My work keeps me pretty busy, seven days a week usually, so I don’t often get a Sunday to myself, but whenever I do I like to pop into church. Since I travel a lot I tend to visit whatever place of worship happens to be closest to wherever I am. Hindu, Baptist, Roman Catholic, it’s all one and good to me.

Last Sunday I happened to have one of these rare Sundays off, and the nearest place of worship was one of those traditional Protestant outfits, all very loyal to John Knox. Now, I have nothing at all against the Protestants as a faith, nor their zeal per se, but dear me, it does make them seem a joyless lot at times! I was sitting in the last-but-one pew, getting splinters in my nether regions because the Protestants, when they decided to do away with all that “gaudiness and popery of worship” which offended them so, they saw fit to include soft cushions. Sermonizing was the Reverend Muchjoy ( I kid you not ) in best spitting-fire-and-farting-brimstone style. I was wondering why I had not just walked a little further to locate some less strident option ( now, the Baptists, they know how to make worshippin’ fun ), and having to admit to myself that I just could not be fussed walking any further since I was quite simply getting to be a lazy git in my old age.

Then a voice whispered on my left: “ Well, well. Fancy meeting you here. Long time, no see.”

I turned my head and out popped my eyes on those proverbial stalks. Seated on the pew beside me was none other than Lucifer himself, grinning and waggling his fingers at me in a saucy little wave.

“ Howdy,” he greeted.

Now, most people assume Lucifer is all cloven feet and forked tail and a bad sunburn, but that is not the case. He’s actually quite the Regular Joe. He has certainly neversported one of those ridiculous little goatee beards that Hollywood has always been so fond of portraying him with. In fact, he dislikes facial hair altogether. And he dislikes being referred to as ‘Satan’. He’s Lucifer. And don’t you forget it. Furthermore, he does not look like Joe Mantegna either. More like a young John Travolta. 

“ Oh. Hello,” I managed to reply at last. Lucifer is not someone I expect to run into sitting in the last-but-one pew of a church. It’s not that Lucifer has anything against places of worship per se, much as I myself have nothing against the Protestants per se, he simply is not keen on his being inside places of worship all that very often. Which is understandable since the folks you tend to find in such places have always had rather a thing about him.

Lucifer gave me a lurid wink. “ So how’s it hanging then?”

A large lady seated in the pew behind leaned forward then and with a ferocious scowl, bid us both, “ Shush!”

Lucifer stuck his tongue out at her. He has a very long tongue. Think Gene Simmons and then some. The large lady gaped, fluttered, and quickly withdrew. I cringed. It had been exactly this sort of behaviour got Lucifer thrown out of … But now was definitely not the time to go there. I gave the shocked lady an apologetic smile and scowled at Lucifer. He leaned toward me, and in stage whisper, leered, “ Ooh, she’s into the Reverend Muchjoy, isn’t she? Doesn’t want to miss a single Word of The Lord according to -” and he snickered. Loudly. I winced. He did have a point though. Why those in charge of church affairs insist on giving license to ranting bigots like Reverend Muchjoy … well, the vagaries of human nature, never ending, are they?

“ We are in the midst -” thundered the Reverend from his pulpit whilst Lucifer sniggered and I pondered, “ in the very MIDST, I say, of sin and depravity!” His eyes were popping too. Much more popping and they might just pop right out and come rolling up the aisle.  “ Sin! Depravity!” he screamed, just in case we hadn’t heard him at the back. He leaned over his pulpit, frothing. “ We are surrounded, surrounded by the very SPAWN of SATAN himself! Hoors! Ho-mo-sex-shuls!”

Lucifer rolled his eyes, made a soft tut-tutting noise, drawing the attention of the large lady behind once more, but not for too long, lest she find herself treated to that tongue again. I’d have bet she hadn’t seen anything that length in some considerable time.

“ Dear me, can’t they change the record?” he complained lightly. “ Still that hoary old chestnut … the ‘hoors’ and the ‘homos’, blame ’em for everything.”

