Satan Loves You

by Grady Hendrix

  “Keep...doodling...” Nero said.

  “That was the three times the Devil abused me,” Frita Babbit said. “Satan’s pitchfork wiener ruined my life. Later, I wanted to get married but every time I told one of my fiancés about the abuse they always ran away. Also, I can’t use toilets. I’m too traumatized. I use plastic bags from the grocery store. I wanted to go to college and study Comparative Literature and then go to graduate school and get a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and really give something back to the world, you know? But I can’t. All that abuse gave me ADD and ADHD and so I can’t study. And that’s how Satan ruined my life. But I want everyone here to know that while I was victimized, I am not a victim. I am a strong woman. They can’t hold me down. I am proud, and beautiful and empowered and no one can stop me but myself. And I won’t stop me because the only limits I choose to acknowledge are no limits. I reach high, for there are stars lying hidden within my soul.”

  There was a quiet moment, punctuated only by the sound of muffled sobs from the visibly moved spectators.

  “No further questions, your honor,” Eddie Horton said, and sat down.

  “Your witness,” Judge Gold said to Nero.

  Nero stood and straightened his toga. He had been stress-eating Cheetos, and there were little orange smudges all over his wrinkled toga, which had turned from white to a sort of off-white grayish gray.

  Nero walked to the front of the courtroom and paused dramatically. Then he turned to Frita Babbit.

  “Would you state your name and spell your last name for the record, please?”

  Frita Babbit looked confused.

  “Frita B-a-b-b-i-t,” she said.

  “Ms. Babbit, that’s quite a tale you told.”

  “It’s not a tale, it’s a true.”

  “That’s for the judge to decide,” Nero said.

  “I think it’s true, too,” Judge Gold said.

  “Oh. Well. All right, so it’s a true tale,” Nero said, adjusting. “Now, Ms. Babbit, you said something that interested me very much. Would you mind if we went back to what you said about this so-called ‘Satanic’ church?”

  “It was a Satanic church,” she said.

  “So you say, so you say,” Nero said.

  “He sounds exactly like someone in a John Grisham novel,” Satan thought to himself.

  “You claimed that this church was called the Knights in Satan’s Service, correct?”

  “Yes,” Frita said.

  “And access to the Devil church of the Knights in Satan’s Service was via the toilet in your upstairs hall, correct?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Indulge me, please. What kind of toilet was it? Toto or American Standard?”

  “American Standard,” she said.

  “Interesting, interesting...” Nero said. “And did you require one flush or two to go down that toilet?”

  “One flush,” she said. “Sometimes two.”

  “So at night, your parents would put you in this American Standard toilet and would convey you to the Devil Church with ‘one flush, sometimes two’? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Ms. Babbit, are you asking me or telling me? Is that what happened?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said.

  “You don’t remember. You don’t remember if your parents sent you to the Devil Church every night to be impregnated and to kill babies with one flush or two flushes.”

  “Steady now, Nero,” Satan thought. “Don’t push too hard.”

  “I think it was one flush, but sometimes it was two.”

  “Well perhaps THIS will refresh your memory,” Satan said, and with a flourish two sheriff’s deputies rolled in a television cart. “You might be interested to know that the toilets in this building are American Standard toilets and last night I took the liberty of flushing myself down one of them. Perhaps you heard how many flushes it took? No? Roll the tape.”

  “But I – ” Frita Babbit began.

  “Roll the tape,” Nero called.

  The screen showed one of the public restrooms in the courthouse. Nero stood in one of the toilets. He bowed to the camera, and then he flushed once...twice...three times. Nothing happened. Four times. Five times. He was still standing there. A rustle spread through the courtroom.

  “Lights, please,” Nero said. “Your honor, I would like to consider this Exhibit D in this trial, unless the prosecution has any objection.”

  A shaken Eddie Horton stood up at the prosecution’s table.

  “I have no objection your honor, but this is highly irregular,” he said.

