The Devil's Day Off

Some mornings it’s hard being a Secret Service samurai, arm-wrestling the legions of Darkness without denting your balls of steel. Leaving the safety of my bed yesterday, it didn’t take me long to realise that the balls in Hell’s Lotto had rolled the numbers of my shitstorm quickpick.

First, when I got to the library to print out the tickets for our flight, a sign told me their pcs were all down. This being Plympton (not exactly the tourist capital of Rainland) the closest internet café was fifty miles away, across a raging river of lava and guarded by an oversexed-yet-horny werewolf.

No worries, I thought, as I took it in my long stride and calculated a back-up plan.

Making a fast stop at home to remove my work clothes from the washing machine and pop them in the dryer I discovered that said washing machine had broken down, locking my clothes inside. As I peered through the tiny, round window my soaking clothes looked ashamed to be in cahoots with Beelzebub and his rotten tactics.

But I looked into the bleary, red eyes of Satan’s minions and spat.

Then, because the bus driver wouldn’t except a tenner (not enough change) and I had to buy something from the Tesco to get a smaller denomination, Satan thought he could beat me by making the queue really long and making the machine swallow my cash when I used one of those do-it-yourself check-outs.

People think the Devil is only to blame for the biggies – War, Pestilence, Famine, Death – but even the Dark Lord has a day off. He does some gardening, collects stamps, maybe is responsible for a new boyband, and then burns your toast or makes a shoelace snap.

I figure, if that red bastard is gonna fuck with me, I’m gonna fuck with him. So every time he makes me step in a dog turd, or moves my cereal bowl so the milk goes all over the table, instead of blabbing a load of expletives I try to laugh about it; try and make him think I love this shit.

In retrospect, even the worst day of your life is just an amusing story to tell down the pub.

So fuck you, Satan. I got my plane tickets, I got my money out the Tesco machine, and today is my day off and you’re back at work inventing AIDS or causing drought or filming another season of Jersey Shore.

You suck. I win.