Signed Lucifer

WARNING: This writing may offend some religious believers. It is not intended to be offensive in any way, rather a light hearted take on heaven and hell but if you are going to be offended by joking references to religion then this may not be the sort of writing you want to read. Again I stress that I mean no disrespect to any religion.



Paper work, there’s always so much paper work, I’m sick to death of it which is rather ironic I suppose as most of it is death related. Still, its worse for J, more go through there than ever did down here which is rather heart lifting, for humanity and for me. Actually I haven’t seen my brother in ages, we were supposed to go bowling last week but he pulled out on me because Dad had a job for him. Rather irritating actually, it wasn’t as if an angel couldn’t have done it, but Dad’s rather cross with me at the moment over the whole tsunami thing. I didn’t mean to cause it, it was a bloody accident and it isn’t as if J hasn’t caused a few of them in the past. But J’s Dad’s golden boy whereas I think he sees me as a bit of a rebel. Well its not my fault I was given this job, he should go take it out on Mum rather than me but she’s a bit elusive these days.

It’s our birthday soon and I always hate sharing my birthday with my twin; its rather galling that most of the earth celebrate his and I’m a bit forgotten. Again it’s not my fault that I have to do this job although to be frank I kind of like it down here, at least compared to the clouds and golden gates J seems to go for. I mean it’s all very pretty but just a tad pretentious. Whenever I go up there Gabriel’s hanging around the gates looking all pious at the people filing past. He always evils me and turns up his nose and I swear that one of these days the temptation to turn him into a lettuce leaf is going to overpower me. I suppose it’s consolation that J doesn’t like him either and he’s actually got to work with the arse. I had him down in hell working with me for a year when I lost that whole 40 day and 40 nights bet with J and it was torture. He is such a prat. Anyway, I’ve got my old angel back now and she is, well an angel. I love her to bits but I don’t think she goes in for the whole tail and horns thing so I expect we’ll be just friends until humanity’s image of me changes to something more attractive. J got off lucky there, he looks pretty humanoid which is attractive to both angels and mortals although before the whole ‘Christianity’ debacle humanity wasn’t really sure what he looked like so he kept evaporating into Holy Spirit or white light which was rather amusing. And hey, I’m not really complaining about the horns and tail thing. I think I’m rather dashing and I’ve known several women who agree with me. Not everyone likes the ‘good little boy’ features, I’m more of a ‘badboy,’ well, I look like one anyway. In everything other than looks me and J are pretty similar, apart from our approach with Dad. When I accidentally caused that Tsunami he went bloody mental, but when J accidentally started Hurricane Katrina Dad was all ‘it could happen to anyone.’ Ever since that stupid woman Eve Dad’s been a bit iffy with me, J tells me to ignore it but that’s easy for him to say, it was partly his fault too but I got all the blame, as usual.

We were pretty young and Dad had just created the world because he was fed up with the complaints about boredom from his kids. He couldn’t be bothered to make sure we didn’t hurt ourselves so he created Adam and Eve as child minders. Adam was alright but Eve was a complete idiot and me and J loved to wind her up. The problem arose when J dared me to turn myself into a snake to scare her because she’d stupidly told us she had a phobia. Anyway I did it and she went absolutely nuts, told Dad she was leaving and nothing could tempt her to stay with two such horrible brats. Wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t taken Adam with her, which left us on our own and Dad incredibly pissed off with me, even though it was J’s fault. Eve stormed right out of the gates of Eden, followed rather sheepishly by Adam, and Dad, trying to save at least a little dignity told them that they couldn’t come back and set an angel with a flaming sword at the gates just to prove his point. I think that’s where J gets the melodramatic traits. Anyway, Dad did not stop shouting at me for like a month, then told me to go to Mum for my punishment. That’s how I ended up lording it over the bad dead guys and in the long run I’ve done Dad a favour because now the mortals worship him, although I suppose the downside is they now hate me.

Seriously though, I don’t know where that whole apple thing came from, I reckon it was Eve over exaggerating to one of those horrible kids of hers. J and I went and visited them, I even took a basket of apples to show how sorry I was, but she just yelled at me some more. I left pretty quickly and watched with some satisfaction as her family fell apart; I always said she’d be a shit Mum, no wonder Cain turned out like that. Anyway, Eve held a grudge, and since mortals lived quite a long time back then the grudge could only grow. During her later senile years she starting telling everyone that I was the route of all evil in the world and the devil idea just sort of grew over time. Humanity needs a common enemy I suppose, just so they can have someone to blame when their lives go wrong. I don’t particularly mind, over some eras its even been kind of fun, the whole Mars/ Ares God of War and Hades God of death thing was entertaining, and humanity’s never had a more accurate interpretation of Dad than Zeus minus the thunderbolts. Dad tried that once and it went horribly wrong, he didn’t try again.

Anyway, we all got a bit bored of the ancients, and me and J took lots on who’d go and kick start the mortals into a new phase. He lost and had to spend a few years as a mortal which was hilarious. He spent his time turning water into wine and bringing people back from the dead and other such party tricks, he even had a bunch of crazy followers at one point! They wrote a book about him and it went to his head a bit, for a while he had everyone call him JC but it wore off thank god. He has always been a bit embarrassed about his full name, I still laugh to think about it. What possessed Mum to call him Jesus I really don’t know, he shortened it to J pretty much as soon as he could talk. We’ve both had a lot of names over the years, mine infinitely cooler than his, he gets ‘Son of God,’ ‘Prince of Peace’ ‘Light of the world’ (that last one still makes me laugh) whereas I got ‘Saturn’ ‘Prince of Darkness’ ‘The Devil’ (it is infinitely cool to have a name preceded by ‘The.’) I suppose he did get songs written about him though, which he continually rubs in my face, but only a portion of the world believe in him whereas most people believe in me.

