Excerpts
From Satan’s Diary
Thursday
Dear
Diary,
I
can’t sleep. Tomorrow is going to be the most exciting day of my
life. It’s what I’ve been working towards for the last few
thousand years. Tomorrow Jesus arrives.
It
feels so surreal. I still can’t believe it. With his death, the
gates of heaven open. What most people don’t realize is that the
gates of hell open for the first time as well. He’s scheduled to
be crucified around five o’clock. At that moment he’ll bear all
the sins of the world on his shoulders and then he’ll be mine.
I
can hardly wait.
Yours
truly,
Satan
Thursday
Dear
Diary,
It’s
me again. I really can’t sleep.
Just
wanted to share that with you.
Yours
truly,
Satan
Friday
Dear
Diary,
I
am still in a state of shock. Where do I begin?
I
always figured God was exaggerating when He said the wages of sin were
death. After all, death seems a trifle extreme for minor sins like
stealing a handful of nuts from a street vendor when he isn’t looking.
But I’ve always placed great faith in the biggie, the one God
Himself listed as the worst of all possible sins: killing Him.
Certainly Caiaphas’ role in the crucifixion should have been good for a
few billion years of rehabilitative and fiery penance. And Judas.
Need we talk about Judas?
I
met Jesus personally upon his arrival in Hell. I asked him a few
questions, just to break the ice, like what it was like bearing all the
sins of the world, especially after God had abandoned him. Did he
focus on all the good of the world and was that what carried him through?
And then, thinking I was pretty clever, I asked how, if he was part of the
trinity – not God and yet God – he could abandon himself.
I
was just trying to make small talk. But Jesus started coming over
all weird. He avoided my gaze and sheepishly dodged all my
questions. I asked if he was afraid that I would get so busy with
the other souls that I would neglect him. That’s when he broke the
news to me. He said there weren’t going to be any other souls.
I said, “Excuse me?”
It’s
this whole ‘bearing all the sins of the world’ thing. If he pays
for the sins himself, then exacting penance from the originally sinner as
well would be double-charging. Jesus explained that he was standing
in for all of humanity. “Then we’re going to be spending a lot
of time together,” I said. I know it wasn’t nice, but I was
pissed. So I broke out the Sin Listings and we started adding up all
the sins of the world. You want to take a guess at how long it is
going to take to work off all the sins of the world?
Three
days.
I
checked my figures twice.
Jesus,
it turns out, got off on a technicality. Culpability for one’s
actions is directly tied to knowledge of the consequences of one’s sin.
The crucifixion of God Himself is indeed a sin demanding of an eternity in
Hell. The problem is, I can only exact the full sentence if the
sinner fully comprehends the magnitude of the sin. It’s like a child
doesn’t know what it is really doing so it can’t be held responsible
for the consequences of its actions. Crucifying God is an
abomination of such magnitude that no human could have actually been
capable of knowingly committing the crime. For that matter, most of
the Jews who called for Jesus’ death believed they were acting
righteously and this has been credited to their favor!
So
what, you might say, who cares if all the penance generated from the
crucifixion added up to less than three-quarters of a second. How
about all those little sins? Certainly there are so many minor
transgressions committed by humanity that all together they’d add up
quicker than you can say, “Eternal damnation.” After all, even
the minor sins like stealing nuts irreparably damage the moral fabric of
the universe. But again, the human mind is incapable of
comprehending even the smallest extent of this damage (“How could
stealing a walnut hurt God?”) so, here too, there is no culpability.
It’s unbelievable. Every human deserves death for the damage to
the spiritual well-being of the universe caused by their sins but as no
one truly understands the extent of this damage, none of them can be held
responsible for it.
I
need a drink.
Friday
Dear
Diary,
You
remember when I took this job. It seemed like a solid career move at
the time. Sure, I had to piss off God and be banished for all time,
but hey, everyone has to make sacrifices. I had to really stand out
and put myself forward to be chosen for this position. And I decided I
wasn’t going to let God down. Hell was where souls would come to
be scourged, to be cleansed so they could return to Heaven their brightest
white on the Day of Judgment. I‘ve done myself proud.
A
project this scale is not easy to manage. I anticipated having to
process trillions of souls over time and thus spent ages of overtime
streamlining the process. I also needed a variety of punishments to get
their attentions. This isn’t as simple as you might think.
One man’s horror is another’s pleasure. Sure, I’ve got
traditional engines of torture like the rack and Iron Maiden, all on a
grander scale, of course. But some souls actually like this kind of
stuff. So I’ve had to be really creative to meet their redemptive
needs.
Today
Jesus didn’t even get halfway through the first level of hell.
Officially there are 666 levels, but I’d added a few bonus levels for
special cases. What’s worse, he laughed through most of the
tortures. That’s because they were designed with the idea in mind
that a soul would spend more than fifteen minutes experiencing them.
Heck, even I can sit through fifteen minutes of anything. But, I had
decided, wouldn’t it be sheer hell if you had to sit through the same
thing for 100,000 years? Like watching a baby smile. It’s
one of the most beautiful sights in creation. But after a week a
soul would scream at that smile. After a year, maniacal laughter.
And after a thousand…
You
just can’t get the flavor of a 100,000-year torture in fifteen minutes.
Saturday
Dear
Diary,
I’ve
left Jesus in the room where you have to watch yourself saying all the
stupid things you ever said in your life over and over again. I need
a break.
The
echo in these empty halls just depresses me. Tomorrow after Jesus
leaves, we close the doors of Hell forever. Jesus says he’ll put
in a good word for me with God and tell Him what a bang up job I’ve done
helping humanity atone for their sins. He says I’ve really
exceeded expectations. Nice of Them to share those expectations with
me now.
It’s
not fair. He’s going to get all the credit for being a savior
after bearing the ‘awful’ burden of the world’s sins on his
shoulder. All that glory for three lousy days of penance.
What about all my millennia of sacrifice? I’ve been a team player.
I’ve come through when the going was tough. And what’s my
reward? To be cursed and spat upon until the end of time.
Life
has lost its luster. I used to feel bad about whipping Jesus for
someone else's sins. Now I don’t even care.
Sunday
Dear
Diary,
Jesus
left today. He was quite cordial, and I guess I really shouldn’t
have let it upset me, but God knows I’ve worked hard to create all this,
and we didn’t even begin to scratch the depths of depravity that I’ve
collected here.
It’s
so typical. You spend thousands of years making a project your top
priority only to find out that upper management forgot to tell you that
you only needed to plan for three days. That’s it, you know.
Jesus has paid the price for every sin, even those yet to be committed.
And that leaves me with no future. I have wasted so much effort, so
much time, so much energy. And for what? The ultimate dead-end
job? No one else will ever come here again. The paint is already
starting to peel. I feel like our time together would have been
better spent playing chess.
It’s
so strange. I’ve been preparing Hell for so long that I don’t
remember how to do anything else. It’s funny too (ha ha).
I’ve been in the business of inventing pain and horror, and yet I never
conceived disappointment of this magnitude was possible.
And
in a few minutes, when I shut the lights off for the last time… I
don’t want to think about it.
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