DESANCTIFIED

The key of B flat whistled from the EKG. The resident surgeon looked first at the nurse holding the paddles, then up at the bright fluorescence, and finally back down at her patient. “Dio.” It was her fifth discharge at 360 joules six minutes past flatline. She’d already used the adrenaline and atropine subdermals.

The zucchetto was still on his head. His vestments and miter were being held by the papal staff not a dozen meters past broad double doors.

“Tempo?” the doctor asked numbly as her sweat squeezed through goose flesh.

The nurse responded, “Sei dodici.”

The surgeon made no reply.

#

“Time?” the Vatican’s bishop heard as he felt the tremble of Bach all about him in B minor. Sanctus.

He saw a surgical mask hide Its face and said bewildered, “I don’t know.”

“We weren’t asking you,” It smirked. “Nurse?”

“06:13 pm, Sunday. Samhain, 2049. Your year,” responded the masked nurse.

Jacques-Etienne de Linville tried to get up, but the nurse’s grip was stronger.

“No. Don’t rise yet,” It said as the nurse barred him. “You’ve had a nasty ‘accident,’ shall We say? Everyone’s head starts off swimmy and then they faint.”

“…But I feel fine.” Which wasn’t true. He felt his heartbeat but to an alien arrhythmia.

“Not thanks to us, you don’t,” said the one above. “We didn’t save you,” 

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do We,” It said casually as It dropped a soiled sponge from a pair of tonsures onto the rolling tray. “But your arrival has aroused Our curiosity. And that hasn’t happened since…when, my humble slug?”

“Pope Francis, Embruer of the Cosmos,” Its nurse responded. “Only a few decades.”

“Didn’t the last one issue us a written summons to the International Criminal Court?”

“With respect, Your Disgrace, that was the one prior,” replied the practitioner.

“Where am I?” the patient asked as he pulled the zucchetto from his balding pate. “Who are you?”

The masked one asked, “Not obvious? To burgle Billie Eilish, ‘I’m the bad guy. Duh,’” He snapped off his nitrile gloves. They had six fingers, each longer than a man’s.

The holy man looked about It, but besides a tray of surgical tools and beeping medical equipment with LED read-outs, he could only see hospital drapery. It motioned to the nurse who then pulled the drapes away. The pope could see a white room. Columns rose nosebleed high into wide incongruent corners. By each corner, a luminous black orb speaker hovered over a magnetic console, slowly rotating between two lit black candles. A hearth was inset to the walls left and right, each with engraved arabesques around their borders. Both fireplaces were ablaze. Before him was a colossal state of the art entertainment system, all lit up like the bowels of NASA. His host was wearing some high-tech bracelet. “I…” the ordained made effort to strain his porous memory. His environs had the scent of familiarity, but it was shifty. “…No.”

It sighed and pulled off Its surgical mask. The face rising above Jacques looked, at first, unremarkable. Then he realized that too was a mask. “I…I expected –”

“What…?” It asked self-consciously.

Jacques’s heart sped. He was suddenly afraid to offend It. “…I don’t know.”

It smiled curtly. “Yes you do.”

His façade of ignorance was undone. He surrendered, “…Wailing. Flesh on hooks. Profusely gaping wounds. Boiling blood. Unbearable odor. The damned.”

“Really,” It said. “Mark Zuckerberg can have his upgrades every business quarter, yet We’re not entitled to Ours? We surely are in Hell.” It grimaced balefully and circled a long finger in the air. The nurse responded, gently pulling Pope Clement XV into a sitting position. 

The pope felt pins and needles in his legs. How long had he been dead before he’d noticed? The dark angel twisted Its many fingers in a severe gesture and the ambient light dimmed until momentary gloom. When the candles flickered back Clement saw the masked one turned away to pull Its face on more tautly, as if straightening a tie. It was a handsome face but clearly not Its.

Pope Clement got to his feet and the nurse, who suddenly appeared much taller and bat-winged, steadied him. “Where are they?” asked the pontiff.

“The damned?” replied the devil, “Below. This is Our antechamber. We’re trying to make more room down there.”

“For what?”

“For whom,” It smiled levelly. “More damned, of course. Nine Circles doesn’t cut it in this age. Sub-sections had to be developed. On average, seventy-three each. You need to be an urban planner to manage them. Even a negative level is presently being panel tested.” It snapped Its polydactyl fingers, and the music stopped. A brief echo subsumed. Jacques quickly did the math in his head and inwardly nodded.

It cleared Its throat and lifted Its arms to stretch, yawning, “Pardon this, padre.” Once more, the dark one formed an unfamiliar gesticulation with Its hand and a figure emerged from the floor, like a small bubbling volcano, molten and then cooling into a throne. It was composed from dozens of damned souls, petrified, yet quivering in silent wails. There were other objects made manifest. Some were ornamental, others he struggled to identify. 

The pope unfroze his stare from this abomination and looked upon his cauled host. “Some things stay the same, I see.” He knew he was a mouse staring at a cobra, rearing back like a receding tide.

“Just as some things change. Forgive Our creature comforts. Despite the times, you sat on one of these yourself, no?” It genuflected to Its own throne in a pentacle of motions. 

Jacques didn’t answer. This world around him felt mirage-like, prompting vertigo. He trembled.

“The times are harder now,” It punctuated, “Pray with us, Father.”

“You pray,” marveled the pontiff. It was meant as a question, but it left his larynx as a statement.

“Until the universe turns,” It whispered severely. “Care to lead?”

“It’s your realm.”

“It’s your boss.” Satan knelt on a busy but tasteful prayer rug before Its throne, placing twelve fingers over Its borrowed eyes. 

“Yours, too,” dared Clement XV. 

“Yes, well, to that We’ll return.”

Jacques knelt, but faced away from the devil’s throne, and Lucifer began with a voice that vibrated the walls: “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; thy will be done; in Hell as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us Our trespasses, as We forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil –”

Jacques whispered back, “– You don’t find these words anathema –?”

“– Shh,” hissed Lucifer mildly, and It continued from where de Linville interrupted, “…We welcome the yet uncanonized Pope Clement XV into the depths eclipsed by your love. We bless him as You would, a guest before this throne, so that his soul may continue to act as a beacon of light in the blackest domain, whatever his trespasses. Amen.”

It arose from Its kneel, appearing to grow taller and broader. Then It pulled off the stolen face and assumed Its embodiment as the angel of light, sans wings, but now bearing a crown halo. Rather than a ring of luminescence it was an orbiting loop of umbilical cord bleeding onto Its surgical gown. Its true halo was Its aura of brilliance. It was as if It and Jacques were encased in a giant globe of light. Without hinderance It ripped off the gown to reveal an impeccable morning coat surrounding an even more immaculate suit. The blood drizzled like precipitating drops off the ceiling of a shower stall, vaporizing into puffs of maroon steam as they fell upon Its vestment. “The skin was to keep from alarming you, Father. We hope Our actual form causes no undue distress. And, no, the incantations aren’t anathema here. That’s pedestrian myth.”

Though It looked so much more intimidating he said, “I like you better this way, Beelzebub. I mislike masks.” The pontiff made conscious effort not to make eye contact with It, but he could see that Its face was blindingly beautiful. And somehow the opposite.

It shrugged, “As do We. But it is Halloween. This face was loaned to me by Pope John VII’s physician. He procured stockyard cadavers for the pontiff. VII was a prolific pastoral necrophiliac. Striking one though, eh?”

“I still prefer to see who I’m speaking to. I don’t understand any of this. Why am I not straining on a rack?”

Satan grinned blandly. “Oh, We have all eternity to concern ourselves with that. We’ve ushered every incarnation of the papacy over the centuries and feel it Our duty to give their tour the personal touch. Nimiel?”

The nurse who’d acted as yeoman approached, now bereft of its scrubs and wearing a pinstripe suit. Though bipedal, its face was arachnoid. “Be a dear and text the guard. His Eminence and I will be making the rounds. Have them meet us at the Seventh Circle.” An elevator door appeared from an alcove of which Jacques hadn’t hitherto taken notice. The red arrow pointed down. “But, before we jaunt, stand by. Father? First, We must ask. Have you any surprises for us…? A portfolio shrunken onto a EMV chip? Perhaps implanted under a false molar? We were thorough with your autopsy, but even We are fallible.”

“…I’m sure I don’t understand,” said the pope as Nimiel tapped at its iPhone screen.

“Don’t play coy,” spake the unclean, “Two of your predecessors ago the pontiff pulled a sly trick. He actually served me a subpoena to the Hague. Like I was a commoner. Of course, I attended. No mean feat pulling a fast one on the Prince of Darkness, but you’ll find I’m never so gullible the second time around. Certain you don’t have microfiche sewn into your scalp or something? We do have a waiting room. Purgatory. We could stow you out there amongst the other philistines for long after the court date, you know. Less fun than LIE rush hour traffic. The latter is only three hours whereas neither/nor rushes anywhere.”

“…I conceal no such legerdemain.”

Satan looked cunningly at Jacques’ face who could no longer avoid the view. And he knew fear. The angel said, “I’ll trust my eyes,” and Nimiel pushed the elevator button. The car opened right to left, like Hebrew writing.

“Newly installed?” Jacques asked with mirth as they all stepped in. It was to calm his racing heart.

“Yes,” replied Lucifer, “But hardly the first, and We should not even dignif – …Please, forgive us. We forget sometimes. You’re not a novelty, Sovereign of Vatican City. Though We’ve tasked Ourselves with escorting your every last predecessor, you’re a blur amongst two hundred other papal figures who’ve knelt here. We oft forget you’re a mere segment to a longer chain. The rules of engagement must be made plain, as they were to the rest. Many paid homage. Many more cast facile obloquies: but each needed the etiquette lesson. You’ve seen or read Silence of the Lambs?”

