Where were we?

  …Oh, yes.

  He lulled the line to sleep with a hypnotic chant, ripped the intern's belt loop with how harshly he snatched his keycard away, skipped the barrier like a common criminal… and landed right in the clutches of a child.

  Not the bow-wielding, winged kind that the Romans obsessed over.

  Not the baby-powder scented, goo-goo-ga-ga type, either.

  But one of the pantsuit-wearing, fingernail-filing, shrewd-eyed kind that only exists in scenarios like these, in which main characters are slated for an early humbling.

  As soon as he cleared the last spiral of the Staircase, the child halted her filing and snapped her fingers, materializing a clipboard bigger than her body. She pulled her thick-rimmed glasses down from her hair and gave him a pointed look over the board.

  “Name.”

  And.

  He hesitated.

  Because sure, in the back of his mind, he knew he’d have to identify himself at some point. He’d have to put on his big boy pants and say it with his chest: “My name is Lucifer.” But somehow, under the gaze of the two-second-old goody-two-shoes sat before him, those four words felt like a ton of bricks sitting on the tip of his tongue.

  He ‘um’-ed and ‘erm’-ed for a moment—a moment that carried on long enough for the clipboard to dip, just enough to reveal an eyebrow cocked like a warning shot.

  “Apologies, miss, my name is, uh,” he murmured, voice trailing so far off that the last three syllables, the only important ones, were inaudible.

  “What was that?”

  He cleared his throat and said it again. Louder this time, but still lost beneath the drone of that incessant snoring.

  There was a beat of silence and then—

  Click.

  The girl shut her pen and shifted the clipboard out of her line of sight. Lucifer took the chance to read her name tag: 61st Head Assistant Manager’s Acting Administrator-In-Training-By-Proxy.

  “Listen closely, kid,” she started, voice loaded with the kind of sophisticated condescension only the 61st Head Assistant Manager’s Acting Administrator-In-Training-By-Proxy could possess.

  “I don’t care if you’re the brother, mother, sister, or lover of whoever’s working the gate tonight. Frankly, I wouldn’t even care if you were the second coming of Christ. No one gets past this step,” she paused to stamp her foot for emphasis, drawing Lucifer’s attention to the words ‘Check-In Point’ etched in the marble. “Without checking in. Especially not a first-timer.”

  He raised his hand to object. After all, he was the first-fallen, not some random first-timer. But the blank stare he got in reply had him slowly returning his hand to his side.

  The girl moved her mouth to make another comment, but paused, giving him a once-over instead. Her eyes lingered on the lamp oil stain that had stuck with him since The Dark Ages. Then they traveled up to the swordfish-bill-shaped holes he’d earned when those no-good thugs who ran the River Styx made him “sleep with the fishies” after a little misunderstanding.

  Her nose wrinkled in disgust.

  In spite of himself, he straightened out his tunic, taking a sneaky sniff at his neon-yellow pit stains while he was at it. To his credit, they weren’t exactly rancid. Not fresh, per se, but not that bad…

  Rude.

  “You know, nobody in the past century has gotten the go-ahead to bypass the [Do Not Disturb] barrier… And though I can’t imagine why, you’re obviously here for a reason.” An uncomfortable silence ensued, one he knew better than to disturb. He looked around at the clouds, frozen in place and glitching around the edges, taking great care to ignore the question hidden between the lines.

  When he didn’t budge, she sighed and fixed her fingers for a final snap.

  “I’d hate to have to turn you around, sir, but if you refuse to speak up…”

  And just as the edges of the board began to fizzle away, Lucifer’s mouth betrayed him. His jaw unclenched and his vocal chords started vibrating without his consent. That name flew out of his mouth as if it were wrought from his gut by an invisible fist.

  “Lucifer!” he cried out. “My name is Lucifer!”

  And it got quiet.

  And she blinked.

  And he blinked back.

  Then, once whatever that was passed over him, Lucifer brought a hand up to his throat and rubbed where it was actually, physically burning—what in the world was that?

  The girl still had her eyes on him, her look unreadable. After a long, awkward moment, he quipped, “New Age parents,” and threw in a half-hearted chuckle for good measure.

  Then, with a hesitant nod, she went back to tossing the pages. The papers flapping gave the man a much-needed breeze as she scoured for his name.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Last name?”

  “Ah.” He undid his bindle and produced his Certificate, still wound up in its baby blue ribbon, not a crease or stain in sight. “I do not have a surname. However, you’ll be able to confirm my identity using this document.”

  The girl cut a glance at the scroll, then at the man, before turning back to her papers. Then, she did a double take, fingers faltering as she squinted at the golden rainbow crest embedded in the bow. It was identical to the one boasted on her blazer’s cuff. “What? Where did you get that?”

  He couldn’t help the smug smile on his lips. Who’s the ‘kid’ now?

  “Why, it’s my Certificate of Rehabilitation. Surely, a staffer of your caliber has seen one of these before.”

  He gingerly tugged on the strings, unraveled it, and slipped it over the top of her clipboard. “If I recall correctly, it has my name, date of death, Soul ID number, sponsor. Etcetera.”

  Mirth settled into his crow’s feet as her eyes darted all around the page, growing wilder and wider as the seconds passed by. The girl choked down a cartoon-grade gulp before handing the paper back to him. She snapped her fingers again, this time, replacing the clipboard with a tablet.

  “Oh? What’s this?” he asked, leaning against the railing, arms crossed. Kids these days. He could have scoffed. Can’t do anything without a computer’s supervision.

  She ignored him in favor of rapping her finger against the screen. And, nosy by nature, he peeked at the screen through the reflection of her glasses. He had to wipe his eyes to make sure he was seeing correctly—it showed a bright red ‘HELP’ button that she was stabbing for dear life.

