A story that won me a contest and that I published in the college anthology! So yeah it's been published people....no stealing! Read on!!
Prologue:
Love conquers all….how many times had he spat at that old proverb? Why would he, Satan, the greatest evil do-er of all time succumb to an emotion as sappy as love? Well, the point was that he had…as much as he hated to admit it. How, you ask? Well here’s the story….
Satan had been off on one of his vacations, that is, he had been out into the world planning the downfall of one of the millions of people who believed in God. It was one of his favourite pastimes. And voila, he’d spotted this beautiful human. She was perfect, beautiful and with eyes that could draw any man in. Satan especially delighted in the way so many accidents occurred as she passed by. She was the perfect destructive force; he at once made up his mind to meet her.
He’d followed her everywhere for a few days, before he finally bumped into her at the café. Something made him want to try his ‘nice guy’ approach and win her over. He wanted to be all that she saw, which was weird in itself. He smiled at her and tried the much used and very corny flirt line. “Hey beautiful…want to get some dinner tonight?”
She smiled at him, a genuine smile. “Why not? I‘m Camilla…”
Those four words had him on his knees. Four weeks and many accidents later, he was begging her to marry him. Innocently she agreed. He hadn’t told her who he was yet, he didn’t want to lose her. And let’s face it; telling anyone that one is the Lord of Hell would turn them off. So he married her, in a registrar’s office with some lie about how he didn’t want a big marriage. She was extremely religious but she still agreed and she didn’t once question him about why he didn’t go to church.
Time raced by like she was trying to win a race. Satan forgot about his kingdom, forgot about the number of horrible souls awaiting his torturous judgement and about what he was on earth to do.
In Heaven, God smiled, he couldn’t help but be amused, even though this situation caused a lot of glitches to appear in the fabric of the world…too many souls waiting in line.
Then suddenly, something went horribly wrong. Camilla had been pregnant and the birth was difficult. Being the mother of Satan’s child was not exactly a walk in the park. Camilla died. The Heaven’s judged her to be innocent…she hadn’t known she was consorting with the devil.
Satan begged and pleaded to be allowed to have her with him, emotions he’d scoffed at overwhelmed him. But God was firm in his decision and he was supported by all the angels as well as the demons. An innocent could not be condemned to Hell on the whims of its ruler.
To cut a long story short. Satan was left holding the baby…literally. It made headlines in the Tri-World Times. He’d dropped the paper when he’d seen it.
SATAN A FATHER?
Satan seems to be going through a ‘mid-life’ crisis. He’s gone and gotten one of God’s most devout followers pregnant! Camilla Withers was found dead in her apartment at 3.00 pm on Saturday after giving birth to Satan’s offspring.
The council and God have decided that she was an innocent victim of his wiles and have allowed her into Heaven. This leaves Satan holding the baby. On being asked how exactly this happened, we were told that Satan fell in love….
He stopped reading there….his reputation was ruined! He threw the paper to the ground and looked back at the bundle in the crib. A FATHER…. How did he get himself into these messes?
Chapter 1: Satan and the Diapers
The little bundle in his hands gurgled up at him. Satan scrunched up his face; his long sojourn on earth had taught him nothing about gurgling babies. He’d never expected Camilla to die and so had never really read up on babies or caring for them. As far as he was concerned, the closest he’d come to a baby was Camilla's sister’s child who’d tried to bite him. Baby souls never came down to Hell anyway….they died before he could play with them. He broke out of his reverie as the little thing gurgled at him.
And it was a thing. In her true form, his daughter has two tiny horns and a little tail. The tail usually swished around, the pointed end normally hurting someone…usually that someone was him. And that scared Satan…there was never anyone who’d thought to hurt him except God…and his scuffles with God were routine…nothing to get upset or offended over. Plus it helped that he and God were omnipotent and could match each other’s size when necessary. But it did hurt his ego to have a tiny gurgling thing poking at him with her tail. No…it was always Satan who poked others with his tail…not the other way around.
Having found that she couldn’t get his attention, his daughter had decided to leave him a present. It took some time before Satan realised that the warm feeling trickling down his legs was not Hell Fire as he’d assumed, but liquid. Urine to be precise. Which also meant…
“She needs to be changed….” Satan turned the kid upside down. “No…she needs a diaper or whatever they call them.” He flicked his fingers and a packet of Huggies, the only brand he remembered, materialized in front of him. “Here goes…just have to follow the instructions.”
An hour and half later, Satan was seen to be holding up something that resembled a pillow stuck with pins. The pillow seemed to be bawling in the loudest most annoying decibel. And the phone seemed to be ringing off the hook, the inbox flooded with e-mails and the instant messenger beeping with messages. Satan sighed. Something had gone wrong.
