I Think I Met Satan

I could not fall asleep last night, my mind just kept racing with thoughts, and they all seemed to be pointing to one conclusion. I think I have met Satan last night. I know it sounds farfetched and somewhat unrealistic but look at what I have to say and then decide whether I am spewing bullshit or not. You see, last night after work I went down to the beach and got myself a beer. I was sitting on a rock by the sea and enjoyed the lovely scenery. It was a quiet dark evening but it was great; sometimes I just like being alone like that.

Sometime I made myself comfortable on the rock I was sitting atop of, I made it so that the crashing sounds wave made whenever they hit the beach were the only thing I was paying attention to, my line of thought, or lack of one thereof, was broken by the somewhat deep, raspy voice of a man. The man, whose voice appeared to be that of a person plagued by something, asked me if it is okay if he sits by me. I could not say no, I mean, there were many rocks he could have sat on, and they are part of nature, so I told him its fine.

The man set on a rock next to one I was sitting atop of, I took a sip of my beer, turned to him and said, “You sound like something’s bothering you, we can talk if you don’t mind it”. I know it is odd to say that to a person you have just met but it is not as if I had anything better to do and he did seem to come there to ease his mind off something.  The man whose face had the passage of time and the effects of prolonged stress written all over it turned to me, his dark brown showed no emotion at all, and his spiky light brown hair was moving gently in the wind, he smiled and said,

“Sure, but I have a question for you, why do humans hate God so badly these days?”

I was taken aback by the man’s question, up until this point I have met a philosopher in my life so I had no idea if this was one or if it was just a man projecting his problems onto the divine. I was visibly confused by the question, but I did not want to make the situation any more awkward than it was already, so I have tried to gather up a reasonable answer to try to satisfy this strange man. So I ended up saying, “As a none believer I guess it’s because God is always portrayed as the ultimate good-doer, while there is so much obvious bad in this world”, I uttered.

The man ran his hand across his chin and chuckled a bit before saying, “What an anthropocentric way of thinking, I guess you are right. However, too bad it is not the right way to look at the subject at hand."

I began feeling confused again and asked in response, "What do you mean it's not the right way? The existence of God is not even proven; this means we can speak of him however we like, as long as nothing is factual."

A wide smile spread across the man's face as he formed his response to my words, "God, and all other Gods are real, they are however not exactly the way religions portray them, you know what the Deism is right? Well that's how it is in actuality when it comes to our god, Jehovah Sabbeoth"

I could not believe the words that came out of this man's mouth, at that moment my mind had replaced all of my rationality with emotionality and I exploded at the man, raising my voice a bit, "Prove it!"

"OK", he said, "You were born on the 26th of October 1994."

My heart sank to my ankles, how could he have known this? How did he know my exact birthday, I mean I do have social networks and some or my personal information is out there, but I do not know this person. I thought he might be a stalker or something, but in order to be sure - I needed to see what else he knew about me, and so I kept trying to keep an unimpressed look.

He kept on going, "Your first serious relationship was with a girl named Alyona, and she was the first green eyed blonde girl you've ever met."

I could not keep up with the fake look on my face, he knew too much, somehow. I jumped onto my feet and yelled out, "Who the fuck are you and how do you know this?" Mind you, I did date this girl, when I was 13, before all the Facebooks and before any legal papers concerned me.

"Well you wanted proof of Jehovah's existence, I gave it to you, if it wasn't for what he gave me personally, I wouldn't be able to know all of this.", he responded at my outburst.

I did not believe a word he said at this point and yelled out again, "Bullshit! You have probably gotten all of this stuff out of someone to get to me! I'm calling the cops now, you're done!" I screamed at the man as I whip out my phone and begin to dial.

"Oh well then, I'll just tell you something you told pretty much nobody, about yourself, at the age of four -before you've immigrated here, a teen took you to an abandoned building and performed fellatio on you and asked the same in return to be done to him, however it did not really wo..."

I dropped both my phone and my bear on the ground and he stopped talking, I do not know how he knew about this, no one knew about this... I kept this a secret, I guess I was trying to repress that, he could not have known this. I felt chills running down my spine and my whole body going stiff.

