Chapter 2
SATAN
The bar was dark and dank at noon on a Tuesday.
It smelled of desperation, stale cigarettes and alcohol.
The air was thick with smoke and billions of years of shitty choices.
The clientele was low brow and the location was in the worst neighborhood in Hell.
It was a shithole filled with broken dreams where hope hung out to die. Normally, I loved it.
Today? Not so much.
I watched as the patrons of the bar cleared out due to my presence. At least there was that. Getting respect was more difficult every day, and I had no fucking clue as to why.
“Boss man,” Lizard said as he slid a crystal glass and a bottle of twenty-three-year-old Pappy Van Winkle across the bar. “Stole this last week for you.”
“Good man,” I told him, examining the precious and expensive bottle of bourbon.
I poured a glass and took a sip. Savoring the rare bourbon in my mouth, I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly.
The good stuff had to be appreciated. Nodding at Lizard to join, he gave me a thumbs up.
He put his ever-present baseball bat on the bar and cracked open a cheap beer—his drink of choice—and took a healthy swig followed by a loud burp.
The man had appalling manners and pedestrian taste in both alcohol and women.
His mates, the Vamps Martha and Jane, made me want to tear my own head from my body and drop kick it.
Tragically, my mate, Elle, and son, Luke, adored the old women.
Elle had hired them to nanny our boy. It made my life a living Hell and I don’t mean in the good way.
“Bad day, boss?” Lizard asked, placing his large wad of chewed gum on the rim of the can of beer.
I kept myself from setting him on fire with effort. The man was disgusting. However, he wasn’t afraid of me and would tell me like it was even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Demons like that were rare. Mostly because I’d decapitated all the others who’d dared.
“You could say that,” I replied.
Lizard was a hot mess, my right-hand man in battle and the closest thing to a best friend that I had.
As Satan aka Blade Inferno aka the Devil aka the sexiest man in the Universe, people tended to be rather wary of me.
Demons in general were duplicitous, sticky-fingered, liars and assholes.
I enjoyed those qualities in my people, but it was lonely at the top.
I had Elle and Luke, but they were off on vacation to visit her family, and I wasn’t allowed to join.
Fucking Sirens were sensitive. Clearly, all of Elle’s bitchy relatives didn’t enjoy my superior sense of humor.
My jokes about menopause and women drivers hadn’t quite hit.
The fact that I’d been threatened with castration if I even set my pinkie toe on their island again was insulting.
I mean, my cock would grow back, but I’d had the same dick since I’d been created at the beginning of time.
It was my pride and joy. I had no intention of letting a bunch of man-eating freaks lop it off.
Hence, I was at the dive bar in Hell on a Tuesday at lunchtime with nothing to do and no one to hang out with.
I eyed Lizard with dismay. He was wearing a royal blue track suit and a mauve beret with black socks and brown sandals.
The fit gave me gas. His eyes were a tad too close together and his jaw was large, mainly due to the unsavory fact that he chewed gum twenty-four-seven. Whatever. He’d always had my back.
My therapist, Sogdroth, who’d only agreed to treat me as long as I promised not to disembowel him for any advice he gave me, had suggested opening up to people.
Making myself more relatable might help me make a few buddies—a couple of ride-or-die comrades.
I found the idea repugnant, but if I was going to let the walls down a bit, Lizard was a safe bet.
“Lizard,” I began hesitantly, reminding myself it was fucking stupid to ask questions I didn’t want the answers to. Screw it. Maybe the therapist was right. A little self-introspection might be just what I need. “Do you like me?”
Lizard’s beady little eyes grew wide. I didn’t take that as a great sign. Maybe a rephrasing of the question was in order.
“What I meant,” I corrected quickly, “I meant to say… do you consider me a friend?”
“Define friend,” he replied.
“Oh, you know…” I stuttered, trying to come up with what the Hell a friend was by definition.
I didn’t have any friends. But… I’d recently doom scrolled the Try Guys.
They were friends. Idiots, but definitely friends.
“Umm… maybe it means daring each other to get bikini waxes and posting the deed online. Or, friendship could be wearing menstrual cramp simulators and posting it online. Or, shaving our legs and wearing women’s panties…
and umm… you know… posting it online.” I winced in embarrassment and horror.
Doom scrolling the Try Guys was biting me squarely in the ass.
Fuck. Was the answer good enough? Would Lizard actually want to be my friend?
“Huh,” Lizard said, scratching his head in confusion. “Lemme give it a shot.”
“By all means,” I shouted, thrilled he hadn’t kicked me out of the bar for being a pathetic loser.
“Maybe you mean friends like someone I would go to El Colacho with?” he suggested.
I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “El Colacho?”
He grinned. “Yep. You do it in Spain. You get dressed up like the Devil and jump over babies who are laid on mattresses in the street.”
“What the fuck does dress up like the Devil mean?” I demanded, wildly offended.
The dolt patted my back and chuckled. “Red suit, horns, a tail.”
“Not Armani?” I asked, confused.
“Nah. Maybe that example is a little too out there,” he conceded.
I huffed. “I should certainly say so.”
Lizard adjusted his beret as his unibrow wrinkled in thought. I was thinking too. I was thinking of a way to get around the promise of not disemboweling Sogdroth. Where there was a will there was always a way.
“Got it, my liege,” Lizard said with a grin.
