Satan's Story (2 page)

In order to prove that there really
was
a tree of life to protect, the Old Man now created what appeared to be flying man-servants. They were muscular guys with wings dressed in short
white robes, all of them quite handsome and athletic. The Old Man gave them swords and told them to chop off Adam's head if he tried to sneak back into the garden.

With regard to that first family of human beings, I've often wondered to myself: What exactly did the Old Man
think
was going to happen? In order for mankind (the whole point of this thing for him, as far as I could tell) to continue, one of the two sons, Cain or Abel, would have to have sex with his own mother. Why the Old Man couldn't see this problem coming is beyond me. It seemed so obvious. For a moment, it seemed like the human story might end before it even began. Then I got an idea. I'd already made reptiles, frogs, lobsters, and many other things (all the things the Old Man doesn't take credit for, basically); why couldn't I make
people
too? So yeah—that's what I did. I made a whole tribe of people on the other side of the river. One of these people became Cain's wife and the populating of the world continued. Just like Adam and Eve were similar to their father (i.e., the Old Man) these
new
people were a lot like me: They were skeptical, doubtful—far less trusting and childlike. They asked more and better questions; they poked and prodded and picked at things. They certainly weren't inclined to believe the Old Man's story. I heard that drove him crazy, which I can't say I minded by this point.

Did it surprise me that the guy the Old Man picked to restart human life after the flood was a complete asshole? Nope, not in the least. The Old Man had awful judgement in people.
Of course he'd choose a drunken bully. Of course his “fresh start” wouldn't work any better than things had worked up to this point. Of course in a short time, the Old Man would be murdering thousands of people again. Humans were what they were. He'd done nothing to change their essential natures. He'd simply killed all of them off, then restarted, seeming to believe that this time everything would be different.

It was around this time that I met Baal for the first time. I can't say I liked the guy. He was shallow, tiring—extremely vain—and kind of in love with his own appearance and presumed sexiness to, he apparently thought, pretty much
everyone.

Baal had a one-track mind. He was pretty much
only
interested in sex. It made him fairly interesting for a while—and then quite dull. But my people gravitated to Baal. They liked him, found him exciting. Which didn't surprise me. My people liked sex a lot; I hadn't told them not to. I hadn't told them much of anything, really. I'd simply created them and let them live. If they wanted to believe in Baal and participate in his ridiculous ceremonies, well, I didn't care—and as I said, I certainly wasn't surprised.

I
was
a bit surprised, however, when some of the
Old Man's
people were drawn to Baal too. The Old Man didn't know how to handle this. To see Baal, who was not supposed to even
exist
, attracting
his
people—well, it was priceless to behold.

I never got tired of watching the arrogant old fool squirm as he watched things happen that, from his standpoint, should have been “impossible.”

A few hundred years later, for a variety of reasons—I think the Tower of Babel had something to do with it—I remember suddenly thinking: “This asshole will never be happy.” I decided it would be fun take him down a notch. I'd just had enough of him, that's all. I thought long and hard about how

I wanted to do it. And then one day I woke up and I knew what to do.

The Old Man was strolling around his heavenly garden with a group of angels, talking too loudly (as usual), gesticulating too broadly (as usual), and bragging (as always). “Job loves me SO much, it's incredible how much Job loves me! And did I tell you what a good man he is? He is
very
good. No, I would go so far as to say, he is
perfect
!” The angels stood there, nodding vaguely and smiling. “Don't they find him boring?” I often wondered. I later learned that most of them were, by human standards, mildly retarded. Good-looking, obedient, male, and dumb: the perfect companions for the Old Man. So no, I don't think they were bored. I think they found him quite interesting, in fact, poor things.

The Old Man hadn't done much work on heaven at this time; his giant remodel was still a few thousand years in the future, but you could already see what garish taste he had. At the center of the garden there was a huge, like hundred-foot-tall marble sculpture of the Old Man, one hand raised, the other on his hip, a stern look on his face. There were several “heroic” portraits of the Old Man hanging on trees. They were crude and obvious, like the work of untalented children. Turns out they'd been painted by angels. But the Old Man obviously loved them.