“NORBERT!”
Several minutes passed…finally an old, stinky, yellowing skeleton tottered in, promptly falling over Satan’s trident. Heaving a sigh, the skeleton began to reassemble himself on account of having his bones scattered everywhere. He made a few mistakes while connecting his vertebrae, but was fine after that.
“Did you need something, Your Evilness?” he whisper-squeaked. (He usually whisper-squeaked, except when he saw rats, then he only squeaked at higher decibel levels.)
Satan turned around to regard him, annoyed. “Norbert in your days of sublime joy…” he turned to laugh hysterically before regaining his composure, “on earth, did you gain any knowledge of or insights on babies? Diapers especially?”
“Forgive me Your Maliciousness,” Norbert bowed low, his head fell off, resulting in a few minutes of groping, before he attached it…backwards, “the only babies I went near were horse’s kits…”
Satan pondered for a moment. Then his eyes fell on the long line of souls mournfully waiting outside Hell’s Gate. He grinned. “Norbert, please bring me the soul outside…the one with the sideburns like that singer-man from Earth…”
In the time it took Norbert to shuffle out, attach the disappearing body parts and shuffle back with the soul, Satan had decided on what he wanted to do. When the soul was brought in, Satan was at his desk, sitting up straight like he’d seen people do in job interviews.
“Please sit down, my dear soul…”
The soul did so and waited, trying not to scream with terror; Satan could be scary at times. He cleared his throat. “Um….please send me to Heaven!” he blurted in a desperate attempt to save himself. “I was a good man! I was even a good father! When my children were young I cared for them all the time…I only left them because I wanted more money, a big house and a new wife! I loved them while it lasted, I didn’t mean to kill my wife…”
Satan smiled. The interview was done. “So…” he began nonchalantly. “You have changed diapers before?” Seeing the soul nod, he smiled wider. “Well, you see, I cannot send you to Heaven…but I have a relatively easier job in store for you…”
Satan stood and steered the soul to where the little pin cushion sat. “Meet my daughter, Lucretia. Lucretia meet Mr. Nanny.” He looked at the bewildered soul. “I’ve been having a tiny bit of a problem with securing her diapers…” A horrible smell permeated the air. “Well…I think she has to be changed again anyway. Well, that’s your eternal punishment. Be my daughter’s nanny henceforth….and do a god job. You’ve got eternity to correct any mistakes you might make.”
The soul sniffed in despair, but ended up gagging on the stench. Satan took pity on him and provided him with the soul of a clothes peg to clamp on his nose. Watching the souls’ efficiency, Satan wondered why he had bothered at all. He had all the souls in the world down here…why had he believed he was expected to work?
He looked down at his finally quiet daughter and felt a surge of something he could not name…oh wait…he could…it was love again. Satan squished the emotion and firmly booted it into place. No he didn’t want anything to do with love again….it had messed up his life enough. And somehow he knew that the Old Bloke in Heaven had something to do with this.
Chapter 2: Misunderstandings
Seeing Mr. Nanny, day in and day out could be boring. No one knew that better than Lucretia. Her world consisted of Mr. Nanny, Drusilla her vampire tutor and Norbert. Drusilla was annoying, she’d filled Lucretia's little head up with big words and the laws of hell and such like, but she’d never taught her about what mattered. Sometimes she was allowed to go out and meet Edgar, the soul of a seventeen year old boy who’d grown up on the streets of America.
Edgar was the one who had taught her everything she needed to know about love, parents, attitudes and how people were supposed to behave. Edgar was also extremely good looking, at least good looking enough for an eight year old to crush on. She liked spending time with him…well it wasn’t like there was anyone else to spend time with.
Lu often wished her father would give her attention, like he was supposed to. Edgar’s tales of how his parents were before they died made her feel sad and lonely. Why wouldn’t her father look at her and be nice to her? She’d always heard how great and terrible he was, but by Edgar’s reasoning he should have been nice to her because she was his daughter.
Lu went up to his study and peeked in. She almost squealed with delight as she realised that her father was asleep and drooling on his desk. Normally Satan never went to sleep…and wait! His trident was unguarded! His trident never left his side! He even converted it to pocket-size when he went on his journeys of mass destruction. Lucretia had been eyeing this very trident for the last six years of her life (she was eight years old you see…)…and she was never one to let an opportunity go if it presented itself.
Slipping close to her father, she slid her fingers around the trident which was way bigger than her. Lifting it with much difficulty she snuck out of the office before half-running, half-jogging to Midlev. Midlev made up the middle levels of Hell. Finally she grinned…now where could she practice?”