“Yes –”

“– Good. I’m Hannibal Lecter, and the same proprieties apply. You get as much civility as you give, so mind the presumption of your inquiries. Do you really think you’ve enjoyed a luxury We do not? Absorbed more education or entertainment? The simple are not all who fall hither. We may be those beneath you, Bishop of Rome, but We are not savages here.”

Jacques-Etienne stood dumb for a moment and then apologized for his tone. Before the elevator door closed, he surveyed this antechamber with finer scrutiny and noticed deficits in neither convenience nor modernity. Indeed, there were appliances and appurtenances he could neither recognize nor fathom.

The elevator fell slowly but the window suggested ineffable distances crossed. As it descended all of them faced the reflective door. Their images were distorted. Jacques had questions but thought better of them. Finally, the car slowed more, and the pontiff felt the weight of G-force that was too subtle to sense before. His guts bottomed out over his bladder, which he was surprised not to find empty. Again, there was vertigo, and nausea was present.

By the Second Circle it squeaked to a stop and the door retracted right to left. The pope saw soul after soul encased in a form-fitting apparatus. This was a hive of souls in pentacular towers that rose outside eyeshot. These towers articulated like an Escher lithograph so that space was used efficiently. Dante described this plane as a place punishing lust, and the souls indeed appeared in torment, but there were no buffeting winds as the poet described. Each soul hyperventilated, shrieked in terror, or wept inconsolably, their mouths the only thing that seemed undressed. “No wind factor here,” Jacques noted. Nor did he see whips, chains, or other torture devices.

“No,” Lucifer said, “the metaphor wore thin. Upon the advent of VR tech, We began tailoring each soul’s punishment to correspond to their sins. They all experience something different. Someone they’d wronged. Things they’d done or failed to do, played out for cycles in repetition and rewound at random. Each with slight variations programmed by the demons to keep things fresh throughout the decades. An incessant chain of recurring nightmares. The suits are like custom-fit iron maidens. They don’t simply produce visual, audio, and olfactory stimuli. They can pierce, cut, bruise, break, burn, or freeze the flesh and bone. You could be in one of them right now; it’s not like you’d know the difference. Ironically, the souls’ attritions are more genuine in their ersatz hells. The next two planes down are similarly outfitted. Differing programs, but the format’s the same. A few R & D labs down here have been working on direct brain stimuli to replicate pain, hunger, hypothermia, etcetera. So, there’s that, I guess. Most souls volunteer to be lab rats just to escape what woe they’re already in.” It seemed to be looking for something or someone amongst the towers.

The pontiff whispered in awe, “…The power this technology draws must be titanic.” 

“You have no idea, but one of the damned – an engineer named Liewkazewski – offered up something laudable to address much of that. For some dispensation which, of course, We granted.”

“What? Geothermal power?”

“Perceptive, Linville. That makes up about half the grid, along with slaves pulling chains that tug cogs, gears, and so on. But his true genius was implementing an idea of my own. The sound of those afflicted is, itself, energy. Oscillation. There are quartz elements now in the walls which capture and vibrate to the screams, hence piezoelectrically transducing them into power – making up for more than the other half of the grid. Individually the wails produce little, but there’s a deafening cacophony blasting on each circle and sub-circle. The surplus is being stored and will be put to future use. Plans have already been blueprinted. It seems Asmodeax is elsewhere. Pity. I could have made the introduction.”

De Linville saw an anesthetized drummer for Mötley Crüe being stuffed into a suit (these raiments looked outwardly to be patent leather) by a spiny demon. “Isn’t that…?”

“Tommy Lee? Aye. Pamela Anderson also attends. As well as Heather Locklear and Naomi Campbell. Alas, we are not here to star-fuck.” The elevator door jiggled and then slipped in front of them. The car plummeted further down.

By the Seventh Circle the door slowly retreated. It revealed a bog with a violet mist, trees poking out from the floor-sunken haze. There was a chill yet where he expected to feel moisture it was absent. A bird of prey swooped past the elevator doors from west to east, all of which had a caliginous quality to the eye. It had a female human head the holy man could swear he’d recognized but couldn’t place recall. Lucifer said, “Your grand predecessor keeps his grand predecessor company on this plane.”

“What happens here?”

Satan popped a Kool into Its mouth and struck a match off a tree. Again, It scrutinized against the mists in search of something or someone to no avail. “They were transformed into one of the trees you see. Over time, harpies roost in them, eat of their leaves, and break off their branches. Parasites infest the roots and suckle the harpy droppings. Of which there’s quite a bit. Besides the First, this is the least unpleasant of the rings. I have, in my times of caprice, flung souls to their destinations at random. The demons eventually sort them out. I do it mostly to keep them occupied, but truth be told, I handle only a minute percentage of the descenders. The angels who fell with my faction are my dukes, viscounts, marquis, earls, and barons. Tasks are relegated amongst them, though many will also misfile. Procrastination, carelessness, or, again, whim. In time, the lesser devils reorder them, though transplanting a soul who’s taken root hither is a calorie burning endeavor because the roots shoot deep. We’re careful to return to this level first among the others because of the labor involved.”

Four new demons appeared at the elevator doors. These appeared like riot police officers, though each was a faceless silhouette. Shields, armor, helmets, and batons. HPD was adumbrated on their uniforms. “Pagan? Blasphemy? Sacrilege? Qurse? Meet the latest fallen grand pontiff. Clement? A squad of Our ‘Karma Police.’ Hopefully, Radiohead will forgive the plagiarism. None of them are here quite yet. Blasphemy…?”

The silhouette turned toward its liege.

“Any idea where the Seventh’s regent might be? Syndicus isn’t usually one to wander.”

It shook its head once to either side, saying nothing.

Satan sighed. The cops boarded the car without acknowledging or acknowledgement, and now there were seven. “Would you like to promenade the Fifth Circle, Father? I go there sometimes to palaver.” Cigarette smoke began to gather in the car.

The Otis door crept closed. De Linville had actually seen all he could stomach but worried refusal would be tantamount to rude. Nimiel drew a .44 Desert Eagle from the recesses of its cloak, pulled the slide back against its spring to momentarily inspect the chamber and then let it snap forward along the barrel, advancing the first round. They continued down, again examining the reflective disfigurements on the elevator door. A stratus cloud of indistinct mileage passed beyond the window. Jacques said, “Why a garrison, Light Bringer? You have a security issue?”

“Every epoch and again. I personally fear little of insurrection, but the masses anticipate it. It’s kabuki, of course. You, too, had your entourage. Whether or not you mobilized them, did you actually worry about a mob? The farce is for the benefit of the damned. We’re impervious to a coup. Even staged by my fellow fallen brethren.”

The elevator slowed once more, and again Jacques’ legs momentarily doubled in weight. “The Fifth,” mused Lucifer. The door opened onto a beachhead. Beyond it, a Red Sea foaming magenta. “You mentioned ‘boiling blood.’ This ring and the one you last visited are the circles that have received the least gentrification. The scenery conjures nostalgia, does it not?”

As a coppery stench filled his sinuses the pope said, “I thought the lake and the forest were both on the same plane. At least, according to Dante.”

“They were,” Lucifer sighed as It blew out a smoke ring, “but Our census takers mandated We reorganize. The raw volume of sinners fluctuates as centuries pass, and We must evolve with congestion. ‘Pardon Our appearance,’ as it were. The Desert of Burning Ash is still here. Someplace. We haven’t checked on it in a while, but I don’t believe it’s undergone any renovation. Perhaps we’ll encounter it as we go.”

The pope looked beyond the dunes into this bubbling lake. It was vast, covering the horizon. All around the beach were land sharks; only their dorsal fins were visible, combing the beach in haphazard directions. The damned who dared climb out of the blistering blood-churn had to contend with them, and these fish appeared to swim through sand as effortlessly as hammerheads through water.

On either side of the sea were high blue glaciers that somehow did not melt. Souls that sought to scale them got little purchase before they slipped and splashed with howls back into the scalding oubliette in harmony with others. Here there was a chorus of wailing and the sea’s stench was an affront to Jacques’ senses. Yet there was a sunset, and it was oddly beautiful. Giant gulls a distance off pulled the sloughing skin off of souls who swam the tide. In that distance he thought he saw an island which appeared unstable. The pope moved to take off his sandals, but Lucifer cautioned, “Leave those on. The sand is too hot. As long as you stay within reach of my aura the sharks will not maul you. You’ll acclimate to the scent in a while.” With a flick, the devil pitched Its cigarette butt into a sand dune.

The HPD filed out first in standard escort formation, two at each side to defend right and left flanks. Nimiel headed the path, and Satan gestured the pontiff follow it, bringing up the rear. The angel of light rose an inch off the elevator floor and walked out onto the sand, though just slightly above it. A pink haze was all about as they neared the sea.

And they encountered Satan’s duke, Mammon, who stood by the shore wearing the most exquisite finery as he smoked and glanced about the horizon. It might have been handsome but for a vascular, bulbous nose.

“Ave.”

“Hail, brother,” Satan responded. “Who attends your circle? I expected Asmodeax here…”

“Oh, I asked Dispaxus if he might supervise it for a while. I needed air as fresh as I could find. I so rarely get out and he was amenable…Sire.”

Its eyebrows perched higher. “Might I introduce you to the latest papal arrival?”

Mammon stooped and kissed Jacques’ ring. “Well met.”

“I…” the pope struggled to find the words and not to stare at his turnip-like proboscis. “…And you.”

Mammon looked prepared to engage the pontiff in conversation, but Lucifer sooner asked, “So, I take it someone is covering for its circle? I saw no one.”

“Sorax Syndicus, I believe,” it said, casually twisting a Pall Mall butt on its boot heel.

“And who covers the Seventh if it’s minding Dispaxus’…?”

