The Devil's In The Details

​          AND the Lord sat among the celestial host, and he was greatly wroth. He looked down, far beneath the heavenly and earthly planes, and shouted, "YOU! Get up here! NOW!"
             And lo, there appeared before the Lord the demon Satan, lounging upon a couch of flame and filing his claws. "You rang?" he said, nonchalantly inspecting a sharpened claw.
               "Show some respect in my presence, Satan."
               "No." said Satan. He stuck out his forked tongue and laughed. "What are you gonna do? Send me to Hell?"
                "You bet I will," said the Lord, now mightily annoyed.
                 But as he prepared to cast the demon back down to the fiery depths, Satan sat up and cried out, "No, wait, Lord, not yet! Gimme a break, it's hot as you-know-what down there! Look I'm sorry, okay? For what have you summoned your servant, Lord?"
                "My servant?" said the Lord, shaking his head. "That'll be the day. I summoned you, all right. What the @#$% mischief are you up to now?"
                  Satan mockingly raised a fiery eyebrow. "Oh, you don't know? What, you haven't been reading your New York Times?"
                  "Yes, I've been reading my New York Times!" shouted the Lord, shaking his copy of that morning's Times in the foolish demon's face. "And you just keep it up, smart aleck, 'cause you've got one hoof back in Hell!"
                 "Okay, okay," said Satan,  raising  his claws deferentially.  "All respect from now on, all respect."
                   The Lord smacked his newspaper on the demon's snout. "Seriously, I know you have an inhuman capacity for evil..."
                  "Of course I do," said Satan, shrugging and rubbing his snout. "I'm inhuman."
                  "Yeah, you are," sighed the Lord. "But lately you've been working time and a half. All  these wars, these genocides, these mass shootings, these disasters, all this suffering. Can't you take a break for one Me damn day?"
                   "Sure," said Satan. "Release me from Hell, I'll be as good as gold. A perfect angel. I promise."
                    "Yeah, and you're a liar," said the Lord.
                    "Got me there," Satan chuckled. "They don't call me the Father of Lies for nothing."
                    "Aw, look, man - er, I mean, beast, isn't it bad enough all the misery you cause on my favorite planet? Do you have to mock me on top of it all?"
​                     "Mock you, Lord?" said Satan, now genuinely puzzled. "What are you talking about?"
                      The Lord shoved the front page of that day's New York Times in front of Satan's face and pointed to one of the headlines. "This!"
                    Satan squinted at the column of print then burst out laughing. He laughed uncontrollably, laughed too hard to speak but slapped his knee joint with glee and laughed until the steaming hot tears splashed down his hairy cheeks.
                   "Oh, you think it's funny, do you?" said the Lord, and in his anger cast Satan back down to Hell. 
                    "No, no, wait," called the demon as he fell back down into the fire, "Hey, I'm sorry, gimme a chance to explain! Please!"
                   The Lord snapped the demon back up into his presence. "Explain," he said.
                    "Aw, it was just kind of a joke," said Satan. "I thought it would be funny."
                  "Funny?  said the Lord. "Are you serious? You've granted this guy fame, fortune  and power beyond belief, in fact you put him in the position of the most powerful man in the world.  And what does he do?  He sins against me and commits crimes against man."
               "And against woman," added Satan.
               "Oh, don't worry, I haven't forgotten about his crimes against woman."                           "Against a lot of women, for that matter," said Satan.
               "Right," said the Lord. "A lot of crimes against a lot of people. For which he never pays because you've also made him the luckiest son of a banana in the galaxy. And I'm guessing you're going to put him back into power next year. Am I right about that?"
              Satan shrugged. "What can I say? The guy did sell me his soul. So I give him whatever he wants and let him slither off the hook. 'Til he comes slithering home to yours truly." Satan laughed. "Boy, is he gonna be one surprised sinner on that day! No gold-plated bathrooms in Hell!"
              "Yeah, yeah, whatever. But this,"  said the Lord, smacking his hand on the news headline. "Letting him sell my book! For fifty-nine ninety-nine, yet!"
               Satan sighed. "All right, maybe it wasn't the best idea. But the guy's broke, runs through money like nobody's business, even I can't keep him in cash. Selling the Bibles was actually his idea, I just accommodated him, like I do all his ventures. And, like I said, I thought it was...hee, hee...you know...hee, hee...kinda...hee, hee... Whoa! Hey! Wait...!"
             "Good-bye," sighed the Lord.