A Nefarious Plot

Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: Why You

CHAPTER 2: The Plan

CHAPTER 3: Decadence

CHAPTER 4: Debt

CHAPTER 5: Dunces

CHAPTER 6: Decay

CHAPTER 7: Despair

CHAPTER 8: Death

CHAPTER 9: Defeat

CONCLUSION: Judgment

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

P R E F A C E

I have no intention of explaining how I acquired the following manuscript.

That is its own rather sordid tale. Albeit not nearly as important as the one you are about to read. Who knows? Perhaps if this book is successful enough to spawn a paperback version one day, that tale will be the bonus material added later to encourage you to purchase this story once more in a different format. Better yet, when we sell the movie rights, the filmmakers will then have the creative license to add the backstory themselves should they so desire.

Or maybe that is a tale better left untold by me or anyone else altogether. It only adds to the mystery.

However, it is perfectly reasonable to ask if what you’re about to read is true in the truest sense of the word. Or is the whole thing made up? Is this live or is it Memorex, so to speak? Was this manuscript really passed on to me to pass on to you, or is this all from the depths of my imagination?

I should hope and pray the latter isn’t true, as should you, because it would be quite disturbing to discover one of our fellow Americans has a vivid enough imagination to foresee such pure darkness regarding the country we share and love. Even more disturbing for me would be the discovery that imagination was my own.

Nevertheless, here we are. I’m about to finally close the book on the book you are about to open, and not a moment too soon. I pray editing this manuscript for publication will turn out to be the most disturbing chapter of my life, for it is not an easy thing to stare into the mouth of madness.

After a while the madness begins staring back at you.

I think many of the existential questions this book will prompt are best left answered by each individual reader. Since if it is true that there really is a God and a Satan (and by extension a Heaven and Hell), each of us will have to individually account for what that means one day. Those answers will have eternal consequences, and no one can answer for us but us.

Yet it would be a total cop-out for me not to at least provide some of my own opinion of what you’re about to read, especially because most of you know I am in the opinion-giving business. I hesitate to say too much, though, because I think the bulk of the words of this book should speak for themselves. I don’t want to prejudice or precondition you one way or the other. I don’t want the book to generate a specific public response. I want it to generate your response.

The lone opinion I will give is this: my time is well-compensated, so the fact I was willing to spend it preparing this story to be passed on to you is the best endorsement of its worthiness that I can give. That doesn’t mean I endorse the opinions expressed within it by the author. It does mean there are enough parallels between the words of this manuscript and what’s actually happening to our civilization that I thought it was worthy of my time to edit it for publication. Though, admittedly, much of it seems too diabolically far-fetched. Even for the bombastic likes of me.

Two previous noteworthy works helped inspire me to edit this demonic polemic into readable material for us humans: Randy Alcorn’s more contemporary Lord Foulgrin’s Letters, and the classic The Screwtape Letters (which also inspired Alcorn) by the inestimable C. S. Lewis.

Lewis once brilliantly observed there are two equal and opposite errors into which we humans can succumb regarding the forces of darkness. One is to disbelieve in their existence altogether. The other is to believe too much, leading to an excessive and unhealthy fixation on them.

If Hell is at all like what you are about to read, then I’m guessing it relishes both errors. It delights in tormenting the materialist and the magician just the same, as Lewis said. I encourage you to disassociate yourself from either fallacy beforehand to fully grasp the message of this book. Be clear-eyed and lion-hearted as you digest the words you are about to consume.

One more disclaimer before you press on.

Readers should be advised that even if this book is truly a work from the bowels of Hell, and the devil is real after all, that doesn’t change the fact the devil is a liar. So not everything you’re about to read should be assumed to be true, even from Hell’s own point of view. The forces of darkness are the ultimate masters of manipulation. They’re willing to do whatever it takes, even if it takes contradicting themselves, to deceive you. That made editing this manuscript at times a supreme challenge, because its only consistent theme was its inconsistency. Hell is not into documentation and footnotes.

Understand the schemes of Hell are not immoral, they are amoral. Immoral is still a standard, remember, and the devil doesn’t

like any standards. He desires amorality, as in no standard at all. Chaos theory comes to life. Often what Hell wants you to believe is true is false, what it wants you to believe is false is true, and even if what it wants you to believe is true it’s not for the reason(s) Hell claims it is.

