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06-09-08

12M

p13

Melody Calls

by

Shaun Dunbar

A young woman, permanently single and orphaned from a young age, finally meets a man who seems like the one she has been waiting for. Unfortunately, despite appearances he is actually Satan, and proceeds to spend his time trying to convince her that he is not the epitome of evil as has been portrayed, and that in fact it is God who may not be all he seems.

 

Sample:

He smiled again. “1 can see why you mock; it is an outlandish concept for someone to accept in this day and age. I had a much easier time being taken seriously back in the past.” He looked slightly angry, as she continued to giggle quietly.         “ Lets face it, Jesus himself could come back for his second coming and you lot would either lock him up in a mental institution, or be convinced that any miracles he performed were the result of camera trickery”.

 

“Well, can you blame us?  I do believe Jesus the man, may have genuinely existed, but I don’t believe he was the son of God, simply some kind of charismatic shaman kind of character, or a Billy Graham type evangelist. I certainly don’t believe in God, or the Devil, and I certainly don’t believe you are one or the other, so stop this stupid game Nick.”  She was getting bored of this, and wished he would let the subject drop. She just wanted to go back to how things were before; her dreams that she had found her perfect man were beginning to take a bit of a knock.

 

“I wish I could, but it is no game Melody. I am the Devil whether you like it or not, and whether you walk out right now or not, nothing is going to change that fact, so the quicker you come to terms with it the better it will be for the both of us”

 

“Okay, well thanks for a lovely meal Nick, and if you just excuse me for a second I think I’ll just go and phone the men in the white coats to come and pick you up instead of your usual taxi. I mean, come on Nick, do you realise just how crazy you are sounding right now? I must say, you had me fooled. I thought you were a normal guy, not some kind of nutter.”  She shook her head sadly. “Oh well, I suppose I should have known with my luck that it was too good to be true”.

 

“You’re still here though, aren’t you?” he smiled. “Something must be keeping you here with this crazy man. Look, I know it’s a lot to take in, maybe I’ve rushed you. Perhaps I should have left it until we knew each other better, but I thought it was best to be upfront with you as early as possible, put my cards on the table as it were”

 

“Okay then, I’ll humour you for a while” she answered. “Let’s say you are the Devil, what do you want with me, why are you wining and dining me? Surely if the Devil wanted something he could just take it by force. Why do things the nice way, the slow way, oh dark satanic demon?”

 

“Don’t mock me pathetic mortal” He said, but with a little grin on his face which suggested he wasn’t being entirely   serious. “Remember, as you say, I am the lord of the underworld, with kick-ass powers. I could turn you into a frog  or something for being cheeky”.

 

“Ooooh, I’m soo scared!” she laughed. “A frog you say, my, you really would be showing me the full extent of your powers then, oh masterful one!”

 

“You won’t be laughing when you’re being forced to swallow your fifteenth fly in a row, Kermit”, he scoffed. “Anyway, what would you rather I do, destroy Tokyo just to prove I have the power? That would be a bit much just to prove a point wouldn’t it?  Anyway, I’m not the bad guy I’m made out to be, I’ve just had a bad press from ‘the other side’, who aren’t exactly going to paint me in a good light now are they?”

 

“I suppose you are now going to tell me about how you never hurt your own, you’re good to your mum, ‘n’ do a lot of work for charity eh?” she smirked.

 

“Oh, I’m no nice guy Melody, I’ve been responsible for many bad things through the ages, I won’t deny it” he replied. “But often there have been reasons for the things I have done which have been withheld from mankind to make me look bad. God and his followers always want to paint things in black and white, good and evil, with everything HE does as being for the good of mankind, and everything I do as being pure selfish evil, when often there is more to it than that. I’m the   victim in many ways of a vicious smear campaign which has been put in place by God’s spin-doctors ever since I was kicked out of Heaven because I was wearing trainers, or not wearing a tie, or whatever pathetic reason they had because they viewed me as a threat simply because I had the audacity to have a mind of my own, something which makes God very     uncomfortable. The Holy Father only wants yes-men around him, those who will constantly tell him how great he is, and how wonderful his ideas are, even though he has rested on his laurels,  ever since his ‘creating- the- world- in- seven- days’ rush job all those years ago, and now just lazes about basking in the adulation foisted upon him by those sycophants up there surrounding him, and the clueless sheep down here who still, in dwindling numbers, fill his places of worship.”

She could see he was getting wound up as he continued to speak, a small vein throbbing in his temple.

“If I was still up there, I would be saying to him c’mon, stop lying around getting fat and talking about the good ol’ days. Ever since you created the world you’ve done nothing of note; no wonder your followers are deserting you in droves. Give them something to inspire them, to reinvigorate them, to reinvigorate yourself more to the point. Because something needs to be done, something needs to wake both you and mankind out of this torpor; I repeat, SOMETHING needs to be done. But that is the problem: it is because I had the balls to say things like this to him, things the infallible one did not want to hear, that I was thrown out of that exclusive club in the first place. God is an egotistical bully, like the big guy in the schoolyard who surrounds himself with little guys who laugh at his every utterance, and beats up those who don’t. He’s a very insecure God you know; I put it down to not knowing who his parents were, a lack of love in the home”.

 

Although Melody was now convinced Nick was slightly mad or playing some increasingly tedious joke, he was so   charismatic and charming that, despite the ridiculous nature of what he was saying, she still did not want to get up and leave. It was worse because although she could see the subject was getting to him, he was very controlled in his anger; he wasn’t ranting and raving, his eyes weren’t spinning, he wasn’t twitching uncontrollably. Instead he was pretty calm, as though discussing nothing more than maybe a bad day at the office, and seemed completely rational, despite all evidence to the contrary. She knew he must be unhinged to genuinely believe what he was saying,( either that or he was really good at keeping a straight face when pulling a wind-up) and yet, because she had grown to have feelings for him and care for him, she couldn’t quite bring herself to get up and walk out on him.

 

“But he is considered to be a loving God to those who believe” she said, continuing the conversation, despite herself.

 

He smirked. “Loving? God? That is an oxymoron, like mature student, golf highlights, or Jamiroquai classic. If a mortal father condemned his child to an eternity of misery and suffering simply for differing opinions, for questioning him, would you consider him to be a good father? A loving father? Or would you consider him to be an ogre, a brutal dictator prepared to destroy something he supposedly created through love, simply because his progeny dared to have a mind of their own? God gave you the intellect to think for yourselves, he gave you the tools to form individual beliefs and thoughts, but yet at the end of the day all he wants is for you all to follow him blindly; to become unthinking, unquestioning sheep. God gave mankind free will, but does not want you to use it; ergo, not free will at all”...