Souls - V

If you want to find him you just have to head downtown and look for the tallest building, cause where else would the devil hole up? Where a phallic symbol towers above the earth, he will be there.

There’d been some question on why he chose this quaint Midwest city to base his headquarters, but it was tough to worry too much about it when the fear of illegal immigrants was replaced by the fear of real life demons. So it was pretty much just taken at face value, want to see Lucifer? Head to Kansas City, Missouri. 

I hop out of my van and head to those revolving doors I’ve become so accustomed to. I nod to the grimy looking guy, his name is Brendan I think, as I head to the elevators. 

He doesn’t stop me. He doesn’t have to. He knows my business.

I step into the elevators, push the top button and watch Brendan and his surroundings slowly become obstructed by the sliding elevator door. At the last moment he looks up and smiles, like he knows somethin’ I didn’t. 

I hate that kind of smile.

Probably the most eery thing about this new landscape we all find ourselves in are the little reminders of the mundane, quick little prompts of how boring we all used to be. Right now, that past banality is the elevator muzak lightly coming through the speakers. This surely wasn’t a feature of this neo-apocalyptic world, it was just something that was left behind, no-one thinking to turn off this approximation of music, no-one worried about royalty free music any longer. It was just left doing what it had always done, pipe safe, docile tones into the ears of the suits who used to ride this elevator. 

Now I’m the suit.

I don’t know why really, but it makes me feel nervous. 

Something ain’t right.

The doors of the elevator open silently, no ding or indication of arriving at the requested floor. The Devil’s office looks like just how’d you imagine it, a sea of cubicles filled with soulless faces as they stare into a computer monitor. 

At the end of the cubicle sea is a shore of glass offices, the biggest one reserved for Lucifer himself. He wasn’t one for humility.

I make my way down the partitioned hallway, trying my damnedest to avoid eye contact with any of the cubicle residents. The black eyes of the soulless still sends shivers down my spine. I can’t, though, avoid the black eyes of Melissa. She is his assistant and she’s been staring at me since the elevators opened. 

She sits at an oversized oak desk, painstakingly carved with all the usual symbols, pentagrams, the inverted cross, etc. A little overkill if you ask me, but what can I say; the man loves his theatrics. She’s also naked as the day she was born.

This has become pretty typical and one of the reasons I hide my feminine parts. He once tried to explain it to me once, said something about the natural state in the Garden of Eden, but I always got lost when he tried to rationalize why the men got to keep their clothes.

I was never really sure if he knew I was a woman or not. Being a fallen angel and all I figured he'd have some intuition about such things but he never confronted me about it. He did always look at me with his sideways grin, like he knew something and was waiting for me to come clean, but he pretty much looked at everyone that way.

As I get within ten-feet of his door, Melissa looks down to her screen and robotically says, “He’s ready for you.”

I nod and head in.