So, this demon walks into a bar. She's dressed to the sixes. Polished horns. Swishing sharpened forked tail. Hooves a-clickin' as she struts towards the tiny crowd seated around the bartender.
Oh yes. So many sinners ready to be shaked and baked. There's Hal who's been cheating on his wife with his secretary. Boring, sure, but you've got to respect the classics.
There's Andrew pounding his fifth beer while gorging on chicken fingers. Gluttony is on the Top 10.
Sheryl wakes up every day thinking about poisoning her poor sick burden of a mother. She hasn't actually done it, but those thoughts are oh so vivid.
Then there's the bartender himself. Danny's a swindler, gambler, brawler and pornography aficionado. Not to mention the fact that he's enabling the rest of these folks with his alcoholic libations. How many of his customers are going to be speeding home drunk?
The answer is zero, because they're all going to hell tonight.
The drunks are all commiserating about how awful and pointless their lives are. If only they knew. They're so oblivious in their bubble of self absorbed emo, they don't even see damnation marching right towards them until it's far too late.
Hal, always the wandering eye, is the first to see the fiery hellspawn scraping the foosball table with her barbed fingernails as she walks closer. Sheryl gags at the sulfuric stench while Danny drops a nearly full liter bottle of Maker's Mark. Poor Andrew almost chokes on chicken bone, which is just fine. When someone's going to spend an eternity in hell, it really doesn't make any difference if they die painfully or not, but seeing someone's eyes bulging as they gasp for air is always entertaining.
"Hey. Hey. Well. Well," the demon hisses. "The lot of you are going to..."
As the demon speaks, her crimson skin cracks and lava streams of pus gush from her face. Hal screams. Cheryl tries to stand up but is frozen in fear. Andrew is still gurgling; performing the oral gymnastics required to keep the chicken bone from sliding down his throat. Only Danny seems ready to defend himself, grasping a bottle of low rate vodka as a weapon.
None of them bother to guess the ending to the demon's rhyme. So disappointing.
"Hell, people. It's Hell. You're going to Hell," the demon shouts, spitting out tiny skittering insects from her mouth while voicing the 'p' in people. "Most folks are on their knees begging me not to send them to the fiery pits. Do you know what I loved so much about the last demon/angel war? Audience participation! It's like crickets in here. Tell you what. I'll give you one last chance. You?"
The demon points to Andrew who is now flailing his arms frantically, gasping for air.
"Okay. Maybe not you. How about..." The demon does a little eenie-meenie-miney-mo while pointing at each victim with her freakishly long centipede of a finger.
"You! Bartender. Riddle me this. Who's going to save you? A) God. B) No one. C)...Well, we all really know the answer, don't we?"
Unnoticed to all, is the tiny crack in the ceiling above the hallway in front of the restrooms. No one cares about it unless there's a bad thunderstorm. Then the rain drips into the hallway and Danny has to place a bucket along with a cautionary bright yellow 'Wet Floor' sign that people always trip over.
Tiny as the crack is, it's no problem for an angel who is used to dancing on the head of a pin to squeeze through. And since an angel is a timeless being, he's also able to combine all the rainwater that had ever fallen in the bar with his own angelic light to create a dazzling rainbow. The bright colors reflect off his golden skin, drawing all attention away from the demon.
Wings miraculously outstretched in the cramped space, the angel blows a trumpet of pure gold to announce his presence. As an agent of good and purity, the music sounds way more Kenny G than Miles Davis. It still boldly announces his godly message. Don't fuck with me, demon.
"Dirk, why do you always interrupt me when I'm ready to flay the unrepentant sinners?" the demon demands.
One might think Dirk is a strange name for an angel. It really isn't. Dirk let his fellow angels take all the cool names like Michael and Gabriel. Sharing and self sacrifice. It's what angels do.
"Did you even give them a chance to repent, Blanche?" he asks.
One might think Blanche is a strange name for a demon. It really isn't. 'Blanche' is the sound a still beating human heart makes when it's ripped from someone's chest and spattered against a wall.
"Look into their souls, you simpering angelic fool."
Dirk turns on his Soul Vision ™ to peer into each one to see their true spirits. Light shines in a bright halo around each one. Danny was always lending a caring ear to his customers. Hal volunteered at a soup kitchen. Sheryl quit her job to care for her mother when her five siblings couldn't be bothered. And Andrew is planning on going vegan if he survives the whole chicken bone incident.
"I see goodness in their hearts and souls," Dirk says, his fluttering wings creating a cool breeze to offset Blanche's unbearable scorching heat.
"You need to get your Soul Vision checked," Blanche hisses. "Look deeper."
