Team Lucifer: Let's All Go to Hell

Team Luficer: Let’s All Go to Hell             Elizabeth Fenley

I work for Lucifer—well, we do, an assorted group of us. Different backgrounds, unique skillsets, synergy, teamwork, and all that. You gotta give us points for embracing diversity. Even though you’re already judging what we do. That’s ok. It’s complicated, like most things in life—and death.

See, Lucifer’s a pretty lonely guy. He gets a bad reputation, by dozens of names in who knows how many religions, cultures, whatever. He was Daddy’s Golden Boy—literally—Samiel, “the Light-Giver,” with a bunch of cool siblings to hang out with, get into the mischief of whatever childhood looks like in a divine family, do all the normal “teenage” rebellion stuff, search for identity, and then get assigned a job. Except it’s kinda hard to argue (not impossible) when Daddy points at you going around in the circle of offspring in the family meeting and says, “Ok, you’re The Archangel General of the Army, you get to be The Messenger—which will have a really cool moment, wait for it--, let’s put in in charge of Fire and I’ll let you keep singing in the Seraphim Choir cuz I’m cool like that, you can be cover Challenges and the worst day of the week Tuesday because we all know Tuesdays suuuuccckkk, you can be Presence and handle the Seraphim stuff, and you get to be a super cheerful Angel of Death.” And on until everbody’s got a gig, whether they like it or not, which is probably a fifty-fifty split, I’m guessing because it’s not like I was there. 

“But what about me, Dad?”

Not one who should be heard talking shit about The Boss, but little Sammy boy shoulda probably kept his mouth shut. In his defense, how was he to know? He probably thought Daddy Dearest the best job for last, to give to his fav. Kinda didn’t work that way, as we know. 

“Right, about that…. Let’s talk alone; the rest of you, fly away. See, I need you to do the hard job. You’re not gonna like it, but I need someone I can count on, and you’re it. You get to go to this new place I created just for you. All you have to do is punish the people when they get there—according to how guilty they are; just give them what they deserve.”

“But—”

“You know better than to interrupt me.”

“Sorry, Dad.”

“I’m not asking you to recruit—people are idiots and don’t have any trouble doing stupid shit all by themselves without any tempting from you or the demons or anything. You’ll have a delivery team; they’ll sort them out when their bodies wear out, bring you the bad ones, and put them in cells. You just have to walk around and assign punishment for each of them. Your demons can do the dirty work and guard the gate for you. I’ll even give you Lilith to run your demon squad for you—we all know what a bad-ass she is; she might pop into the human world occasionally for some R&R, but don’t worry about that. Just keep it running smoothly and make sure nobody gets out. I know, pretty grim, but you can do it. Remember, you’ll always be my favorite, even though I’ll be here, and you’ll be there. I’m gonna call it Hades, or Hell, or maybe The Underworld, or Netherworld, but I’m undecided on Abaddon. Doesn’t matter—we’ll take care of getting the word out to the humans. You just stay there, keep everything nice and tidy.”

“Always?”

“Yeah, son. For Eternity. Ok, gotta go. Work to do. You and the others punch in at the timeclocks and get to work. Love you, my ‘Light-Giver’.”

A pretty bum deal, huh? He got rid of the “Light-Giver” identity after about a century or so and chose Lucifer as his favorite of all the things people call him. 

Back to Team Lucifer. Our job is one he created, recruited us for—not He, the Big Upstairs One. We weren’t on his assigned team of demons, and we don’t report to Lilith (which is fortunate because she seriously creeps me out with those razor teeth). Lucifer keeps the whole thing on the DL—the team, the job, the goal.

We break into Heaven and steal souls to take to Hell, not to be caged and tortured, but with a longer-term plan in place. Peter’s a wimpy little pussy and those “Pearly Gates” are about as secure as a picket fence. We slip in discretely, evaluate, retrieve, and transport. Simple.

It’s easy because we’re specialists. I’m a Sluagh na marbh—catchy, right? We hang around in Scotland and Ireland most of the time, stealing souls because that’s what Sluaghs do. My name’s Nymbrynne, which just rolls off the Celtic tongue. There are a dozen wraiths, but they don’t speak. Tnalusa is a Choctaw Impla Shilup—basically, a “soul eater” who’s learned to spit instead of swallow. He’s pretty calm and quiet, but when he does talk you can count on him to drop something seriously deep and profound. 

Of course, we have some Nephilim on Team Lucifer. (I think there’s a rule somewhere that it’s mandatory.) Arzryat’s a total asshole—smug, condescending, thinks only Nephilim and demons should work for Lucifer, so he doesn’t mix with us inferior creatures. Fuck him. Gandor and Golvig are twins, which I didn’t know was a Nephilim thing, so they pretty much just talk to each other but they’re decent to work with. The female Nephilim are pretty cool, “team players” more than the males; Skalltss, Durvia, Vayzen, and Kalseru are solid and reliable on a job.

Now to The Why: we pick out souls who would be useful as a kind of supernatural army—but not one for Lucifer, since he’s got demons and all of us. One for God—not Daddy God—Mommy God. He gets all the PR, of course, in the eons of patriarchal oppression, but She’s God too. (And no, she’s not Goddess like Hera or Bastet or Shiva or Heidi Klum.) Sometimes God is plural, but She rarely gets recognized even among the non-humans as God singular, female. Since Daddy assigned all the kiddos, which He needed Her to create and raise obviously, their jobs, The Archangel General runs Daddy’s Army. Mommy wants an army too, but She likes to be clever and discrete. She’s also a divergent thinker, so this was her plan; if things go sideways, She wants Lucifer and The Army From Hell (and Team Lucifer, naturally) on her side. I think She enjoys the secrecy, the ongoing Mommy and son relationship that they’ve had behind His back from the beginning. She’s my idol, I admit it.

I like to think—and my wise Choctaw buddy Tnalusa agrees—that this is how we make the world a better place. I know, working for the Devil to steal Heavenly souls for an army in case Mommy God needs to kick some ass doesn’t sound like a good thing. But think of it as an insurance plan for Balance in the Universe. Checks and Balances in the Divine Government. Gender Parity.

It’s unarguably more virtuous than politics and more ethical than lawyers. Plus it rises above the foolish human biases of race, culture, religion, gender, sexuality, social status, and silly lines drawn on maps.

Just in case you make it to Heaven one of these days for being a good little human, Team Lucifer still may steal you for Her. Don’t get too used to the harp music and shit. We may be coming for you.

Until then.