Mark drove home from work, driving a little faster than he should. No, that wasn’t true. A little faster than he should would have been okay. Cops don’t pull you over for going a little faster than you should. He was going much faster than an ambulance should. But that was usually how he drove after a bad day at work. It would have been one thing if it had been a Friday, then he’d have the whole weekend to cool off. This was a Tuesday. Two days worked and he was already a mess.
He didn’t even hear the sirens behind him. He happened to look into his rearview mirror, wondering why some idiot was tailgating him. When you’re going twenty over the limit a cop will tend to do that. He turned off the blaring radio, checked his right side mirror, and pulled over. Great, he didn’t need this.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?” the officer asked once he reached Mark’s window.
Mark wondered why they always asked that. Are they trying to get you to admit to something they might not know about? ‘Sure,’ Mark thought. ‘I’ve got a crapload of pot in the trunk, why don’t you have a look.’
“I guess I was going a little over the limit,” Mark said instead.
“A little?” The officer’s eyebrows went up over his sunglasses. “A little is going down a steep hill. A little is passing someone on the interstate. I don’t turn my car on for a little. You were driving like a bat out of hell.”
“I’m sorry, officer. I had a bad day at work.”
“Yeah. And you’re going to have a bad evening too. I’m going to have to ticket you for excessive speeding. I’ll ignore the no turn signal infraction, but I’m going to have to get you for the seatbelt.”
“You’re ticketing me for not wearing a seatbelt? You’re joking, right?”
“Nope. We’re cracking down. Some of us are tired of looking for body parts after a guy gets thrown out of his car because he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. But hey, consider yourself lucky. I could have you walking the white line to see if you’ve been drinking. But seeing it’s only 5:30, and your speech isn’t slurred, I’ll assume you were just anxious to get home.”
“Sure.”
The officer went back to his cruiser and took a ridiculous amount of time writing out the ticket. Finally he returned with the citation and a “have a nice day.” Mark decided not to bring up the fact that a ticket wasn’t going to brighten an already sour day. He drove away, careful to drive the limit until he was away from the police officer.
Mark pulled into his driveway twenty minutes later, hoping supper would be done.
“Janie, what’s for supper?”
No reply.
“Janie?”
“Mark? Is that you?”
“Who else would it be?”
“Don’t take that tone. Are you okay?”
Janie stepped from the spare bedroom. She was wearing what must have been an old pair of Mark’s overalls because they fit loosely. There was green paint on her fingers, which was transferred to her blond hair as she swept a stray lock from her forehead.
On seeing his expression, a look of concern crossed her face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Bad day at work. What have you been doing?”
“Painting the spare bedroom. I’ve been putting it off too long.”
“What about dinner?”
“That’s why I was surprised to hear you come in. I didn’t know it was so late. Are you hungry?”
“No, I just worked all day without a break and am doing fine, thanks. You?”
“Don’t be rude,” she said. “I can throw something together pretty quick. How about spaghetti and garlic bread?”
“Come on! We’ve had that already this week. Can’t you come up with something original?”
“Do you think you’re the only one around here that does anything? I’ve had to get this house ready to sell practically by myself. I work hard too, only my day doesn’t end at five o’clock. I keep going with cooking and cleaning and laundry and packing. So, if you want something more fancy you can make it yourself or you can go out and trim the trees in the back like you’ve been promising for weeks!"
“You know…” Mark cut himself off. He clamped his lips together and shook his head. He was about to lose it. He continued, in a slightly calmer tone. “I’ll trim the trees. Would you be so kind as to let me know when you’re finished cooking?”
“Sure,” his wife whispered.
Mark stomped off to his room, changed into some casual clothes, and headed to the garage for the garden shears. Passing the kitchen he thought he heard Janie crying, but he kept going, ignoring it. She should be a little more sensitive to his problems, he thought. She had no idea what he went through to buy the food she cooked and the paint for the rooms and the new house they were moving into next month.
He walked to the trees separating his house from the one behind it. Eyeballing them, he decided where he’d start cutting. He had gotten the cedar chips down a few weeks ago and they looked good, but the new growth on the trees was all wrong. A tree was supposed to grow up, not down. He was tired of getting hit in the head whenever he walked back there.
He set into the stray branches, cutting off the unwanted portions. This would take no time, he thought. His wife would never have supper ready by the time he was done.
