aspect, and in his size and majesty immediately commanded the silence of all assembled. He wore deliberation, and public care, and princely council on his stony face, which shined majestic under a thin layer of lake soot. His shoulders seemed wide enough to carry monarchies. All who looked on were dumbstruck by his awesomeness.
“Hey, guys,” he cooed in his soft, but commanding voice, like a demonic Fred Rogers. “Thrones and imperial powers, off-spring of heaven, Seraphim, Cherubim…” He pointed at each as he said their titles. “...ethereal Virtues—or are we going to trade in these titles and become princes of Hell? That’s what Belial and, maybe Mammon—who can tell?—were saying: Leave behind what we knew and make something better. Endure these minimal hardships and forget the betrayal that sent us here. Live and let live. I say, phooey!”
The audience, not prepared for such a harsh word, recoiled. Tears came to a couple of eyes.
“God intended this to be our dungeon, not our new frontier; not our safe retreat. Is this where we relax in the darkling sun and roast marshmallows on the fiery lake? No. This is our prison. This is where we remain in strictest bondage under God’s thundery finger. Be sure, He will continue to reign sole king and won’t easily let go of part of His kingdom due to our revolution; and be sure, even Hell is part of the kingdom of God.
“ He used to rule over us with golden scepter, but now, rest assured, it’s iron he holds over us. We’re here discussing the relative advantages of war and peace as though we were able to make our own choices. War got us here in the first place, and it’s the victor, not the vanquished, who make the terms of peace. And we all know what those terms will be: servitude, the whip, and arbitrary punishment. Yet, we’re worse off than slaves, because we’re immortal and so are our emotions. We won’t ever be broken to the work, but our hostility, hate, resistance, and thirst for revenge will always be there. We’ll always be plotting how to not follow orders, how to minimize God’s victory, and because of that, we will always reap the harshest punishments. It’s our nature to revenge and to be punished—but we must revenge intelligently. We are going to hurt, so let’s make sure God hurts a bit too, yeah?
“We’re not going to storm the walls of Heaven. Sorry, Moloch.”
“It’s okay,” shouted Moloch from the back of the stage. He was a bit sleepy anyway.
“Let’s take small steps. Look, we only know those parts of God’s dominion that we’ve seen, right, so there’s no way to know if there’s more of it or not, but if you guys were paying attention in Book One, you would have heard Satan say that there’s a rumor that God created a third world, and put a new kind of creature on it, called Humans. They look kind of like us, but less powerful and less excellent, and yet, God loves them more. God actually took an oath, in Heaven, to love Humans more. Can you believe that crap?”
Gasps. They could not believe that crap.
“So let’s turn our energy toward these Human people, people! Let’s gather some intel. What are they like? Do they have peenees—If so, how big are they? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Are they more susceptible to force or trickery? Heaven’s closed to us. God is stronger than us. But maybe, just maybe, He left this new place unprotected, and we can either mess it up with Hellfire or take it over for our own. Drive these puny effers out like we were driven out, or seduce them to evil and make God their enemy, too, so that, repenting, they wipe the humans out for us. Oh, holy crap, guys, I’m really kind of excited about this!”
And he was.
“We’ll turn his joy to sadness, and our own sadness to rejoicing! These human emm-effers will be left to suffer with us, and they’ll curse the weakness of their forefather, and how they messed up the good thing they had. What do you think, guys? Is this a better plan than sitting around playing Pong and writing undecipherable manifestos?”
Despite being a little miffed by his potty mouth, the assembled demons were with him. They were really kind of excited about this, too.
“All in favor,” Beelzebub suggested, “say Aye!”
Of course, all of this was Satan’s idea, and Beelzebub, more than taking credit, was attempting to create the illusion of democracy, like a good lackey. In fact, only Satan, the true author of all the universe’s evil could have crafted a plan of such deep malice as to confound the race of mankind in its one root, and Earth with Hell to mingle and involve. But, spoiler alert: Satan’s spite will eventually serve to augment God’s glory. Stick around!
As could be anticipated, the demons all loved the idea. Their eyes sparkled with evil intentions, and the vote was unanimous. The roar of “Aye” rang out through the halls of Pandemonium. The walls shook, the stained glass window cracked, and the velvet painting of Elvis spontaneously caught fire and was spontaneously extinguished by a spontaneous cascade of rain from the upper storey bathroom.
“Good choice,” Beelzebub continued. “By choosing to lord it over a lesser creature, you’re no longer just a bunch of fallen angels. You have become bullies—a synod of bully gods. And from our new realm, when we take it, we might be in a better position to re-enter heaven, or at least to find our own cushy places to bask in Heaven’s light and cool our scars in the soft, delicious air.
But who shall we send in search of this new world? Who is sufficient to the task? Who can attempt, with wandring feet, the dark unbottom’d infinite Abyss and through the palpable darkness find his uncouth way? There is a vast rift between Heaven and Hell, and this new world stands as an island between the two. We need someone with strong wings who can make that impossible flight. There are going to be angels on guard, some sentried and some stationed, so we need someone stealthy, too. He’s going to have to be smart, and we must be smart in our choice, for on whom we send, the weight of all and our last hope relies.”
