and placed in a yellowed envelope with their baby teeth, and their aggressively meaningless tattoos are hidden beneath a thick layer of morticians make-up. Their parents assume that as difficult as its body is to deal with, the hipster’s soul has already moved on to a happier place. Those in the death business know otherwise. Long ago, the constant, sneering contempt hipsters have for those deemed less cool than themselves (read: everybody) microwaved their souls into tiny dried husks that rattle around inside them like old beans. When a hipster dies, he or she simply ceases to exist. In life: they helplessly hump every passing trend. In death: nothing.
For creatures of pure soul, like the dead, or those who stand close to the roots of Creation, like Satan, the hipster is a cosmic finger in the eye, an aberration that makes the Universe want to vomit. A hipster penetrating one of the spiritual realms feels as vile as a neo-Nazi penetrating a Holocaust memorial service. It is wrong, and the reaction is often a sudden, spontaneous spasm of violence.
Nero picked up a folding chair and began to beat the awful thing.
“Not cool!” the hipster squealed. “So not cool!”
“It’s getting away,” Satan said as the hipster covered its head with wristband-encrusted wrists and tried to scurry around Nero. Satan threw his lamp at it, cutting off its escape. Nero summoned all his courage and tackled the scrawny, shapeless thing, and the two of them rolled into the corner, looking like a beach ball wrestling a piece of string.
“Hurting! Me!” the hipster shouted as it struggled.
Satan picked up his phone and dialed.
“Yo!” Enar said.
“Enar,” Satan said. “You sent me a hipster.”
“The kid’s already there? Great! Have you heard his demo yet?”
“I’m very upset, Enar.”
“Yeah,” Enar said. “Whatever you do, don’t let him play you track two. It’s terrible.”
“I’m very upset you sent me a hipster.”
“It’s what all the kids are into these days. You and me, we’re old guys, we don’t understand. This kid, he’s from Bushwick.”
In the background, the hipster was trying to bite Nero.
“Get away, you nasty thing!” Nero said, kicking it.
“I want you to send me someone normal,” Satan said.
“Normal for what?” Enar asked. “Go down to Williamsburg and that’s all you see. Check out Silverlake and this guy is about average. Come on, he’s my sister’s kid. Help me out.”
“You don’t understand,” Satan said. “I can’t send this thing out as a representative of Hell. We’ll be a laughing stock.”
“Laughter is the best medicine,” Enar said.
“No,” Satan said. “It’s the worst medicine. In fact, it’s not even a medicine at all. I want to return your hipster.”
“I can’t really let you do that,” Enar said. “Look, you don’t want the hipster. I understand. There’s not a lot of patience for his brand in my sister’s house, either. But the fact is, he signed the contract. Right now, he’s all you’ve got. I can try to find someone with a more mainstream look but right this minute no one comes to mind, and it’s going to take me a while to sort through the options. And you know what the song says, ‘If you can’t be with the one you love/Love the one you’re with.’ Which, in this case, is my sister’s kid.”
Satan moaned in spiritual pain.
“The second I know something, I’ll be calling you,” Enar said, and hung up.
Satan slammed down the phone.
“I just want to go to the bathroom,” the hipster whined. “Is that OKAY?”
Nero lowered his guard for a second, but that was all it took. The hipster kicked him in the shins and made for the door. Satan tackled him and they went down in a heap. Lying on top of the wriggling sack of pale, jelloid flesh made him feel sick. The hipster had no bones, no muscles, no form or structure, he was just a pale skinbag covered in hair and ironic tattoos.
“I’ve got its feet,” Nero said.
Satan found that he was holding two limp tentacles that must be its arms.
“I’ve got its arms,” he said. “Now what do we do with it?”
“Here,” Nero said, dragging it towards the garbage can. “We’ll put it in a garbage bag and drown it in the Acheron.”
“Right,” Satan said.
“We’ll have to double bag it,” Nero said.
“Let go of me, you gaylords,” the hipster squealed.
The phone rang.
“Ignore it,” Satan said.
In one swift motion Nero grabbed the trashcan liner and pulled it up around the hipster’s legs.