The drifter was in his early twenties. He was lean and hard, with a seven-day stubble on his chin and dirty, stringy hair down to his shoulders. He wore a sweat-stained olive drab t-shirt and dirty blue jeans.
He was feeling mean. He had been hitchhiking for a month. His last ride, not having a good feeling about him after sharing a few hundred miles in the cramped space of a small coupe, had left him at an interstate rest stop.
A middle-aged woman was traveling with her eight-year-old nephew. For the last 30 miles, the young lad had been asking for a rest stop, getting more urgent with every mile. Finally, his aunt stopped the car and led him to the door of the men's restroom. “I'll wait right here,” she told him. After a few minutes, road-dirty young man came out, looked at her and smiled.
She waited a few more minutes. Her nephew did not come out. She asked a male attendant to go in and look after him. “Maybe he's sick,” she volunteered.
The attendant retched when he found the young boy lying in a pool of blood on the floor of a bathroom stall, his throat cut so deeply that his head was almost severed from his body.
The drifter would later say it was a “spur of the moment thing. It was so easy. I could do it, so I did.”
-------
Screwtape was screaming into the phone. “Of course you've got to go for an execution as soon as possible. We don't want to take a chance on a genuine Death Row conversion, rare as they are. That's where the Enemy has the game stacked against us. Some jerk can do some dirt that would make Hitler blush, but if he really goes over to the other side, He robs us of our just winnings! The Old Cheat!”
Screwtape stopped screaming and chuckled. “Who would ever think that the Devil was interested in seeing 'justice' done, huh? But the sooner they come to us, the better. We can be patient, sure - but life in prison is a long time for some, and it only takes the blink of an eye for them to slip through our fingers.”
Screwtape continued giving advice to the young, inexperienced demon: “We do our best work when we're not noticed. Make them doubt we even exist. Summon up the cartoon image; it's so easy to make fun of a man in a red suit with a pitchfork, tail, hoofs and goatee! Ha ha! And if they don’t believe in us, the next step is not so great.
“What step? My dear chap, you're not that green, are you? The next step, of course, is denying the Big Guy's existence! Then all they've got is their puny, insignificant selves for solace - and that, I can tell you, is not much! Ha! - just a minute - I've got a call on another line.”
Desiree Caliente's soft voice was telling Screwtape that the Lower Demon in charge of the Southeast District was on the line.
“Look - I've got to take this call,” Screwtape told the underling on the other line. Then he abruptly pushed a button cutting him off. He pushed another button. Glubwart was on the line.
“Well, what is it?” Screwtape asked Glubwart.
“Good news, chief,” Glubwart said. “My whisper campaign is paying off. The casinos have been approved. We can look forward to lots of wrecked homes, lost homes, fortunes, families. People turning on each other, focusing on themselves. Uptick in alcoholism, divorce, domestic abuse, the whole enchilada.”
“Jewels?”
“Dozens every day, once we get really rolling.”
“How are you coming on Project Sugarloaf?”
“I'm working on it sir, but I must say -”
“No, you mustn't SAY,” Screwtape interrupted. “You must DO. Get back and work as if your life depended on it. Because,” the Chief Demon for United States Affairs smirked, “it does.”
Screwtape hung up the phone before Glubwart had a chance to protest further.
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