DEVIL'S ADVOCATE
by
T.J.Hurford
copyright: T.J.Hurford. 1996
Deep in the bowels of ZRCTV the writing is definitely on the wall for Don Allen. Falling ratings have made his formerly prime time show a joke. Unfortunately, to his bosses, it is anything but funny. Sponsors are threatening to pull out unless the downward trend is reversed. "Smarten yourself up; change your debauched ways!". Come up with something new OR ELSE.
Don is pissed off. He has tried everything. Snail racing. Bimbo baiting. 'Gays' wrestling in mud. (He'd like THAT one, it would have given a lot of his friends secure jobs for years to come). Unfortunately the Mother's Moral Union had definitely NOT liked it.
Don returns to his penthouse apartment and prepares to do the only thing that a 'true' man can do under such circumstances. He flings the window wide and steps out onto the ledge. Below him is an immense drop. He closes his eyes and is just about to step out into space when a voice close to his ear suddenly causes him to fall backwards into the flat.
Don shakes his head and looks up. Silhouetted against the sky there is a LARGE figure. Almost barrel-shaped, it is, nonetheless, obviously female. He shakes his head again in disbelief and moves backward to a chair. The shape on the ledge hops nimbly down into the room. It is, he now sees, clad in skin-tight black lycra, has a red-horned cowl on its head and is carrying a pitchfork in its left hand. There is a sudden movement and a long, forked tail, its tip sparkling with blue light whips into sight and then disappears again.
Don stairs at the half-full bottle of whisky beside him. "Don, My Boy. You'd better give this stuff up or it might kill you". He laughs at this and walks slowly toward the window. He looks at the figure again, shaking his head and blinking several times. "Not yet, though". He tips his head back and drains the bottle in a few dribbley gulps.
The figure is, he now sees, HUGE. "Look, Jumbo. I don't know whose party you've just come from, but the way out is over there". He hooks a thumb at the apartment door. "The zoo is two blocks down in the park". He turns away and walks unsteadily toward the bathroom. Opening the door he stares in disbelief. Wedged in his shower, flab bulging against the glass is his visitor. With mouth open he looks back into the main room. 'She' isn't there. He looks back into the bathroom. The shower is empty. From behind him there is the sound of the window being closed. He gulps and rushes into the shower cubicle to stand fully-clothed under the streaming water. The figure appears naked in the doorway. Don has had enough shocks for one day and he slides in a dead faint onto the tiled floor.
If Don had thought this day was bad, the following morning, afternoon and evening are far worse. He awakes lying on his side staring at the bedroom wall. Images and memories of a steamy passion-filled night of sordid sex with a very active hippopotamus all to the accompaniment of flashing red lights and heavy metal music disco-ised flash into his mind. He laughs ruefully. "Too much scotch, Don, My Lad. This is definitely NOT one for the 'shrink', methinks". There is a sound like a ton of figs rapidly leaving an elephant. With a jerk, Don sits up, or, at least, he tries to. There is a gigantic flabby arm draped across him. The words 'LOVE' and 'HATE' are just visible tattooed in a Gothic script which at any other time he might have admired. Movement has awakened his companion. 'She' seizes his horrified face and plunges it into seemingly acres of undulating bosom. Suffocatingly wet whimpers can be heard as, with futile struggles, Don Allen is engulfed and subdued by the primal urges of his mammoth visitor.
Time passes all too slowly for Don that day. By evening he is a disheveled cringing wreck, starting violently at every sound. His visitor, meanwhile, is obviously enjoying herself. Encased now in a skin-tight scarlet cat suit, she has eaten him out of house and home and abused his poor body in every way imaginable to satisfy her perverted sexual needs and fantasies. "YOU BITCH!. You've used me. I feel so cheap. OH!. GOD." "No good calling on Him, baby. He can't help you now. You're mine. ALL MINE". The woman cackles in glee. Her body ripples in waves of fat as the humour of the situation titillates her.
Don stares in disbelief. "Are YOU trying to tell me that you are...?. That can't be possible. HE'S a man....isn't He?". The woman subsides into a groaning chair. "Sometimes yes. And sometimes no. It all depends on what I feel like at the time. Last night I was both.". She erupts into deep chuckles as the man shudders violently, remembering the previous night.
Don Allen is, although he hasn't yet realised it, a lucky man. A VERY lucky man. He has made the intimate acquaintance of the second (and some would say) the first, most powerful entity in the universe. THE DEVIL.
The next afternoon after yet another night of debauchery, Don is released. At the T.V. station colleagues are surprised by the change in him. Gone are the cheap suit, loud tie and scruffy sneakers. Gone too are the loud braying laugh and foul, sexist jokes. Don is a changed man. He is now a very sharp person. Italian suits and slick hairstyle. Mirror-polished shoes and fashionable 'shades'. Is it a trick of the light or do his teeth really sparkle when he smiles??.
Don reveals unexpected talents for piano-playing. He plays the violin so expertly, that recent immigrants released from the superstition and slavery of rural Eastern Europe cross themselves when they hear him and mutter charms to ward off the 'evil eye'.
Don suggests a new idea for a programme. He will play 'Devil's Advocate', standing in for the evil men (and women) of history, and arguing, in full costume, for their side of things. He will 'play' a weekly game of 'what if'', debating against academics, politicians and military men and women. He will research each role meticulously.
The management loves the idea and Don takes the station back to the top of the ratings. There is just one problem. Don always wins these discussions. His justifications for the parts played in history by the likes of Stalin, Hitler, Lucrezia Borgia, Attila the Hun, the Marquis de Sade at al is so convincing that 'phone-in' viewers vote time and again for his side. It is subversive and dangerous. Many are afraid of the influence on the young that this programme is having and so they decide that Don must be removed. PERMANENTLY. Unfortunately they do not realise Don has not been playing the Devil's Advocate. He actually IS the Devil's Advocate. In return for the occasional night of passion, Don Allen has sold his soul to the Devil. His powers of persuasion are not the only ones that he now possesses. Don, to all intents and purposes, is now a Junior Devil himself with abilities beyond the mind of mortal man. one attempt after another to 'do him in' fails spectacularly.
Don doesn't mind. His show has achieved phenomenal ratings and private attempts on his life are clumsy and ineffectual, until, that is, he meets Clarissa, a Junior God and 'plaything' of the Supreme Being who has invested her with abilities beyond the mind of mortal man in exchange for the occasional night of passion.
Clarissa Goodbody has been sent to redress 'the balance'. Unfortunately for God and the Devil, Clarissa and Don have both picked up a thing or two technique-wise and find that satisfaction can only be theirs when locked in each other's embrace. Don and Clarissa have fallen in love. Almost all of their powers are taken away by their 'mentors', but they don't mind. They front a new late-night show on advanced and creative sexual techniques that ensures them 'immortality' to the sex-crazed, and infamy amongst the moral minority.
end
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