The man turned his head to the ocean and said, "Sit down, boy, I'll explain everything."

I just set down on the rock again, I did not know what else to do, him knowing this was impossible, I did not want to find out what other impossible things he knew or could do. I was scared shitless of this man at that point, I still am.

He began speaking again, not breaking his stare from the ocean, "God's a living being, albeit not a biological one, he is living regardless, and he created this universe, but not in the usual sense - he simply jumpstarted the events that ended up leading to the Big Bang. He never really intervened in this reality. He did however pop up on this and some other planets from time to time, during one such time he met Abraham the Canaanite and told him that if he had wished people to remember him for all eternity, he would have to revolutionize his way of thinking and acting. The sad part is that we are still seeing the signs of this revolutionized thinking – the Abrahamic religions.

"Jehovah was never into being worshipped, he didn't even know about such practices for the most part. The thing is, he didn't see humanity as any more than all of his other quote on quote projects and trust me there where many. That is something you, humans, tend to forget, omniscient beings need to be constantly busy with their minds - otherwise, they go insane. That would make sense of what the Abrahamic religions say about him, that he may be good, but that he does evil things for the sake of humanity. Funny thing though, they wouldn't know that he does those evil things out of a broken psyche rather than some divine plan or supreme moral compass, if that was the case.

"This brings us to the next point, even if Jehovah was all about excessive care for humanity; he still can't really illiminate all evils from this world, simply because he's busy. Before you ask me about the omnipotence thing, its relative and needs his attention even if it wasn't."

It all began to make sense to me, it did sound far more realistic to have an extremely powerful being that started our universe and never gave too many fucks than what religions have been trying to tell us for the past few millennia. It is stupid to believe that an all-powerful being would care so much about a single species of primates. I took a deep breath and dared myself to ask the man the following question, "So how do you fit into all of this?"

The man looked back at me with his expressionless face once again and said, "Long story short, I'm one of his sons, you call us Angels. I never quite got the idea of Jehovah's children being his messengers. It is just another stupid human assumption. Anyway, before you ask more questions, know this I am older than this universe, I used to travel here a lot and I was the one who found out about the evolution of the Homo sapiens, your species.

"When I first found you I was intrigued by your intelligence, finely an earthly species that can communicate with me, I wanted Jehovah to help you advance and prosper, and he rejected my requests claiming it would disrupt the natural order, amusingly enough creating new universes for him did not disrupt any natural orders. Being the obedient child I was back then, I listened, and did nothing for your kind until around sixty thousand years ago your population dropped drastically."

"The Toba eruption?" I questioned him

"That is the common belief, but no, the migrations of your species out of Africa weren't so successful at first, so the numbers plummeted. I was convinced that your kind might die out so I made the trip to this little lovely rock and helped your ancestors figure out what they should be doing in order to ensure the survival of their species. Jehovah found out and did not like my work, even though it helped your kind a lot, he could not care less, I had disrupted his natural order and an intense argument ensued. Keep in mind, we're all informational beings and he's more powerful than me, so no real physicality was involved."

I began to piece up the information, I thought I knew who this man was and I did not like the idea of him being who I thought he was. I just sat there and waited for him to either prove me right or disprove my probably insane thoughts.

"At the end of our little argument, he had asked one of my siblings to throw me out of our home dimension, what you call Heaven, and while the obidient little fuck that my brother is tried to do as he was commanded" I could feel the man tense up as he spoke, it was the first time I had noticed him get emotionally invested in his words and it did freak me out a bit. I remained silent and he continued speaking, "It did not work out well as I almost ended up taking my sibling out with me. Jehovah ended up doing the job himself, he threw me out of the house and into a cage inside this lovely little rock we're currently sitting on. You know one thing he could never do is bring an end to my existence, neither physically nor emotionally, and yes, he has emotions," he continued.

My heart sank to my ankles again and I felt sheer fear creep up my body, slowly, painfully, I even began to feel physically colder. I swallowed up my saliva and slowly formed the following question, "Are you the Devil?"

