Too wicked for...Hell!

by Richard Hennerley

  The first thing you need to know about God and The Devil was that they were not always daggers drawn at opposite ends of the spiritual spectrum, so to speak.

  Indeed, in the beginning there was the light, and there was God and there was The Devil. And God and The Devil were great friends and partners. Indeed there are some reckless demi-Gods in far, far away corners of the Universe (whose very distance and isolation, it seems to me, causes them to be reckless and over-confident) who gossip that God and The Devil were once lovers.

  Now that it is a supposition upon which I would not even think (or dare) to comment. What is indisputable, though, is that God and The Devil were friends and the basis, the cement, of that relationship was the world creation business. Together, God and The Devil would pass many a happy eon together planning and creating new worlds. World after world after world they made together. God would make the basic planet structure, the weather system, the geotectonics and the highest life-form and The Devil would do the rest: the plants, the animals, the insects, the microscopic life. Aware of God’s tendency towards ‘fire and forget’ creation, The Devil, a great believer in post-creation customer support, would then take meticulous care to make sure that each new world created was catalogued, observed and managed, taking the time to tweak and correct any small issues that might come up as the world developed. Thanks to God’s creative flair and The Devil’s impressive administrative and managerial talents the God-Devil period of world creation was extraordinarily fruitful and the Universe grew at a rate not since matched, with one successful world succeeding another and then another and then another and then…you get the idea. So much different to nowadays when God churns out a world and forgets He’s done it, leaving it at the mercy of the forces of entropy – hence the current state of chaos in the Universe, of which I’m sure you’re more than well aware of.

  All throughout this God-Devil period, The Devil was a delightful creature; warm, friendly, happy, enthusiastic and full of love: not a trace of the evil that was later to consume him. So, what went wrong?

  Well, truth be told, it was, as so often, God that made a mess of things.

  You remember earlier that I mentioned that God had the intention span of a bored teenager? Here’s an example – the incident that led to The Devil becoming The Devil as you know him today.

  So, making successful world after successful world wasn’t enough for God. It all became too formulaic for Him and He decided that He would try something new. In all previous worlds made by God and The Devil, the highest life form (as created by Him) operated on a spiritual level governed by one of the Universal Laws of the Universe – that being Love. Now, running a world on that kind of principle is, pretty much, a sure fire recipe for getting it right, But, oh no, that wasn’t enough for God, why should He be bound by some silly Universal Law? He was the Supreme Being, after all. Did I mention that God can be a tad arrogant…

  The result of God’s line of thinking was a plan for a new kind of planet – a planet where the highest life form (codenamed ‘humans’, a name that remains to this day) would have something that God would call ‘free will’. They would be ‘free’ to decide what was good and what was bad, who to love and who to hate, to be truthful or untruthful and their nature would not be based on the Universal Law of Love, rather upon whatever rushed in to fill the vacuum.

  The Devil, always wise, argued against this. He said it would be a disaster. That it would not work. That it was a recipe for pain and suffering and grief. That there was plenty of bad stuff out there, floating around looking for a home just such as the planet God proposed.

  But God, exhibiting now not the characteristics of a bored teenager but of a stuffy, middle-aged, middle class male, decided that He was right, everyone else was wrong and He would do what he wanted to do and if The Devil didn’t like it he could do one. And, after much heated discussion, The Devil went along with God’s plan. He recognised that God could be arrogant, spiteful but mostly he was (like us all) a prisoner of his nature and mostly he was good: his sins were sins of omission and frailty and incompetence, not of evil so if God said it would all be okay then he should probably accept that. And after so much time together, so many worlds created together, The Devil had come to love God deeply and found it hard to deny Him anything.

  And so a new planet, fully stocked with ‘humans’ came into existence. And what a disaster it all was. Humanity became prey to every poisonous wisp of depravity and evil floating round the Universe. And the Devil, with his micro-management, cataloguing and observation saw it all. For a hundred and twenty seven years he observed Planet Earth and every day he saw a new atrocity, a new depravity, every day a new crime committed by mankind against mankind or animals or the environment. And The Devil would feel the pain and he would weep. He tried to speak to God about it:

  “God, look what your ‘humans’ are doing – look at the things they do to my beautiful animals, outdone in evil only by the things they do to each other! You must take away this curse of free will or this new planet will become a ball of suppurating evil that will infect the Universe!”

  God was having none of it, truth be told he’d already moved on to the next thing and had completely forgotten about creating Planet Earth and the whole ‘free will’ thing ( a concept he, thankfully, used only once) and, anyway, he was the Supreme Being so what was The Devil talking about? Supreme Beings don’t make mistakes. Things became very tense between God and The Devil, The Devil depressed and outraged on a day by day basis by the horrors of God’s new planet and infuriated by God’s indifference to it all and refusal to engage. Eventually The Devil could bear his pain and frustration no longer and resolved to solve the problem himself. One day, whilst God was off doing Supreme Being type things, he hacked into the new planet’s Life Forms Database and accessed humanity’s DNA. His attention was to splice out those baleful chromosomes responsible for free will. Oh, if he had succeeded in the plan what a better place your world would be today! But – sadly for all concerned some particularly obsequious and nosey Archangel spotted what The Devil was up to and reported the matter to God.

