Those Pesky Virgins

THOSE PESKY VIRGINS By Richard David Bach

Late on a hot hot August afternoon, Satan and Iblis sit nursing beers – Diablo Dark Ale, of course – in the dim, air-conditioned chill of the Last Mile Saloon. The Devil and his Muslim counterpart are in Arizona to collect a couple of deserving souls at the Arizona State Correctional Facility at Eyman; Satan is waiting for a particularly murderous drug dealer who has committed unspeakable crimes, and Iblis is to pick up a jihadist who has done some very nasty things in the name of Allah. It’s bone-numbing cold in the saloon, far too frigid for Satan’s taste – he would have preferred the outside desert heat where it climbs above 100° before ten – but the good ol’ boys at the bar seem to like it that way so he leaves it alone. A country-western song plays over and over, damping down all the other sounds – clinking glasses, laughing patrons, cracking pool balls. It’s ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’, about some kid who gets into a fiddling contest with the devil. Satan has stuffed the jukebox with quarters – that ditty is one of his favorites. Iblis doesn’t care for it but he hasn’t been able to find anything on the juke box that pleases his middle-eastern ear, so he just tunes it out. Satan doesn’t normally retrieve his clients personally – other than those who have bartered for earthly advantage – but he makes an exception for Francis Frederick Fellwell, a man after his own heart. Iblis wants the soul of Ahmed al-Kaboom - but for a different reason - and he doesn’t get to Christian countries very often. The last time was 9/11, and he was far too busy on that day to take in any of the tourist attractions.

2 Ahmed and Francis, or Frank as he prefers to be called, are scheduled to kill each other later that afternoon during the course of an exercise yard fight in the maximum security wing; and Satan and Iblis have arrived early in the hope that they will meet - it’s been a while and they have a lot to catch up on. Besides, they want to watch the fight – it ought to be a good match. Francis Frederick Fellwell is proud of his name. The significance of the sixth letter of the alphabet, repeated three times, comes to him in a revelation one Sunday morning as he daydreams his way through the fire and brimstone erupting from his father’s pulpit. Hell and damnation have been the salt and pepper on the breakfast grits served daily by his itinerant preacher parents, and he finds the notion of Hell much more fascinating than the boring prospect of sitting next to Jesus. By the time he is 17 he is the official enforcer for the local drug dealer, who is also the local sheriff, and he has the first of the tattoos that now illuminate most of his body – the ‘F’ word and the number of the beast frequent and prominent among them. Francis is serving multiple life sentences at Eyman, without possibility of parole, imposed for the gruesome murder of a 15 year-old high school kid - who had stiffed his pusher for a half ounce of pot - along with the kid’s grandmother, grandfather, mother, father and four-year old sister. Even the sheriff, who went down with Francis, thought that this was overkill, given the size of the debt. Francis Frederick Fellwell isn't afraid of Hell, although there's always that nagging doubt. He equates the non-possibility of parole with his father's warning that there's no exit from Hell, and decides that Hell couldn't be any worse than an Arizona State Correctional Facility.

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3 Ahmed al-Kaboom is equally proud of his name. Adopted when he submitted to Islam at 13, while under the influence of crack cocaine and an imam every bit as fiery as Frank's father, the former Danny Washington thinks that the name appropriately announces his mission - to bring the word of Allah, and his prophet Muhammad, to the world. And, if in the process he has to blow up a synagogue and the twelve preschoolers therein, well, so be it. In retrospect, though, it probably wasn’t smart to leave his underlined copy of the Koran, with his name proudly inscribed on the cover, in the coffee shop across the street from the synagogue. Ahmed al-Kaboom is not afraid of Hell either. He knows that if he dies with the name of Allah on his lips he will achieve paradise, with seventy-two virgins. Midway through his second beer, Satan zips up his NASCAR jacket against the chill and asks Iblis the question that has been the subject of so much debate in the west: “Tell me, cousin, will Allah bestow upon your jihadist, this Ahmed al-Kaboom, the seventy-two virgins he has been promised.” “Of course not,” laughs Iblis. “Allah, the compassionate, the merciful, doesn’t condone these stupid assholes who go around blowing themselves up and killing others in His name.” Iblis sneers with disdain when he recites the godly honorific, but he cannot not say the words – they’ve been so deeply ingrained in his being. “He doesn’t think they’re doing anything to bring His word to the ‘hood; and actually He’s pretty pissed with the whole radical Islamist umma for not getting with the modern world.” Black Muslims have been Iblis’ role models for American speech and dress; he wears a Malcolm X T-Shirt and at times he sounds more Brooklyn than Bahrain. “It’s been thirteen hundred years since your brother Gabriel dropped the Koran on Muhammad the Prophet, and those friggin’ imams still think they live in a seventh century

