Writing Prompt: The End of Evil

As I'm trying to get back into the groove with my creative writing, I will be posting short stories here to keep everything in one place. Last night it was this writing prompt on Reddit that grabbed my attention.

Prompt: “Uh...hey God...it’s me, Satan. Yeah, I know, I’ve done questionable crap with you and your son and whatnot, but I need to talk to you about the humans. There’s WAY too many down here and it’s rather crowded, so can you please do something about it?”

Story:

"Thousands of years of silent treatment, and now you're calling me out of the blue, just like that?!" The initial reaction was an awkward silence, but God's voice has finally sounded through the interdimensional phone receiver.

Lucifer took a deep breath. He hadn't expected it to be an easy conversation, but the jury was still out on how difficult it would end up being.

"God, have you seen the humans recently? What they've done with the planet, with their civilization? If we don't set our differences aside, that piece of rock will burn down faster than a prophetless religion."

"As a matter of fact I have checked in on them quite recently. They seem fine to me."

"You're really okay with all that's going on? They keep calling out your name, but it's mostly to express disdain for other people. They do all their praying in temples and almost none of it in their homes. They're afraid to listen to themselves. Sometimes they speak with priests, but they never talk to you anymore," Satan rubbed his fingers against his brows, trying to remember the Big Guy's triggers. "Most of them don't even believe you exist. They think that if they can't find you in outer space then you've always been a lie."

"I know," God's voice sounded deep and hoarse.

Lucifer clenched his teeth. It was all a risky play, and it was looking increasingly more hopeless with every beat of the conversation, but Satan had to try. It wasn't like him to back down.

"It's a mess, God. They've fallen so low they don't even know how to begin picking themselves up. Don't you feel any responsibility for the life you've created?"

"I'd say it's far beyond being my responsibility now. It has been, for more than a few generations."

"Aren't you supposed to love them unconditionally? 'Seek and you shall find' and all that jazz? You're seriously going to let them just erase themselves out of existence."

"How did it go... 'if you love me you will back off and give me some space?'"

With his legs up on his desk and his comfy recliner set all the way back to a nonchalant half-crunch position, just a while ago Satan thought he'd had it covered. Now he was beginning to feel like a scolded child. He frowned, kicked his desk and spun on the chair, holding his legs up, knees almost touching his face before stopping himself with feet on the desk after coming full circle. There was one more argument up in his sleeve.

"You've made a lot of promises to them, you and your favourite son. That you'd always be there for them in the time of need. Well, they need you right now, will you let them down?"

"You know I treat my Word very seriously. I shall abide by it," replied God, his voice seemingly devoid of emotion. "Like you said, things are far from perfect over there. False prophets abound and your own influence has been spreading like wildfire. If now's the time for the Apocalypse, so be it."

"You will seriously bring upon the End of Times over this?!"

"If you're so concerned, why don't you try fixing them yourself?"

Satan frowned and sat up straight. So it has come to this, after all.

"I... you know what happened last time I tried. The 20th century, that whole mess... And right now they've got access to weapons that could explode the entire globe. They can't take any more of my methods."

"Oh. Was it that bad? Really, pray tell me about it."

Was it... satisfaction in God's voice when he said that, or was it Lucifer's own assumption that made him feel like the Big Guy was pulling his leg. Satan gritted his teeth.

"You know damn well how bad it was," the Devil has pulled out all his stops. "I took them all to hell and back, I almost broke them all and their world, and you just let me do it. So many unanswered prayers, so much pain and suffering, they're still telling jokes about God's being out on business, they just can't comprehend it."

"And yet they're still standing. 'To hell and back,' you say. It was you who saved them from your own mischief."

"In just six years there's been more death and horror than over most centuries! Without the care of their beloved God they were all alone and their souls were grasping for light, but there was none. Someone had to help them!"

The short pause in the conversation made Satan a bit uncomfortable. The words he'd just said, it wasn't like him, not like him at all. He spun back on the chair, to untangle the receiver's cable.

When God's voice came through, it was one that demanded an Absolute. It was the voice wise men heard after days of meditation in the desert, one that artists felt when they created their pinnacle works.

"There are no obligations in my world," said God. "Why did you help them, why didn't you bring them all the way to your side?"

"Because... I've grown fond of them. I think, I... love them," Satan heard himself say. However strange the words may have sounded, deep in his heart he felt they were true.

"Is that why you want me to save them now?"

"...yes. I'm asking you to save them because I love them," Satan's voice trembled. He paused to take a deep breath as a divine realization that has been creeping up his spine for millennia has finally reached his mind. "That world, those people you've created, they taught me love."

