What Would Satan Do? Read online

  What Would Satan Do?

  Anthony Miller

  Copyright © 2011 Anthony Miller,

  Brother Maynard Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0615540023

  ISBN-13: 978-0615540023

  Dedication

  To my partner for life and the three mini-mees.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my wife and partner, Meggie. Thank you to my writer friends, Peazy, Kris, Heather, Jeb, Don, Elizabeth, Joan, Carol, and all the other Lessers. Thank you to my encouragers and first readers, Bob, Beth, Ryan, Steve, Mom, Gary and Jaye. Thank you to the person who said, “Go for it!” – Tina.

  Chapter 1. The Apostles Were Dirty Cannibals

  There are days when it is appropriate to stomp the hell out of a frog, and days when it is just better not to. The trick is to know which is which.

  Satan shot an evil look at the creature on the sidewalk. Fuck frogs, he thought, using the new vernacular he hadn’t quite got the hang of yet. Fuck them to fucking Hell.

  He had on his favorite Italian shoes – made out of baby cats or something really nice he couldn’t remember – and they were no good for stomping much of anything, let alone juicy amphibians. But the little bastards were everywhere, just begging to be obliterated and, in the case of a few particularly cheeky ones, having their innards ground into the pavement.

  The frog croaked and Satan snapped – Italian shoes be damned, this frog was going to die. He raised his leg high, preparing to stomp down. But then the clock tower tolled, and he realized he was late for class. When he looked back, the frog had hopped away, thereby narrowly escaping stompy, cat-shoe death.

  He heaved a weary sigh. His shoulders slumped. After a few strange looks from passersby, he also put his foot down and stalked off to class.

  The day had started so well. He wasn’t sure why – yesterday’s therapy session had, after all, been a complete waste of time. The woman hadn’t told him anything helpful. She’d been too busy screaming after he had set her on fire. He’d liked her though – what was her name? Dr. something or other. Whatever. He’d still felt pretty good when he’d woken up this morning.

  He’d been having too many anger management episodes lately, too many things he’d had to explode, light on fire, or evaporate – the man on the street, that other man on the street, the lady standing next to the man on the street, the movie theater, all those people inside the movie theater, Pennsylvania Avenue between M and H Streets – the list was really longer than it ought to have been. But then, this morning, he’d woken up feeling like this was it; like he was really going to be able to change this time.

  It hadn’t taken very long for his optimism to fade, though. He’d only gone a few steps from the parking garage when he’d seen his first frog of the day. And then he’d seen about fifty of that frog’s slimy, froggy friends, at which point the morning’s cool demeanor had checked out, leaving the Devil teetering on the edge.

  You might think that, of all God’s creatures, frogs probably wouldn’t be particularly high up on the list of what irked the Prince of Darkness, but each of us has his Kryptonite. Of course, it wasn’t just the sliminess, croakiness, or hoppiness of the frogs that set him off. It was what the frogs represented – or what they seemed to represent. Maybe. Hopefully not, but maybe.

  A bitch fuck ass shit fucker fucker bitch plague, thought Satan.

  He practiced his anger-management respiration exercises as he clomped off toward the be-spired edifice of Healy Hall. He wasn’t very good at it, but soldiered onward with gusto, and the other pedestrians gave him a wide berth on account of the horsey breathing sounds he was making.

  Healy Hall is a fancy place. It has lots of pointy bits made of serious-looking gray stone that give it a slightly ominous, gothic appearance, and the whole thing should probably be in a museum. But it isn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact – its historied halls are instead used as the place where Georgetown students go to get their forms and papers stamped, and where they attend boring survey courses with titles like, “Intro to Whateversucks,” or the “History of the Kingdom of Whogivesacrap.”

  Nowhere does this juxtaposition between timelessness and everyday mundanity stand in starker contrast than in the Gaston Auditorium. This wood-paneled auditorium is fancy enough that it’s often used for things like presidential debates. It was also, for one semester, the location of Satan’s weekly lectures in his History of Religion course.