  And God was furious!

  How dare anyone interfere with His creation!

  Who, exactly, is the Supreme Being around here!

  No-one, but no-one, challenges the Authority of God!

  And so The Devil’s gallant attempt to free humanity of the curse of free will failed. God and The Devil fought terribly. God was maddened with rage. Rather than argue more, rather than accept The Devil’s, frankly very coherent, assessment of the situation, rather than admit that He had made a mistake, God went big time Old Testament and yelled:

  “If you’re that bothered about that bloody planet you can bloody well go and live there – you’re bloody well banished!”

  The next thing The Devil knew he was there on that horrible mistake of a planet. Alone. Banished. Denied the love of God and all that he had ever known and cherished. His poor heart broke into a thousand pieces and he cried and cried for a precious and beautiful thing lost and never to be found again.

  For the next one hundred and forty three years, The Devil wandered the face of the planet of his banishment, a poor lost soul mourning his break with God, but despite his own pain he was still, at that stage, a creature filled with love and he would try and share it with humans whenever he met them. He was constantly rebuffed, cast out, laughed at and ridiculed. He became filled with despair and, eventually and to his horror, he noticed evil thoughts sneaking into his own mind. At first it was just one at a time, then two, then three, then a multitude until he knew that the evil of humanity was infecting him, too, that it was gnawing and eating away at everything good in his soul.

  Then there arrived the black day when the power of evil that had crept into him became too strong. Chancing upon a random and vulnerable person The Devil - in a fashion that is all too human - committed an unspeakable and vile atrocity against that person.

  What had he become? A monster. He
was corrupted. A threshold had been crossed. Deeply distressed, The Devil roared at the sky, unleashing a cry so loud that it shook mountains and of such bleakness that it killed babies in the womb. The Devil was ashamed of what he’d done, disgusted by what he’d become. In his shame, he wished to hide his face from God. So he began to dig into the ground beneath his feet. He dug and he dug, down and down. Down to the molten bowels of the planet. And there he would make his home.

  The Devil had hoped that burying himself so deep down would protect him from the evil of people. But it was not to be. Evil carried on infecting The Devil, taking over his soul and becoming to him as addictive as any powerful drug. He began to revel and delight in the power of evil and where once he had tried to spread Love he now spread hate and pain and suffering, seeking to always increase the Greater Sum of Misery in the Universe. And when an evil soul left a human body he would gather it to himself in his fiery home, Hell as he had christened it, both to draw strength from its evil and to punish it for its role in making him the wretched creature he had become. So, you see, the Devil is a creation not of himself but of God’s pettiness and humanity’s evil – but whilst drawn to that evil, he still seeks to punish it. Just as God is not entirely good, The Devil is not entirely bad.

  Part 3. Judgement.

  We return now to The Politician - still standing in front of God and The Devil, still fantasising about a glorious future of wickedness at The Devil’s side. But a Seed Of Doubt has crept in. God and The Devil are talking and suddenly everything is all too reminiscent of a courtroom back in Anywhere, leading to the feeling that another judgement is taking place:

  ‘It’s nice to see you again, Devil. You don’t get up here as much as you should…I must be honest, things were so much better organised when you were here, I often miss having you around…humph…mmm…you’re looking very dapper, by the way.’ Says God to The Devil, looking both regretful and embarrassed.

  ‘Thank you, God, for your sartorial compliment and your acceptance of the fact that you perhaps made a mistake in banishing me. But, no matter, we are where are – you made none of your creatures without purpose and it seems that my purpose now is the purpose of evil.’

  ‘Tell me then, Devil, why do you not want this person, this politician in Hell?’

  The Devil never got the chance to reply to God’s question for, upon hearing that question The Politician’s fears were confirmed. This was another judgement. One that could result in exclusion from Hell, from all that lovely pain, from all that lovely potential power! This could not go unchallenged:

  “Nooo, Devil! You need me! Don’t exile me from the pleasures of Hell, I can help you…that God chap…” at this point The Politician flapped a hand dismissively in God’s direction, causing him to raise his bushy, white eye-brows in surprise, “why, He’s yesterday’s news, you’re the real up and coming player in this, err, universe or whatever it is - but you need someone by your side to help you achieve your true potential, to take Hell up to the next level. You need someone by your side who understands evil, someone who knows the potential of wickedness, someone who truly loves power and is prepared to do anything to attain it. And that person is me! You and me, Devil, together we could sweep this bedsheet clad charlatan off His pearly throne and have dominion over Hell, Heaven and everything else! Just look at all the things I achieved when I was alive! Look how well I served my masters, The Greedy One Percent. I destroyed entire nations so that bankers and businesses could steal their resources. I financed murderous terrorist organisations and death squads so I could use them as an instrument of foreign policy. I took worldisation to new heights, sacking hundreds of thousands of workers in my own country so their jobs could be done in other countries by slaves working only for food and a roof over their heads. I bailed out the banks, created an economic system that funnelled money to the already wealthy and rewarded corporate failure – communism for the rich. I spent trillions on arms and paid for it by cutting social and welfare programs. I suborned the media, turning journalists into prostitute peddlers of propaganda. I sent idealistic and brave young men and women to fight and die in faraway lands for no reason other than to make me and my rich friends even richer. I turned democracy into a farce where whoever wins an election, the rich will still call the shots and decide the policies. I turned a blind eye to tax evasion and corporate crime and the degradation of the environment. I supped with dictators, rapists, fraudsters and murderers. I started countless wars the world over. I destroyed entire civilisations, annihilated entire peoples. I became someone of great power and wealth and that power and wealth was built on a mountain of a million corpses and I have no regrets, I would gladly do it all again.” And with a final rhetorical bow, The Politician finished, “and that, Devil, is why you need me.”

