“Have I not served you faithfully for hundreds of years?” Nero asked.
“Yes. But – ”
“Sir, I will not lose. Hell was the best thing that ever happened to me. When you released me from my torments you took a chance on this short, paunchy, washed-up Roman emperor. No one liked me. Everyone thought I fiddled while my own city burned, even though fiddles weren’t even invented when that happened and I greatly prefer the cithara. They all just judged without knowing the facts. You took me out of the gutter, you gave me a chance, you gave me redemption: an eternity of service to a cause greater than myself. Now I have a chance to return that favor. And sir,” Nero was all steely resolve. “I will not lose.”
Satan had never heard this kind of conviction in Nero’s voice before.
“All right,” he said. “I trust you.”
Nero smiled.
“You don’t know how much that means to me,” he said.
“Okay,” Furlough said, sticking his head back in the door. “They finally got her to stop crying and she’s in the courtroom. It’s showtime.”
Frita Babbit sat in the witness stand. This was the grand climax of the prosecution’s strategy, which had been beaten out and storyboarded by three Hollywood scriptwriters for maximum emotional impact. First, the days of expert witnesses pounding it into the jury’s brains that Satanic abuse was a fact of life, that cults were everywhere and that cults had ruined Frita Babbit’s life. But that was just a tease, because the prosecution always withheld the lurid details of Frita’s abuse, dangling it in front of the jury as it led them down the hallway of their argument like a coy mistress, staying just out of reach, dropping item after item of clothing behind them, drawing the jury down a passage with no exit but the one the prosecution had chosen for them. The jury was primed, and Frita Babbit was about to strike the match.
“Ms. Babbit,” Eddie Horton said. “I don’t want to badger you with a lot of questions. I know how brave you are to even be here today. And I couldn’t be more grateful to you or to your support team.”
He gestured to the six women wearing “Team TruthTeller” t-shirts who were sitting nearby, ready to spring into action the second Frita showed any signs of distress.
“You are a brave, brave woman and I hope that our friends from the press record your heroism and that it goes on to inspire children around the world to tell their parents about the abuse inflicted upon them by Satanic cults. I hope that they, too, will learn from your courage and speak out. Silence does equal death.”
“Thank you,” Frita said, quietly.
“I want you to know that you are a personal hero of mine,” Horton said, placing his hand over his heart. “And it is a great honor for me to cross examine you here, today, where the healing is going to begin. But rather than peck at you with a lot of legalese I want you, in your own words, to tell the court what happened.”
“First,” Frita Babbit said. “I would like to read a poem I wrote. It’s called ‘Healing?’”
Healing?
By Frita Babbit
Now and then
I get a little bit tired
Of listening to the sound of my tears
Now and then
I get a little bit nervous
That the best of all the years have gone by
But I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone’s shadows.
If I fail, if I succeed,
At least I’ll live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can’t take away my dignity.
Because I am beautiful, no matter what they say
Words can’t bring me down
I am beautiful in every single way
And I’ll find my strength in the arms of an Angel,
Far away from here
In the arms of an Angel;
May I find some comfort here.
And I will survive
As long as I know how to love
I know I will stay alive.
I’ve got all my life to live,
I’ve got all my love to give
And I’ll survive.
I will survive.
“I will survive!” she shouted, rising to her feet.
There was silence for a moment, and then, in the back of the courtroom, a female reporter began slow, strong clapping. And then a man, tears running into his beard, stood up and began to clap as well. It was just the two of them for a moment, but then another reporter put down his notebook and stood, clapping slowly, proudly, powerfully. And then more people stood, and