Dirk sighs, but does as she suggests. His eyes turn a deeper shade of infrared as he gazes intently at each of the frightened humans.
"Hmm. Oh you're right. Infidelity. Gluttony, Hateful thoughts and..." he turns to Danny. "This one owns a porno where furries reenact scenes from Paw Patrol."
Danny shrugs. You just don't lie to an angel.
"Sinners! You have all reaped the blade of judgment!" Dirk shouts in his sing-song angelic voice as he pulls out a flaming sword.
"Really? That's not the Blade of Judgment," Blanche says. "It's a cheap knock-off."
"I have loaned the Blade to Uriel as he had much smoting to do," Dirk says, his angry wings flapping like a bat out of heaven. "But the Judge-A-Matic Sword™ that I wield will be sufficient to deal with these four heathens."
Andrew falls to the ground, gasping his last breath.
"Correction. Three heathens."
"P-please...you're an angel, right?" Cheryl pleads in a voice trembling as much as the rest of her body. "I'm into G-god and stuff. I even g-got married in a church. My f-first marriage at least. Don't h-hurt me,"
"Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Our Father. Our Father," Hal says, crossing himself frantically.
Danny just holds up a wine bottle. God likes wine, right?
"Give me that." Blanche leaps over the bar and grabs the vintage from the bartender's shaking hands. "Dirk, you're not going to smite these fine people because I'm dragging them to hell instead. I was here first. Finders keepers."
"I think not!" Dirk shouts. "These sinners shall burn in the Eternal Flames of the Righteous!"
Hal raises his hand. "Excuse me but do the righteous flames hurt as much as the hellfire?"
"Indeed," Dirk smiles proudly.
"You're damned if you're damned and you're screwed if you don't," Blanche clarifies. "Okay, Dirk. Enough of this. It's been an eternity since we've locked horns and wings in battle. Let's rumble."
Dirk tosses the flaming sword up in the air, watches it spin , then catches it ready to fight.
"Showoff!" Blanche sighs. "No weapons. Just you and me, angel cakes."
"The second I set this sword down, you're going to rip out the bartender's spine and attack me with it, are you not?" Dirk asks. Blanche's claws are lodged in Danny's back like an electric can opener, so it's a valid question.
"Oh, please," Blanche says, throwing Danny's rag doll body against the wall, shattering the top shelf liquor. "I don't need a weapon to gobble a little canary like you."
Danny groans in pain shielding his head from the clinking shards and liquor spilling from the broken bottles. He gasps a weak cry for mercy.
Dirk stares at Blanche who has frozen in her tracks. "You are really going to stop our battle because that sinner asked you to?"
"Of course not. I'm a burning cinder of pure evil. It's just that..."
Blanche's ochre colored eyes fixate on the empty stool between Hal and Sheryl. "It's just...there's nobody there."
The angel gazes at the stool as though he's expecting the prodigal son to walk in, have a seat and order a martini. Both he and Blanche know this would be the perfect moment to strike the other while they're enthralled by the empty air but they don't.
Hal and Sheryl are too frightened to move, but they both breathe a short sigh of relief. Perhaps they might survive the night after all.
Or not. Silly mortals.
"Sangdu natuku, Nam-tar!" Blanche hisses before uttering obscenities in her native hellish language that cause Sheryl's head to explode.
The angel sings a song of Light and Vengeance that evoke images of running towards the Eternal Kingdom on an endless treadmill of glass shards. Hal goes completely insane at the sight of a paradise he'll never experience.
Blanche becomes a being of pure hellfire which, considering all the open liquor, isn't the safest option. Her raging fireball is matched by the brilliance of the angel's inner being hurled at the force of evil. The two meet in an instant cacophony of wonder and terror. The explosion shakes the foundations of the building in one final burst of heavenfire.
Then, as quickly as it explodes, everything implodes. It's over.
This would be a very minor and inconsequential battle in the war of darkness and light, except for one important detail. It's notable not for what happened but rather what didn't.
Hours before the skirmish broke out, Mitchell Murphy's hand clutched the doorknob of the now defunct and completely disintegrated Danny's Bar and Grill. He was ready to walk in and take his usual seat in between Hal and Sheryl when he suddenly got a craving for Chocolate Chip burgers. As Danny's Bar and Grill doesn't actually have a grill and certainly didn't have any chocolate chips, Mitch elected to turn around and go home to satisfy his culinary craving.
When he got to his apartment, he found he didn't have any burger patties in the fridge so he just microwaved a bun filled with chocolate chips, ketchup and some half moldy cheese. It was oddly satisfying.
That last bit really isn't that important. The fact that Mitch wasn't present to meet his final destiny, however, makes all the difference in the universe.
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