She spotted a huge pillar opposite the landing where she stood. That would be awesome. If she practiced on that pillar there would be no way she could miss…that way her ego wouldn’t suffer either. She was filled with excitement, she wondered how to work it…maybe she should cause an explosion? The moment she’d thought it, the trident…well…it tingled and something shot out of it. The pillar blew to smithereens.
Lu threw back her head and laughed. She’d been born with the genes for mass destruction and it made her feel extremely happy. She turned away and decided to show it to Edgar…he’d be so impressed! She missed the rocks that slowly began to fall as Midlev crumbled without the support of the pillar holding it up. Fortunately there was another huge floor to stop the debris from crushing Lowlev.
She made her way to Lowlev, unaware of the chaos and uproar that had broken out in Midlev. Edgar was where he always was, trying to shoot the rabbit but failing to do so. You see his punishment was that he had to shoot the rabbit to be able to get free, but the rabbit disappeared at the last moment, causing him to lose his freedom. The hopeless task was supposed to make him suffer from boredom as also the knowledge that he would be at this ad infinitum. So he quite welcomed Lucretia’s visits.
She showed him her powers by blowing up some of the yurts that had been placed in and around Lowlev by her father…for decoration she presumed. She giggled in happiness and turned to look at Edgar who was smiling too. He turned to her and opened his mouth. It took quite a while for the words to come though; it was a known fact that men who were extremely good looking were also extremely dumb. Then he said,
“Goo…”
“Goo?” Lu wondered if the futility of his task had finally gotten to him.
“Can you make goo come out of that thing?” Edgar har-har’d in this horsy sort of way.
Lu almost made a face, but managed to stop herself in time. Even though she always had this niggling feeling that maybe she didn’t like Edgar as much as she thought she did, because to be quite frank he irritated her…she convinced herself that she liked him. This made her want to impress him with all that she could do.
She concentrated and thought about goo. Just goo…not any size in particular. Which is why she panicked when she saw waves of goo flooding Lowlev…and as usual panic led to things getting worse…
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“…..destroyed Midlev…set a few thousand souls free to wander between the three worlds and goo?” the last word was said in the most contemptuous tone she had ever heard. “Goo, Lucretia is something that we never use…it’s only the stuff that they show people in the cheesy American horror movies. No self respecting citizen of Hell would think of goo…”
She almost cowered as her father gave her a menacing glare. He shook his head and continued his rant. “Even Hell has a system. You’ve destroyed the houses of the Seven Sins, completely razed the houses of the Thirteen Dukes of Hell and somehow managed to flood Lowlev. Thanks to you two of our levels are missing and there are loads of souls at Heaven’s gates begging for mercy…no doubt God will be contacting me about this. How could you cause so much destruction?”
Lu couldn’t take it anymore. A mutinous look came over her face. “Well, whose daughter am I?”
Satan grit his teeth. “My child, we do cause destruction….but in other worlds. What is the point in destroying our own system…it’s like you’re doing God’s work for him! You’re playing for the other team!”
By the time he finished, the monitor of his computer bleeped. Seeing it was God on the web cam, Satan snarled and flicked a button. God’s calm face appeared on the screen…Satan could have sworn the other omnipotent being was laughing at him.
“What do you want?” he growled.
“My dear Lucifer…” He hated being called that, but God always did. Maybe it was just to remind him of what he had been. “Why may I ask do we have souls clamouring at our gates? Souls who are supposed to be in your kingdom performing pointless tasks for your amusement?”
Satan shot a look at Lucretia. “Well, I’ve been having a few problems. You don’t have to ask, we both know the reasons behind the big things that happened in each others kingdoms!”
God nodded. “Well, I trust you’ll take care of it? I’ve destroyed a few of these souls, but I don’t fancy having to destroy more of them. I also hope you will keep your daughter in hand? Jesus has been an absolute asset to Heaven; let’s hope Lucretia is the same to Hell? If not…” God turned to Lu with a kind smile. “You can always work for me...”
Satan almost howled with rage as he switched off his computer. “His son is an asset to heaven is it? Well maybe he’s right…Jesus never tried to destroy heaven as far as I remember! Why can’t you be like Jesus and help me keep Hell going? Must you always cause trouble for me? We’re supposed to trouble other people!”
Lucretia glared at him. “Why do you care? You don’t know what’s been happening! Maybe I should work for God!”
That was the last straw. Satan lunged for her and threw her over his shoulder. “Lucretia, you will stay in your room. You’re grounded! I don’t want to see you for a year understand? You’re not going out anywhere! Not even to meet that Edgar kid…I mean, what kind of taste do you have?”
The moment he put her on her bed, Lucretia resorted to the thing most kids say when they want it to hurt the most. “You’re not my father! I hate you! I hate you!”