Reaching with the shears, he cut a branch on the far side of the tree. He knew he should have just walked around to get it, but didn’t want the bother. He didn’t cut all the way through and the branch twisted around as it started to fall, yanking the shears from his hands. Mark swore.
“Just one thing,” he said. “I just need one thing to go right.”
As he knelt to pick up the shears, he heard a distinctive hissing sound to his right. Oh. Crap. Mark didn’t know a lot about snakes, but a hissing one couldn’t be good. He turned his head as slow as he could. His eyes focused just in time to see the snake flying at him. He passed out before he fell any pain.
***
“Wake up, Mark. I’m ready for you.”
Who was that? Janie? Was dinner ready? What was he doing lying down?
“Mark, wake up. We’re going to have some fun.”
It wasn’t a woman’s voice. What was going on? He opened his eyes. He wasn’t in his backyard. In fact, he was nowhere he recognized. There were lights shining down on him, but he didn’t see a source. There were also glints of light coming at him. Then a face crossed his field of vision. A young man, good looking. Maybe a young doctor. He remembered the snake. Janie must have called the paramedics.
“What happened?”
“You were bit by a snake, Mark.”
“I thought so. Am I going to be okay?”
The man smirked. “I always love this part,” he seemed to say to himself. “Mark, I’ve got some bad news for you.”
“What? Did I lose a leg or something?” He thought of his body. Everything seemed to be attached. But he had heard of phantom limb syndrome, where someone who has lost a leg or arm could still feel it sometimes.”
“No, your leg is fine. It’s your soul that’s in trouble.”
“My soul?”
“Yeah. You see, you’re dead, and this is hell. Get up.”
The man reached a hand out, the smirk was still on his face. Mark took his hand and was lifted to his feet. He looked around himself. He seemed to be in a hall. To his left was an ordinary looking door. To his right the hall seemed to stretch forever. Behind him was a blank wall, but in front of him was a mirror. No, it couldn’t be a mirror. But what he saw didn’t make any sense either.
“I’m dead?”
“Yep.”
“And I’m in hell?”
“Bingo!”
“That doesn’t make any sense. I wasn’t such a bad guy.”
“No? Didn’t you just leave your wife crying in the kitchen?”
“I, uh…wait, how did you know about that? Were you looking in my window?”
“You see, this always happens. You explain everything very clearly and they still don’t get it. Okay. Let me be blunt. My name is…oh wait. I forgot the special effects.”
The man snapped his fingers, and that fast everything changed. The light in the hallway suddenly turned red. No, it wasn’t the light, the hallway was on fire. The man had changed too. He was twice as tall, towering over Mark. His skin had turned red, he had horns coming from his forehead, a tail that reached behind him, and a large pitchfork. He laughed in a deep, menacing way. In the background Mark was sure he could hear singing, only it was dark, mean, and discordant.
“Ha, ha, ha,” the man laughed in his deeper voice. “I am Sactophrax, the high lord of doom and despair. The keeper of doomed spirits, the master of misery. You will burn for all eternity and I will plague you with torment until you beg for relief!”
Mark fell to the floor, his hands on his head. Every muscle in his body trembled and he started to cry. Instantly, the man, Sactophrax, was back to his old self, the flames were gone, his skin was pale, and the music had gone.
“Oh, don’t get all weepy on me,” Sactophrax said. “I’m just trying to prove a point.”
Mark ventured a look. He could see the man was back to his old self. In fact, Mark started to question that he had really seen what he thought he had.
“You’re…Satan?” he asked in a shaky voice.
The man smacked his own head with his hand.
“No. I just told you. My name is Sactophrax.”
“What were you just now? All the flames and the deep voice?”
“Oh that? Just my way to get past the disbelief. People get sent to hell and they have a hard time believing. So I do the deep voice and special effects. It makes thing much faster.”
“So you’re going to torture me?”
“In a manner of speaking. Nothing physical, mind you. You’re dead, which means no more physical pain.”
“Really?”
Sactophrax rapped his knuckles on Mark’s head. “No pain, genius. Just mental torment. Most people get sent to hell for a reason. We just exploit that by making you feel the pain of the sins you committed.”
“What about all that high lord of doom and keeper of…”
“Keeper of doomed spirits, master of misery. Well, a bit of an exaggeration, I’ll admit. It sound much better than Senior Undersecretary for Verbally Abusive Husbands.”
“That, uh, seems really specific.”
