I was on my FaceBook page one day when I saw it. I’ll admit, I’m on the Internet more than 7 hours a day. Often exceeding that on the weekends. You could call me a hermit, but really, I just don’t have anything else to do. I don’t really have any friends at school, unless you count the kids who are forced to talk to me, like my lab partner.
I wouldn’t count them. My FB feed isn’t filled with selfies and photos of people. I mean, yeah, I’ve got my mom and dad, uncles and aunts, and cousins, but really, it’s filled with things I like. I follow a couple of musicians (Avril Lavigne is perfect, honest), and a ton of fandom-related things. I’ve got Harry Potter (I’m a Ravenclaw- that’s always been my favorite house), Lord of the Rings roleplay (I play as an elf, hobbits are just not my style), Doctor Who, Avengers (who can resist buff guys and girls doing superhero things?), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and so so so many more.
I come from a Christian family, and you might call them a bit obsessive. Crosses adorn our walls, and pictures of Jesus are about the only artwork we have. We even have a fake Ten Commandments as the centerpiece of our family room. All in all, they’re great people. Accepting, kind, loyal, wise, like Christians should be. None of that “Greater than thou” crap. So I wasn’t at all surprised when I saw the post from Aunt Jude, indicating that if I loved God, I should like and share. If I scrolled past, I loved Satan. Things like that were always popping up from my family, and I was tired.
So I scrolled. I didn’t click, like, share, or anything else. It’s not like they’d know I’d seen it, and anyway, who cared about those things? They were stupid. Nothing ever, ever happened. I’d been going through a crisis of sorts, too, so maybe that attributed to it. I was questioning if there even was a God, and if He was all He was cracked up to be. Not that I was going for Satan, mind you. It was just… I was unsure.
A few hours later, after I’d eaten dinner with my family, I was still up on my iPad. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Then, a call came in from FaceTime audio. There wasn’t a number for it. Just a few dots. I thought that was odd, but whatever. I answered it, and for a second there wasn’t any noise.
“Hello?” His voice was gravelly and low, almost like his words were made out of rocks.
“Hi, um. Who is this? You don’t have a number, sorry.”
“I… I saw your post. Or, well, didn’t see it, actually. Today. On FaceBook. That was really sweet of you.”
I was a little creeped out. This guy, whoever he was, was acting very odd.
“Who is this? What post?” I asked.
He sighed. “The one about God and Satan. The one you scrolled past.” I could hear something in the background behind him, crackling and sizzling.
“How did you… Are you in my room!? Nevermind, that’s stupid of me. Seriously, though, who are you?” I was getting irritated. He wasn’t answering any of my questions, and I was actually tired for once.
“My name is Lucifer. I wanted to call to say ‘thank you’. No one’s ever said that about me before. Not like you have.” He wasn’t laughing. But that was just stupid.
“Haha. Thought you’d pull one over the Christian girl, huh? Nice joke, buddy. Who are you?” I was getting seriously angry.
“I’m not lying, Felicity. That’s my name.” He mumbled something I couldn’t make out, then turned on his video. I almost gasped. The man was beautiful. No, that doesn’t even come close to describing him. He was ethereal. His hair and eyes were as black as the darkest part of space, his skin like molten copper. I think I just stared at him for hours, because it feels like that. He just stared back at me.
Eventually I snapped out of it. “Oh my god.” He smiled at me, and I would’ve froze again if I hadn’t looked away. “I am so freaked out right now.”
“I know. I can feel it.”
And so we talked a long while into the night, blah blah blah. He told me the story of how he was cast down, and why, and it’s unfair. Banished just because he refused to love humans more than his father. I told him that I thought it was just horrible, and that I understood because my dad could have quite a temper as well. That’s actually how I ended up having tea with him every Sunday. We’ve become quite good friends, and I’ve introduced him to my parents, though they know him as John. They love him, just like everybody else. He’s kind, charming, sensitive, sweet. So what if there’s the whole living-in-hell thing?
I’ve always liked warm weather.