Satan felt something sting and it was painful. Being who he was, he was never one to stay calm. He turned around and hissed at her. “Well, you’re no daughter of mine! I wish you hadn’t been born!” he failed to see how Lu’s eyes widened with hurt.
Satan was pissed that he could even feel pain. He wasn’t supposed to! That was another soppy emotion…and pain because of love…that was just horrible! He stalked off, crushing everything he felt and pushing it away. It did not belong in the devil’s world.
Chapter 3: Satan’s Soppiness
Dread grabbed him the moment he entered Hell. The silence was overwhelming and he had to face it, silence was something Hell rarely had with Lucretia around. He stepped into his office and stopped amazed. Everything was in order…his papers were neatly stacked on the desk and the whole room was spotless. And Satan had one question on his mind.
“Where did the chaos go?”
“Norbert!”
Satan sighed with frustration. He should be investing in a new skeleton soon. Preferably one that wasn’t averse to a bone sticking enchantment. He glared at the skeleton who shuffled in hurriedly. Norbert’s head was bouncing on the neck uncontrollably like he was excited or something. He even dropped it a few times and had to look for it before he said what he wanted too. Suddenly Satan realised Norbert was panicking.
“Lucretia’s gone!”
Satan nodded calmly until his brain processed what was being said. “WHAT?” sometimes…just sometimes he wished omnipotency worked with his own kin.
He got to work at once, calling Cerberus, the hound of Hell and Jörmungandr, the Serpent to look for her. Even the dukes rode out and the sins roamed the grounds of Hell, but none found her. Satan suffered anxiety attacks and threw tantrums until he realised that if he wanted to find his daughter then he’d have to get off his bum and do it himself.
He wondered where she could have gone. There wasn’t any place in Hell that had been left un-searched. He thought long and hard, when he suddenly hit up on it. There was a place where no creature of Hell could reach…it was the Axis of the World. This was what held the three worlds of Heaven, Earth and Hell together. Maybe Lucretia could reach it because she was his daughter?
He teleported himself outside the gate to the Axis and then entered. Right at the place where the line of light came through from above, sat his daughter. She had her knees drawn up to her chest and little face was buried in them. She was sobbing her heart out.
Something wrenched at Satan’s heart…wait it wasn’t something…it was love and right now he wasn’t in the mood to shove it away. That was his little girl out there crying so hard. He walked up to her and sat down. Clearing his throat a little awkwardly he began.
“What’s wrong kiddo?”
Lu looked up at him with a pout. “Daddy hates me…”
Satan couldn’t help it; he grabbed her in a hug. “Demons aren’t supposed to be kind and loving honey, but maybe this time…I can make an exception. I love you…only you and your mother, sweetie.”
She snuggled up to him. “I was scared because daddy didn’t love me the way he was supposed to…”
“The way I was supposed to? Who told you that?”
“Edgar…he said that mommy left because I was a devil and that you didn’t love me…”
Satan rolled his eyes and looked at his daughter. “Lu, Edgar is a dimwit…you better give up on him okay? You’re my daughter…you deserve better. And I’m sorry I yelled at you. I should have explained stuff and taught you things…so yeah…be my partner?”
Lucretia laughed. “Yeah I will. And I didn’t really like Edgar anyway…he was annoying…”
They smiled and snuggled up. And for one Satan was being soppy….and you know what? He didn’t mind a bit!
Epilogue:
The screen flickered a bit and God’s face went out of focus for a minute. God smiled. “I think we should change this computer…it’s getting old…”
Satan nodded. “They have this Cetrino duo thingy on the market now…I’m ordering that…maybe you should go for it too?”
God pondered. “Maybe I should…so how is your daughter?”
“Lu’s fine…she caused a really nice tsunami in China the other day…caused a lot of destruction. It really helps to have someone share the burden with you…” Satan smirked proud.
God nodded. “Yes, Jay takes care of his own followers. That’s a load off me! He’s very good at it you know? He helped heal people after that tsunami…he gave them hope.”
The smirk fell off Satan’s face. He grinned. “So which one of us do you think will get to the Centrino thingy first?”
God grinned determinedly. “Good will.”
“Yeah right…evil wins all the time!”
Both the omnipotent beings scrambled for the telephone book. Outside, nineteen year old Lucretia sighed and pulled out her phone. “Hello? Jay? They’re at it again! Yes I’ll be picking it up for him, yes I’ll meet you there…we’ll pick it up together, so neither one of us has the advantage. See you.”
She peeked in, to see her father scrambling through the directory. She shook her head. Some things never change. Oh no! I have to touch that chip before Jay does!
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