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4 desert. Allah, the compassionate, the merciful, gave them oil, for Suliman’s sake, and now He’s not sure it wasn’t a mistake.” Satan chuckles. “Won’t Ahmed be disappointed when he doesn’t get his virgins?” “Nah. Allah won’t give him any virgins … but I will. That poor schmuck was doing my work … spreading hatred and discord. Why should I punish him. I’ll reward him.”

Satan has an epiphany. He realizes that he has been going about his mission in the wrong way. If Satan wishes to win the struggle with God for men’s souls, why should he torment those who do his bidding and strive in his service? He should reserve his tortures for those who have been sent to Hell for committing religious crimes, like touching the skin of a pig, or worshiping Him in an incorrect manner, or dying before getting baptized; and Satan should honor those, like Francis Frederick Fellwell, who have spread the pain and suffering that Satan promised when God expelled him from Heaven. Satan can’t wait to get back to Hell to begin implementation of his new campaign; but first, the exercise yard fight. It’s a really good fight. Francis Frederick Fellwell and Ahmed al-Kaboom, goaded into a challenge by their eager fellows, have been preparing for weeks and they are both really buff. Frank’s tattoos animate over his muscles and variegate in the hot sun, and perspiration oils Ahmed’s chocolate skin. By prior agreement they wear only shorts to insure neither has secreted a weapon. They start slowly, circling. Ahmed lands the first blow, a glancing kick to Frank’s left knee. Frank shakes it off and retaliates with a wicked haymaker to Ahmed’s left ear.

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5 That smarts and Ahmed lunges at Frank, toppling them both into the exercise yard dust. They are evenly matched – Frank is 6’ 2” and clocks in at 240 pounds, and while Ahmed gives an inch in height, he has a ten pound weight advantage. They grapple and kick and punch and bite – Frank loses the best part of an ear and Ahmed is soon missing a finger – and go at each other for over twenty minutes in the 118° heat until Ahmed’s neck snaps at the same moment that Frank’s brain fries in the relentless sun. The guards make no attempt to stop the contest – neocons all, they see it as an early skirmish in the coming war between the Christian west and the Islamic world. Satan and Iblis have a small bet on the outcome, but given that they know there will be no winner, they wager on style. Even there, they agree the fight was a draw; and when it is over, Satan and Iblis collect their newest lodgers and hug each other before heading home, promising to meet more often. Iblis doesn’t leave right away. It takes him a few minutes to find Ahmed’s finger in the dust and dirt kicked up by the fight; he knows that Ahmed would want to be buried with it.

Satan takes Francis Frederick Fellwell and goes straight back to Hell, where he immediately turns one large section into a paradise – golf courses, gourmet restaurants, warm tropical beaches and, of course, virgins, lots of virgins, for those who might be into that sort of thing and for the occasional religious hermaphrodite – Muslims for Jesus. The denizens of Hell who get to reside in this new suburb are surprised and pleased, and filled with smug vindication: ‘See, what I did couldn’t have been so bad after all.’ The torment

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6 of those who remain excluded – presumably for all eternity - is intensified. Satan is delighted. God grumbles, but Satan ignores Him.