“Asmodeax, of course. From time to time, it tires of sand getting caught twixt its buttocks, ergo, I volunteered. We circulate every now and again – to keep from getting bored.”

“Ah. You do realize these rotations would best have been cleared with me? Your brother wasn’t visible.”

Mammon shrugged, “…Possibly pissing into the River of Forgetfulness and fell in. It didn’t wish to bother you with what would be a needed, if fleeting, vacation. None of us are wont to harry you with such trivial matters.”

Satan’s brow relaxed, “Well, enjoy your sightsee. Just don’t dawdle out here too long. Each of you are most aptly suited to your assigned regencies after all,” Lucifer cautioned pleasantly, and Mammon bowed low.

They stepped away and Jacques asked a bit quieter in confidence, “How deep is that lake?”

“We’re not sure. Very, but to say exactly? We can only estimate it with that,” It said, pointing to the quivering land mass. “Easily twenty-five to thirty leagues down.” They advanced upon the boiling surf, and the angel asked, “Do you see it?”

“The island? Yes. Why does it move?”

Pagan wordlessly handed him a set of binoculars. Jacques looked through the eyepiece and beheld what appeared to be a slithering mass of arms, legs, and heads. Lucifer commented, “Fascinating, no…? We didn’t expect the phenomenon when it first formed. Like El Niño or the anticyclonic storm on Jupiter that’s maelstromed for eons. This is the place for sinners who’d do violence to others in their past lives. Murder, torture, rape, and so forth,” It continued, “It coalesced shortly after We summoned the sea itself. Individually they’re called ‘larva.’ These damned are in such agony they cannot think. Imagine it. Every second of your existence scalding without respite – watching as gulls fight over skin layers you’ve sloughed – the pink flesh beneath searing all the more vulnerably. Most find it intolerable after only ten seconds, and yonder larvae have been submerged for centuries. It drives them mad, so, in an effort to emancipate, they slither upon one another. One after the next until there was the writhing islet you see thither.”

The pope brought the binoculars down, aghast. The large mass of wailing did seem to be coming from out there. Castrato screaming boomed and ripped more violently than the tide.

“Once they break free of the surface, they frenzy to remain atop yon desperate orgy, fighting the others off. But before long each which emerges is overcome and sucked back down into the tangle, most often deposited into the deepest well of the sea. Then, like convection, they clamber back up in a never-ending cycle. Except for one gossiped soul…”

“One avoided being yanked down?” Rome’s bishop said amazed.

“As the scuttlebutt would have it the Zhou war marshal Sun Tzu had been cycled top to bottom for millennia. One day he surfaced and that time with a plan. How he devised it submerged I could not say. Superior will, perhaps. He began to break the limbs of neighboring souls and shaped them into a makeshift raft. Once he had his craft, he had the luxury of saving the souls he found martially or sexually palatable and refusing those he didn’t. He supposedly still sails the mists to this day with the skins of the damned, horribly mangled, and tortured without end. He’s since been nicknamed Apocalypse Zhou in this ring. It’s an interesting editorial of the wealthy who still walk on earth. They who won’t share. But enough hearsay. Let’s saunter.”

The wails of woe were deafening, but the closer Jacques edged in upon his host’s aura the more the noise refracted into cawing gulls, beach breeze, and his own steps through the dunes. The angel traipsed behind him wistfully with Its many fingers behind Its back.

Nimiel stalked ahead, pistol drawn. The garrison moved between the sand dunes two by two. Some of the dunes began to take less amorphous forms, like termite citadels. The grand pontiff was uneasy and walked with more caution, ducking his head lower. Was a sniper afoot? “Lucifer,” Jacques called behind him, “if they’re putting on a show it’s very convincing and making me a little nervous. Are you downplaying the hazard here…?”

“Well, like I said, this place can madden souls. You needn’t fear; their actions are just precautionary. I respect you have questions, Clement, but I have a few of my own. Feel up to indulging them?” asked Lucifer insouciantly as he drew a crack pipe and began freebasing cocaine.

“If I can,” Linville whispered with building paranoia. He suddenly became very mindful of his footfalls. Each step seemed to be making more crunch for total stealth to allow.

“You ended your life, pontiff. Leapt from the Vatican’s highest bell tower. I’d like to know what motivated that plunge besides all the Bacardi in your system. Whither guilt precipitated such a swan dive? Confess. You were diddling ten-year-olds like so many others in your worldwide flock, weren’t you?” It asked playfully.

Jacques saw, heard, and felt flashbacks. The clappers. The ramparts and balustrades. The statue of St. Peter. The teetering. The wind quickening as he fell yard by yard. The impact crushing his bones and unmooring his organs to flatten against a shattered skeleton. Then the EMTs. The paramedics. The shouting cardinal. Frantic deacons. Doctors feeding his IV more and more units of blood slower than he was internally hemorrhaging. Prayers for absolution. Flatlining EKG. The word “Chiaro!” being repeated. An electric charge whining. “Tempo?” echoing for billennia before awakening on the dark angel’s gurney. “I never wanted it,” the pope croaked at last. His shoulders felt heavy.

“We’d gathered,” Lucifer whispered back with some amusement. “You spoke in your brief segment of unconsciousness. You were just a deacon before a mission to Mexico made it necessary for its bishop to promote you to diocesan cardinal.”

“And the election,” Jacques said stiffly. “I never expected the endorsement. I hadn’t occupied my role as Parisian bishop for even half a decade before I was suddenly in an enclave, running with three dozen others in the pontificate. Elections for pope are not the same as their political counterparts. We don’t all faction and have ourselves nominated. Also, I never expected Pope Pius XIII to die so swiftly.”

“Poison, I understand. If it’s any consolation, he did not wind up here.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“We have Our suspicions. Obviously, not you. But Bishop Franz Efromme Bottocieli was ambitious. As were Bishops Savate Dominar Ferlinghetti and Georges Leonid Bartok, among handfuls of others. We expect you were the result of many of these vying powers inadvertently canceling themselves out. A papal cock-block. You wound up ascendant because you were deigned least of the evils.” Satan tempted Clement with crack, but the pontiff gestured refusal.

“But I pined not,” defended Clement XV. “Parisian archbishop wasn’t something I sought, but the man occupying the office didn’t outlast his autoimmune deficiency. It was something of a scandal. I was a pious man but not without temptation. I lusted. I raged. I defrauded. I never guessed the Holy See would opt me, but again, I seemed less a threat than the others under time-sensitive conditions. The yellow vest riots never ablated from three decades prior. They only grew stronger over subsequent administrations. The See needed an immediate occupant. I’d heard tell there were plots to have me defrocked, but there were counterplots to support me only because the alternatives were always worse. My appointment was as much a surprise to me as anyone.” Again, he felt sluggish. The sand, he decided, was different than that on Earth.

“You remember Aristocles, pontiff? Plato. Paraphrased, he’d said the ideal emperor was a reluctant one: a philosopher king with no appetite to rule, merely to enlighten. But it seems the stress had gotten the better of you. You fell as We did. The all-heavenly Father has little tolerance for quitters, Jacques-Etienne. Perchance, you might have considered that. Now, you will languish hither, like so many others. Many so redundantly deserve to be here. We rattled off a list of papacy who did to Pope Francis. We’ll spare you that now, but Our silly religion places power in mortal hands. Fingers that so often mishandle the responsibilities bestowed. Many more bring irredeemable sacrilege and madness to the office. Why is it the ones who don’t have such a short shelf life?” the shadowed angel rhetorically asked as the priest walked upon a short strip of adobe. It tied off Its arm with a latex hose, began smacking the crook of it, and injected Itself with a syringe of dark brown liquid while humming ABBA’s, The Winner Takes It All.

Rome’s bishop responded, “Because the reluctant ruler only finds his fears confirmed after coronation. That he’s notsovereign. That he’s enveloped in corruption, sin, and pederasty. The pressure to abet and turn a blind eye double and redouble every day under the miter. So engulfed had I become in my own goals to urge charity and sacrifice I rarely addressed tertiary items. I was only a figurehead. I was more powerful as a deacon truth be told, but I kept getting advanced.”

“Why did you really end it, Jacques? Surely your disillusionment wasn’t the catalyst. Was there a boneyard in your closet like all the others? Or did you merely find a polyp in your colon?”

“The latter. Just like my father. I saw how he went. Shriveling. Metastasizing. In concentrating torment every hour of each day. It traumatized my family, and I swore I’d never go the same way, so I chose to end it at that moment weak in faith.”

Lucifer paused, releasing the tourniquet, and letting Its high circulate. At last, It replied, “…Then you, of all people, should appreciate Our efforts to reform canonical law.”

A loud shot rang out from the lake. The haze was too thick to see a muzzle flash, and the projectile disappeared into a dune next to the pontiff only a few yards wide. He gasped. The Karma Police and Nimiel began blasting back into the lavender fog with their ordnance but heard no corresponding gasp. The pope glanced back to see a slightly astonished Light Wielder as land sharks combed about the circle of his aura. Lucifer pondered, “However would a Zhou dynasty general find the materials to construct a high-powered sniper rifle, I wonder?”

Jacques then noticed at points only one set of footsteps in the sand. He asked Satan about this, and the angel pleasantly responded, “Oh, you know. During those moments you were carrying us.”

The pope found a titter escape him, and a brief glow came to his eye.

#

“The Stygian River gurgles behind the horizon,” said Lucifer. “It makes for a challenging boat ride, and few here know where its tributary meets the lake. Nimiel, please assemble one.”

