The Devil and Temptation

“..and I shall give you power beyond your wildest imaginings!!” hissed Satan, flourishing his cape in what he probably thought was a dramatic manner. The gesture probably would have had more impact had it been timed better. Unfortunately, the lighting storm he’d spent all morning arranging had long dissipated by the time he reached the climax of what he referred to as his ‘patter’. At the dress rehearsal, back in hell, he’d looked great – a big imposing silhouette in front of a gothic picture window, lighting splitting the sky behind him. He was now stood in front of a rather grimy UPVC window that looked out on to the dilapidated streets of Bromley, the skies above now home only to a rainbow. In the distance, the chimes of an ice cream van could be heard. There was an air of sad kitsch about the whole scene. As temptations went, we weren’t really off to a good start.

The little man whose soul Lucifer sought looked nonplussed, and stayed silent – waiting for a climax that had already passed unnoticed. Satan coughed into his clenched fist, as if trying to stifle a giggle. I looked at my feet, whilst suppressing the urge to mutter something under my breath. It was all very well for the devil, he’d just turned up in a puff of brimstone, but I’d spent the last 40 minutes in a cramped carriage on the district line. The journey had been made worse by the fact that I’d had to carry an oversized ghetto blaster with me, something Satan insisted I bought with me in order to play what he termed his ‘temptation mega mix’. He frantically signalled that I should start the tape, and I complied. After a slight pause as the tape spooled through, the first track kicked into life, and immediately revealed one of the many flaws in the devil’s worldview.

In Satan’s mind, the mega mix was a fiendishly precise selection of songs designed to confound the mind of any mortal who might listen to it. As far as he was concerned, it was a playlist so seductive that the listener would gladly succumb to their darkest desires, and accept the terms of whatever bargain he offered them. To the ears of any normal mortal, it was six songs recorded from the radio, with lyrical content that even the most desperate of horny teenage boys would consider unsubtle. I mean, take track one – ‘Temptation’ by Heaven 17. An 80’s pop classic perhaps, but hardly a stealth attack on the subconscious mind. The intended victim was now clearly smirking, which was hardly surprising considering that Satan had resorted to cavorting around the room in a pathetic attempt to raise the man’s excitement levels and force him into a quick deal. I too would have been amused, had I not been so complicit in the whole affair. The combination of a poor quality recording and poor quality equipment meant that the song’s high end had almost been lost entirely. As a result, I was forced to fill in for the female vocals. I couldn’t have hit the high notes as a prepubescent boy, let alone as the twenty five year old smoker I was now. I sounded like a terrier being squashed under a paving slab, and it was my discordant yelping that finally elicited outright laughter from our target. Satan shot me a look of utter venom before disappearing from the room. I stopped the tape, nodded apologetically at the little man, and silently let myself out of his home.