At the end of the fourth quarter Satan is dismayed to find that his latest intake records show no uptick in production - he is receiving no more new souls than is usual, and there has been no increase in heinous crime or war. “Of course not,” he is told by a resident who was an advertising account executive while on earth. “How can you expect to market a new product if no-one knows about it? You’ve got to go out there and sell!” This particular flack’s ticket to Hell had been bought by years of eager espousal of the tobacco industry agenda. Marketing is a new concept for Satan. Until now he has relied on the Bible and Judeo-Christian theology to populate his precincts with sinners; but outside of the big ones – like ‘thou shalt not kill’ – the number of mortal sins has slowly shrunk as tolerance and rationality have grown under the influence of The Enlightenment. Of course, there have always been a few who would bargain their souls – more since Faust made it popular – but they always think there must be an escape clause. Satan appoints the adman as Director of Marketing and hires an advertising agency, one that cut its teeth on pharmaceuticals, to begin an ad campaign designed to promote Hell as a pretty cool place after all, and to persuade a certain demographic that one can do bad things without fear of an awful afterlife. The Marketing Department sets a goal: they want a 22% increase by the third quarter, at least three quarters of which is to be attributable to this new crusade. They will verify the numbers by exit polls which will ask the basic questions: ‘Did the new information on Hell’s true nature influence your conduct, and if

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7 so, how and to what extent?’ The agency is given a massive budget, but is told in no uncertain terms that there will be no supernatural assistance for the campaign. The advertising agency assures Satan’s minions that this is not a problem – they can do as much with money as with miracles. They commission some television productions – a family sitcom and a reality show, followed by ‘Route 666’, an animé cartoon program slotted for the time when mommy will want to plunk down the kids in front of the TV so she can take a bath, or whatever. ‘Route 666’ doesn’t exactly promote evil – the ad agency thought this might be too much for the little ones – but it supports the proposition that no good deed goes unpunished. The kids love the cute characters – imps and devilish animals do hilarious things involving a lot of potty humor – and red becomes the new purple as Barney fades from sight. The reality show – ‘Survivor – Devil’s Island’ – pits armed and dangerous adversaries in a literal fight to the death. The survivor, who has reached that pinnacle by some really sneaky ambushes, traps and treasons, is to be personally awarded his prize by Satan himself (or at least someone who looks a lot like the current depiction of the Prince of Darkness). The losers get a one-way ticket to the nice new Hell. The sitcom is easy. They purchase the rights to ‘Hope and Faith’ and morph it into something far more beguiling. With a theme song titled ‘Less is More’, the show will now have them be faithless and hopeless. Starting slowly at first, they portray Hell as more like Stalag 17 than Dante’s vision, and they follow the television shows with a full-length feature big budget movie, with Adam Sandler playing the Devil and Al Pachino in the role of God.

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Now God is beginning to get really upset. This is not in accordance with The Plan. But God is not without resources of his own. His tool is Father Francis X. Casey, a paranoid schizophrenic diagnosed not long after his ordination. The Vatican has no idea what to do with him until it is perceived that, when off his meds, his paranoia gives him an uncanny ability to detect plots against the Church. Assigned to a little known section of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Inquisition) whose function it is to combat such plots, Father Casey spends most of each year reading newspapers, watching television and movies, and otherwise keeping an eye on everything that is going on all over the world. When Father Casey is taken off his medication for his annual pre-Lenten communion, and has his annual opportunity to look back on everything he has absorbed during the past year, he immediately identifies Satan’s PR program and recognizes it for the threat it poses to Christianity. The pope issues an encyclical, and pulpits all over the planet resound with denunciations of any attempt to sanitize humanity’s understanding of Hell. God decides to up the ante. Through His emissaries on earth – the pope, Pat Robertson, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and a couple of asylum inmates with whom He is in regular communication - God goes on the counteroffensive. He lets it be known that Heaven has recently been renovated, with many upgrades available for frequent piety points – and it is now better than ever. Pat Robertson proclaims that God has personally assured him that Heaven is a five-star facility while Michelin would give Hell only one or two-stars at best. Quickly understanding that punishment has been removed from the equation, God’s PR firm moves into enhanced reward mode – pointing

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9 out the many advantages of Heaven over Hell. They use a matrix, much like the auto manufacturers do when they compare the features possessed by their own vehicles against those that are sadly lacking in their competitors’ products and, of course, Heaven is the clear winner. It’s sweeps week all over the western world, and God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, are locked in a battle for ratings.

