The B-SAC

"Mammon!" Satans voice thundered through the soot coated halls. A stone wall crumbled and collapsed somewhere. The cries of some unlucky souls were cut off when they were crushed. One Mississppi, two Mississippi, the cries flared up again. Death has no persistance in hell. A droning sound emerged from the back of the halls, visceral like pulsing blood in a choking man's ears. Satan squinted. A shadow formed in the corner of the atrium, visible only because it was even darker than the darkness surrounding it.

Arches and pillars cracked with every blast of the creatures's wings.

Satan rolled his eyes. So dramatic. "Could you be bothered to turn up the haste a little bit." Seconds later the giant creature that was Mammon landed in front of the the Ruler of Demons, God of this Age, and he bowed and spoke: "Hail Satan. You demanded my presence for fulfilling your evil deeds. You call, I shall follow. How can I be of servi..." "Do you know which day it is?" Mammon looked up in surprise. "Indeed. It's Friday, Satan. I know this because, uhm, it is my day off. The one day I look forward to every week." 

"Ah, touching. Friday, huh. Any special Friday? Beige Friday maybe? Or green Friday? Red? Blue? IS IT BLUE FRIDAY, MAMMON?" Satan could be a little aggressive sometimes, even for hell standards. Mammon straightened and thereby punched a hole in the high ceiling with his horns. His attempt to remain graceful was sabotaged by stones raining in his face. He rubbed his eye. "Well, Satan, the only coloured Friday I know is Black Friday, so ..."

Satan did a slow clap. "And black Friday it is! Marvellous! And can you guess why I'm absolutely furious about this fact right now?" Because you are the lord of wrath and have very poor anger management, Mammon thought. What he said was: "Since it's black Friday it might have something to do with shopping?"

Satan took a deep breath. "Listen, Mammon. Do you, by any chance, recall our last congregation. The B-SAC one." He did. Whatever B-SAC was, he remembered the congregation. Admittedly, he had been a little occupied with counting and recounting the souls he had earned the other day. A plane full of businessmen had crashed and provided him, the Prince of Greed, with 189 fresh insatiable souls. In hindsight, slowly, vaguely, he remembered the small flipchart next to Satan. The graph that was displayed had looked like a very steep cliff. Downward trend, not upward. He remembered Satan ranting about heavy declines in soul acquisitions, people not selling their souls anymore, but rather leggings and essential oils and coaching programs in pyramid schemes and so on. "Humans dying and going to hell are good and nice, but our strongest ressources are souls that offer themselves deliberately. Or, well, are offered. But since human sacrifice has become scarce in modern times, we are facing a lack of sources." Satan had tapped his pencil against the lowest point of the chart-cliff. "Which means we have to adjust. Go with the Zeitgeist. There are 7 deadly sins, and all of them are still trending. We just have to exploit each of them at the right time. Well, what is the right time, you ask? There is a time for each of them in the human calendar, I tell you. For each of you, actually. I see 7 Princes of Decay and Terror, which means 7 magnificent opportunities. So, due to upcoming events, let's start with the amazing sin of Greed, and therefore with you, dear Mammon. You know that greed is the impetus of the human race. 45 % of all the souls come here because they could never get enough in life." 

A meaningful pause had set in. Here, Mammon remembered, he had leaned back and looked around, nodding in search of approval. Nobody reacted, all eyes were glassy again. So he fell back into his calculations, slightly disappointed. That's when his memory got too foggy. That had probably also been the part where his role for Black Friday was coming into play.

Satan was still staring at him. Mammon cleared his throat. "So, what I remember is that greed ist the greatest sin of our time and, uh, Black Friday is coming? Has come, actually. Since it's today." Now Satan was massaging his temples. "Oh!" Mammon exclaimed. "And, uh, it is a great opportunity for people who would sell their souls for stuff?" 

Satan let his fingers sink from his tortured temples. "This is absolutely right. This is exactly what I was hoping to achieve today. What I told all of you months in advance. And especially you, Mammon. Especially you, the Lord of Greed. You were my speck of hope for the Black Friday Soul Acquisition Campaign. The B-SAC should have been your baby." Now he sounded disappointed, his gaze shifted into the distance, whereas Mammon felt weirdly guilty. Feelings that didn't really work in hell. 

However, B-SAC rang a bell somewhere. Yes! Mammons face lightened up. "Belphegor!" he yelped. Satan shot him a glance. "Belphegor?" "Yes! I had trouble listening, because honestly, who can listen to the Prince of Sloth for more than 20 seconds, but I'm quite sure I heard him saying something about having a great idea for B-SAC. I just guess I, uhm, didn't know what he meant with that back then ..." "Wait, stop. The Prince of Sloth has taken charge of the Black Friday Soul Acquisition Campaign? Alone?" "Well, everyone else was busy, there was a lot to do, the renovations around here ..." Another pillar broke down when Satans fist landed in it. Mammon eyed it grievously. Satan stared at him, his fist still in midair. "What did Belphegor do?"

