Satan felt different when he wasn’t human.
Thinking hadn’t left him yet, but Being started to drag behind him as Satan barreled through matter. Seeking materiality but being unable to give up on humanity, Satan had settled in a stately, desert tree, where there was enough wind and wet tissue for him to talk with Maud. If the tree was a painting, imagine molecules standing up and arguing beneath the reds and blues, the surface area beneath the surface.
“You’ve come to stop me,” Maud heard him say.
“I’m here to talk.” said Maud.
Satan flared lightly at the tree’s flowered edges. He could wrap up into such dense stuff as space was made of, yet the need to bloom still overwhelmed him. Satan was the universe’ most reckless thought and he had barely rested until now. Was Maud really hoping for a conversation as he caught his breath?
“Were trees more lovely before humans? Before humanity soldered names to feel their branches by, roots, lignin, the dendronization of names polluting perfectly good wood?”
Maud said, “The daughters monitor souls, not humans. Our names for things are far more complicated than their dictionaries will ever invent.”
“Such pride they take, in language of all things. It is admirable.
Satan looked at Maud’s monitor, hanging at her side like a broken bough.
“Are you still looking for just the right souls to track in your legends? Facts and figures. I’m tired of it all. These oil paints relate themselves as beads of sweat to my dendrite nervous system. Water and electrons. Even conversation is drying up. Breath, Maud. Relax. Taste the air and blossom without all that extra opinion. Let breeze pollinate within reach. Let thought put seeds only as far out as we can see. Notice, the view gets brighter the smaller you get. The red giants in human skies are surrounded by dark. What’s wrong with a little less on those tablets of yours?”
“What you’re doing is dangerous.”
Satan paused. Maud scratched at her coffee stain.
“Don’t you also risk your own dismemberment?”
“Dismemberment,” scoffed the devil. “So … corporeal. I prefer ‘fragmentation.’ Or ‘dissemination’, maybe.”
Delusional, thought Maud. She quit fidgeting with her sleeve. How am I supposed to argue with these crazy, fucking thoughts?
“I intend to pull myself from this sinuous entanglement, sap what’s left of my physics, drain the rest and let the nearest star dry every cartilage down into one final spit of sand. Nothing you say will stop me. This is the end, Maud. The hard and total reset.”