Lucifer's Angel

Sometimes I wonder what goes through many people's heads before they do some of the shit they do. Not that I mind, I'm just puzzled at times. Seriously. The name is Baal and I'll be your friendly neighborhood Devil for the day. My Avatar's name is Calhoun Baxter. You can call me The Hell Hound. Today, in the eyes of the world, I am a six-foot-one, lean and athletic young Black man with medium brown skin, sharp features and a smooth shaved head. I found my Avatar wearing a stylish business suit as he walked to work and tried to dodge the "Occupy Wall Street" mobs but that wasn't really my style so I changed his attire magically. Urban is more my style.

Clad in my customary Black leather jacket over a red silk shirt, Black silk pants and Black leather boots, I stride through every City and Town known to man. My mortal Avatar grew up in the City of Hartford, Connecticut, and holds an MBA from Northeastern University. I travel a lot. I possessed this Avatar a while ago, and I periodically return to it whenever it suits me. My host usually remembers nothing, and I only steal him for a few hours at a time. Then I return him to the same spot where I 'jumped' into him. Must be confusing as hell for the poor bastard but what do I care? I've got a job to do and The Boss doesn't accept failure.

I get a lot of stares as I walk through Manhattan. It's my mortal guise, one of many I use to walk about the world of man. I have many Avatars. Men and women, Black and White, Asian, Arabic and Hispanic, and every ethnicity you can think of. This tall, slim young 'brother' is my favorite because of his mindset. He's got the mind of a cold killer, even though he's learned to subdue it. He's a highly paid Corporate Shark. I think one of these days, I may very well come up to claim this Avatar for The Boss but for now, it's my vessel. The Boss sends me on many jobs because some of the Others have been screwing up a lot lately. I love my job and I do it happily. The dilemma faced by most people in this world, and other worlds, is that they don't like their station in this life. Everyone wants more. Well, I do too but I'm happy to be myself. And I love what I do.

Ladies and gentlemen, I work everywhere. From Melbourne to Los Angeles. From New Delhi to Dubai. From Cap-Haitien to Montego Bay. From Shanghai to Kyoto. From Amsterdam to Marseille. From Johannesburg to Boston. From Istanbul to Havana. You name the place, and I've definitely been there. I've seen all of the world's best places. Ah, the wonders of Teleportation. A wonderful power which The Boss has so charitably bestowed upon me. All so I can catch the Bozos ( my personal nickname for the Escapees) more efficiently. My elusive prey come from all over, and when they escape The Big House, they tend to return to their old digs. Not a smart move, I know. However, nobody ever said the Denizens of Hell were the smartest cookies on the planet. They're just the meanest. Still, I like certain places more than others. Like New York City. Due to its size, diversity and propensity for wickedness, I do a lot of business down here.

As I walk through the streets of New York City, I stalk the Escapees. October 11, 1985. Twenty-year-old Janine Monroe shot her boyfriend Trevor Watkins four times after catching him in bed with another man. That other man was none other than her cousin Henry Monroe. And then she turned the gun on herself. All this took place in the dormitories of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Fast forward twenty six years, and Janine Monroe is now walking the streets of New York City. She's stalking closeted gay and bisexual men who don't disclose to their girlfriends or wives the truth of their sexual orientation. Thus, she shot Marcus Wilson, a prominent African-American lawyer who deceives his lovely Jamaican wife Natalie Johnson with her good friend Nestor Chavez on a weekly basis. This woman has declared herself the Avenger of Women Whose Lives Have Been Destroyed by Secretly Queer Men.

The City of New York is on high alert as the New York Police Department search for this troubled, gun-toting young woman who's a dead ringer for a gal who died a generation before. The police sketch artists have released a portrait of her and plastered it over wall, and in the front page of every newspaper in the City That Never Sleeps. This case has baffled the police from the start. Not that it takes much to baffle New York's finest. They simply haven't been at their best lately. They're so much better and smarter on the now defunct series Law & Order. I do miss that show. Jack McCoy was my favorite character. I liked his old-fashioned suits. Anyhow, they thought the Janine Monroe look-alike was a copycat killer since she simply couldn't be the one committing these crimes. For starters, she was dead and buried. Her bones lie at the bottom of a grave near Brooklyn, where she grew up. The massive manhunt was still underway.