In this moment, his phone rang. Satan fumbled it out of one of his many tunic layers and stared at the display. Mammon stared, too. "This is a New York number.", he said. Satan nodded. He pressed the small green button and cleared his throat. "Uhm yes? It's Satan?" The connection was quite miserable due to the fact that between the phone and the next cell tower lay roughly 15 kilometers of stone, lava and earth metals. The voice at the other end sounded young, bright and surprised. "Oh my god. I ...n't expect this to ... ... real number. You sound exac.. ... I imagined. I'm a hu... fan!" "Okay?" Satan got a little self conscious. "Who are you? How did you get my number?" A surprised pause. "Well, it ... very easy to find. Behi ... ... supermarket checkout at Target, 255 Greenw... Street, New York. At ... ...ost and found board." 

Satans eyes started to burn. Literally. He let the phone sink and turned to Mammon. "Belphegor put my number on a lost and found board at Target? The private contact of the Ruler of Hell was published in a supermarket?" Mammon shrugged. "Maybe it's not the worst idea. Being close to your target group. Ehehehehe. Target group." Satan was not amused. He took the phone again, straightened and lowered his voice by an octave. "Okay, that's good. I, er, wanted you to find it there. So. Are you planning to sell your soul to the Almighty Demon, Destroyer of Worlds, Father of Darkness?" The voice laughed, delighted. "Absolutely! The Black Fri... offer you made is ...prisingly generous. 2 wishes inst... ... one for only half an eterni... in hell? I'm in!" Satan and Mammon shared glances. "Uh, I know. I am very generous actually. That's the secret of my popularity.", Satan growled and looked very satisfied. "Well then. I will send you a contract you shall sign with your own blood. No other blood, that doesn't work and usually brings some unsavory side effects." The voice was pure excitement now. "Understood! How long will it ... oh, it's here. And it's burning my tablecloth, one sec... Okay. Just let me ... the knife real quick. Ooookay, ouch, tha... should do, quite a lot of bloo... actually, well, the tableclo... is busted anyway, aaaand done. How do I send it back ... you? Ah, it's gone."

Satan and Mammon listened silently. Seconds later, a stack of roughly 29 pages appeared in a whirl of flames in the air. Satan mumbled "It's here, let me call you back in a minute" into the phone and hung up. Mammon took the first page and scanned it over. "Arnold Munzinger, 28, born in Cologne, Germany, moved to New York 3 years ago to study theology after quitting his job as a teacher due to several "mean pupils incidents". No further explanation. Wishes for a pair of Yeezy Desert Boots, ew, and the Apocalypse. Now. Epicentre Cologne." Mammon glanced at Satan. "Well, it is a little too early for the Apocalypse, isn't it?" Satan nodded. "Would tear us all to bits and pieces", he grumbled. "We'd need at least six times the number of evil souls and demons we currently have to even remotely consider winning the war against Heaven. Luckily, this is all ruled out in the Terms and Conditions. Apocalypse, Peace on Earth, Coming of the Messiah ... that's why this contract is so damn extensive. People have a lot of stupid ideas. Joke's on Arnold, then. Everything that's precluded in the T and C's is automatically eliminated from the contract. So, only an ugly pair of boots for the poor guy." He nodded approvingly. "I'd never thought Belphegor could come up with something like that. Half an eternity, ha. I'm surprised he thought of the small print." 

And with that, he pressed his hoof next to Arnolds insignia. The page smoldered and blazed, shot up in the air, turned to ashes, formed a pentagram for two seconds and at last found its way to the wall behind Satan, where it settled in dark red letters. Satan nodded, pleased. "Back to work, then. Who knows, maybe the Target advertisement wasn't a bad idea at all. Are there more of those? We might branch out a little, since Christmas is just around the corner. Oh wait, let me call Arnold real quick and congratulate him on the new shame on his feet ..."

But when Satan grabbed for his phone, the floor suddenly jerked, making him stumble. Actually, the whole hall was trembling now, shaking, stones grinding, arches crashing. "My oh my, the renovations were just finished!" Mammon moaned. "What is that?" An opening formed in the highest part of the ceiling. The cracking got louder and simultaneuosly moved up. "Hell is splitting up!" Satan screeched. "Is that ..." And he ran to the part of the contract that was still hanging in the air, patiently, "Terms and Conditions" written on top in curved letter, snatched the first page and read: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, ..."