Satan misses his goal for the third quarter and his fourth quarter numbers still are not increasing satisfactorily. His cost-per-soul is escalating rapidly and he is becoming impatient. Satan and his PR consultants come to the conclusion that he is fighting against four thousand years of negative images, and that faith and hope alone will be insufficient. The only way to convince humans that the new and improved Hell would be a really nice place to spend the rest of eternity is a demonstration – testimonials from satisfied customers. There has been telling; now there will be show and tell. Satan will produce an extravaganza – a Witness for the Wicked World Tour. The T-shirts are awesome; and not coincidentally, everything with a www in its address is diverted directly to Satan’s website.

Satan boots up his database, and begins his search for suitable candidates. His criteria are simple: First, they must have been so clearly evil that no-one could question that they would be Hell-bound at the end of their tenure on earth. Satan reasons that deranged or mentally incompetent criminals won’t do – because liberals will argue that a benevolent and forgiving God would not condemn to Hell those He had created with cognitive defects. Although misguided, those voices would still be heard and Satan could not afford any doubts.

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10 Second, the Witnesses must be clearly deceased – demonstrably and provably so. There are those, after all, who hold that Elvis is still alive. And third, it would help if they were good public speakers. Satan’s data base is well organized, cross-referenced by the nature of the crime from crimes against humanity to the crime of eating meat on Friday before that was ruled permissible by the Holy Roman Church, much to the dismay of those who had performed that ghastly act when it was still a mortal sin; by the nature of the criminal – from serial killers to masturbators; and by the nature of the victim – from molested children at one end of the spectrum to dishonored fathers and mothers at the other end. Satan has a special subcircle for pedophilic clergymen and congressmen. He considers the big names – Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic – and goes with the latter two – they are recently deceased and can be exhumed to prove it. And they wouldn’t have a lot of positive character witnesses. He selects the soul of a mother from Peoria who had drowned her three small children because her boyfriend didn’t like them and she liked her boyfriend more than she liked her kids. She received a lethal injection in her arm; the boyfriend is getting a daily injection at the Illinois state prison in a different part of his anatomy. Satan picks a couple of Wall Street crooks who bilked little old ladies out of their nest eggs and lived like royalty with their trophy wives and even more gorgeous mistresses until they were shot – execution style – by the grandson of one of their victims. The grandson is still in Limbo – God and Satan have been unable to agree on whether he should be punished for the murder or rewarded for the retribution; although that could become complicated now that the Vatican is reconsidering the whole notion of Limbo. God isn’t all

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11 that pleased that Jesus has given Peter (and his successors) authority to revise the structure of the afterworld, but given that they would claim that faculty anyway, it really doesn’t matter. God wins the coin toss and will take the boy if the Church does away with that intermediate level, and the other inhabitants of Limbo will await a similar lottery. Kenneth Lay is an afterthought. From the list of serial killers, Ted Bundy is a quick pick. Notorious and good looking, he’ll be a perfect salesman to demonstrate that if an evil serial killer like Ted Bundy is not suffering while in Hell, it must be a nice place. Bundy doesn’t go on the Tour, though - Satan has him announce on national television that precisely six months from the moment he arrives back on earth he will be again whisked back to Hell – and he gives an date and exact time, down to the second. During that six-month period, Bundy will appear on every talk show and will be interviewed by every talking head, including Larry King, Lou Dobbs, Barbara Walters, Jay Leno, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher. Only Oprah turns him down. The Bill O’Reilly interview is a disaster for Fox – O’Reilly goes ballistic when he can’t get Bundy to admit that he’s a fraud and that the notion of a nice Hell is only a liberal lie, and fair and balanced are the first victims when O’Reilly finds that his mute button for Bundy’s microphone doesn’t work. In the days preceding Ted Bundy’s return to Hell, the media are saturated with commercials announcing the scheduled time. All the networks plan live prime-time coverage (eastern daylight time) and the venue is assured when Bundy rents the newly renovated New Orleans Superdome and sets up a Lazy-Boy rocker and a 52” plasma TV on the 50 yard line. A huge digital clock high above the field ticks down the seconds and the