"Bingo!" he called out, raising an arm in the air, "that's one of my names here on Earth, Along with Satan, The Accuser, Lucifer, The Beast and so on, back in Heaven we didn't really have any, which means having a bunch of them here makes it all the better." he added.

"S... s... s...o... wha... t... do you wan...t...t...t with m...e...e...e" I stuttered.

"I don't know who, or how, or why, but all the myths about me, aside from the falling and the Immortality, are false, I think Enoch who was the first human to find about us on his own, is somewhat responsible for this. All I want from you is your eternal soul of course!" The man answered.

My body froze and my eyes widened in utter terror, this person, weather he is the Devil or not, was mad enough to scare me to death at that point, he noticed my fear and began laughing. His laughter, surprisingly, did not sound evil or even strange at all. Maybe he's just good at hiding his intent, I am still not sure.

He stopped laughing and said, "I'm just kidding, souls don't exist, so you've nothing to worry about, nor does divine judgment or anything of the sort since Heaven is simply my home dimension and the only humans to end up there are Enoch and the one you call Gautama Buddha, for their discoveries regarding higher nature and advanced physics, such as our existence. Jehovah was oddly enthusiastic about having them in Heaven apparently, and Hell, well it is my cage, which by the way broke during an earthquake a few thousand years ago. Do you have any questions for me though? Bear in mind I can't see the future or read the minds of dead beings..."

For some reason this man that claims to be the Devil made me feel a lot easier with the things he said then, I sighed, placed my hand on my face and wonder what could I possible ask without risking to know something I'd regret knowing later. It took me a few moments to think of something, but then it hit me, the ultimate question, and so I placed my hand on my thigh and managed to collect every bit of confidence I had in me into a single sentence.

"What is the actual divine plan, then?" I asked, I was hoping for some logical answer, perhaps something about discoveries or creation or even maybe something artistic, I did however get something that will most likely haunt me until the end of my days.

The man chuckled, "If you have a sense of humor, you're going to love this one." He continued, "The real divine plan was like that of all living beings' plans - find the most pleasure, avoid the most suffering, but the key word is was."

Dumbfounded, I asked, "Was?"

"Yes, was." he turned his face once more to the ocean and continued, "You see in Jehovah's case, and probably all other beings on his intellectual level is finding ways to not go insane, a god's suffering is insanity. So at a certain point he became obsessed with death itself and wanted to find out how it is to die."

I was confused once more and I was apparently showing on my face.

"This mythos about a child of a virgin woman, who is the son of the god and the god himself, sounds familiar?" he asked

"Yeah... Jesus Christ, the reason behind Christianity", I replied.

"Well, here comes the funny part, Jehovah made himself mortal, as this Jesus man and got himself killed... I tried to convince him it was a bad idea, but our creator was always a stubborn one! That's where the stories about me trying to tempt the son of the god who is also the god himself away from the righteous ways he had devised himself."

My eyes widened with complete and utter shock, I did not know what to say, I was sure at this point I am talking to a nut job, why on earth, would God try to kill himself? it is just too illogical to be true. The shock wore off quickly and a sense of alertness replaced it, I was actually somewhat fearful for my safety at this point, due to me believing this man was insane beyond hope.

He kept on going, "Too bad there's nothing that can escape the cold embrace of death, not even a god..." Upon noticing my unchanging shocked look, the man got up of the rock he was sitting on and proceeded to walk away saying, as far as I managed to hear, "Well I guess I should go now, I feel like if I give you any more information, you might end up in a bad place. It was lovely, human, So long!"

Once I was sure he is far away from me I jolted back up, picked up my phone, which was still lying on the sand, surprisingly there were two missed calls when I looked at the screen of the phone, and I do not remember putting it on silent mode. The thing that made me change my mind about this guy however, was a layer of ice I had noticed when I was passing by the rock he was sitting on... upon seeing it, I ran, I ran until I reached my house, twenty minutes in land.

I think I met Satan last night, and it is really scary knowing we are living in a Godless world, with him roaming it free.