Chapter Eleven-
Meg sat in the near-empty courthouse cafeteria, human again, in spirit, at least, but feeling exhausted, dejected, and almost defeated.
She absently shoveled around the vegetables in her lunch platter while her mind resembled a whirlwind, trying to piece together what happened in court earlier.
Aside from Halloween coming early in the courtroom, she didn't expect things to go south so fast. The Devil broke her star witnesses down like a math problem, and he clearly wasn't even trying. If this was war, she was being woeful outmaneuvered.
Lacking anything to do, and even less of an idea, she just glanced around at the empty tables, steely counters, and white linoleum. A few paces away, she spied attorney Harvey Birdman and prosecutor Reducto chatting about a civil case they both were on opposing sides in.
She shrugged, and kept her mind back on the matter at hand, the lack of a strategy that could pull everyone concerned back from the brink. So far, she had nothing.
It just baffled Meg that she could do so well, early on, and now she was getting crushed. As though she was on the receiving end of a very well executed rope-a-dope.
She sighed and wondered why she was here. She knew she had to beat back the doubts, but they came unbidden anyway.
Meg fished in her purse and took out her cell phone. She was too down to go home by herself and was hoping that Death was free to pick her up after today's session.
She brought the cell to her head to speak, but got an earful of Death's and his mother's answering machine instead.
She lifted her head up to hear a voice coming from the hallway into the cafeteria. When she saw it was her opponent, gloating easily into his cell phone, she wanted to leave. Not out a sense of fear, although that would have happened, had she felt the need, but more out of a need to be alone and not have to hear him at all.
Until her dying day, she would never know why she didn't get up and go straight home, when he casually took the seat opposite hers and sat congenially down with a cup of tea.
"Why so down, Meg?" he asked, the smugness still showing somewhat through the mock-concern on his face. "You have to look at it the way I see it. The only way it can be seen. You have the makings of a good lawyer, trust me on that. But you're not scheming, you're thinking. It has its place, but it'll never give you that killer edge you need."
Meg didn't know if he could read minds, so she shelved the opinion she had of his advice, and just listened to him with wary respect.
"And what would I need to get that so-called killer edge, hmm?" she asked.
"I'm glad you asked, my dear," he replied. "What you need to do is understand that the law is a game. It's not about guilt or innocence. A trial is just a game. And the object of the game is to convince the jury that you're right. That's all. Isn't that easy?"
In spite of herself, Meg laughed inwardly at the simplicity of that. It was that easy if one looked at it in that light, and that was the genius of it. The simplistic was his friend, his dark ally. The evils of the world were inspired by his simple acts.
It reminded her of the time she went to the art museum on a field trip. She saw Surat's Sunday In The Park With George, and was given a lesson about the art style used, pointillism. The simple giving rise to the complex. If true evil was given an art form, it would have been pointillism, and the Devil would have been its master. Given the length and breadth of bloody, human history, his painting would have made Surat's look like a paint-by-numbers kit.
But she kept her face screwed in a skeptical scowl. It was easy to reduce the freedom or captivity of someone other than one's self into how charismatic one was to the jury, but it was missing the morality, and that was what she hooked on to. Had to hook on to. It was the only thing that separated her from him. The last thing she wanted to do was seek or accept advice from the cloven one.
Besides, soon it would be morning on Earth, and that meant school. She'd have to go home eventually and face the earthly grind of dealing with her folks again, something that didn't make her feel particularly sanguine after just hearing Jennifer's testimony.
'Why was it so hard to be a teenager?' she thought. 'Unless you had great looks, or was connected to the right people, or did what others in the herd expected of you, the deck was stacked against you, and the others constantly let you know it.'
And what exactly was she going back to? Abuse? Ridicule? Living under the double standards of others?
She stiffened inside as she reminded herself to stop dwelling on that, because she could feel herself starting to slip into the old thoughts. The thoughts that her religious upbringing, such as it was, and, quite frankly, her fear, kept her from exploring to its tragic conclusion.
"Thinking about killing yourself, huh?" asked the Devil.
"Shut up!" Meg snapped, fearing that he could read her mind, and momentarily not thinking about whom she was addressing. She froze in terror, her breath sitting in her chest. But the Devil just chuckled understandingly.
