Tag: Satan

Fiction: The Devil You Know

Posted on by bryon

Satan slouched on his throne, one leathery wing idly beating time to the off-key tune its owner hummed.

He watched the parade of souls stream by him. Some quailed and screamed at the sight of the overlord of evil; others, hoping to be spared a little misery, genuflected before the throne, not realizing that Satan fried every 417th person to do that.

As the endless line of wrecked humanity slunk past him, he would meditatively torture one in a particular fashion and another in a different way. For the better part of an hour, he drilled holes in various sordid souls so that he wasn’t the only one in Hell who was bored.

A flash of movement caught his eye; he turned his horned head to see one of his lieutenants rushing toward him. The demon bowed before his infernal lord.

“What?” Satan demanded.

“My prince, there is … something odd. Something new, and none of us in Admissions can explain it.”

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Fiction: One Low Payment

Posted on by bryon

“I’m going next door for just a little while,” Pastor Henniks told his wife.

“All right,” Sue said. “I’m going on to bed. Don’t be too long.”

He nodded at her and went out the front door of his parsonage and walked across the lawn to his church. He let himself in a side door and went directly to the sanctuary. The pews could hold about eight hundred people, and most Sundays they were filled. He turned on the chancel lights, leaving most of the room in darkness.

He knelt before the altar and stared at the gold-plated cross.

“Lord, I know I’ve done wrong. I’ve done more wrong than a man should, especially a man in my position. I’m sorry. I am so very sorry. Please, please help me. Don’t visit my sins on my poor family or on my congregation. They don’t deserve that. I know I’ve done wrong. But I’ll change, I’ll change. I’ll mend my ways if you’ll just take this cup from me.”

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Fiction: The Coming Revolution

Posted on by bryon

He was getting reports about this place, and there were stirrings in his own office that lent those reports credibility. Something looming this large demanded his personal attention.

He donned a disguise for his task, making himself appear to be a white male of average height with dark hair and a Van Dyke beard.

It was late in the afternoon when he walked in the door. The office held all the charm of  a medieval sanitarium, only with overhead fluorescent lighting and Lysol. He took a ticket from the dispenser and waited in the shortest line. It also was the slowest line. Just as he was about to become annoyed, he recalled having instituted that perversity himself. He reined in his attitude; he was supposed to be the author of annoyance, not a victim.

“Six six six,” a flat female voice called, and he stepped up to the counter.

“Last name,” the woman demanded in the same monotone.

“Satan.”

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Fiction: The Side of the Angels

Posted on by bryon

“You’re … what?”

Lonnie had been sitting alone on the park bench, quietly minding his own business, soaking in a little late afternoon sun, and continuing to recover from the excesses of the previous night. He’d come to this part of the park to get away from the old busker playing his trumpet. Still, a few high notes would sometimes drift over. And he’d been alone until an absolutely nondescript middle-aged man came strolling along and sat down next to him. Even at that, the man was so utterly unremarkable that Lonnie didn’t notice him at first, or that he had a cloth bag. Then the man spoke.

“You heard me,” the man said. “I am Satan, and I want you to do a job for me.”

“Look, guy,” Lonnie said. “I had too much to drink last night, too. Go home and sleep it off. I’m not in the mood.”

“Your mood is not relevant to our conversation,” the bland man said. “I need someone killed and you can easily do the job. The target sold her soul to me and doesn’t wish to pay. She’s trying everything she can think of to avoid her fate, and I’m getting tired of it. Even though it will do her no good, she’s holed up in a church, and the priest is sympathetic to her. I want you to go in and kill her.”

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