Dave vs The Devil (Original) - [Urban Fantasy/Comedy]

"Mommy and Daddy, you can't catch me!" Eli said.

He giggled as he flew around the room, taking advantage of the high ceiling to keep out of reach of Margaret and to maneuver away from me as I flew around trying to catch him. Even with the high ceilings, trying to fly around the room for me was difficult, and my feet kept knocking things over and off surfaces.

"Fitzwilliam Elijah Daverson! Get down here right this instant!" Margaret yelled. She stamped her foot and pointed down at the ground.

"Mommy! That's mean! I'm just trying to have fun!"

"You can have fun on the ground, where it's safe, honey."

"I'll be fine Mommy! You'll see!" He giggled and spun through the air, narrowly avoiding my grasp.

"Dave, stop chasing him. You're just encouraging his behavior," she said.

"Yes, dear," I said. I dropped to the ground and flattened out my shirt. I looked up at Eli. "We can do this all day, buddy. You have to come down sometime."

"No, I don't Daddy! I'll just stay up here all…" Eli trailed off.

Eli closed his eyes and fell asleep in the air. He dropped towards the ground like a rock.

"Catch him, Dave!" Margaret screamed.

"I got him!" I said.

I lined myself up with his fall and caught him in my muscular arms. You may not agree, but this is my story and I think I'm muscular and well endowed, so don't argue with me. "Well endowed" is just another term for strong, right? Right?

I'm just kidding! I know what well endowed means, obviously. Don't ask me to explain it, though.

All that said, let's recap. This is my third journal I've written since I made that bet with Lucifer years ago. Hopefully, you're learning something from this.

I don't want my replacement as the Devil to be stuck in this job forever. That would make me feel guilty for tricking you into the job in the first place. And neither of us wants that.

A lot has happened in the last three years. I made a bet with the devil, my ex girlfriend killed me to help me win the bet, I wished for Lucifer to get therapy, and I took over for him as Devil when he ascended back into heaven as a reinstated archangel.

Then a bunch of other stuff happened. I became a father, Cain stole some demon magic, damned souls escaped from the circles of Hell, and Judas snuck his way into Heaven.

A fallen angel, Samael, revealed himself to be the mastermind behind Cain's plot, he opened the abyss to release his fallen angel brethren and in the process released all the monsters that were also trapped inside.

Then he impersonated the President, killed all the world leaders, and tried to kill me, but lost due to my sheer awesomeness overpowering his loserness.

Bingo bango, and now we're here. Well, not quite. I threw a party celebrating my victory, played matchmaker a couple times, and found out that Lucifer tricked me into becoming his replacement so he could perform a coup in Heaven.

Now we're back to the present. I looked down at the sleeping Eli in my arms and remembered that despite everything bad that had happened, I couldn't be happier. I had a lifelong partner whom I loved in Margaret, and a beautiful five-year-old son—in human years—whom I loved just as much.

Margaret loved him more than me, but that was the job of a mother. To love their children more than life itself. And she did. To her folly at times.

She still has the scar on her hand from grabbing a knife out of Eli's hand when he was running around the house with one. It was more important to her to keep him safe than to not grab the knife by the blade—ouch. Not that she was wrong in doing that. Neither of us would have been able to live with ourselves if he had gotten hurt.

Tomorrow was to be his first day at school. His aging was accelerated so he wouldn't be in normal classes. Instead, he would have a series of private tutors who would cram as much information into his brain as fast as possible.

One benefit of his accelerated aging was his mind absorbed information like a sponge. He was a genius, at least in how quick he picked up new information. We didn't know what the limit was in terms of complexity because he was still so young.

Unfortunately, these private tutors were teachers at the local school, so he would have to spend all his learning time on campus. Margaret and I were worried he would face bullying for being so different.

Not only was he half-demon, half-human, but his accelerated aging would alienate him from his peers. While they would be spending a year in each grade, he would only spend a matter of days in each. That was assuming he passed the tests to graduate to the next grade.

If he didn't, his life would be even worse. He would quickly get too large and old for it to make sense for him to be in earlier grades, and he would stick out even more than he already did.

Neither Margaret nor I wanted that, so I would be keeping a watchful eye on him to make sure nothing bad happened to him at school. Sometimes being the Devil had its perks. In Hell, I could basically do whatever I wanted most of the time.

Stolen story; please report.

The only thing I had to be concerned about was public backlash, but I was powerful enough to silence any dissidents. I just didn't want to have to do that. Mostly because I wasn't a murderer.

But I didn't anticipate getting backlash from being overprotective of my son. At worst, I would get some nays on the new reality show about me called, "Dave Yay or Nay?"

I didn't know what purpose the yays and nays served, other than to measure my public approval. It's not like getting too many nays would vote me off the show. I wish they did. I wasn't super jazzed about this whole show concept in the first place.

But the producer, Harry Stabberstein, tried to convince me that the public was clamoring for it and needed it or they would lose faith in my leadership. What he actually convinced me of is that he wouldn't leave me alone until I said yes, imprisoned, or killed him. And since I wasn't a murderer and since infernal law allowed "journalists" to harass public officials to "get to the truth," I realized my only option was to yes sooner or later. So I went with sooner.

