Sometimes, Mephistopheles (Mephisto for short) reflected, souls arrived down at the Gates of Hell claiming that they could talk their way out of things, that this was all just one big misunderstanding.  These people were known to have “silver tongues.”

But if these mere mortals had silver tongues, Mephisto’s boss, Lucifer, possessed the singular golden tongue.

Mephisto had seen his boss charm them all.  He could talk a priest into becoming a killer, could convince the most selfless saint to turn his back on his fellow man.  Once, Mephisto swore, he’d seen his boss charm the very wings off of a butterfly.

And yet, right now, Lucifer was speechless…

It was obvious.  Mephisto slowly edged backwards as he watched the fallen archangel, the Master of Hell, open and close his mouth without any sound coming out.

Briefly, Mephisto wondered what could be considered a “minimum safe distance.”  Technically, his boss’s wrath knew no bounds, but usually the flames didn’t make it more than a dozen feet or so before dissipating.  Still, the trusted devil lieutenant didn’t want to lose an eyebrow.

“Wha – what in the name of Hell did He do!?” Lucifer finally roared out, his bellow shaking the very foundations of the infernal plane.  “This can’t be!”

Lucifer turned and glared with twin black holes at Mephisto, who shuffled uncertainly forward a step.  The other lieutenants were hanging back, waiting for someone else to step up and take the fall.

“Boss, we really didn’t have much of a choice or anything,” Mephisto commented, already half-tensed to dodge Lucifer’s impending wrath.  “I mean, it’s Him.  What are we going to do, say no?”

For a moment, Lucifer kept up the million-watt glare, and Mephisto prepared himself for the worst.  Reforming this body was going to be a royal pain.  But just as he was resigning himself to atomization, the anger went out of Lucifer’s shoulders, and he slumped down.

“Man, that guy really just bugs me, you know?” he said, his voice more despairing than raging.  Kicking off his sandals, the fallen archangel padded out onto the grassy, frolicking meadows that now covered Hell.  He bent down and ripped a dandelion out of the ground, but three more wildflowers sprung up in its place.

“I mean, just look at this,” he went on, spreading an arm out.  “What in the world was He even thinking?”

Interested by the motion, a fluffy lamb ambled over, nibbling hopefully at the Master of Hell’s robe in hopes that it tasted like grass.  Lucifer fired a massive bolt of lightning into the lamb, but it just briefly made the creature’s wool stand on end before it decided that the robe wasn’t as tasty as the green grass underfoot.

Again, none of the other lieutenants spoke up, so Mephisto was left to fill the silence.  “He said that even the worst souls could be saved through peace and tranquility,” he offered, again cringing back from any outrage.

“Peace??  Tranquility??  That’s not what souls want!  They need to be burned in Hellfire and flayed by imps with pitchforks!” Lucifer shouted back, glaring at the whole pastoral scene around him.  “Has He not read any of their recent literature?  When did He go so soft?”

“Some time around the New Testament, I think,” Satan’s lieutenant offered, stepping forward, carefully lifting his foot to crush a daisy and grimacing with distaste.

Lucifer suddenly straightened up, frowning.  “What did he do with the imps, anyway?”

“Er… you just tried to electrify one of them, sir,” Mephisto informed him.

The Lord of Hell’s eyes went wide.  “He turned my demons and imps… into SHEEP?”

“Not just sheep, lord,” grunted Ba’al from behind Mephisto, oozing forward.  “Ducks, piglets, little frolicking puppies-“

Mephisto managed to just duck the fireball, but the giant slug form of Ba’al wasn’t so fast, and the grass was covered in a layer of slime.  “How dare he??” howled the Eternal Ruler of Damnation up at the black sky.

Time to steer the Master back to a more pleasant topic, Mephisto decided, reaching up and gingerly feeling the top of his head to make sure it hadn’t been burned away.  “Sir, at least you did something to Heaven, didn’t you?” he asked.

The devil lieutenant knew his master well.  Lucifer already had another fireball glowing in his hands, but the question made him stop and smile, the orb of energy dissipating.  “Oh, you bet,” he grinned, suddenly happy.  “That should at least put a bee in His bonnet!”

WHAT IN THE NAME OF ME HAS HE DONE?

“Lord, he said that it was allowed, since it’s a version of Heaven-“

A VERSION OF HEAVEN TO WHO?  BABIES?

“Erm, let me see…” The cherub ran a shaking chubby hand down his clipboard until he found the entry.  “Um, rednecks, Lord.”

