The Devil and Crying

Sharing a flat is difficult sometimes. For example, my flatmate Steve recently became a godparent to a mutual friend’s child, and as part of the christening ceremony he had to renounce the devil. So now if I want the devil to come round, I have to wait for Steve to go out. Otherwise there's the awkward moment where they see each other and say 'hi' in that really restrained way, while not making proper eye contact. Usually at that point the devil gets upset with me and refuses to grant me any satanic gifts, and instead starts crying and threatening to 'sue my ass'. Like it's somehow my fault.

The devil, in case you didn't know, cries really easily at everything. I mean, the other day he cried because we had no milk and I could only offer him green tea. He could have conjured some milk up with his demonic powers, right? No, apparently not, because it wasn't actually about the lack of milk for normal tea, was it? No, it was because I knew he was coming in advance and 'hadn't bothered' to prepare for his arrival. “So, what are all these dead chickens, slaughtered goats, candles and sigils about, then?” I asked him, casting my arm round the room in a theatrical gesture (and, I might add, slightly burning my expensive new robes on a candle in the process, something El Diablo singularly failed to comment on). This comment, designed to cheer Satan up, in fact just instigated further crying. Then he started apologizing and explaining that it wasn't really my fault and that he'd been under a lot of pressure recently because of the credit crunch.

Like a lot of people, the dark lord has been using the credit crunch as an excuse for all sorts of shit. The other day he tracked muddy hoof prints all through the flat (which I had to clean up quickly to avoid Steve making snide remarks about the devil when he got home). When I commented on the devil's basic lack of hoof cleanliness, he sheepishly explained that due to the credit crunch he couldn't afford to refill the chemical footbaths at the gates of hell any more. “But why the mud, lucifer ?” I asked, “You told me that the road to hell was as parched and dry, and that nothing could grow there. Also, you don't need to physically WALK anywhere, do you? You just sort of turn up in a puff of brimstone”. At this point, the problem became clear - out of habit, the devil was still insisting that anyone entering or exiting hell used the chemical footbaths at the gates. Trouble is, as the chemicals hadn't been changed for months, rather than being filled with that chlorine smelling blue liquid you'd expect to see, the contents now pretty much resembled the soily runoff you find on the floor of a festival portaloo. Rather than keeping hell clean, the chemical footbaths were now serving to make it dirtier - but as the morning star had instigated the footbath system in the first place, he was too proud to stop using them, lest he appear weak in front of the other dark gods like Cthulu or Gozer. And yes, while he could just teleport straight from his throne room to my flat, he felt he had to go via the gates and accompanying footbaths because he wanted to keep an eye on one of the gatekeepers, who he thought had been 'looking at him funny'. At this point, as I sat trying to firm up the hoof prints with a hairdryer for ease of brushing out later, I was quite tempted to point out that this was just another classic case of his oversensitive nature ruling his life and causing trouble for his colleagues. However, I feared that would set him off crying again, so I let the matter drop.