“There’s a lot of demons down here. A lot of jobs to go around. But I am the Senior Undersecretary. Best job in hell. Any higher and I’d be doing paperwork, any lower and I’d be tormenting people who don’t use their turn signal on the freeway. Of course, if you’d died any sooner, you might have gotten that one, eh?”
Mark thought that might have been a joke, but wasn’t in the mood to play along.
“That’s all this is?” he asked instead. “All Satan wants is to remind us of the bad things we’ve done in our lives?”
“Hey, we’re all doomed to be miserable. No eternal happiness, and all that. So, we try to spread the misery around. It doesn’t take much to distract us from our own. But anyway, we’re getting behind. It’s time to tell you why, exactly, you sucked as a husband. We’ll start with when your wife found you. Look here.”
Sactophrax turned Mark to face the mirror he had seen earlier. It was what he thought it was, but it still seemed impossible. He saw himself, lying under the tree, unconscious. No, not unconscious, dead. In a moment his wife ran to him, screaming his name. She fell to her knees and screamed louder. Mark felt bad. He had treated her poorly, and here she was, hysterical over his body.
“Why didn’t you call the paramedics?” he whispered.
“She did. They didn’t get there fast enough. Let’s move on, though.
The next mirror showed a funeral home. There was a casket at the front of the room with rows of chairs. At the front his wife was seated. She wore all black, with a veil covering her face. A man leaned down to talk to her. He put his hand on her shoulder. Mark couldn’t see his face.
“Who’s that?”
“Oh, that’s Paul. Janie went to school with him. We like him down here.”
“Why is he here?”
“Oh, we’ll get to him. Just pay attention.”
The man finished saying whatever he was saying, gave Janie’s shoulder a squeeze, and walked away. The service began. A minister spoke about death and sorrow and a lot of things Mark hadn’t really considered at all. The man seemed to have good things to say about Mark. A few other speakers took their turn. Then the pall bearers took the casket out of the room.
In a moment the scene changed. Now they were at a graveyard. The minister spoke again, blessed the grave, and lowered the casket into the ground. When someone dumped a shovel full of dirt on the casket, Janie couldn’t take it anymore. She got up and ran to a large tree, hiding on the other side as she sobbed. Paul followed. He took the handkerchief Janie was holding and dabbed the tears from her eyes. She put her arms around her and held him tight as she sobbed on his shoulder.
“Ah, how sweet,” Sactophrax. “Making his move before the body’s even cold. You can tell why we like him.”
“He’s a sleaze,” Mark answered.
“You have no idea,” Sactophrax said, laughing. “Come to the next one.”
The next mirror was Janie again. She was sobbing again.
“I hate this,” Paul murmured. I’ve caused her so much pain. I’d do anything to take it back.”
“Even go to hell for her?”
Mark looked at the demon. “Yes. I’d do anything.”
“Well, good. You’re in hell. Congratulations. Now pay attention.”
“She’s in pain, I see that. Do I really have to look at this?”
“Of course. But you don’t see why she’s crying yet. Just watch.”
As Janie continued to sob, Mark realized something wasn’t quite right. Those weren’t tears of misery. They were…something else. And then he saw it. When Janie raised her left hand to wipe away some tears, a glittering ring looked back at him. It was firmly on her ring finger, and it wasn’t any ring Mark had given her.
“Yes, Paul. Of course I’ll marry you.”
“Marry him! I’ve been dead for a day and you’re getting married!”
“Oh right,” Sactophrax said next to him. “I forgot to mention that. These mirrors take us to the future. They show us how Janie’s life is turning out. See, now that you’re dead, time doesn’t really matter anymore. Time only matters to mortals. You see, once you’re dead it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“How can it not matter?”
“Okay, let me try to explain this. Us demons know we’re damned. It’s over. From the moment Adam and Eve entered the Garden of Eden, we knew it was over for us. God wins, Satan loses, the end. The only reason to play the game is to win souls. Now, God’s all altruistic. He wants to win souls for the simple pleasure of seeing his children happy. Blech! See, we’re much more sophisticated. We want to win souls so we have something to do for eternity. Could you imagine being damned for all eternity with nothing to do? If I had to wallow in my own sorrows, that would be my own personal hell. So, instead I have you. I get to make you wallow in your personal hell. Great, huh? Well, not for you, so much.”
“I get it. You’re showing how her life would go without me.”
