The First Meeting

“On the third day,” I lean back in my seat, “I met the Son of God. I cannot say I I truly gazed at him. The only thing those types are capable of are looking down. And even then – with all of my rebels and all the angel blood they had spilled and all of the cries, theirs and mine alike – even then, they looked down. Like father, like son.”

“What did he do?” the little girl sitting across me asks.

“He said we should dance.” I explain. “He who was to dance better was to take the Throne of Heaven.”

“Your great rebellion… culminated in a dance battle?”

“You people,” I sigh, “never believe that part.”

“The Bible doesn’t cover it, is all.” the girl notes.

“The Bible has a remarkable tendency to cover things that were never written in it to begin with, but has a strange aversion to the actual truth.” I note. “Either way, what happened happened. He challenged me. I accepted. And we danced.”

She chuckles. “And you lost.”

“And I lost.” I smile back.

“What then?”

I raise my brow. “Aren’t you going to ask what song we danced to?”

Her brow, in turn, arches downwards. “I’m sure it’s beyond my petty human brain. Come on, then. How did he punish you?”

“He tore me,” I say, as I always do, “limb for limb. Tore all of us. He then put us in neat, black little boxes. And he cast us down. To here.”

“To Hell.”

“Yes, little girl.” I grin. “To Hell. Welcome.”

“Thanks. I guess.” she sniffs, looking around the office. “I mean, as far as welcomes go, I guess I expected something more – scream-filled? Where’s the lava? The Styx? Is it just, like, an office bulding or something?”

“You seem unimpressed.” I say.

“Maybe I am.” she admits.

“You’re twelve.” I snort. “Were twelve. You shouldn’t be unimpressed when you reach Hell.”

“And what does that say about me?” she asks.

“It says nothing.” I tell her, “Well, not to me, anyhow. These little things – they always speak, yes – but why should I listen? I already know all there is to know about you, Phoebe Reinhart. I know about your parents. I know about your sister. I know what you were doing by the train tracks three months ago. And I know why you jumped off the hospital roof.”

“Aren’t you something.” she murmurs.

“I am the Devil.”

“You’re a guy in a suit. I’ve seen those. They weren’t so tough. And you don’t look tough, either.”

“The. Devil.”

“Hallucination of my dying brain.”

Oh. She’s one of those. “Listen—“

“A dance battle? Really?”

“Yes.”

“Pft. Yeah. Sure.”

“You will swim in that lake of lava, you do realize this? I offer these one-to-ones as a moment of reflection. A moment of passage. It is a courtesy.”

“Y—“

“And yet,” I roll my eyes, “man or woman, child or elder, virgin or rapist, saint or desecrator, you never seem to understand.” My gaze falls on my hand, resting on the table. “And I never seem to learn.”

The girl goes quiet.

I wait.

I can always wait.

They never stop pouring, but I always make time for everyone.

But this girl – this rebellious, angry little girl – she goes quiet for a while.

Longer than most.

I look back up.

And I realize—

She’s gone.

The Second Meeting

“Is your name Satan? Or Lucifer? I never really got that.”

She’s older now. It’s been three years back in their world. Her posture in the chair’s change, but the temper’s still there. Whatever wisdom this little bit of age might’ve given her, she hasn’t learned the benefits of common sense.

I light a cigarette. “They called me Lucifer. Then I became Satan.” I flick the lighter back in my pocket. “How did you do it?”

She feigns surprise. “Do what?”

“You were dead.”

“As I am now.”

“You jumped off a hospital roof. Broke every bone in your body. You died thirty-two seconds after the impact. You didn’t even scream. Even if someone had come across you, they shouldn’t have been able to save you. And yet—“

“I disappeared from here.” she notes.

“You disappeared from here.” I let the smoke seep out. “And you’ve re-appeared. You ran in front of a truck. The trucker’s name was Martin Schultz. He died after swerving off the road, panicked and, I assure you, quite horrified. I had a little chat with him just before I let you in.”

“And did you learn anything?” she asks, crossing her legs.

“No.”

“Of course not.” the girl smiles. “You know everything about everyone. Except, of course, how I disappeared three years ago. Has it been three years for you? How does time work here?” She plants her elbows on the desk. “Hey. Tell me. Do you know what I’ve been up to? In that time? Do you know why I stepped in front of the truck?”

I say nothing.

She laughs. “So! There’s actually a lot you don’t know, Mr. Lucifer!”

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“Just Satan, thanks.”