THIS IS WHAT REDNECKS THINK THAT HEAVEN IS LIKE?  ALL OF THEM?

“Enough for him to make it stick, Lord.  Some of us argued-“

I DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND HOW THEY STAY ON THOSE HIGH HEELS.  THEY’RE ALL SO… TOP-HEAVY.

“He filled… them… with helium, Lord.  Said it would make them more ‘perky’.”

AND THEY ARE ABLE TO BREATHE IN THOSE TIGHT SHIRTS?

“More or less.  Lucifer said that the breathing was the best part, rising and falling.  I’m not quite sure what he meant, Lord.”

UGH.  THAT DAMN ANGEL ALWAYS KNEW HOW TO MAKE ME ANNOYED.  AND THEY JUST SERVE THESE MEATS ALL DAY LONG?

“Chicken wings, sir.  And beer.  That’s right.”

QUITE TASTY, THOUGH.  IS THAT AN OWL ON THEIR SHIRTS, UNDER THE… CURVATURE?

“The slogan, sir.  Most people’s eyes don’t make it down that far.”

INDEED.

The devil sitting across the table from me leaned back, one hand lazily twirling a finger about an inch above the brim of his coffee cup.  Even though there was nothing physically extending down into the cup itself, the liquid beneath his finger seemed to be moving along with his motions.

In front of me, both of my hands were wrapped around my own coffee cup.  Even after years of working here, of pouring coffee every day for the angels, both holy and fallen, that wandered in here, I still got nervous when talking to them.  Call it mortal nerves, maybe.  I waited for the devil in front of me to respond.

“See, here’s my theory,” the devil across from me finally started.  His voice was cultured, with only the very faintest little hint of a sneer giving any sort of allusion to his true nature.  “We all know that God exists, somewhere, in some form.  Right?  We,” and he waved one hand around in a little circle to encompass the two of us, the coffee shop, the world in general, “wouldn’t be here if He didn’t exist.”

“But we never see him,” I countered.  “And even the angels and devils I’ve talked to haven’t ever spoken with him directly.”

It was true.  Ever since I’d started working here, since I had realized who the real customers of this coffee shop were, I’d begun asking around.  My inquiries were surreptitious at first, but as I grew more comfortable with the immortal agents of Heaven and Hell who filed through here every morning, grumpy and in search of their caffeine fix, I grew bolder.

The devil across from me held up a finger, as if I’d just made his point for him.  “Ah, but that’s just it, isn’t it?” he announced triumphantly, as if he’d scored a point.  “We know that He exists – but at the same time, we don’t know!  We’re doubtful!”

I narrowed my eyes at the man.  Was he just trying to be flippant with me?  He did look the type – if it weren’t for the black clothes that marked him as a fallen angel, he could have fit in at a fraternity house, dressed in a polo with a popped collar and hollering for shots.  His blonde hair was pushed back in a loose curl across his forehead that would generally take hours in front of a mirror.

“What’s your point?” I said shortly.

The devil crossed his arms and looked smug.  “Doubt,” he announced.

“Doubt?”

“Yeah, isn’t that what I just said?  See, I think that this God guy lives on doubt.  He exists, but He can’t demonstrate that He exists, or else He removes all the doubt.  And He must need us to be doubtful for some reason!”

I didn’t feel convinced.  “So God exists… but He is powered by doubt?” I reiterated.

“Yup.  And if He was to start messing around directly, throwing lightning bolts and such, well, that would remove all the doubt!”  The devil looked pleased as punch with this theory.

“Okay…” I paused, trying to decide where to go next.  I still didn’t feel convinced, but I didn’t see how this devil could help me any further.  He was a fairly low ranking devil, but he had been one of the few that seemed agreeable to talking with me.  I was stuck with the customers who seemed friendly, low-powered as they might be.

We sat there in silence for a couple more minutes – I was trying to digest this theory, and the devil was gloating, apparently believing he’d landed another convert.

“So, what does this mean for us?” I finally asked.

“It means we can do whatever we want!” the devil exclaimed.  I almost expected him to add a ‘bro’ onto the end of that sentence.  “See, God can’t jump in and stop us, or else it would prove that He exists – and He can’t do that!”

“But what if He intervenes indirectly?” I countered.  “Like, God doesn’t appear and throw lightning bolts, but there happens to be a thunderstorm in that same place that struck just then.”

The devil across the table frowned.  “Nah, that wouldn’t work, would it?” he mused, looking a little rattled.