As a reality show, it does have interviews where cast members explain what they were thinking during different parts of the show. These sessions are obviously filmed after the events that they are referring to, but since in reality shows the interviews can be shown simultaneously with the events on the show, I will do the same here so as not to confuse you.

And to answer your question, yes, I have been editing out the interview segments from the most recent events. I wanted to ease you into it rather than blasting you in the face from multiple angles all at once.

I also won't include all segments. Only things that make the story more entertaining, ahem, I mean, more informative.

I looked down at the young boy sleeping in my arms and smiled. I never knew I could love something or someone as much as I loved myself, but here we were. To be fair, I learned that when I started dating Margaret, but every new precious person embedded themselves into a hole in my wicked little heart.

[Dave - Interview Segment]

"And that's when I smelled it. Falling asleep from exhaustion must have relaxed all the muscles in his body. All of them. I wanted to drop him in that moment, but I knew Margaret would never forgive me. So I just very gently placed him on the floor and said, 'I caught him. You're changing him.'"

On top of having to attend school in Hell, Margaret suggested, and I reluctantly agreed that he should have a partly human upbringing. She thought he should spend time in a human school and we should take a day trip to Earth every week as a family.

Not only that, but she thought we should have outings in Hell as well every week. I thought she was trying too hard, but she reminded me that Eli's childhood would be significantly shorter than a normal child's. This wasn't a journey. It was a race.

We wanted to pack as many enriching and good memories into his small child brain as we could before he was a grown man, and all his personality traits, habits, thoughts, and opinions were mostly formed. Sure, adults learned new things and grew, but his formative years were a crucial developmental period, and his formative years were about ninety days long.

To arrange human schooling for Eli and false identification for Margaret when we visited Earth, I called the Assistant Director of the FBI. I'm going to skip the practically obligatory Federal Booty Inspector joke and tell you what he said.

Drew, who was once upon a sweltering Nevada afternoon, a highway cop, then a federal agent, and now the Assistant Director of the FBI, informed me that he couldn't help me with something as trivial as my son's education when he was rooting out fallen angels from the government and the country.

I informed him that he would have to deal with a very angry demon woman named Margaret Daverson, who was my lifelong partner and the mother of my child, if he said no.

I also reminded him that demons were significantly hardier than humans and much stronger too, so she could whoop his ass into next week without even trying. And if he did somehow manage to kill or restrain her, I would put him through so much torment, he'd wish he died and went to Hell.

He reluctantly agreed, if I agreed to help him with his fallen angel investigation. I reminded him he was in no position to negotiate, but he begged and pleaded so much that I felt sorry for him and relented.

There seemed to be a pattern forming here. I often said no to people, but if they persistently pestered me, I eventually gave in. I didn't know if that was just a character trait or a character flaw.

Upon my agreement, he sent me a 300-page pdf file of everything the FBI knew about the fallen angels, their movements, and their plans. It included activity in other countries. Technically, the FBI was supposed to be domestic, but apparently they were working with the CIA on this one because fallen angels in other countries were just as dangerous as fallen angels in theirs.

Assistant Director Drew picked a small elementary school in Las Vegas—naturally—to place my son. I asked him why Vegas, and he responded, "Why not Vegas? Isn't it your jam? Sin City and all that?"

I responded that it was my 'jam', sure, but did everything have to fit a theme with him? He said it was the only way he'd remember which school he'd sent my son to because of the mental association. I reminded him that notes existed, but he wouldn't budge.

So apparently I was raising my son in the city of sin. Great. Just great. As if I wasn't going to have enough trouble teaching him right from wrong when he was half-demon and lived in Hell, I would have to watch out for his friends in high school or earlier, taking him to back alley poker games and strip clubs.

The only good thing I saw out of this whole situation was Uncle Tony. Remember the Reno bar owner who hosted my "Save the World" parties? I made him the godfather of my child. Mostly because Lucifer wasn't available and might have betrayed me, and was actively trying to take over Heaven.

The only reason I didn't think he'd succeeded yet was because nothing terrible had happened on Earth yet. I figured the first thing he would do was start causing trouble for the humans that the bible said he hated so much.

Tony Zamboni, or Uncle Tony, had opened a new location for his bar in Las Vegas recently and was overseeing its development. It was in the finishing stages of construction and he was looking to open it soon.

The thing that was so great about this, is he had reached out to and networked with organized crime in the area before the move. Since he was only a bar owner as a front for his real business, crime, he needed to okay the move with the city's underground authorities first.

And as such, he was now connected in a way that would allow him to find out if my kid was getting into trouble. And he was close enough to be able to bail him out if he did find his way into a pinch.

I would be there for my kid, but with this new assignment to investigate fallen angels, I wouldn't be able to watch him at school all day. Besides, after some thinking, I realized how creepy and helicopter parent-y that was, and I didn't want to be that guy.

Margaret wasn't too happy about it, because she was born to be a helicopter parent, but I talked her down and convinced her he would be relatively safe, even if he did get into some hijinks.

What kid didn't get into a little trouble? I said it would be good for his development and after some discussion she agreed I was right. So I wiped my hands clean of the situation and everything went smoothly after that.

Who am I kidding? I knew it wouldn't be that easy, and I turned out to be right, yet again. Sometimes I hated being right all the time, but it was a burden I had to bear. Poor me, right?