Damned

VI

Spare me, please, your dime-store psychology, but I really do hope the devil will like me. Note, again, my lingering attachment to the H-word. My being here, locked in a slimy cage, it would seem a foregone conclusion that God isn't my biggest fan, and my parents, it now appears, are largely out of the picture, as are my favorite teachers, nutrition coaches, really all the authority figures I've tried to please for the past thirteen years. Therefore it's not surprising that I've transferred all my immature needs for attention and affection to the only parental adult available: Satan.

There they both are: the H-word and the G-word, proof of my tenacious addiction to all things upbeat and optimistic. To be honest, all my effort thus far to remain spotless, mind my posture, present myself as perky, affect a cheerful smile, is calculated to endear myself to Satan. In my best-case scenario I see myself assuming a kind of sidekick or comic-relief role, becoming a perky, chubby, sassy girl child who tags along with the Prince of Lies, cracking wise-ass jokes and propping up his flagging ego. So ingrained is my spunky nature that I can't even allow the Prince of Darkness to indulge in the doldrums. I truly am a sort of flesh-and-blood form of Zoloft. Perhaps that explains Satan's general absence: He's simply waiting for my verve to exhaust itself before he makes himself known.

Yes, I understand that much about pop psychology. I may be dead and vivacious, but I'm not in denial concerning the manic first impression I can make.

Even my own dad would tell you, "She's a dervish." Meaning: I tend to wear people out.

It's for that reason that when the blue-Mohawk punk unlocks my cell door and swings it open on creaky, rusted hinges I step back deeper into the cage rather than forward to gain my freedom. Despite the diamond ring the punk's just tossed me, which now resides on the middle finger of my right hand, I resist my wanderlust. I ask the kid his name.

"Me?" he says, stabbing the oversize safety pin through his cheek. He says, "Just call me Archer."

Still lingering in my cell, I ask, "What are you in for?"

"Me?" the kid, Archer, says. "I went and got my old man's AK-47 semi…." Dropping to one knee, he shoulders an invisible rifle, saying, "And I blew away my old man and old lady. I slaughtered my kid brother and sister. After them, my granny. Then our collie dog, Lassie…" Punctuating each sentence, Archer pulls an invisible trigger, sighting down the barrel of his phantom rifle. With each trigger pull, his shoulder jerks back as if pushed by recoil, his tall blue hair fluttering. Still sighting through an invisible scope, Archer says, "I flushed my Ritalin down the toilet and drove my folks' car to school and took out the varsity football team and three teachers… all of them, dead, dead, dead." As he stands, he brings the bore of the imaginary rifle barrel to his mouth, purses his lips, and blows away invisible gun smoke.

"Bullshit," shouts a voice, Patterson, the football player, fully restored to a teenage boy with red hair and gray eyes and the large number 54 on his jersey. In one hand, he carries a helmet. His feet scratch the stone floor, the soles of his shoes tapping and skittering with sharp steel cleats. "That's total bullshit," Paterson says, shaking his head. "I saw your paperwork when you first got here. It said you're nothing but a lousy shoplifter."

Leonard, the geek, laughs.

Archer snatches a rock-hard popcorn ball off the ground and wings it, line-drive fast, against the geek's ear.

Exploded popcorn and the pens from his pocket fly everywhere. Leonard falls silent.

"Get this," Patterson says. 'According to his file Mr. Serial Killer, here, was trying to steal a loaf of bread and a batch of disposable diapers."

At this Babette looks up from her mirror and says, "Diapers?"

Archer strides over to the bars of Patterson's cell, thrusting his chin between the bars; snarling through clenched teeth, Archer says, "Shut up, jockstrap!"

Babette says, "You have a baby?"

Turning toward her, Archer shouts, "Shut up!"

"Get back into your cell," Leonard shouts, "before you get us all in trouble."

"What?" Archer shouts. He swaggers over, at the same time extracting the safety pin from his cheek, then begins to pick the lock of Leonard's cage door. "You afraid this will go on your permanent record, twerp?" Tripping the lock, Archer says, "You afraid you might not get into an Ivy League college?" On that note he swings the barred door open.

Grabbing the door, yanking it shut, Leonard says, "Don't." Unlocked, the door won't stay shut and swings open. Holding it closed, Leonard says, "Lock it, quick, before some demon comes along…."

Already, Archer's blue head is swaggering over to Babette's cell; pin in hand, he's saying, "Hey, sweet thang, I know a scenic spot overlooking the west edge of the Sea of Insects that will take your breath away," and he begins picking her lock.

Leonard continues to pull on the bars of his cell door, holding it shut.

My door hangs open. I close my hand into a fist around my new diamond ring.

Patterson shouts, "You loser, you couldn't find your way across to the far side of Shit Lake."

As he swings open Babette's door, Archer shouts, "Then join us, jockstrap. Show me."

Dropping her cosmetics back into her fake Coach bag, Babette says, "Yeah… if you're brave enough." Pointlessly, she pinches her already short skirt and lifts the hem as if to prevent it from dragging. Being a total Miss Harlotty O'Harlot, her legs showing almost to her panty-hose crotch, Babette steps through her open door, picking her way delicately in her fake Manulo Blauhniks.

Leonard stoops to collect his scattered pens. He brushes the bits of sticky popcorn from his hair.

Archer swaggers over to Patterson's cell. Holding the safety pin outside the bars, beyond Patterson's reach. Baiting him, Archer says, "You up for a little field trip?"

To get Leonard's attention I tell him my theory about behavior modification therapies versus plain, old-fashioned exorcisms. How nowadays if any of my friends, my alive girlfriends, sat in their bedrooms all day throwing up, the diagnosis would be bulimia. Rather than engage a priest to confront the girl about her behavior, express love and concern, and evict the occupying demon, contemporary families engage a behavioral therapist. It's weird to think that as recently as the 1970s religious leaders were throwing holy water on adolescent girls with eating disorders.

My hope really does spring eternal; but, darn it, Leonard isn't listening.

By now, Archer has sprung Patterson. Babette joins them and the trio is already strolling toward the fiery horizon amid screams and swarms of black houseflies. Patterson offers his hand to steady Babette on her high heels. Archer sneers, but it might just be the pin lanced through his cheek.

Even as I continue to talk, expounding on my theory about Xanax addiction being caused by demonic possession, Leonard of the lovely brown eyes throws open his cell door and bolts after the vanishing hikers. My last only new friend in Hell, Leonard's scrambling over the terrain of aged Gummi Bears and smoldering coal. His head swiveling, on the lookout for possible demons, he's calling, "Wait!

Wait up!" Rushing after the fading blue point of Archer's Mohawk hair.

When all four of them are almost gone, reduced by distance to mere rule-breaking dots in the landscape of bubbling poop and discarded Jujubes, only then do I open my own cell door and take my first forbidden Bass Weejun steps in their pursuit.