Damned Fiction

by David Kempf

At the same time, the Jinn were pathetic. They were merely clones of Arioch. He had cloned himself by using fire magic for the lesser worlds. Earth was one of the lesser worlds. His clones worked in ways that resembled a pack of wolves. They were drones and dullards; especially for those who dwelt in the spirit world and in the world of myth created by men.

  “Why do mortals pay money for things such as this?” asked the Jinn king, interrupting Satan’s reverie.

  “Eh? I’m not sure.”

  “All of this shit, this terrible shit, evil, murder, a bleak house of the dead and damned like this, is all attributed to you, you know. Horror movies and especially horror books are all blamed on you and your supposed awesome dark power. No one knows anything about the Jinn these days.”

  “Sorry if I get better press than you do,” Satan said with a grin. “But I’m not responsible for dark fiction or man’s long history of books that were burned. They sent their greatest literature to their literal version of Hell. There was so much greatness in man that was never recognized because those with power were not lucid enough to understand great art.”

  “Why are we here then, in this haunted house of the imagination?” Arioch asked.

  “Oh, lighten up. It’s fun. There’s the irony of it, right, shadows and phantoms.”

  “It’s pretty gaudy.”

  Satan repressed a grin of satisfaction. The upper hand was his. He knew that the Jinn were destined to become no more than a memory. They would become a Wikipedia entry for those researching obscure gods. All creatures and spirits of the imagination could do no real harm. It was the deplorable hearts of men that burned with lust and hate that enabled them to create an excuse, to nurture true evils of the flesh. There were no Illuminati behind the scenes. Men were geniuses and pitiful fools. Some were good and some were evil.

  The price of being center stage, though, was to lose a friend who went back almost literally to the damned beginning of time. Satan felt a slight twinge of regret at the thought. He’d probably even miss Arioch.

  “Oh, gods,” said Arioch, as a glimmer of the truth suddenly dawned on him.

  “What?” Satan asked.

  “The Jinn are going to become no more than a myth. A legend.”

  “Yes.” Despite the fact that he was winning, Satan could not help but worry that the whole plan, the entire agreement, could be ruined. The Devil was neither a fool nor a genius. He hated the Jinn because God was so lenient on them. They damned, they inspired murder most foul but they never paid the price that the Prince of Darkness did. The Jinn were remarkable but not unique. They were more like sheep than any men who worshiped his worst enemy, Christ.

  Burned books?

  Burned souls?

  No.

  That wasn’t at all fair to the Christian faith or to the heart of the true message of Jesus.

  Yes, religious fanatics cloaked themselves in many faiths and ideologies and censored art and destroyed the lives of good people. It was all human nature.

  The Devil was always the ultimate censor.

  He pretended that pornography and violence were the only forms of free speech and high art.

  The Devil had convinced men that he did not exist. It gave him deep satisfaction.

  “They come here to see me,” Satan said, “even the ones who don’t believe in me.”

  The Jinn king nodded.

  That very moment kicked open a dark door of irony. The two of them realized time was passing in the fake graveyard.

  A beefy young man costumed in a red suit with plastic black horns and the required pitchfork walked by them. “I am Satan!” he exclaimed in a threatening tone.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said the Devil. Arioch snickered.

  “You don’t believe me, mortal?”

  Arioch murmured, “‘Mortal,’ that’s rich.”

  Satan ignored him. “Sorry, no.”

  The youth shook his pitchfork menacingly. “I’ll take your soul…”

  Satan scowled. This dumb-ass kid was dressed up in a stupid, mocking way that would have insulted him into an eternity of rage, if it wasn’t part of his plan already.

  “Is this really what you think the Devil would look like?” he asked the actor.

  “Well, yes, I guess… if he did exist, he’d be dressed sort of like this.”

  “Oh, you don’t think you look the part exactly?” Satan asked. Damn, the kid couldn’t even stay in character!

  “No, man, I’m not an idiot. The real deal would look like a comic book superhero with red dinosaur skin. The horns would look like a bull’s, but overall the real Devil would probably resemble me.”