“Not quite. This isn’t A Wonderful Life. This is what actually happens to your wife. Only, we get to speed it up a bit. Time doesn’t matter once you’re dead. It only matters to those who get to make choices. Your choices are done. Can we get back to it now?”
“It’s not like I have a choice.”
“Wonderful! You’re getting it already! Let’s get to the next mirror.”
The next mirror was inside Mark’s house. But it wasn’t his anymore. Janie was in the living room, picking up some plates and glasses. She started from the room but tripped over a pair of shoes much bigger than her own, spilling the dishes on the wood floor. Broken glass was everywhere.
“What did you do now!” came a voice from another room.
In a moment Paul was there, standing over Janie.
“What do you think you are doing? Those aren’t cheap, you know.”
“You didn’t buy them,” she murmured.
“What? What did you say!”
“Nothing. I’ll clean it up.”
“That’s right. And do it fast. I don’t want to miss my show.”
“I miss you Mark,” she whispered. Paul still heard it.
“Mark? Mark is dead. I’m here. You should respect me!”
Janie whirled around and faced Paul.
“Respect? What respect do you deserve? You are so hate…”
Janie didn’t get to finish the rebuke. The back of Paul’s hand swung around and hit Janie, almost knocking her to the floor.
“Now what were you saying about respect?”
Janie didn’t answer, and Paul hit her again.
“I want an answer!”
“I can’t take this!” Mark shouted. “Why doesn’t she leave him?”
“Oh, hohoho,” Sactophrax laughed. “That’s your doing. You taught Janie she deserved abuse from men. It’s all she’s ever gotten.”
“I never hit her.”
“No, if you had, she may have left. What you did was much worse. You didn’t hurt her physically, you destroyed her confidence, her self-respect. You set her up for this.”
“Are you saying this is my fault?”
“Congratulations, genius. Oh, and it gets better. Wait until they start having children. More punching bags to play with for Paul.”
“No. No! I can’t watch this anymore. I won’t. This is more than I can bear.”
“You did this, you get to watch it. At least you don’t have to live it, like Janie does.”
Mark was silent.
“You know, I’m not supposed to jump ahead like this, but it gets even better. You see, Janie doesn’t take it forever. In about five years she’s going to shoot Paul in the head. She gets the death penalty and we get two new souls down here.”
Mark’s jaw dropped and he had to swallow several times before he could speak. “Two?”
“Oh yes. Paul was abusive, but Janie ends up a murderer.”
“No.” Tears started falling from Mark’s eyes. “She goes to hell because of me.”
“I know, isn’t it great? That’s the real perk of this job. Us demons don’t tempt mortals as much as you would think. We just steer you in the right, or wrong, as you might say, direction. Mortals think of so many great evils on their own.”
“I won’t let this happen. I’m going to stop it.”
“Stop it? You’re dead, Mark. Remember?”
“You said time doesn’t matter here. What if I go through one of these windows?”
Sactophrax’s face instantly went sober.
“You don’t want to do that, Mark. You’ve had it pretty good here. We wouldn’t want to have to get rough with you.”
“Rough? This is hell.”
“That’s the point!” All humor had left the demon. “You are meant to suffer!” “No. I’m going back.”
With that, Mark turned from the demon and started running towards the first mirror. He could hear Sactophrax scream behind him and then running feet. Quite a few of them. He looked over his shoulder and saw at least a dozen demons, faces contorted with rage, pursuing him. He got to the mirror and started banging his hands against the glass. It didn’t seem to budge. He hit harder, kicked, and slammed his weight against it.
The demons had caught up with him and were pulling him away from the mirror. He kicked them away and returned to the glass. He hit it again and a small crack appeared. He was about to kick the crack when he felt sharp teeth on his arm.
“Ow!”
“You broke the rules. If you don’t suffer like a good condemned soul, we get to hurt you!”
Mark threw his elbow back at the demon that was biting him, throwing it against the wall. He kicked the glass, lengthening the crack by several inches. Before he could kick it again two or three demons wrapped themselves around his legs. Unable to free himself from them, he threw his body at the glass, hands first. More cracks appeared. He beat his fists on the glass, cutting them on the cracks of glass. Blood started to flow down his hands. The demons had all reached him now and with the weight of twelve men on him, he started to sink to the ground.
“Please,” he tried.
“You thought there was mercy in hell?” Sactophrax leered.
“But I love my wife.”
“You should have thought about that when you still had her.”
Mark would have surrendered them, but for the first time, this wasn’t about him. This was about someone else. This was about Janie, and for the first time in too long, he realized he really loved her.
