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Writer's picturekaitlynseabury

This Story Doesn't Have an Ending




It was right before my thirtieth birthday when I found out that I was Satan. I learned it the same way a football player learns that his team had won the championship game, after emerging from a state of unconsciousness brought to him by a pair of cleats to the back of his neck.


I didn’t get kicked in the head, but I did take a front windshield to the face. I had been speeding, alright, and texting, so it really isn’t surprising that I didn’t brake in time for the curve, and lost control of my car. It isn’t surprising that my car then smacked headfirst into a tree trunk, smashing the front end, but barely leaving a dent in the tree’s wood. It had only been the week prior that my brother-in-law questioned whether or not I had gotten my airbags checked lately, seeing as it was an old car and I’d had it for quite a long time. I dismissed his concerns, deeming them not a priority. Ah, such is life (such is death.) 


When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see anything. It wasn’t total darkness, but all I could make out were blurry shapes of grey and white. I blinked furiously to try to clear my vision, but it almost seemed as if that was making it worse. Panic gripped me. Was I blind? Was I paralyzed? I realized I hadn’t even tried to move my limbs—would they work?


That’s when I heard the voice.


“Hello, Satan.”


It wasn’t a scary voice; it was actually the opposite. Light and feminine, it almost trickled in a way, not different from water down a calm, rocky hill. It caused my shoulder muscles to relax, and I found myself smiling. What a beautiful sound.


You are ridiculous right now, can you see that? That was my own voice I was hearing now, sharp and scared. My brief reverie broke, and I pulled my fists to my eyes (yes! my arms moved, I wasn’t paralyzed!) and began rubbing. If I could just see, I could figure out what was going on. 


“Calm down, Miss, if you’re worried about your eyesight, it will return slowly, but it will surely return. Your eyes are just getting used to being in the afterlife.”


I almost laughed at that statement. How nauseatingly cliche. The afterlife? Really? I had obviously died, or had sank far into insanity, and this chick was throwing around stupid, floaty, meaningless words like “the afterlife.” Give me a break. When you die, you rot in the ground and become worm food, I don’t care what your mommy told you at nighttime during your prayers. To me, faith in a higher power was almost as useful as faith in your car being able to make it those last ten miles when you only have 3 miles worth of gas left. 


“Would you mind telling me where I am?” It was the first words I had attempted to speak out loud. I was slightly taken aback by how deep and raspy my voice sounded, but who knows, maybe getting my brains smashed in and entering the mystical afterlife had altered my vocal cords. I almost rolled my eyes; all I felt was annoyance and the beginning of what was sure to be a monster of a headache. 


It was only then that it struck me how bizarre it was that I could remember almost everything leading up to my current situation. I remembered being in my car, I remembered looking back and forth between my phone and the road, I remember losing control as I turned the corner, I remembered hitting the tree, I remembered the distinct absence of an airbag, and I remembered the broken glass. That’s where the recollections stop, but wasn’t it abnormal for me to know exactly how I got here and what had happened? Don’t people usually wake up dead and not understand why or how they got there? What was I basing that on—movies? TV shows? How was I really supposed to know what was normal or not? I briefly wondered if it was also abnormal that I wasn’t freaking out, nor was I particularly surprised about any of it. I dismissed that thought almost as soon as it entered my brain because I already knew why I was feeling the way I felt. I had always been like that—it was virtually impossible to shock me, even the most terrible of life’s situations had always felt inevitable. I thought back briefly to the day my mother had died. How I had stood there, eyes wide and cheeks dry, as my sisters had fallen to the ground weeping. 


“I just told you where you were.” The sing-song voice answered. Did I detect a hint of impatience in her angelic voice or was that just the death getting to me?


“Ok, great, but if you could actually explain it to me, that would be wonderful.” Regardless of whether or not her tone was impatient, I made sure mine was. 


“You died, I assumed you were aware of that, my apologies, Miss.” If the woman noticed my hostile tone, she was pretending not to. “We are all quite excited about your arrival. Pardon me if I am not welcoming enough; I, myself, am hardly able to contain how ecstatic I am.” Despite her words, her inflection didn’t change, leading me to wonder if she was being sarcastic and this was all some sort of sick joke. 


