Interview with a certain Gentleman
By. C.T. Phipps
The man whom every reporter would give his soul to interview was standing at
the edge of the downtown Washington D.C. apartment's window staring down through
the half folded blinds at the teeming masses that danced at the man's whim with the ease
of a veiled suggestion or a well placed word. Thomas Bradley had done just that to get
an interview with the man, sold his soul for a chance to interview Satan. Lucifer
Morningstar, Ahrimane, Iblis, The Devil, The Prince of Darkness and probably a
thousand other names throughout history and geography. The Evil One was currently watching
the mid-afternoon rain pouring on the city streets. He probably was having a dickens of a time
here in Washington as usual.
"Do you have your tapes ready Tommy?" The Gentleman spoke with his calm
clear crisp voice. He certainly didn't appear to be what Thomas had expected. The cult leader
he had promised that he could set up an interview with the Devil and Thomas had agreed mostly
out of jest. He hadn't expected the man in prison for multiple murder to actually know Satan
and until he had stood in the Gentleman's presence he'd believed it was just going to be another
of the man's deluded nutters. The Gentleman was the real McCoy though, Tommy could feel it.
The Gentleman was dressed in a white double-breasted suit with a black dress shirt and
white straight tie. He didn't look terribly rich or awe inspiring but like any number of the
thousands of mid-level Washington bureaucrats who slid in and out of the United State's capital
like flies off a carcass. He had short well-trimmed blonde hair and attractive features but wasn't
particularly striking with possible Germanic ancestry or English or Swiss or Polish and perhaps
even diluted Jewish heritage. All in all the type of guy you didn't even stop to make chit chat
with.
"It's all ready Scratch." Thomas said giddily as he set up the recorder right beside him.
He remembered briefly that film, starring Tom cruise and that Pitt guy his girlfriend went gah-gah
over, and how it's premise had been interviewing a vampire. Tommy remembered it as being
bloody ridiculous at the time and his opinion hadn't gone up much. This was going to be
something real though. It was a chance to learn all the secrets behind the world's evil puppet-
master and his minions. Thomas was trying not to think of the price he had to pay but in the
end. Still what was his spirit, his existence, his mind to the thing he was going to bring the world
after this night? One immortal soul for the truth of the man who took them? Peanuts.
"Don't call me that unless you're a Puritan Thomas. It's rather one of my signatures that I enjoy being referred to by different names for different folks. Old Nick for the British…Santa Clause non withstanding." He made an odd smile at that. "Just call me the Gentleman for this interview would you please?"
Thomas shrugged as he nodded and said "Sure, Gentleman sir." It wasn't surprising really that the Devil would know that Tommy had been thinking of him like that since the moment he had laid eyes on him. The Gentleman wasn't very striking it was true but he still carried himself with a regal ambiance that immediately gave one the impression of refinement if not greatness. It was unsettling but that was probably the point. Thomas disliked having his feelings being known. It was the reporter's bane to have one's thoughts known by a subject.
"Very well I think it's time to begin. I normally don't give interviews as you might guess but given your prestige in the field Tommy I decided to make an exception for you." The Gentleman said approaching. Pulling one of Thomas's chairs from the table he was sitting at the interview's subject sat down. "Feel free to start anywhere."
"Okay…" Thomas thought momentarily creeped out by whatever the Gentleman had decided made him worthy of this interview. He'd done some questionable things in his field but were any worthy of the Gentleman's attentions?
"Tommy I don't have all eternity." The Gentleman smiled.
"Oh sorry. Ummm…" Tommy decided to ask the first question that came to mind.
"So why did you rebel against God?" the question was the biggest question of all and certainly deserving of an answer to tell why evil began in the universe. Thomas lit a cigarette and held it in his right hand in between his fingers waiting in anticipation.
"My love of my fellow man." Was the answer.
"Oh come on." Tommy snorted, the gentleman wasn't going to give him this kind of answer. The man was the root of all evil, the great deceiver, the fiery pitchfork-wielding tormentor of mankind. It just couldn't be right. Tommy pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and really hoped this wasn't going to be some of that crap Anne Rice had published a few years back with Menoch the Devil. The book had made Lucifer into some kind of lily-washed saint and Thomas had gagged practically reading it.
