An excerpt from my new book, *Discordant Sound.*

When Satan’s pager went off, he knew what it was about. More bad news. Sometimes Satan wished he’d never invented the pager.

“Boss,” said Beelzebub when Satan answered the page, “those two guys in the Political Wing are fighting again.”

“OK, I’ll handle it,” said Satan, and he sighed as he walked from his office to the elevator, pressed the button for Level 666, and waited as he descended. He took a sip of malt liquor to steady his nerves. Truly the Devil’s brew!

Satan didn’t like visiting level 666. Even he shuddered at the denizens of that Level. These were the mass murderers who killed their victims in the name of some religious or political principle. Satan hated listening to them describing their revolting crimes, but he had been required to make frequent visits because of one crisis or another.

First there was the overcrowding problem. During the twentieth century there had been a flood of new arrivals and whole new wings had to be added to Level 666 to accomodate all the damned souls. Satan had had to personally supervise the construction of the new wings, fearing that the federal courts would close the whole Level unless there was enough space for all the denizens. Satan hated being subject to federal court supervision, but that was a result of all the “prisoner litigation” stirred up by the lawyers. Oh, those damned lawyers! Damned both literally and metaphorically. Maybe it had been a mistake letting them all into Hell.

And when the overcrowding crisis had been addressed by the building of all the new wings, then the petty bickering among the inmates of Level 666 began. They were all troublemakers, all demanding credit for the killing they had done back on Earth, because, of course, in Hell your status depends on how much horror you managed to inflict on suffering humanity during your lifetime. It was Satan’s boast that, unlike certain supernatural beings he could mention, he classified human beings on strict meritocratic principles. The downside was that Satan was always being called on to decide who was the baddest-bad in the sense of bad, not bad in the sense of good.

That kind of one-upmanship went on all over Hell, but Level 666 had the most quarrels. All the people in 666 were playing one-upmanship games with each other to prove who was the worst killer of all. Satan had to arbitrate these disputes to prevent the fights from getting out of hand.

The elevator had reached level 666. The door slid open, and Satan strode out into the molten lava. Satan waved at some of the religio/political killers-Torquemada, Napoleon, Tamerlane, Pol Pot. But no-one waved back: Everyone was looking at the two men who were pulling at each others’ moustaches....

[end of excerpt]