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Alastor sat in the small library space of the hotel, as he often did. His eyes trimmed the page, from side to side, quickly taking in information. Lucifer had thought he could steal a quick glance without the other looking up.
He was wrong, he made eye contact with Alastor. He hadn’t meant to do that. He felt himself let out a breath he had been holding in.
“Well good afternoon your highness! I was just about to come by your quarters and ensure you hadn’t passed away in your sleep! It’s almost two, and I surely knew you weren’t the type to sleep an entire day of work away!” Alastor lowered his book to reveal his all too regular smile.
Lucifer, often, was unable to sleep the night before. He slept from ten to one. He had at least decided to change before leaving his room, Alastor always made comments about being presentable in the hotel. He wore a grey sweater and black slacks.
Lucifer rolled his eyes. “I don’t work until four and you know that. I’m helping the cat in the hat behind the bar so he can spend some time with the spider. Again, you know that.”
Alastor closed his book, revealing the cover and tilted his head to the left, still smiling at Lucifer.
“My apologies, now that you mention it I do recall this arrangement. Again, my apologies. I was a bit lost in thought when reading.”
Lucifer glanced to the book Alastor had, he felt his stomach drop. He instinctively took a few steps forward and squinted.
“The Bible?” He couldn’t help but look confused. “We’re in Hell.”
“Hah! Why, yes we are! It is still a literary classic. Now I have had a burning question to ask you, and since you stopped by while I was reading I may as well ask you now. Tell me, how does your story differ from the biblical canon?”
Lucifer wanted to retract each step he had taken further into the library.
“…what?”
“I just reread Genesis. I heard the canon perspective of what happened, but now I’d like to hear yours. How would you explain what happened in The Garden of Eden?”
“Is this a trick question? Or some kind of fucked up joke?” Alastor shook his head.
“No. Plain and simple. I am curious how you would argue the bias of the Bible, or do you argue it’s divine perfection in all the details?”
“No sinner has asked me this before…”
“Well I am just happy to be your first, sire!” The radio demon said with mock enthusiasm.
Lucifer sat down a few foot from Alastor with his arms crossed across his chest.
“When I was an angel I misunderstood what the Fruit of Knowledge was and I made a huge mistake because of this misunderstanding.”
Alastor mirrored Lucifer, crossing his legs and resting a hand on his knee.
“I thought that God placed the tree in the garden as a trick for Adam and Lillith, well, Adam and Eve, but Lillith would have been a victim had she stayed with Adam.”
He watched Alastor’s eyes, waiting for a glimpse of disinterest in order to give himself permission to stop speaking, but he didn’t see it.
“God told us angels that the tree contained the Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Humans did not have a clear concept of these two things in the beginning. We did. He stated the humans would ‘surely die’ if they ate the fruit. So I asked God if he had poisoned the fruit? He told us he didn’t. Yet, God also explained that Adam and Eve had to choose Him, he couldn’t coerce them into belief and wouldn’t coerce humans to join Him.”
He still carefully watched Alastor. Who seemed to listen.
“I thought that giving the humans the fruit would do one of two things.
One, Prove that God lied to the Angels, because the fruit DID kill Adam and Eve once they ate it. It was a poisoned fruit created to make examples out of toys who hadn’t really known any better.
Or two, Prove that humans HAD to know what Good and Evil were in order to be faithful, how can someone choose good without knowing what good is? I thought humans were incapable of choosing faith without this?
”I know all of Hell declares me as a ‘thinker’ a ‘dreamer’, but it wasn’t that. I deliberately went against God’s design with the intention of proving the flaw in the design.
I thought once the fault was recognized it could be corrected, I thought He would understand the point I was making and give humans a basic understanding of Good and Evil. THEN, they would have free will. He could remove the tree.”
“But I was wrong. There was a 3rd option. Giving Adam and Eve the Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil armed them with the ABILITY to be Good and Evil. Before that, they didn’t know true wickedness. They were capable of being unkind, sure! But they were not EVIL. Once sin entered and corrupted the world, God banished me here for destroying his design, instead of protecting Adam and Eve from my mistake. Mind you he still chose to hide the garden, which makes me feel like the fruit was a trap to start with.”
They were both quiet.
Alastor’s eyebrows lowered, and he watched his hands for a moment, his smile’s edges softened.
“My, that truly is a dreadful misunderstanding…you two never cease to entertain me. You hope for the best in others.”
Alastor leaned back in his seat, looking back up at Lucifer with his almost glowing eyes. “If I had been in your place I would have known God wouldn’t appreciate being alerted to the flaw in His design. But you two are… naive.”
Lucifer didn’t say anything, he had relived these exact thoughts endlessly for over two thousand years.
“However, may I point out that you did not place the fruit in the garden? You did not teach humankind how to be wicked and cruel? They may have chosen to eat the fruit without your intervention at all!” His voice was still somewhat cheery and whirring with static.
Lucifer shrugged. The guilt of thousands of years doesn’t dissolve after a single sentence.
Alastor watched Lucifer, studying him with something dangerously close to understanding.
“So, dear Morningstar… I don’t think you damned them by your own trickery. You damned them by giving them free will, which God claimed humans already had.”
“And if that was unforgivable…well.”