It does sometimes seem rather ludicrous that a world in which people are willing to watch grown adults drink their own vomit on national television in order to win a few thousand bucks, and call this entertainment, would baulk at allowing the same grown adults to do whatever and with whomever, with consent, in the privacy of their own bedrooms. But as I said, the vagaries of human nature. I frowned suddenly as I was reminded of Lucifer’s general distaste for church and religious types. “ What are you doing here anyway?” I asked.

Lucifer raised an elegantly slim hand to examine the manicured nails on the ends of his long fingers. “ Well now,” he purred, “ I’m here because someone needs a reminder that the concept of sin does indeed cover sexually harassing one’s housekeeper.” He glanced pointedly in the ranting and frothing Reverend Muchjoy’s direction.

I gaped. “ Muchjoy there? No!”

“ And to think -” Lucifer murmured, raising a beatific smile to a point just beyond my left shoulder, “ there are those would claim God told them to join the Christian militia in Montana and kill people in His name, and yet they would blame me for bringing people into the world who have great fashion sense and appreciate good music.”

I scratched at my beard. Unlike Lucifer, I do like facial hair. Lately the beard had been getting long, it badly needed a trim. My regular hairdresser, Gabriel, is on extended leave, however. Gabriel is a whiz with comb and scissors. I simply would not allow my follicles to be touched by any but Gabriel. The beard would have to await his return. To Lucifer, I said; “ They need someone to blame besides themselves for showing poor judgement.”

Lucifer cackled again. One thing about him, he has always been able to see my sense of humour where others cannot.

“ How true,” he sighed. “ People do like to have scapegoats. And the more amorphous the scapegoat, the better never to be proved wrong about its existence and forced to take responsibility for oneself.”

He’s smart, is Lucifer. Of course he is. It’s how he survives. He’s choosy too, about who he takes to his domain, but he keeps that quiet as part of a longstanding agreement. It would never do to have people find out how choosy Lucifer is, or there would be a heck of a lot more sinning going on and a lot less worrying about the consequences, and that would never do. It’d put the churches right out of business.

“ By the way, how’s that son of yours doing these days?” Lucifer inquired.

"Oh, he’s fine,” I replied.

“ Hm. He still doing that thing of his, what was it … carpentry, right?”

I nodded. Lucifer gave me an arch look. “ Bet you never thought he’d follow his stepfather into wood-carving. Kids, huh? You offer them a kingdom and still they’d rather spend their time carving wooden sailboats for the tourists. Not that I would know so much, not having kids of my own -” Lucifer smirked at me and added, “ not yet anyway.”

I decided that wasn‘t a place I wanted to go with him either.

“ And his mother -” Lucifer’s smile turned wistful at the edges, “ how is she?”

“ She’s good,” I told him.

“ You should remember me to her.”

“ Oh, I shall.”

It took nearly an hour but the Reverend Muchjoy ( for whom I had lost much respect and I suspected my patience not to be much behind ) did finally run out of varieties of sinners to berate from his pulpit. He then led the congregation in a joyless rendition of a hymn which I refuse to call singing. Singing I like. What this noisemaking lacked in joy, however, it made up for in loudness. I mouthed along with the dreary racket whilst Lucifer examined his nails some more and smirked. With the hymn-slaughtering done, the congregation rose en masse and not ungratefully, I noted. There were more than just me discreetly massaging the kinks and creases out of their posteriors. Lucifer also rose, turning to me with a grin and another of those lurid winks.

“ We should really do this again some time,” he enthused.

I raised an eyebrow. “ Next time could we make it the synagogue then?”

Lucifer chortled, nodded a kind of ‘Amen’ to that, and then he thrust his right hand out towards me. I took it in mine and shook hands with him. It would have been churlish of me to have done anything else. After all, it was a long time since we’d had that little tiff of ours …

“ Well then, God, my old chum,” Lucifer said, “ it really has been a blast seeing you again.”

“ And you, Lucifer,” I replied.