Calcifer scowled, hunching over his cup of dark roast coffee (grounds in the cup) as he glared at the intruder. This was his coffee shop! He had staked his claim, and some, some angelhad no right mucking up the place!

Author’s note: Part I can be found here.

With a gout of flame, the devil clawed his way through the portal between worlds, bursting out of the pasta sauce shelves in aisle three.  His arrival didn’t cause much damage besides the wholesale destruction of three dozen jars of marinara, but an elderly lady comparing brands of linguini gave him an obscene gesture for splattering her dress with red sauce.

The devil straightened up to his full height, and then cursed violently as his head bumped into one of the fluorescent lamps with the tinkling of broken glass.  He shrank his size by two feet so he would fit inside the confines of this puny world.  He turned to the elderly woman.  “Where is Harold Ancillar!?” he bellowed.

The old woman glared at him.  “You ruined my dress, you prick!” she snorted.  “Get outta here before I take my cane to ya!”  She waved the instrument vaguely in his direction for emphasis.

Confused, the devil backed up several steps, exiting out of the aisle.  He spotted another weak little human, this one with shorter hair and a green apron on over his clothes.  “Where is Ancillar!?” he repeated, flexing the six-inch claws at the ends of his fingers menacingly.

The young man looked up at the towering red-skinned monstrosity with a bored look.  “Aisle six,” he said, and returned his attention back to mopping the floor.

The devil was perplexed.  He had seen fear before, had watched several training videos, but he didn’t seem to be generating the proper responses.  “Aisle six?” he repeated, his tone slipping slightly, returning back down to normal speaking levels.

The man in the green apron held up one arm, pointing at a large sign with a six above one of the aisles, not looking up.  “Yeah.  Anchovies, aisle six.  On the left.”  He shuffled past the devil, pushing his wheeled bucket of water.  “Thank you for shopping at Rainbow,” he added sulkily as he passed.

The man hadn’t pronounced Harold Ancillar’s name correctly, but the devil still wandered into aisle six, just to be sure.  He found nothing on the left side of the shelf except several small jars of disagreeable fish, so he pressed on, eventually finding himself standing in front of a large glass case filled with cut pieces of meat.

Looking down at the display, the devil felt slightly more at home.  He was used to raw meat; many of the training videos had featured humans being chopped into similar pieces.  Although those pieces had featured far more blood and much fewer price signs.  He looked up from the case and found himself being angrily watched by a fat man holding a short knife.  “What cut can I get you?” the man asked.

The devil stared back.  Did he want to be cut?  In the training videos, the humans had always run away from the knives, so he suspected that the answer was no.  “Nay, puny mortal,” he replied politely.

The fat man gestured to one side with the blade of the knife.  “Get out of the cue, then, would you?  You’re holding up the line.”  The devil looked behind him to find several other grocery store patrons impatiently waiting for him to move.  Several of them seemed to be preoccupied by small pieces of black plastic they were holding.  The devil moved to one side, and the humans shuffled up to the counter past him without sparing a glance.

The butcher watched the devil amble off, still holding his knife at his side.  “Emo freaks,” he muttered.  “Ought to get a job, contribute to society.”

The devil was feeling more and more lost.  He wandered past several conveyor belts, where old women yelled at him in a foreign tongue.  He tried yelling out for Harold Ancillar at them, but they merely threw back more words he couldn’t comprehend.  He strongly suspected that they were insults.

 Eventually, the devil found himself trapped, surrounded by flimsy plastic and metal carts that had been abandoned by their former users.  The entire experience was bewildering.  He had done very well in the training class, scoring top marks, and had been honored by being selected to collect a damned soul.  He had been given the name, and the overworked-looking demon manning the controls of the portal generator had assured him that he would materialize closely nearby.  It had all seemed so simple.  Show up, roar a few times, watch the crowd run in fear, and grab the poor chosen mortal and return through the portal.  He couldn’t figure out where he had gone wrong.

Shoving the carts out of his way, the devil stepped through a pair of magically moving doors and found himself squinting in the bright light he recognized as outdoors.  Throwing up one clawed hand to block out the light, he staggered forward, blind and unseeing.  He suddenly felt the ground dip under his feet, he heard an angry yell and a loud screech, and then everything went black.