He raised his hands to shrug.
“It says more about Heaven’s fear of free will than it does about your sin. Nonetheless I… pity your punishment.”
Lucifer chortled, “Yeah…me too. I never meant to hurt Eve, or Adam. I never meant to hurt anyone, and yet every single sinner and winner for thousands of years continue to be punished for my mistake. I lose sleep over this, Alastor. I wish I would die here in Hell and finally be granted some form of rest, but no Sinner had hated me enough to make my dreams come true.”
Too heavy, Alastor whirls his voice back up to be jovial.
“Goodness, pal! Losing sleep every night for all of eternity? You are devoted! You and I are different in this way. I cause pain for fun, and only lose sleep when I am bored. Every scream is like a kiss goodnight for me. But for you? Every dream is marked with the screams of people you never knew, the sick, the young, the evil, the cruel, lions, and tigers and bears! Oh my!” Alastor laughed maniacally.
Lucifer didn’t laugh. At first, he didn’t move at all.
Then his breath caught in his throat, it was humiliating. It was angelic, it reminded Alastor of a night when he was alive. He had been left the street after being beaten as a young man. He had had the same cry as Lucifer.
Lucifer’s hands came up to his mouth, to stop the sound. His shoulders trembled once. To prevent from being seen, Lucifer used his left hand to cover his eyes and his right hand to cover his mouth.
“I can still hear humans before they die. When they pray and ask for the pain to stop, when they ask to see family again, when they ask for the person who is hurting them to stop! I am still an angel, I still hear these things.”
A tear slipped free, burning as it traced down his cheek. He didn’t wipe it away. Alastor watched, for once he wasn’t hungry to watch suffering. Lucifer uncovered his face and wiped his hands off on his slacks. He cleared his throat.
“They didn’t know sickness and cruelty before me. It’s very frustrating.”
“There’s a verse,” he said before clearing his throat a second time. “I think I helped inspire it, ‘For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.’”
“I thought knowledge would free them, I thought understanding good and evil would make them choose good. But... that was not the case.”
He bowed his head into his hands again. A final tear rolled down his cheek.
“So when you laugh, whether it’s at this or laugh at me” he said softly, almost pleading, “you laugh because those screams don’t mean anything to you.”
He looked up at Alastor. His eyes were red, shining, ruined by time and tears.
“But to me? They mean everything. I wish I could help all of them. How do you help thousands? How do you apologize to an entire species?
“And my sweet daughter, my sweet Charlie… she is trapped here because of that misunderstanding. She is kind, maybe a little overzealous, but she is the best Hell has to offer. She has nightmares of the voices of those on earth and has no idea that they’re real.”
His voice breaks, and he groans to clear his throat again, to maybe finally clear the lump that was forming there. “I can’t believe I’m telling you all this. Of all people in Hell, you?” Lucifer chuckled.
Alastor did not laugh this time.
Then, painfully soft, Alastor spoke. Finally the smile was gone.
“‘And the Lord God said… Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing both good and evil.’”
Lucifer raised his eyebrows.
Alastor continued, “‘And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.’”
“You know that verse?” he said hoarsely. “Were you-?”
“Goodness no!” He giggled unfittingly, “My mother was, so I was raised around it.,” Alastor replied pleasantly. “I read Genesis many times in life and a few more in death.”
Lucifer stared at him, “I don’t understand?” he whispered. “Why would you still have it memorized and still read it?”
Alastor’s smile returned in full.
“Hmm, maybe for nostalgia? Many humans spend their lives wondering whether God, Heaven, or Hell are real,” he said lightly. “Whether their sins matter. Whether anyone was actually listening?
“But I never wondered. So if it makes you feel any lighter, I am one less soul you should feel responsible for.” His voice crackled with static.
“I always knew what I was doing was wrong,” Alastor went on with a little cheer “I knew there was a God. I knew there was a Hell. I knew exactly where the path I was walking ended. I walked it anyways, leaving a trail of blood behind me! “
He shrugged.
“I was happy to put on a good show the those listening.”
Lucifer’s hands clenched in the fabric of his sleeves.
“I never wanted someone like you be possible.”Lucifer whispered, terrified and brokenhearted for the man across from him.
Alastor first leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes bright. He then stood up from the table, taking a few steps away from the reeding nook, sensing Lucifer’s fear.
“And there’s the sweet tragedy in it all, dear Morningstar.”
He glanced back at Lucifer.
“I gave myself fully to evil,” Alastor finished. “And Heaven was never confused about what to do with me? Strange isn’t it?”
The radio crackled, zappy and clear once more. Almost like this conversation hadn’t happened.
“You sinned out of love and it got you here.”
“I sinned without remorse, and yet I still get to kill as I please, I own sinner’s souls, I walk freely. While you couldn’t even defend yourself from a sinner if you had to. Peculiar how that works?”
Lucifer seemed exhausted. His eyes were haunting to Alastor, taking him back to earth in ways he didn’t want to be. His mother used to look at him with the same eyes, worried about her baby’s soul.
Alastor turned away and started down the hall.
“Go back to bed or spend some time with your daughter. I’ll take over at the bar tonight… I’m sorry to have troubled you with my questions.”