"Don't sweat it. I can see the debate playing out on your face. You gotta go home, but you're not really sure that you want to. I understand. If I had a family like yours, I'd take my sweet time, too. Especially that Peter. Man, and I thought Job was long-suffering."
Meg cocked her head in surprise. "You know my dad? You know my family?"
"Pretty much, yeah. God's not the only one who can see people from far away, but I like to think that I'm more accessible. But, back to you. You know, you could just stay here. I know that you keep somehow astral traveling back and forth from Earth to here, so in a way, you've sort of done the hard part already."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that you're already here as a spirit. All you'd have to do is just stay up here. Let your folks deal with the body. Knowing them, they'd just as soon use it as a speed bump in their driveway, or something. But you wouldn't have to worry about all that because you'd be free, and that's the important thing."
"C'mon," said Meg, as though this was a chess move she saw from two miles out. She knew that he wouldn't be this chummy unless it was clearly in his favor, somehow. It was a trick, and that was all she needed to know. "That's not the answer, and you know it."
"That's not what your heart tells me."
"Like you'd know," she countered.
"I would. I know Man's heart very well. For instance, when you told the jury in your opening statement that you weren't going to paint the defendants as anything less than dumb for falling in line with that cult leader, you, my dear, was full of it."
"What?"
"That's right. You knew that Jennifer was part of a cult when she introduced the old man to you as their leader. And you were willing to join yourself, because you thought he had something you needed. Security. A place to belong. Acceptance."
"No, I-"
The Devil took a sip of tea, ignoring her rather weak protest. "Hell, girl, you even let him fit you for your very own track suit. I wonder what would have happened if you did drink the punch when the others had. I suppose there would be no one here to try and save you, would there?"
The truth of that hit her like a body blow, but she couldn't let him know that. "That's bull. And anyway, you're a liar."
"Hey, I'm just telling you what you told the jury," he said easily. "Unless you were lying to them, just then. Besides, how could you have known what their problems were like? Oh, yeah! You were just like them. But that didn't stop you from denigrating them when you put them on display like that in front of the jury, you hypocrite."
Another body blow, and this one crashed into her ego like a thunderbolt. "What? Are you kidding? I was trying to defend them. I was trying to show that they were capable of making mistakes, and made one by hooking up with the old man. I was saying that even though they had problems, they could have found better avenues for help."
"Like you did? You almost fell in line with them yourself."
He was peeling her open like an onion, with expert speed, exposing her insecurities and fallibilities to the judgmental light of day. 'Why did he know these things?' she fretted internally.
"I didn't mean to," she tried to explain, but wondered in the back of her mind why she was trying to explain herself to him? "I just didn't…think. And why are you coming down on me? I thought you liked trying to sway the jury to your way of reasoning. That's exactly what I was trying to do."
"If you say so," he shrugged. "It's not like you were doing that for me."
"What are you talking about? I did it for me."
"Really?"
Meg saw the trap close too late. "I mean…I did it for my defendants. They're the ones on trial, not me."
He stopped mid-sip and suddenly turned seriously. Deadly serious. "Don't bet on it, sweet pea." Then he brightened again and asked, "By the way, how are those scars?"
"Huh?" said Meg, unnerved by the mood shift.
"The scars. You know, like the ones on your back from all of those poison darts that hit you in South America? Or the bullet wound in your chest, from where your own father shot you. Or in your shoulder, where your brother threw that spear?"
"What are you talking about? What scars?" she lied. Her face betrayed the knowledge that he knew it all too well.
"Now, who's lying?" he smiled. "But I mustn't leave out the most damning, the most important scars of all, the ones on your arms," he pointed at one of her arms, the healed lines, hidden under her blouse's sleeve, would be just visible under close inspection. "And the ones in your soul." He then pointed at her heart.
She couldn't hide anything from him, she knew now. It was foolish. Better to let her spiritual wounds be exposed now, than fight a losing battle each time, to conceal them. "Leave me alone." Meg said sadly.
"Why?" he pressed pleasantly. "This is Heaven, a place of truth. If we can't be truthful here, where can we? You know, I really love the way you debate on whether to kill yourself in the bathroom with the razor blade and with the suicide note on the sink, or to just simply do it in your room. Though, if I had to choose, I'd say your mother's suggestion of taking an overdose of pills after reading a Sylvia Platt book, was inspired. Who knew Lois' heart could be so black? I thought little Stewie was going to be the evil one. Who saw that coming?"