The fallen angel sat up and opened his eyes.  He was back in Hell, standing on the runic focus of the portal generator.  His instructor, off to one side, made a mark on his clipboard.  “Closely nearby?” the angel sputtered.  “You call that close?  He wasn’t anywhere nearby!”  He rubbed his aching head.  “What happened, anyway?”

“You stepped into the street,” his instructor replied.  “You were hit by a car.”  He sighed and set down the clipboard.  “Sadly, we’re losing a lot of operatives that way.”

The portal operator shrugged.  “It’s not like the old days, anymore,” he said sympathetically.  “We don’t get no respect.  They just brush us off, don’t run away like they used to.”

As the failed recruit sadly shuffled off to study for his next attempt, the instructor glanced sideways at the portal operator.  “Thank goodness for Contracts,” he said conspiratorially.  “They’re the only division still in the positives for soul collection.  Thankfully, they’re bringing in enough to cover for the rest of us.”

“Thank goodness for greed and banking crises,” the portal operator said.  He sighed and began resetting the portal generator for the next run.  Just another day in Hell, he thought resignedly to himself.

Part I can be found here!

Nervous twitches be damned.  Lucern reached up and grabbed his halo off his head, twisting it around in his hands.

The other angel winced.  “I’m really sorry about this,” he said apologetically.  “It wasn’t my idea.  But let’s be honest, Lucern, you’re supposed to be keeping an eye on celestial bodies, and that meteor came right out of your section.  That’s a big oopsie to make.”

“Okay.  So what happens next?” Lucern asked.  The sinking feeling had settled into a general dread in the pit of his stomach, and he now just wanted to be done with the whole thing.  He spared a moment for the airy new apartment he would never see.  He’d probably be demoted all the way down to cherub, spend the next ten thousand years directing traffic to make sure there weren’t any malakim collisions.  He’d have to wear one of the glowing vests.  He shuddered.  Those ugly vests clashed with everything.

The other hashmallim dug through his files and folders until he found a large, bulging file, which he passed over to Lucern.  The folder was a bright red color, which didn’t make Lucern feel any calmer.  After he had passed over the file, Melis waited expectantly for Lucern to open it.  Lucern hefted the file consideringly.  “Have you read it?” he asked, and received a negatory shake in response.  Lucern set the file down on his lap and flipped it open.

For a moment, he couldn’t comprehend what he was reading.  The other angel looked strained, torn between respecting Lucern’s privacy and desperately wanting to know what the punishment was.  Lucern flipped the file around so the other hashmallim could see.  “Does this make any sense to you?” he asked.  “I’m being given a plane to run?”

Melis frowned, grabbed a couple of papers to look at closely.  “Man, the Almighty doesn’t mess around with punishments,” he commented.  “You’re being put in charge of all the other screw-ups, I guess.  Ba’al’s coming with you, see, here’s the transfer paperwork.  And they’re opening up a new level below the celestial plane for you.  It looks like you’ll be pretty autonomous, though.”

Lucern snorted.  “Autonomous?  Look at all this prophecy he’s tacked on!”  He held up a thick sheaf of densely written boilerplate.  Apparently I’m going to eventually get so fed up on Heaven that I’ll declare war, and lead all my misfits in a failed coup.  Look at this!”  He slid the papers across the desk for the other angel to study.  Melis’s frown deepened as he read.  “What sort of civilization is he planning to impose these crazy rules on, anyway?” Lucern questioned.  “Plants?” he asked with a slight hint of hope.

The other hashmallim shook his head.  “Mammals, this time.”

“Mammals?  Are you serious?  Those little rodents that are running around?”

Melis rummaged around through the files once again.  “Obviously, there’s a bit of evolution left to do.  Here’s the final artist’s conception.”  He slid the sheet across to Lucern, who snorted.  “I know, not much better.  They don’t even have wings.”

Lucern was still frowning as he leafed through the papers, but he was beginning to warm to his role.  He would have to move to the new plane, of course, but he would be taking quite a few of the other angels with him.  And to be honest, he could use a change of scenery.  Lucern knew that he wasn’t very good at managing details, but corrupting?  He had always been good at striking deals with the other angels for favors.  How hard could it be to do the same with some small hairy bipeds?