"Tell me Tommy what you think of the world today? War, Rape, Crime, Child abuse, Religious intolerances….guilt?" The Gentleman smiled waving his right hand as if feeling a nonexistent breeze. "What if I told you Tommy that was the Father's way of teaching us how to appreciate the true depth of his creation?"
"I'd call you a liar." Tommy said, pulling another cigarette from his jacket pocket and lighting with a match from another pocket. The other one he'd lit up too fast and it had burned to ashes in his fingers.
"Of course you would Tommy." The Gentleman said with his smile brightening ever so slightly to the reporter's answer in a sort of private triumph. "Question nothing, it's my way."
"Pardon?" Thomas said raising an eyebrow.
"We'll get to that later." The Gentleman replied with the same cool relaxed tone he hadn't wavered from. "Long ago I asked myself why certain things were not to be in the world I dwelled in. Why it was and I quote…wrong." The last word was enunciated so slowly and with such hidden depth that Thomas felt the temperature drop ten degrees before the Gentleman was done with saying it. "I thus asked God to change the world."
"Make everything not so wrong?" Thomas said puffing on his cigarette.
"A world Tommy where nothing is wrong; to put it in a perspective you can understand A WORLD OF NO CONSEQUENCE..." the five words were not shouted but rung in the air "anything could be done and anything willed without ramification. Black could be white, murder and insult mix with lovemaking and compliment. Call it evil if you will I felt there was something fundamentally wrong with making anything possible in this universe unclean." The Gentleman said as his words conjured up a beautiful paradise where ever hidden fantasy was allowed and not just horrible things but all the acts Thomas had been told only saints could do, living side by side.
"All beings in God's creation are by nature selfless Tommy. We are one body one flesh one spirit with every action having an equal and often adverse on another being. Thus I wished for this world to end suffering." The Gentleman leaned back into his chair and folded his hands blinking at the reporter.
"So…what did God say?" Thomas Bradley said breathing a deep breath of nicotine into his lungs then breathing it out onto the Gentleman accidentally, the smoke seemingly having no affect on him at all.
"He said my dream was beyond his power and even he cannot make one plus one equal three…well the equivalent really but that's the best summary your mind could get in a two hour casette tape. I knew however this was a lie." The Gentleman blinked for the first time since the meeting began and moved his fingers to his mouth in a contemplative thought.
Thomas grinned putting out the cigarette into a nearby ashtray as he beat it to a unrecognizable pretzel like shape. The Gentleman's words were everything he imagined them to be, telling the inner most secrets of the universe to his captive audience.
"Why would God lie to you…Gentleman?" Thomas asked almost calling him Lucifer but remembering his place.
"I don't know." The Gentleman responded truthfully as he twirled a finger in his hair for a moment. "However I had seen him make Light from Darkness, Substance from nothingness, and could not believe that while good could be changed to what men call evil that it could not hold the properties of both equally."
Tommy tapped his reporters pen for a moment as he saw the Gentleman looking up at him annoyed.
"Sorry…was just getting a little bored with the whole science lesson versus the fate of the universe." Thomas tried making a slight joke but unfortunately the Gentleman wasn't laughing.
The Gentleman then smiled again in another private triumph. "I appreciate your lack of patience and we will move on Tommy. You are paying well for this after all." The last words were frightening in their pettiness.
"So what about religion." Thomas said, deciding he had gotten as much out of one question as he was going to get.
"Hmmm?" The Gentleman teased hinting that he should clarify his question, for himself or the audience who knew.
Thomas thought about it for a second and then decided how to phrase it "You know, which religion is right?" Thomas certainly wasn't a religious man but he believed something was out there or he wouldn't have gotten this interview.
"Don't be so sure." The Gentleman continued "I am a bit…surprised Tommy that you would trust me enough to give you a solid, truthful answer as to the state of the correct truth of the universe."