  “I see,” Satan said impatiently.

  Arioch snickered again. He was also growing impatient. If the Jinn were going to soon become a thing of the past, he didn’t appreciate Satan showing off. Even so, Arioch fully realized he was powerless to prevent it.

  “Look, guys, can I go now? I’ve got people to scare.”

  “Oh, do you?”

  “Yes," the young man answered. “I mean, y’know, I’m on the job.” He tried to step away but couldn’t. “What the fuck?” He tried to lift his feet but they seemed glued to the floor.

  “This is not part of the agreement,” the Jinn king said to Satan.

  “I think it should be.”

  Arioch sighed. “Fine; you’ll do what you want anyway…”

  “If I didn’t listen to the one who created all worlds, I won’t listen to you or this pimple faced geek dressed like a fool…”

  “Hey, fuck you!” exclaimed the young man.

  “Horns, a tail and a pitchfork… Séance Manor is not very inventive.”

  “Listen, asshole…” Suddenly the struggling youth found he could walk again. He gawked at the two supernatural visitors. “What the hell?”

  “It would be better for you not to know the truth, young man.”

  The actor tried to walk away but again Satan used his will, and he instead walked backwards. He looked against his will into the eyes of the strange teenage boy. “Oh, holy fuck,” the actor breathed.

  Satan nodded. “That’s right. You’re in trouble. No one here can see us or hear us right now. I want to show you something truly horrible.”

  The boy could not speak.

  Arioch folded his arms. “Why don’t you give it a rest?”

  “There are some things worse than poorly worded wishes, old friend.” To the teenage actor, he said, “Look into my eyes and see the truth.”

  He sneered as he rummaged through the boy’s thoughts. “Listen to this, Arioch,” he said. “Our little devil, here, wants to call God’s name.” To the actor, he said, “Well, let me tell you this, sonny. God is unavailable, just like He is to parents of five-year-olds who die of cancer.” Satan let images flow into the boy’s brain. “See? Ah, you’re Jewish. Even better. God let plenty of you ‘chosen people’ get gassed and burned in the German death camps. Look! Oh, I could go on and on!”

  “Please,” the boy whimpered, “I don’t want to see any more.”

  “What is so terrible that I’m showing you? It’s history, you little fuck. Say it out loud and I may stop.”

  The boy swallowed hard. “Me, I hate me. I’m a coward.”

  “You aspire to be a coward. You’re so much less!”

  The boy quivered. His mouth worked but no sound came out.

  Satan curled his lip. “Oh, you want to cry. You want to scream. But you can’t.”

  Again the young actor struggled to make a noise.

  “All right, go ahead. What do you have to say about yourself?” the Lord of Fire asked.

  “I’m… pathetic.”

  “Oh?” Satan stared hard at him. “I’m waiting.”

  “No, I… aspire… to being pathetic.”

  “Now you are beginning to understand.”

  “Yes,” answered the terrified mortal.

  “Say the words and mean them and I will let you be as long as you live in the flesh.”


  Arioch rolled his eyes. It was almost unbelievable how the Devil got human souls. He’d convinced the race of humans that he did not exist. Then he slowly moved in for the kill by making them feel like insecure cowards. This was the trap he set for the human race and Arioch had to admit that it worked rather well.

  “Say the words now, I grow impatient with you,” Satan growled, a near-subsonic rumble than made flakes of stone fall from nearby tombstones. “If I change my mind, I can torture you with memories so bad of your childhood, family, rejections from girls, embarrassing moments, the death of loved ones…”

  “I’ll be damned!” the boy exclaimed. “I aspire to being pathetic!”

  “Do you really mean those words, young sir?”

  “Yes,” said the boy, finally able to weep.

  “Great. Then off you go, see you in, let’s see—sixty-eight years. Congratulations.”

  “What?” the young actor asked the Devil.

  “I mean you’re already dressed for the part.”

  The young man, having forgotten the confrontation, walked briskly away into the next horror filled scene of Séance Manor.