I thought there would be at least some sort of security around heaven. But no, there wasn't; I walked right in. When I was about
twenty feet away from him, the Old Man stopped talking and noticed me. We looked right at each other as I walked up to the group and stopped a few feet away. There was silence for a moment. The Old Man looked puzzled by my presence—then displeased—and angry. Would he tell me to leave—would he
attack
me? I hoped not. He was bigger and stronger than me, and even if I was quicker and smarter (as of course I was, am, and always will be), he outweighed me by fifty pounds at least. But no, he just stood there, staring at me. I saw a number of things playing across the Old Man's face. (I'm good at psychology, by the way; it's one of my strengths.) He looked scornful, contemptuous, utterly superior. Yet at the very same time, he looked worried— even slightly
scared
. He wanted desperately to come across as “all-powerful,” but he knew—somewhere deep inside him he
knew
—that it simply wasn't true. And the longer I stared back at him, the more uncertain he appeared.

Finally, he spoke with forced friendliness, as if to convey to his angels that yes, of course he'd invited Satan to heaven. “Where have you been?” he asked me. I quickly told him the truth; I had been wandering the earth. There was another pause. The Old Man cleared his throat. He didn't like silence, I could see that. Finally, he smiled broadly, thinking of something to say. “Did you see Job?” he asked me.

“He's a very good man who loves me.” I lowered the boom on him. “Of course Job loves you,” I said. “He has a nice life. Take that away from him and see what happens.”

The Old Man's face instantly hardened. His lips got thin, white. Clearly restraining himself, he shrugged casually. “Go ahead and ruin his life then, Satan. You'll see,” he said.

I have to admit that I was surprised when Job continued to love the Old Man even after I'd dismantled his life. I had assumed he would turn on the Old Man quickly. When I saw the Old Man the next day, I instantly noticed that he looked excited, ebullient even. He'd been publicly vindicated and he obviously felt wonderful about it. This time, as he saw me approaching, his
face broke into a huge grin. “Turns out you were
wrong
, Satan. Job does still love me even though you got me to destroy his life for no reason at all!” he crowed, then suddenly stopped, apparently aware that what he'd just said sounded, you know, bad. It meant that the Old Man
knew
what he'd done was wrong; he'd just admitted it. The door was cracked for me, so I pushed it open.

“If Job still loves you,” I said, “it's only because he's not in physical pain. Let me hurt him and then watch what happens.” Would the Old Man go for this? He'd already told me before
not
to hurt Job, why would he approve of it now? He stared at me, obviously shocked by my audacity. His supreme loftiness slipped ever-so-briefly—then he forced a smile and said, “Fine, go ahead, just don't kill him.” In less than an hour, Job, who was already grieving over his ten dead children, was rolling around on the ground in abject misery. This was the moment of truth, I knew. If Job stayed faithful to the Old Man now I'd be proven wrong and my whole plan would fail.

At first Job did stay true. I got nervous that the Old Man might end the wager at that moment, but for whatever reason— my guess is he was too busy gloating and preening in front of his angels—he didn't. And before long, as I'd predicted, Job began to turn on the Old Man. When he said God had “hedged him around,” I smiled, knowing this would infuriate the Old Man. “
Hedged him around?”
I imagined him blustering. “
What does that even mean?!
” But I think he probably knew what it meant: that the wager was starting to slip away from him.

I sent Job's friends into the story for two reasons, one small, the other large. The small reason was that I thought it would be amusing to have these three obviously awful men complimenting the Old Man and talking about how “perfect” he was; I figured the irony of that might bother the Old Man (turns out, I was right.) But the
bigger
reason I sent them in was that as these three jackasses kept hammering away at poor Job, he kept responding with nastier and nastier remarks about the Old Man: God was terrorizing him. He wanted to sue God, but knew he'd lose because God would cheat him. Then Job started challenging God to a fight and calling him a
coward
for not showing up!