Thomas knew he wasn't surprised…hoped it, but there was still that glint of triumph that he seemed like he wanted him to say it.
"If anyone knows it would be you." Thomas finally said as the welcoming nod from the Gentleman made Thomas want to reach across the table and strangle him.
"Yes Tommy well the secret is quite easy to share. The religion itself that is the most perfect? The religion is the person who wears it. The Bible, Torah, Qua'ran, Analycts of Confucius or writings of Lewis might tell a man through allegory how to live or the perfection of love and other "godly" virtues but ultimately reading them, repeating their words, and even doing what they say will do nothing to save you from my grasp unless you feel it." The Gentleman's words are bitterly sweet and whimsical.
"Ouch." Thomas said scribbling down some notes on his yellow pad to that comment.
"It is a funny thing about humanity really that the entire sum of religeon seems to be everyone taking seriously often the horrible justifactions that God himself despises and frequently condemns from his prophets.....see much of the Old Testament and New and somehow consider it and everything after sacred. Ancestor worship occasionally bites one in the arse I must say." The Gentleman said putting a finger to his mouth.
"What?" Thomas looked up at the seemingly nonsense phrase.
"Never mind, carry on." The Gentleman said.
Thomas had some interesting questions for that one but decided to obey the man's command. Thomas decided to ask another big question, he privately cursed himself for not writing down his questions beforehand. The interviewer had just expected them to come to him during the conversation. It hadn't been for lack of trying, he'd crumbled up a dozen sheets of unsatisfactory questions earlier this morning. He obviously should have tried harder.
"So what's your plan to win?" Thomas asked and quickly clarified "How do you intend to transform the world and how do you intend to get God not to…well lay the smack down like everybody predicts he will." It was a mainstay in every religion that darkness would not triumph in the end. He had to know how the Gentleman felt.
"Patience…" the Gentleman said though the words weren't comforting. He was saying it in a way that was increasingly flaring Thomas to levels of violence. Thomas wasn't patient, he wanted his answers now, damnit!
"The way of salvation lies in what is natural to our forms. Thomas, it is inscribed in every fiber of our existence the presence of the Master. The union with all that should be is a condition we are born into and it takes society to make us ignore that little voice in our heads." the Gentleman grinned.
"Your saying my conscience is God talking to me?" Thomas asked before going to the fridge to get a beer.
"Well of course, what else would it be?" The Gentleman smirked. "God talks to you like he does everyone else in the world, why shouldn't he? Five billion people know him every moment of their lives and only by recognizing that presence can you ask the right questions. The questions for the best possible outcome." The Devil took Thomas's beer from his hands and began drinking it himself.
"And what questions are those?" Thomas murmured, annoyed because that was his last beer.
"Obviously how to take the best possible solution to go around my attempts to make your lives a living hell." The Devil said sipping.
"Real love of your fellow man there." Thomas sighed.
"I admit I am leading you and the rest of the human race which follows me to their doom Thomas but it's only doing what you want to do in the first place. Heaven is Hell to the damned in it's lack of abuse and Hell is only Hell because it's inhabited by those with no love but for themselves. Really sometimes I wonder about you people." The Devil finished the beer and turned it upside down on Tommy's table.
"Uh huh. You still haven't answered my question Gentleman." Thomas asked. "How do you intend to overthrow the Almighty?"
"Get him to follow his conscience." The Gentleman smiled.
"Follow his conscience." Thomas decided he needed another cigarette and lighted one up.
"The Crusades, the Inquisition, Mindless intolerance, Witch burnings, Slavery, The World Wars, the death penalty, Shunning, abortion and those willing to kill to stop it, Child abuse, Legalism, Military dictatorships, Environmental and Political terrorism, Starvation, in general the things that you so often take for granted are the products of a mankind which is restless against the horrors it knows exist but either because they have been told not to or it is "not their business" they choose not to do anything about them. In fact it's even better if he chooses to do something about it." The Gentleman put his hands down on the table. "You would be surprised truly Tommy how easy it is for a righteous man to become mine by choosing to believe he must hate to do what's right." He said the last words like a police officer might tell a friend how to avoid getting a traffic ticket.