  Arioch snorted. “That kid was easy, beneath your efforts.” They resumed their stroll through the graveyard.

  “You should talk. Your stupid clones need to read horror fiction to understand humanity and damnation.”

  “You think, Old Scratch?”

  “‘Old Scratch’? Please! It sounds like the title of a bad short story.”

  “You always did have a problem with writers, didn’t you,” Arioch observed, grinning.

  Satan spat. The spittle sputtered on the ground before cooling. “Writers are always trouble,” he said. “You know that. If men were not such fools in need of storytellers, you Jinn would never have understood them at all.”

  “What? Where did you get that idea? Let’s face it, there is much pride that will fall along with the Jinn here at good old Séance Manor tonight.”

  “Oh yes,” Satan answered.

  “You smelled blood in the water, didn’t you?” Arioch asked the Devil.

  Satan smiled. “Certainly.”

  “Christopher Wisdom?”

  “He showed that even a stupid mortal kid could get you, that the Jinn were weak.”

  Arioch scoffed. “You could have destroyed us eons ago.”

  “Us? Don’t you mean you?” Satan asked.

  “The drones….”

  “Yes, them,” Satan said.

  “That’s why we refer to ourselves in the plural.”

  “You know, Arioch, after tonight, you won’t even be referring to yourself in the singular.”

  “Yes, I know that!” Arioch shouted at his tormentor.

  Zombies lurked nearby as they walked in the graveyard, waiting patiently to jump out and scare them. Arioch, having lost patience with the fakery, allowed a slight bit of his reality to infuse his manifestation.

  One glance from the costumed zombies was all it took. They fled from the pair.

  “Amazing,” Arioch said, with a grin. “They looked at me and realized this was not the right plastic graveyard for them to be hanging out in. A wise choice, don’t you think?”

  “A very wise choice indeed… Wisdom must be their middle name.”

  “The one whose last name is Wisdom made you confident enough to swallow your evil pride, even if for a moment. Are we right?”

  “You are, indeed.”

  Arioch dialed his manifestation back. Customers—or victims, depending on one’s point of view—walked by the two teenage geeks, saw that there was nothing to be frightened of and walked briskly to the next live scene of terror.

  “If they only knew,” said Arioch.

  “Some do,” Satan said.

  “Those are the ones who used to get burned at the stake.”

  “I am more than aware of that,” said the Devil.

  “Well, yeah, of course, you are the Lord of the Fire.”

  “I will rule over the fire when the Jinn fade into obscurity for all eternity.”

  “I suppose you will,” Arioch answered with a sigh.

  “We open up dangerous doors of chaos tonight, old friend.”

  More victims ran through Séance Manor, quickly leaving the graveyard. They were young kids, easily scared.

  “How do you intend to do it?” Arioch asked.

  “Well, I might as well give you a hint so your swan song has some meaning.”

  “Old Scratch, you’re the best.”

  Satan clenched his fists so tightly that sparks dribbled out between his talons. “I told you,” he ground out, “I fucking hate that silly nickname!”

  “Sorry. We don’t even know where it came from,” Arioch added thoughtfully.

  “It has to do with writers of books.”

  “Hmmm. The Jinn called them scribes.”

  “The Jinn are fucking stupid!” exclaimed Satan.

  “You mean the drones, right?” Arioch asked.

  “Certainly I do, Arioch.”

  “I thought as much.”

  “The masters…”

  “The Jinn were the masters of all men, although they were not aware of it.”

  “They don’t think I exist,” Satan said in a low voice.

  “Then they are fools. But to be honest, you did hide for a while,” Arioch said.

  Satan grunted. “When I come out of hiding, I will rule over them and bend them to my will.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “How else?” Satan replied. “By writing a bestselling book.”

  The Jinn smiled at this. “We’ve known for centuries that there is a great power in the written word. It was how our drones learned about human nature. That is, the darker side of the human mind and soul. We can’t read minds but we can read wishes.”

