Dear Satan,

How've you been?

Detail, Dreamland with Chevalier Ernest Thorn, lithograph, Adolph Friedländer, Hamburg, 1910.

I'm writing on account of your competition’s chicken sandwich. We’re talking Chick-Fil-A, of course.

I know, I know, I know … We don't regularly go there because who needs all the God Squadery, but the Goat and I stopped in because it was easy and we were hungry and they're supposed to have the best chicken sandwiches in all of the land. I mean, who doesn't love a good chicken sammie?

The sandwich was good—okay, it was really good, but the service? Satan, say what you will about the God Squad, they have got this shit down. The drive through was like a well-oiled international border crossing. They get 'em in, get 'em chickened up, and get 'em out. BOOM

I kept watching and thinking, No wonder they all love the Lord so much. Imagine if Satan got on board with this level of operation.

I realize you deal mainly in vice, which has its own commerce issues, but as far as best practices go, the Chick-Fil-A people are at the top of the game. You could probably learn a thing or two from them. I don't know how much time you spend on the ground doing personal site checks, but those drive-through beer stores could use a little help. There’s no operational consistency, service is spotty, and branding is all over the place.

Do they even have drive-through brothels? Uh … actually, I don’t want to know.

That's about enough of me all up in your face and everything. And truth be told, while that spicy chicken sandwich gave me the idea to write you, It’s really not what I came here to talk about, but you knew that.

I want to talk about this other stuff. Yes, I have a lot of images of you around my house, but don't get all full of yourself. They're not what you think. You're alright and everything, but I have no intention of worshiping you anymore than I worship the other guy.

My myriad devil pix are not homages or icons or anything like that. They’re reminders. You're here because I'm keeping an eye on you for John.

Did you know my brother John?

Detail, Kellar Toasts the Devil, Strobridge Lithograph Co., Cincinnati & New York, 1899.

He was an atheist, so maybe not. We're not talking about some squishy agnostic; we're talking your dyed-in-the-wool atheist. And frankly, Satan, I'm not far behind him with that designation.

You’d think this admission would eliminate you from my lexicon. Say “atheism,” and while everyone knows it erases the other guy, not many people think of it as doing the same for you. Maybe because it’s fun to “believe” in you as long as you’re safely relegated to a bin of bad costumes at the Spirit of Halloween store once a year.

Satan, John drank a lot. And when the booze came to an end it meant big trouble for him. If last call came around and he was out of options, that would put him on the road to the one destination he feared more than anything else: the DTs.

The DTs, or delirium tremens, transform a phrase like "filled with demons" from a metaphorical description to a literal and terrifying phenomenon. For John, it meant violent hallucinations that featured you in relentless pursuit of him. There you were in all your scaly horned glory without the comforting filter of a movie or TV screen to temper your power. You’d snarl at him and dart through the halls, peer and snicker at him through HVAC vents, and wait for him in the shadows. But the worst was when you’d break through the wall in a rage, tearing through the plaster and studs, to come for him and rip out his throat.

A quick question: As leader of the underworld, have you ever experienced gratitude?

Heaven knows I'm thankful for many things, but dig this, Satan: I am one tiny little rung in the DNA ladder away from John’s level of addiction. Just a puny genetic tweak and I might have ended up like my brother, strapped to a gurney in a detox ward screaming my head off about you breaking through the wall.

So while I’ve got myself a drinking problem, it ain’t John’s drinking problem and for that I am thankful.

Detail, Le Choclat Fausta Sèduit, Henry Monnier, 1922.

As Evil Overlord, booze is one of your best side hustles. Its road starts off with glittering martinis and raucous laughter and leads straight to … Well, you know. So did John.

The outer limits of his alcohol withdrawal pushed a self-proclaimed atheist’s mind to produce a deeply religious image. That is saying something, Satan. Call it proof the no-atheists-in-a-foxhole cliche got old and tired for a simple reason: it’s true. John’s experience might turn it upside down, but you get my drift

When their situation gets dire, most people are all over the other guy, with remorseful eyes turned upward in search of the pearly gates and Cloud 9 and all the rest of that bullshit. At that point—particularly when your buddy Grim Reaper makes the scene—people really don’t want to think about you, much less their previous dealings with you. This is when you’ll see a whole bunch of your thoughts-n-prayers.

Uh-huh.

But what does it say about someone when they see you at the edge of their world? I’m not talking about death necessarily, but what’s outside reality as we know it, the land on the other side of the looking glass.

John saw you there.

I’m not going to mince words. Chicken sammies, beer drive-throughs, Halloween masks, all of that is meaningless noise around you. Your real business is acquiring souls, that's what you do. And while this is from the advanced class: even an atheist can believe a person’s made a deal with the devil. The details of those tragic transactions could undoubtedly fill volumes, but right now I don't care to read so much as one word about any of it.

I have my own private Satan legacy to deal with, a simple binary proposition. When he pulled the trigger to end his own life, when the gunshot rang, when the essence of John O'Brien slipped from the body he inhabited for nearly 34 years, right at that moment, did he succumb to your unforgiving clutches, or did he just escape them?

I will live with that question forever.

Now then Satan, know this: If you somehow emerged from the flat white screen in front of me and your filmy wet lips spread into an evil smile and you proclaimed yourself to be at my service, I wouldn’t ask you to answer that question. I would not give you the satisfaction of validation.

I would clench my bony hands into fists and bludgeon you with them again and again and again until exhaustion overcame me and I collapsed into a heap on the ground.

Now you'll forgive me for not ending this with my usual salutation.

Erin