"And God?" Thomas Bradley said getting up and breathing deeply in his cigarette's smoke into his lungs as he turned his back from the Gentleman. He wanted the answer to it all and he wanted it now.
"Humanity suffers unimaginably because they choose it as the better path. All I am doing is showing the Lord that for every mortal that wants to follow his way and love one another unconditionally, there are thousands who prefer to be damned. Eventually I want God to grow sick of this cat and mouse game where his hand is offered to my damned if they just take it. I want him to excercise his desire to end the horror and make the world a pleasure palace for us all by eliminating the consequences. A rape victem because of his free will suffers unimaginable trauma yet why deprive the rapist of the rush and feel? Give us what we want God and we will be happy....the legions of Hell are my living petition to the Government that is Heaven's master." The Gentleman then got up from his chair.
"Your wrong." Thomas said in reply as he threw his cigarette on the ground and stamped it out with his foot. The idea of the universe's people speaking as one for mindless impossible self indulgence was too horrible to think about.
"You are a fine man to be making such a decision Tommy! I have watched you from the day you were born til you grew up to be the philandering hard drinking womanizer you are." The words flowed from the Gentleman's sneering lip as it quivered with impotent wrath. Thomas fell down on the ground at those words. Scared at the sudden vehemence from the figure as he looked at him.
"It won't be our contract or your not believing in God that damns you, as if such things mattered to those who feel him in their bones and work his will! No Thomas it will be the fact you never have cared about your fellow man beyond the story. That has made you mine." The Gentleman began to move toward Thomas.
Thomas had only seconds ago wanted to wring the neck of the Gentleman was now terrified beyond belief of the figure which grabbed him by the shirt and lifted him up against the wall.
"I'm going to warn people with your very own words." Thomas tried futilely to whisper out his curse, the world had been warned time and time again and the words he had heard were little more than what any man could imagine if he thought about it. The Gentleman knew this. Thomas had traded his soul for something any man could learn if he just listened to God.
"It is time for your judgment Tommy." The Gentleman said. Thomas's eyes glazed over in stark terror before the man's fingers began to close around his trachea and squeeze.
"Where I dwell there is no light of holiness and only darkness dwells. You have no idea what it is like to feel the suffering as an angel of billions upon billions of dead. Rape, Robbery, drugs, I provide everything the world has to offer to the Damned and they lap it up. The only difference between this world and the next is that there is no equal trace of selflessness among the Damned. The souls may be miserable but better misery than giving up their favorite vice for union with the divine!" The Gentleman spoke with a delicious grin as Thomas Bradley's tongue bled. Thomas's teeth were clamped down on his tongue while he struggled for air.
"Do you see it Tommy as your blood suffocates your body dies? You are kindred spirit now with us. You will live like us because you want it the same. You always have. You wanted this interview knowing it's cost! You will be glad you took it! Still even there, amidst the self pitying horde that is the legion unending of my army against God!"
Tommy could see Hell as the man's form became indistinct and his eyes watered from the strangulation.
"God…." The word sounded out but whether as a prayer or a questioning cry he could only guess. The Gentleman slammed Thomas's head against the back of his wall and all faded to oblivion.
When Thomas awoke his neck still bore the bruises from the assault but the tapes were missing and the door was ajar. No trace else wise remained of the Gentleman's presence. The fact he was alive, shook Tommy to the core and he wondered briefly what had stopped the Gentleman from killing him. Whatever intervention was responsible for his life Thomas was grateful for and as he headed out into the coming night he didn't know whether to pray, preach, or fall on his knees and weep. In the rain that he walked out his apartment to embrace the night he believed finally at last that for once the devil had not gotten his due.
However a certain gentleman watched him from afar and played with the tape in his hands.
"Only those in Heaven are immune to temptation Tommy. Only mortals and angels who have been tested in the fires of the world against the horrors of the night can resist my serene call. You have cast yourself with them but mark my words I will be victorious even as God uses me to temper such steel."
