Satan's Story by Chris Matheson

Author:Chris Matheson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing
Published: 2016-11-13T05:00:00+00:00

FIVE

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.

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