The Devil Eats Pizza

 In another life I wrote a series of over-the-top comedic short stories - imagine a low-brow cartoon novelized by a kid trying to be Douglas Adams - in which Satan and several other Hell-spawned folk traveled an increasingly strange and hostile multiverse together. It's remained high in my heart and is regarded fondly by many friends, but I could never hope to recapture its bottled lightning.
        As such I've spent a good portion of my free time brainstorming a less surreal reboot, something more in-line with where my creative juices have settled in adulthood. Since its comedy leaned a little visual for prose, my first thought was, "okay, how could I make this thing visually?" My idea was a sitcom in which the well of human belief has run dry, forcing the divine from their homes and bringing them to Earth as regular people. A sort of reverse-isekai that left Satan a balding middle-aged man stuck working at a Mystery Shack-ish tourist trap in Wisconsin Dells. I called it "Wisconsin Hells".
        I banged out a couple dozen passages, introducing Abaddon (ambiguously gendered, physical form has aged better than Satan's, works at a mall ninja knife shop with a conspiracy theorist coworker) and Satan's boss, Charlie (devout Christian who doesn't know he's a vampire. Master of creating convincing hoaxes, but sometimes stumbles by accident into one of the few remaining "magical" objects or creatures left on Earth). The tone is generally somewhere between King of the Hill and Bob Newhart, slice-of-life and dry despite the fantasy elements.
        It's a simple, silly concept that I moved on from rather quickly. They made a cameo appearance in a short story I was commissioned to write for a Doctor Who-adjacent book in Summer 2024, which should hopefully be out by Summer 2026. I didn't expect to do more with them until I got the idea to write a Halloween special, something I'd previously done in 2023. It was fun, but too in-jokey to be of any value here. This one, I think, has more to it and thus I've opted to share it.
        If nothing else it'll let me prove these characters existed before they showed up in a Doctor Who tie-in, which should keep them off the Tardis Wiki.

Satan sighed a long-winded rumble, a thunderous vibration that almost seemed to burrow, physically, below all the world’s other sounds. Abaddon, long his right-hand Thing, recoiled slightly at a sound it had come to associate with catastrophes of Biblical proportions.
“You’re telling me,” Satan’s whole body quaked, “that this is the cheapest pizza in this city? Good lord!”
“Welcome to the friggin’ club.” Abaddon laughed, rolling its eyes. “And I never told you it was the cheapest. Just the cheapest that doesn’t suck. Unless you want Domino’s.”
        “Domino’s? On Hallow’s Eve? Why would you even put such a thought in my head?” In another era, fire would have leapt from his tongue.
“Pizza at all sort of seems like a waste on Halloween, though. How ‘bout something nice, something autumn-ish? A cauliflower soup or something pumpkiny.”
“You know as well as I do that neither one of us is in the mood to cook today.”
“Got me there. So, we splitting a large?”
        “No.”

The place was crowded, mostly parents taking their kids out for a slice before the tricks and treats. A long winding line nearly spilled out the door, reminding Satan of some of his old demons’ tails. He would’ve been its pointed tip - though in truth he was closer to round than pointed these days.
The line moved faster than it could’ve, but slower than it should’ve. Finally, he reached the counter. A scraggly, soul-patched kid looked him up and down. “Didja call ahead?”
“Of course I did.” Satan grumbled.
“What was the name?” Shit, what was Abaddon’s human name again?
        “Abby, I believe.” That felt weird, after three Big Bang/Crunch cycles spent calling it nothing but Abaddon.
        “We have one for Abstinence.” Somebody in the back repeated that name, laughing to himself.
        “That should be it.”
        “It should be, or it is?”
        “Yeah. Yes, it is. It definitely is.”
        “Just fuckin’ with you. Sorry. ‘S been a long day.”    
        “You and I both. Is my pizza done?”
        “I think they’re the ones coming out right now. But, this one looks kinda undercooked.” He shoved a paddle under Satan’s large cheese and jostled it gently. Then he pointed at the still pale-white mozzarella in the center. “It’s kinda, y’know, blond and jiggly.”
        The guy in the back chuckled to himself, “heh. Blond and jiggly.”
        “Well, feel free to stick it in a while longer. I can wait.” Satan shrugged.
        “You heard the man,” the dude with the soul patch giggled, “stick it in there, daddy!”

“I’m surprised, and a little disappointed, that they didn’t laugh when I gave them a big tip.” Satan shook his head. “Young men never change, do they?”    
        “I changed into an old woman.” Abaddon said.
“It’s different when you’re hellspawn.”
“No, humans can do that too. Government don’t like it, but when has a politician ever been happy?”
“I miss their screams the most.”
“That never got old.”
“Much like the girls they went for.”
“Amen to that.”
“Do you still find it odd, letting phrases like that loose without feeling a burning through your esophagus?”
“I find it freeing.”
“Well then, hallelujah. And a happy Halloween to all of you at home.”

"Oh, but we’re not done yet!” Charlie said, grinning wide. “I got one more new display here.”
It had been so long since Satan’s last encounter with the genuinely paranormal that he’d begun looking forward to these meetings with no sense of irony. This was all he had left. “What is it, boss?”
“They say this artefact came to the man I bought it from straight from the depths of Hell.” His smile spread so wide it looked about ready to eat his ears.
“Color me intrigued.” This could be good. Charlie grabbed something unseen and opened his clasped hands theatrically for his handful of employees. The thing they saw was truly wretched, a couple inches tall but with a body like a man’s, arms ending in feet and a sort of stubby conical nub in place of legs. The head was that of some horrid, bug-eyed rat, its fur a sort of fishy green. It shrieked.
“I’ll be damned, it really is from Hell,” Satan smiled the kind of soft, wistful smile he would’ve once found unbecoming. Something else had made it.