As if on cue (or as if she was reading my mind), the woman spoke again, “Forgive my manner of speaking. Regardless of my emotions, my voice remains unchanging, along with my face. That’s how it is down here, you will surely get used to it...well, you’ll have to get used to it.” She laughed—a small dollop of a sound, like a spoonful of whipped cream being placed on a piece of apple pie.


Before I could say anything else, I felt a small tingling behind my eyes, almost like a very soft, slow electrical surge making its way from the back of my skull and pushing forward. I squeezed my eyes shut hard and shook my head slightly, trying to rid myself of the feeling. Instead, it became stronger, building up to the point where I was gritting my teeth together just to deal with the discomfort. 


Then, as quickly as it had started, it stopped. I slowly opened my eyes, wary of whatever it was that was going on behind my lids. Expecting to see the same grey and white nebulous shapes as before, I was surprised to see a perfectly clear face instead. The face of the woman with the musical voice. She smiled.


Her face looked almost exactly as I would have pictured it to look. Round, cherubic, with rosy cheeks and two deep dimples. She had wispy blonde hair that was loosely pulled back into a ponytail. Her eyes were a weird shade of blue—almost purple. She looked as pleasant as all hell.


“My name is Angel,” she was still smiling as she spoke, “I told you that you’d get your vision back. Do you feel better now?”


Her name was Angel? She had to be kidding. 


“I know, Angel seems like a silly, predictable, and unoriginal name for me,” She once again said this right after my thought, giving me that same feeling I had had a few minutes prior—that she was speaking on cue or reading my mind. I felt the hair on my arms stand up slightly, despite the warm temperature of the room. 


Speaking of the room, I finally was able to get a good look around. I was laying, halfway upright on what appeared to be a hospital bed. The room, however, looked absolutely nothing like a hospital room. The floor was carpeted, a dark maroon color, and there were two armchairs in the corners, paintings of animals posed in flower baskets on the walls, and two desks, each with two small lamps on them. It sort of reminded me of the therapist’s office I used to frequent when I was alive. When I was alive. What a weird thing to think. 


“Alright, well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Satan.” Angel’s voice, though still the same tone and decibel, had become businesslike. “I am no longer needed here, but I am sure I will be seeing you again soon. At least, I very much hope so.” She gave another smile, her dimples deepening to the point where I thought her face might actually cave in, then swiftly turned toward a door near one of the desks. Had that door been there before when I first looked around the room? I couldn’t be sure, but I had a feeling it hadn’t. 


I didn’t have time to open my mouth, much less get out a “good-bye,” before Angel was gone. The last thing I saw before the door closed behind her, was the wisps of her silky blonde ponytail. 


The room to myself now, I leaned my head back and took a deep breath. That was the second time she had called me Satan. The first time I thought I misheard her, dazed and out of it because I had just woken up. But there was no mistaking her this time. She had definitely called me Satan. Was she being mean? Was she making some sort of joke and trying to be funny? I had only known her for what couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes, but she still didn’t seem like the type to be mean for no reason. She also didn’t really seem like the type to make jokes and try to be funny. 


What happened next is hard to explain. I’ve tried to put it into words countless times and have failed miserably because I just don’t think it can be described in a way that is able to be comprehended. I will try the best I can, though:


While pondering Angel’s choice of nicknames for me, I happened to glance down at my hands. They looked normal...except they didn’t. My fingers were much longer than I had remembered them, and my nails seemed different, too. A little more pointed and a little sharper. They are claws.


I moved my eyes to the rest of my body. It, too, seemed longer than it ever had before, and sharper. As if I had been rubbed against a whetstone, and all my edges were honed and distinct. I am a weapon.


That’s when I knew. There isn’t a way to explain how or why, but I knew I was Satan. The Devil. Lucifer. The Fallen Angel. El Diablo. No matter how you wanted to word it, it was what it was and at that moment, I felt as if I had known forever. I laughed. Oh, how silly everyone alive was, how silly they were with their pictures of red monsters with horns and pointed tails, how silly they were with their beliefs and their blind certainty. I kept laughing, tilting my head back and letting the sound float up to the ceiling. It felt good to laugh, it felt good to be dead. Most of all, it felt good to be Satan.


