Page 1 of Not Today, Satan
PART ONE: FIRE
Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of Power divine,
Supremest Wisdom, and primeval Love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.
-Dante’sInferno, Canto III
I.
I can tell you what happens when your life goes to hell.
When you’ve crossed a line you can’t come back from.
You’re scared. You’re confused.
And if you’re standing in front of me, your life hasliterallygone to Hell.
Still, I think for the fiftieth time since starting my shift in the Welcome Hall six hours ago,that doesn’t give anyone the right to be an asshole to me.
Take the dead douchenozzle standing here now, bashing his fists into the top of my desk, unsympathetic to the fact he’s giving me a migraine.
“I’m not dead! Stop saying that!” He bends over the table, so close that the acrid stench of alcohol on his breath smothers me.
I wipe a smattering of his spittle off my cheek with the back of my hand and resist the urge to wipe it back onto his face. That’d require touching him, and the dampness of his saliva on me is enough to trigger my gag reflex.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I say flatly. “You’re dead. You died in a car crash.”
“Impossible.” He swats away my statement with a wave of his hand. “I’ve never been in an accident.”
I narrow my eyes at his blatant lie.
One thing about humans is that you can’t trust them. Everyone tries to lie their way out of here. What they never understand is that I have no say in their final accommodations. That’s all my father.
I flip the folder so he can see it. “This says you were drinking.”
“I had one or two,” he sputters. “But I’m a good driver, even after a glass of wine.”
I fix my gaze on the stone ceiling and stifle a sigh.
This pointless after-school job was Father’s idea. He thought it’d help me understand what he does. He said it would build character. I wonder if annoyance and boredom are the character traits he’d had in mind.
“You actually had six glasses of wine.” I hold up his file, heavy with the weight of his many sins. “Then you crashed into a tree after almost running over an old lady.”
“But Ididn’thit her. I swerved at the last minute.”