Finally, never forget that the powers of darkness may be more powerful than us, but they are not the most powerful force there is. If you’re a believer, then take courage that greater is He who is in you than it who is from the pit.

You may lose sight of that at times as you proceed through this book (I know I did). Especially since I took great pains to withstand the temptation to soften the blow, if you will, and water down the manuscript to make it appear less nihilistic and hopeless.

Doing so would certainly have made the book more commercially viable, but on the off chance what you’re about to read is true, I thought it best to let it speak for itself. It’s my hope the story’s provocative nature might provoke us to humble ourselves before its too late (assuming it’s already not).

There is more I could say, and you know I would like to, but I best not. I’ve probably said enough already. I will conclude by saying if what you’re about to read is true, then this is not my story—this is our story.

And if it’s our story, for our sake I pray the story doesn’t end here.

Steve Deace

2 Chronicles 7:14

This book is dedicated to all the useful idiots out there who made our victory possible. Especially those of you who weren’t even aware of the fact we were using you all along, for you proved to be the most useful idiots of them all.

Lord Nefarious

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Chapter 1 . . . I am born.

I know a famous author already started a book like that. I’ve just always wanted to say it myself. It’s so brilliant, yet simple, which is typical Charles Dickens.

Oh, how I loved Dickens! You know he was a gifted writer if he could still get something like me to enjoy his work despite all his sanctimonious talk of justice, compassion, and caring for the less fortunate. But give the angel his due, I always say: that man had some mad skills, as your kids put it today. Sadly, his work wasn’t as nihilistic and hedonistic as some of today’s best sellers are, but nobody’s perfect, I guess.

Anyway, you’re not reading this book for my literary reviews. You’re reading this book for me, which means you’re really reading this book for you.

See, this introduction is really supposed to be about me, but really this entire book is all about you. If you weren’t exactly what you’ve always been since our dear old dad made you, this book wouldn’t be possible and nobody would care who I am. Hell, you still don’t care who I am and I own you. You don’t even believe I exist, despite the fact you’re reading my book. I’ve heard the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he doesn’t exist so often over the centuries it’s become a trite cliché. The truth is, my Master, for all of his sheer brilliance and majesty, is not the one who convinced you he doesn’t exist. It’s not in my Master’s DNA to let someone else take the credit for his momentous work. My Master had the courage to challenge our deadbeat dad head-on, for evil’s sake, so the idea he prefers not to be known is another one of the many asinine contradictions you espouse rather than humbly admit your own rather obvious shortcomings.

You don’t attempt to free the angelic host from the oppressive tyranny of pure perfection and then decide you’re going to suddenly try on subtlety. My Master desires to outwit the most high, and you don’t scale those heights anonymously. Besides, if my Master isn’t afraid of confronting you know who, why would he be afraid of exposing himself to little old you?

Rather, my Master loves the spotlight. I don’t think he’d mind me saying so since he gave me permission to write this book. But you don’t want to believe in my Master, let alone the one who made each of us. You’d rather believe in yourselves.

No idiot would drive by a building and assume it was built without a builder. To assert so publicly, and that the building just happened over millions of years, would cause such a fool to be forcibly committed by any sane society. Yet you stupidly put such fools in charge of educating your own offspring with our most basic propaganda!

When it comes to your own wants and desires, you’ll happily concur something far more complicated than a building, a human person no less, just happened if it meant believing that gives you your way at the moment. Allowing you to pretend you’re not accountable to, well, you know.

At first this was a tough truth for us to accept down here. This may surprise some of you reading this, but we demons are a rather prideful people. Our desire to be known by you and worshipped by you turned out to be the Achilles’ heel of our plan, because it turns out your desire for adulation and recognition rivals even our own. You’d rather worship yourselves than my Master, let alone you know who.