By. C.T. Phipps
The man whom every reporter would give his soul to interview was standing at
the edge of the downtown Washington D.C. apartment's window staring down through
the half folded blinds at the teeming masses that danced at the man's whim with the ease
of a veiled suggestion or a well placed word. Thomas Bradley had done just that to get
an interview with the man, sold his soul for a chance to interview Satan. Lucifer
Morningstar, Ahrimane, Iblis, The Devil, The Prince of Darkness and probably a
thousand other names throughout history and geography. The Evil One was currently watching
the mid-afternoon rain pouring on the city streets. He probably was having a dickens of a time
here in Washington as usual.
"Do you have your tapes ready Tommy?" The Gentleman spoke with his calm
clear crisp voice. He certainly didn't appear to be what Thomas had expected. The cult leader
he had promised that he could set up an interview with the Devil and Thomas had agreed mostly
out of jest. He hadn't expected the man in prison for multiple murder to actually know Satan
and until he had stood in the Gentleman's presence he'd believed it was just going to be another
of the man's deluded nutters. The Gentleman was the real McCoy though, Tommy could feel it.
The Gentleman was dressed in a white double-breasted suit with a black dress shirt and
white straight tie. He didn't look terribly rich or awe inspiring but like any number of the
thousands of mid-level Washington bureaucrats who slid in and out of the United State's capital
like flies off a carcass. He had short well-trimmed blonde hair and attractive features but wasn't
particularly striking with possible Germanic ancestry or English or Swiss or Polish and perhaps
even diluted Jewish heritage. All in all the type of guy you didn't even stop to make chit chat
with.
"It's all ready Scratch." Thomas said giddily as he set up the recorder right beside him.
He remembered briefly that film, starring Tom cruise and that Pitt guy his girlfriend went gah-gah
over, and how it's premise had been interviewing a vampire. Tommy remembered it as being
bloody ridiculous at the time and his opinion hadn't gone up much. This was going to be
something real though. It was a chance to learn all the secrets behind the world's evil puppet-
master and his minions. Thomas was trying not to think of the price he had to pay but in the
end. Still what was his spirit, his existence, his mind to the thing he was going to bring the world
after this night? One immortal soul for the truth of the man who took them? Peanuts.
"Don't call me that unless you're a Puritan Thomas. It's rather one of my signatures that I enjoy being referred to by different names for different folks. Old Nick for the British…Santa Clause non withstanding." He made an odd smile at that. "Just call me the Gentleman for this interview would you please?"
Thomas shrugged as he nodded and said "Sure, Gentleman sir." It wasn't surprising really that the Devil would know that Tommy had been thinking of him like that since the moment he had laid eyes on him. The Gentleman wasn't very striking it was true but he still carried himself with a regal ambiance that immediately gave one the impression of refinement if not greatness. It was unsettling but that was probably the point. Thomas disliked having his feelings being known. It was the reporter's bane to have one's thoughts known by a subject.
"Very well I think it's time to begin. I normally don't give interviews as you might guess but given your prestige in the field Tommy I decided to make an exception for you." The Gentleman said approaching. Pulling one of Thomas's chairs from the table he was sitting at the interview's subject sat down. "Feel free to start anywhere."
"Okay…" Thomas thought momentarily creeped out by whatever the Gentleman had decided made him worthy of this interview. He'd done some questionable things in his field but were any worthy of the Gentleman's attentions?
"Tommy I don't have all eternity." The Gentleman smiled.
"Oh sorry. Ummm…" Tommy decided to ask the first question that came to mind.
"So why did you rebel against God?" the question was the biggest question of all and certainly deserving of an answer to tell why evil began in the universe. Thomas lit a cigarette and held it in his right hand in between his fingers waiting in anticipation.
"My love of my fellow man." Was the answer.
"Oh come on." Tommy snorted, the gentleman wasn't going to give him this kind of answer. The man was the root of all evil, the great deceiver, the fiery pitchfork-wielding tormentor of mankind. It just couldn't be right. Tommy pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and really hoped this wasn't going to be some of that crap Anne Rice had published a few years back with Menoch the Devil. The book had made Lucifer into some kind of lily-washed saint and Thomas had gagged practically reading it.