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12 time remaining is posted on several websites. Anticipatory reminders for ‘Ted Bundy Day’ scrawl across the bottom of every news network screen. According to the ads and his interviews, at the precise moment predicted Ted Bundy will simply disappear from view in front of all the people packed in the Superdome to watch and all of the surveillance cameras beaming his smiling image all around the world, thus confirming his message. Satan brags that this will be every bit as good as the stunt God pulled with Jesus 2000 years ago.

God’s patience comes to an end. He summons Satan to Heaven – the first time Satan has been back in a long time – and an unexpected treat. Satan arrives in angelic splendor, his white wings gleaming in the reflection of God’s luminescence, and he bows to the Lord. God is not pleased – He considers the attire and the feigned obeisance to be impudent attempts to remind Him that Lucifer was once a favorite among the angels and that he had been cast out of Heaven for refusing God’s command to bow to Adam. “How may I serve you, Lord?” His tone is unctuous and he makes no effort to hide his smirk. Satan knows perfectly well what God wants of him, and he knows fully as well that he holds the high trump.

“You know damn well what you can do! You can shut down that damned Club Dead that you’re running down there! I want Hell restored to its natural state, and I want it right now! Do you hear me! I won’t put up with this nonsense for a moment more!”

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13 “But, Lord,” says Satan, smug now. “Surely you will recall that you yourself gave me plenary authority over Hell and all of its dominions. You, of course retained jurisdiction to determine which souls would enter Heaven and which would be sent to me for punishment; but I hold the power to impose the punishment. Surely, Lord, you would not wish to be seen to alter The Plan because I see fit to employ non-traditional forms of punishment to those I deem worthy? Hell is mine until Judgment Day, my Lord. Is mankind ready for Judgment Day?” Once more Satan defies God and once more God responds by turning his back on Satan. That wounds on a level that Satan had long thought to have been purged of feeling. The hurt and anger engendered by the rebuke reinforces his conviction that this is still indeed the wrathful God of the Old Testament, and not the goody-goody loving and forgiving Father peddled by Jesus. He tears off his angelically immaculate wings and returns to Hell, more determined than ever to win.

The Witness for the Wicked World Tour goes well, even better than expected. Performances are sold out throughout the Christian world; Cobain, Joplin and Morrison headline the shows; and supplemental sales of T-shirts, posters, CDs and action figures are huge. The venues are awesome – every major stadium, concert hall and arena in Europe, North and South America, Australia and the colonial capitals of Africa are booked and prepared. Lighting, music, backdrops and sets are all carefully designed to support the Message and maximize the images, and the Tour will be aired as HBO Specials. Shades of rust and amber tint the spotlights on Slobodan Milosevic, giving him a hearty and robust exuberance that verifies the oratory with which he once spellbound his

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14 countrymen into rape, murder and genocide. Patriotic anthems playing just below conscious levels add to the imperative of his words. They use pink for Pol Pot to mellow his Asian complexion as he describes, with Zen-like serenity, the many delights and pleasures of an agrarian Hell. His background music is a Leonard Bernstein original composition contrived to emphasize his cadences and movements. Bernstein agreed to do it in exchange for residence in the new evildoers’ section of Hell rather than the circle to which he had been relegated because he was, after all, gay. Eileen Warnoss, the most prolific woman serial murderer of the twentieth century, portrayed on screen so depravedly by Charlize Theron, is now stunning in a devil’s red strapless gown, replete with cleavage. She is bathed in golden tones as she tells the world of the equal opportunities for women in Hell. And over and over, repeated on every stage, on every TV screen, on every laptop, the Message – Hell is a great place and the more evil you are the better your chances of getting there. There’s a subtext there – your chances of getting into Heaven are chancy; one little misstep and you’re gone, so if you’re going to Hell anyway, might as well have a good time on the way. And the Witnesses have been diligently trained to stay on Message. No matter how far afield the interviewer might stray, the Witness can be counted on to bring them back to the Message, each time with increasing emphasis. Bill O’Reilly is not the only talking head to go apoplectic. The Peoria mother exudes childlike rapture that she has been sent to such a nice place after the wicked thing she has done. Ken Lay aw-shucks his way through the tour

