The demon knew his prisoners had escaped their sand trap when the hordes of doomed souls stopped their aimless wandering and all turned in one direction, like a massive herd of animals all driven to one central point. There were billions of them. Surely those meddlers now faced the ultimate hell. This was worse than if they had been damned themselves, it thought. To be overrun by the needs of a billion lost souls.
The sand pit had been a diversion. They thought they had escaped, but in reality they had gone from bad to worse. The sand pit was for its amusement, really. It was designed so they’d be able to dig out rather quickly. It would give them hope. Giving hope in the hopeless place was the most fun thing to do. The portal actually did say “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here,” but no one took the oath seriously. If they had, they would be better off. But in reality they had been given their chance and had not accepted it. So now they were consumed with false hope for things that were never going to change. They’d led their lives the wrong way, but somehow they thought that God would show up one day and say, “Ooops, I made a mistake about you, Jack the Ripper. You don’t belong down here at all. You’re a good man, just ridding the streets of those evil women. You need to be upstairs with me. Besides, I understand you’re a great cook and do extraordinary things with kidneys.”
No, God didn’t make mistakes. If you were doomed to be down here, it was for a reason, a very good reason, and you knew damned well what it was. There would be no stay of execution here. No slap in the wrist and just don’t do it again. You had a whole lifetime to make things right and you couldn’t be bothered. Even after you did, you had a chance to plead your case. No one did. They just didn’t think hell was real. They’d be sent off to some summer camp to play.
But the shock of hell was all too real. Still, most of them kept their hope, which was ironic about the sign, for they really needed to abandon it. Hope just did not exist in this place. Their search for something that was completely lacking made their existence all the more unbearable.
It was a very cruel joke. But this one belonged to the creator. This time God was having the last laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Todd said. He’d been watching the demon closely. Very closely.
“Don’t worry, son, you’re going to get to know me like the back of your hand in no time flat. We’ll be best buddies, you and I. We will be a force to be reckoned with.”
“I don’t want to have anything to do with you,” he sneered, “All I want to do is get my Mom out of this terrible place and then to never see you or hear from you again. Isn’t that simple?”
“You have a well-developed mind for one so young. Unfortunately, you don’t understand the one cardinal point of this whole game.”
“And that point is?”
The demon laughed. “The point is that I’m the demon and you’re not. That means I have the power and you don’t. In other words, I call shots and you don’t. I give the rules and you follow. I’m the brains and you’re the body.”
“And if I don’t follow the rules?”
The demon laughed. “You ask some very interesting questions. Let me help you to understand. Suppose for a moment that I had an itch on my face just above my left eye. What would I do?”
“You’d scratch it.”
“That’s right. I’d scratch it. I would do that by commanding my hand to come up to my face and scratch. And my hand would obey.”
“Yeah.”
“Would the hand not obey?”
“Only if it couldn’t. Like if it were paralyzed or something.”
“But if it could, it would. The hand doesn’t concern itself with good or bad, right or wrong. The mind does that, does the thinking and the evaluation and the moral thing. The mind decides it’s ok and the brain just does it. It doesn’t have a mind, a conscience of its own. It just does what it’s told.”
“So what’s this got to do with me and you? You’re not a mind and I’m not a hand.”
“Ah, not yet. But we will be. We will become very close. Inseparable. You’ll be like the hand and will be able to have all the fun. And I’ll be the mind and will tell the hand what to do. It’ll be easy and it’ll be fun. You won’t have to worry about that right and wrong nonsense they fill you up with. You can let me decide that for you.
The boy stopped and looked at him for a long moment. “You’ve really got this demon thing all figured our, haven’t you?”
“Well, I’ve had a lot of years to practice.”
“You forgot just one thing, though. Why would I want to help somebody who killed my Dad?”
The demon laughed. “No, son, you’ve got it all wrong. You won’t have any choice but to serve me. You’ll be part of me, like the hand and I’ll be the brain. If the brain tells the hand to make a fist, it really doesn’t have any options not to, don’t you see? You’ll become my little puppet, and I’ll make you do whatever I want you to do. Play your cards right and you might even enjoy it. Many of them do.”
“What if I hate it?”
“You’ll get over it. And if you don’t, too bad. But you’ll obey because I’ll control the nerves.”
“I think I just want to go home,” Todd said. “I just want things to be back the way they used to be.”
“Well, you will be going back home soon enough, though I don’t think things will ever be the way they used to be. But you’ll get used to it in time. You’ll enjoy being the most powerful kid on the block. You’ll be able to do things you couldn’t do before.”
Todd just shook his head. All of that might be ok. He wasn’t sure and there was something about it that made him want to wet his pants. But even if it did turn out cool, he’d still rather have his father back.