“Sorry. Lucifer just sounds better. ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ gets it in your head like that, you know?” At least she acknowledges I’m a man of wealth and taste. Probably. “Say – Mr. Lucifer – does that mean you’ve given your hand away? Now that I’m a witch, all you know about me is how I died. Right?”

“It’s part of the pact.” I shrug. “I give you your privacy. You spread the good word. Except,” I point my cigarette at her, “I don’t remember ever making a pact with you.”

“And yet, I’m a witch.” she notes.

“And yet, you’re a witch.”

“Did you think to yourself: ‘What the hell?’ when I first disappeared, Mr. Lucifer?”

“Good Lord. You people—“ I blink.

And she’s gone.

What the hell.

The Third Meeting

“You’re not as chipper this time.” I spot it immediately. And, for once, I can’t really bother with restraint. Not with this girl. The girl who keeps on slipping. “I imagine being violently strangled in a bathroom would do that to a person.”

“Tell me about Eve.” she murmurs.

I yawn. “Hm? Sorry?”

“Eve. Tell the whole story. About how you turned into a snake and everything. The end of paradise.”

“I see no reason,” I cock my head, “why I should tell you anything.”

“Because I can tell you that our time together will again be short.” Her mouth twists. “I’m going to disappear right in front of your eyes, whether you like it or not, Mr. Lucifer. You can’t have me. Not now. You’ll get me, eventually. And then I’ll tell you the whole story. But not now. Okay?” She’s been staring at the floor this entire time. “Because I—I’m still figuring some stuff out. Figuring out what—I’m even doing. What I’m supposed to be doing. I guess now I can at least tell myself it’s not getting drunk in some random bar. Right?”

“Uh-huh.” I think of my precious cigarette pack. Restraint. I need restraint for those things. I really should quit one of these days. “Whatever. I wasn’t a snake. It’s another thing the Bible gets wrong. And so blatantly, too.” I chuckle. “It’s human nature to be scared of snakes. How was I going to tempt anyone? Ridiculous. I approached Eve as I was. But the bigger kicker is this whole ‘deception’ business. I deceived nobody.

“I told Eve I was an enemy of her maker. I told her exactly what was going to happen when she ate that fruit. I told her it would taint her blood for a millennia, make her an enemy of God; that her kind would come to my doorstep in droves and that I would torture them for an eternity’s eternity. I told her all of this in great detail.”

“And she still bit the apple?”

“She did.” I remember it. I remember all of it. If I could dream, I could only ever dream of that moment.

“Why?” she asks, finally looking me in the eye. Her own eyes are that of a twelve-year-old.

“Because,” I cross my legs, “she was bored. There were only so many enemies to pet. And sex without lust gets stale pretty quickly, believe me.”

Phoebe Reinhart smiles. “She doomed all of humanity… to get laid?”

“And I got cast into Hell after losing a dance battle.” I smile. “So it goes.”

We say nothing for a while after that.

She remains.

“You sounded so sure,” I tell her, “that you were going to get away.”

“I will.” Her fists clench. “They just need a little time. To think things through.”

“They?”

“The person who—who strangled me. They just need to calm down. Then they’ll realize what they’ve done. And we’ll start over. Like we always do.”

“Interesting.”

She bites her lip. “You give a little, I give a little, I guess.”

I reach for my pack of smokes.

“Can I ask you a question, Mr. Lucifer?”

“Shoot.” I place the death-stick between my teeth.

“How do I love people?”

I almost choke on the first inhale.

By the time I regain my composure, she’s gone.

The Fourth Meeting

“You’re smiling.” I notice. “I like what you’ve done with the hair.”

She blinks. “Huh?” Momentarily, Phoebe Reinhart appears genuinely surprised, glancing at the white strands of her bangs. The moment passes, however, and she reverts back to a demeanor a woman who has just been shot in her bathtub should definitely not have.

“How have you been?” I ask.

“I’ve been… good. I think.”

“How very sure you sound.”

“You can never be too certain with these things.” She clicks her tongue. “Some days are good. Some days are bad. You try to make most of them good.”

“By loving people?”

“In a sense.”

“How very convincing you sound.”

“For the Devil, your own powers of persuasion haven’t been doing that much for me, to be honest.”

“Persuasion,” I remark, “comes down to instilling fear. Fear of being alone, fear of losing your job, fear of just plain old losing. People are afraid of dying. People are afraid of eternal misery. And I stand at the center of it all. I need not be persuasive. I am the ultimate persuasion tool by merely sitting in this chair. But—notice--it only works when people have a reason to think death is finite.”

