The antichrist, also known as Todd, had a lot to live up to. His father, also known as Satan, was pretty much a legend in hell. He was also its ruler, god, and master.
So it is pretty fair to say that Satan cast a pretty big shadow. He would remind Todd of that too. Whenever they’d take a vacation to the mortal realm and foment some chaos, Satan would turn to Todd and say something like, “You better appreciate this trip, because your never going to be able to afford trips like these.”
The worst part is that Todd would be enjoying the trips. He liked hanging out with his dad. He liked tricking morals into ruining their lives and the lives of others, but whenever his dad would remind him of how much better he was than Todd, Todd would have like, full blown panic attacks.
He probably had his first when he was around a thousand years old, which is super young for a primordial being to experience.
Satan of course had no clue about any of this. His job was pretty time consuming. And he wasn’t much of a “check up on you” kind of dad. He was more of a, “Look at how great this is and how thankful you should be to have me.”
Plus, he was a single father, so you have to give him some credit there at least.
Todd was not a great student. Oftentimes he would struggle to pay attention in class. A demon therapist said that he may have ADHD, but his father just said he was lazy.
To be fair, Satan said that Todd was capable of succeeding, in fact he believed he could do whatever he set his mind to, but Satan thought Tidd simply lacked the drive to go out and achieve any of those things.
Todd wasn’t sure which one it was. On one hand, he really did want to do better in school. On the other hand, the school’s ipads had internet access, and Todd loved scrolling through the Lord of the Rings wiki pages.
Todd had probably memorized more facts about the lord of the rings than he had about proper torture techniques. In fact, the last time he had been on vacation with his dad, Todd had snuck off to New Zealand to watch them film the new season of Rings of Power, instead of wreaking much havoc.
He wrote some racist tweets about the colorblind casting because he’d felt guilty about his lack of work, but for the most he’d just watched them film the creation of the rings in awe.
Todd’s love for Lord of the Rings continued to grow until he became a certifiable super fan. It became harder for Todd to hate humans as his love for Tolkein’s book grew. Perhaps it was due to Tolkien’s christian themes throughout, or perhaps it was simply because, compared to Todd’s own gigantic height, humans were roughly hobbit sized.
So Todd’s enjoyment of torturing humans lessened over time, until eventually he almost always found a reason to not go on vacations with his father.
Satan acted like he didn’t care. Because his whole thing was that he was too cool for everything. But both Todd and Satan noticed how they were growing apart slowly, which is saying something since they were already so different.
For instance, Satan hated Lord of the Rings. He watched half of the first season of Game of Thrones, but had found Lord of the Rings to be completely inaccessible. In fact, when Satan had tried to pick up the first book in the series to read, it had literally burned his hand at the touch.
Satan was from a different generation, obviously. But more importantly, he was really just a different kind of person. In highschool, Satan had been on varsity torturing. Sure he had created and ran the school, but he had earned the position either way. At the end of the day, Satan just found it hard to talk to Todd about anything.
Eventually, it got to the point where the only time Satan and Todd would talk to each other was when Satan would bring up Todd’s future, also known as the apocalypse.
Todd was always supposed to be the harbinger of the apocalypse. Nobody had told Todd, but Satan had thought it had been obvious.
Then Todd would point out how Satan had used to say Todd would “Never be able to do these kind of things when he was on his own,” and then Satan would get really frustrated and say it was a joke and then Todd would say it “didn’t feel like a joke,” and Satan would raise his voice and Todd would raise his voice and all of a sudden their screaming at each other and then they notice everybody around them has stopped what their doing and even tortured souls are looking at them with super awkward expressions and then one of them would just storm off.
So things weren’t great.
One night, Todd was sitting on the couch in his apartment. He’d moved out a few hundred years ago, and he probably hadn’t talked to his father in decades. The last time they’d spoken, Todd had told his father that he wanted to be a set designer for the new Lord of the Rings show. His father said that was a waste of the education he had paid for Todd to receive.
Todd was going to tell him it was his dream, but then gave up. Satan was pretty set in his ways.
Anyway, Todd was looking at some pictures on his phone, and he saw one of him and his dad. They were torturing some guy. Todd smiled as he looked at it, remembering some of the good times he used to have with his dad. Sure, that wasn’t really his thing now, but he remembered the fun he had used to have.
Todd thought about what his dad was doing right then.
Before he could second guess himself, he took out his phone and called Satan. It answered after a few rings.
“Hello?” His father asked.
“Hey dad, what are you doing?” Todd asked.
“What do you want?” Satan asked with suspicion.
Todd grimaced. Already, they were heading towards a fight. Todd was tired of fighting.
“I just wanted to call and say I love you,” Todd said.
The line was quiet for several moments, before Satan responded.
“Thanks son.”
The call ended a bit later.
Sure, Satan didn’t say he loved Todd. But they did stop arguing over the apocalypse.
Baby steps.
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