“Remember the general who got shot by a cannon after mocking the enemy’s ability to hit anything?” I countered.

The devil looked a little ill.  He lifted up his coffee, but slopped a little as it rose up to his mouth.  “Uh, maybe my theory needs a little detailing,” he stammered, as he rose up quickly from his seat, brushing drops of hot liquid off his black clothes.  “Maybe I’ll let you know once I’ve worked it all out.”

I watched the devil scurry away, and sighed.  Another servant of God who didn’t even know if his boss existed.  Sometimes, I despaired that I’d get anywhere on this.

The bell above the door jangled, jolting me out of my reverie.  Well, at least I could serve coffee.  I hopped up and hurried back behind the counter, putting on a smile as the newest angels entered.

The waitress glanced over at the bearded man in the corner.  He had been sitting here for several hours, now, and she was starting to feel a little concerned.

This wasn’t the first time that a senior citizen had wandered into the coffee shop and refused to leave.  The waitress could still remember that incident a couple of months ago, when a man with Alzheimer’s insisted that his daughter “would be along to pick me up any minute.”

That hadn’t been so bad – until the man stayed for another four hours, staring blankly out the window and shedding all over the floor.

So, once she had a few free minutes between waves of customers, the waitress sidled over towards where the bearded man sat, his cup of coffee in front of him long since gone cold.

“Sir?” the woman said as she stepped up to the table, her tone not impolite.  “Sir, is everything okay over here?  You’ve been nursing that cup of coffee for a while.”

The man glanced up at her as she spoke.  His eyes were bright and focused, she observed with a hint of hope.  Maybe he would turn out to just be some philosopher, reflecting on some problem for a local college, or some harmless story like that.

“Oh, things are quite fine, Virginia,” he replied, his tone gentle.  “I’m just reflecting back on my past, you know?  Trying to think of, if I could do it all over, what changes I might make.  What I might do differently.”

The waitress was startled for a moment.  How did this man know her name?  But then she remembered that she was at work, in uniform – including a name tag – and relaxed.  A glance towards the front of the shop showed no angry and impatient line of customers, so she slid down into the seat opposite the elderly man.  Her back fit smoothly into the two indentations carved into the back of the chair.  It felt good to take the weight off of her feet, even if just for a minute or two.

“Well, I certainly can think of a few things I’d change!” she commented, rolling her eyes.  “But hey, you made it to this age without killing yourself or losing any limbs, so you must have done something right?”

The man just smiled kindly at her, his eyes twinkling in amid the mass of white hair.  He had similar gray running all down his back, and his hands looked wrinkled but still able to move and grasp.  He looked oddly like one of Virginia’s grandparents, in that distant sort of way that all older people look the same.  Something about him radiated trustworthiness, insisted that he couldn’t cause any real harm.  Despite her natural cynicism, Virginia felt oddly at ease.

“I suppose that I’ve done a lot right – but in broader terms, wouldn’t you say that the world is a bit off track?” he asked, spreading out his hands as if to encompass the whole globe in a single shrug.  “Maybe, if the dinosaurs hadn’t been wiped out, they wouldn’t have had such war and bloodshed.”

Virginia couldn’t hold back a laugh at that.  “Really?  Dinosaurs?  The big lizards with the huge teeth?” she replied, still chuckling.  “You think that they’d ever learn to get along?”

“Intelligent plants, perhaps?  I do like the photosynthesis.  They wouldn’t go to war with each other.”

“What, like the whole world would get six months’ vacation every winter?” Virginia asked, almost liking the idea.  “But wouldn’t they all start fighting over who has to go live in cloudy places like Seattle?”

The man laughed at that – a rolling, deep belly laugh that was naturally infectious.  Virginia laughed along with him, imagining the absurdity of plants that could actually think.  Impossible!

“So, you like how things turn out,” the man finally concluded, as his laughter subsided.  “You think that everything went as well as it could, in the end?”

“I mean, nothing’s perfect, but that doesn’t mean that any big changes would help,” Virginia replied after a minute of thinking.  “You know what I mean?”

The man didn’t reply, but lifted his cup of cold coffee to his lips, gazing over the brim as if waiting for the waitress to continue.

“I mean, nothing ever works out like it should, does it?” the woman continued, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, as if speaking on a stage.  “Like, we plan for it all to go perfectly, but no amount of planning accounts for everything that ends up going wrong.  There’s always some moment where we have to sort of scramble to keep things together, but it all works out in the end.  Doesn’t it?”

