Distraxiom

[This is part of an ongoing tandem writing experiment. To read the full story, click here.]


Carl Marx and Immanuel Kant clasped shoulders at Tesla’s remark and bellowed. Lucifer shot them all the stink eye, literally, but it did little to quiet the roar.

Enraged, Lucifer grasped his empty snack container by the hair and punted it with one hoofed foot directly into the chuckling gullet of Richard Nixon. Nose flattened, Nixon picked up the severed head, unhinged his jaw and dropped the morsel in his mouth, swallowing it whole. “Point taken,” he snarled.

“NOW, FOR THE REASON I HAVE SUMMONED YOU…” But before he could finish his sentence, another voice called out from the council.

“We KNOW why we’re here, let us make that crystalline clear. You’re out of souls, dear heart. You need more and you can’t figure out where to start.” It was Oliver Cromwell, from far in the back. The lilting, sing-song voice was a dead give away, and something Satan hated very, very much.

“Yes, we have all noticed the drop in temperature,” Commodus said. “And look, that great big pile of souls has been diminished to nearly nothing,” he said, gesturing with his right hand. “Honestly, Satan, what good would a council do if they were always two steps behind you?” The room let out another chuckle.

Eyes brimming with acid, Lucifer dug in his pockets for another hankie. “Don’t let them see you cry, don’t let them see you cry,” he thought over and over again. In a final effort to keep his composure, the Lord of Darkness resorted to biting his tongue and repeatedly stabbing himself with his nails of pure, sharpened obsidian. When he was sure he could speak without a falter in his voice, Satan, the King of the Underworld, the Sultan of Sulfur, the Baron of Brimstone, spoke in a high falsetto.

“What good indeed, Commodus?” As his eyes met with those of the Morningstar, Commodus saw the face of every crippled man he ever killed on the sands of the Coliseum.

Lucifer switched from his mocking falsetto back into his normal, Barry White-ish baratone. “My friends, you forget your place. You hold your current positions as uneaten and unburned councilors only while I hold sway over my kingdom. When the souls dry up, your usefulness as councilors dries in tandem. However, your souls still retain that unburned quality which my furnaces crave. And, with the finely aged quality of so many of your souls, I’d wager a guess that you’ll all go up faster than an old growth forest in the middle of July!” Lucifer flicked his hands like a cheap birthday magician, and every councilmember had a separate but equally terrifying vision of heat, intense heat beyond explanation, as if they had plunged into the heart of 1,000 suns, followed by nothing. No heat, no cold, no good and no ill. Simply nothing. It was infinitely more terrifying than the blinding heat of hell’s furnace.

Lucifer felt the room shift, felt the balance of power roll back into his court, and it felt wonderful. Moreover, he felt good. And, for the first time in a long time, probably since the council helped him bring about the Spanish Inquisition, Lucifer felt in complete control of every member.

Nietzsche was the first to speak. “Vell, vat vould you have us do?”

“Dear, dear Frederich,” Satan said. “As much as I appreciated your help in bringing about the Holocaust and WWII with your absurd Ubermensch, I dare say the problems facing us now far exceed the expertise of the council, as is.”

Satan felt the collective eyes of the room on him, saw the questions bubbling up in each and every one of them. He focused all his attention to his ears, and when he heard the faint crack of John Locke’s lips part to say something, Satan leapt upon the table and, in his most earnest impression of a late night TV infomercial spokesman, the Prince of Darkness said, “Which is precisely why, at this very moment, a tour bus is veering off its proper path on Pennsylvania Ave. As I stand before you this bus is cutting across the median, barreling into oncoming traffic, and colliding head-on with a black Chevy Suburban! Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you the new co-head of Satan’s Braintrust, the only man evil enough to be called away early from his most-important work on planet earth, Mr. Carl Rove!”

And, with another flick of his wrist, a black leather rolling chair holding an aged, fat and bespectacled man with wild, questioning eyes appeared between Andrew Jackson and Philippe Pétain, the leader of Vichy France.

“Oh, come off it, Carl,” Lucifer said. “Don’t act so surprised, this was all written in the fine print.”