Mother, Almighty
She summoned Satan on a rainy Thursday evening. When he appeared in the circle, she said, “I desire you as I have never desired a human—I want you.”
Laid out. Bare. What does the devil look like exposed? In the circle he was amorphous; he was smoke; he was a reflection in a bathroom mirror after a steamy shower. The room brimmed with the presence of something ancient, swarming with an odious scent. Like egg salad. But this could not deter her—she would know him, biblically.
“My name is Alurea, and I want you, Lucifer. We’re the same,” she said, slinking forward. Lucifer could see her collarbone scoop up shadow. Warm light from a desk lamp spun a halo behind her. When he tore himself from the sight, he saw they were in a study––why did summonings always have to take place in studies? Or basements? Or abandon buildings? Why not a cozy kitchen? Why did no one ever greet him with tea? Had humans no manners?
Alurea, as if reading his mind, approached the clean-painted summoning circle, then stepped to the side; with a sweep of her hand, she gestured to a silver tray with a steak on a plate. There was a glob of butter on it with some decorative garnish that Lucifer didn’t recognize.
“I hope you like it rare. I figured I should at least buy you dinner, first. Plus, I made the plate in a pottery class. I had to find some use for it.” Alurea’s delicate shoulders went lax as she picked up a tall, black bottle. “Do you like red?”
*
Lucifer had never had a crush, but he had crushed many windpipes, skulls, dreams, and pinky toes. Alurea had done none of that and, when he told her of these minor accomplishments, she hummed and smiled, graciously pouring him more wine. They sat on the dark wood floor of the study, crisscross-applesauce, and traded giggles. Alurea did not complain about the smell of sulfur that wafted up when Lucifer would raise his arm to gesture grandly, adding flourish to his stories. He wanted to see her lurch back when he spoke of torture and terror, but Alurea leaned in, breath wine-scented and hot. Her eyes were huge and hazel. By demonic standards, they were nothing special. Lucifer had seen shinier. Hedonism gives the eyes a special glow––burning up your soul does that––and there’s nothing like it. Rock stars always have it bad. And bad is good.
They made small talk. How are you? (Charmed, said Alurea.) What’s your favorite color? (Black like your eyes, said Alurea.) Can you believe that flat-earthers are still at it? (A hilarious prank on your part, said Alurea.) And when she batted the questions back at Satan, he blinked as he explained that her human eyes could not perceive his favorite color, which was something like the shade of plague and nuclear clouds before they sear one’s eyeballs. He’d named the color “Utopia,” because he was cheeky like that.
Then they got to big talk. “Lucifer,” Alurea said, eyes on the empty plate between them, “I know I’ve trapped you in this circle and we’re both somewhat drunk, but I stand by my statement earlier. I want you.” And she looked at him with her shiny eyes, and Lucifer wondered how much brighter they would get if he gave her what she wanted.
“Why?” he asked with a laugh, leaning back to splay out his legs, parting them open as he watched Alurea watch him. “I’m a cloud of smoke who is taking the outline of a human for the sake of your simple brain. I can’t take as you desire, not without a human vessel.”
Alurea perked up, swiping a strand of her long, cocoa hair behind her ear. “I know.” She fixed him in her gaze. “I’ve read the books. You’ll enter me as a cloud of smoke––”
“Or as a snake, if you want that,” Lucifer added with a wave of his hand. He reached for the bottle of wine, which Alurea held out from over the circle’s line. He latched onto her wrist and jerked her arm forward, making her eyes go wide. “Do you want that?” Lucifer took the bottle and drank, releasing his grip. “Those who think they do don’t always know what they’re getting into.”
Alurea dropped her eyes to the floor again, her hands resting on her thighs as she smoothed out her skirt. “Smoke, snake, whatever you like,” she started, “I’m alone. I’d like a child, but I find no man fit to father one.” She turned away, hair falling to block her expression.
Lucifer paused. “Online dating’s that bad, huh? You really think the devil will be a better father?” He looked to the side, black eyes wide as he pretended to make eye contact with an imaginary third party, whom he pretended shared his bewilderment. He took another swig from the bottle and let it clatter to the floor, finished. They sat in silence. Then, Lucifer conceded, “If you insist.”
*
When they were done, the paint of the circle was smeared across Alurea’s body in red streaks. She had writhed, she had screamed, and Lucifer was reminded of how he never got tired of being a snake and entering into small, warm places where––for a moment––he felt kind of safe. Women were like that, he supposed. Safe.
Alurea smiled when he returned to smoke and sat beside her, examining her body. She was slight, and he could see her hipbones when she fanned out her limbs. When she rolled onto her side to face him, her eyes glimmered.
“I think,” she began, “Hell is just a hundred candles lit all at once.” And she laughed, and Lucifer saw she had a little gap between her front teeth and decided it was lovely.