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15 with a sincerity that has even his fiercest critics shaking their heads; and the Wall Street duo crow about how their babes in Hell are even hotter than their babes back on earth.

Now there is an upsurge in new souls on Satan’s side of the ledger. God fights back but he is limited by the ethics that bind his benevolence. He will not sink to his adversary’s level of depravity even though this is an asymmetrical war and Satan can employ tactics not permitted to the side of truth and justice. Of course, God reasons, he can always change the definitions, but he will save that for more desperate times. More to the point, all the real talent in marketing and advertising – the talent that sells the world cigarettes, beer, SUVs, deodorant soap, toaster ovens, cruise ships and power bars – belongs to Satan. God’s agents sell nutrition products, exercise machines, toilet paper and abstinence. No contest. There is, however, a disturbing trend. A head count of Hell, taken to assure that the infrastructure is capable of handling the influx, exceeds the intake report population by some 12%. The answer is obvious – the borders of Hell are not secure. Because God has significantly lowered his bar, many have been going to Heaven despite what they may have assumed to have been Hell-bent sins. And many of these sneak over the line to sample Hell’s well-advertised delights. The new coyotes are the defrocked and humiliated homosexual priests who feel betrayed by their Church and who, if they were to die now, would be above God’s current lowered bar. Satan’s staff is divided. Half say let the illegals stay … they do no harm and they bring some diversity. The other half is again divided into two camps. One wants to round them up and deport them back to Heaven immediately because they place a strain on Hell’s

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16 resources and because they don’t fit in culturally – their namby-pamby crimes certainly don’t comport with the level of evil expected by Satan. The other side agrees that they should be sent back, but lobbies for a permit system that would allow limited term visits. All are united, however, in their insistence that Satan demand that God return his entrance criteria to pre-war standards. At the end of the six months, Ted Bundy disappears from the 50 yard line in the Superdome, just as he said he would, and the world no longer doubts. Churches are burned and atheists are lynched; institutions crumble under the onslaught and the earth is in turmoil. Metaphorically, all Hell breaks loose and Chaos threatens.

Chronos, First God of the Creation, has brought order out of Chaos once, and he isn’t about to do it again. “Enough!” he thunders, and Mt. St. Helens erupts. Chronos calls for a convocation of the Gods to decide what to do with a world out of control, and the Pantheon is packed. Kunitokotatchi and his female consort, Izanami, and Pan-Gu, Ymir, Odin, and Amon-Re are there, as are Tepeu and Gucumatz, Vishnu and Shiva, and the Brahma Shampati. The Olympian Gods, Zeus and Hera and their children, have come even though they are wary of Prometheus and Atlas and the other Titans whom the Olympians had ousted in a classic hostile takeover in an earlier age. Even Zoroaster and other Gods who no longer have worshipers are there – all of the Gods of the Creation are assembled, and they are dismayed.