  Right before his eyes, the screen changed to display a new message: ‘SIT TIGHT, HELP IS ON THE WAY.’

  Oh.

  Oh dear.

  Beads of sweat began to form in places Lucifer didn’t know beads of sweat could form. Do not lose your composure, he urged himself. You’ve earned your second chance, fair and square, Lucifer. You have every right to be here.

  But suddenly, the memory of the keycard he’d... borrowed, sitting snug in his bindle hit him. Okay, so I may not have the right to be here, necessarily. But I’m sure they’ll be understanding given the circumstances.

  The girl must have noticed his prying gaze and clutched the tablet closer to her chest. But still, he could see a bit. More specifically, he could see her looking through a list of active staff members. She shook her head when one in particular came up: Johnn von Wigglestein.

  Lucifer’s fingers flexed dangerously against the stick, threatening to break it in half. Because he knew Johnn von Wigglestein. Or rather, he knew that Johnn von Wigglestein was the name printed on the keycard in his bindle. And moreover, he knew that the ‘HELP’ she'd summoned would not take kindly to the little predicament he'd found himself in.

  The girl’s fingertips glided all across the screen, typing up what Lucifer could only assume was shaping up to be a novel-length message. Lucifer shifted his weight nervously; none of the Eternal Affairs correspondence he’d (accidentally) intercepted during his teacher’s pet days had been so thorough.

  It had been more along the lines of, ‘@Atlantis Staffers will sell soul and/or cover a graveyard shift for one (1) droplet of spring water on 3rd level of Hell
  Maybe she’s a cut above the rest, is all. More… professional. She is wearing a blazer, after all.

  He inched closer in hopes of catching something benign on the screen. Don’t make assumptions. Perhaps she just needs a senior coworker to verify my documents. But instead, he watched in disbelief as she typed:

  'how did we let the actual literal DEVIL get all the way up here???’

  ‘whenever God wakes up somebody is going to HELL i’m snitching sososososo bad’

  ‘whoever is manning the gate rn (cough johnn von chucklefuck cough) owes me lunch and their first born after this mess.’

  So naturally, Lucifer, panicking, spat up a little word vomit. “It’s a bit odd, I’m sure. Rehabilitation and all. Especially coming up from Hell. You don’t see it too often, do you?”

  She typed faster. He talked faster.

  “Rare, sure, but we must consider: how rare is a story like mine? One of ascension, hubris, betrayal. Then finally, transformation.” No reply. “It’s not often that one harnesses their second chance in this manner, you know. To truly renege their ways, discard their egos, and—”

  “...Sorry, is this coming from the man who just broke into Heaven?”

  And. Well.

  Fair.

  Before he could think of a rebuttal, a throat cleared from behind him.

  “Uh, sir. Er. Mister Satan, sir?”

  Lucifer snapped his head around like a disturbed owl to find a startlingly handsome but absolutely petrified set of twins, clothed in nothing but strategically-fashioned cloud fluff held together with golden rainbow pins.

  “I prefer Lucifer, these days, if you don’t mind.”

  “Ah, sorry, sir, Mister Lucifer, sir.”

  “No need to apologize. Was an honest mistake, right?” He flashed a toothy grin that the twins struggled to reciprocate. “Now, what can I do for you, boys?”

  The two looked at each other, communicating through nostril flares, mouthed words, and urging eyes.

  “You do it!” one hissed. “No, I did it last time, you do it!” the other replied.

  My word. Lucifer shook his head, watching the spat unfold (“But that doesn’t count! The last security risk was a squirrel, Vito, not the King of Hell!”). I know that good help is hard to find, but this is ridiculous.

  While the two were bickering, he turned to peek back at the girl. Who… was nowhere to be found. Her tablet was still hovering where she left it, as if she’d forgotten it in her rush to get away.

  The gears between his ears started churning. The tension between the brothers picked up, quickly escalating to a shoving match (“No the fuck I did not cry, Theo. It was windy. And even if I did cry, you’ve never been scratched by a squirrel, have you?!”).

  Never one to forsake an opportunity, Lucifer slowly inched backward, finally stepping onto the marble floors of Heaven once again. He took a cursory glance around before he scooped up the girl’s device, making sure that shifty little snitch wasn’t lurking, waiting for more competent backup.

  When he was sure that the coast was clear, just the odd, pixelated clouds and clear blue skies, he made his way to a corner with his bounty in hand. Crouched down and out of the twins’ line of sight, Lucifer’s face lit up. Not only from the tablet’s blue light against his face, but also from the pure, unadulterated glee of having his first taste of freedom in God knows how long.

  He tapped around the device, eyes wide at all the information at his fingertips. Secret maps, access codes, and, if his eyes weren’t deceiving him, a direct line of communication to Heaven’s resident Sleeping Beauty.

  Lucifer hesitated over the button. [Wake Up God], it read. Underneath, in small font was a cut and dry demand: Do not use under any circumstances.

  But still, he couldn’t help but consider. Could he call in a favor after all that time? “Hey, Big Guy,” he’d say. They had been on a nickname basis back in the day. “As I’m sure You know, I'm eligible for reincarnation. Long time coming, I know... I'm wondering if You could pull a couple of strings for me—”

  A particularly violent snore punctuated the end of that thought as well as the twins’ fight off in the distance.

  (“Dude. Dude. No way we just lost Satan.”

  “'We?' I didn’t lose shit! I told you it was your turn!”)

  An eerie silence settled in as the snoring stopped all together.

  Anxiously gnawing on the inside of his cheek, Lucifer quickly made his decision. And just as the boys rounded the corner, they caught the spirit-crushing flash of Satan himself vanishing into thin air, with the 61st Head Assistant Manager’s Acting Administrator-In-Training-By-Proxy’s tablet in hand.