I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story

So. There’s a turn-up for the Book of Revelation. ‘And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever . . .’ Oh cheers, I thought, when I heard that. Oh thanks. But now they’re putting it out that Jonny Flashback was on a need-to-know basis. He’ll be narked about that. (He’s never been right, you know. Stands under a silver tree in Paradise with unwashed dreads and a beard the size of a sheep, muttering and doing those mad tramp things with his hands. It’s the Kerouac trajectory from beat guru to stumbling bum. You see it a million times.)

You know what all this is about, don’t you, assuming, for a moment, He’s serious? Divine Anxiety. Create the unforgivable and you compromise infinite mercy. Forgive the unforgivable and you compromise infinite justice. Mercy, justice, mercy, justice, yada yada yada, until you’re so dizzy from chasing Bugs Logic around in circles that you fall on your cosmic arse and put your cosmic head in your cosmic hands and wish you’d never created anything.

Therefore this preposterous new deal, before time comes to an end. Actually The End.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to just drop that on you. Forget I said it. Time’s not coming to an end. There’s loads of time left. For a reason that’s nothing to do with the end of the world being nigh I get a shot at redemption. There’s a catch. (Where would He be without those catches?) I’ve got to live as a human being. One month’s trial period then I sign-up for a lifetime of earwax and flu. I, Lucifer, get the chance to go home – provided I don’t make an utter pig’s pizzle of living out the rest of Declan Gunn’s life.

Now, there are a lot of machinations and computations to be gone through when confronted with this type of offer. I’ve been through them (took about three earth seconds) and I’ll bring you up to speed presently. But why, in the meantime, Gunn?

Well, as you’ll remember, having fallen on harder times than he thought he could bear our scribe was about to take his own tediously predictable life. Razor blades, bath, Joni Mitchell in the tape deck. Suicide’s a mortal sin. I get the suicides. Look, if you’re thinking of killing yourself, don’t. You won’t go to Heaven. (Kidding. Kidding. Honestly. Go ahead.) Now God’s got a soft spot for this Gunn. Some vestigial Catholicism the Old Man can’t bear to see go to waste, some good deed when he was a nipper, maybe the afterlife intercession of his dear deceased mother, Baal only knows – so God pulls Gunn’s soul (which, technically, is cheating, I might add) before Gunn tops himself and puts it on ice in Limbo. (The Vatican will tell you they’ve done away with Limbo – don’t you believe it. Limbo’s still rammed with idiots and stillborns. Not a fun place. I mean even in Hell you can have a conversation.) If carcass life grabs me, I stay and Gunn goes via Purgatory (think windowless dentist’s waiting room: bawling toddlers, heaped ashtrays, the sense that you’ve brought it on yourself) to Heaven. If it doesn’t, Gunn’s back in his bones and taking his chances with suicide. Can you believe this stuff? I mean you can’t believe it, obviously – but can you believe it?

Any seasoned deal maker will tell you that spontaneous negotiation’s a bad strategy; the ad hoc approach will leave you ripped-off, busted, conned, stiffed, outsmarted and generally holding the shitty end of the stick. The advantage of being me is that I know where I’m going with a deal from the get-go. I always know. Fact is there’s really no dealing with me. Dealing’s so inappropriate a concept it amounts to a Rylean category mistake.

I can tell you what wasn’t going to be the deal. The deal wasn’t going to be that I accepted. The most myopic, cataracted, boss-eyed, occluded and cursory glance at the proposal should make that obvious. But not taking the deal didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to have some fu –

Do you know something? I’m not being completely honest. I know: you’re shocked. There was – by the flaming nipples of Astarte – there was the briefest, tiniest, most fleeting sliver of a moment in which I thought (they move fast, angelic thoughts: you’ve got to be quick), in which I wondered whether, actually, thinking about it, you know . . . whether in the end it wouldn’t be worth –

But like I said: they move fast. They shift. I was laughing at myself, hysterically, on the inside, before I’d even finished considering whether it might not have been something to consider. It’s not even fair to describe the process as one of considering. It was more of a rogue or involuntary twitch of the spirit, analogous perhaps to those in the corporeal realm which shock you, inexplicably, in that state between being awake and falling asleep. (What’s the matter? Dunno. Just got a massive twitch. Well you frightened the bloody life out of me. Now that I come to think of it, not infrequently precipitated by half-dreams of falling, yes? That sudden yank or jolt just before you hit the ground?)

Anyway. The point is, moment of professional weakness, masochistic fantasy, psychodemonic tic – call it what you like, it was there one instant, gone the next. What it came down to was –

No no no no no. It won’t do. That’s not the whole story. That is not, Lucifer, the whole story. Very well. I hold up my hand. Economy with the truth. The truth is I had to take it seriously. Had to, d’you see? In no more or no less the way than the Old Boy has to take genuine human penitence seriously. It’s a condition of His Nature. One doesn’t have a choice about some things – even He’d admit that. Of course what one wants to do is laugh the whole thing off. ‘Me back in Heaven,’ one wants to muse aloud with trowelled-on facetiousness, ‘yes, I see. Capital idea. Can I roll you another Camberwell Carrot?’

How long before I’m reinstated with full angelic clout? I asked Gabriel.

Wholly at His discretion.

So you’re saying that even if I make it through the human life without running amok and get back in Upstairs, it’ll be as a human soul until His Lordship feels like returning me to my former status and station?

Angelic status, yes. No guarantee of rank.

And what happens, my dearest Gabrielala, should I fail to get through the scribe’s life without mortal sin?

He shrugged. (I was at a loss for how to describe what he did in corporeal terms until yesterday, when the joke fat man in the Leather Lane chippy said ‘Sawt’n’vinnigga, chief?’ and I found Gunn’s shoulders going up – then down. How on earth should I know?) Charming. So you get back in, but there’s no guarantee that you’re not going to be polishing some bubble-head’s bugle down on the forty-second level for fifty billion years.

I took the one month ‘trial’ and sent Gabbers back Upstairs with a new set of terms and conditions. Not with any hope that they’d be accommodated, obviously – but to let them know that I’m taking the proposition – ahem – seriously.

Now. I’ve got some moves – but even if I didn’t, there’s no reason to pass up a month’s vacation in the Land of Matter and Perception.