"Simon" by Cory Swanson

A young man is on trial for killing the devil.

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"Simon" by Cory Swanson

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Simon killed the Devil. It wasn’t an easy feat, to kill something immortal, but Simon had been up to the task.

“I thought I was giving a gift to all humanity,” Simon said at his trial, his orange jumpsuit glowing like a sun under the neon lights. “I really did.”

But that wasn’t for him to say.

“I mean, who wouldn’t shoot Old Scratch, given the chance?”

“Mr. Lancaster, it is not for us mortals to judge whether another is fit for death,” the prosecuting attorney claimed, his balding pate sweating even though the air conditioner in the courtroom had to be sucking half the power in town. “Mortal judgment is God’s work, not man’s.”

“Objection, your honor,” Simon’s lawyer barked from his seat.

“On what grounds?” the judge asked.

“Penal code 167b. The death penalty. Human society has deemed it appropriate under certain circumstances to determine whether a life should be terminated on moral grounds.”

“Through due process.”

“Your honor,” Simon interrupted. “There would be no due process with Satan. This was humanity’s one chance to revenge itself of all the evil in the world. Literally all the evil in the universe could be eradicated. I saw my opportunity. I took action.”

* * *

    It hadn’t been easy. Getting the Devil in such a vulnerable position had taken years of research and planning. Simon hadn’t made any bones to anyone about it. He’d even obtained private funding from a wealthy businessman to sustain his operations and keep himself fed as he schemed. “I plan to kill the Devil,” he’d told anyone who asked. “But don’t tell him that.”

    Of course, the Devil had heard of Simon’s plans to kill him, and Simon knew he would. He was Satan after all. This was the first step of drawing the Devil out in the open where Simon could confront him.

    Telling people to not tell the Devil that he planned to kill him was just how Simon would make sure the Devil would hear about his plans. After all, one can’t sneak up on the Devil. He knew that much.

    He also knew he couldn’t summon Old Scratch through any of the traditional means. Holding a seance or driving to the crossroads would only frame things to the Devil’s advantage. They would imply that Simon would want to make a deal, and he didn’t.

    Simon wanted no deals. Just the Devil’s dead body in his trunk.

* * *

    “I thought I’d be a hero,” he told the jury. “And for a while, I was.”

    “I assume you’re talking about how you toured the talk-show circuit, bragging about committing murder,” the prosecuting attorney said.

    “Objection,” Simon’s lawyer shouted. “Characterizing the witness.”

    “Sustained,” the judge said.

    “It’s okay,” Simon said. “I’ll admit I was proud, which shocked me. Pride is a sin, and the death of the Devil should have made such a thing impossible. But that didn’t stop me. I’d worked too hard to let the fruits of my labor pass me by. I had to pay my investors back, after all, and that book tour and those appearances generated good revenue.”

    It had been part of the plan from the beginning. Killing Satan was already being made into a movie. Ryan Gosling was going to play Simon, and Steve Buscemi was the Devil. The contracts were all but signed even before Simon had carried out the act.

    “I, I, I don’t even know what to say,” the prosecuting attorney sputtered. “You wrote a book bragging about premeditated murder. One which disturbed the fabric of the universe.”

    “I killed the Devil,” Simon barked, standing up. “Nobody, and I mean nobody, thought that was a bad idea. If you’re going to blame something, blame all of Christianity. I was taught from a very young age that all evil and sin was an abomination to be avoided. To be eradicated and stomped out. I was going to usher in a new age. A bright and shiny new world where nobody could even think of doing anything wrong. Where the Devil no longer whispered in your ear, tempting you to depravity.”

    The balding lawyer stared at Simon, who still panted from his tirade. “Okay. So you didn’t anticipate the consequences of a world without evil. Tell us, then. How did you do it? How did you kill the Prince of Darkness?”

* * *