The man smiled at her, his eyes twinkling again, and Virginia felt as though she’d just managed to ace a speech.  Warmth bloomed inside of her, and she couldn’t help but smile back.  “It’s good to hear someone talk like that, with such an optimistic view,” the man told her, still beaming.

And with that, he pushed back his chair, standing and stretching his limbs out to the sides.  “I think that I’m about done here, then,” he said, as Virginia rose up across from him.

The waitress also started to stand, but she felt herself catch for a minute against the back of the chair, and had to twist around to get free.  “Although if there is one thing,” she started.

“What would that be?”

“Well, these wings,” Virginia said, gesturing at the offending appendages hanging off her back.  “I mean, the scientists say that they help with balance or something, but they’re always getting in the way, and they can’t even keep us aloft more than a few seconds.  It would be great if they weren’t in the way so much.”

“No wings,” the man said, nodding sagely.  “A good suggestion.  I thought they’d be perfect, but it’s like you say – things never quite work out perfect.”

“And while you’re at it,” Virginia kept going, suddenly feeling on a roll, “maybe you could get rid of this bobby glowing thing up above our heads.  Makes it really tough to fall asleep at night.”

“No halos,” the man repeated, as if he was making a mental checklist in his head.  “Got it.  Anything else?”

Virginia shrugged, the wings making the gesture quite elaborate as she headed back up to the front of the coffee shop.  “I think that’s about it,” she said.  “So, do you need me to call someone to come pick you up, give you a ride home?”

Silence was her only answer.  The waitress glanced up, and was startled to see that the man was gone.  He must have ducked out the door while she was busy getting through the thin passage back behind the counter, she reasoned.  Once again, her wings had gotten in the way, slowing her down.

About forty minutes later, after the next rush of customers was subsiding, she glanced down at herself, and noticed that her name tag was missing.  She didn’t find it until she went back home that evening.

When I finally reached the front of the long line, I stepped up to the absurdly tall podium, tilting my head back to gaze up at the shadowy figure standing behind it and staring down at me.

The creature leaned forward, its head sliding down on a long neck to stare down at me.  I felt like a guilty schoolboy, pinned in place by a forbidding mistress.

Most schoolmarms, however, don’t have eyes filled with flames, giant venom-dripping spikes sticking out in a ruff around their heads, or scaly grasping fingers that end in terrifyingly long and sticky claws…

“AND WHAT HEINOUS CRIME HAVE YOU-“

The monstrous figure paused, turned its head, and let out several hacking coughs.  “Sorry about that, feather in my throat,” it went on in a much more normal tone of voice.  “Anyway, what did you do to end up here?”

I glanced around.  I’d been vaguely hoping that this was just a test, that I wasn’t actually in Hell, but my hopes were rapidly fading.  “Um, I guess I stole a bunch of money,” I fessed up.  It didn’t feel like nearly as big of a deal as it had when I was still alive, but I supposed that it had stuck me here.

The figure nodded.  “Oh, sure.  Times are tough, need to feed the family, all of that, yes?”

“Well, no.  I was a lawyer and I embezzled a few million.”

“For charities?”

“To buy a bigger boat than my boss.”

The figure shook its nightmare-inducing head, making a tutting noise.  “Shameful.”  Its face brightened somewhat, if that can happen with a mouthful of razor sharp fangs.  “I do, however, know just who to pair you with!”

Pair me with?  Before I could ask, however, the figure raised its scaly fingers and somehow managed to snap them without taking off any digits.

There was a clink at my feet.  A long iron chain had appeared, clamped onto my ankle and trailing off into the darkness.

I glanced up at the devil.  “Go on, follow it,” the creature encouraged me.

Well, what could I do?  I set off after the chain, trying to gather up the length in my arms as I followed it back towards its source.

The other end, I discovered several caverns later, turned out to be attached to a large, blue-collar angry worker by the name of Charlie.  He was probably six inches and fifty pounds heavier than me, and he had the beefy arms and body of a dock worker.

“Er, hi,” I greeted him, once it was clear that our legs were attached by chain.  “I’m David, and I guess we’re linked together or something.”

The man nodded, not looking especially enthusiastic about this.  “Hi,” he returned.  “So what are you in for?”

“Embezzlement.  You?”

The man shrugged.  “A guy ripped me off, so I killed him,” he confessed without much concern.  “Ran him off the road.  Unfortunately, I didn’t really think about what would happen to me after, so I went down with him.  Woke up here.”