  “Hah!” said God, “well, this one’s certainly a bad one…there’s no doubting that. But surely, Hell is exactly the place for one such as this…why, I mean, one such as this that attacks even me, The Creator…hah! Burn in Hell, I say, burn in Hell!”

  The Devil looked at God in a manner somewhere between affection and irritation and replied, “Oh my dear, sweet, God. All these millennia and you’ve still not learned, have you? Still, you were never the sharpest tool in the box, bless you. Don’t you understand, evil trapped me because of what you did to me, it turned me into the thing I am and I cannot resist it. But the thing of beauty you made when you placed a piece of yourself in me is not entirely gone and I respect that aspect of myself and I keep it alive by seeking to punish evil as much as I seek to propagate it. That is the purpose of Hell. Punishment. Punishment as a tribute to that small part of me that is still good…a creature such as this,” The Devil nodded contemptuously towards The Politician, “does not belong in Hell. It’s not like me, at least I despise what I am. This politician is a different creature – a psychopath that is reflexively evil. It doesn’t feel pain or remorse, you heard it yourself - ‘my power and wealth was built on a mountain of a million corpses and I have no regrets, I would gladly do it all again’ – this…thing, this monstrosity loves misery, it is a greater form of evil, one which thrives in Hell. It is incapable of reform or change, it knows not love or understanding or care, it is unmoved by grace or beauty or goodness. It is a dark-eyed, soulless monster, consuming all it touches. It seeks power over others so it can satisfy its base and perverse lusts. It loves evil unconditionally and always will. Hell simply isn’t bad enough for a creature such as this politician.”

  “Hmm…yes, I see your point and I express regrets for past decisions regarding yourself that were perhaps hastily made but we are, as you said, where we are and not even I can overturn Universal Law…huh…I tried once and look how that ended up! Very well…your request to have the individual known as The Politician expelled from Hell is granted. Now, however, I must think of an alternative punishment.”

  God went quiet, observed by a pensive Devil and a despairing, fluttering politician, and then went all judgement of Solomon like and pronounced in a booming voice:

  “The Politician will be chained between two Archangels and forced to witness very act of cruelty, violence and despair that occurs on Planet Earth for all of eternity”.

  “What do you think of that one, eh, Devil?” said God, all pleased with himself.

  “Well…erm…God I kind of like the principle of it but, in your usual dear, sweet way, you’ve sort of missed the point again. Our troublesome politician would love to spend eternity witnessing pain. How about this…we keep the Archangels and chains, we keep the eternity but instead of witnessing every act of cruelty, violence and despair that occurs on Planet Earth, the politician witnesses every act of grace, beauty and goodness that occurs.”

  “Oh, yes, Devil, I must say, that’s a wonderfully demonic twist! Excellent, truly excellent!”

  Upon hearing this judgement and sentence The Politician experienced a sense of unreality – this could not be happening, could not be happening! And as God snapped his fin
gers and two muscular Archangels entered the room, already equipped with chains, The Politician collapsed to the floor screaming hysterically and begging for mercy.

  When The Politician was finally restrained and chained between the Archangels, The Devil approached, took a pair of sharp, silver scissors from a pocket in his dreadfully dapper waistcoat and snipped away The Politician’s eyelids, in order that not a single moment of grace, beauty and goodness would go unobserved.

  After The Politician was dragged away to serve his punishment, The Devil and God also left that bright, white celestial room of judgement, but not before sharing an embrace of sweet tenderness and regret that caused a tear to well up in the Eye of God.

  The Politician is now serving the sentence imposed by God and The Devil. That sentence is served every second of every day and will be served every second of every day from now until the twelfth of Never. So, the next time you hear the wind howling over the rooves of houses, through the trees or where ever, take note. For that is not the wind howling. It is The Politician howling in black despair upon witnessing yet another act of grace, beauty or goodness.

  Also by the same author and available to download now from Amazon

  I Really, Really Want It.

  AUTHORS NOTE: The events described in this book are true, exactly as told to me by an extraordinary celebrity agent before his fall from grace and imprisonment on fake, trumped up charges. I have changed only names and locations to protect the innocent - and the guilty.

  "Excellent writing. Fresh, engaging and pushing the boundaries. It's written by someone who has obviously worked in the celebrity industry he describes and provides a fascinating left-field insight into a glamorous but tawdry world." U.S. REVIEWS