  “And so is this courtroom,” Nero crowed. “Ms. Babbit, I submit to you that I am the approximate size and shape of a very large baby and I could not flush myself down an American Standard toilet. I submit to you that it is impossible to flush a human being down a toilet with one flush, two flushes, three flushes or even TEN FLUSHES!”

  A buzz went through the courtroom.

  Satan resisted the urge to jump out of his seat and punch the air in celebration. This was as close to a touchdown as they could get. Nero hadn’t let him down.

  “Now I remember,” Frita Babbit said. “We had Toto toilets.”

  The buzzing in the courtroom turned off like a switch had been thrown.

  “Toto toilets?” Nero repeated.

  “All the abuse clouded my mind, and forced me to block things out. Of course, American Standard pipes are too small,” Frita Babbit said, smiling serenely. “But we had Toto toilets which, with their larger exhaust fittings and gentler U-bends, are exactly the right size for facilitating Satanic ritual abuse.”

  “I see,” Nero said.

  Satan felt defeated. But no, he’d trusted Nero so far. He wouldn’t give up on him now. This was, after all, the man who had allied himself with his own stepfather to rise to power at sixteen and then poisoned him and taken the title of emperor. He always had a trick up his sleeve.

  “If we could ask you to turn your attention to one of your previous statements,” Nero said. “You said that you were abused by the Knights in Satan’s Service, correct?”

  “Yes,” Frita Babbit said.

  “And they were led by a man you referred to as the Dungeon Master.”

  “Oh, these names are bringing it all back,” Frita shuddered.

  “Would you like to take a moment?” Nero asked, all supercilious concern.

  “No, I’m all right. I just have to keep telling myself to be brave and give voice to all the voiceless victims of Satanic ritual abuse out there.”

  “The leader of the Knights in Satan’s Service was the Dungeon Master?”

  “Yes, but Joe Biden was there, too.”

  “I haven’t forgotten Vice President Biden,” Nero said. “What kind of robes did he wear? Something vice presidential?”

  “No,” Frita said. “Joe Biden wore dark robes and a horned helmet, just like everyone else.”

  “Dark robes and a horned helmet,” Nero said. “And they chanted?”

  “Yes,” Frita said.

  “What did they chant?”

  “Oh, the usual chants. You know, ‘Hail Satan,’ and ‘Do Me Lucifer,’ and ‘Eat My Babies,’ that kind of thing.”

  “And their Devil Church was underground?”

  “Yes, it was in a system of tunnels that stretched beneath our entire town.”

  “Here in Nevada?” Nero asked.

  “Right,” she said. “Springfield, Nevada.”

  “I put it to you then, Ms. Babbit, that you are lying!”

  It was a masterful blow and Nero spoke it in masterful tones. He shouted it out. It split the air of the courtroom in two.

  Everyone gasped.

  “The Knights in Satan’s Service never wore long black robes and horned helmets but rather, short white robes and no helmets at all. Their chants were the reform Satanic church chants which would never include ‘Hail Satan’ or ‘Eat My Babies’ but instead were entire
ly in Latin. In addition, the leader of the Knights in Satan’s Service was not known as the Dungeon Master but as the Master of Mazes and Joe Biden was never a member.”

  The silence in the room was absolute. Satan felt his heart floating up out of his chest like a balloon. Like he had said to Gabriel, they had given him a chink and sometimes a chink was all he needed. At the prosecution’s table, Eddie Horton looked like a headache was clamping big steel bands around his skull and tightening.

  And then:

  “I remember,” Frita Babbit said. “I had suppressed the real details of what happened all my life, but now I remember. Thank you, Mr. Defense Lawyer. And thank you, Judge Cody Gold, for giving me this chance to recover my memory. I didn’t go underground for the rituals at the Devil Church with the Knights in Satan’s Service.”

  “What?” Nero said.

  “They took me away in a hot air balloon. Every night the Dungeon Master came to my bedroom window in a hot air balloon with a giant Pentagram and a goat’s head painted on the side and he took me away to the real church of the Knights in Satan’s Service one hundred miles away. I remember now. I remember!”