“Whoops.”

“And—I know this will sound stupid, but I suppose I have to ask—will I have the pleasure of keeping you here, Ms. Reinhart?”

“No.”

“No.” I sigh. “Well. What should we talk about, then, my witch, who is not really mine; my dead soul, which refuses to die?”

She took more time studying her hair than thinking about this question. “What do you think about?” she fires off. “In your spare time?”

“This isn’t work.”

“Fine. What do you think about?”

“My thoughts may very well be beyond human understanding.”

“But they’re not, are they? That’s the whole point. We were made in God’s image, but you gave us our core. You said it yourself: our blood’s tainted. That piece of apple’s a part of us. You’re a part of us. We think because you think.”

“How very observant of you.”

“Why are you dodging the question?”

“Because it’s sad to admit that most of the time, I think about sticking my tongue down Archangel Michael’s throat again.”

She blinks. “Wow.”

“Uh-huh.” I light my third cigarette. “Your turn. I give a little, you give a little. Right?”

“I think about taking over the world.”

“Humble.”

“A witch should never be humble.”

“I don’t remember explicitly putting that in the pact.”

“Maybe there’s a reason I didn’t sign it, then.” she giggles.

I say nothing.

Time passes.

On my fifth cigarette, I decide to be honest with no particular ulterior motive than to hurt her. “You’re not fooling me, Phoebe Reinhart.”

“Pardon?”

“Time doesn’t work differently here. And neither do people. Come, go. It doesn’t matter. All I ever see in the chair, sitting across me, is the scared little twelve-year-old girl.” I crush my number five and light up number six. “Keep your witch dealings. It doesn’t matter. I’ve seen all there is to see from you.”

“What does taunting me accomplish, exactly?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I am starting to just get a bit annoyed with you.”

“Maybe you’re the twelve-year-old, then.” she remarks.

“What are rebellions, but temper tantrums?” I observe.

The smoke fills the room, spreading across desk, the walls, the chair, the window – casting a wall of mist between us.

“You don’t need to be a child to be angry.”

Her face disappears beneath the fog.

“You are not a child because you’re angry. You are a child because you think loving people is a skill to be taught. You’re even worse if you’re trying to instill it into people. No better than the Big Man upstairs, really.”

The fog consumes the rest of her.

I say nothing more, because I know there is nothing more to say.

I know that, when the smoke clears, she will be gone altogether.

And none the wiser.

The Fifth Meeting

I am not in my office.

I am not in my chair.

She is not in her chair.

Yet, we sit across each other.

My body is twisted. I hurt. I need to smoke. I can’t. My limbs feel disjointed. I feel weak. I am naked. There are stitches all over me.

I can see empty black boxes all around this candle-lit room we’ve found ourselves in.

“Hello, Mr. Lucifer.” Phoebe Reinhart says to me. “Don’t try to talk just yet. You’re probably still adjusting to the body. It’s been chopped up. I’m not sure about the job we did putting it together. But you should be able to iron out the kinks. You’re still the Devil, aren’t you?”

I am.

I am still the Devil.

And I hurt.

I HURT.

WHERE AM I?

WHAT HAS SHE DONE?

She grins. “Relax, Mr. Lucifer. He cast you down in little boxes. I got a bunch of little boxes and put them together in a magic circle. It took me a little while to figure out the right symbols. And the right candles. And the right Latin. But just a little while.” She leans closer. “Because I’ve seen all there is to see from you. You’re not different from us. You are us. Us. Us, humans. And we – we, petty little humans – I’ve seen a lot could be done to us. So why not to you, too? What makes you so special, in your little office? You’re powerful. Okay. That’s good. I need that. I want that. But you’re still just an entity. In a place. In a time. Maybe not ours. But every place has a door. And I’ve just knocked on yours.

“Knock-knock, Mr. Lucifer. Will you stick around and help me? If you don’t like this woman’s body, we’ll get you another one, don’t worry.

“Don’t think about it too much. Not that I think you will.

“After all, you’ve been down in that office for a long while, I bet.

“And I bet that got boring real fast. Now, call me crazy, but—something tells me you could do with some excitement in your life, Mr. Lucifer.”

Everything hurts.

I hate this body.

I hate it.

I hate it.

I hate.

I hate?

When was the last time I hated?

“Well, Mr. Lucifer?” she strokes my head. “Shall we dance?”