My feet shuffled towards the double doors past the secretary. My hands rummaged through my thinning hair doing my best to get presentable. Was that a stain on my shirt? I turned the knob.
“S-sir? You wanted to see me?”
At his desk, Lord Lucifer sat. The fallen angel’s horns reached near the ceiling fan and his ebony skin perfectly complimented the fine ivory suit he adorned. “Al, good ole’ Adlcidius, old Al, Ally boy, there you are! Come in and grab a seat!”
“T-thank you sir.” I waddled over to the posh leather chair across Lucifer.
“Now don’t you start that “sir” nonsense or else I’ll demote you to imp status right now!” Lucifer said with a hearty chuckle. “Lu works fine for me.”
“Yes sir, I mean Lu!”
“Hah! I like your attitude son!” The Lord of Darkness said, his massive claws rummaging through a series of manila files. “Now let’s see here. If I’m not mistaken, you’re up for a quarterly review. Ah hah!” Satan’s talon clasped a file with my name on it.
Fear began to race through my heart. My finger began to fiddle with noose of a tie at my neck once more.
“Ahh, you’re the hotshot who closed the Holmes account. My man! I wish I had guys like you back when I cut ties from my old boss.”
“Thank you.” I breathed, oxygen finally entering my lungs.
“Hmmmm.” Lucifer began to rummage through the other aspects of my file, flicking through page after page. “Well now I think we have some issues here.”
My heart stopped. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, it says here two months ago you caused your last client to fall in love?”
“He said the worst thing that could happen to him was get married!” I stammered
“And before that your other client scored a two-million-dollar settlement?” Lucifer asked, his eyebrow rose in confusion.
“Well, I successfully possessed the client.” I did my best to pad the story. “Then I had him drink some cleaner. Or, I thought I was cleaner at least.”
“It was a protein drink that didn’t list an ingredient your client was allergic too.”
“He left it in the cleaning cupboard!”
The fallen angel shook his head. “Well that’s beside the point Al. We got a string of mix ups like that. It says here you successfully got your client pregnant!”
“But sir!” I began to beg. The tie was now completely off my neck and sweat rolled off me like a waterfall.
“Now, now.” Lucifer laughed. “You’re not in any trouble. I value you as a member of this firm. Now I can’t offer you a promotion given your bad luck lately. But you’re a solid performer. So, I tell you what.”
“Sir?”
“If you’re struggling, how about we send you back down to the call center to work on sales?” My boss offered with a smile. “If your numbers pick back up, we can bump you back up in a few decades.”
Sales. This place truly was hell.
END