"Tell me Tommy what you think of the world today? War, Rape, Crime, Child abuse, Religious intolerances….guilt?" The Gentleman smiled waving his right hand as if feeling a nonexistent breeze. "What if I told you Tommy that was the Father's way of teaching us how to appreciate the true depth of his creation?"
"I'd call you a liar." Tommy said, pulling another cigarette from his jacket pocket and lighting with a match from another pocket. The other one he'd lit up too fast and it had burned to ashes in his fingers.
"Of course you would Tommy." The Gentleman said with his smile brightening ever so slightly to the reporter's answer in a sort of private triumph. "Question nothing, it's my way."
"Pardon?" Thomas said raising an eyebrow.
"We'll get to that later." The Gentleman replied with the same cool relaxed tone he hadn't wavered from. "Long ago I asked myself why certain things were not to be in the world I dwelled in. Why it was and I quote…wrong." The last word was enunciated so slowly and with such hidden depth that Thomas felt the temperature drop ten degrees before the Gentleman was done with saying it. "I thus asked God to change the world."
"Make everything not so wrong?" Thomas said puffing on his cigarette.
"A world Tommy where nothing is wrong; to put it in a perspective you can understand A WORLD OF NO CONSEQUENCE..." the five words were not shouted but rung in the air "anything could be done and anything willed without ramification. Black could be white, murder and insult mix with lovemaking and compliment. Call it evil if you will I felt there was something fundamentally wrong with making anything possible in this universe unclean." The Gentleman said as his words conjured up a beautiful paradise where ever hidden fantasy was allowed and not just horrible things but all the acts Thomas had been told only saints could do, living side by side.
"All beings in God's creation are by nature selfless Tommy. We are one body one flesh one spirit with every action having an equal and often adverse on another being. Thus I wished for this world to end suffering." The Gentleman leaned back into his chair and folded his hands blinking at the reporter.
"So…what did God say?" Thomas Bradley said breathing a deep breath of nicotine into his lungs then breathing it out onto the Gentleman accidentally, the smoke seemingly having no affect on him at all.
"He said my dream was beyond his power and even he cannot make one plus one equal three…well the equivalent really but that's the best summary your mind could get in a two hour casette tape. I knew however this was a lie." The Gentleman blinked for the first time since the meeting began and moved his fingers to his mouth in a contemplative thought.
Thomas grinned putting out the cigarette into a nearby ashtray as he beat it to a unrecognizable pretzel like shape. The Gentleman's words were everything he imagined them to be, telling the inner most secrets of the universe to his captive audience.
"Why would God lie to you…Gentleman?" Thomas asked almost calling him Lucifer but remembering his place.
"I don't know." The Gentleman responded truthfully as he twirled a finger in his hair for a moment. "However I had seen him make Light from Darkness, Substance from nothingness, and could not believe that while good could be changed to what men call evil that it could not hold the properties of both equally."
Tommy tapped his reporters pen for a moment as he saw the Gentleman looking up at him annoyed.
"Sorry…was just getting a little bored with the whole science lesson versus the fate of the universe." Thomas tried making a slight joke but unfortunately the Gentleman wasn't laughing.
The Gentleman then smiled again in another private triumph. "I appreciate your lack of patience and we will move on Tommy. You are paying well for this after all." The last words were frightening in their pettiness.
"So what about religion." Thomas said, deciding he had gotten as much out of one question as he was going to get.
"Hmmm?" The Gentleman teased hinting that he should clarify his question, for himself or the audience who knew.
Thomas thought about it for a second and then decided how to phrase it "You know, which religion is right?" Thomas certainly wasn't a religious man but he believed something was out there or he wouldn't have gotten this interview.
"Don't be so sure." The Gentleman continued "I am a bit…surprised Tommy that you would trust me enough to give you a solid, truthful answer as to the state of the correct truth of the universe."