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17 But they are not of one mind. The Eastern deities, amused by the dissention in the western world, argue laissez faire – hands off. They point out that these people have made their own beds and now they must sleep in them. Kunitokotatchi, Izanami, Pan-Gu, Vishnu, Shiva and the Brahma Shampati vote for non-interference. Their believers will pick up the pieces when it is all over. The Titans, the Olympians, the Nordics and the Teutonic Gods insist that Chronos must do something – they fear that their efforts to promote western civilization and spread it to less enlightened parts of the world will come to naught. They vote for intercession. The Native American, Egyptian and Mesopotamian Gods abstain. They don’t have a dog in this fight and would just as soon go home. Prometheus, who gave men fire and civilization, and was punished for it, pleads the case for the interventionists, and eventually they prevail. One by one the others come to his side, and at the end they agree it must be unanimous. The Brahma and Athena, known for their wisdom, draft a position paper and Chronos is assigned the task of delivering the verdict of the Gods. God and Allah, Satan and Iblis sit at the rear of the grand hall, fully aware of the seriousness of these proceedings and sternly admonished that they are not to speak unless spoken to. Charon the Boatman and Lord Pluto stand guard – they know what the netherworld should be. Around them the mists of Chaos swirl and roil, tinted by the flashes of ultra-violet and infra-red that illuminate Chronos’ ire. “Look what you have done!” he roars, and a hurricane lashes the Gulf Coast. Chronos aims his finger in turn at each of the four at the rear of the chamber, and they can almost feel the red laser dots on their foreheads.

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18 “We – all of us here - created the world; We designed the physical laws that govern its operation; We populated it with plants and animals; and We brought forth man and watched over him and guided him. And when We were weary of holding Chaos at bay, and when We were ready to retire to a more peaceful realm, and when We deemed you capable and fit, We turned it over to you. We gave you The Plan, and We even let you take credit for the Creation and The Plan. But look what you have done!” Chronos’ rage triggers a series of small earthquakes along the Pacific subduction zone. “Enough! The Plan is premised upon reward and punishment, and punishment is a word that carries its own definition.” Chronos pauses to acknowledge the affirmitory nods from the other Gods seated around him. “We will have no more of your obscene games over men’s souls. Satan and Iblis … you will immediately return your domains to their proper punitive status and you will immediately cease all assertions to the contrary. As punishment for your transgressions against The Plan, you shall not set foot on earth or in any way meddle in human affairs for 1000 years.” Iblis stands and protests. After all, he hasn’t taken any part in Satan’s stupid scheme. “Silence!” thunders Chronos, and the lights go out in Karachi. “You started this mess with your nonsense about virgins. There shall be no more virgins in Paradise … or in Hell!” Iblis retreats, humbled. Chronos turns to Allah. “You shall make it abundantly clear to all your adherents that there are no virgins in your Paradise, and you will warn them against evil acts in your name. We do not care how you do that. Just do it!”

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19 God is the next to suffer the wrath of Chronos: “We are especially displeased with you. We expected your self-professed benevolence to improve things on earth, but We watch in dismay while you and your apologists excuse every evil with that indefensible philosophical fiction men call ‘free will’. You have a choice: Either you will exercise your purported benevolence to aid mankind, or you will make it abundantly clear to your adherents that you cannot and will not intervene. The current ambiguity is confusing to mankind and unacceptable to Us. Chronos shuffles his notes and clears his throat – which dislodges a glacier in Greenland – and continues: “And whichever option you select, you will immediately reexamine your criteria for entrance to Heaven. All of the best ethicists in human history would appear to be available to your realm and should be enlisted to address the issue. You may begin with Our disgust at the notion that unbaptized babies belong in Hell or that anyone should be punished for worshiping either of you in the wrong way. Do you understand us?” God and Allah nod, but with little enthusiasm. “Now, go back to your realms, do Our bidding and do not stray from The Plan. And be warned …We placed you on your thrones, and we can just as easily remove you.”

Once back in Hell Satan is so angry at his humiliation in front of God that he takes it out on his Witnesses, and shows them no mercy. Francis Frederick Fellwell finds that Hell is indeed worse than the Arizona Correctional Facility at Eyman. Ahmed al-Kaboom

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20 is really annoyed when they take away his virgins – he had only used 57 by that time – but that’s his least affliction as the heat comes back on. It has yet to be determined which option God will select; and Iblis is still trying to figure out what to do with all those virgins he has left over.

THE END

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