Devil's Advocate

At 8:02 pm on a Tuesday evening, Angelique Springdale died. She didn’t know she had died right after it happened, nor did she remember any sort of pain, even with the cause of death being a gunshot wound to the head. She remembered hearing a muffled bang sound, like a thick book falling from a high up place and then a pulling sensation behind her belly button as white lights zoomed behind her closed eyes. And then, nothing. It was probably better that way in the grand scheme of things. Getting shot is nasty business. Next thing she knew, Angelique was standing in the middle of what looked like a bank lobby. The only difference was the silence. No loud phones ringing, no people coming in and out, no typing on a computer or money being put through a sorter. Just silence so loud it was almost painful. Jeez, how did anybody function like this?

“You get used to it after a while.” A matter-of-fact voice stated coolly behind her. Angelique jumped and spun, moving so fast that her vision blurred and her stomach jerked. She shut her eyes and braced herself to hit the floor. A warm, strong hand steadied her, resting on her shoulder.

“Easy.” That same cool tone hit her ears. “Dying takes a lot out of you.” Angelique’s mind raced as her stomach flipped over again. Did he just say…?

“So…I died?” she managed to squeak out the words, her voice rough like she hadn’t used it in a long time. She eased her eyes open slowly, her vision darting around before landing on the sharply dressed man standing before her. Tan skin, black beard, long black hair pulled back in a sleek pony tail. And his eyes. So blue they seemed to glow. She let her eyes fall across his incredibly well fitting suit down to his very shiny dress shoes before she moved back to looking at his eyes. By then he was smirking at her, teeth oddly pointed but sparkling white. She swallowed thickly.

“You were killed. It tends to jostle the soul more so than those who see this coming.” She kept waiting for some sort of sympathy or kindness to enter his tone. It didn’t. Only cool factualness lingered in his voice. He might as well have been reciting the periodic table. Angelique took a deep breath and moved away from his hand. The man let it fall, not attempting to hold her. She appreciated the release of pressure from the weight of his hand. Her shoulder still tingled from where it was resting, almost like all the heat had risen to her shoulder. Taking a few moments to orient herself, she looked around at the bank lobby type room one more time.

“How did I die?” she finally asked, her eyes still wandering. Where the hell were they?

“Let’s call it…my office.” The man answered her unspoken question with an amused statement, the smirk on his face growing. Angelique felt herself growing irate with his stupid smirk and his tone of voice. Before she could interrupt his train of thought with a few choice words, he continued,

“As for how you died, I told you. You were killed. After you fell asleep watching that insipid sitcom, a gentleman broke into your home. Saw you in the living room. Shot you in the head.” She was finally grateful for his ‘just business’ type tone. It helped her to disassociate from the words he was saying. Her mind raced again and she felt chills run up and down her spine. Shot in the head. What a way to go. Acceptance of the idea of being dead was becoming easier for her, though. That was the only reason it was easy for her to turn her gaze back to his and keep her voice steady when she asked,

“Alright. So now what?”

“Now? Follow me.” The man turned and walked down a narrow hall, his stride saying he didn’t care if she followed after him or not. Angelique trailed after him as he headed in through a large painted door on the left side of the hall, the heavy looking thing painted a deep burgundy with a gold handle. Inside the walls were that same burgundy, broken up only by gold trim. No pictures. No windows. A desk sat at the back wall of the large room, with two couches situated around a glass top coffee table directly before it. A mini bar sat at the back right corner, and a large filing cabinet sat next to it. It felt cold to Angelique, which was ironic considering how her temperature had been up since she came back to herself. The mysterious, thus far nameless, man gestured for her to sit. Angelique sat slowly on one couch, as close to the door as she could get. The man ignored her and walked to the mini bar, bustling about before walking over to sit opposite her. He placed a tall glass of red wine in front of her, a tumbler of whiskey in his other hand. Angelique left the glass where he placed it. If he noticed, he elected not to say. He just sat there, silently sipping his whiskey. Angelique made direct eye contact with him and counted the seconds of loud silence. 20. 60. 113. 241. Finally she couldn’t take it anymore. She had to speak.

“So now, apparently, we move into the office part of your bank sized office and what? Share a drink? Make some small talk?” Angelique felt her ire grow with every word. She took a deep breath and continued, this time taking her tone of voice down a few notches, trying for some semblance of calm. “Do you do this with everybody who comes through your office after they die?”

“Sometimes more. Sometimes less.” He answered, a flash of heat entering his practically glowing blue eyes. She felt a blush creep up her neck to paint her cheeks rosy. Clearing her throat, she looked away, her gaze landing on that untouched glass of wine.

“Afraid I’ll need more than one of those for adventures like that.”

“So it’s on the table then?” he asked, the innuendo in his voice unmistakable. Angelique allowed her eyes to rake over him once more, and allowed herself to take in the heat from his eyes. The promise. The clear desire. He was interested in her, or at least in sleeping with her. She considered it briefly. What did she have to lose now? She was dead. Trysts with other dead beings, whatever or whomever they may be, seemed highly inconsequential. And this guy was insanely attractive. Look in his eyes promised a wonderful night. Or two. With a firm sigh, she shook her head. She definitely wasn’t doing this. No matter how much she may want to.

“On the floor, on the table, on the couch or on the desk. Not happening.” She spoke with conviction, no hint of doubt or waver in her voice. For being so tempted, she was personally proud of herself. The man nodded once. An acknowledgement.

“Impressive. Most people give in to temptation a bit more easily down here.” He mused. For whatever reason, that phrase struck a chord with Angelique. A lightbulb went off in her head.