I nodded, wondering if I should be showing some sort of commiseration.  “Small world, actually,” I said, more to fill the silence than any other reason.  “I actually died from some asshole running into me with his car.  We tumbled right off the edge.”

“Really?  The guy I killed, he was an embezzler!” Charlie said, looking a little interested.  “Some nose in the air lawyer, totally ripped off my company so he could buy himself a boat or some shit.”

It took another minute for realization to dawn, but it clicked for both of us.  “You!”  I gasped out in shock and anger, glaring at the man.

“You!” he returned, and I saw his big, meaty hands starting to tighten into fists.

For the next indeterminate period of time, there was a lot of fighting.

It turns out that in Hell, there are a lot of weapons sitting around!  And some of them really don’t seem to fit in.  I mean, I can understand why a devil would need a pitchfork (presumably for prodding at sinners, I feel), but I’m still not certain who decided that it was a good idea to leave a fully loaded stack of assault rifles over behind a stalagmite.

However, as the battle against Charlie waged on, it finally started to sink in to me that I wasn’t doing any actual damage.  Sure, we were batting each other around a lot, and it was great to see his body shudder from getting hit with bullets, but there was no wounding, no killing going on.  And as soon as I stopped shooting, Charlie popped right back up to come lunging at me with a battleaxe he’d found somewhere.

So once I ran out of bullets, I let the gun drop from my hands, and slipped down to take a seat on the cavern floor.  Charlie, still red-faced and puffing, took a few more swings at me with the axe, but he eventually gave up on the futile effort.  He dropped the weapon to the ground with a clatter and sagged down beside me.

“Well, I feel a bit better,” he commented at length, as we gazed out.  There wasn’t much of a view, but it was at least better than running around grabbing weapons.

“Yeah, me too.”  I looked at the man, noting that he did look much calmer.  “Good shot with that axe, though.  You ever play any ball?”

“Minor league, yeah,” he responded, looking surprised that I’d caught the shape of his stance.  “Busted my knee up, though, so I couldn’t go pro.  I wasn’t that good anyway, to tell the truth.”

“Looked like you kept the form, at least,” I offered.  I received a nod of thanks for the compliment.

For a few more minutes, we sat there.  “So, now what?” Charlie finally asked.  “Aren’t we supposed to be getting tortured, or something?”

I looked around.  The other man was right – there was definitely a noticeable absence of grinning demons with pitchforks, or pools of boiling lava filled with screaming souls.  “Maybe it will start at some point,” I guessed.  “I mean, I feel pretty bad about what I did, that’s for certain.”

“Yeah, me too,” Charlie agreed, although he didn’t meet my eye.

I thought about just lapsing back into silence, but there was still a chain around our legs, connecting us, and I really did feel bad.  “Hey, man, look,” I said, getting the other fellow’s attention.  “I really am sorry about the whole embezzlement thing.  I didn’t ever stop to think about who I’d be hurting.”

For a second, Charlie glared angrily at me, but he couldn’t keep it up, and the angry expression dropped.  “Aw, hell,” he finally said.  “I’m sorry, too.  I was just so angry that I decided I had to kill the sunovabitch – no offense,” he added.

“None taken.”

“But now, I mean, I could probably have gotten the money back, and I still had a good business and all that.  It wasn’t like you really took anything from me I couldn’t get back.”  Charlie grimaced, but then his face cleared.  “And I’m sorry too.”

I held out my smaller, office worker hand, and Charlie shook it with his big meaty mitt.

Feeling much better about ourselves, we sat on the ground of the cavern a bit longer.  But then, as I glanced up and stretched, I noticed something I’d missed before.

“Hey Charlie, look over there!”

“What’s that?”

I shrugged.  “It looks like a door,” I said, climbing up to my feet to go approach it.  But after a few steps, I noticed a jerk at my leg.  I glanced down, and saw that the chain attaching our legs had grown noticeably shorter.  “Dude, come on.  Let’s go see it.”

Charlie looked less than thrilled at having to get up, but he climbed to his feet and we ambled over.  The door looked like a typical wooden interior door, but set into the wall of the cavern.  I reached out for the handle, but paused, glancing at the man I’d been forcibly assigned.

“We could always just stay here,” I said, checking with him.

Charlie shook his head.  When he glanced back at me, I was emboldened to see that there was no more anger in those eyes, just determination.  “Nah, let’s see what’s next.”

So I opened the door, and we stepped through.