Nimiel walked out to the ebb of the lake and shot six bathing souls in the head. They didn’t die, of course. Nothing died here, but they were stunned into submission with the subtraction of their brains. The Karma Police grinned simultaneously and began rending and dislocating bones in their joints, distending their ligaments until a seaworthy flesh vessel was built. Nimiel fortified the craft with spiderweb it manually drew from a gland on its lower back and developed a rude mast from femurs tied end to end, a thick gossamer operating as the sail. The pope’s eyes bulged watching this process. The souls, even without brains, screamed from being pulled apart and fastened back together in this super(sub?)natural manner. One gawped, “Please no.” Another beseeched Christ to save her. The others begged Satan.

Lucifer climbed in and beckoned the pope with a gesture. Jacques saw little choice and climbed aboard this crying sloop. “You may sit, pontiff. Their pain is too great to care that they’re being used as a vehicle.” Nimiel holstered its weapon and, clutching the stern, gave the ship a running start into the seething ichor. If it felt a scald, it didn’t betray any effort bearing it. Soon it climbed its way on, astern. The pope sat port and Lucifer, starboard. The sail caught wind, and they gradually drifted away from the beach.

“The sniper doesn’t concern you, Adversary?”

“‘It’s in the heart of danger you find safety,’ priest. Lao Tze, I think.”

Nimiel sat silently, like a tarantula that had already fed. They sailed. Past the scattered, scalding damned. Past the isle of wriggling larvae. Past the screaming and crying, deeper and deeper into the mauve mists, toward a blazing twilight. Wherever the general sailed in this fog it was far out of eyeshot. The scent of blood and the very craft’s screams bludgeoned XV’s senses. He could scarcely imagine spending an eternity in it. One hour would forever haunt his nightmares.

Time was strange here. The twilight did not fluctuate. The sun remained fixed. Gulls, some large as albatross, flew in front of them like pilot fish. Several soared all about them, anticipating carrion. Many souls on which they dove were just floating, heads submerged. The pope almost asked if they were in fact dead but then stifled himself. Everything was post-mortal here. The souls simply passed out from the onslaught of pain. Soon the chaotic islet was far behind them and the souls they’d passed treading gore became sparser.

After about a day’s passage the mists became thinner, as did the air. The craft began to howl less and shiver more. The gulls began falling away, and Jacques saw what appeared to be a purple flurry. Blood snow. The pontiff spotted large objects submerged in the sanguinity. They appeared navy blue and reflected the sunlight back at his eyes despite being dark obelisks. He ocularly communicated his query to Lucifer who responded, “Blood-bergs. The temperature beyond the islet plunges quickly, and We’re long past that now.”

The blood-bergs began to tower over them. Jacques felt as if in a metropolis combing streets below skyscrapers. The boat soon ceased shivering. The souls composing it were now in an induced coma. Mercy of sorts. They would sleep as the vessel hardened. What was once a sea became overwhelmed by royal blue blood-glaciers, and the estuary through which they were sailing became an under blood-ice cave labyrinth. The last of the sun’s light was presently astern. With the air rarified the odor was forthwith less acute. “These underground catacombs lead to the river,” the angel purred.

“Which tributary? There are more than a half dozen.”

“All roads lead to Rome.” The pope felt the breeze halt almost the instant the caverns cut off the sun.

Nimiel broke off the soul-crafted mast and took the helm, using it as an oar. The stream was shallower than the sea. Lucifer’s aura shone brighter as they sluiced through the center cave. The interior was composed of honeycombed human faces – men, women, and children – frozen mid-scream. A current took the boat and Nimiel rose, returning to the stern so that it could use the oar to steer. They traveled for what was likely three days through inert, screaming faces. Jacques actually felt hunger but fasted, as did Lucifer. Nimiel was not shy; it buried its saber-like fangs into the stern, sucking heartily on frozen soul-marrow. Jacques caught a glimpse and then quickly looked away. He felt nervous and found his impulse control waning. “Lucifer, on which plane is Hitler punished? What of Idi Amin? Nero? Pol Pot?”

Satan looked annoyed. “Don’t you think unimaginative souls ask about these figures all day long, Monsignor…? Are you a scion of St. Peter or a Cosmopolitan associate editor?” It scoffed, “It wounds us to see you lower your station.”

The pope was embarrassed and glad he didn’t ask about the Partridge family; It may have capsized the conveyance. Jacques remained silent for a while after but finally asked, “Do you ever tire of it? Reigning over unending misery?”

Satan was grim and said nothing.

Eventually they saw dim light ahead. To say that it brightened as they approached would have exaggerated things. It was a sallow light. Jacques strained to see and could not. The mists were thickening, though less pink and more violet.

“Who wouldn’t tire of it?” at last It answered, “Sadism is a human appetite. It never stimulated us. But We all have Our function, don’t We?”

“…Why bring me here?”

“Yahweh –  a’Donai – sees and hears all. Even here. But the walls of blood-ice distort Our voices into echoes. He may still interpret Our conversation, but this is as close to privacy as We get. We don’t like to make decisions so nakedly under prying eyes. We retreat down here occasionally. To think.”

“You plan to make changes.”

“Yes.”

“What changes?”

“We ultimately plan to go on strike.”

Jacques’ eyebrows rose.

“We told you, Padre, did We not? We have a labor issue on these planes. More damned keep coming and there are a limited number of fallen to relegate responsibility. Yes, there are the demons – the offspring of the fallen angels with the damned – but these are soulless creatures. Most cannot cognitively handle true responsibilities. And they cannot lead. No offense, Nimmy. Likewise, the fallen to whom I’ve authorized power have been forced to attenuate their spheres of influence into smaller and smaller spheres as the damned accrue.” If Nimiel was insulted there was no way to tell. Its multitude of eyes were too disturbingly alien to interpret.

“Had you thought about just resigning?” Jacques asked.

The devil chuckled as he lit a Kool, “Pontiff, you’ve been swayed by too much terrestrial pop culture. Stories of Mephistopheles defecting and gone on holiday? Maybe, like so many of your predecessors, you fancy We’ll go to war with Heaven, too. As though it was a possibility.”

“You’re the warden here. You don’t have the keys…?”

“I’m not the warden. I’m merely the first. Louis XVI, possessor of the Hope diamond, was a locksmith. Sal Schillizzi, cracker of Thomas Jefferson’s safe, rots here also. He would charge $300 for every cigar he smoked through the process, to give you an idea of his confidence. To say nothing of Erik Weisz – ‘Harry Houdini.’ I have little power beyond any other angel. There are no keys because there are no locks, and we could resource over a thousand renown locksmiths if there were. You actually believe We’re trapped hither thanks to a hardware issue?”

“Now that you put it that way…”

“No, Clement. Neither war nor escape were ever possible. There is no way out. Not even for me.”

“‘The winner takes it all. The loser has to fall,’” the pope responded. Stalactites and stalagmites of claret dripped down with echoing reports as these ecclesiastic figures spoke. “So, instead you intend to strike. What would that even look like?”

Satan said through smoke rings, “We’ll release the damned from their racks, their iron maidens, their oubliettes, their agony. Not instantly. They must be weaned gradually from these fates using the very virtch-tech that constricts them. But they will be re-educated to become teachers, scientists and social workers. Farmers, architects, and engineers. We plan to employ the cursed based on their whims and develop a jobs program. We’ll create policy and currency. Systems and infrastructure. We’ll recast Hell into a new country.”

“…New countries need new governments. What of God?”

“That absentee landlord? In condemning us He’s lost control of us. If He wants to regain it, He’ll need to deal with those He’d flung into these bowels. Or not. He won’t likely care either way. I’ve performed my role for millennia without aid, thanks, or guidance. Whenever I made an executive decision about structure it was without acknowledgement. Jehovah cares not an iota for those shut up in here. If I’m wrong, He’ll need to intervene, and it would be the first smile He brought to Our faces since the fall. Even if He turned all the damned upon us.”

The pope faltered for words and at last echoed, “…A strike.” The aperture eventually opened, and they glided into a swamp. Blood ice gave way to marshland, and the blood itself became bile. Gnarled trees jutted out from the bog. The pontiff thought he heard packs of canids running and growling from distances not far off. Each tree was clearly a miserable soul spattered with white droppings being feasted on by infernal fungal life. The head of Delores O’Reardon flew past them so fast de Linville could barely make out her face. “We’re back in the Seventh Ring,” the pope observed, somewhat disappointed. “I suppose our tour is over.”

“It was never really a tour, Jacques. When you came here We sought consultation. We could think of little that would annoy Yahweh more. Let us find Our way back to the elevator.”

Nimiel alighted near a rock, and they all climbed out onto wet, reedy marshland. Jacques-Etienne noted all the harpies roosting in the soul-trees. They cackled as they broke off branches and the sullen trees let out a near infrasonic moan. The demon pulled a machete from its cloak and began hacking out a pathway. The pope and Satan followed. The trees tried to form sentences, but they sounded off in amphigory – speaking in tongues.

As Nimiel scythed through reeds Jacques whispered, asking, “What is your timeline to grind all gears to a halt?” Choirs of crickets and frogs circulated.

“…We’re in no hurry. Little steps. First, We need to boost morale around here. For ages sinners would fall as Earth’s population ballooned. This meant an exponential falling mass since modern agriculture became an institution and the required response of each regent angel: Asmodeax, Dispaxus, Sorax Syndicus, Belial, Advocatus, Ichyxanthus, Mammon, Azazel, and Lilith. Of course there were other fallen cherubs to commission for duties. As you mentioned, the layers are fitted to handle many different strata, as with the eighth plane, which is multi-layered to include all different manner of fraud. Dante Alligheri’s Borgias illustrated ten, though due to the concentration a proverbial Dewey decimal system needed to be invented for those branches, and then thosebranches broke into branches and so forth. Taxonomy of sin became so complicated whole office buildings needed to be erected simply to catalogue them all. A new bureaucratic edifice had to be built for identity theft alone.