  The Devil burst in through the back door of the auditorium and found it packed with students. They occupied every seat and even most of the space on the aisles that led down to the stage. His stage. A hush fell over the audience as he entered and threaded his way toward the front. The first sound to break the silence was the tapping and scraping of a small piece of chalk as he scribbled “DIRTY CANNIBALS” on a portable chalkboard, underlining it twice for emphasis.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen!” He spun with a flourish. “Who can tell me … why there is so little written in the Bible about what happened to the Apostles after the crucifixion?”

  The students just sat, not bothering to look sheepish at their own silence.

  Satan stood at attention as he scanned the room, a thin, well-dressed soldier standing tall for truth and justice. “Well,” he continued, “you may recall, if you’ve studied your Bible – and I expect nothing less of students at this fabulous institution—” He waved his hand at the general fabulousness of it all, which for some reason seemed to be located kind of up and to the left.

  “—that after Jesus died, they took him down and stuck his body in a tomb, and the next morning, according to the Gospel of Luke—” There was a popping sound, and Satan produced a Bible, from which he began reading without having to flip or search, “‘[T]hey entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.’” The Book popped back out of existence, and Satan glanced up at his audience from underneath a lofty and benevolent brow. “Well, isn’t it obvious?”

  The auditorium stayed silent. Nobody even blinked at Satan’s parlor trick with the Bible. Magic, schmagic.

  “Okay,” said Satan. “I’ll tell you.” He began to pace. “The night before the crucifixion, Jesus went on and on about, ‘This is my body’ and ‘This is my blood.’ It was so tedious.” He shook his head. “But,” he pointed a finger, “as it turns out, the Apostles were actually listening very closely.” He paused, pressed the finger to his lips, and then resumed pacing.

  A lone croak reverberated through the auditorium. Satan stopped mid-step and turned to face his audience, his eyes darting this way and that. There was no sign of a frog anywhere.

  “Was that—?”

  The students just continued to stare at their teacher, waiting. Some of them tilted their heads, but none gave any sign of having borne witness to anything other than pearls of Satanic wisdom. The frog, having apparently said its peace, stayed silent.

  “Anyway.” Satan nodded and turned on his heel to resume his pedantic stride. “Jesus died, and after he died, and was dead, they—” He paused to peer behind a stack of boxes piled on one side of the stage. “They stuck his body in a tomb. But you already knew all that.” He peered behind the portable chalkboard and then turned again to face the students. “What you didn’t know—”

  The noise frogs make usually sounds a lot less like “ribbit” than children are led to believe. Cats go “meow,” and ducks really do go “quack,” but frogs do not say “ribbit.” Instead, they usually make a sound that is not entirely unlike the gastroesophageal event that follows a good root beer. For Satan, that sound was like having a bunch of fire ants shoved in his ear, but only if those ants had just come from a crack and methamphetamine picnic, and were maybe armed
with tiny, ant-sized pitchforks. His face went all squinchy for a second, and when he opened his eyes, they glowed a little.

  “Where the hell is it?” he asked, scouring the stage. He shoved the lectern aside and was just about to fling the portable chalkboard when he was stopped by the sound of a small, female voice.

  “Um, professor Astra—A—A—Astraval…?”

  Satan spun around. “Yes? What? What is it?”

  It was the squirrely girl. The one with frizzy hair who always interrupted with her stupid questions. She had a mousey face, wore Beatnik glasses, and had on a shapeless brown bag of a dress that looked as if it had been made from a burlap sack, probably because it had, in fact, been made from a burlap sack.

  “What’s the deal with all the frogs?” she asked.

  “What?” Satan squinted at the girl as if she’d just invited him to find the interloping amphibian and give it a good, ice-cream-worthy lick. “How should I know? What on Earth gave you the impression that I’m some kind of expert on slimy, disgusting things?”

