A brief discourse with the God of Death.

Lucifer explains the basic ins and outs of the universe to a passing mortal.

The last thing that went through Alex's head was an 11mm bullet. He felt no pain from this, but the sensation of his spritual being tearing itself away from his physical body like a butterfly from a pupae was, as he would later describe it, not entirely pleasant. As he rematerialised into, albeit, a slightly more ephemeral version of his human form, he took stock of his surroundings. He was in a room panelled with mahogany, with a generous fireplace and two large armchairs, the very image of a perfect English stately home. The only thing missing was the hunting trophies.
 "Yes" came a voice in an almost perfect RP accent. Something was not quite right here. "I never had a chance to go hunting, I must say i've never really understood it as a sport." Alex's mind was furiously trying to work out where he was, why he was there and how he got there, although how and why can sometimes be construed as the same-
 "It is quite funny, however, when we shrink the hunters to the size of a mouse and allow a fox to chase them while repeatedly insisting the humans enjoy it."
 "wait, what?" Alex floundered.
 "you're dead, Alex," replied the source of the voice, a rather tall, handsome man, dressed in a plain black and white suit.
 "I'm in heaven?"
The man laughed and clicked his fingers. A glass of scotch appeared in his hand."Guess again, Alex."
 "so this is, you must be.." Alex stammered.
 "Satan? Lucifer? Hades? Mot? I have many names, not all of them nice," replied the man.
 "So where's the trident and the burning and the manic laughter?" enquired Alex. The ice in Satan's glass tinkling mingled with his laughter as he replied, "yeah, physical embodiment of evil and all that, it's not my fault that you humans fear death so much that anyone who has anything to do with it gets labelled as evil."
 "Well," Alex replied, "if i'm honest, I thought death would be the end of it. But I guess I was wrong, or at least, empirical evidence would suggest so anyhow. I don't remember dropping any acid recently, and this doesn't feel like a dream. So, if you are indeed real, that means the stories about you must have some element of truth to them."
 "Well... most of them, yes." Satan made a sweeping gesture with the hand holding his scotch, then raised it to his lips."
 "So you're like, a complete b*****d aren't you, I mean, no offence but some of that stuff you did in the bible was a tad erm, bastardly, for want of a better word."
 "What stuff?"
 "You know, the book of Job and all that..."
 "oh, that whole business with Job? Blown out of proportion really. Everyone makes out like it was my fault, like 'hey lets blame it on Satan, he's the physical embodiment of evil or something right?" Really, it was just Yaweh being a dick, tormenting Job like that for a laugh. When El saw what he was doing, Yaweh just blamed it on me, saying I tricked him into it. Thats how I landed this job right here."
 "Sooo, when does my eternal torment start?"
 Satan took another sip from his glass, which to Alex's irritation remained at exactly the same level. "It's not that simple," Satan chuckled "you'll see."
 "So i'm not here to be punished then?"
 "No, well, yes, but just torturing you forever would be horrendously impractical and ultimately pointless."
 "Why so?"
 "You don't know when to shut up, do you" He cleared his throat, more of a conversational device than anything else, mucus lodged in the throat tending not to be much of a problem when you are a transdimensional superbeing, and continued. "you won't undergo punishment per se, but you will be forced to look upon all the wrong you have done, and you will learn from it, like a spiritual rehab." He paused. "It all depends on what you've done, how much of a b*****d you are et cetera et cetera."
 Alex thought for a moment and asked, "but what about phsycopaths and sociopaths and the like, how can they possibly learn from their mistakes?"
 Satan grit his immaculate teeth and swayed his head uncertainly from side to side like a tennis fan. "Yeah, they're a bit of a problem, accidents of creation as it were. You see, humans weren't designed by us gods, we were messing about with some black holes and the like, when Baal noticed that life had arisen in your particular solar system. We observed until you humans evolved. We decided under general consensus that we had to do something about it, so we, I say we I really mean El, gave you the gift of the soul. This also meant we had to figure out what to do with said souls once you had died, incredible short lived as you are. Or were. Anyway, thats my responsibility."
 "You didn't answer the question."
 "Ah yes," the God of Death adjusted his tie, "phsycopaths. Well usually in the extreme cases we just terminate the soul. Same goes for dead babies. However we occasionally make an exception. We have a whole planet for them actually, hidden a couple of galaxies away from yours. Usually they get so bored they beg to stop existing."
 "Okay, so there is a hell, there must be a heaven as well right?"
 "Yes, once you have passed through hell first, we've never had a human go straight to heaven, there's always something to learn."
 "So everyone goes through hell and then we what, meet God in heaven or something?"
 "Well, I assume the "God" you are referring to is Yahweh, he was always the most involved with you humans."
 Alex pondered this for a moment, and thought out loud. "Bloody hell, so all this s**t was real after all."
 "All what s**t? Forgive me, assuming human form severely limits my intelligence. Theres only so many thoughts you can cram into 100 billion neurons. Anyway, no, you won't meet Yahweh, we imprisoned him in his own little universe, to stop him destroying bloody everything and contantly impeding your progress. We had to send Quadeshtu, god of love, in human form down there to sort things out. He tried to teach them about compassion and loving thy neighbour"
 "That turned out well," Alex remarked. Satan laughed once more.
 "Well, I cant say I blame you guys for it, after all, Yahweh set a very poor standard as far as courtesy was concerned. He was very keen on destroying all who opposed him. Have you read much of the old testament?"
 "Yes," sighed Alex.
 "Well, that was supposed to be the good stuff he did."
 






Will finish the ending shortly, just thought i'd put up what i've got so far.

Author's Note

I know my grammar regarding dialouge is poor, please correct me if you see a problem there That is if anyone ever actually reads this...