I swung my feet off the bed and heard a metallic thunk as they hit the floor, as if someone had dropped two anvils. I looked down and couldn’t help but start to laugh again—of course my feet were now hooves. Sharp, long, devil hooves. I immediately put my hands to my head and sure enough, felt two little horns amid the tangles of my curly, long hair. Oh, fantastic, I thought to myself, as I stood up and stretched a little. I heard a few cracks as I bent myself over to the right, then to the left. Dying really had done a number on my muscles. I took a few steps to test out my new extremities, only to discover that, as far as I could tell, there was virtually no difference between walking with human feet and walking with devil hooves. I was a little disappointed—I had kind of been hoping that each step would cause the ground to shake or something like that.


 Aside from the minor aches and pains, I felt almost exactly the same as I had before I died. I didn’t feel any stronger or more powerful, but was that something you felt just by taking a few steps? Or did the powerful feeling come through behavior and action? I suppose that was probably a question for a psychologist and I didn’t really care. All I wanted now was to get out of that weird hospital-but-not-hospital type room and explore what I assumed was the depths of hell.


I was hit once again with the undeniable lack of surprise I was feeling about basically the entire situation. Shouldn’t I be upset that I had hooves at the end of my legs, horns growing out of my head, and was likely to be in hell for the rest of eternity? Shouldn’t that have given me at least some sort of pause, maybe even a little guilt, or at the very least a twinge of sadness or fear? I didn’t feel any of those things—on the contrary, I felt excited and energized. I guess that meant I was where I was supposed to be. I walked over to the door that Angel had gone through, took a deep breath, and opened it up. 


I don’t know what I was expecting to see when I opened the door, but it certainly wasn’t a hallway. A very boring hallway, at that—just bare, white walls and a white carpeted floor, leading narrowly towards another door about 25 feet away. I guess albeit boring, the hallway served its purpose, which I assumed was to lead me to the other door. I headed toward it, one hoof in front of the other, what did I have to lose? 


As I approached the other door, I felt apprehension, the first semi-negative emotion I’d experienced since waking up here. Everything suddenly seemed a little too perfect, sort of like a set-up. But if I was Satan, who could be setting me up? God? I didn’t even believe in God, nor did I believe in the devil or heaven or hell, so what did I actually think was going on here? These thoughts flooded my brain like water; I had broken some sort of mental dam and there was no going back. I stood there, facing the door, raising my hand to the knob, then putting it back down, raising it again, and putting it back down again. I guess I did have something to lose, after all—my goddamn mind. 


This was silly, I was feeling empowered and exhilarated before, what had changed? A simple walk down the hallway? Just open the door, just do it. These were my thoughts, but at the same time they weren’t. I had two people in my head now—the me that was there before I died, and the me that was there now. The former was the one with reservations, and the latter was the one telling her it was dumb. Who was I supposed to listen to when they were both me? I shook my head, Jesus, I really was going crazy. Just open the door. So I did.

I was hit with a gust of wind so powerful that my arm holding the doorknob would have surely snapped in half had I not let go immediately. The door was ripped from its hinges and flew off into nothingness. It was a wonder I was able to stand...well, I guess it wasn’t that much of a wonder, right? I did the best I could to keep my eyes open—the wind was churning up blood-red dust, creating a visual effect that was straight out of a horror movie.


Now, this was the hell I had been expecting. 


All I could see was red and it appeared as if I was standing on a foot of land with absolutely nothing around it. It took all my energy to turn my head and look behind me—the hallway had disappeared. There was nothing there now. There was nothing but red dust as far as I could see in any direction. I felt the panic rise in my stomach, sending shockwaves of fear up into my chest and throat. I was going to either scream or vomit, I wasn’t sure which. My eyes were burning, and not just from the wind and dust—I had started to cry. I looked down—my hooves were gone and had been replaced with my two human bare feet. I slowly lifted my hands to my head, teetering horrifyingly, but maintaining my balance. I felt through my hair frantically, a part of me knew there wouldn’t be horns there now, but I desperately hoped I was wrong. I wasn’t.


I was sobbing at this point, choking on dust and spit and whatever other particles were flying around. If there had been enough room to fall to my knees, I would have. But there wasn’t—there was only enough room to stand, I couldn’t even turn my whole body fully around because it seemed like too much of a risk. A part of me toyed with the idea of just letting myself fall off, but something inside of me was telling me that would be the wrong choice. I had no idea what the right choice was, though. I had no ideas at all. I caught myself wishing I were dead, before being gut-punched with the fact that I already was dead and this was it. I couldn’t remember a time in my whole existence when I had been so terrified. 

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