“Satan’s Joke” by Paul Fay Jr.

Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush plays.

Lacey Banks and Jack Kennedy are two vastly different people. …And Satan made a Job-like commentary on the world and the state of Western Society when he decided to torture Lacey unnecessarily and for no good reason…and totally destroy her life and her existence as much as humanity and her evil would allow. Satan traditionally hates women. …And at the same time bring unnecessary and dangerous and unreasonable honor and unconditional love and respect and joy to Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy is complete scum…but we didn’t see it because Satan clouded our eyes the same way that he clouds everyone’s eyes to the opposite end with Lacey.

The idea wasn’t to send Jack to Heaven, but…Jack was with God. For a while. And Satan didn’t stop there. He prompted Jack to harass Lacey…and Lem. And now it seems that Jack is temporarily in Hell.

But…the egg is in Satan’s face.

Why?

Because he adores Lacey.

See the idea was to send Lacey into a Hellish existence and then watch her crumble and fair infinitely worse than Jack. Satan traditionally hates women. …Jack was supposed to weakly honor God in the end and even in the face of his outlandish good fortune find his way back to sanity and wisdom as a man, even if only marginally. And Lacey was supposed to totally crumble and turn into a demon who only God Himself could recognize. …But Satan is Satan…and he might not be as insightful as he supposed.

See…Lacey…has been tortured as much humans allow. …She’s not a particularly sinful person and after becoming a Born-Again Christian at age 3 or so her sin wasn’t helpful to Satan so he had to go into overdrive with all of humanity and attack her to a bizarre degree everywhere. Being an orphan he had options and he desperately used all of them.

But…Lacey’s walk with Christ is so solid…he was only made to feel more desperate increasingly over time. At age 24 he arranged to have her hit by a car just to put himself out of his own embarrassment. But she was so faithful to Christ and didn’t want to die out of God’s will that he couldn’t kill her and her car came to screeching stop just inches from her with smoke flying up into the air. (Really)

Then he tried to kill her again with a rare placenta issue that often kills both the mother and child. Lacey saw demons clawing at her uterus in the shower before she went into labor and wondered why. It was only when her stunned OBGYN found it during labor that Lacey discovered the problem.

Then Lacey’s son almost died from a rare form of epilepsy at age 2. And etc. and etc.

Lacey did have affairs. But only after almost committing suicide due to her husband’s own issues and lack of empathy. He’s likely mildly autistic and…was a womanizing alcoholic…but he claims he was raped. And maybe he was. And those affairs…were fully disclosed to her now legal husband.

Both of her parents who raised her molested her and while she grew-up believing she was loved…they likely don’t truly love her at all or almost at all. Really. They’d not care if she died…almost at all. They’re incredibly heartless people. …Not that they aren’t well-bred and thoughtful and pleasant, ironically. So…it’s hard to even describe their abuse to make anyone feel empathy.

Satan even ruined her one joyful experience with perfume by bringing an overweight, sloppy, ignorant, hateful, jealous poor woman from the south to be obsessed with her. And he made everyone sympathetic to Casi…on a deep level against their own interests and conscience just to try to make things worse. Possibly…because he realized he’d gone too far…and that God was going to let Lem be involved…and he wanted to pollute that too…ahead of time. Because nobody sympathized with Lem…or tried to understand his personal feelings or story…against their conscience and best interests. And they instead whitewashed Jack’s every move, even though Jack was a narcissist.

…Jack and Lem weren’t really in love with each other. Lem was being used and abused. And Jack was only as in love with him as he was able to be in his narcissistic, crass, cruel, and unreasonably spoiled state. …But people made it something it wasn’t. And Lem was clumsy and confused and accidentally made statements that are easily manipulated and misunderstood. So…even though Lem is Lacey’s only source of love…and God is allowing it…like in Portrait of Jennie…it doesn’t make any sense to people and they refuse to acknowledge Portrait of Jennie. Theologically they’d rather Lacey was an evil witch than a horrifically tortured Christian martyr. Even her own legal husband. He bullied Lacey just the other night about it and she had to plead with Jesus to not fall apart. And New Age people see her as a homophobic, backward idiot. Or they generally misunderstand her temperament or something unloving. Maybe not all. But she mostly hears from her haters. Everyday. All the time.

…But about a year or two ago…Lacey started feeling empathy for Satan and his demons…in their hatred of humanity. Not out of lack of love for her children…but the opposite. Lacey is possibly brilliant…and…so…she sees that while good humans can exist…there’s plenty of room for hatred of humanity. And she started praying for Satan and his demons to God. Out of genuine concern for them. Why did they fall? …She’s had several conversations with Satan with maternal worry for him and his demons as to why they rebelled…wondering if they can try to fix it with Jesus…but knowing that that’s unlikely.

A Sparrow Alighted Upon Our Shoulder by Johann Jóhannsson plays.