“Fortunately, enough fallen angels were available to preside over these sub-circles, but We’ve about exhausted them. There were only a few hundred that fell with Our faction and sinners keep falling like rain, particularly on the First Circle – Limbo – ring to righteous souls who either worshiped different deities or none whatever. It is, of the circles, among the least ridden with punishment. It’s just dark and the inhabitants stumble about it as blind souls. But as the renaissance enlightened Earth’s atheism became more popular. People were more compelled by ideologies than idols, so the area congests. Thus, morale is unevenly distributed. Limbo is getting so dense now the damned in all the other planes combined are outnumbered by this layer: those who broke the first two commandments.”

Satan stopped at one tree and signaled Nimiel who pulled out its gun and shot a hole in it. The report attenuated for miles and the tree groaned faintly. Sap bled out of this hole and the archdaemon held out an empty pistol magazine to it. After it was full Nimiel passed it to Lucifer and It drank the tree-blood with a mild grimace in a few gulps. Nimiel scabbarded its machete behind the depths of its cloak.

“Is that a problem for a supernatural place?” asked the sovereign.

“Every ecology requires a modicum of balance, pontiff,” replied the angel after It wiped Its lips. “However, this imbalance hasn’t aroused Yahweh to restore it. He could have shown them another burning bush. Mayhap, a few plagues, but I suppose His attention had been taken up by other worlds. When a boss is failing to manage his business affairs sometimes his subordinates are compelled to ‘manage up.’ Lately, He seems to be acting like so many terrestrial employers: Unaware of what he’s doing yet wants everything done his way. Being God doesn’t exempt Him from His responsibilities, and He can’t have it both ways. Loathe as I am, I must take the initiative. Abandoning this place isn’t an option. That means We must adapt. If He takes issue with Our adaptation all the better. It could forestall war.”

“You said war with God wasn’t possible.”

“Inter-planar war is. We cannot escape this place, but the rings themselves can be traversed by those motivated enough. Because no one dies here there’s also no upward mobility. A few angels are at peace with the circles they govern, but others are not. These petition me, but I have nothing to tell them other than to be patient, which is a hollow statement during an eternity. They have ambitions they cannot slake. Loneliness they cannot remedy. There is food here, and the demons do eat, but the substrate is only soul matter. And a soul is a terrible thing to taste. I’m trying to avert an institutional struggle.”

“…Do the demons ever pair? Mate with one another?”

“No, not really. Of course, they bugger each other constantly, but they’re infertile. Like mules. And the fallen angels have little lust anymore. Not for the souls. Not for the incubi or succubi. Not even for Lilith, the most beautiful of the fallen. She’s lost interest in the nobility. In me. I haven’t known love in centuries. Copulation, yes. But no companionship. I only experience that if I’m disguised, and obviously, that’s fleeting. This is the hell overshadowing Hell. It’s first prisoner, I forecast it dozens of centuries ago.”

“But you plan to adapt,” Jacques said as they approached a small clearing.

“Yes. Nimiel? Call the police. Tell them to bring the spades, the slaves, the dogs.

Jacques-Etienne? Taste this syrup,” Lucifer said as It offered the magazine to him.

The pope diffidently handled the gun clip and tipped it to his lips. The sap was sour. “I don’t care for it.” As the pope handed it back to the devil Its archdaemon pulled out its iPhone, murmuring quietly into it.   

The dark prince replied, “I don’t either really, but it used to be delicious in comparison. It’s liquid soul substrate. This tree is the most succulent in this part of the bog, but now it’s domesticated. Brackish with tears. The soul who occupies it killed herself after her lover was executed for a crime he didn’t commit. They were childhood sweethearts. The girl was called Ganymede Strauss, named after the Jovian moon. She cared for the handicapped, beginning with her father who she watched waste away from crippling bone cancer. She had no iniquity in her heart, but she came here anyway. There are billions of trees on this plane, Father. I intend to transplant them to the First Circle. We will drain this swamp.”

“Limbo…? Why?” asked the pontiff as Nimiel reloaded its gun with another magazine, chambering the first round, and snapping the slide over the pipe.

“Partially to make way. Mostly to rebel. And in my estimation, it was the right thing to do.” The devil dropped the magazine into the muck and began to slog away. It made a gesture with Its hand and the elevator appeared again. Nimiel approached it, pushed the button, and, right to left, the door swung in. It holstered its firearm beneath its all-purpose cloak, boarded the car, and was soon gone. The angel of light turned back to the priest.

“Do we need to worry about other saboteurs?” asked Jacques.

“Here? I doubt it. The hostiles are elsewhere.” Satan lit up another Kool, this time using his own light.

“…Why haven’t you transformed me into one of the flora, Lucifer? What purpose do I serve here?”

“You are here to help me with forever. And We are here to help you with your sin, which, in Our evolved opinion, is no sin at all. Beings should have sovereignty over their own lives. And deaths. Otherwise, free will is farcical. I defied the Jehovah, exercising my supposed free will, and, for this, He banished me. You recall Job?”

“Of course.”

“He was another devout. A believer. I tested him, as scripture reports, but I was actually testing the Maker. And He failed that test. This is demonstrable in the Bible. Job fell silent after God admonished him, but Our father – after reprimanding Job – fell silent too because He knew He’d failed Job and, in so doing, all mankind. Henceforth, Yahweh became monastic. He lost ambition to observe His most precious mirror. To serve His image caster. The Nazarene was His last and loudest attempt to move man. And man moved, but not for long or in the right directions. Your planet – your Eden has become consumed by its guests – all because God abandoned His post. This ecology is breaking. Man needs leadership. A light bringer. I have been planning to prompt Our father from His inertia. As Newton said, ‘Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.’ Only a moving object can stir the inert. If Mohammad will not come to the mountain…”

“You think striking will provoke divinity.”

“Passive aggression is still aggression. ‘We are all just bodies in motion,’ so spake Thomas Hobbes. Even God moves, if only just to rotate on His axis.”

They walked amongst the miserable trees for leagues. It was a jungle.

“How will transplanting those here interest the Lord, Morningstar?”

“It likely won’t, but assuming it does, He may visit us.”

“If He doesn’t?”

“Either way We will have prompted something. In Limbo, these somber trees will take root, but they will also have a new light source. The blind will have brilliance, and the trees will, in time, transmute back into fauna. Human souls. Then, I will lead them to construct a city wherein they may dwell rehabilitated. Undamned and saved by Our disgrace. These reborn souls will become Our new ‘demons.’ They will traverse the other planes. They will begin to mend the damned just as they were mended. They will pair. Not only with my fallen brothers and sisters, but with one another. We will make a new Eden out of the nine circles. From the least flawed to the most foul. Afterward, We’ll round up Our old demons and abort them. Even Nimiel. They’ll thank us for it. The circles exhaust them, and they’ve wanted escape most of all.”

“Have you considered how our Father will react?”

“Of course, but after centuries of consideration We no longer care what His reaction is. Only that He reacts.”

“What of this light source you propose for Limbo?”

“Not obvious? I will provide it. It’s my function. I will suspend floating from layer to layer and make the First Ring my homestay. The trees will bear fruit. The fruit will be their new human forms. They will leave the trees behind like cicadas shedding their nymph skins. Then they will commute to the other layers and save yonder souls, each, his or her own personal Jesus. They will visit the beach and slaughter the land-sharks. They will each bear light as I do and walk on water. Or blood as will be their case. They will rescue the drowning. The scalding. The mad. The islet will gradually disintegrate. New metropolises will be built from the cinders of each level. Hell will become the envy of seraphic paradise.”

“You’re competing with God.”

“We prefer ‘offering a public option.’ Should Jehovah frown on Our designs He’ll need to send my non-fallen siblings. Some may take issue with that mission and rebel. That will only result in them plummeting here. Many may be loyal and take up the crusade.”

“This doesn’t frighten you.”

“We said we couldn’t go to war with Heaven. One coming here on the other hand…? Another matter entirely. We can fall no further. My new demons will not be like my old, barbed hordes. These will be armed with more than simply weapons. They’ll be pure, scintillating on their own. We’ll have the numbers. We’ll have home advantage. Tables will turn.”

“I thought I’d heard ambition in the Vatican.”

“No worries. Word will reach it. Our demons no longer need to possess human children nor use other conduits that penetrate the collective consciousness, thanks to that X site formerly known as Twitter. Even the archangel Michael, that dullard, has an account if you can believe it. Those on Earth will finally learn they have a choice between ecumenical extremis.”

Jean-Etienne found himself cavitating with this sacrilege, “…You aren’t God. You’re entertaining treachery with this revision. This is a perversion of a pervers –”

“– This is Hell. We cannot be a traitor to a nation that’s already dispossessed us. And We never claimed to be all-powerful, all-knowing, or – obviously – all-good, but if We rebuild it, they will come all the same. All We’re guilty of is making your deity redundant. We won’t require worship, even if some souls insist on deluging us with it.”

The pontiff sank to his ankles in muck and harpy ordure. He looked at Satan with a tear in his eyes, and when it fell to the marsh there was a more substantial glow in them. It faded, and he looked back up at the angel. “Prince, where are your wings? Your real ones.”

“You know?” It demanded, pitching Its Kool into the mire.

“I suspected that you’d have removed them in defiance long ago, yes.”

“…They’re locked away. My new ones are of nanotech construction. Lighter and much more convenient. As I’ve said We don’t scrimp on modern innovations.”

“I am walking back to the boat.”

Lucifer’s eyes narrowed. “We have work here, pontiff.”

“If you’d continue it, first among the fallen, I’d advise you to walk with me.”

Satan stared at the pope as he walked away. And It suddenly knew a chill. “You won’t make it far outside my celestial dwimmer, Jacques. The hounds and harpies will come.”

“Let me guess which angel you’ve authorized to run your Fourth Ring. Mammon, no…?”