“There is one more detail,” Melis added.  Lucern glanced up at him.  Melis had one more sheet of paper in his hands.  “I’m afraid the high council isn’t thrilled with your name.”

“What’s wrong with Lucern?” he asked defensively.  Lucern didn’t know the origins of his name, of course, but he thought it had something to do with light, and it sounded very pleasant.

The other angel shrugged.  “It didn’t score well with the testing groups,” he said.  “It doesn’t sound, well, evil enough.”  He held up a hand to fend off Lucern’s angry retort.  “Look, the new name isn’t that different.  You’ll like it, I’m sure,” he added, pleading.  He slid the last sheet of paper across to Lucern.  “Just sign this, and the new name will be assigned.  You’ll be able to move forward, put this whole meteor debacle behind you.”

Lucern looked down at the new name, tested it out in his mouth a few times.  It actually wasn’t too bad.  It sounded fairly close, even.  And he really didn’t have any other choice; angels couldn’t just bow out and retire.  He picked up a pen and signed his name.

Melis hastily collected the sheet of paper back.  “Wonderful, I’m glad this is all behind us,” he said, obviously relieved to have this ordeal over.  “Just head down to the portals and they’ll have you sent down to the new plane that’s being opened.  Special orders are out for it already, so you shouldn’t have problems with customs.”  Privately, Lucern doubted that.  Angels didn’t handle change well.

As he stood, Lucern looked around the ugly office once more, suddenly overcome by wistfulness.  “Is there a new name for this plane?” he asked.

“Hell.  Ugly name, if I do say so myself, but at least it’s easy to remember.”

Lucern shrugged.  He was already considering his next plans.  Normally, he had a very difficult time with new things, but he was finding this new assignment surprisingly easy to accept.  Building a new plane from the ground up took lots of time and effort, but given the state of the rodents running around the celestial plane at the moment, he would have pelnty of time to prepare.  As he left, he spoke his new name aloud, trying to adjust.  “Lucifer.  Lucifer.”  It didn’t sound quite the same, but he would adjust.  Eventually.

Lucern, Angelic Hashmallim Third Class, was not having a good day.  Although angels technically cannot curse, he was doing his best to mutter the filthiest words he could think of under his breath as he rushed up the endlessly winding stairway.

“Poop!  Muck!  Decay!  Filth!” he ranted under his breath.  And he had only just been promoted up to Hashmallim, from Seraphim, and that had taken him nearly 750,000 years!  The new title had come with a nifty new staff, which he had already managed to misplace, and although he hadn’t seen his new living quarters, he had been assured by a cherubim that they were very nice.  Airy, he had been told.  Unfortunately, airy was about all that he could expect in Heaven, but it was much better than dwelling down on the Celestial plane with all those nasty lizards everywhere.  Although not any more.  And hence his problem.

Panting and out of breath, he finally arrived at the landing with the proper door, and pushed his way inside heavily.  The receptionist, a short female cherubim who barely managed to see over her desk, glared at him through her oval glasses.  “You’re late,” she said acidly.

“Yeah, well, I’m a little distracted at the moment,” Lucern panted.  “Damage control, and all that.”  He looked at her pleadingly.  “I can probably turn this around, right?” he asked hopefully.  “Look, they can’t have been in the master plan for the long term.  A change has really been long overdue.  Maybe this time we can give the plants the upper hand?”

The cherubim shrugged at him.  “Frankly, I never liked the things.  All scaly, and the second you look away they’re trying to eat your fingers.  But I’m pretty sure the Divine Plan didn’t involve them all being wiped out by a freak rock from space.”  She pressed a button below her desk, and a minute later, a garbled, incomprehensible electronic voice babbled back at her through a small speaker.  She nodded to Lucern.  “You can head in now.”

Lucern eyed the double doors behind her with some trepidation.  “Do I have to?”  His feet betrayed him, however, and he moved forward.  The receptionist watched passively.