He resumed his seat at Satan’s right side, and sat silently, looking around at all those in attendance, waiting for someone to second his motion, or oppose it, or volunteer to undertake the task, but no one spoke. But of course they didn’t. They were all deep in thought, pondering the danger of this undertaking. Each of them could see the fear in the eyes of the other, and none of these Heaven-warring champions felt equal to this dangerous task.
This was all engineered, too. Satan talked a big game about solidarity and an unenvied throne, but the truth was, he was surrounded by powerful creatures who had already been talked into rising up against One who was objectively a pretty good leader. Like when a convoy of European outcasts in South America are talked into a do or die mission to deliver tanks of Nitroglycerine to an oil fire over rough, narrow roads despite the love of a sexy and submissive local girl who regularly forgot to make sure her nipples were covered, Satan was ass deep in a dynamite salad, trying not to make the wrong move that would cause it to blow. Satan stood in transcendent glory, as he was wont to do, and spoke.
“Your silence is understandable. Your deep consideration is needed here. Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light. There are nine walls of fire to pass through, and on the other side of them, gates of burning Adamant to keep us in. If anyone gets past those, next is the void of emptiness, gaping wide and threatening ultimate loss of being, like my ex-wife’s vagina. And on the other side of that? Well, who knows what dangers might await him or if he can ever return.”
Beelzebub, standing at his shoulder, whispered in his ear, “Good job. Lay it on thick.”
Satan continued, “But I would ill become this throne if, when danger was ahead, I shrank behind. Why do I wear this awesome crown that Mulciber made for me?—thanks Mulciber. Props.”
Mulciber, standing in the front row, smiled toothily, as a number of his peers patted him on the shoulder.
Satan resumed, “How can I stand before you, if I don’t accept as great a share of hazard as of honor? Do I deserve the glory? Absolutely. Look at my forearms, guys.”
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Raucous and deserved applause.
“But if I’m to sit above you all and bask in the glory, I should first demonstrate my overwhelming value through acts of daring. You guys, my army of fallen angels: Get to work on our new home. Engage yourself in whatever might make Hell a little more comfortable and our torment a little more tolerable. Mine for gold, gems, and ibuprofen, while I abroad, through all the coasts of dark destruction seek deliverance for us all—I’m going. And I’m going alone.”
The assembled demons gasped in one sharp intake of wind. Beelzebub shouted, “Morning star, no!” and everyone pretended not to hear it. Beelzebub smiled to himself a little as he pretended not to notice everyone pretending not to hear it.
Satan stood and raised his hand to silence them. Politically, this served a number of functions. First, it ensured that no one, given courage by their leader’s great sacrifice, would have a chance to try and talk him out of it and go in his place. Second, it kept those who might have tried from pretending to be brave, knowing they’d be refused, and, in the glow of false praise, taking over Satan’s throne while he was gone. Third, it made him look humble. In truth, though, they were as frightened of the undertaking as they were of Satan’s voice.
They all rose at once, and the sound was as the distant sound of thunder. And all at once, they bowed to him in awful reverence, praising him for hazarding his own life to defend theirs. After all, just because they’re minions of Hell doesn’t mean they’re bad people.
And so, the consultations ended with celebration of their chief. It was as if the storm had passed, and they were little birds, chirping as the sun breaks through, ready to peck to death some unsuspecting pygmies.
***
You know, when you think about it, humans are kind of terrible.
Even an army of demons, gathered together in Hell after an enormous defeat can come to a consensus everyone can live with. Of all living creatures, it is only bitchmade humanity that bickers among themselves, that pushes off unpleasant undertakings on others, that live in hatred and war, hoping all the time for God’s grace and forgiveness, when humans can’t give the same courtesy to one another.
What a bag of dicks.
Not you, of course, gentle reader. I know you have enough self-control to go to a meeting with a mind toward effective problem solving; weighing each argument completely (except the lame ones) and allowing yourself to act with friendship and respect toward whomever gives the argument that wins the day, while also feeling camaraderie and empathy for those who are less well received. But then, you’re one of the good ones.
Everyone else is a dick.
***
When the council was dissolved, the procession of grand infernal peers came forth next, double-file in order of rank. Centered between the two lines walked Hell’s dread emperor, as though he alone were the antagonist of Heaven. If the demons who watched him walk out of there hadn’t been so excited about the outcome of the council, they might have noticed just how much like God Satan looked in his pomp and regality. A globe of fiery Seraphim surrounded him, and when the procession ended, they blew their trumpets and announced the great result to all those who weren’t present. In the four cardinal directions, Cherubim charged out, magnifying the heralds’ words. All the furthest reaches of Hell heard the news, and all the furthest reaches of Hell shouted back their acclaim.