“Down here. A-am I in hell?” Her voice cracked on the end of the question in barely disguised horror. The man shook his head no, taking a slightly longer sip of his whiskey. An image of smacking the glass out of his hand flashed through Angelique’s mind. She tampered it down quickly.

“Not yet. This is a sort of limbo. My office, as I said. Hell is not nearly this comfortable.”

“I can’t believe it.” She answered, leaning back on the couch and letting her glass of wine remain untouched. It wasn’t a statement she expected an answer to, so the man didn’t give her one. He instead studied her, watched her try to put herself together. After a few moments of sitting in silence, and several deep breaths, she spoke again.

“Why?”

“You’ll have to be more specific.” Two more deep breaths, this time to get rid of her irritation.

“What did I do? Why am I hell-bound?”

“Ah.” He said, standing. He moved to the filing cabinet, opening the top drawer and pulling out a folder, seeming to not even look at it. The folder was black, no other indicator on it. Briefly Angelique wondered how he knew that was the correct file, but she elected to remain quiet. He tossed the file onto the coffee table and sat back down, gesturing at her to pick up the folder. She did so with great trepidation, startling a bit when she pulled out the first page.

“Me.” She said blandly, holding up a basic looking fact sheet about herself. Her full name, hair color, eye color. Birthdate. Height and weight. There was even a small picture of herself in the top right corner of the page. The man took another drink.

“You.” He answered. “By the time they make it down to me, all the files are color coded, based upon the sin you were most guilty of in life.”

“What is black then?”

“Sloth.” He said, resting one ankle on top of his knee. “You were a lazy little thing in life. So much wasted potential.”

“I didn’t feel like I had a whole lot of that.” She mumbled, flipping through the file. A highlighted section caught her eye. “Hey! I did not have a gambling addiction!”

“Denial is the first step on the road to recovery.” He said with a smirk. “And you definitely did.” She ignored him and kept going through the pages, skimming through her entire life. First birthday party. Joining the basketball team. Quitting the basketball team. Studying for the spelling bee. Sleeping in and missing said spelling bee. First dates. Breakups. One night stands. Strings of dead end jobs. She closed the folder and tossed it to the side when she got to the details about the night she died. She didn’t want to read through any of that.

“Alright. So I was extremely lazy and I liked my slot machines. I don’t think I deserve to go to hell for all that.”

“I feel the same way. Which is why you’re not there. You’re here. For now. I have a proposition for you.” He stood and walked back over to the file cabinet. Angelique ignored the way her ears burned at the way he worded that, thinking of his very inappropriate ‘proposition’ just moments before. He came back over, handing her a red folder with a grey diagonal stripe across both the front and the back. She took it, but didn’t open it.

“What is this?”

“The man who killed you.” Now she opened it. Scott Penn. Not the name she would have given a killer. Or even a burglar. She skimmed the first page, looking at all his basic information.

“What are his colors?” she asked, continuing to read.

“The red is wrath. The grey is greed.”

“Huh, would have thought greed would be some sort of shade of green or something.” She mused, still flipping through Scott’s folder. He was on the debate team in high school. An odd fact to associate with ‘killed a woman in his adult life’.

“Too ‘Christmas’ for the folks upstairs.” He answered with a roll of his eyes. Angelique snorted, closing the file and handing it back.

“Other than entertainment value, why show that to me?”

“I want you to bring him to me.” The man said with a sharp grin. Now she was confused.

“And by bring him, you mean…?”

“Exactly what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not a killer.”

“I know that. I did read your file.”

“Why?” she finally reached for that glass of wine, as though she desperately needed it to even consider having this conversation.

“Because he belongs down here. As you said, you do not. And,” he paused, giving her a very weighted but neutral stare. “You have not said no.” She reared back, almost as though he had slapped her. Well. Son of a bitch. He wasn’t wrong. Sighing, she gulped down half the glass. His stare turned to a glare.

“That. Is very expensive.”

“What do you need me to do exactly?” She ignored his statement, plowing forward before she lost her nerve. “Like how do you need me to go about this?” She downed the rest of the wine, unsure why she was even contemplating this. After an exasperated sigh that Angelique presumed was because of the haste in which she consumed the wine, he sat his whiskey down and leaned forward.

“The details are up to you. Personally, I don’t care how you get it done. Just send him down to me, before the end of his natural life.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You’re more than welcome to take that trip downstairs with me, should you desire.” He said with an indifferent shrug. “It makes no difference to me either way.”

“Alright. Let me make sure I understand this. I kill Scott. Scott goes to hell. I get sent the other way. That sum it up?”

“Pretty much.”

“And you can guarantee this? Who even are you?

“I have many names.” He gave her an almost cruel grin, showing the full extent of his pointed teeth. His blue eyes flashed fire in the slightly darkened room. “You may refer to me as Lucifer.” Angelique was too shocked to even comment on the fact that she was in the middle of contemplating making a deal with the devil himself. Instead, she sat her glass down and sat back, taking a moment to think about the deal itself. Was it worth it? Could she live with herself if she followed through with it? She didn’t know. She didn’t even know if she could follow through with it. What she was positive of, without a shadow of a doubt, was she did not want to go to hell. With a shaky breath, she steeled her resolve and nodded her head.

“Alright. Deal. Do you have a contract for me to sign?” Lucifer did not answer. He stood, setting his whiskey glass down with purpose. Angelique stood to her feet and scooted back, as though she would run. The devil crossed the room while she stood transfixed, his glowing blue eyes seeming to hold her captive. Before she knew what was happening, he was in her space, his ridiculously warm hand sliding along her jaw and tilting her face up. A breath escaped her lips and a question began to follow, but Lucifer cut it off, covering her lips with his own. That pulling sensation hit behind her belly button, and her vision went dark, white lights racing behind her closed eyes once more.