Stepping through the door, Lucern found himself standing in a large study, decorated in a fashion that would become known as Baroque in approximately sixty-five million years, give or take a few thousand.  A large desk occupied most of the room, with a tall and imposing angel, Melis, sitting behind it.  The effect was spoiled only slightly by the large holes cut in the sides of his clawed armchair to accommodate his wings, which were softly shedding piles of dandruff on the richly carpeted floor.  His halo hung slightly askew from the back of the chair.  He did not look up as Lucern entered.

After several minutes of awkwardly standing, Lucern coughed slightly.  Since angels don’t get sick, they have little experience with coughing, and so Lucern’s attempt sounded more like “Harroomph.”  Still, it made Melis look up from the paperwork on which he was scribbling.

“Oh,” he said.  “Lucern.  Yes, we have been needing to talk to you.  It’s about this whole meteor thing,” he added, and Lucern felt his heart sink.  His hands twitched, and he resisted the nervous urge to adjust his halo.

The other angel glanced down at his paperwork, shuffled a few folders around on his massive desk. “I’m afraid that the upper councils really weren’t expecting a disruption of this magnitude,” he explained.  “I mean, they had some contingencies for minor volcanic eruptions, floods, that whole sort of thing, but the entire mass extinction really threw them for a loop.  They’re going to have to start over, probably take at least twenty million years before we get back to this level of advancement again.”

“But this time we get to not muck things up as much,” Lucern protested, searching desperately for a silver lining.  “I mean, look at the Tyrannosaurus.  Ba’al was supposed to make that guy kingly, and did you see what happened to those arms?  Really, starting over is a good thing.”

Melis gave Lucern a severe glare from his side of the desk, and Lucern reluctantly fell silent.  Despite his new promotion, Lucern still felt very subservient to the hashmallim currently chastising him.  He was technically still two classes below the other angel, but he instinctively reacted as though he was an entire level down.

“The high councils had plans to remedy that,” Melis commented defensively.  “And Ba’al is also going to be talked to sternly.  But the council needs someone to point the finger at.  The Almighty himself has taken notice that all of his pretty lizards aren’t roaming around any more, snacking on plants and each other, and we’re going to need someone to step up and say that they were responsible.”

The sinking feeling in Lucern’s stomach was threatening to rip him through the floor and all the way down to Earth.  Angels tend to have limited foresight, preferring instead to follow a preordained plan, but even he could see where this was going.  “You want me to be the scapegoat for all this,” he said hoarsely.

Part II is coming up next!

I fumed silently at the back of the unmoving line, shooting daggers from my eyes at the back of the tall bearded man currently arguing with the barista.  Clad against the angry stares of the other patron in his tattered sport jacket, knit cap, beard, and black plastic glasses, he continued to argue over whether Guatemala was considered “fair trade organic.”

Most of the other people in line had consigned themselves to being late to work, men in suits slumped over their briefcases as they waited for the daily dose of caffeine to get their joints moving again.  I, on the other hand, had a meeting with my thesis adviser in a mere twenty minutes, and was cursing every unkempt hair in the hipster’s beard.  Unfortunately, my curses seemed to be having no effect.  “I’d sell my soul for this line to hurry up,” I muttered in frustration.

“Would you now?  That’s quite an interesting offer,” spoke up a cultured voice behind me.

Confused, I turned around to find myself gazing down at a short but sharply dressed man.  My first impression was that a shark had mated with a Republican, and the resulting offspring had managed to find a black silk suit with a red tie.  The man looked as though he was already working out how to swindle me out of my social security.  “Excuse me?” I said stupidly.

“Trading your soul for a faster line,” he repeated back to me, smiling innocuously.  “I’ll need to jot it down for your signature, of course, but it sounds fairly binding to me.”  He withdrew a small pad of paper from an inside jacket pocket and began scrawling something.

“I’m sorry,” I broke in.  “Who are you?”

This time, the man’s grin seemed ever so slightly tinged with annoyance.  “I’m a devil, of course,” he said snidely.  He pushed back his black hair, and I saw two small, almost dainty horns emerging from his forehead.

I blinked a few times, but the horns didn’t revert back into hair.  “I didn’t realize the devil actually existed,” I said.