"Whatever," she said blankly, thinking back to that very moment, when her mother just didn't want to help her anymore, and when she needed her the most. "Whatever happens, happens," were Lois' words then, and it slowly stabbed Meg like a stiletto now.
"Yeah, I guess you're right, though. It's not like home is the only place to get you daily dose of nastiness and cruelty. I'll bet school's a drag, too, huh? Ah, the three R's…reading, 'riting and ridicule. Though I must say, for a loudmouth like that D'amico girl, she sure does ask for it a lot when you show her what you're made of. I wonder if that's done on purpose. What do you think?"
"Whatever."
"Whatever? Whatever? Oh, come on, you're much wittier than that. Aren't you the next Clarence Darrow? What kind of crusader would you be if you weren't true to yourself?"
"And what am I denying to myself, then?" Meg asked absently, not caring what she heard.
"Your deepest wish."
"Which is what, Amazing Kresken?" She was tiring of this dance.
"That you want to die," he said to her simply. "I thought that was painfully obvious."
Meg's heart turned into glacial ice. She knew he was exploiting her weaknesses, but she didn't care. That weakness, that mystery, was hers. It was her private despair, and she guarded it with all the priority of a state secret. He had no right to meddle or psychoanalyze, no matter what his agenda was.
"You don't know what I want," she said with a venom even he would have approved of. "You're just trying to twist me around with your lies."
"It takes a liar to know one, and you're lying to yourself, now, Meg. Your family's going to self-destruct; I want you to know that. Not all families survive themselves. It's happening now. It's happening with you," the Devil said simply.
He took another sip of his tea and continued. "Right now, that part of your brain, your fight or flight response, is wondering if you should stay, in which case, you'll be swallowed whole by their dysfunction, sooner or later. Or whether you can make your own way out to a better place. Maybe this place. It's not too late, and at least this time, you wouldn't feel a thing. No razors, no peanuts, yes, I know about your allergy, and no return. Isn't that like Paradise?"
'Maybe,' she pondered impossibly. "Maybe…"
"Listen to me, Meg. You don't have to think about this right away. But I can make it happen…if you want me to."
"You could? How?" she asked skeptically. Inside, she couldn't believe that she had asked that. But listening to him was becoming…easier, so much more natural. 'Why am I listening to him?' she asked herself in thought.
"Put in a request to stay here in Heaven. Despite what some would say, I still have some pull up here. Now, Ragg doesn't know that you're still alive, despite that boob trying. If you can arrange to have your body resting someplace private outside the home, I can call Ragg and tell him where it is. He could come over and dispose of it, and you can stay up here for eternity. Now that's a deal you can't beat with a stick."
"I suppose, I could…" It was so easy. It made…such good sense. Easy was good, too, wasn't it?
"Like I said, don't rush into it. Think about it back home, and then let me know, okay? 'Cause, God knows there are worse things you could do with your life than waste it being loyal to the scum who treat you like dog shit. You're better than that, by a long way out."
He was right. The door was there. He revealed it all to her. All she had to do was open it and pass through. Her choice. She didn't owe her fickle family a blessed thing to keep her from the happiness that had been denied her for so, so long.
"Yeah. I do deserve better than what's been happening to me. It just hurts so bad sometimes, and I get so tired of taking it all the time," she admitted, feeling a little more fatigued just from the telling. "I just want some peace. And I just want them to care for me like I do them. I just want someone to care."
"I care, Meg. You can believe that." He reached over and held her hand and she didn't flinch. His touch wasn't nauseating this time, but actually gave her a warm feeling of comfort she didn't think she ever felt before. The last time she felt anything similar, it was long ago, when her mother once held her, when she was very young and she fell and hurt herself.
She embraced the dream, and the dream was real. In her mind, as clear as if she were watching a movie, she could see the battered, ruined body of herself found by hikers near a lonely woodland stream. Her picture on prominent display behind Tom Tucker as he gave a momentary report of her death and the lack of clues as to her killer's identity.
