They called me devil. They called me demon. At first I thought it was just because of my name. Hey guys, I never chose it. Then I found out that they must’ve seen something in me that I couldn’t at the time. You can try and fight a fate so strong that people who don’t even really know you can already sense, but in the end, you’re going to lose. In the end, fate is what it is, regardless of your personal wants. Oppose it, and it’ll make you miserable.

But so long as you play a part in the role fate has for you, it gives you the chance to expand on it a little bit. Once you learn that fate’s the director, but you still have some creative control over your character, there’s still plenty of fun to be had. They called me demon, but not anymore. Now they call me king.

I watch the ants scurry across the concrete mound, full of fearful scheming. Pathetic. They once at least stood to speak that sinister moniker. Now there’s only hushed whispers, and turned backs. Nobody faces me anymore. Nobody dares. It’s amazing what a lot of money can get you in today’s world. White toothed masks, and hand shakes. Fear in the guise of respect. They can keep the latter.

Yes, I’ve come a long way from that middle class boy, from the average farm family, from the fearfully courageous children, yelling their “good book” learned aliases from across the street. Nothing came of the good I attempted at that time in my life. Save a cat, lose a dog. Help a lady across the street, catch the bullet she would’ve been to slow to find before. Protect my farm from vandals, and come to find out that human beings who are once scorned, can carry terrible vendettas. When I lost my mother, I lost my place. I lost the good little boy she was trying to create. I became the devil.

The kids still yelled, even after they found their pet’s dead carcass nailed to their off white picket fences. They just took great care to do so from far down the street rather than across it. I defied the laws of man and God. Punishing innocents, causing pain, creating sin and havoc. I did things that I should have never gotten away with. Yet I did. Time and time again. I became a prince of that little town, until I got bored with playing a tyrant, and decided to actually be one.

Years went on and I found what the real world was like. The crimes I committed in that little place from so long ago, were everyday occurrences the world over. Still viewed as horrors, but somehow through dull and apathetic eyes. People were untouchable here. So I knew I could get away with even more.

As I found corporate jobs with places as shady as the back alleys and street corners that were a trademark of the times, I polished my dark virtues, in the world, and in the office. I was Vlad the Impaler. I was Nero, Caligula, the Boogeyman, Satan himself. I was every bad thing that happened to people, regardless of their own personal beliefs or stature. I paved a bloody trail until the throne of power, of dead presidents, was mine.

The thing of it is though…when you’re seated at the top of the world, looking down from that place of ultimate power, you start to think. Where is there to go from here? What else is there to do? I shake hands with politicians, while plotting to have other corporate executives have accidents in elevator shafts. I feed the poor at shelters, with food laced with microbiological agents that most militaries of the world don’t even have names for yet. I’ve saved entire rainforests, while simultaneously making homeless a species of owl to make room for a brand new golf course.

All the pieces are at my disposal. All the pieces are mine to move and play against each other as I very well see fit. I play the devil as God himself. However, there is no opponent. I play with myself. And so the question still remains…where do I go from here? I stand in my office with a view of the world, in my best suit, and wait for something worthwhile to happen. I wait for change. I wait for a challenge.

Then it occurs to me. For all the evils I do, I am still only feared. In the world we live in, without proof of my actions, I never actually committed them. The greatest thing the Devil ever did, was to convince people that he didn’t exist right? Then that means a greater devil, would make damned sure everyone did. After all, what good are evil acts, if nobody but myself knows about them? Caligula, Nero, Vlad, these men made no false pretenses. They were evil incarnate. They were mad men. They were infamous. They were on the right track.

Today I stand in my office still, but with a camcorder behind me. I have my finger poised over two buttons. The first brings it to life, with the city and world a beautiful blue and gold back drop behind me. I make a sermon to the camera as it feeds live to a news station that I had hostilely taken over. The news crew laugh that uncertain, nervous, laugh. The things they’ve heard, are starting to come fuller to light than they ever realized would. They are afraid. They are afraid of what that second button will do. I don’t leave them in suspense.

The world over watches overhead as white contrails, smoky tails chase the megaton silver bullets onward and upward. People speaking in tongues I don’t understand stare in wonder, bewilderment, sadness, for those of them smart enough to comprehend, as streaks cover the sky into the horizon. Just enough time to pray. Just enough time for a final meal, a final drive, a final run through the park, a final fuck, one last movie, one last shower, one last kiss goodnight, the ending song, the twilight breath, before those silver bullets are met by fate’s ever present cousin, gravity.

When the first of my fiendish little friends finds their mark, it’s all over the news. Some podunk little town that had a rash of unexplainable violent crime years ago, gone in a flash of white burning light, and a mushroom cloud of smoke. The story spreads across the country before the second one hit. The story spread across the continent, when the third found its home. The story spread across the hemisphere when the fourth and fifth met their marks. By the sixth quarter hour, the world knew my name. By the second hour, while the heavens still rained their silver tears of nuclear destruction, the world hated me. By the third day, as the earth stood as glass, the survivors, wherever they could be found, would never forget the name Daemos, the Destroyer.

Now I have my challengers. Now I have opponents in men that are worthy of my villainy. They hunt me down as I walk my newly formed world, terrorizing still, the people who catch my gaze. Even as I evade their capture, or righteous justice, I revel in what I have become. The true Devil. For I no longer need to send my victims to hell. I have brought it to the living. I wait for the day these men of action finally find me on a day that I grow tired of the chase. Who of these new world heroes, could possibly face a living demon?

Who?