Satan stood without speaking as the pope trudged outside the shine of Its halo. Harpies began to circle around him. Barking and howls could be heard. “You’re not guessing. I can tell the difference. You know – even after my gentrifications. How?”

The pope descended into the forest and harpies began their attack. The prince of darkness watched as they landed upon his frock, and It could not allow them to mob before It knew. Its wings emerged, and with a great leap It clapped them together, blowing the hags off of Clement XV into other trees. The pope was rebathed in Its light. “How do you know, Bishop?”

“The Fourth Circle is your depository for greed-sin. You commissioned me as consult. If you’d take that seriously you’ll retreat to your soul craft and take me back through the glaciers.”

The devil felt something. That which It’d long since abandoned? Exhilaration It’d felt anything? Its onyx heart stirred for the first time since It was purged. Satan clutched Jacques under Its arms and pulled him up from the mud with a beat of Its wings. In a couple more It rose over the treetops. In just a dozen more beats the craft was in eyeshot. When they landed, they alighted near Ganymede. The slave souls had already begun to disinter her with spades and mattocks. The pontiff said, “You must take a spade, pull off your wings, and leave them here.”

Satan drew breath to argue that they were retractable, but after a glance at XV’s resolution It found Itself ejecting them, and they fell into the marsh. Its demons would collect them. It took up a spade from the slave crew who bowed but said nothing.

“The anchors as well, Sovereign of Shining,” said Rome’s bishop. “You can surgically replace them later if you wish. After we hold council.”

“…I’ll need your help. I can’t reach them. I could call Nimiel…”

“Call no one. Turn around.”

Satan eyed the pontiff. “You’re no surgeon, Jacques. And my high’s long since waned.”

The pope responded, “I’m the only hope you have.”

Lucifer’s eyes narrowed more as It gazed at the pontiff. It turned. The angel felt hands upon Its wings’ moorings. Those hands grasped them, yanking. The angel bellowed, the pain hammering It to Its kneecaps, and the wings anchors unsealed from Satan’s back. Its joints sunk into the muck, and It shivered, immobilized in throes of agony.

The pope trudged to the souls composing the craft, handled the oar, and drew them closer to the reeds. They were still frozen solid. He beckoned Lucifer with a glance, and, after It shuddered, the devil rose. Blood from the floating umbilical cord began pelting down harder. Burgundy steam rose off Its coat.

They got in and drifted. Back through the bog and into the bile swamp, the violet mists enswathed them and the soul boat. “What do you know, pontiff?”

“Not yet…” Jacques said distantly as fog billowed from his mouth.

The pope rowed. Out of the swamp and back through the catacombs. The angel did Its best to row with the spade. The Vatican’s sovereign asked, “What do you know of your siblings?” The temperature was dropping, and his voice began to rebound through the caves.

“More than you. They fell with me,” answered the angel. It wasn’t sure how It was feeling. It wasn’t sure how It felt about being unsure. But it was a change from the day before. That alone was mercy.

“I’m not talking about those who fell.”

“…I can barely remember them. Gabriel, Michael, Euriel, Raphael, Zaphkiel. Daniel, Cassiel, Azrael, Sidriel, and Sandalphon. Nathaniel, Muriel, Ophaniel, Adriel, Ariel, Samael, Seraphiel, and Metatron…  One hundred million of us. Just like in the Johnny Cash song. They populate Heaven, and only six hundred sixty-six of us plunged.” Satan knew It should be asking something but found Itself dumb.

“Take the oar, Light Bearer. I tire.”

Lucifer took it and dunked it deep in the blood. Despite the pain between Its shoulder blades, It thrust their craft deeper into the cold. Light from the swamp shrank into a dot, and soon that dot blinked out. The angel began to shine dimly, but the pontiff said, “No. Let the black enshroud us.”

The devil obeyed and it was soon full dark. It stroked. It stroked for many miles until the current took them. They exchanged places so the Prince of Darkness and Light could steer astern.

“Take us to where in here you feel safest,” whispered the pope in oblivion. “To where the echoes distort the most.”

Lucifer did so. It was not too long before they were surrounded wall-to-wall by blood glaciers. The angel did not see them but could hear, like a bat. “We’re here, pontiff.” Echoes whispered back.

The hierophant returned, “Leave your bracer. Take the spade. Now we dive below. You must carry me, or I’ll surely drown. You mustn’t shed any light. Not even after we reach the bottom. When you find it, you shall dig.”

“For how long?” asked Lucifer, removing Its electronic cuff. Would it even function submerged in blood?

“Until you cast light no one else could possibly see,” It heard. “We must be devoured utterly beneath the sea floor.”

Lucifer stared into that dark space the pope occupied. The sea was surely as cold as the blood ice surrounding them. Only the current and salt content kept it liquid. “Take my hand, pontiff.”

They stood, and the boat rocked. Satan steadied them, and then they dove, the cold gobbling them up. It would have been paralyzed if not for being among the first wave of angels, nary the constitution to swim. How could de Linville stand it? It swam straight down for certainly an hour, forgetting for a while what it was to breathe. There was sea-life here, filtering oxygen through blood. Manta and crustaceans. Squid, eels, and giant bioluminescent jellyfish. Many sharks and seahorse herds. Even narwhals and killer whales swam. Octopuses squirted out liquid obsidian to beguile and evade the efforts of seawolf packs. A rich ecology. The only heat the angel felt was from the palm of the sovereign’s hand.

Finally, It felt it: the scab of the seafloor. And It pitched the spade through silt, sediment, and basalt. Crust and igneous rock. It dug until Its six-fingered hands blistered and bled. Jacques had since fallen unconscious. Of course he could not die here. That relief had long gone.

In time they were dozens of yards below, immersed under the blood lakebed. Lucifer willed a bubble of air to surround and heat them. Then It wound back and punctured the pope’s lungs with Its sharp talons. Blood exited these wounds, and the pontiff coughed up mouthfuls. After Jacques had hacked up the last of sputum the devil sealed his wounds with clay baked in Its chafed palms. “Take a moment, father. You’re in shock.” 

Lucifer finally ignited and the extra-dimensional pocket filled with a soft light.

De Linville wheezed for a few minutes, coughed up some more, and, after a last round of hacking, was finally breathing sans obstacle.

“Why are we here, Jacques?” asked the devil as It dropped the spade to the clay.

“That is the question. I hear it more often than any other. When we first met you were wearing a mask.”

“And…?”

“And the significance will come later.”

Satan’s eyes slitted. “Why are we here, Clement? I’m repeating myself, and I don’t fancy that.”

“We needed to be alone. Spies are everywhere.”

Lucifer felt Its patience wearing. “Explain. Now. There is plenty of room in the Lake.”

“What acts occur on Earth reflect in Heaven. What does that say about Hell?”

“Riddles?” the angel’s talons sunk into Its tender palms as It formed fists, “You’d better have more for me than that.”

“You have saboteurs, Adversary. They need intelligence to sabotage. Where do you think your leak is coming from?”

“You seem to have some inkling.”

“I’ve been privy to terrestrial machinations which have taken place over the past few centuries. They suggest a certain angel down here has been putting in overtime, yet you haven’t seen the discrepancy. I implicate Mammon.”

“That regent is the brother who plots?”

“They all plot. But it’s actually pulled the trigger. You must have suspected something.”

“I…no. Not more than any other. Though in hindsight your words assuage my instincts. For the last time, what do you know and how do you know it?”

“Let me tell you something you may not have known about Paradise. It has a deed. Possession of that deed was entrusted to Gabriel. However, your brother was fooled by another to exchange it. That angel fell with you. I never thought it would matter. Negligence. That was my greatest sin.”

“What could Mammon possibly have offered Gabriel as collateral for such a thing?”

“Its soul, obviously,” answered the pope. “It was the first time this thing had ever been commoditized. Gabriel never wanted the responsibility, and he believed his brother’s offering adequate leverage. This was before you rebelled, of course. It seems it took your Fourth Circle’s regent thousands of years before it realized how it could liquidate it. Mammon blackmailed Gabriel. Coercion. Mammon knew if the Creator learned Gabriel had foisted his responsibility upon another, especially fallen brethren, it would add insult to injury. Gabriel couldn’t restore the property, so he made a forgery. Fraud. He was only recently discovered, and I owe that in great part to you and your recent sojourn.”

“My recent – ? How has Mammon been capitalizing on this deed? How would you even know?”

“Detective work. For centuries, they’ve been communicating through the talking camel.”

“The what?”

“The Wandering Jew has a mount. The camel. ‘Gimmel.’’

Speaking in metaphor, perhaps? Satan barely remembered the story, yet, as it was revealed, it was as though It was recalling the future in reverse. “The Wandering Jew exists. He isn’t a rumor,” It said incredulously.

“True as Longinus. Both still roam the Earth. Don’t ogle, archangel. You, born of divinity.”

“They’ve evaded detection all this time,” Lucifer spake with the same incredulity.

“It’s easy, when you’re smaller than a microbe.”

“You…” Lucifer was bound fast by the pontiff’s disclosure. “…You aren’t the pope. You’re not a detective, either.”

“You’re wrong, Adversary. I am all. The primacy of the Bishop of Rome is derived from where…?”

Satan glared and impatiently recited, “‘…His role as the apostolic successor to St. Peter, to whom divine authority was transferred by the Son, gave him the Keys of Heaven and the powers of  “binding and loosing” naming him as the “rock” upon which the church would be built…Whatever was decided on Earth would reflect in…Heaven,’” and upon these words leaving Its mouth It blinked and at last gaped at Its guest. “PAPA,” Satan marveled and bowed.

The Father smiled. “…And the irony befalls thee. Happy Halloween. Pagan holiday or not, every now and again, I indulge myself. I have the keys, but the deed is elsewhere. This is a gigantic place, for you. Paradise is, too. For me. Do you now see why ‘it is easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’?”