Thomas knew he wasn't surprised…hoped it, but there was still that glint of triumph that he seemed like he wanted him to say it.
"If anyone knows it would be you." Thomas finally said as the welcoming nod from the Gentleman made Thomas want to reach across the table and strangle him.
"Yes Tommy well the secret is quite easy to share. The religion itself that is the most perfect? The religion is the person who wears it. The Bible, Torah, Qua'ran, Analycts of Confucius or writings of Lewis might tell a man through allegory how to live or the perfection of love and other "godly" virtues but ultimately reading them, repeating their words, and even doing what they say will do nothing to save you from my grasp unless you feel it." The Gentleman's words are bitterly sweet and whimsical.
"Ouch." Thomas said scribbling down some notes on his yellow pad to that comment.
"It is a funny thing about humanity really that the entire sum of religeon seems to be everyone taking seriously often the horrible justifactions that God himself despises and frequently condemns from his prophets.....see much of the Old Testament and New and somehow consider it and everything after sacred. Ancestor worship occasionally bites one in the arse I must say." The Gentleman said putting a finger to his mouth.
"What?" Thomas looked up at the seemingly nonsense phrase.
"Never mind, carry on." The Gentleman said.
Thomas had some interesting questions for that one but decided to obey the man's command. Thomas decided to ask another big question, he privately cursed himself for not writing down his questions beforehand. The interviewer had just expected them to come to him during the conversation. It hadn't been for lack of trying, he'd crumbled up a dozen sheets of unsatisfactory questions earlier this morning. He obviously should have tried harder.
"So what's your plan to win?" Thomas asked and quickly clarified "How do you intend to transform the world and how do you intend to get God not to…well lay the smack down like everybody predicts he will." It was a mainstay in every religion that darkness would not triumph in the end. He had to know how the Gentleman felt.
"Patience…" the Gentleman said though the words weren't comforting. He was saying it in a way that was increasingly flaring Thomas to levels of violence. Thomas wasn't patient, he wanted his answers now, damnit!
"The way of salvation lies in what is natural to our forms. Thomas, it is inscribed in every fiber of our existence the presence of the Master. The union with all that should be is a condition we are born into and it takes society to make us ignore that little voice in our heads." the Gentleman grinned.
"Your saying my conscience is God talking to me?" Thomas asked before going to the fridge to get a beer.
"Well of course, what else would it be?" The Gentleman smirked. "God talks to you like he does everyone else in the world, why shouldn't he? Five billion people know him every moment of their lives and only by recognizing that presence can you ask the right questions. The questions for the best possible outcome." The Devil took Thomas's beer from his hands and began drinking it himself.
"And what questions are those?" Thomas murmured, annoyed because that was his last beer.
"Obviously how to take the best possible solution to go around my attempts to make your lives a living hell." The Devil said sipping.
"Real love of your fellow man there." Thomas sighed.
"I admit I am leading you and the rest of the human race which follows me to their doom Thomas but it's only doing what you want to do in the first place. Heaven is Hell to the damned in it's lack of abuse and Hell is only Hell because it's inhabited by those with no love but for themselves. Really sometimes I wonder about you people." The Devil finished the beer and turned it upside down on Tommy's table.
"Uh huh. You still haven't answered my question Gentleman." Thomas asked. "How do you intend to overthrow the Almighty?"
"Get him to follow his conscience." The Gentleman smiled.
"Follow his conscience." Thomas decided he needed another cigarette and lighted one up.
"The Crusades, the Inquisition, Mindless intolerance, Witch burnings, Slavery, The World Wars, the death penalty, Shunning, abortion and those willing to kill to stop it, Child abuse, Legalism, Military dictatorships, Environmental and Political terrorism, Starvation, in general the things that you so often take for granted are the products of a mankind which is restless against the horrors it knows exist but either because they have been told not to or it is "not their business" they choose not to do anything about them. In fact it's even better if he chooses to do something about it." The Gentleman put his hands down on the table. "You would be surprised truly Tommy how easy it is for a righteous man to become mine by choosing to believe he must hate to do what's right." He said the last words like a police officer might tell a friend how to avoid getting a traffic ticket.
