movies big enough. Shoot, he’s already up for a place on the Supreme Court.”
“And he’s a judge?”
“Greatest jurist ever to wear a robe. You know that decision in Nevada that if someone’s a real dumbass you can smack them? That’s his ruling. The Supreme Court wanted to overturn it. Couldn’t. It’s airtight.”
And then he smacked Satan.
“Dumbass,” he said, and rolled away.
“Ow,” Satan said.
Over his shoulder the cop yelled, “That’s legal in this state!”
By now, Judge Cody Gold had reached the doors of the courthouse. He shoved his arms up in a big victory “V” and then ducked inside. His fans were left gasping in his wake, on their hands and knees, throwing up from over-stimulation and having private emotional meltdowns. They all seemed to have lost interest in Satan now that they were in the presence of their biggest hero and Satan used the opportunity to find Nero, who was lying on his back in a chewed up bit of dirt that had had grass on it earlier that morning, before the crowd descended.
“We should go inside before anyone notices us again,” Satan said, pulling Nero up.
“He stepped on me...” Nero said in a dazed voice.
Satan smacked him sharply across the face.
“Ow,” Nero said, recovering himself. “What was that for?”
“Get a hold of yourself,” Satan said. “We’ve got a trial to attend.”
“But you hit me,” Nero said.
“It’s legal in this state.”
At the best of times, Nero did not like the physical plane. His centuries of torment had forced him to face the reality that he had been an evil despot and so coming back to the scene of the crime, the mortal realm, always made him self-conscious. What if someone recognized him and he’d had their great, great, great, etc. grandfather crucified? It would be so awkward. Add to this the fact that he had just had an intense fangasm and now Satan, his Lord and Master to whom he owed everything, and because of whom his existence had recently become incredibly stressful, had slapped him. Nero was already a volatile cocktail of neurochemical reactions. He was already a ticking emotional time bomb. And now he did the only thing he knew how to do in the face of this slap.
He ran away crying.
Satan gaped after him as Nero lumbered around the corner of the building.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Wait! Nero? Come back!”
Getting into the courtroom was like boarding a plane in Tel Aviv on September 12, 2001. That is to say: security was tight. Even pieces of paper were being x-rayed. Paperclips were going through mass spectrometers to make sure that they were actually what they claimed to be - wire in a looped shape that used the principles of torsion and friction to hold together multiple pieces of paper - and not nefarious, James Bond-ian assassination devices from the Q Division. No one could walk more than ten feet without some steely-eyed sheriff’s deputy asking for their ID, looking at their face, looking back down at their ID, looking back up at their face, back at their ID and then, finally, giving a grudging nod. Half the press in the courtroom were arrested after background checks discovered their outstanding warrants and unpaid parking tickets and the wheels of justice ground to a halt while alternate journalists were selected and screened.
Finally, Satan was seated in the freezing cold courtroom, waiting for jury selection to begin. The cold, hard-backed wooden chair behind the defendant’s table was designed to be as uncomfortable as possible, but it was nothing compared to the psychological discomfort Satan felt sitting there all alone. He felt conspicuous, sitting at this enormous wooden table with no papers, no files, no law books, no lawyer. It was just him. The plaintiff’s table to his right was packed with things. There were two lawyers, their assistants, Frita Babbit, her PTSD and Recovered Memories Counselor, and they had brought an impressive assortment of papers, files, law books and anatomically correct dolls. Satan felt like a chump.
“Couldn’t get Daniel Webster, eh?” a reporter said from behind him.
“Huh?” Satan replied, inelegantly.
“I thought you’d have plenty of lawyers to choose from in Hell,” the reporter said as everyone else in the press pool watched to see how this joshing would go with Satan. They were throwing out a test balloon here: would Satan be their funny buddy, or a stiff? Satan couldn’t think of anything sharp and witty to say back, and he considered smiling, but then he realized that smiling could lead to