The next moment became the site of her private funeral, and the small knot of friends she had wept sad tears alongside the majority of her family, now realizing to their regret and private, everlasting shame, how terribly they treated her and how empty their lives had now become from her absence. Only Stewie, for whatever reason, held still, held silent.
Then the world had changed, melted away into the distance of the past. The vista was now breathtaking. Beautiful spires of celestial cities spanned the eternal sky. Golden, stallion-driven chariots crossed the air in loose traffic patterns, and caught the sun in fiery reflections. Those with the ability, flew on powerful, snow-white wings.
The entire skyscape cried to her a freedom she couldn't begin to explain. Tears flowed unnoticed from her eyes as the reality of where she was finally hit her. Heaven, in all its understanding, in all its majesty, in all its unfathomable mystery, opened up to her like a sweet, cool breeze on the hottest of days, washing every pain, every memory, every disappointment in her life away forever.
She walked reverently to a massive, gilded gate where Saint Peter himself, sat lounging by his desk. Meg didn't want to disturb the man, but she desperately wanted to enter The Kingdom.
"Excuse me," she quietly said to him. "Could you help me out? I'm trying to get in, and think I have to wait until you check me out, or something."
Peter snorted awake and peered at the girl curiously. "Oh, hello there. Sorry, young lady. You wanted to get in, you say?" He reached into a drawer in his desk and fumbled for his folders. "Be right with you. I just have to look for your Mortality Report."
He kept rummaging in the various drawers for it for some time, and Meg began to worry a bit.
"Are you sure it's in there?" she asked, fighting to keep the anxiety from her voice.
"It should be," he answered. "Strangest thing. This happened once before. Couldn't find it no matter where we looked."
Now Meg was getting more nervous. "Was there a young, black woman dressed like Catwoman running around here lately?" she asked. She was having her suspicions.
"Not that I know of," said Peter, scratching his head, perplexed. "I hated that movie, but he might be able to help you." he pointed with his chin to the figure behind her.
"Who?" she asked, before turning to see for herself and gasping in confused surprise to see the Devil standing calmly behind her.
"Wait! What are you doing here?" Meg asked, before falling silent with a numb dread as The Prince of Darkness reached behind himself and produced a snow-white folder with her full name typed in gold on the cover.
"What's that?" she asked him again, comprehending dawning in her eyes. "Is that…my Mortality Report?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he opened the folder, put on a pair of reading glasses, and read to her in a clear voice.
"Megan Griffin. Female Human. Time on Earth: 18 years. Time of Departure: Thursday/March 18/2010. Cause of Death: Suicide. Warning: Subject has rejected the love of the Father by ended her own life, which was given to her by Him. Subject is hereby disavowed from The Kingdom for all time, and shall be penalized to the fullest extent of the Law."
He looked up after reading and said to her, with a predator's grin, "That's me."
"He's right, I'm afraid," the saint chimed in sympathetically. "Why would you do such a thing, child?"
Meg was beset on both sides by divinely correct protocol, and she never felt like such a fool.
"I-I was told I could," she explained with a fearful sob, the magnitude of her error terrifying her to her core. "I don't understand. I-I thought it wasn't wrong if I let Ragg kill me. It was a mercy killing, right? Not suicide!"
"Afraid not, mon cher," the Devil explained. "See, you set yourself up for Mr. Ragg to kill you in the woods. Even though he did the dirty work, you arranged it. That counts as an assisted suicide, in my book, as well as 'Da Big Guy's. So, is there anything you'd like to add before sentence is carried out? If you want to scream and cry, that's fine. I'm pretty used to it by now."
She did just that and more, as he grabbed her, kicking and clawing at the clouds, by the collar, dragged her to the trunk of his crimson sports car, and dumped her in with fearsome finality.
Peter could still hear her wailing and pleading, muffled in the space of the trunk, as the Devil gunned the engine, and drove for home with his latest prize.
He shook his head sadly. "Poor girl. I kinda liked her. Oh, well."
The terror of her waking dream was so real to her, it made her jump, her hand jerking out of his.
She just stared at him, out of breath, fear and shock of the vision making a mask of her face. The betrayal was smoothly brutal. The con was exquisite in its execution, and the tragic punch line would make her shiver for days afterward.
She hated him as he looked at her quietly and continued to drink his tea. With a few deep breaths, she calmed down enough to put everything into perspective, and then she placed the hatred squarely on where it truly needed to be. On her.