"And God?" Thomas Bradley said getting up and breathing deeply in his cigarette's smoke into his lungs as he turned his back from the Gentleman. He wanted the answer to it all and he wanted it now.
"Humanity suffers unimaginably because they choose it as the better path. All I am doing is showing the Lord that for every mortal that wants to follow his way and love one another unconditionally, there are thousands who prefer to be damned. Eventually I want God to grow sick of this cat and mouse game where his hand is offered to my damned if they just take it. I want him to excercise his desire to end the horror and make the world a pleasure palace for us all by eliminating the consequences. A rape victem because of his free will suffers unimaginable trauma yet why deprive the rapist of the rush and feel? Give us what we want God and we will be happy....the legions of Hell are my living petition to the Government that is Heaven's master." The Gentleman then got up from his chair.
"Your wrong." Thomas said in reply as he threw his cigarette on the ground and stamped it out with his foot. The idea of the universe's people speaking as one for mindless impossible self indulgence was too horrible to think about.
"You are a fine man to be making such a decision Tommy! I have watched you from the day you were born til you grew up to be the philandering hard drinking womanizer you are." The words flowed from the Gentleman's sneering lip as it quivered with impotent wrath. Thomas fell down on the ground at those words. Scared at the sudden vehemence from the figure as he looked at him.
"It won't be our contract or your not believing in God that damns you, as if such things mattered to those who feel him in their bones and work his will! No Thomas it will be the fact you never have cared about your fellow man beyond the story. That has made you mine." The Gentleman began to move toward Thomas.
Thomas had only seconds ago wanted to wring the neck of the Gentleman was now terrified beyond belief of the figure which grabbed him by the shirt and lifted him up against the wall.
"I'm going to warn people with your very own words." Thomas tried futilely to whisper out his curse, the world had been warned time and time again and the words he had heard were little more than what any man could imagine if he thought about it. The Gentleman knew this. Thomas had traded his soul for something any man could learn if he just listened to God.
"It is time for your judgment Tommy." The Gentleman said. Thomas's eyes glazed over in stark terror before the man's fingers began to close around his trachea and squeeze.
"Where I dwell there is no light of holiness and only darkness dwells. You have no idea what it is like to feel the suffering as an angel of billions upon billions of dead. Rape, Robbery, drugs, I provide everything the world has to offer to the Damned and they lap it up. The only difference between this world and the next is that there is no equal trace of selflessness among the Damned. The souls may be miserable but better misery than giving up their favorite vice for union with the divine!" The Gentleman spoke with a delicious grin as Thomas Bradley's tongue bled. Thomas's teeth were clamped down on his tongue while he struggled for air.
"Do you see it Tommy as your blood suffocates your body dies? You are kindred spirit now with us. You will live like us because you want it the same. You always have. You wanted this interview knowing it's cost! You will be glad you took it! Still even there, amidst the self pitying horde that is the legion unending of my army against God!"
Tommy could see Hell as the man's form became indistinct and his eyes watered from the strangulation.
"God…." The word sounded out but whether as a prayer or a questioning cry he could only guess. The Gentleman slammed Thomas's head against the back of his wall and all faded to oblivion.
When Thomas awoke his neck still bore the bruises from the assault but the tapes were missing and the door was ajar. No trace else wise remained of the Gentleman's presence. The fact he was alive, shook Tommy to the core and he wondered briefly what had stopped the Gentleman from killing him. Whatever intervention was responsible for his life Thomas was grateful for and as he headed out into the coming night he didn't know whether to pray, preach, or fall on his knees and weep. In the rain that he walked out his apartment to embrace the night he believed finally at last that for once the devil had not gotten his due.
However a certain gentleman watched him from afar and played with the tape in his hands.
"Only those in Heaven are immune to temptation Tommy. Only mortals and angels who have been tested in the fires of the world against the horrors of the night can resist my serene call. You have cast yourself with them but mark my words I will be victorious even as God uses me to temper such steel."