*
Alurea looked small but really, she was giant. Not just her belly, which swelled over the months of their knowing each other, but her goals.
“I want the world,” she told him one night––though it was technically morning since the sun had begun to peep through the window. It filled the room with a hot, orange glow, and Alurea’s face was split by the light. “I think you have given it to me. The world, I mean.” She ran her fingers across the Persian rug that she’d bought for them to sit on. She’' just finished her first trimester and explained she was sick of sitting on the chilly floor; the study had a draft; Lucifer must be sick of it, too.
He told her that as a timeless, immortal being, he’d dealt with way worse. He also lacked a human nervous system and a sense of temperature, but appreciated the sentiment. Usually, he’d have slit her throat already, made her throw up her intestines or a bunch of frogs, then made off with her soul. But she was polite to him. She regarded him with gentle eyes, grinning as if she knew something he didn’t.
Of course, Lucifer knew this was impossible. He’d seen it all by now. And, having seen everything, he’d begun to worry that his spawn would kill Alurea during delivery, as antichrists tend to do. He considered that he could pluck her soul from Hell and make her an Archdemon––some sort of willing Persephone who’d once admitted she killed a roommate’s cat by giving it antifreeze as it had eaten her own pet, Filbert the Rat. (Oh, how he adored her for that act.) Alurea was vengeful. Alurea was bold. And she had studied black magick under her grandmother, who’d passed a month before Alurea first summoned him.
“This was her house,” Alurea had said. “She was like a mother to me. I have no other family. My goal is to be a mother to your child. Then I’ll have it all.” She smiled shyly, showing the tiny, neat gap in her teeth, and Lucifer fell into that black as if it were consuming him. Though he would never admit it, he was hers.
*
Lucifer often caught himself thinking about what his son would be like. He knew the child was male because that was his intention when he’d laid with Alurea, and he wondered how this incarnation of the antichrist would work out. There’d been others (all male) but they hardly got far. Crusaders, exorcists, and odd pairs of siblings who investigate the paranormal were constant problems, and antichrist mothers were rarely nurturing, stable types.
Alurea’s excitement grew in tandem with her stomach, she now looked as if she held the entire world in her belly. Lazing around on the rug, Lucifer would watch her quietly as she flipped through a worn, blue notebook: her grandmother’s notes on magick. “I need to know how to take care of your son,” she’d say without looking up. “I have big plans. I want the world, and I intend to have it.”
Lucifer loved how her eyes glittered when she spoke like that. Looking at Alurea, he decided that if this antichrist was beheaded by some stinky demon hunter, a female antichrist would be next. Maybe he needed to get with the times; girls could obliterate the world too, right?
*
The end began on a Sunday morning, the lord's day because Hell loves irony––and because Alurea knew how to mix herbs to induce labor. Lucifer was summoned from the middle of a conference with some lesser demons, placing a pin in their latest doomsday plans before saying, “I have to take this.” Then he poofed away.
He’d never seen Alurea’s bedroom, but when he arrived, he found her sitting on a blood-soaked, ivory sheet, her body drenched in sweat. She was bare other than a large, sage-color shirt, which stopped mid-thigh. The sheet between her legs was murky and the room reeked of human. In Alurea’s arms was a freakishly pale baby––though it had her eyes which Lucifer was secretly happy about because his own were common and bland by demonic standards. (Red eyes were all the rage now.) The umbilical cord kept mother and son connected, and when Alurea saw her Lucifer, she pushed herself up on an elbow, then collapsed back onto the bed, asking him to cut the cord.
Lucifer did so, sloppily, as he’d never done such an act––he was more of a “rip the child out of your womb with my claws” type. But with this child, he felt something strange. Something warm, like a shot of hardy liquor but without chance of hangover. Bliss? He separated his son from Alurea and placed him on her chest, so his tummy was flush against her breasts. He wasn’t certain he placed it correctly; he assumed if he laid it like that it wouldn’t roll off the bed or something. He considered conjuring up a thick carpet to cover the bedroom. The antichrist dying from a concussion and brain trauma would be embarrassing. At least demon hunters made it honorable.
“Lucifer,” Alurea’s voice was hoarse, “Please, in the dresser drawer. There’s a brown vial. Can you bring it to me?”
Lucifer did as instructed, and Alurea downed the palm-sized bottle in two gulps. “A healing concoction,” she sighed. The antichrist dozed in her arms. His little head was covered in black hair, which must be from Lucifer, though he wasn’t sure, as he was a cloud of smoke.
“I shall post a guard for you at your bedroom door,” Lucifer said, the urge to protect rising in his chest. He’d seen his children shredded, torn limb-from-limb, and exploded by Molotovs on some occasions. Sure, his kids were all trying to end humankind––but it was still killing a baby. Didn’t the beer-gut-Christians say that was always wrong?
