Angels and Demons
I am extremely sorry if this hurts anyone's sensibilities. It's just a joke, and I hope no one is offended...

PART ONE : JEPTHET

Belios, Dark Master of the Pit, Lord of Oblivion, Keeper of the Flame, Knight of Satan and general bad guy, fumed noisily. It's pretty much like fuming silently, but with a touch of Darth Vader to it.

Pacing the floor of his office, he shook his from side to side, angrily, not an uncommon sight actually, since he was often angry. It went with the job, though in private he was supposed to be a jolly fellow. His friends would certainly say so, only he didn't have any. It was a common problem that most of the successful demons had learned to live with, and Belios dealt with it by being angry most of the time.

He was especially angry today though, and the cause was clear enough to anyone close enough to hear what he was muttering. Of course, few would want to be close to one of the most powerful beings in hell when he was in a bad mood, but here's what he said...

"I'm sick of that little punk. What the hell does he think of himself anyway? Thinks he understands the nature of evil, the little lizard nosed monster. Turn human against human! As if it were that simple. Lousy punk would lose us all our jobs." Belios continued his pacing, clearly getting angrier by the minute. After a few more futile circuits of the room, he turned to his desk, and rang the buzzer.

Agroth, his secretary, popped into the room with all his customary efficiency. He was a good secretary, but he was one of those demons that was wreathed in fire all the time. This meant that if the heating ever failed, he was handy, but on the other hand, you had to learn to live with singed memos. Belios thought he added to the general decor.

Another advantage of having an elemental for a secretary was that it wasn't too easy to kill. As Agroth opened his mouth to speak, Belios raised his right hand and pointed a finger at the secretary, a rage filled howl bouncing of the seething walls. A bolt of lightning flashed out, running right through Agroth's face, and he was soon a blubbering file of flames on the floor, and it calmed Belios a little to watch Agroth's body slowly re-form in front of him.

"Thank you Agroth," Belios said, his face twisted into the closest approximation of a smile he could manage with the huge tusks sticking out of his lower jaw, and Agroth carefully bowed. "Now go and get me that Jepthet fellow. It's time to teach him a real lesson." Agroth backed out, and walked back in a moment later, a small, thin demon in front of him. Like all successful demons, Agroth had a highly developed survival instinct, and as soon as he walked into the room, he realised that an example was about to be made of him, and sure enough, in a moment he was a puddle on the floor, again. Sometimes he really hated his job.

As he slowly re-formed again though, he noticed that Belios was smiling again, which was rather strange. After all, it was hardly as if Jepthet was a powerful demon. Agroth could have killed him without trying, he knew. Interested, he hovered in the doorway, and when he heard the conversation, he was horrified. He knew that Belios was evil, but this was true cruelty. And disguised like a favour!

Because Belios had decided on one thing. Death was too good for this foolish demon, who tried to use psychology instead of turning the bodies of his enemies into a pulsating mass of maggots. Jepthet was one of those know it alls, the type with the squeaky voice, who smugly thought that he was better than everybody else. One of the worst kinds of beings, thought the Knight of Satan, a self satisfied nod later.

No, this one would have to get a special punishment, a hell, a hell for demons, and he, Belios knew just the place.

"Jepthet m'boy," he boomed, carefully avoiding stepping on the then boiling mass of Agroth, "come on in, step right here, sit down."

The lesser demon sat down, not a little fearfully, and looked at his lord with uncertain eyes. Belios said, "I've heard that you've been talking again, spreading your theories, and I think it's wonderful. The employee training programme seems to be working well, and you chaps, out there in the field all day, it's good to see that people are thinking too, but I've been getting a few complaints from some of the other boys, they're a little worried about your theory, you know..."

"I know sir, but really, this should work to our advantage. The other side has been doing this for millenia sir, and I think we should influence people too, not just to a few petty wars, but all the way to civilisation. To bureaucracy. To bloody minded incompetence. To fast food chains that serve recycled plastic!" Jepthet let out a low moan of pleasure at the last.

"Yes that's all very good, but then what does that leave for us to do? No m'boy, you'll find that there are bigger and better things for you to do. I think that you should try and implement your idea, but maybe some other time. There's a job I have for you, which should take all your talents. But I have faith in you. What I want for you to do is infiltrate the other side, and find out what they're up to, we could manage our activities a lot better if we knew what was up," Belios said.

"Yessir!" went Jepthet, his Adam's apple bobbing convulsively.

END OF PART ONE

PART TWO : JEPTHET GOES TO HEAVEN AND MEETS THE MAKER

"But what exactly do you want me to do, sir?" he asked. "Go to heaven m'boy," Belios said, trying to smile, and looking far more menacing than normal, as a result. "Go to heaven, and infiltrate that crew. Become one of them Do the whole nice nice routine. See what new techniques they've come up with. Then finally get back here, and let us know what you've learnt."

"Go to heaven sir? But, that could be very dangerous," Jepthet mumbled. "I won't lie to you lad, it might well be, but I like to think my team is made up of go getters. Unless you want to leave my team lad. That's up to you entirely. You always have the freedom to choose not to do some thing, just like you have the freedom to choose between the acid bath and the iron maiden. It's all in your hands really."

Swallowing convulsively, Jepthet tried a smile, then gave up, and said, "Well, I'm on my way to heaven then. I'll see you later sir."

A month later, Jepthet was one of the most popular angels. His treaty on the nature was evil, and his techniques for combating the devil reflected the lifetime of study that he, the and Jesuphale must have put in. His outrageous jokes made him popular, and no one was threatening to turn him into a pile of sludge. All in all, it was a very nice place to be in. And he absolutely hated it.

It was like the Stockholm syndrome. He'd been a demon all his life, and donning a disguise and changing his name didn't change the fact. And the fact was that he was miserable in hell, and loved the fact that he was miserable. It was like masochism. The perfect ism for a demon, along with sadism.

And so, even though he was having the time of his endless life, he was still a demon inside, plotting and planning on how to convert humans to evil, and send them to the warm place. What happened next though, was beyond his wildest dreams.

One night (well, it was probably night, but with all the white up here it was so damn hard to tell!) as he was walking back to the cloud that he called home here, he bumped into God himself, rushing as if trying to run away from someone. "Wha?" he began, but God commanded some respect, even when he was running around wearing only his briefs.

"You're the new guy, Jesuphale, right?" God boomed. "Good good good. Now look Jesuphale, I was on the Earth right now, and you know how it is, you spend all your time surrounded by angels and everyone else is having fun but you're just watching and well, sometimes you want to take part too. Well, there was this one girl, and you can guess the rest. Now she'd prayed a lot to me, and I figure I owe her a good kid, so I need to send one of our chaps. You're supposed to be a pretty smart chap, why don't you volunteer?"

Jepthet was bright, and while he knew that they were against the whole reducing to a boiling mush thing up here, there was a look in God's eyes that was very familiar. He wondered if God was related to Belios. Probably. It was all the inbreeding that resulted in bad teeth like the ones Belios had. "To the world I go sir," he said. Besides, he was getting bored here, and he had a plan, one that would doom uncountable numbers of humans to the warm place.

"Good egg," God boomed, and waved his hand. Jepthet felt himself shrinking, and fading away, and from a long way off he heard God's voice, "And listen, Jesuphale, that name's way too unwieldy for the common human. Shorten it to something that rolls off the tongue, will ya? Something like Jesus!"

Jepthet smiled. He was going to have a lot of fun.