“Devils,” the man corrected.  “I mean, the Big Guy himself wouldn’t show up for a soul like you, no offense intended.”  I felt slightly offended despite this, but waited for him to continue.  “Name’s Mephisto, and I’m an upper executive in Hell’s legion.”  He paused in his scrawling and patted his pockets.  “I’m sure I have a card somewhere.  I always lose the damn things,” he complained.

I put up my hand reassuringly.  “I’ll believe you,” I soothed.  “But come on, I’m not going to give away my soul just for this one coffee line to go away.”  The hipster ahead of us had finally finished placing his insanely complicated drink order (I caught “half-caf, no foam, two soy creamers and I’ll know if it’s milk”) and the line had begun inching forward.  “See?  We’re moving already.”

Mephisto shook his head at me.  “I’m offering you an opportunity, here,” he insisted.  “It’s not what you get for the soul that matters.  I mean, come on.  Your soul’s barely worth that guy’s order.  I’m not exactly going to hand you the keys to my Corvette.”

“Figures that a devil drives a Vette,” I said sourly.  “Red, of course.”  But I had to admit that I was slightly intrigued.  “Okay, why should I hand over my immortal soul, then?”

Mephisto gestured around at the other people inside the coffee shop.  “Look, let’s be honest here, alright?  Every single person here is ending up in Hell.”  He swung his finger around as he spoke.  “Mixed fabrics.  Masturbated once to gay porn – that’s right, it only takes once.  Premarital sex.  That guy over there ate eel, that’s a no-no.”  He shrugged.  “Now, when they all get down to the fiery gates, they’re starting off at the entry level.  Basic torture, fire and brimstone, all that stuff you know and love.”  He turned the finger back to me.  “But you sell me your soul now, and assuming you don’t get run over today, you’ll have a chance to pick up some scores before you even set foot in the lobby.  You’ll be looking at a middle management position right away, easy.”  He winked salaciously.  “A few short eons and you might even have a shot at an executive gig!”

We had reached the front of the line, and I distractedly ordered my usual mocha.  Mephisto smirked at me, muttered “gay” audibly under his breath, and asked for a large black dark roast with the grounds dumped into the cup.  The perky barista’s eyes seemed to glaze over as he ordered, but she nodded and scurried off to prepare our drinks, pausing only to snatch the five dollar bill from my hand.

“So what sort of things do I need to do for these points?” I asked as we waited at the pick-up window.  “I’m not going to have to kill little children, am I?”

This provoked a snort from the demon as he held in his laughter.  “Oh, you humans are so dramatic!” he groaned.  “Nah, nothing so outright.  Just keep on being your usual self.  You all spread corruption around yourselves normally, so as long as you don’t make any drastic leaps to Jesus or anything stupid like that, you’ll be fine.  Think of it like a bank loan, where you’re giving us your soul up front, for us to invest, instead of forcing us to wait until the payment’s due.  When you’re dead,” he clarified.

I was torn.  On one hand, twelve years of Catholic school was telling me to start reciting the Lord’s prayer and building crosses out of any nearby pieces of wood.  On the other hand, this deal actually sounded fairly enticing.  I had long since harbored doubts about whether I was actually a good person, and this seemed to confirm my suspicions.  “How long do I have to think this over?” I asked, stalling for time.

Our drinks arrived at the window, and Mephisto took a long drag from his steaming cup.  I could smell the burnt grounds in his cup.  “Eh, I’ll give you till the end of the week,” he said generously.  “I’m here every morning this week, right around this time.  Just wave me over when you’re ready to sign the paperwork.”

I nodded towards his cup.  “Did you pay for that?”

Mephisto lowered his cup long enough to stare at me incredulously.  “I’m a god-damned devil,” he said.  “You think I have to pay for overpriced, addicting beverages?”  Still shaking his head, he snapped his fingers and vanished in a cloud of vile-smelling smoke.

I glanced around as the puff cleared, but no one else seemed to have noticed.  I lifted my own coffee mug to my mouth, but could smell the sulfur even before the liquid met my lips.  I sighed and tossed the full mug in the garbage.  I was already starting to consider ideas to sell Mephisto for increasing corruption; I wondered briefly if the Devil had ever considered a Ponzi scheme.  I would have to run to make it to my adviser’s meeting, but I felt less worried than before.  What’s the worst he would do, tell me to go to hell?