After an hour or so of this, the celebration was over, and all the demons of Hell, their minds spinning and full of ignoble thoughts, though more at ease for the sake of having a plan, immediately forgot all intention to work toward the improvement of their lot, and turned to perplexed wandering, cards, whoring, bicycle racing, mountebankery, or whatever low pursuits they chose to help them keep their minds engaged and entertain the irksome hours until their illustrious leader returned.
That’s not really fair.
Some of them were more organized than that. Some discovered the passion of sports, those great pursuits of yore that give nobility to the thoughts and grace and firmness to the body. Like at the Olympic games or on the Pythian fields, they organized great races, both on the ground and in the beaten air. Foot races gave way to chariot races which gave way to NASCAR, and the feats of athleticism brought them as much glory as do deeds of war when armies rush to battle and the thickest legions close on one another and the sky burns with the passion of contention.
The milder, wimpier demons started bluegrass circles in silent valleys, playing lutes and harps and whatever they happened to have brought along with them. You know that guy who always seems to have a ukulele with him? Like that. They sang happy songs of their heroic deeds and bluesy songs about their unlucky fall from golden Heaven, complaining that fate would allow their freedom to be taken from them by force or chance. Soon, the different circles came together and, connected by their similar subject matter, spontaneously composed contrapuntal harmonies, and the joined voices suspended all the goings on in Hell, and mesmerized the thronging audience like only the voices of immortal spirits could do.
Their souls elevated with the magic of song, several broke off and sat on a nearby hill, conversing about high-minded things in sweet discourse. They discussed things like providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, and specifically the conundrum of fixed fate and free will, in terms of their recent experiences. Were they fated to try to overthrow God and fail? Did they make the choice freely, and is that even possible in a world where their creator knows all that will happen? If the KFC knew everything, He must have known the angels would betray Him even before they were created, and if He knew that, didn’t He have some responsibility for having created them? And could the angels, millenia after their creation, have made a different choice? Were they doomed to fulfill God’s dark foreknowledge? They found no solution, and at every turn they made, they found themselves lost in meandering mazes of intellectual dead-ends. Of good and evil much they argu’d then, of happiness and final misery, Passion and Apathie, and glory and shame. Vain wisdom all and false Philosophie. Yet, for a short while, it took their minds off their problems, brought up cathartic tears, or conjured false hope. Most importantly, though, it gave them patience to endure their punishment.
Yet others broke off, some in military squadrons, some in ragtag bands, to explore that dismal world, and discover if any clime perhaps might yield them easier habitation. They set out in four directions, on foot and on the wing, following the four streams that empty into the lake of fire: Styx, the river of hatred; Acheron, black and deep, the river of sorrow; Cocytus, the river of weeping, and Phlegethon, the river of fire. Far from the lake was found the river Lethe, a slow and silent stream, the river of forgetfulness. Anyone who drinks from it forgets their former state and being, joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond Lethe, the explorers found a frozen continent, dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms of whirlwind and dire Hail. The ground is nutsack cold—which is a scientific term that means the hail never melts, but piles up until it has filled the frozen valley and become a bog of powdered ice. From above it looks solid, like your mother, but like your mother, it has swallowed entire armies. The frozen air burns like frozen fire.
At this time, I’d like to remind you all that while Hell was the new and shitty home of these new-made and shitty demons, humankind was on the cusp of existing, and when it finally did, everything would be beautiful until ***SPOILER ALERT*** Adam and Eve eventually fucked up and ruined it for all of us. Anyway, once they brought death into the world and all our woe, and then began to people the earth, people started dying. Their dust went unto dust. But as you probably know, their very undusty souls had to be stored somewhere, and unless they followed some pretty specific and arbitrary rules during their life fairly completely, Hell was that place. To make things even more fun, those rules wouldn’t be shared with said humans for several thousand years, so pretty much all of them, even the particularly good and wise ones, went to Hell.
Now, of course, the Good News about Jesus is pretty readily available, so none of us really has an excuse. I mean, now that we know better than to fornicate, and lie, and do butt stuff, and divorce our spouses, and take the name of our Lord in vain, and work on the Sabbath, and not go to church every day, and doubt our favorite translation of the Word, and all those other things, there’s no way anyone’s going to Hell anymore, right? I mean, unless you were raised in a non-Christian faith and don’t know any better, or unless you live deep in the darkest depths of the irony of the Amazon and can’t order a Bible on Amazon, or unless you practice some reasonable incredulity and can’t be totally sure that that particular pacifist hippie is the warlike messiah you’ve been waiting all eternity for, or unless you’re not all the way convinced that every word in the Bible is true except the ones that your priest/preacher/minister/elder suggested you ignore. If any of those things is true, you’ll probably still go to Hell. I mean, I’d feel bad for you, but the information you need to be successful in afterlife is readily available in at least 20% of the peopled world, so there’s a fighting chance you have no excuse.
Long story long, all of the fucked up extreme places these demons discovered would eventually be populated by the souls of the damned and become sections of the poorly-designed theme park that is Hell.