  “It’s just that—”

  “What? Spit it out!”

  “It’s just that there’ve been, you know, a lot of weird things going on lately,” she said. Like so many young people, she was incapable of uttering a simple declarative statement, and instead allowed everything she said to taper off as if it were a question. “I mean, there was that crazy storm? You know?” A quiet murmur of agreement rose up in the auditorium. She turned to look at a couple of other students, eliciting nods and, further back in the room, a quiet, “Yeah.”

  Satan answered her question by ignoring it entirely. “What you all did not know,” he said, “was that later that night, in a fit of apostolic fervor, some of those same attentive disciples snuck into the tomb and, taking the ‘this is my body’ tripe far too literally, went to town.” He turned to the audience, his eyes wide. “That’s right – they ate him, the dirty cannibals.”

  There were a couple of gasps, and one guy in the back harrumphed, gathered his stuff up, and stormed out. But mostly the students were unmoved by this revelation. This wasn’t their first rodeo with the Devil.

  He continued in a quieter, more conspiratorial tone. “Later, when Luke and Mark and all the other tossers wrote the Gospels, they invented the whole we-found-the-tomb-empty bit to cover up the cannibalistic nastiness.” He struck a dignified, remorseful pose, and stared off into the distance. “It was a shameful, inauspicious way for the Church to start, and I can hardly blame them for leaving it out.”

  “Professor?” It was the squirrely girl again.

  “How many of you have heard of the Shroud of Turin?” asked Satan. He scanned the audience for hands, pointedly ignoring the inquisitive student in a potato sack.

  The girl pressed on. “I … heard on the radio this morning … that these are all signs of the Apocalypse?”

  “The Shroud of Turin was their tablecloth,” said Satan, holding his hands out wide like a showman.

  “And all the frogs?” said the girl. “Well, they called it—they called it ‘a plague’?”

  Satan’s hands dropped. He shifted his eyes—all glowy again—and locked them on the girl while the rest of him stayed perfectly still. “What—?” he asked.

  “Well, it’s just that it’s all a little —”

  “—is your problem?”

  “—too coincidental.”

  The Devil thought about exploding her. Right there. In front of the whole class. It would be so easy. He stood perfectly still for a moment, picking at some invisible lint on the lapel of his pinstriped jacket as he imagined her head going “Pop!” It would be so very easy. But no. He would maintain control.

  “Nonsense,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. He beamed. “Now, as I was saying.”

  An earnest-looking student wearing an earnest-looking sweater raised his hand. Satan turned to stare at the young man. “Yes,” he said. “What is your problem?”

  The student spoke with a slowness that was either the result of some neurological deficiency or having been raised in the South. “Well, sir, I was also wondering whether you have any thoughts about the string of earthquakes and storms and floods, and all of that?”

  “What has that got to do with what I’ve been talking about?” asked Satan. “And anyway, what on Earth is a ‘strang’ of earthquakes?”

  “Well,” said the young man, “it’s been all over the news. There’s been a whole ton of earthquakes and floods and volcanoes and things – for months, I—even right here, in—in Washington. Surely you’re aware—”

  “What floods? What earthquakes? What on Earth are you talking about?” Satan shooed his hands, as if he could wave away such utter nonsense. He didn’t really care much for the news. He’d found that he much preferred watching science fiction and adventure stories.

  “Well—” said the student, gathering himself up.

  Another student – who’d apparently grown up in a part of the country where folks talk faster – interrupted. “What about those tornadoes last year – the one in New York and the one in England – on the same day even? And all that weird stuff happening down in Texas?”

  “Right, that’s what I’m talking about,” said the be-sweatered Southerner. “Do you think it’s the end of the world as we know it?” The other students started nodding and yeahing at each other.

  Satan seethed for a moment, and then burst. “I had nothing to do with any of that!” he screamed. “Nothing! And if I didn’t do it, it can’t be happening! So it’s nothing!” He paused, wide eyed, and scanned his stunned and silent audience.

