An uneventful night at the Grassy Knoll Pub got interesting when Jesse Custer, the proprietor and bartender, noticed droplets of water on the bar forming letters.
The letters formed words. The words a sentence.
Specifically one that read “I DESIRE A DRINK-M.”
Time to make good on that promise, Jesse thought. Raising his voice above the noisy jukebox, he yelled “Pay for your shit and get out! We’re closed!”
“But it’s only eleven-thirty,” one bar patron moaned.
“Private event. Pay up and get the fuck out!” Jesse responded.
Thirty minutes later, the last of the remaining patrons had paid their tab and exited the premises. As the front door swung shut, Custer said to no one in particular, “The place is empty. You can come out now.”
A door then opened where one shouldn’t have been, and Lucifer Morningstar, the Lord of Hell, entered the Grassy Knoll Pub with a look on his face combining a smirk with a grouchy stare.
“Took you long enough, Reverend,” the Devil muttered as he took a seat at the bar.
“Humans are fallible and slow, sir. You of all people would know that.”
The Devil smiled wryly. “I suppose you’re right. I do know that, what with all the souls I’ve collected over the years. People are dumb, slow, and fallible.”
Jesse Custer responded to this by producing a glass bowl filled with artisanal pretzels. “What’ll you have tonight, sir?” he asked Beelzebub. He was careful with his language. People had to around the Devil; one wrong word and it could literally cost your soul.
“I think,” the Devil mused, “I’ll have an appletini please.”
“Oi, Jesse, Big Red here wants a fruity little appletini!” Cassidy, the Knoll’s doorman howled from his post. “They twist up a punishment where there’s no good whiskey in Hell, did they?”
The Devil turned to the Irishman at the door. Fixing his gaze on the Irishman, the Devil said “Proinsias Cullen Cassidy, I am Lucifer Morningstar, Prince of Lies and Lord of Hell. I am in a good mood. When I am in a good mood I desire an appletini. Pray to the God of your choosing your ill-timed remarks don’t sour my good day.”
Cassidy fell silent, knowing for once when to keep his mouth shut.
“So sir, what’s got your spirits up?” Custer asked the Devil.
“We figured out how to effectively manipulate outrage!” Mephistopheles said, bursting into a shit-eating grin. “A test on the American market’s proven this new method works!”
“How do you figure?”
“Oh it was hard to manipulate from the start,” Lucifer quipped. “I believe the last time we spoke I told you if we bottled the outrage from Americans alone it would power the Hellforges for eternity. Unfortunately containing that energy was unsustainable. Then HR had a great idea and…”
“Wait, sir,” Custer said with a raised eyebrow. “You mean to tell me there’s an HR department in Hell?”
“Well of course, my dear boy!” the Devil said with a cackle. “Where do you think we place our influence in the biggest corporations? Ours is on the sixth circle across from the Karen Vats and the Scold Sowing Fields.”
“Huh,” Jesse muttered.
“Anyway,” the Devil continued, “We didn’t need to contain the outrage according to HR. We just needed to redirect it, and watch the damage happen!”
“So what’d y’all do?”
“Oh we’ve been working on a variation of this for years,” Lucifer said. “You remember the Basket of Deplorables and the Emails stuff from 2016, right? We just couldn’t direct the outrage because it wasn’t raw or potent enough.”
“Then those wonderful men on your Supreme Court go in one week letting more people carry guns than ever before. That’s going to up the number of assaults and murders, which will go to our tallies automatically. And then that wonderful Sam Alito fellow on the Court went and released that opinion overturning Roe, pushing the amount of feral, untapped rage to a boiling point we’ve never seen before!”
“So more guns are better for Hell, and fewer aborted children are good for Hell,” Reverend Custer mused, cleaning a glass almost meditatively.
“Oh a murder’s a murder, we’ll take it where we can get it,” Mephistopheles said with an approving grin. “But this time around we almost got one of your Justices assassinated and people threatening more violence by the day! And so much of it directed at Christians! This is the biggest tide turning Hell’s seen against The Enemy in millennia!”
“How’s that working out for the bigger picture?”
“We’ve nearly destroyed every institution the American market found sacred to the foundation of democracy. Our efforts have frayed a divided nation to an almost breaking point. With any luck we’ll get what we want and spark a second Civil War!”
The Devil cackled with delight. It was a sickening sound.
“And the best part is none of the mortals we’ve worked over dare take a moment of self-reflection over how they contributed to all of this hostility and sin. The last President made refusing to take the blame for anything as American as apple pie. Now everyone believes everyone else is the enemy if they don’t think exactly like they do, and that difference of opinion is in their eyes LITERALLY violence! We couldn’t ask for a better footing!”
“Shew,” Jesse Custer said in resignation. “Sounds like you’ve been turning up nothing but daisies, sir.”
“What? I don’t follow.” Lucifer replied.
“It’s a Southern expression saying everything’s going your way, sir.”
The Devil mused on that for a moment. “I would have said “turning up maggots on a fresh corpse,” but your mortal terms of speech are so cute I’ll let it go.” Finishing his appletini, the Devil stood.
“You have kept your word, Reverend Jesse Custer of the Grassy Knoll Pub, and I shall honor mine. Your liquor supply will not run out until my next visit. Which may be sooner, rather than later, if the Offended and the Scolds are finally tempted to violence.”
Flashing one more wicked, unholy grin, the Devil opened a door where one shouldn’t have been. Before entering it, he turned to Custer.
“You heard it from the Devil himself, Jesse Custer. If the humans would stop fighting amongst themselves for a day they’d realize who really caused their woes and act accordingly. Most of you mortals will never reach that level of self-awareness, and we of the Pit find that delicious.”
With that, the door closed, and the stench of brimstone disappeared from the Knoll’s interior.
A few moments of silence passed before Cassidy finally spoke up.
“Have ye really been pissing in that vodka bottle for this occasion…y’know, when HE showed up again?” Cassidy asked his friend.
Custer turned to meet his friend’s gaze. “We’ve know each other for how long and I’m just learning your LAST name is Cassidy?”
Neither man answered the other’s question. After all, certain VIPs might be listening, and both Jesse Custer and Cassidy the doorman preferred plausible deniability when they could keep it.
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