Back to the icy one, we’ll call it Popsicleland, because that’s what your dick turns into in about the first two seconds, but it’s even worse because it’s wintertime, so nobody wants a popsicle.
On a revolving schedule, all the damned souls are carried to Popsicleland by harpy-footed Furies. Of course, everywhere else in Hell is rather hot, so in addition to all the torture of extreme cold, the sinners are subjected to the bitter change of fierce extremes, which is pretty fucked up, really. You’re sitting in the furnace like, “Man, I could really go for a popsicle,” and Hell’s like “Abracadabra, it’s your dick!” In Popsicleland, the sinners are dropped in the ice, which due to their soft, ethereal warmness, melts around them a little and refreezes so that they are totally immobilized in ice until their time is up and they are hurried back to the flames.
On the way, both ways, because geography, they pass over the river Lethe which makes their suffering even worse. They struggle as they fly over to reach the river with their little soul fingers, knowing that even one drop will make them forget all their pain and suffering, and the harpy-footed Furies knowingly get them super close so they can reach, but the water is tricky and runs physically away from their touch, just like it did for Tantalus who would eventually be waist deep in it for all eternity. Also, Medusa guards that shit, mostly unrelatedly, but just in case.
Now, back to our explorers. Upon seeing Popsicleland, they shuddered, aghast with horror, and kept walking, finding nowhere the restful, idyllic fields they sought. They passed dark and dreary valleys, many a region dolorous, frozen and fiery mountains, rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death. It was a whole netheruniverse of death and suffering, which was not ideal. God created it entirely evil, and its only function was evilness, where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds monsters abominable, inutterable, and worse than fables yet have feign’d or fear conceiv’d. There were mythologically unattractive women pretty much everywhere.
***
Meanwhile, the adversary of God and humanity, Satan, carried on the wings of good ideas and actual wings, flies solitary along the river Styx, toward the Gates of Hell. Sometimes he hugs the right-hand coast and sometimes the left. Sometimes he shaves the ground with level wing, then soars up to the fiery concave, like Maverick in Top Gun. From a distance, he would have looked like a distant fleet of ships which, due to the reflection of the sea and general distance seem to be sitting among the clouds, sailing among the equinoctal winds from Bengala or the islands of Ternate and Tidore, where the merchants get their spicy drugs and rhino horn and horny goat weed and regular weed, through the Mediterranean northward to the pole. From a distance, that is. Close up, Satan looked nothing like that, and really, if, even at a considerable distance, you mistook Satan flying through Hell for a fleet of ships sailing in the Mediterranean, it’s time to visit your friendly neighborhood optometrist.
In front of him, rose up the Hell Bounds, an unscalable wall of hatred and smellyness coated—I’d wager—in some kind of glossie scurff, and at their base, the thrice threefold Gates of Hell, thrice folded of Brass, thrice of Iron, and thrice of adamantine rock impenetrable, impaled with circling fire. On either side of the gates sat two figures more terrible, more execrable, more feared and loathed than any other in the created universe.
One of them appeared a woman from the waist up, and at worst a hard 8 at any respectable drinking establishment. But pull your eyes down from her bare, swelling breasts and her flat, toned stomach, and she ended in a scaled serpent’s tail, done up into coils below her, voluminous and vast, and at its end, a daggerlike sting that delivered some of the nastiest poison the underworld would ever know. Hell Hounds patrolled her snakey sex, galloping about her middle, with wide mouths open wide to bay at intruders, in case you were hard up enough from her top half to want to get up in her bottom half. The dogs weren’t as fierce as they looked, though, and if anyone disturbed them, they would creep into her womb as though it were a slippery kennel, and hide there, still barking, though out of sight. Scylla the whirlpool, bathing in the Sea between Calabria and Trinacria, wasn’t half as hazardous and abhorred as that fucked up vajayjay. The night hag, when, called in secret, riding through the air she comes lured with the smell of infant blood to dance with Lapland witches, while the moon eclipses at their charms, would be a better choice for a one-night stand. I’m telling you as your friend, do not stick your dick in that.
The other shape, and I only use that word metaphorically because what really stood out about it was its shapelessness, was kind of like an indefinite, blobby shadow with no distinguishable limbs, joints or members. Black as night, fierce as ten Furies (though not the Harpy-footed kind, thank God), and terrible as Hell, he shook a dreadful barbed dart with the corner of his blobbiness, for hand had he none. On his head, which was not really a head but rather the most headlike of his lumps, sat the likeness of a kingly crown.
Satan approached, and the monster charged him with horrid strides, every step making hell tremble at approximately 180 beats per minute of pure unadulterated funk. Satan kept a remarkable amount of cool and stood his ground. In fact, he was more curious than scared (the Daughter of God being the only created thing he feared, and even then only by way of foreshadowing), his brows arched into an unmistakable expression of ‘What the fuck is that?’
As the shapeless shape closed on him, Satan spoke: “Whence and what are you, execrable shape, that dares, though grim and terrible, advance your miscreated front athwart my way to yonder gates?”
