Satan Announces Retirement

"A spirit gets to be my age," he admitted, "and he starts to think there are more important things than his career. Me, I'm the Father of all lies. That's a lot of responsibility, and it wouldn't be fair for me to be away causing misery and torment all the time, especially while some of them are still fibs."

After several reporters voiced suspicions, however, Lucifer laughed mockingly, causing a small volcanic eruption in the background. "Of course, that's not the real reason I'm choosing to retire," he said with a toothy grin.

"So your first statement was a lie?" a reporter asked.

Satan beamed. "He's my youngest," he said, with more than a hint of pride.

"So why are you retiring, Your Lowness?" another journalist inquired.

Satan sighed. Behind him, a dry wind blew the empty husks of several human bodies across the boiling landscape.

"Reality television," he answered gruffly. "I've come to realize that, well, I'm not really needed anymore. Honestly, I've been laying demons off by the truckload ever since reality TV became popular. And if you think demons are trouble under normal circumstances, you should see them when they're unemployed."

"Could you clarify the link between reality television and your retirement, sir?" asked one journalist. "We don't  - understand..." He faltered as Satan fixed an eye on him.

"Let's face it," snapped the Prince of Darkness, "compared to reality TV, my organization is incompetent. Do you realize how hard we work to tempt people into jealousy, betrayal, adultery? Do you know how rare it is for us to so thoroughly overwhelm some fool that he willingly inflicts pain upon himself? Usually it takes us years of conditioning to simply erode a person's self-respect enough to accept another human's mistreatment! And these reality shows..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "Fifteen minutes on screen, and  they've got people willing to eat vomit for pathetic cash prizes! They're making and breaking alliances with Machiavellian glee, they're torturing themselves physically and each other mentally, they're sleeping around like nymphs on holiday."

A tear glistened in Lucifer's eye. "I have to hand it to them," he sniffed. "They've accomplished more in five years than some of my top people have accomplished in fifty. Would you like to guess, anyone, how many couples in a million we can usually delude into becoming swingers? As hard as we've worked, it's always been considered a practice for the dregs of society."

Satan's voice dropped to a whisper. "This fall," he sighed. "Wife-swapping shows. On two different networks. I swear, by all that's unholy, they don't even look like they're trying."

In the background, the fires of hell dropped to a gloomy, smoldering flicker. A reporter cleared his throat nervously.

Satan looked up from the podium. "Go home," he barked. "I'm a dried-up shell of an embodiment of evil. Go cover the fall TV season. Nothing much - " he choked. "Nothing much is happening here."

As reporters began to drift off, a bit of a spark came back into Lucifer's eye. "You can tell everyone I'm no longer a threat," he called. "And hey, as long as you're watching, remember that if there are people willing to do things on TV that you wouldn't do, that makes you a good person."

Several reporters made notes, and one asked the Prince of Darkness if he had any further comments.

"Yes," Lucifer growled. "Shove it." He laughed weakly and stepped away from the podium, disappearing in a burst of flame that most journalists agreed was "less dramatic than expected." There was also widespread agreement among those writers present that most would find some excuse to refer to the departed devil as "the Spirit Formerly Known as the Prince of Darkness."

Upon returning to the surface, reporters discovered that the Dark Prince's people had not, in fact, seen to their parking as promised, and all of their press vehicles had been towed.