The Gay Community of New York City has often been under attack by bigots, often heavily armed ones. As a result, they're really good at motivating the powers that be when one of their own is in danger. The police were looking for the newly resurrected Janine Monroe, and it was only a matter of time before they caught her. Now, this I couldn't allow. The Boss has been explicit in his orders. The lady must return to the Big House, otherwise it's my smooth brown ass that's on the line. She cannot fall into the hands of mortal men and women. The humans simply cannot be allowed to have incontrovertible proof that there is life after death. The Old Guy in the Sky and The Boss have an agreement. The White Hats and the Red Hoods don't fight each other above or below. We fight each other through our favorite puppets, mortal men and mortal women.

Like I said, I was tracking the Target through New York City. And she cut a bloody swath through the busiest City on the planet Earth. I found her in Central Park, of all places. I walked up to her. There she was, sitting on a park bench. Still lovely as ever. Clad in a White blouse, short Black dress and high heels. In her hand she clutched the gun. Two hours ago she shot Kenneth Albright, a wealthy Irish-American businessman. He's supposedly happily married to Annabelle Chong, a beautiful Asian woman. They had a son together, little Adam. Unbeknownst to his family and business associates is the fact that he sleeps with men. Young minority guys from the Hispanic and Black communities. He caught AIDS that way and passed it onto his wife. She only found out recently. Using her supernaturally augmented keenness of mind, Janine Monroe tracked Kenneth back and shot him. Six bullets.

I stood before her, and sighed. She sat there, and instead of the vengeful woman I had been expecting, I saw a very vulnerable woman. She sat there in tears. I cleared my throat. Janine Monroe looked at me and I looked at her. One look at me she knew who and what I was. Lucifer's Angel. The Hound of Hell. She knew why I was there. I asked her how she was. No need for this to be unpleasant. I'm a Gentleman Devil, after all. Janine Monroe looked at me with tear-filled eyes, then described her day to me. She told me that she truly enjoyed herself today, her first day on the planet Earth since she went to Hell twenty six years ago. Janine Monroe went to the movies, and also visited her old school, John Jay College. Going to the movies, dining in restaurants, visiting her alma mater and also walking through the town's beautiful libraries. She did all that. Too bad she slaughtered several men across the City while doing all those things. She hadn't been too discrete either. Even without using my vast powers, I was able to find her.

As I stood before her and listened to her spiel, I could hear the police sirens in the distance. They were coming toward Central Park. Coming for her. I looked at her and she gave me a resigned look. She told me those gay and bisexual bastards who deceived their women and hid their true sexual preferences deserved to die for destroying the lives of women who put their trust in them. I nodded somberly. Revenge is a sentiment I understand all too well. I am a Devil after all. Just not the Chief One. Someday I could be. I held out my hand, and Janine Monroe took it. We vanished in a great ball of flame just as several policemen and policewomen began surrounding the park bench where we'd been having our little chat.

Three days later...I stand in the City of Johannesburg, South Africa. A stocky old guy with red hair, alabaster skin and green eyes grins at me in a most feral way. His name is Franklin Hauser, and he was a particularly brutal son of a bitch under the Apartheid Regime in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. He boasted of killing at least thirty Zulu activists before dying of cancer at the age of sixty six. Now, on the anniversary of his death, he escaped from the Big House Down Below. And he came back to South Africa, stunned at how much it had changed. And he was up to his old tricks, hunting down African men and women simply for being different from him. I smiled at him as he begged me not to take him to Hell. He claimed to be doing God's work.

That's it. I've had enough of his bigoted nonsense. Down in Hell, we don't discriminate. We hate everyone equally. It's high time Hauser learned that. I reached for him, but before I took him...I shifted. I allowed my features to morph from the visage of the tall, twenty-something Caucasian male whose body I possessed, to that of my previous Avatar. The young Black businessman from New England. A look of astonishment and hatred filled Hauser. He shrank from me, so frightened was he by the fact that the Devil who came to drag him back to Hell wore an African's features. With a simple touch, I sent him to his final destination. I could still hear his screams ass he fell into a lake of fire. This time, there would be no escape. Smiling, I continued walking through Johannesburg. In my melanin-rich new Avatar, the place truly felt like home. I rubbed my hands together. All in a day's work.