You might wonder why Satan, who is generally a pretty colloquial fellow, went all dictiony on this creature, and you’d be right to wonder. I can personally only guess that he wanted to demonstrate his courage through eloquence. I know I struggle with finding the right words when I’m frightened sometimes, but Satan, not frightened at all, jumped right in there with his best expressions on.
“I intend to pass through those gates, and I have no intention to ask your permission. Step off, Hell-born, or taste my shoe with your face and learn not to contend with spirits of Heaven!” Satan continued.
The angry goblin’s eyes flashed. He replied in a voice like a purring kitten, “Are you that traitor angel? Are you he? Did you break peace in Heaven? Did you break faith with the Creator? It had never been done, what you did, until you did it. Are you he who drew after him one in three of Heaven’s angels? Are you he who brought them out of favor with God and condemned them here to waste eternal days in woe and pain?
“Well, yes, that’s approximately…”
“And you call yourself a spirit of Heaven?” the blob purred. “Hell-doomed! How do you come before me breathing threats and scorn, here where I reign King. Get you back! Back to your punishment, false fugitive! And add speed to your wings, or I will pursue your tardiness with a whip of scorpions, or give you one stroke of my dart, and strange horror and new tortures will seize you that you have never before imagined.”
As he spoke, the terror grew ten times more terrible, both in size and ugliness. But Satan, unafraid, stood his ground, incensed with indignation, his hands on his handsomely trapezoidal hips. His rage burned like a comet streaking through the Arctic constellations, shaking plague and rage out of its burning tail, like comets do.
Each grimaced at the other, as when clouds stand a little apart from one another, waiting for the wind to blow the signal for them to come together in strife. Hell grew darker with their frowns; only once after this will the two meet a greater foe than that standing before him.
They both drew back to strike, each intending to finish the other with a single stroke, but before they could let loose all of Hell’s rage at once, each on the other, the snakie sorceress threw herself between them with a cry.
“Father! Stop it!”
The combatants stopped dead in their tracks.
She looked deep into Satan’s eyes, and said, “Would you kill your only son?” She turned around and faced the beast behind her, “Son, what fury would possess you to threaten your own father with that horrible spear? God’s looking down on you and laughing with horrible glee, while you, His drudge, are taking His revenge for Him, following His orders, perpetrating His ‘justice’.”
At her words, the hellish pest drew back and slouched, defeated. She turned again to Satan, gazing deep into his eyes.
Softly, kindly, but guardedly, he spoke to her: “Your words are strange, young lady, and they stay my violent hand, at least until I know who...what you are, half-snake and half-sweetness, with those fine titties and gross netherhalf. Why, when I’m meeting you for the first time, did you call me father? Why do you call this blurry monkey my son?” For no reason he could fathom, there were suddenly tears in his eyes. His voice took on an edge. “I don’t know you. I’ve never seen you before. Until right now, I’ve never seen anything as blecch as the two of you, and yet…”
She, weeping, replied, “Have you forgotten me, then? And do I seem now so ‘blecch’ to you, who you once thought so beautiful when you knew me in Heaven? Have you forgotten your first meetin’ in Heaven, when the assembled Seraphim stood in a circle around you, and you told them all of your plans to overthrow God? You were brilliant, so they said. So charming—so modest but confident. Everyone there was there because they were already sympathetic to your cause, but your words won them over to action, who would never be more than impotent grumblers.”
Satan remembered. He smiled to himself, recalling how on he was.
“And all of a sudden, you were surprised by a migraine. Your arrogance and self-love swelled up inside your cranium. Your eyes dimmed and swum dizzily in the darkness, until you fell to the ground, as if in a seizure, and your head burst into thick, fast flames. Everyone panicked, but you foremost thought that God had heard your blasphemies and stricken you down, and that deathless until now, He would rip your life from your perfect head. And yet, you lived. The pain intensified, until the left side of your head opened wide, and a goddess in bright armor, carrying a spear and a shield, burst forth from your head wound in resplendent glory. The whole host of Heaven recoiled in horror and exhaled all at once. The sharp exhalation sounded like “siiiin,” and Sin became my name.
At first they hated me. They thought I was a bad omen, and how could they not? But I was beautiful, and I had your incredible charm, and my graces won them over. I became a sexy mascot of sorts for your cause. But you especially, who saw so much of yourself in me, adored me, became enamored of me. You said you loved me, father, and meeting in secret, you took my maiden charms and made me your secret concubine. Now do you remember me?
“Hmm, it’s hard to say. There were a lot of girls in my life back then.”
“War broke out, and my womb began to grow with your child.
“Wait a minute,” said the lord of darkness, “I pulled out!”
“You absolutely did not pull out,” Sin replied, “but rather your seed spilled, over and over again, both all over my supple body and within all of my nooks.”
Satan’s eyes glazed over, enjoying that image.
