Fable #3 BARGAINING WITH THE DEVIL
And Lucifer called forth two of his greatest servants to stand before him – Greed and Envy. As they bowed and scraped all sniggering and cloy into his presence, Lucifer spoke with the voice of fire and the bass of a million drums. “G and E, my boys, so good to see you, been ages. Since mankind never learns its own lessons you have been two of my most trusted servitors lo these many eons, permanent as planets in my galaxy of dirty tricks. I salute your service. You have always been able to make mischief and create harm in even the least likely and far-flung situations. As I age agelessly, it occurs to me that I have shown too little appreciation for your efforts. Now on this special day of the one billionth cinder and ash jubilee of my great decension to the fabled charcoal throne of my anti-angelic power, I want to rectify that oversight to ensure your loyalty to me continues for many millennia to come.
“I hereby direct you to select your own reward. It is the rarest gift I can offer, never granted to any before. Anything you want of me I will give you gladly, whether jewels or gold or power or prowess or potency, it is all there for the simple asking. The only caveat is thus: only one of you gets to choose the gift you will each receive. So to be fair and so there will be no disputes, in reward for the deference of letting the other choose, the second of you will receive twice the treasure of whatever the first asks for.
“Do you understand me? Put simply, for everything the decider of you requests the second will receive two of an equal measure. If one asks for all the gold in the world the other shall receive diamonds of twice the value. You have only to work together to receive all the wealth and power in the universe in which you could each ever hope to wallow. I repeat, never have I offered any of my loyal minions such a promising promissory prospect. Now go from me. Deliberate carefully, make your decision and return to me when you have reached it.”
No question about it, it really was a truly glorious offer. Anyone else would have been deliriously happy at the astonishing prospects which opened before them. Unfortunately, these were, after all, Greed and Envy we’re talking about here. To them it was all quandary and conundrum. All these two professional plotters had to do was connive together to achieve the maximum benefit for both but that was the one thing their selfish natures prohibited them from being able to do. Though they were completely different personalities in tinyness of heart and size of brain they were really a lot alike.
Immediately their discussions turned torturous. Envy fretted sweat that if it was forced to choose first it could never be content with the jealousy it would feel at Greed’s acquisition of more. Greed couldn’t contemplate going first because that would preclude it from acquiring as much as it could possibly acquire at Envy’s expense. A Satanic cynic might have almost concluded that Lucifer anticipated they might have trouble reaching an agreement prior to his making them the offer.
As it was they went on jockeying for position well into the night, trying every trick, feint and boomerang they knew, and they knew them all, neither trusting the other as each tried to cheat the other in turn. They were still at it well into the next day, too, pulling out all stops; and on into the next week, using every devious device, every artifice, stratagem and ploy; then into the next month, hurling every imprecation, conning every con and sting, crafting every misdirection and duplicity; but whatever they tried, neither could out dim the other’s wit nor gain the advantage in conmanship over the other’s con.
Finally, the Great Satan wearied of all this tired caviling and sent word that time had expired. They had to reach a decision the next day or forfeit the offer altogether. This was the one voice they answered to and had no choice but to obey.
Having just one chance more, from the room where they had retired that last night to negotiate, listeners swore they had never heard such turmoil and racket. The screeching din was unbearable, the caterwauling atrocious, the whining and yes, even the unmistakable and seldom heard but once heard never forgotten legendary sound of the distant wailing and gnashing of teeth that grates through the ages and gnarls the dreams of all who hear it, was heard that night. The next day, like well whipped pups the two cretinous creatures slunk back into His Unholiness’s gruesome presence.
The scene which greeted them was legendary and unforgettable. It was a ramshackle place, less palace than ruined mobile home park on a war torn moon. Through the malevolent, pestilential, puce and pustule portico of pus and sty they entered into the half finished formica and linoleum Great Basement Hall of the Underworld and trembled with trepidation.
The room looked like any tract home’s partially finished basement. With fake wood paneling for walls and a pseudo, tacky, free standing wet bar which, because of the infernal, festering heat- the effects of which the broken air conditioner couldn’t alleviate- was less wet than merely moldy and damp. The cockroaches, vermin and rats, all completely pesticide resistant (where would death have sent them?), vied for floor space with the multicolored serpents that slithered like mobile shag carpet everywhere along the creaking floor, even covering the walls and ceiling. For recreation there was a dim lamp and a cheap pool table with uneven legs and warped cues and a black and white TV with tin foil aerials always turned on but with no reception. As snowy as the screen always was it didn’t make the place any cooler.
As the two miserable, hapless, small time evil doers and done-tos crawled on their bellies into the Basement Hall the Devil and all his followers waited. The two groveling adversaries were obviously bruised and battered, exhausted, emaciated, beaten, gouged and cut.
“Well, have you decided?” the great Source of Stench demanded as they approached his old torn red vinyl kitchen chair/barstool throne. His extremely loyal dead dog Butch, as it had for centuries of centuries, was resting as always at his feet, decaying all smelly and maggoty.