He let his knees touch the floor, and with the extra leverage, pushed up as hard as he could. He couldn’t get into a standing position, but that didn’t matter. He managed to move the hoard of demons forward one, two steps, then fell forward, against the glass of the mirror. He heard cracks spreading and then the sound of breaking glass. Everything went white, then dark.
***
Mark blinked and saw white. He closed his eyes and saw red through his eyelids. Where was he now?
“Mark? Are you there?”
Mark mumbled something incomprehensible.
“Mark, talk to me, please.”
“I’m here,” he croaked.
“It’s okay, Mark,” said another voice. A man’s voice. “You tried to check out on us, but we got you back. We’re on the way to the hospital.”
Mark opened his eyes again and saw a young man with a hat. The logo on the hat was for the local EMS service. He was alive. He wasn’t in hell. Was he there in the first place?
“I thought I died. I…was in hell.”
“Yeah, poisonous snake venom can do that to you,” the paramedic said. “You’re lucky to be speaking.”
“I’m so sorry, Janie. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I know you had a bad day. I found the speeding tickets.”
“It’s no excuse. I need to be better.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Janie said. “I’m just happy you’re alive. I love you so much.”
“I love you, too.”
***
A year later
Mark stood in the hospital for the second time in a year’s time. He couldn’t believe how much his life had changed. He still had a temper, he still said things to his wife that he shouldn’t, but he was trying. And things were getting better. They decided not to sell the house. He figured that if he had to work so hard to get a bigger house, maybe it wasn’t worth the stress it put on his family.
He still worried that his near death experience wasn’t a dream, that he really had died and had only cheated Satan. For a little while. When it was his time to go, would he just return to Sactophrax? Maybe he had only bought some time. He tried not to worry about it. All he could do was try his best to make things right. And hope. He could always hope.
Looking in the window he saw the nurse cleaning his new baby for the first time. That was something he’d put off too. He cared so much about money and what he had that he kept putting off having a child. He had known since he started dating Janie how much she wanted a little baby, and now they had one.
“It’s really a miracle, isn’t it,” a man next to him said. “I may be an old devil, but I can’t look at a baby without a smile coming to my face. I can’t believe so many of you mortals waste these experiences.”
Mark’s heart jumped. ‘Old devil’? ‘Mortals’?
“Yeah, it really happened. You got a second chance.”
“Sactophrax,” Mark whispered.
The man turned to face him. He actually wore a warm smile.
“In the flesh, so to speak.”
“It really happened?”
“Listen, I could give you the hellfire and horns show again, but I don’t want to scare the babies. So can you just trust me on this one?”
Mark couldn’t answer.
“Yeah it happened. And we’re not too happy to lose you.”
“Satan gave me a second chance?”
“No, of course not, you dolt! Satan wouldn’t have given you the first chance if he was in charge. No, you broke out. You cared so much, you got yourself out. You changed things.”
“I don’t have to go to hell?”
“See, that’s up to you. We’re still waiting for you. Just because you got a second chance doesn’t mean you won’t screw it up. You could still end up in my hands. And trust me, if we get you a second time, we won’t let go. And it won’t be as nice as the first time around, I’ll guarantee you that.”
“This is just too weird.”
“I know.”
They stood silent for a time.
“You know, we’re not aloud to tell you about the future, but…,” Sactophrax began.
“But what?”
“You’ve got a good one there. That baby. You see, it’s a good soul. Paul would’ve ruined it, and you still might. But that soul, well, if it turns out right, he’ll do things.”
“What things?”
“Sorry, genius, can’t tell you that. I shouldn’t have told you that much.”
“Why?”
“Why am I here telling you this?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s not everyday someone gets away from us. In fact, it almost never happens. It kind of…impresses me.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s like when you’re watching your favorite sports team get beat, but you know they played well. It’s just that the other team played a little bit better, they wanted it a little bit more. It’s hard to hate them for that. I can admire their effort.”
“So that’s it? We’re done?”
“Oh no. The thing about your team getting beat is that the next time you play, you’re going to try all that harder to win. In fact, we just dispatched three tempters just to work on you. You had better watch yourself.”
“I will. Um, thank you Sactophrax.”
“Don’t speak of it. Seriously, don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to get myself in trouble. I better get going.”
“Um, safe, er, travel.”
Sactophrax smiled. You too, Mark. You too.