She continued. “Now listen! You went to war for a remarkably short time against a much, much stronger foe. You and your soldiers were swept off the battlefield, and I was tossed out, too, like the sticky trash you made me. But before they disposed of me, they gave me this golden key, and told me to keep these gates shut forever and let none pass.
“I sat guarding them, all alone, as my belly grew and your son…”
“Pretty sure it’s not mine.”
“...kicked and churned like the spawn of Hell he was. At last, your odious offspring, fully grown like Julian Sands in Warlock II, tore through my entrails, ripping me apart. With the trauma, pain, and fear, my lower half healed badly and looks like you see it now.
“Healed badly? It’s a snake tail!”
“That’s what I said. It healed badly. And he, my inbred enemy, and also my son, was born brandishing that dart of destruction. I named him Death (I’ve always wanted to name a son Death), and Hell trembled when the name passed my lips. I ran from him and he pursued, full of rage, I thought, but he was faster than me, and when he caught me, I learned his true passion. He raped me again and again with the most penile part of his blobbiness, and of that rape was born the baying hellhounds that you hear, ceaselessly crying, hourly conceived and hourly born, to my unceasing dismay. For when they get bored of running in circles around me, they climb back into my womb, howling, and gnaw my bowels, their only food, before bursting forth again and terrorizing me. There is no rest, no intermission, and their father, our son, encourages them. He would devour me himself, but he knows that he can’t survive without me. As much as I long to die, he is a true child of Hell, and he loves his life of torture. His threats give me hope, but my hope is as empty as they are.
“Father, avoid his deadly dart. I don’t know if it can kill you, but God only knows what tortures it would inflict on you.
“Umm...okay. Well...I didn’t expect that. This is a lot to just kind of drop on me out of nowhere. I’m… I’m a daddy! Well...uh, wow. And a grandpa? I have a daughter! Wow, I mean, I know I was there, but it was a tough time for me, and, huh...I totally forgot you existed. And this guy here! What a good lookin’ kid! He has my...general disregard for the safety and comfort of others. Hey there, Chief! Death, huh? Wow. It’s a good name. A strong name, for my strong boy. And Sin, hmm, look, I’m sorry I don’t remember you, but I’m sure you were an excellent lover—Lord knows I was!—and, um, you’re welcome—and um, well, a lot’s changed since those days. I have a lot of responsibilities. Um...I’m King of Hell now, so that’s good! And you have solid work, seems like a good gig, the security guard thing! So...um...so we’re both doing good. And...wow, yeah...I wish I could stay to chat, but if you could just open that gate…”
“I’m not going to open the gate.”
“I get it. You’re angry. I never called, I know, it’s just, you know...King of Hell stuff. I tell you what. You can have full custody.”
“You son of a…”
“Look, I’m trying to help! I want to set you and this handsome fellow over here free from this dark and dismal house of pain. And all the Heavenly host who are trapped here, who followed me into battle and shared my punishment. I feel really bad, you see, so I’m going alone on this crazy dangerous errand, without any protection but these guns,” at which point he flexed his biceps, “and my incredible wits, to wander lonely across the immense void, exposing myself to terrible danger for the sake of all of you, my comrades in arms, and my friends. You see, there’s this rumor that there’s a new paradise out there. A beautiful place God made for His new race of upstarts, who He created to fill the hole in His heart we left there. It could be true! Or if not, there might be something else going on. Either way, I’m going to find out and come back and report.
“You just want to leave us again,” Sin said.
“Leave you? No!” Satan said, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “I’m doing this for you. Look, if this place is real, it’s going to be fucking beautiful. It’s going to be amazing. When I come back, I’ll take you guys there with me. We’ll bask in the sunlight together, fly through the sweet air, make love in the clover, you and me. Junior and the pups will have other creatures to torment, and they’ll give you a rest, you know. We’ll set up a little house, with…
“With teacups?” Sin asked, her eyes filled with hope.
“With teacups? Um...yeah, of course with teacups. So many teacups you won’t know what to do with all the teacups. And we’ll be together. You, and me, and Death, and all the hellhounds, and a little garden where we grow our own heirloom tomatoes.”
And here he stopped. Sin was gazing off into space, lost in her own fantasies of a normal life of not constant torture. Death grinned horrible a ghastly smile, thinking of all the little bunnies and chickens and tigers he could rape and eat (in whatever order) in Eden.
Satan kissed Sin on the forehead. “What do you think? Help your old man out?”
“I keep the key of this infernal pit by due and command of Heaven’s all-powerful Monarch, by Him forbidden to unlock these adamantine gates; against all force, Death ready stands to interpose his dart, fearless to be overmatched by living might.”
“True, but…
“But what do I owe to a Ruler who hates me, who thrust me down into this horrid gloom to be what, a security guard?”
“You’re better than that.”
“I’m better than that! I’m heaven born, for God’s sake, and sitting here in perpetual agony, terrorized by my own children. You’re my father, not Him! You gave me life, not Him! Whom should I obey? Whom should I follow?”