And Satan…has cried. Yes. Satan has been brought to tears. He didn’t expect Lacey to be so distanced from Lem’s love. He thought better of humanity. He also didn’t realize how hateful and evil they’d become toward her. How vile her mother who raised her would actually be. …And he knew her cousins might die…but he didn’t think it would be Matthew.

Maybe a dead Englishman tried to warn Satan with the character Matthew Crawley…but Satan didn’t hear the warning. And no…they aren’t in love. Lacey and Matthew are not in love.

Why was a dead Englishman trying to warn Satan? That’s a very interesting question.

Andante Con Moto – String Orchestra Variation by Nicholas Britell plays.

Maybe because Satan didn’t anticipate Lacey’s unconditional love for Great Britain. Just like he totally misunderstood her.

Why is he crying over her? Because he’s not pure evil. He’s evil. He’s Satan. But he’s not the creator of evil and God isn’t evil at all. It’s complicated. But essentially he’s just in rebellion against God…and so…he still can occasionally feel feelings as horrid as he is…and he’s actually cried genuinely over Lacey’s life. He feels more empathy for her than Jack Kennedy and the Kennedys do. That’s how far he went…and possibly why he cried. He…might have gone too far. And no she hasn’t slept with any demon or Satan. At least not at all intentionally or consensually. …Humans have just turned out to be more evil than Satan anticipated in regard to Lacey. And he likes her a lot more than he anticipated as well.

“Lacey’s not marrying Jesus. Right?” asks an Englishman.

“No!” says God.

“Then how does this make sense?” asks Lem.

God reassures Lacey and Lem and the Englishman about the entire situation but it’s far more difficult than it should be and that concerns God.

…I’m mad. Lots of people are. …I was willingly deceived…but I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. And I understand God couldn’t fully protect me…but I’m mad. And lots of us are. We had no idea.

See…here’s the thing. If the CIA killed Jack Kennedy they lied about it to cover it up for the sake of American pride, essentially. They didn’t want to have to explain that they had messed-up and allowed for Joe Kennedy Senior to buy the election. They didn’t want to fix the system and address the flaws in American democracy. That was….embarrassing hard work. …And it was far easier to just brush it all under the rug and kill Jack…thinking that it was an exception and not a post WWII trend. They still wouldn’t be open and honest about it…or it’s possible they don’t even know anymore everything that happened. It’s possible that that information was destroyed.

But meanwhile…Jack Kennedy’s mythical character persists. And Lacey has no idea how much Lem loves her. Because she’s daily harassed when she’s with Lem by entities violently insisting he was gay and powerfully in love with Jack Kennedy forever.

…People love Jack still to an unreasonable degree.

I think Satan thought that gay men would love Lacey a lot more than they do too. And that’s been surprising to him? He didn’t anticipate how hateful they’d stubbornly be towards her.

He knew about her other haters. But he misjudged gay men.

They…have a profound amount of love and respect for Jack Kennedy. They’re…bizarrely loyal to his legacy. …Look…Lem wasn’t gay. And I even literally said that while I was alive. But gay men hijacked Lem’s identity and are still holding him hostage in gay literature and media. …It should have been obvious Lem wasn’t completely gay if he was at all. But instead of being psychologically sophisticated and honest…gay men have chosen to be irrational and catty for the sake of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

…I’m devastated. But…perhaps it’s amusing to wonder why. Why are the gay men so damn loyal to Jack? Because it’s a profound amount of loyalty.

Jack was bisexual. Not gay. And you’d think gay men would have some lack of loyalty based on that…but they don’t. They overlook that. He’s not even one of them and yet they still cover for him…to a psychotic degree.

Do gay men hate Lacey? Why? It’s insane. Truly. It’s batshit crazy. They’d have no reason. …It’s tragic.

Or do they all secretly hate women?

Later.

Satan Takes A Holiday as performed by Tommy Dorsey plays.

Why did gay men decide to insist that Lem aaa gay?

“The truth is…we did it. It’s a curse.” admits MSNBC.

A group of gay readers open their mouths in shock.

“Yeah. But you weren’t supposed to be that gullible and vulnerable to believing the lies.” says Satan to gay men.

“What was the curse, MSNBC?” asks one gay man.

“Diego cursed everyone alive to think she was lying. Because he didn’t want her to have any form of self-defense left. …But…gay men were specifically cursed because…you all weren’t supposed to be able to reason anymore or you’d possibly realize Lem might have been straight and you’d all been wrong or lied to.” says Chris Hayes.

Stardust as played by Artie Shaw plays.

“You cursed our reasoning ability!?” yells David Pitts from the afterlife.

“Yeah?” says Chris Hayes. “Well…Diego did.”

“Dammit! This song sounds creepy!” says a gay man.

“Yeah. Want me to suck your cock?” asks Jack’s residual energy.

“Umm. No.” says a gay man.

Then why have you cursed Lem to that for eternity?

-PBF Jr.