Defining evil

pt 4 of stacy and elmer read part 3 first

Little stacy had been reading many books and Elmer the demon took no action to cure the childs voracious lust for knowledge in spite of the questions peppered at him constantly by the bright little girl.

" So God stopped talking to people after mo-mu ma... that Koran guy after he did not get the message right yet again for folks and demons are not evil they just seem that way because god was mad they rebeled against him, so who was closest to right? " she asked finishing breathlessly, showing a vague comprehension of the complex nature of the relationship between heaven and hell.

" Oddly enough the guy who I invited to read your favorite bedtime story "The adventures of Tom Sawyer" tonight." Elmer the Demon said as he snapped his fingers with a sound like stone cracking and transformed her outfit from the alice in wonderland blue and white dress that she adored to the pink Minnie Mouse footie pajamas she loved at bed time.

She petulantly pointed out he had not answered the question as she gave him a hug while being tucked in to await her guest reader forcing Elmer to pull a different Mark Twain book off the shelf and leaf through to a specific page which he held out with a scaly purple pebble grained finger underlining the part that held her answer.

"A God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell�"mouths mercy, and invented hell�"mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!"
�"Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, 1916

There was a knock at their door as Mr. Clemens had arrived as a favor to Elmer to read Stacys' bedtime story.

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

Oh boy, Samuel Clemens himself---now things are really getting interesting. I think you've got a brilliant idea here, and the whole concept is quite interesting. You know you use some very long sentences---right? It's not a drawback to understanding, but I think it would make for less laborious reading if you shortened them a bit. Just my two cents, you understand.