“John Sedgewick,” he intoned in a low rumble, filling John’s very soul with utmost dread.
“Y…yes, sir? Did you want something of me?” John almost fell dead away, though that might have been redundant.
“Want? I want of nothing.” His voice bellowed and shook the very ground around them. “However, perhaps there is something I can offer.” A malevolent leer spread across the Devil’s hideous face.
“You mean you want to offer something to me?”
Satan jeered at the sniveling man. “Yes, to you. But in exchange for something from you.” The prostrated demon guard laughed, and then caught himself. The Devil swatted him like a fly, and then continued. “You see, John, you’ve already broken nine Commandments. That is, indeed, quite a feat, even for a lowly human such as yourself. Now, if you could break all ten…”
“That would make you happy, sir?” John asked.
“It pisses Him off when his creations do this. So, yes, it would make me, as you say, happy.”
“Him? You mean God?”
“Don’t be an ass, John. Of course I mean …God.” Satan retched at the word.
John paused and thought back to what the demon had said he’d already done to deserve his plight. In an instant, he knew what Satan was getting at. “You want me to murder someone? But who?”
“Why, the person who killed you, of course.”
“I…I was killed?”
“Listen, John, lots of people wanted you dead. In life, you were a prick. So, yes, you were killed. In your sleep, as a matter of fact. Bludgeoned to death with a hammer.”
Now it was John’s turn to retch, but then he thought to ask, “And what do I get out of this?”
“Get? You get the job of the gatekeeper – a far better cry than what we had planned for you, I must say.”
Defeatedly, John shrugged and nodded his head in assent.
“Touch her shoulder, John, and she will die,” Satan leaned down and whispered in his ear.
In an instant, John was back in his home. He walked through the living room, then to the bedroom. And there is where he found her. His wife was standing over his bloody corpse, hammer firmly in hand. She had a satisfied smile on her face.
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