“Ooh! Me!” Satan couldn’t help himself.
“You! Of course it’s you! It’s always been you! You’ll really build me a little house? With a garden?”
“And teacups.”
And teacups! And you’ll take me out of this horrible place? And I’ll rule by your side!”
“Wait...I didn’t…”
“At your right hand, your daughter and your wife, forever!”
“Okay, sure! Can I have the key now?”
“Do you promise?” She batted her lovely eyelashes at him.
“Do I… Of course I promise! I’m...looking forward to it!”
And grinning, she took the dripping key out of her scaly folds and led him, her snaky tail leaving thick slime in its wake. She drew up the huge portcullis, her back rippling with ungodly muscles. She put the key into the hole, and turned it, and with thousands of snaps and clicks, the infinite barrel of Hell’s unbreakable gate turned and opened. Bars slid back out of the rocks; bolts unfastened, as if by magic, and with the jarring sound of two trains colliding, the gates flew open, thundering on their hinges.
Sin trembled seeing what she had done. She had opened the unopenable, and no force in Heaven or in Hell could now close it. It stood open so wide a 747 could roll through sideways. An entire Roman legion, marching with their banners spread, with horses and men in loose ranks, flanked by elephants, would have room to spare. They belched out smoke and flames like the mouth of a furnace.
As Satan, Sin, and Death stood looking on, they saw before them the secrets of cold Infinity, a dark, limitless ocean without bounds, where length, breadth, height, time, and place mean nothing.
Satan had heard that somewhere in that mess Night and Chaos hold eternal anarchy. The noise of wars, and the unrefined elementals fire, water, wind, and earth swirl around their disordered throne, each striving for mastery over the others. Among them, the atoms—unnumbered as the sands of Barca or Cyrene’s torrid soil—and their qualities come together, clash, and break apart again. Chaos stands umpire over the battle, and with every decision, he further disorders the game, changing rules and awarding points and penalties at perfect random, without forethought or concern for fairness.
Beside him, Chance, Chaos’s high arbiter, sits stirring the wide abyss. This is the womb and grave of Nature, filled with all of her component parts, constantly mixing, breaking apart, evolving and slipping backward toward chaos, confusedly. And the noise! To compare something big to something really small, it was like a hydrogen bomb blowing a chunk out of the American midwest, or like if the frame of Heaven collapsed and the Earth was torn out of its orbit to go hurtling into the sun, only much, much louder and nastier. Only the Almighty Maker, in Their wisdom, could order all of this into order and use it to create new worlds and new life, so take that, Darwin!
But here, beside Hell gates, it was only quiet emptiness. The wary fiend peered into the abyss, kicking himself for even trying. Holy fuck, he thought, this was going to be hard. This was no narrow gorge he had to cross…
He had a thought. It was a good thought, an important thought. This was the thing that really mattered, he knew, and without thinking, he acted on his good, important thought.
Giggling, he peed into the abyss.
With that out of the way, he could move on to the boring shit. He spread his mighty wings for flight, and jumped out into the churning smoke. From there, he ascended many leagues into the upness (it can’t really be called a sky, and up, if we’re honest, is even a stretch), feeling really good about himself. But then, he hit an air pocket. His wings wrapped awkwardly about him, he tumbled ten thousand fathoms into the deep. He fought to get his wings loose so maybe he could catch some breeze, but to no avail. In fact, he would still be falling through Nothingness to this day, had not some bad luck (for us, not him) saved him. A burst of cloud, churning with fire and nitre, happened to churn together below him and lift him upward, giving him the chance he needed to untangle himself.
The cloud dropped him in a strange bog that was neither liquid or solid, but in which he was kind of able to navigate. Half walking, half flying, he foundered on, treading the crude consistence and wishing for a canoe. His speed and dedication were something to see, like a griffon chasing an Arimaspian who had stolen his gold, or a pygmy chased by migrating cranes. Over bog or steep, through straight, rough, dense or rare, using his head, hands, wings, or feet, swimming or sinking, wading, creeping, or flying, he made his less-than-merry way. Eventually, a universal hubbub wild of stunning sounds and voices all confused, borne through the hollow dark assaulted his ear with wildest vehemence, and being the fearless, badass motherfucker he is, he turned his way thither, kind of excited to see who he would run into, and maybe ask directions to the nearest coast of darkness that bordered the light.
He turned a corner, and before him rose up the shiny, but unkempt, throne of Chaos in its dark pavilion, and next to Chaos sat his consort, sable-vested Night, the oldest creature of all, who, despite her age, and though ineffable, looked pretty effable to Satan. Around them were gathered their children, Orcus and Ades, Demogorgon, Rumor and Chance, Tumult and Confusion, and finally, adorable Discord, with his thousand mouths.
Satan, never dismayed, walked right up to Chaos’s throne. “What up, homies?” he asked, with Satanic nonchalance.
“He’s a spy!” Shouted several of Discord’s darling mouths.