“Yes your un-eminent doggedness, we your slaves after much quiet deliberation as how to best serve your infamous, sulfurous Self have reached a decision.
“Who then will choose the gift for the two of you?”
“It will,” Greed said and pushed the reluctant and cringing Envy forward.
So Greed had won. Being the more aggressive sentiment of the two meretricious disinformationists many had suspected it would, none were surprised. Envy was the more passive and seemingly weaker of the pair. Obviously Greed had finally been able to wear its little buddy down and secure for itself the same portion of whatever Envy chose doubled.
“Envy is it then? OK but before you tell me what is it you choose as your reward, E-man, we have to reacquaint you with the terms of the agreement.” The Prince of Darkness turned to his lawyer (yes you heard). - By the way most who plummet to hell change shape and drop away their façade of earthly normalcy once they arrive to expose their true dark interior selves in all its gruesome horror in these halls of perdition. Only lawyers and politicians kept their same appearance and in Hades look pretty much exactly the same as they look on earth.
Satan’s barrister actually looked quite spiffy in his expensive dark glasses and plaid sport coat and white golf shoes (he hadn’t had time to change when the lightening hit him). The Dark Lord had his attorney remind Envy of his agreement, that by going first he was knowingly accepting that the double measure of his, Satan’s, largess would go to his alter ego Greed. “You accept these terms freely?”
Envy was a sorry sot with simpering manner, a little voice and fleeting refractory eyes which never quite focused directly on anyone or anything. It was the prototypical sneak and snake. Behind it the arrogant, smug and brutal and belligerent Greed glowered, the essential bully that loomed and lurked behind everything on earth, and twisted its eyes with an inverse grin which had nothing in common with joy or in league with kindness. Drama was thick in the room, as all Satan’s unmerriest of women and men rubbed their slimy hands together. The scapegraces had arrived driving their goats, the murders, thieves, paid propagandists and liars and child molesters hung from the rafters and drooled phlegm in anticipation.
Envy, its little loser’s thin voice breaking at first with tension in front of its peers, spoke hesitantly.
“I… I yes, I freely choose, your exalted Mean and Evilness which surpasseth all comprehension, I would have you… I mean, what I want for my reward to which my compatriot in crime behind me, Greed, I willing concede should receive double the measure of, I ask, or beg that you, your Infinite Royal Darkness, should vouchsafe unto me, or inflict unto me the following honor…”
The little slime ball paused for dramatic effect here, the room hushed, Greed leaned forward rapaciously to hear… Then, slowly at first but then with a snickering sneer of his lip and a quick, malevolent glimpse in Greed’s direction, with a nearly inaudible but clearly vicious hiss, it continued, “…for my gift I want you please, if it serves your pleasure, my Dear drear Emptiness, to reach your holy hand into the back of my skull and pluck out one of my eyes!”
Only when they heard it did the crowd realize that Envy had ultimately reached the only decision he could reach and remain true to its nature. They let out a collective sigh of relief mingled with disappointment, “Ah, yes, yes, of course, what did we expect?”
For the only way Envy could not live in eternal torment of the knowledge that Greed had more of something than it did was to reach far over to the negative side of the ledger to craft its request. So it asked for a negative “plus” for itself in the hopes that Greed in receiving more would actually get less and suffer more with the loss of both eyes than Envy would with the loss of just the one.
“So be it!” Satan responded quickly before Envy could change its mind, slapping his thigh in horrible hollow mirth. “So you ask of me and so shall it be. Let the gendarmes come forward and take these two away to receive their gifts from me. Ha! I knew it. Do I know my workers or what? It just never gets old. My Godlessness, I just can’t get enough of it.”
As the two miserable fools slunk away it was to the raucous laughter of all Satan’s leprous followers. For a long time the only sound to be heard was Satan, that devil, laughing. He laughed till the tears came. It was a loud grating, empty, hollow thing which because it was so devoid of feeling or joy was the most horrible, persistent, foul and soul curdling sound in all of hell.
Some of the most immature imps among the crowd thought that this trick the Devil had played on Greed and Envy was a work of pure impious disingenuousness. But in fact the experienced knew that here on earth such an outcome was commonplace, as predictable, persistent and old as soil. Negative gratification, for just one instance, is the pure nihilistic essence at the heart of terrorism. Or in the political realm, take the Middle East, where hardliners in Israel greedily want more of the land of their neighbors while hardliners among the Palestinians are consumed by the unwillingness to accept any of what the Israelis already have. Both are willing to suffer and especially, let others suffer for them, in futile quest for what neither can have.
A similar situation is evolving in present day Iraq. And of course, it happens every day in daily life, from the divorcing couple next door to the criminal element everywhere, where one person will choose to live in misery as long as there is one chance in a thousand that somewhere, someone they love or hate, or even just society in general, may actually have to suffer more.
The moral: only those blind to the competitions of the world can ever truly learn to see.