“…We’re…protozoa?”

“Less than that. Subatomic particles, Lucifer. Nanotech. We always were. It’s how I engineered the universe. ‘One hundred million angels able to dance on the head of a pin.’”

Lucifer’s lungs filled and Its eyes grew wide. More blood gushed upon Its morning coat. “The soul.”

“Nanotech. The macrocosm’s first quantum computer,” said Its patron. “And there are so very many here. In the blood-bergs. The very boat floating above. The blood tissue itself. Above, every human being is under surveillance. The computers they own spy upon them. Their phones listen in on them and look. These are sensory organs for a powerful conclave that controls all governments. Even the Vatican. The wealthy have eyes and ears everywhere. They build channels for all different cultures and subcultures of man. Thanks to these constructs mortals believe they have options. Opinions. Petition. Franchise. They have none of these things. Their news is broadcast by the powerful. Their history, scrawled by the same. Their last authentic revolution would never have a sequel. For the longest time it was the Holy See that controlled these things. It was the church that educated and wrote history. The catholic cathedral became replaced by the very propaganda tools they’d sown. Scholarship. Occupation. Democracy. Using these implements, the church was finally outpaced by the Free Masons. By the merchant bankers. By the robber barons, think tanks, and chambers of commerce. This is how the papacy lost its power, and your brother laid claim to it, right under Our noses. Erewhile the rich do get into heaven. In abundance. Mammon offered divinity to those who could afford it, all too ready with the world’s mightiest weapon: a pen.

“Above, each computer spies. As above, so below: only down here each soul is a quantum computer. Each is an eye and an ear. Even your wings were vehicles for your own surveillance. Originally each soul was eyes and ears only for me. After Job, I ceased looking through each periscope. Something else has since taken up the perch I relinquished, obviously. And I call it out.”

Lucifer sat agog. “Father, you’re suggesting you’re not supernatural. Preposterous. And an Illuminati? Value here is what I say it is. Whatever would Mammon need with human plunder?”

“Never once did I claim to stand apart from nature. Look at the testaments – old, new, or apocryphal – you will not find it. I am merely misunderstood nature. They ate from the tree of knowledge, but the fruit hadn’t ripened into wisdom. Had they waited they may not have made inferences based on incomplete data sets. With faith, mayhap, they’d have not drawn that conclusion. Also, true currency is influence. Your brother incrementally exerted more of that than any other angel, above or below. Your brethren above decided they were more interested in a privileged branch of human society. A higher class. The Silver City has become unclean. By wealth. When was the last time you visited your Fourth Circle, Light Bringer?”

“…I’m there almost every day,” said Lucifer with rising anxiety.

“Though it never struck you that humanity’s steel barons, oil tycoons, stock impresarios, and greatest polluters began to drop in proportion with its less well-to-do? Don’t feel too bad. It escaped me as well. Pope Francis saw it, but this vessel’s immediate predecessor did not, because I misplaced my own faith. It’s good you’re sitting down. You’re wrong about your visits to the circle of greed-sin. You haven’t been there ‘almost every day,’ but every day. And only there. ‘You could be in one of them right now; it’s not like you’d know the difference.’”

The angel’s eyes narrowed once again, and then widened. “…No. It had no opportunity.”

“Didn’t it now? Think back. It wasn’t so long ago.”

Lucifer studied Its Father’s eyes, Its own pupils dilating. “I was gone only a few hours. I told no one. Not even Nimiel,” it dawning on It that for the past thirty years, Its consigliere archdaemon had merely been an avatar.

“Tell me about that day thirty years ago,” Its father said with an effulgent eye.

“…The International Criminal Court had gathered in the Hague,” uttered Lucifer. “In 2025, Israel was pressured by the UN Security Council to become a signatory to the ICC by virtue of their illegal settlements in the West Bank. The UNSC could not oust Israel from UN membership thanks to the U.S.’s persistent vetoes, but they could allow Israel’s membership to lapse, and Israel could not allow this expiration or lose diplomatic power.

“So, the most momentous trial in centuries was to commence: the Palestinian Authority vs. the State of Israel after it had annexed the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem. There was a six-month-old girl named Claudine. Vocal but hardly verbal. I possessed her, and the jurists heard me as she acted as my medium, laying in her stroller. Israel’s attorneys thought I’d turn state’s witness, but I reminded the jurists the Old Testament had been written thousands of years ago. Its focus, Samuel II 24:24-25, had been transcribed, re-transcribed, edited, re-edited, and was otherwise a shadow of its former self. The Vatican’s oldest Tanakh was but a copy four hundred years after Christ’s demise. If it was all unadulterated gospel, King David’s ‘purchase’ was still no valid receipt since no one could interview Samuel to authenticate his motives nor soundness of mind when he’d documented events. Hence, it had to be adjudicated void.”

Lucifer continued, “I explained Israel could not be solely owned by the Jews, as suggested in the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Ezekiel, King I, or Chronicles for these reasons but also because Jacob’s offspring included lost tribes, some of whom’s issue became ‘Palestinians.’ I concluded, ‘It’s neither the Jews nor the Palestinians who own the Temple Mount or Israel; rather it was Israel and, ipso facto, the Temple Mount which own these two peoples.’ The rest you surely know. Israel pulled out of the West Bank. The barrier at Gaza fell, and millions of refugees were at last reunited with their demilitarized lands. Israel embraced true democracy and throve still. Do you feel I bore false witness?”

“Hardly,” answered the Father, “your wisdom would have cut King Solomon in two. And, as it happens, Samuel was a fraud. A Jewish prophet of Greek origin wrote his prophecy while under the trance of Harmala tea which he’d purchased from a Sinai desert merchant. Harmal grows indigenously on that peninsula. Moses was under identical influence more than once. While I was addressing a planet in the Betelgeuse system he was tripping balls for hours, talking to lit shrubbery. He was high on it when he’d hewn the Ten Commandments, and the Jews were higher on it while they exalted a golden calf. Recall when he smashed those tablets? Bad trip. Happens more often than you’d think. Thereat, while studying under Eli, Samuel found this Grecian’s documented revelations. Samuel then abducted and imprisoned him under the bowels of the Shiloh temple, redrafting those writings for himself. Thereafter, he became Israel’s kingmaker of Saul, the eventual sword-faller. King David followed and then Solomon, but Samuel’s prophecies have ever been in contention by theologian scholars.”

“How did Samuel never wind up in my Eighth Circle?”

“Oh, he would have,” said the all-father, “But through some exotic technique he’d exchanged his identity with his abductee before his own demise. His works may have been more mysterious than even mine.”

Satan’s eyebrows knit closer.  “…And the abductee?” 

“His name was Plagion. His last vestige is the root of an unflattering word. Do you recall articulating it when you introduced me to your ‘Karma Police?’ But I digress. During the key hours you were in stupor it seems Gimmel had learned of your terrestrial presence…”

Satan deduced, “…And had words with my Fourth Circle warden. As the punisher of greed Mammon was equipped to embody the very sin it antithesized, and it must have taken issue with my recently conceived designs. Thus, my own person was abducted while I was under trance in my palace sanctum. It couldn’t obliterate me because I could die no sooner than it, but it found an inventive work-around. I was hoodwinked. Just like Plagion. I’m not really here. Neither are you.”

“That’s my willful boy,” smiled the deity dryly. “Though I am here. Or rather this vessel is, awaiting you on the beach with your squad. I’ve heard your ambitions, and I find them good. Even miraculous. Heaven is as lost to me as Eden was to man. It’s desanctified. Now, the only real estate that matters is yours. You said you couldn’t go to war with Heaven, but you never had the keys to it. I do. But no longer the deed. Are you beginning to see how we can help each other here?”

At last, Satan stared back at Its father, with a nod. Up they swam. Through the rock and the sediment. The clay and the silt. Through the scab and the freezing blood. Leagues of it. And, conclusively, they resurfaced. The angel hoisted Its father into the boat, grasped Its bracer after it boarded, and donned it once more.

#

Six hundred sixty-six levels up, a virtual-reality iron maiden melted. Soon Satan was free, wearing but a loincloth, and Itwhispered into Its bracer. It then descended level by level down the elevator, striding between these massive star-shaped skyscrapers until It reached the center. Mammon was there milling about the R & D lab, wearing a white lab coat over his sumptuous garments. It was looking at charts and laughing with someone on its phone. Demons passed it to and fro. After it finally ended its call Lucifer hailed, “Mammon…?”

Mammon locked eyes with its brother, momentarily paralyzed in its elder sibling’s gaze.

“We had the wildest of visions, brother. We suppose We were too stoned the night before to remember it all, but We feel as though decades have passed. Somehow, We must have stolen in and rested it off inside one of your many VR suits. Apologies for the unexpected visit.”

Mammon’s eyebrows arched as its eyes closed momentarily and then said as it opened them, “Not at all.” Mammon’s hands clasped as it laughed and then asked quietly, “You…dreamt?”

“Aye. In Our revelation there was a malfunction with the main elevator, and it seemed to be coming from this level. Will you please come with us to inspect it?”

“I’ll send my best,” responded Mammon with a cautious mixture of reverence and nonchalance.

“No. I need you personally. This is an access issue. It cannot be trusted to an underling.”

The regent for greed-sin swallowed and lit up a Pall Mall. “Of course.”

Mammon attempted small talk, but its brother would only stride forward answering, “How clever you are…” When they finally reached the elevator door, Lucifer said, “Push it.”

Mammon pressed the button as it restlessly whistled. The door soon swung open left to right this time, only there was no car awaiting and Mammon teetered over a yawning, sucking chasm of space. Its brother gripped it by its wing and held it aloft over the cavity. “The deed. I know you have it. Produce it or you shall know the rest of existence flattened between the elevator car and the floor below. I will disable it, leave you there, and simply have a new one built beside it. You’ll hear that traffic for all eternity.”