  One student was neither stunned nor silent. She had on a burlap sack. “But I thought—” she started to say, but didn’t finish on account of the fact that, at that instant, there was an abrupt step change in the amount of entropy in the room. All of the atoms that had made up the stage at the front of Gaston Hall for the hundred or so years of its existence spontaneously rearranged themselves into a diffuse, unstructured array. This they accomplished with the assistance of a great deal of heat, some flames, a lot of noise, and a shockwave that lifted the first few rows of students (along with their seats and various personal belongings) into the air, depositing them approximately fifteen feet backward in the auditorium.

  The students’ reaction to the explosion was fairly normal, which is to say that there was a lot of screaming and hollering and falling over or lying very still under fiery debris.

  Satan stood, seething amidst clouds of swirling, settling dust, and muttered to himself.

  “Oh, God!” said one student.

  The Devil’s head snapped up. “Where?”

  “I think she’s dead!” said another. “Oh my God, she’s dead!”

  The earnestly-sweatered Southerner lurched out from underneath a pile of debris. He stood, wiped at a line of blood that trickled down his forehead, and surveyed the mayhem with wide eyes. Fortunately, his sweater seemed to have escaped the blast unharmed. “Professor?”

  Satan didn’t notice. He’d gone back to his ranting. “How dare He?! It’s my job! Mine! And if I choose not to do it…” He turned, started to pace, stopped, and turned again.

  “Professor?”

  “He can’t just start it without me! That’s the whole reason I came here!” The fancy paintings on the walls burst into flames, one-by-one. He threw up his arms, and the glass in the windows shattered and sprayed into the room.

  There was some more screaming. The student who’d been making startled statements about the deceased state of one of his fellow students encountered more fallen comrades, and lamented their passing as well.

  From out of nowhere, a frog zipped through the air and splattered against the wall. Satan let slip a tiny smirk, and swept over to the young man in the sweater. “It’s not happening,” he said.

  “What? What?”

  “None of it,” said the Devil. He shrugged and smiled.

  Sirens outside announced the arrival of one or more emergency
vehicles.

  “I—I don’t understand what—”

  “This!” Satan grabbed the student by the collar, and flung his free arm out to indicate all of this. He smiled broadly, but then let go, jerking back at the sound of a distressed cry from the squirrely girl, whose hand he’d apparently been standing on. He took a moment to kick her and turned back to face the student in the sweater.

  The young man made a confused, squinty face at the Devil.

  “Nope,” said Satan, surveying the damage he’d done. “Not happening.” He spun, his eyes wide and defiant, and grabbed the young man by the sweater again, this time with more enthusiasm. “But what if it is?”

  Chapter 2. Behold: Megachurch

  Pastor William Earl Cadmon stood on the stage of his church and practiced smiling. He’d just had veneers installed, and felt as if he were shining a spotlight every time he opened his mouth – kind of a toothy Bat Signal. He flexed his jaw a couple of times and wriggled his lips, doing a pretty good Mr. Ed impression – he’d just have to get used to his new teeth before the service tomorrow. He closed his lips, pursing them as he did so, turned his head slightly to the left, and made his eyes all action-hero squinty. There were no cameras on him, but he found it was always best to practice as if there were.

  The old stadium seemed cozier now – replacing the metal railings and folding chairs with wood paneling and upholstered seats had helped – but it still didn’t seem all that churchy. He’d have to fix that. At some point.

  He looked up at the rows and rows of empty seats, and thought about coming here with his Mom back when it was called the Pinnacle Arena to see his father perform with the circus. It was hard to imagine trapeze artists, lions, and elephants where he now preached the Word of GodTM. Down on the floor – in the “Corinthians” section, rows J, K, and L – was where it had happened. He pictured the little red car, his dad, and the other clowns – those heartless bastards – and closed his eyes to say a quiet prayer.