  “Your honor, this is outrageous!” Nero shouted.

  “It’s outrageous that we’ve helped this fine young victim of Satanic ritual abuse recover her suppressed memories?” Judge Gold roared. “I don’t find that outrageous at all, I find it powerful and moving.”

  “I’m whole again,” Frita Babbit shouted, turning her face up to the ceiling. “At long last, I’m whole again. I have my memories back!”

  The entire courtroom went bonkers. Everyone was so moved by their role in helping Frita Babbit recover her repressed memories that even the sheriff’s deputies were hugging each other and crying.

  “Your honor,” Nero shouted. “This is not appropriate behavior. This has become a kangaroo court.”

  “You’re out of order,” Judge Gold shouted back.

  “You’re out of order!” Nero yelled. “You’re out of order. He’s out of order. This whole trial is out of order.”

  Deputies grabbed the shouting Nero and dragged him backwards out the door of the courtroom. As they muscled him into the hall he yelled:

  “No further questions, your honor.”

  By the time he reached the exit from The Room, Michael was crawling on his hands and knees across the wet, steaming carpet. His lungs were seared and bleeding, there wasn’t an inch of his skin that wasn’t burned or bruised. Every pore of his body screamed in agony. Angels are ageless but Michael had aged in the time it had taken him to cross that benign-looking expanse of gray, corporate carpeting.

  He reached up and grabbed the handle of the door, pushed it open and dragged himself into a plain, white cinderblock corridor. At the end was a metal door.

  Michael started walking. The fact that the walls passed by at a normal rate of speed struck him with a bone-deep vertigo that threw him to his knees. He picked himself up and made it to the end of the hall. He knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” a voice called from inside.

  Michael pushed open the door and went inside to meet his Maker.

  Satan’s testimony was over quickly. He had dreaded getting up on the stand, but the plaintiff’s lawyers had made it clear that they weren’t going to cross-examine him. They said it would be “unholy” for them to even talk to someone as evil as Satan, and so Nero called him as a witness, and he sat in the box. He was surprised by how different the courtroom looked from up here. Judge Cody Gold dispensed with swearing Satan in, saying that he would not participate in blasphemy.

  “You have heard the arguments made against you,” Nero said. “And so I draw your attention to the plaintiff. Do you recognize this woman?”

  “No,” Satan said.

  “Look carefully,” Nero said. “After all, she’s accusing you of something that happened a long time ago.”

  “I’ve existed since before the dawn of time,” Satan said. “It’s not actually that long ago for me.”

  “You’re sure you don’t recognize her?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Did you molest this woman as she claims?” Nero asked.

  “Well, the Eighties were kind of a bad time for everyone,” Satan said. “But I didn’t molest her.”

  “Why should we believe that?” Nero asked.

  “I don’t do that kind of thing,” Satan said. “A lot of people claim to be Satanists and start up Satanic cults but I don’t associate with them.”

  “Never?”

  “Never.”

  “And why not?”

  “I don’t have much interest in mortals,” Satan said. “But I especially don’t have much interest in losers. And, generally, people in cults are losers.”

  “So you deny, unequivocally, that you molested Frita Babbit.”

  “Unequivocally,” Satan said.

  He and Nero had rehearsed this. Nero had walked him through it dozens of times until he knew the script backwards and forwards. But he was still nervous.

  “Is your penis shaped like a pitchfork?” Nero asked.

  This wasn’t in the script.

  Satan shook his head.

  “For the record?” Judge Cody Gold asked, leaning in.

  “My penis,” Satan said, through gritted teeth. “Is not shaped like a pitchfork.”

  “No further questions, your honor,” Nero said.

  It was time for closing arguments.

  Eddie Horton went first. He stood in front of the bench, and someone on his team pressed “Play” on a CD player and the soft sounds of “I Will Remember You,” by Sarah McLachlan began to play as Horton reviewed the facts of the case. And then he struck home.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, every day there are over two hundred recorded cases of Satanic Ritual Abuse. With close to one million estimated Satan worshippers in this country there is a good chance that Satan is causing your child to be ritually abused right this minute. I want you to look at these pictures.”