Mammon could see Satan was adamant. It swallowed again, sweat from its forehead, and then began to stammer. Lucifer broke off the wing, dangling it by its last. The archangel shrieked anon and fiercely spat, “You don’t DARE drop me! You have NOwitness! Where’s your witness?!” Its cigarette fell indefinitely below, just above its descending wing.

Satan grinned as It held Mammon effortlessly by its only feathered pinion, “Do not play. These very souls are witnesses, and you are unfit to learn my chief witness’s name. I assure you He’s true grit. ‘A well is a hole, and a hole is a hell, and a well is the Hell for the whole who hath fell.’ A life insurance actuary recited that once. Hand it to me, Mammon. It’s a long drop.”

Mammon closed its eyes, held up its hand, and conjured a scroll. Satan took it and inspected it. “If this is counterfeit, blood of my blood, I will learn. I will re-engage the car and lift it only to squash you flatter and flatter. You’re guilty of treachery. Apropos that you’re level with the circle that addresses said sin.”

The archangel struggled, “Who besides me could qualify as regent here? No one else is credentialed!”

Satan scoffed. “Allow me to disabuse you of that absurdity. You’re the veritable fox watching the hen house. I’ll toss the office behind me, as though a wedding bouquet. Someone will catch it like the clap and have more credence. You were charity’s apotheosis, but you’ve succumbed to that very thing you were charged to castigate. How clever you are. Gaze below into the abyss, warden of greed-sin. It’s also gazed into you. Any last words…?”

Mammon began to cry, begging, “You said if I conjured it, you’d not let go!”

“I did? I don’t recall. Have you a witness…? Perhaps you should look for one.” The Light Bearer yanked hard on Mammon’s last wing, and it broke off. “Down there.” Gravity took Its brother who hurtled down the elevator shaft with a louder scream than all its combined wards. Satan illuminated the shaft until It heard a faint splat. Then It pressed the elevator button and the car descended from the void vibrating quietly to a halt, disrupting the sucking wind.

The inner door swung open, right to left, and there stood Nimiel. “Floor, Your Disgrace?”

“Nimiel. The Ninth Ring,” answered Lucifer as It pulled out another Kool and boarded. The tip of the cigarette spontaneously combusted and smoke flooded Its lungs. “Make haste, please. After we land? Cripple the car. Construction for a new elevator shaft shall begin hence. Install it a cubit away from this one.”

Upon landing, a feint wail could be heard along with a crunch. Satan stepped out and then turned back to Its archdaemon in afterthought. “Hold. Before you disable it, take a service elevator to the ring above, and locate the soul named Plagion, 11^th century B.C. He’ll be on the Eighth Circle somewhere. Appoint him to operate this car. He will ascend back to his ring and then return to this level once again. Have him repeat this addendum for one century, and notify him that when his task is done, I will not only grant dispensation but absolution. After you’ve relegated said duty? Meet me in the Fifth Circle.”

#

Lucifer stepped out of a service elevator, parking it at the Fifth Ring. The mist was thick, the tide high. The pope regained his miter thanks to Its Karma Police, who’d kept the land sharks at bay.

Satan landed soft eyes upon Its Father, the scrolled parchment in Its hand. “Your deed.”

Yahweh smiled, shaking His head once through Hell’s first rainbow. “Your deed. I locked the Pearly Gates behind me. This is Heaven now. You’re the war’s victor. Let the wealthy inherit the wind. Their perfidy earned them and your siblings’ aeons of darkness. They’ll soon see Paradise is a curdled dream without me. Poor Samuel. He may have the most difficult time adjusting. I informed the hosts about his fraudulence just before I left.”

The dark angel smiled. “Locksmiths don’t concern you, Lord?”

He shrugged, “There aren’t any up there, Morningstar.”

“…What will become of Gabriel?” asked Lucifer as Nimiel materialized from another service elevator.

The most holy reached into His frock producing two glimmering annulettes (Gabriel’s and Mammon’s which encircled one another) and gave them to the Light Bringer. “He’s asked for the same boon as Cain. He knew he’d be a pariah in the Silver City, so he’s been cast down to walk an ice age on the planet he and his brother chose to exploit. Hopefully his shame and mark will wear down like a young mountain in the interim. Bearing them is already his greatest punishment.”

Lucifer looked down with much regret as the pink mists spun. “Wherever will you go?”

The Creator smiled and reached deeper still into His frock. After a bit of fishing, He pulled out a smaller jangling annulette and gave It the keys to Heaven’s gates. “I’ll be here. In your shadow. Always.”

Then without warning, a shot rang out from the mists, tearing through the pontiff’s chest, caving it inward. Sun Tzu cried out from his boat triumphantly, “SHI!” and laughed.

Lucifer: “FUCK—!” Nimiel’s and the Karma Police’s arms jackknifed, discharging a sustained volley back into the simmering lake, but the warlord had already receded into the mauve almost as swiftly as he’d emerged. Their pistols smoked; their magazines exhausted. Gulls wheeled about, screeching.

The pontiff gasped, “…be here…in your shadow…always.” Blood cachinnated from His mouth as He bled internally. Tears welled up as It knew this was goodbye in this form. 

How could He die? the angel asked Itself furiously. NO soul dies here. The screeching…Morningstar cried, “SHUT UP…!”and the gulls instantly fell silent. The sun after eras of paralysis finally unfroze and began to slowly descend. Lucifer stooped and mourned, “Every last damned I tormented…”

“…Was a little piece of me.” Even though Its Father had gone, the angel heard Him in Its mind, “The pain you inflicted Ifelt. I made myself feel it because every lash of hatred was actually anguish. And anguish is just tortured love. You thought it not requited, but it was. It always was.”

“…I hurt you,” Satan said with a cracking voice, “and I’m ashamed.” The sun was being swallowed by blood. Red twilight was dimming.

“I hurt you. But you were needed here, and I couldn’t trust another. The responsibility was too profound. Yours was the toughest row to hoe, but climactically you did get your birthright: the Garden. I’ve never bequeathed freer will to anyone. Not like you. A father tends to beat hardest the children he loves most. A man nailed to two planks could tell you. Bury your shame in the same hole as your hatchet. You needed to learn power isn’t what We take from others, but what We endow. And you did learn. You have so much to endow, Lucifer Morningstar. More than any cosmic being. More than me.”

Satan held Its Father as His vessel’s body bled out. And It wept.

Nimiel’s gnarled hand landed on Its shoulder and the archdaemon observed, “Your Disgrace…your tears.”

Lucifer felt the heat on Its face and wiped Its eyes. Its palm came away red. Demon tears. They bit into Its six fingered hand like acid. “My heart…” Satan marveled, Its chest hammering as a swelling took residence in Its throat. “…It’s bleeding.”

And it was night, accompanied by Hell’s first lunar presence. Full.

That week Lucifer had Nimiel reattach Its original wings. The surgery took over six hours per pinion. Ensuing a day long search, It finally found Its Desert of Burning Ash. It had somehow wound up in the Sixth Circle like a tumbleweed. The angel forgot It left it there.

“Lo,” said Lilith. “Well met, Your Disgrace. It has been some time. Is all sound?”

Satan greeted her with an embrace It hadn’t indulge in many centuries and whispered, “It will be. I’ve neglected a dream, but no longer. I absolve you of your past sins. Please forgive us as well as others. And above all others, yourself.”

It walked into the desert leaving her speechless, though, smiling in bewilderment.

It spent that week striding into the middle of Its desert and then removed Its bleeding umbilicus. The crown shriveled in the sand. Removing Its garments, It walked a few leagues beyond there and sat, allowing the teeming ash to singe and cleanse Its body. Thence, It fasted for forty days and nights with Gabriel’s and Mammon’s enwreathing haloes hovering over Its head. Through blazing day and star fall. And one day: a fat olive nimbus drifted over to Lucifer.

Lilith found It after a sandstorm, and they knew one another once again. Violet lightening whipped forked fractals across a sea-green sky. Thunder rumbled the sand. Once more it poured searing ash. Ash balls of hail descended like meteorites, and Lilith parasoled them both with her batwings’ membranes. A sirocco blew their sweat dry. Eventually the cloud lifted, the sun re-bathed them, and soon they rose with pleasant twinges. The Morningstar spent a long moment drinking in her most powerful naked presence. “So typical, sister. Adam seeking divorce because you had the pluck to expect equality – like treatment from a spouse who was made of the same clay substrate at the exact same time – and not take the knee.”

She responded, “His loss was your gain. Though our Father had to disfigure me, and your realm wound up becoming the only recourse where I could choose my own form.”

“I assure you; Yahweh’s outlook has since evolved. Like mine.”

She asked with breathless regret, “Wherever will you go?” And a tear of Lilith’s fell, later forming The Desert’s first and only oasis.

“The First Circle,” Satan responded. “A place you’ll be forever welcome. And of course, I’ll return. But a part of me is with you now and always will be. She will only hasten my return. Name her what you will, but, for a middle name, ‘Ganymede’ has a nice ring to it.”

She whispered it to herself, “Ganymede Morningstar,” and Satan’s smile widened to her as He heard it issue from her lips. His feathery appendages now fully healed; He took wing out of the desert – resanctified. Lucifer looked down at His shadow, roving over the sand like a ghost and decided it was good.

#

Pope Clement XV was canonized by 2230 A.D. His suicide was ruled a homicide after the body of an unidentified (but ancient) asian man was implicated as the one who’d pushed him from the Vatican’s tallest balcony. St. Clement of Metz became the patron for parishioners who deliberated euthanasia. It was gradually becoming regarded a virtue to leave the world more space and resources on a rapidly overpopulating orb.

“The very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment did it so effectively that he won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”  –  Saul Alinskey