This whole atheist movement though, is not amusing. I know we, as a family may be pretty useless, but mortals still need us to sort out the whole life after death thing. That according to Mum is the whole point of us; it’s always comforting to know the only reason your Mum had you was because she needed someone to run her estate but c’est la vie. Anyway, if mortals stop believing in us then we’ll start loosing our powers which could get really shitty. If one of us has to go back to earth it is bound to be me, Dad is not happy with me at the moment and J went last time. There are even mortals on earth talking about the ‘antichrist’ (another pretty cool name) and if Dad has his way that might actually happen. I have to admit though, it would be pretty cool, I’ve always wanted to see what it was like to be mortal, admittedly only for a few days, but I suppose I could put up with a lifetime if I got the powers J had. I suppose I have a reputation to uphold as well, I could get waited on hand and foot like a king, none of this humble stuff J had to put up with. He was really pissed with Dad about that, and it was only when he heard about the bible that he got out of that foul mood. The whole Jesus thing wasn’t really to his tastes and I loved rubbing it in his face. I took every opportunity to go down and tease him about it and as a result I’m in there quite a lot. I was the angel at the tomb, and the dove at the baptism (Jesus’ face when John dunked him in the Jordan made me laugh so much I almost flew into a tree) and J got really pissed that I was teasing him so relentlessly. I did feel a bit bad, so I went and asked Dad if he could come home, then arranged a spectacular death for him, which was pretty awesome if I do say so myself. J was dead chuffed.

He’s with that chick Mary Magdalene now, its getting quite serious as they got together almost as soon as she died. I laughed so much when that Dan Brown book came out; J found it pretty funny too, although to be fair it was wrong as they only got together after she died. Anyway we’re having an anniversary party for them next week. All the angels and saints’ll be there so it’s quite a big occasion. I have to admit I prefer the angels to the saints, who still need to let the whole ‘evil incarnate’ complex wear off (and I have to admit I’m not really helping, but playing practical jokes on Paul is just too funny.) They all had a bit of a shock when they got here and met the real J but he’s still a ‘good’ person so they got used to it eventually. The afterlife doesn’t work quite like they expect it to (in fact the whole heaven hell thing is quite interchangeable so I guess the catholic purgatory was closest to the truth) and you can pop down to visit hell and be home in time for tea, in fact I do it everyday! I hate eating in hell, the food is shit and Moses (the only saint/prophet I get on well with) makes incredible scones so there’s no way I’d eat down there. In fact Moses is making the cake for the party, he’s talking about some sort of three tiered extravaganza which, in my opinion, has the potential to go horribly wrong. Even Mum said she’d drop by although she doesn’t often. She says she doesn’t like people staring at her but she is being a bit ridiculous. People wouldn’t stare nearly so much if she dropped the whole black robes and scythe thing, but she says it makes her feel powerful. She’s really a bit insecure is my mother, I guess it comes from an eternity of having mortals scared to death (oh the irony) of you, but they snap out of it when they get up here. She has so many friends and yet she still prefers mooching about on earth. I personally think she spends her free time visiting old people’s homes and scaring little old ladies literally to death. It’s the sort of thing that’d make her giggle. Good old Mum, and the little old ladies usually thank her for it afterwards.

In fact my Mum is probably the most powerful of us all. After all its her who controls the afterlife, who dies and when; Dad says her real name is Time but Mum says that makes her sound old and tells everyone to call her Meg. Dad on the other hand doesn’t have any problem with aged pomposity. He’s managed to make the whole of humanity call him God (or some variation, seriously, where on earth did Allah or Buddha come from?) which makes us all laugh, but Mum says to indulge him in his old age and she usually knows what’s best. Humanity eh? What a wonderfully silly race. Here is a group of people who have managed to come from living in trees to creating the internet (literally one of the most wonderful inventions of all time) and yet most of them still need an all powerful God to explain the meaning of their existence. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad things are like that as otherwise my family and I would be out of a job and probably fade into non existence. But shouldn’t a race that is that powerful (powerful enough to dream us into existence in the first place I might add) need a meaning other than to aspire to be even better than they already are? Dad doesn’t take me seriously when I bring this up but I can totally see a future in which mortals realise they don’t need us (Mum not included of course) at which point we’re a bit fucked. I asked Mum about it and she just made a vague reference to the 3rd age that went straight over my head.

It’s interesting though that such an awesome race can be so mindlessly destructive. I had a chat with Mohammed about this the other day and the poor guy was totally distraught. His people have got a particularly bad rep. at the moment which is totally unfair seeing as most of them are perfectly decent. It reminded me of the crusades when J was getting all worked up and asked Dad if he could go down there are straighten everyone out. Dad said no which is probably the response Mohammed will get when he asks. The thing is that these people are either extremists in which case very little will change their minds or they are doing it in the name of their religion but not necessarily for the religion itself in which case there is very little any of us up here can do. Its all very depressing anyway and its making Mum ill, people dieing before they’re supposed to.