  He took a remote control out of his pocket and began to run through PowerPoint slides.

  “This is Elian Gonzalez, this is Frankie Muniz, this is Dakota Fanning. Wonderful, talented child actors that never would have given us such heartwarming performances if they had been killed and/or eaten by Satan worshippers.

  “You have been in this courtroom with Satan for over six days now. You have seen violence in the way he sits, you have seen the arrogance of his wardrobe, you have witnessed the sneering way he sometimes scratches the back of his neck. We have been in the presence of true evil and it has chilled my soul. I trust it has chilled yours, as well. Today you will be asked to go into the jury room and in private you will examine your consciences and decide on a verdict. I want to leave you with just one thought. When our Founding Fathers invented the justice system that we use today – the amazing justice system that lets us sue doctors for malpractice and pet store owners for selling us tiny dogs that turn out to be rats – when our Founding Fathers invented this system of law and order, did they do it because they loved Satan, or because they hated him? Think about it.”

  He paused dramatically.

  “Thank you.”

  No one applauded, but Satan had seen a few jury members nodding in silent agreement during the speech. He didn’t know how Nero could counter this but, then again, Nero was a Roman Emperor, and Roman Emperors are not to be underestimated. Nero stood, threw the end of his dingy toga over one arm with a masterful flourish and strode to the center of the courtroom. He stood silently for a moment, feeling the vibrations of the room, and then he began to speak.

  “Citizens of the jury,” he said. “ My heart bleeds for Frita Babbit. At an age when she should have been learning sacred songs and preparing for marriage, safe in the loving arms of her family, she was being robbed of her innocence. Who would do this to a child? Who would want to destroy a child’s soul? It is unthinkable.

  “What does that word mean: unthinkable? It means, ‘I don�
��t want to think about it.’ You don’t want to think about it. None of us want to think about it. And so we don’t. Instead, we look for someone to blame. Someone outside of ourselves. Someone we don’ t know. The outsider. The other. Often, that person is Satan.

  “And there he is. The Prince of Darkness. The Lord of Lies. Beelzebub. The Evil One. Sitting right here in this courtroom. God hated Satan, and he threw him out of Heaven for his sins of arrogance and pride. Satan tortures those we love in the afterlife. He imprisons their souls in Hell, his foul domain. He is the Corruptor. The Serpent. Surely, molesting children must be like eating popcorn for him.”

  Satan tried not to move. Anything he did, even something as innocent as scratching his nose, could be taken as an admission of guilt. Anything he did would be used against him in this court of law. Still, he did think Nero was laying it on a bit thick.

  “But, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, when you go into that room I want you to think about what you have heard here today in this courtroom. It is undoubtedly true that Frita Babbit was abused, perhaps terribly, and maybe even by sick individuals who used the name of Satan in their rituals. But this case is not about that. This case hinges on the allegation that Satan himself visited her three times, each time in the shape of a different animal, and each time with a penis shaped like a pitchfork. Satan has denied this. And that is the cornerstone of our defense.

  “Many of you think Satan is lying, but I call your attention to the reputation of my client. There have been many, many stories both written and told about Satan, and every one of them revolves around one simple fact: Satan keeps his word. In your Book of Job, he makes a bargain with God and honors it, even when he loses. In your folktales and in your songs by the Charlie Daniels Band, Satan is always defeated because he makes a bargain and sticks to its terms even when they are not to his advantage. These stories and songs are not written by people who like Satan, they are written by his enemies. But even his enemies admit that Satan keeps his word. So if you think that Satan is lying to you, ask yourself this: Charlie Daniels wrote about a Satan who kept his word. Is Charlie Daniels a liar?”

  Okay, Satan thought to himself, they were asking themselves questions now. This was better. He felt that subtle feeling that a door far, far away had opened, just a crack. Just a chink. But it was enough to give him hope. Satan knew better than anyone else that hope was dangerous, but he couldn’t help himself. It was growing in his heart.