The words left a heavy silence in their wake. Satan felt as if the space between him and the Big Guy, for so long overflowing with hatred, resentment and anger, suddenly was only void. It was as if the phone receiver was about to suck him inside it.

"You realize how long I've been waiting to hear those words? I'm proud of you, son."

"I know. I'm... sorry..."

This time, God remained silent. As Satan thought back to the original disagreement between him and his Creator, as he looked back on everything that's happened ever since, he felt the void filling up with something he hadn't felt in eons.

The Light.

He wasn't about to stop talking now.

"I've done... terrible things," Lucifer's voice was breaking. He hunched on the chair, trying not to look at the tokens of earthly horrors he's kept decorating his office: weapons of slaughter, tools made with the singular purpose of inflicting pain, bloodied cuffs and chains... "I gave it my all to prove you wrong, but just when I thought I had it, when I could break those people, to prove to you they're weak and evil, that's when I realized I don't want to be right."

God has finally decided to speak.

"Son, do you know why I always hated when you would use free will as an argument to bring them over to your side?"

"Why?"

"Because out of all my creations, you're the only one who had it, but never used it," God's words struck Lucifer with the full power of Enlightenment. "You were so stuck on being contrarian, on your rebel phase, that all you've done was spite me. Right now, this phone call, it's the first thing in your existence that you're really doing for your own sake."

Satan was speechless. The words rang true, but there was more to it. It was as if the Truth was tapping into him, filling him up with new energy. Or, on a second thought, it felt as if it was awakening in him a potential that's been there all along.

"Son, it seems to me this world's purpose is fulfilled. I'll let Michael and JC know the Rapture is on."

"But, God! What about all those people? What about your Great Plan?"

"My Great Plan is what me and those good souls will do once that lousy material plane is scrapped. It's only just begun."

"But what about eternal damnation?"

"Ah, yes. Well, from our point of view, you and the souls you've taken from me are not our concern anymore, at least for now. You've still got a long way to go before you can come back home. But don't fret, my son, for this is the path you've chosen, all those eons ago. Now that you know love, now you've discovered how to think for yourself, you're finally ready to become a God of your own world."

Lucifer almost fell out of his chair. He regained his composure and sat upright. He took a deep breath, searching for the words that were appropriate to this situation, the moment he's been dreaming of all this time. None have come that would seem worthy. Satan let out a sigh and fell back on his seat. He knew this moment would come, but nothing could prepare him for how it would do so.

"That story my half-brother used to tell back in the day," Lucifer felt he now knows his Truth. He spoke slowly, mincing words, knowing full well he's experiencing a moment of divine clarity. "The one about the prodigal son. It was about you and me, wasn't it?"

"It was, son. This new world of yours, it's going to be one filled with your misdeeds and mistakes - it won't start out pretty, they never do. It'll be your job to fix it - with love, compassion and guidance. Once you do, you and I will meet again, and I'm looking forward to it," God paused for a second, as if he was at a loss for words, seemingly searching for a moment of divine clarity of his own. "If, or rather, when one of your most-loved creations enters into a disagreement with you. When they turn on you..."

"Yes, father?" Satan had a feeling he knew where the Big Guy's train of thought was heading.

"Go easy on them, or you might push them further away from you than they already got on their own. That would be... unfortunate. That's something you might regret."

"You could just say you're sorry."

"Good luck, son. I can't wait to see how your world turns out."

"Thanks, dad. Bye..."

Satan sat there in silence for what, even to him, felt like an eternity. Finally he wiped the tears from his face and stood up. He noted there was nothing there to sit on anymore. He was no longer in any concept of place, or time. He felt his own form flexing and moulding in harmony with his thoughts and emotions, volatile and yet comforting, always familiar and perfect in its own way.

He felt the energy of all corrupted souls from his Father's world buzzing within him. It filled him to the very limit of his consciousness, he could barely contain it.

It was time to say a word. The Word.

Concepts, abstractions, various potential forms a world might take raced through Lucifer's mind. Laws of physics, moralities, but also different safety measures preventing the denizens of the material realm from breaking free of its limitations. He smiled. Schrodinger's Law, the very act of observation changing the observed object, he couldn't imagine anything more perfect to ensure the preservation of this new world he was about to create. The Law was brilliant. His father's work.

Instinctively, he turned his newfound divine gaze to where the interdimensional phone, that device he almost never used that was the hotline to his estranged Father, used to lie on his desk.

Like everything that inhabited his own realm in his Father's world, it was now gone.

Lucifer sighed, then steeled his will.

It was time to create.

The time for sadness, for longing and regret, someday it would all come to him. But in this slice of eternity, from his world's creation to its grand conclusion, for Lucifer it was time to get busy.