Hell by Robert Olen Butler

up.’”
    Go ahead and fix my ass good for these fuck-you thoughts I’m having. Do something to show me what an immortal omnipotent omniscient bad-ass you are.
    “And of course it wasn’t too long before the old man came back around. Kill the other guy. Kill yourselves. Kill anything that moves. That’s the way to please You-know-who and get to You-know-what.”
    Whoa. You can’t hear me.
    “But it was too late for him and me.”
    We all assume you know what we’re thinking.
    “He realized I saw through him and he didn’t like it.”
    But you don’t.
    Satan suddenly leaps up from his chair. His face flushes as red as the throat blood of a bullock before a tabernacle.
    Hatcher gasps and recoils. I’m wrong. Now it comes. The worst thing ever.
    But Satan simply cries, “I did it in defense of the double cheeseburger! Those cows died for you!” And he throws himself back into his chair. His face turns white. “Next question.”
    Hatcher is panting. This is a dangerous moment, he knows.
    Satan sees the state Hatcher is in. He cocks his head at him, and again Hatcher fears he’s been wrong.
    But Satan says, “Yes. Exciting. It’s all very exciting. Ray Kroc’s in the kitchen even as we speak. Cooking up a firestorm of Big Macs. Calm down now and ask me the next fucking question.”
    Hatcher has to put aside what he’s learned unexpectedly and go on as he’d intended. He takes a deep breath, quells the panting, and says, “There are so many of us . . .”
    “A multitude. A teeming multitude. Your brothers and sisters. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Yearning , I tell you. I lift my lamp beside the flaming door.” He’s on his feet again, and suddenly a torch appears in his hands. A torch with a flame of what looks like red neon, but throwing out great swirling clusters of sparks. “Sacrifice. Kill. Pray. Come to me, my little ones.”
    A spray of sharp pointillist pain rains onto Hatcher’s forehead. The sparks from the torch. He cries out and he smells his hair burning and he beats at his head with his hands.
    “Oh pardon,” Satan says, and instantly Hatcher’s pain ceases. “Pardon. Breathe free and get burned. Always the way, yes? Always.”
    The torch has vanished.
    Once more, Hatcher starts to doubt what he thinks he’s come to understand. Breathe free and get burned. This is a warning. But why such indirection? Hatcher can’t worry now. Interview. “So you invite your multitude, yes?” Hatcher hears himself reflexively picking up the Old Man’s locutions. “Do you have to take the souls you’re given?”
    “Have to? I want you. I want you all. I choose you, my darlings.”
    “Doesn’t he decide who gets in?”
    The fire behind Satan flares up, rushes forward over Satan and all the way to Hatcher, does a bullwhip snap at the top of Hatcher’s head and sets his hair on fire again. This time Satan simply watches as the top of Hatcher’s head rages in such pain that his sight shuts down and his brain is about to. Then Satan says, “Okay. Okay.”
    The flames go out and Hatcher can see again: the thin, hard, upturned line of Satan’s mouth, his narrowed eyes. Hatcher’s head still aches and smolders and his hair is gone for now, but his brain is working again. He is exhilarated. How quick Satan was to punish him for pressing the point about his father’s higher authority. Hatcher takes this as proof of the privacy of his own thoughts. Prove me wrong, asshole.
    And Satan doesn’t. He says, “Don’t go ‘he’ with me. He he he—I’m not laughing. He he fucking he. It is I. I who choose. I do so because I want you. I want you in my family. Doesn’t that warm the cockles of your heart? Not to mention the top of your head. I want you all.” Satan looks straight into the camera. “Isn’t this a Hallmark moment? Send me a card now, all of you. Go find a sweet little greeting card with family thoughts and mail it to me.” Satan blows a