Bill sits on his armchair with Guinness and cigarette in hand in front of the TV. He’s already forgotten about the college students, so it’s not remorse that’s keeping him up at night. For reasons he doesn’t yet know, he’s an insomniac. So, he spends most of his nights binge watching whatever shows interest him. Last month, it was Breaking Bad. This month, it’s Criminal Minds and next month it will be Lost.
Bill looks at his watch. As soon as he sees it’s 3:33am, the TV suddenly turns off. When he looks at the TV, Bill’s heart almost jumps out of his chest. Someone—no, something—is standing in front of him. It’s a bipedal creature, naked, skin as dark as obsidian and eternally in the state of advanced decay. Its head is bald with the same obsidian decay, small red eyes, and a large mouth with long, sharp teeth protruding. Its limbs are inhumanly long, three sharp claws for “toes” and four sharp claws for “fingers.”
The thing gives a bass, gritty maniacal laughter. “You look scared,” it says. Its voice has the same bass, gritty tone.
Bill somehow finds air in his lungs to say, “A-are you an alien?”
“Close.”
Bill can’t draw his eyes away from its garnet eyes and salivating teeth, if you can call whatever black pus that’s dripping from its mouth saliva.
What is it? Bill ponders. What’s the next supernatural thing? If not an alien, then what? A Chupacabra? No, that’s supposed to look like some dog creature. This thing looks like something straight out of the Old Testament. Wait a minute…
“Are you the devil?” Bill finally asks.
“If I were, you wouldn’t need to ask.”
“So then, a demon.”
“Hmmmmm,” the demon groaned in agreement.
“Did… did God send you?”
“Do not insult me as if I would do the bidding of the Holy One of Israel. I come at the command of my lord, Lucifer.”
No freakin’ way. I must be dreaming.
“This is not a dream.”
Bill’s eyes somehow widened more than they already were. Great, demons can read minds.
“What does… Lucifer want?” he manages to ask
“You would not fathom it. I could tell you that he wants you. But he already possesses you spiritually since you do not believe in the Holy One of Israel. What he wants is… company in the eternal abyss that awaits us. Death.”
Bill scoffed. “So you came to do justice, is that it?”
The demon looked at him, offended. “We do not indulge in holy virtues like justice.” It said the word as if it were a curse word. “That business belongs to the Holy One of Israel, always disrupting my lord’s plans, ever since that Son of His tricked him on the cross and rose from the dead. No, I have come for death.”
“So you’re the Grim Reaper?”
“Some know me by that name, though pop culture has grossly exaggerated the functions of my office. I do not come like a chauffeur to gently guide you ‘to the other side.’ Such ambiguity is an insult to my work. There is no ‘other side.’ Only Heaven or Hell, and after that, the new heavens and the new earth—the New Eden where the Holy One of Israel will UNDO ALL MY LORD’S WORK BY RAISING HIS STUPID SAINTS,” again, like a curse word, “FROM THE DEAD AND THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO TO STOP IT.” The demon calmed itself down from its sudden outburst. “The name by which I prefer to be called is Hades.”
Bill’s heart skipped a couple beats. “As in the Hades? God of the underworld?”
Hades gave a short bark that sounded like a rabid Pitbull. A laugh? “Another exaggeration from fatuous humans. No, there is only one God. Lucifer was the first murderer. He loves to kill with his own clever machinations. But sometimes, he likes to send me to have my own fun. For a time, he gave me Greece. And now, he’s given me you.”
“Why me?” Bill asked with a chill.
Hades looked at him as if he asked a stupid question. “Why not you?”
Suddenly Hades walked toward him. Bill flinched, ready to defend himself… with what, exactly?
But Hades didn’t reach for his throat or do whatever it is demons do when they kill. Instead, it reached for Bill’s ashtray on the nightstand beside him, picked it up, and emptied its contents into its mouth as if it were finishing a small bag of chips.
“I know you enjoy judging in silence,” it said. “But do not presume to judge me when you do exactly what I just did at a slower rate. ‘Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.’ Hmph. And you consume it.”
Hades walked back to where it stood and stared at him.
Bill broke the silence. “So, aren’t you going to kill me? How will you do it? Strangulation? Set me on fire? Stab me with some hellish dagger?”
Hades grinned. “It’s too bad you think the Christian Bible is a farce because if you read it, you’d have some semblance of our unholy work. No, Lucifer is not direct in his methods. He is the progenitor of insidious evil.”
“I refuse to read the Bible. What about the Qur’an? Is there any truth in there?”
“Two children sit side by side as they’re taking a test. Child A is answering every question correctly. Child B copies child A but somehow manages to get every answer incorrect in his great stupidity. Christianity is child A, Islam is child B.”
“How about Mormonism?”
“Execrable fan fiction. It was my colleague, Ahab, who tricked them into wearing ‘holy’ underwear. They’re known to say that Mormons spew such laughable doctrine from their mouths that they were afraid of what might come out their sphincters.” Hades made a sound that sounded like a dying cat. Bill interpreted it as a laugh. “It was Ahab who appeared to Joseph Smith. The Nordics called them Loki.”
This is all too much, Bill thought.
“Why are you telling me all this?” he asks.
Hades gives him a quizzical look. “No one will believe you. Because I’m bored. But enough delay.”
Hades somehow managed to stand straighter and Bill suddenly noticed its—their—decrepit wings, like someone had torn all the skin and feathers off a bird’s wings until all that was left was bone and loose, rotten flesh.
Hades then disappears just as suddenly as they appeared. One moment they were there, and the next they weren’t.
The Lutheran Column 