I was terrified with good reason. Lizard was as strange as they came.
If he brought up booking, I’d have to decapitate the Demon.
He’d overshared a while back about a hobby called booking where one acquired a large, thick, hard-backed tome and then slammed one’s manhood in it.
Repeatedly. It was not my idea of a good time.
However, to be fair, I had suggested getting the hair waxed off our groins then posting it on the internet.
Lizard spoke. I held my breath.
“Back in the day I used to go with a few buds to England for Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling,” he explained with a wistful expression. “Damn good time.”
I waited. I knew there was more. There was always more.
“Ahh,” Lizard said, pulling the tab on another beer.
“It involves chasing an enormous wheel of cheese as it rolls down a steep hill. Nothing like it. The salty breeze off the moor blowing your hair back as you hold your mate’s hand and outrun the fat, pasty British bastards.
The sound of the cheddar as it squishes and squeaks while bouncing over rocks and people who didn’t get out of the way quickly enough is almost as good as a Big O.
The feeling of pride when you and your bestie dive upon the gelatinous wheel and take the first bite. Glorious.”
We sat in silence and stared at each other.
Lizard broke the awkward quiet. “You mean a friend like that?”
“Umm… no. Not exactly,” I said, squinting at the insane man.
For some reason, I wanted Lizard to be my friend.
Sogdroth has said being open was the way to go.
Soooo, I decided it was time to come clean about a hobby I’d secretly been indulging in for decades.
“Actually, I was thinking more like a comrade to come up with elaborate schemes to appear deceased in public places. Then once in the ambulance, come back to life and freak people out, possibly cause a heart attack or two.”
I watched as he considered the activity. “Could we wait until we’re in the morgue and then come back to life when we’re being examined by the forensic pathologist?”
I nodded, impressed. It was genius. Maybe having a real friend could be fun.
“Outstanding!” I announced. “We shall go to NYC at once and play dead. You in, friend?”
Popping his wad of gum back into his mouth, the Demon gave me a thumbs up. “I’m in. But it’s Tuesday. I say we wait until Friday. More people in Times Square.”
“Hmm,” I said, mulling the plan. “I see how that might be more invigorating. Friday it is!”
Lizard’s cell rang. A drawing of Martha and Jane popped up on the screen.
The sketched interpretation of the old hags was far superior than a photo would have been.
Since they were undead, they didn’t show up in photos or mirrors or on video.
Small mercies were indeed kind. My new BFF took the call.
I could hear the pains in my ass yacking it up while Lizard barely got a word in.
He didn’t seem to mind. The man just smiled and chuckled.
Love was very, very, very blind. If I had to listen to Martha and Jane on a daily basis for the rest of my life, I’d be forced to rip their tongues out and shove them up their bony asses. Again, small mercies.
“Love you too, you sexy gals,” Lizard said as he hung up.
Sogdroth had impressed upon me that in order to have a friend, I had to ask questions about their lives and stop talking only about myself.
I wasn’t convinced this was true. I was a riveting subject to discuss.
But Sogdroth had been correct about opening up.
I had a playdate in Times Square on Friday to prove it.
Here went nothing. “You have a nice cell phone, Lizard,” I said casually. “Do you like it?”
“Yep,” he answered. “Stole the latest model last week. The camera is excellent.”
“Ahh,” I said, knowing I should inquire about his mates. My ass puckered and I wondered if I could do it without insulting the shit out of the nasty old nightmares. I was Satan. I could do anything… “So, friend, was that a productive conversation with the hookers?”
“Loves of my life?” he corrected with a chuckle.
“Sure,” I said, doing my damnedest not to gag. “Let’s go with that.”
“Fantastic,” he said, putting a fresh piece of gum into his mouth to add to the massive wad already there. “They got their boobs done!”
“I’m sorry what? They’re dead. Didn’t think that was possible.”
“Me neither, but my gals are fucking nuts.” He threw his head back and laughed. I was shocked he didn’t choke on his gum. “But… I do think there’s something you need to know.”
My eyes narrowed. That didn’t sound good. “Out with it.”
“Alrightyroo,” he said, topping off my bourbon. “You know how you said that Vamps are pussies and they have it easier than Demons?”
“I do,” I replied with an eye roll. “It’s true.”
“Yep, well, that got back to Astrid.”
“Fuck,” I hissed. My niece, who I secretly adored, was a terrifying nightmare. “And?”
“She said that she heard word on Oxford Street is that your pecker is petite. And those with pocket sized pee-pees tend to lash out at those who have much larger equipment, literal and metaphorical… like Vampyres.”
“WHAT?” I shouted. “Who said it? Which Oxford Street? My pecker is HUGE and OUTSTANDING and WONDEROUS. No one talks smack about my package.”
“Don’t know who said it. I suppose we should go to Kentucky and ask Astrid,” Lizard suggested.
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” I snapped. “I shall get to the bottom of this hideous rumor immediately. Are you coming?”
Lizard laughed. “Wouldn’t miss it. Want one more drink before we hit the road?”
I considered the offer. It was practically impossible for a Demon to tie one on and the bourbon was rare and excellent… just like my fucking junk. “Yes. I’ll have one more.”
I drank the rest of the bottle. It would have been sinful to waste twenty-three-year-old Pappy Van Winkle. I was sinful, but not wasteful when it came to the good shit.