Lord of Hell (Alex Holden) by Devin Harnois

constructed refugee camps.
    Mexican news sites had more information. And footage of me. The newscasters didn’t know what to make of me. There were interviews with villagers talking about me, how I’d saved them. That I was a saint, an angel.
    Oh, if they only knew.
    I stared at the computer screen, trying to figure out if I was being paranoid or not. “Am I just noticing these things more, or is there something to it?” I asked Mew-Mew. “All within a month, there’s an earthquake where there shouldn’t be one, a tsunami on the other side of the world, and then a dormant volcano that showed no signs of erupting suddenly blows and takes out a bunch of villages.”
    Stefan already said it’s not Ragnarok. Or at least there aren’t specific signs, like last time. Mew-Mew sat on top of the couch, his tail curled around his paws.
    “What if the world is sliding into chaos, like all those End Times…?” I swallowed, my stomach going heavy and cold.
    You think it might be Jehovah?
    “Shit.” I rubbed the side of my face. “No, it can’t be that. Satan is supposed to take over the world first. I’m supposed to fool everyone into worshiping me, and him. Create a one-world government, give them the mark of the beast and all that shit.”
    Mew-Mew flicked his tail. But Satan isn’t around to take over the world, and you won’t do it in his place.
    “So maybe I screwed up the prophecy and he’s trying to salvage what’s left. If he can’t have his world-ruling Antichrist and laughing Satan, maybe he’ll skip to the bit where the world dies in chaos.” I didn’t want that to be true. I hoped I was being paranoid, because if Jehovah was trying to end the world, I didn’t know what I could do.
    I slid back from my desk. “I need to talk to him.”
    I went up to the gates of Heaven again. Saint Peter glared at me while he sent a messenger to Jehovah. The messenger came back and said he refused to talk to me. I screamed through the gates for a good fifteen minutes, even kicked at the gold bars a few times, but all I did was annoy Peter. I gave the gate one more good kick before leaving. I also gave Peter the finger.
    Since I couldn’t get answers straight from the source, I went for an alternate route. I went to see Joshua. He answered the door and looked me over, one eyebrow rising just slightly.
    “Alex, is something wrong?”
    “I think Jehovah might be trying to end the world. I went to ask him about it, and he refuses to talk to me. I thought maybe I was just being paranoid and it was just coincidence, but now I’m really worried.”
    He stepped aside to let me in. “What was a coincidence?”
    “The earthquake in Indiana. The tsunami in Indonesia. And now the volcano in South America.” I went inside and started pacing. “The tsunami alone might have been normal. It’s a danger zone. The earthquake, though? One that strong in a place that doesn’t get many? And the volcano was dormant for a long time. The scientists swear there were no signs of it erupting and it just exploded out of nowhere. Three huge disasters in a month.”
    Joshua watched me. “You think it’s the tribulation?”
    “Is it?” I asked, hoping he knew the answer. Revelation and the Satanist version of it in The Book of Truth were guides to the end of the world, but neither of them were meant to be literal in every detail. They were full of metaphor. There were things they agreed on, though, the same signs of the end of the world: my rise to power, the Second Coming of Christ, huge and multiple natural disasters, and a final battle that would determine if the new world was ruled by Jehovah or Satan. But with Satan out of the picture and me refusing to follow my destiny, I had thought the world was safe.
    “I don’t know.” He sat on the edge of the couch. “I thought you were supposed to take over the world before the worst of the disasters happened.”
    “What if Jehovah changed the plan?” I said. “Satan tried to