A bit later, when the Old Man started screaming down from heaven … well, this was a glorious half-hour for me. To watch God making a complete fool of himself was pleasurable beyond words. Sometimes I closed my eyes and enjoyed the mad, irrational torrent of his words. Other times, I studied his face and body, relishing the rage and folly and fear I saw there. From the start, the Old Man's bizarre mix of overblown grandiosity and pathetic insecurity had seemed volatile. Now it seemed like it might actually explode. I couldn't
destroy
him, I knew that—but I might, at the very least,
diminish
him.

At one point, Job begged the Old Man for mercy, which I thought was grotesque. This poor man who'd had his life
utterly ruined for no reason was now groveling about his own worthlessness? It seemed like what a child would say to a cruel parent to make the beating stop. The Old Man was beside himself now, clearly overcome with rage and frustration and wounded pride. Everything he said sounded either vaguely insane or incredibly stupid. He was breathing too fast, sucking in huge mouthfuls of air, appearing to hyperventilate. He looked like he'd lost his mind and gone over some sort of edge from which I honestly couldn't imagine him ever returning. I felt the sweetness of imminent victory. Where would the Old Man go after this spectacular failure? I had no idea, nor did I much care. He could wander around the moon for all I cared, babbling to himself about unicorns (which, yes, he seemed to actually believe in). Or hey, maybe he could die; gods
did
do that, I had now learned. Zeus died, for instance. He'd had enough, apparently, and so he allowed himself to essentially “not exist.” Maybe the Old Man would do that.

I had gotten so caught up in the Old Man's meltdown that I stepped partially out from behind a tree to get a better view. The Old Man, looking paranoid, whipped his head around. He saw me standing there and suddenly he stopped yelling.

We looked at each other for a long moment and as we did, something became clear: the Old Man had made a complete fool of himself. My plan had worked better than I could have possibly imagined. But as we continued to stare at each other, it suddenly became clear that I had won nothing. That the Old Man would never give in, and that our battle—and yes, it obviously
was
that—would continue.

Hundreds of years later, after the fall of Jerusalem (“Great judgment there with Nebuchadnezzar, God” I remember thinking to myself), I started hearing rumblings about his big new plan: the Old Man was apparently creating a son to “help him.” Not to brag, but I knew as soon as I heard this plan that it'd never,
ever
work. The Old Man was a complete narcissist. The idea that he could play a supporting role in his own story? It was laughable.

What was Jesus like? Well, he was both similar to and different from his father. He was similar in the sense that he was strange and muddled in his thinking and sometimes mean as hell. He was different, however, in the sense that he was actually clever. I grasped that as soon as we started talking. “Are you
really
the son of God?” I asked him, partially wanting to tweak the Old Man, sure, but also honestly not sure who this young man was. I mean, okay, the Old Man said he was his son—but what did that even
mean?
“If you are the son of God,” I asked Jesus, “why don't you turn those rocks into bread?” Jesus looked back at me with those inscrutable eyes of his. For a moment, I wasn't sure he'd heard me, and I was about to repeat myself when he said in a soft voice: “Man does not live on bread alone.” I looked back at him, unsure what that even meant, but I won't lie—weirdly taken aback and, yes, impressed. The son wasn't a blockhead like
the father. There was something subtle, even witty about his retort. The Old Man, asked the very same question, would have undoubtedly shouted out something like, “How DARE you ask me that, I will DESTROY you, Satan!!”

Jesus and I walked around Jerusalem for a little while, and then I tested him again. “If you really
are
the son of God,” I repeated, “why don't you fly around a little?” His response this time was not as good. “Don't test me,” he said, which sounded, quite honestly, like something the old idiot would have said. Jesus and I spent the next several days together hiking up a mountain. We brought a tent and food and water.