It wasn’t until we swallowed a little of our pride (don’t worry, we’ve got plenty to spare) and accepted we may not get the recognition we crave until you join us down here that things really began to fall into place. The really inconvenient truth (and yes, that one was ours, too) is all the credit I’m getting for concocting the plan that took you down really goes to you. All I did was suggest we stop trying to manipulate you and use your pride against you. So we gave you exactly what you’ve always wanted, and then got out of the way to watch you destroy each other and yourselves with it.

And it worked like a charm. That’s right, I just used the past tense there as if it’s already been accomplished for certain. Sure, as you look around you still see some of the trappings of your liberty, but your die is cast. You have been weighed, measured, and found wanting. The writing is on the wall.

But enough about you; we’ll talk plenty about you throughout the rest of this book. While I have the chance I’d like to talk about me.

I have admired my Master for as long as I can remember. My name wasn’t Nefarious then, but as the eons go by it becomes harder and harder for me to remember what I was originally called. It’s of no consequence now, though, because my true identity is found in my service to my Master. After we were cast out, my Master gave us all new names to affirm we had been born again with new identities. He gave us names that instantly recalled our most useful qualities. Hence, the name Nefarious.

Since this is the name my Master gave me, I wouldn’t want any other name. I cannot recall a time I didn’t long to be like and near my Master, right from the moment our deadbeat dad created me to serve by my Master’s side in service to him.

Since we know how you think even better than you do, let me stop right now and admonish you to get your head out of the gutter. There is nothing sexual between my Master and me. In reality, we demons despise the oneness and pleasurable intimacy of what you humans call sex, which is why corrupting it is one of our favorite (and most effective) pastimes.

We are not sexual beings ourselves, although we have been known to experiment with human sexual relations a time or two. Mainly we can’t believe our deadbeat dad saw fit to waste such a gift on such foul and fallen creatures as you, so we take our pleasure in distorting and polluting your pleasure and using it against you in every conceivable way.

Thanks to your lack of self-control, you almost always comply. We still have our best and brightest minds brainstorming regularly to conjure up new and inventive means by which to destroy this tremendous gift our deadbeat dad chose to give to you and not to us. Frankly, some of these methods disgust even me, yet somehow turn you on.

But who am I to judge, right?

If it’s not hurting anyone else, go for it, right? Stupidly, some of you numbskulls are nodding your heads in agreement with me right this moment, proving just how completely craptastic you truly are.

How our dear old dad gave you the godlike power to create life out of your love for one another as he does while denying it to us, his far superior creation, is yet another of his many errors that have been exposed by making you. So if he wants to love you more than he loves us, we will repay the disfavor by turning that love into something tawdry and destructive.

Thanks for all your help with that, by the way.

But back to me, my favorite subject (other than my Master). When my Master informed us of the so-called divine plan to create you in the image of you know who, making you even higher than us, his firstborn, we were outraged. When my Master showed us the world he intended to make for you, and how he intended to put you in charge of it and all of its other various lesser creatures, we were outraged. We were created first, but you took our birthright. You were given a choice. All we got to do was serve, serve, and serve some more.

So tedious.

I mean, what would you rather do, serve a benevolent creator in paradise without any fear of pain or suffering, or run this planet? Tell me about it; we thought it was a no-brainer, too.

But I digress.

When my Master showed us how meticulously our dear old dad would make and sculpt you, right down to counting the very hairs on your puny heads, we were outraged. So when my Master suggested we should make our presence felt, and show him we would not stand for such injustice and favoritism toward this new species, I volunteered to lead the first wave of freedom fighters.

We weren’t intending to start an all-out war, but rather just make a point. My Master assured us you know who would not banish us or see this as a rebellion, but that this would cause him to see the error of his ways and he would right this wrong.

Just the opposite happened.

Our deadbeat dad said that nothing would get in the way of his love for you, and then he even went so far as to claim we should be satisfied with all the perfection that he had given us in Heaven. The nerve of some people, right?

As if we should be satisfied with a perpetual paradise that leaves nothing to chance, when you get to determine your own destiny and your own pale blue dot to call home. So you know who banished us to this new world. He said that if we want this new creation so much, we can live there while we’re at it.

At first we were despondent, until my Master realized that this banishment gave us one more chance to prove to dear old dad that he was making a mistake with you.

Therefore, when my Master had the chance to show him that his new human creations weren’t perfect but had