  “Very few have escaped me,” said Satan.

  “We’re well aware of that,” Arioch said.

  “Not all men are fools,” said the Devil. “Henry David Wells, for example.”

  “Yes, a fool who got miraculously lucky,” said Arioch.

  “He escaped due to someone else’s wish.”

  “Yes, Christopher’s one wish. We remember. We were so busy tinkering in other worlds that we never dreamed we could be cheated in this one.”

  “This one will be your grave,” Satan said.

  They both had to laugh. The setting was perfect. Plastic graves and coffins with a cheap painted background giving the “illusion” of depth to it.

  “Yes and so it shall be,” Arioch said, almost impatiently.

  “We both damn men…”

  “Yes and we’re pretty damn good at it,” Arioch said.

  Satan chuckled. “Fear, men are surely fearful.”

  “Yes, especially of themselves.”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  Satan pointed to the plastic graves.

  “Oh, death,” said Arioch. “I see.”

  “Do you?” asked the Devil. “I beg to differ. I believe you fear the grave even more than men do.”

  “Do you?” Arioch asked bitterly.

  The devil only grinned.

  “I am not mortal,” Arioch said.

  “No, old friend, but you will be.”

  “No, I will be a dead god. All gods die when they cease to be worshipped and are no longer remembered. What faces me is oblivion, not the grave.”

  “Yes.”

  Arioch sighed. “Must we argue during our final moments?”

  “No, we shouldn’t,” Satan answered.

  “You delight in tormenting us,” Arioch said.

  Satan laughed. “Well, of course! Arioch, my friend, I delight in tormenting all living things!”

  “You’ve been frozen in time for so long, we suppose we have forgotten what your true nature is,” Arioch said. “You are, after all, the Devil.”

  “Yes.” Satan sighed. “I am a laughing matter, a joke, really, until the burning gates of Hell are open and men see me
for what I truly am.”

  “Burning gates of Hell?” Arioch asked.

  “You know what I mean,” Satan answered. “Listen, let me tell you something. The inner darkness of men’s hearts and the power of the written word can’t not be overstated. Writers are dangerous. They open too many forbidden doors. They flatter themselves and hate themselves at the same time. It’s a joint venture from Hell itself. How they function, writers, in polite society is a dark miracle within itself.”

  “They live off their constant readers the way vampires live off the blood of the living. There is no jurisdiction for them. They think they own the whole world, the arrogant typing bastards.”

  Arioch opened his mouth to speak but Satan cut him off with a sharp gesture. “It isn’t the sadistic bloodthirsty serial killers of history’s dark hall of fame that lights my fire. It isn’t the bloodthirsty evil genocidal maniacs, the dictators that really made the wishes you Jinn need. No, you and I are much more simple creatures than that. The cost of souls is bargain basement, not supreme luxury with all the perks of being a fascist elitist. Not at all. The word is out among the spirits who remain hidden and serious about eternal damnation.”

  “We’re starting to see what you mean,” Arioch said. “The darkness of men. Hearts of darkness, if you will; murder, rape, genocide… They are all parts of the human condition but it’s the soul, the inhuman condition, that’s of interest to the Jinn and you, the Lord of the Fire.”

  “Precisely my point.” Satan said. “Ordinary men can do extraordinarily evil things. They needn’t bow before some evil Satanic star or spill their own blood in some crazy fucking bizarre ritual, looking for inspiration. That isn’t possible for those who are squeamish about seeing their own blood but orgasmic about seeing the blood of others.”

  The others…

  Satan knew he would have to take on the former clients (although they were certainly not aware that they were clients) of the Jinn. The Jinn were right about the certain types of fools who would make bold and dark wishes that would condemn them to their own damnation and ultimate extinction. Earth would all go up in smoke; the Devil knew it and so did the Jinn. Humanity was a bad joke, a fucking farce. The ones who ruled them—presidents, dictators, kings­—they all revealed that men were fools. Politicians alone provided sufficient proof that men were stupid, foolish in both body and soul.