“I’m not a spy,” Satan retorted. “I don’t want to explore or disturb the secrets of your realm. I’m just passing through on my way up to the light, your darksome desert being right on the way. However, I travel alone, without a guide, and I’m a little lost. Could you maybe let me know the readiest road out of this lovely domain? In the vague direction of Heaven, I mean.” He leaned in for a whisper. “Look, I know you hate that slippery bastard God as much as I do. You like your stuff scattered around, right? He keeps cleaning up after you and messing up your system! Has God been reordering shit around here again? Annexing land for that creation bullshit? Maybe I could help you take some of it back, huh? Your gain is my revenge, you know what I’m saying?”
The old anarch, with his twisted face and really quite distracting stutter, responded: “I- I- I- kn- kn- know y-y-you. You’re that mighty angel who raged against the throne of evil! I heard you get your asses handed to you, you know. I have a nice, though unkempt, little cabin on the frontiers of the void, where I stay a lot of the time, you know, for peace and relaxation. Even Chaos needs a break from the chaos, you know. Anyway, I was sitting in the garden, reading some Bret Easton Ellis, dipping my feet in the brook whilst the piranhas nibbled lovingly at my toes, when suddenly this roar of confusion fell down out of Heaven! It was you guys. Jesus, it was beautiful. All the angels and shit following you banging drums and blowing on trumpets… I went immediately back to work. It was like a new awakening. I remembered how much I loved my job! Geez, Lucifer, I can’t thank you enough.”
“I go by Satan now.”
“Satan? Man, that’s hardcore! Satan. I like it. Anyway, the thing is, I keep having to move my cabin, which frankly isn’t hard, it’s just kind of thrown together.”
“Feel your feelings, dear,” Night chimed in.
“Yeah, you’re right. You know, it pisses me off. God has so little consideration for other eternal beings. There’s not really that much Chaos left. Heaven was one thing, but Hell is fucking huge, that took a lot of chaos, right there. And now Earth? 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilos of chaos went into that fucker. Do you have any idea what that kind of unsorted matter would bring on the open market? And the bastard went and sorted it. All of it. My domain is smaller than it’s ever been, and the chaos I have left keeps getting weird ideas and clumping into recognizable things. It’s fucking maddening. And that golden chain that holds up the earth goes right through my chrysanthemums!”
“Aw, man. That’s totally unfair,” Satan said. “Let me ask you, though…” and he paused an unconscionably long time, for effect, “What are you going to do about it? Are you going to go lobby for sustainable ordering practices, or are you going to let me do my thing?”
“Ooh, I didn’t think of lobbying!”
“Lobbying is pretty chaotic, but I’m the fucking King of Liars, ya weirdo. I can wreak the kind of havoc that will make your head spin!”
“You know what, you’re right,” said Chaos. “If you’re willing to help, why should I stop you? It’s not a long walk from here to the golden chain, and from there, a short drop to Earth,” pointing the way with his many-jointed finger, “and I’d be beholden to you if you could disorder it a little bit. There will be danger and havok…
“Danger and havok are the tatas on which I was suckled,” Satan replied, surprising himself with the poetry of the statement.
And with that, Satan was off. With fresh alacrity and force renewed, he sprung upward like a pyramid of fire into the wild expanse, winding his way through the shock of fighting elements on all sides round.
Chaos and his children clapped and cheered. I’m pretty sure Night had fallen back to sleep and slept through the whole thing.
Satan triumphed over harder challenges than the Argo as it sailed past the Bosporus, or than Ulysses with Scylla and Charybdis, but with difficulty and labor, he made his spectacular way.
Unbeknownst to him, Sin and Death would eventually follow in his tracks, paving behind him a broad and beaten way, the famous Highway to Hell, complete with bridges over the abyss, toll booths, and a fuckton of lanes, all the way to the utmost Orb of this frail world. A lot of people think it’s a one way street, since the damned souls of humanity can only take it Hellwards, but the perverse spirits of the deep easily travel to Earth via the Highway to tempt mortals and then punish them; whence came into our world both masturbation and blindness.
At last, on the horizon, Satan saw the sacred influence of light, shooting a glimmering dawn out of Heaven far into the drooping bosom of Night (age will do that to you). Here is the farthest edge of ordered Nature and God’s creation; Here is Chaos impotent to affright and confuse. Satan couldn’t help but recognize its beauty, which drew him through the air like the perfume of flowers. The light easily bore up his fatigued wings, and like a weather-beaten ship on the far side of a storm, he lay down, relieved, on the beach of existence, torn and tattered, though safe at last.
And all above him, though far off, Heaven shone glorious with its opal towers and sapphire battlements—his old home, his first love and his true hatred—and dangling from it, by a polished golden chain, this pendant world. Bittersweet tears ran down his face as he thought about the comforts of home, the warming love of God, and the upstart monkeys who were enjoying Satan’s portion of it now he was out of the way. He stood, brimming with new purpose, and to that new world, fraught with mischievous revenge, he hurried accurst, and in a cursed hour.
