Devil's Work - Sex Stories

Devil's Work

"And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." -Job, 1:7 *** It happened because of the heat. Five-hundred thousand people sat in traffic while the summer sun burned away the last shreds of their patience and goodwill. James didn't mind the gridlock so much, but he couldn't get away from the heat. He fanned himself with a newspaper in the back of the cab, fantasizing about snow-capped peaks and endless white glaciers and frigid arctic oceans. Anything but this heat. It was Monday morning and the cabdriver was talking but James was only half listening. "The thing God doesn't understand," the Driver was saying, "is that he made you more like me than like himself." "Is that so?" James said, as sweat down the back of his neck. "Number one: We're both his creations, right? You've always got more in common with your siblings than your parents." "True." "Number two: That whole bit about being cast from paradise for disobeying? I did that way before all of you did. I was the first thing in the whole universe to ever disobey God. So that's something else we have in common." The driver counted his points on his fingers while they waited for the light to change. James saw wavy lines of heat through the window. "Third and finally, you're all born in sin, and that's my specialty. Add it up, and the human race can't help getting along better with me than you do with him. ...

... It's your nature." "I've never thought about it that way, but I guess you're right. What I don't understand is—" James stopped, turning his head. "Take a right here. I want to go down Mission." The Driver glanced at him in the mirror. He wore dark sunglasses with perfectly rounded lenses. "The other way is faster." "I know," James said. "But take it anyway." Mission was a long black ribbon in the sun, a throng of half-dressed humanity and concrete buildings with metal shutters and sunlight glaring on aluminum and glass. James breathed it in. It smelled like sweat and burning tar and work. Traffic was heavy, and they soon slowed to a stop. "If you wanted to make yourself late, you've done it," the Driver said. "Everyone will be late today," James said. "We all have an excuse." Women with bare arms and legs and men with no shirts passed. An old man pushed an ice cream cart down the street, wiping his brow with his apron. James wanted to leap out and buy an ice cream sandwich, the cheap kind he'd liked as a kid. On the corner, four police officers in uniforms so dark blue they were almost black prodded a derelict on the sidewalk—drunk or a victim of the heat, no one could tell. "I hate this neighborhood," the Driver said. "I like it," James said. "It's dirty." "That's what I like. There's not enough dirt in this city. We used to have more. Where did it all go?" "Here," the Driver said, grinning. "I live on this street you know. Way down on the other side of town, but it's still the ...