She couldn't believe how easy she made it for him. He walked in the room and she bared her soul to him as if to a lover. The shame crept into her face as crimson blush and she gritted her teeth in a vow that she would never let her guard down ever again when he was around her.
"You want me to die, don't you?" Meg asked in a frosty voice. "How could I have been so stupid? I gave you all the tools you needed to get the job done, didn't I? It's got nothing to do with my life, or even the lives of the kids. I'm just in your way, so you wanted to eliminate a problem."
"Nothing personal, my pet," he admitted.
"Wrong. I'm nobody's fucking pet, got that?" she spoke with new steel in her voice. This slave would break her shackles. She stood from the table, hands on the tabletop, and leaned forward to face the Devil squarely.
"And you get this, too. I'm through walking on eggshells just because you're around. I was more afraid of myself than I was of you, and that's gonna change around here. You know, I was really going to let you get away with having me kill myself. What a laugh. Well, Mr. Scratch, I decided not to listen to your mojo anymore. You're not my friend and you're not my master. You're just my enemy, and nothing more. Now, I've got a case to win, and you've got one to lose."
The Devil said nothing still as Meg gathered her cell phone and her purse and walked past him towards the door. She turned just as she got to the threshold, and said to him with returned audacity, "Oh, and if you're feeling threatened by my chances of winning? Tough shit."
She marched out of the room, buoyed by an exhilaration of facing down the Devil, and an inner strength she hadn't known before.
Meg strode by clerks and paralegals on her way back to the courtroom, her mind still scrambling for a strategy. It felt good to be free of the Devil's grasp, but it wasn't over yet. She might still be in danger from this case, but Jennifer and the rest of children certainly were.
She attempted to slow down her thinking and remember what she was planned to do overall in the trial. She wanted to show the court that the kids were not brats who wanted attention at any cost, but were victims, solely. If that was the case, then who was the victimizer? Clearly, that role fell to the cult leader. And how did he go about doing that?
The light bulb shone in her mind like the top of a lighthouse.
She never did get around to questioning the cult leader. It slipped her mind after that entire courtroom Monster Mash nonsense. She forgot that she had to establish how he did his brainwashing, since, if it could be proven that such tactics did exist, it could bring her that much closer to victory and acquittal. He would have to be called in as both a witness and an expert witness on cult indoctrination.
Meg gave a tight grin in satisfaction of the formulation of a workable plan at last. That didn't stop her from thinking of a suitable counter-punch to the Devil's inevitable cross-examination. She couldn't stop him from asking questions calculated to blow her proof to shreds, and that took some of the joy from her step as she neared the assigned courtroom.
So lost in thought was she, that she didn't hear Death call her, and almost bumped into him as he approached her.
"Death? What are you doing here?" Meg asked. "I tried to call you, but I just got your machine."
"Yeah, I know. I came home a little while ago and heard your voice on this long, weird message. Sounded like you were talking to somebody," Death explained. "I wanted to call you about it, but I just kept getting a busy signal. I don't think you hung up, there. Anyway, I thought something was up, so I came out here."
Meg waved it off. "Don't worry, I'm alright. Just had a chat with…"
A thought, a beautiful, beautiful thought then blossomed into being in her head, and she radiated a smile she only gave whenever she had gotten a hold of a really good bag of weed.
She grabbed the front of Death's robe, not worrying about his touch, since she was already a spirit, and stared pleadingly at him.
"Please tell me you still have that message on your answering machine!" she said in earnest.
Death, not knowing what was going on with this crazy girl, answered. "If I say I do, will you not shake me to pieces here in the courthouse?"
"Yes!"
"Okay, okay. I still have the recording. It's an old machine my mom never got rid of. Ma never was good when it came to programming that thing. Probably set the record timer too long and got…what exactly are you looking for, anyway?"
"You said that the message was long and weird, right?" Meg asked breathlessly. "I bet…I hope, that it recorded the whole conversation between me and the Devil. I can use this, somehow."
Meg let go of his robes, to Death's relief, and by way of gratitude, he asked, "You want me to go get it for you?"
"Yes, would you? The whole machine," she said as she straightened her blouse and pictured her victory strongly in her mind. "This may just turn this case around for us."