The Devil

1

Lucifer.

The Light Bringer.

He was the Angel of light.

He believed that man had seriously fucked up.

So, like a good cop, he collected his evidence, brought it to His Lord.

The Lord, being God, like all governments, was highly sceptical and laughed at his bearer of light.

Truly pissed off, like all good cops, Lucifer began to falsify the evidence.

An early fan of The Wire, if you will.

Not so much Serpico as Satan.

And yeah, got fucked over.

So he did what you do when you get caught, you rally the guys.

Set up his own shit.

Not quite Mugabe, but he was getting there. His coup failed.

No wonder the Irish have such belief in him.

Failed rebellions.

What we do best.

He was, as they put it, thrown into hell.

And like all former zealots, he swore,

‘The fuck I’m going down alone.’

And you kinda have to admire the cojones of the guy. Not only was he taking his motley crew of failed cohorts to hell and beyond, he’d go after God’s supposedly mega love.

The Human Race.

He’d enlist:

Idi,

Adolph,

Maggie Thatcher,

And for a pure Trivial Pursuit (even arch demons need recreation) somewhere on the list of crazed cronies he added the name of

Taylor, Jack.

Just for a spot of diversion.

The guy went around with guilt,

fear,

anger,

spite,

arrogance.

And best of all, he was a half-assed recovering Catholic.

Not only would it give Luc some R and R, he’d get to drink some Jameson, sink a few pints of Guinness and, primarily, watch the stupid bollix try to figure it out.

Where was the downside?

Most diabolical of all, Taylor would look for motivation. That made the Devil laugh out loud. He loved the game most when humans sought explanations and motivation.

Reminded him of wondrous times, like that idiot Aleister Crowley.

And if he knew Taylor, and he sure knew a sitting target, sooner or later, Taylor would do two really stupid acts.

Apart, of course, from trying to understand it.

Taylor would do two incredibly dumb acts.

One: he’d go to a priest.

And by all that is unholy, the priest would feel the wrath of meddling with the Anti-Christ.

And then the tinkers.

Luc had a special hatred for them as the weird clan could see things.

He didn’t like that.

Not to be seen.

If there was to be a show time, he’d call the time and place.

Mostly, he worried (if such an entity could worry) about them because, unlike Taylor, or priests, or the other minions, they weren’t afraid.

He thrived on fear.

His raison d’être, perhaps.

And if Taylor did follow through, with the tinkers, he’d lay such a wrath on them that they’d huddle in the fear he had tried so long to instil in them.