Lucifer knew Alurea would do her best to care for their son. She hadn’t read all those books on magick and demons for nothing. Now it was his job to make sure she could do so safely.
“Oh, Lucifer, a guard isn’t necessary,” Alurea said, attempting to sit up. When she managed it, shifting the baby into the crook of her arm, she wiggled her eyebrows at Lucifer’s shock. “Healing concoction,” she winked. “See? I’ll be back up in no time. But, if you’d like to post a guard, you may post him outside my house. I can take care of everything inside.”
Lucifer summoned two of his favorite subordinates. First, a guard named Tilly from the torture unit. She kept souls from escaping by eating them, then vomiting them back into their cells. (From the way they sizzled, Lucifer assumed her stomach acid must be something special.) Second, a demon who insisted everyone call him “The Fuzz,” despite his name being Brian. The Fuzz claimed he liked the name because it made his torment of cops more ironic, especially when he’d drop them in the street, then gun them down with bullets that turned into flesh-eating maggots once embedded.
His two favorite demons protecting his family, Lucifer returned to his conference, where his colleagues offered him congratulations––may this son survive. Lucifer assured them he would. He had a real mother this time.
*
A week passed before Alurea summoned Lucifer again. He’d thrown himself into his work to avoid popping in unannounced. Though, it wasn’t like he could. A protection spell made it impossible to enter without Alurea’s consent. She was a talented witch; this possibly explained why Lucifer felt a flutter inside his smokey form when he thought of her. Power and strength: eternally sexy. He waited, Tilly and The Fuzz updating him on Alurea, saying she was taking excellent care of the baby and had taken to calling it, “golden boy,” though she had not named him. Perhaps, Lucifer thought, she was waiting for him to help name the child; he’d become fond of Vlad in honor of his favorite denizen of Hell.
When Alurea finally summoned him, it was not to the study, but the kitchen. She had returned to full health––if not better––and was dressed in a rust-colored, linen dress. There were dark stains on it and, despite the way their color blended with the fabric, Lucifer recognized them as blood.
“Alurea,” he said. “Enchanting as always.” He scanned her up and down, and he knew if he had a stomach, it would be pretzeled into a knot. His son was nowhere in sight. “How are you?” he asked, beginning to glance around. The kitchen was small with a tile floor and dark-colored cabinets. On a granite counter sat an array of dried plants, bones, and measuring cups. A large pot simmered on the stove. Lucifer could not see its contents.
“Oh, Lucifer.” Alurea took a trembling breath, biting her lip as if to contain excitement. “I have wonderful news.” She approached the circle, which Lucifer noticed was drawn in thick, black marker. It smelled like Sharpie. “I’m about to make my dreams come true!” Alurea rejoiced, clapping her hands once, then bringing them to her chest, covering a dainty, gold necklace. Yet Alurea’s eyes were brighter.
“All this work, this labor of love . . . .” she twirled away from him, going to stir the pot. Lucifer noted it was a nice pot, silver and probably French, because the French are snobbish about quality like that. As she banged a wooden spoon twice on the rim of the pot, the scent of flesh rose. There was a hint of pepper and thyme, too.
“My love,” Lucifer pleaded, “What are you talking about?”
Alurea stared at him. Then, she snorted, barely stifling a laugh, “This!” She tapped her grandmother’s notebook that sat by a jar of what appeared to be molars. Alurea’s eyes were wild. “I’ve taken my grandmother’s ideas and made them better.” She let out a sigh, crossing her arms. She leaned against the counter, looking from the book to Lucifer. She picked it up, flipping to a page and ripping it out. Lucifer was impressed when she tore it fairly straight.
“This, my love.” She held up the page, licking her lips. “Puer Comedenti. It’s a spell for power.”
Lucifer felt faint––he wasn’t sure how that was even possible as a sentient cloud of smoke.
“You see, my grandmother had this theory, but she never got it right. She was about three hundred when she passed. Quite the witch if I may say, loved her to pieces––those are some of them.” Alurea pointed at the big bell jar that had a human hand on display. “She dabbled with the idea of consuming the flesh of virgins.” Alurea watched Lucifer closely. “Of course, she realized, the younger the soul, the purer the soul. The purer the soul, the more potent. But, as a practitioner of the blackest of magick, eating virgins or newborns only did so much for her.”
“He’s in the pot.” Lucifer blurted, feeling far away. Then he felt an incendiary rage. “You made our son into an entrée.” If he had a heart––if he hadn’t honestly seen worse––he would have crumpled into a ball of grief on the tile. But he was Satan. He had seen his son come back time and time again. Still, Lucifer’s mind raced with the idea of how he would eviscerate Alurea, because that would be the plan for infinity times infinity. He would make a special chamber for her. He would turn her inside out by grabbing her tongue and pulling it out her bottom. He felt himself catch fire. He hadn’t done that in a while.
“Calm yourself.” Alurea rolled her eyes. “No need to be a hothead. You’ll set off the smoke alarm.” She took a hand towel from the sink and began to wave it. “I won’t lie. He tastes pretty good, though I think the meat needs some more salt. Can I get your opinion?” She held out the wooden spoon to Lucifer. “Just kidding. I know it needs more salt.” She added a big spoonful of salt to the pot, muttering about sodium content. “Anyway, I need you for one last thing.”
“I refuse.” Lucifer snapped.
“Okay. Doesn’t matter.” Alurea put her hands on her hips. “You’re mine, Mister Devil.” She stomped her foot, her pointy-toed boot raising a dust bunny or two. “That circle’s got you trapped, and your boys can’t enter my house without my say so.”
Lucifer felt his fire extinguish.
“You’re going to help me with one last thing.” Alurea hummed, turning the heat off the stove and putting on a pair of baby-blue oven mitts. They had roosters on the backs of the hands. She lifted the pot with a grunt and carried it to the sink, tilting it into a strainer that drained into a ceramic bowl. Sigils had been painted on it. Alurea eyed Satan and nodded toward the bowl. “Like it? I made it in my pottery class. Learning to use the spinning wheel is easier than you’d expect.” Steam rose from the bowl, and Lucifer watched in silence.
“My grandmother never had much luck with newborns––too pure for her intentions. They gave her power, but not enough for what she wanted. Something about their purity interfering with her ‘ill-willed’ desire for mass destruction. Babies make terrible nihilists.” Alurea shook her head. “But I am not my grandmother.” She lifted the bowl with her mitts and carried it before Lucifer. “And I am no nihilist. If anything, I consider myself a humanist, though some would say I’m a moral relativist.”
“If I had a brain, you’d give me a headache.”
“If you had a brain,” Alurea chimed, “This would’ve cost me more than some wine, childbirth, and letting you slither up my snatch on the first date. I never considered myself easy, but one does as one must.” Alurea stretched her neck, inclining her head side to side. “Anyway. I’m going to do a spell, drink this slop which smells like chili, and mercy kill everyone. Let’s get on with it.”
“I’m sorry, you what?” Lucifer leaned forward, tilting his head like he had an ear. “You just said you were a humanist. Doesn’t that mean you’re pro-human or something?”
“In a way,” Alurea said, smiling at her bowl of antichrist chili. “In case you’ve been too busy in your paradise of torture, allow me to enlighten you: this world is a shitshow. All I’ve wanted is for everyone to be good. Then I grew up. I realized it’s impossible. And it’s not even your fault. People do it to themselves.”
Lucifer tried to rush her, his not-body howling for him to smush her like a roach. He lunged, and the demarcation of the circle jolted him with what felt like a toaster in a bathtub. He’d used to like that sensation, would save it for some Tuesday night fun, but now it just angered him.
Alurea sighed. “Won’t you settle down? Listen, maybe Earth isn’t as bad as the enclave of Hell, but we’re never going to have peace. Real peace. Not treaties where everyone’s looking for a loophole. Not ‘tolerance’ that requires a government to make bigotry a crime. Peace. Humans are made in the image of The Divine, and The Divine made you, so He or She or They or It can’t be all that great.” Alurea took a sip of the bowl and frowned. “Too much salt, now.”
From his place in the summoning circle, Lucifer could see the sun setting from a stained-glass window above the kitchen sink. The glass composed an image of a blue and yellow snake, which allowed a blob of green light to settle by Lucifer’s vaguely foot-shaped appendage. When he looked back up, Alurea was steel-faced.
“I’m going to help everyone,” she said softly. “I’m going to do what no Divine or Devil ever could––I’m going to bring peace. Your son was my golden ticket. A hundred newborns’ souls could never agree with the end of Earth, but your child––that hellspawn––it’s what he was made for. The end is for the best.” She paused, staring at the bowl as she spread out her fingers to hold it more comfortably. “I do it out of compassion. I will make it quick. Like a sudden sleep. And because your son is part your kind––a piece close to Divine––I bet I’ll have the strength to end you, too. To end everything.” She smiled, showing the skinny gap between her teeth. “No more pain. Ever.”
“You’re crazy.” Lucifer scoffed.
“One way to find out,” Alurea said. She raised the bowl and began to chant.
Gabriela Everett is a fiction writer based in her hometown of Las Vegas. She possesses a BA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago and an affinity for coffee at midnight. Everett’s previous publications include short fiction in Columbia College Chicago’s Hair Trigger, as well as poetry and prose in Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s lit mag, Glyph.