They created the eight-day week about ten years ago. Erdaday was put between Saturday and Sunday, to break up the alliteration, kind of like how Wednesday breaks up Tuesday and Thursday. Erdaday means Earth Day. It was invented by TES — The Environmentalist Society — who thought that we were messing the planet up much-much more than we were cleaning it. So they thought that everyone should clean up Earth for one day out of every week. It was a BIG hit with the American population, because people would have three-day weekends instead of just two. Mostly everyone just looked at it as a day off, even though it was meant to have a purpose. It’s just like how Sabbath Day was meant for church-going, but not too many people went to church. Most people called Sabbath day Hangover Day and instead of going to church they would spend their time drinking a lot of bloody marys stepping over newspapers in their underwear. Now, there are no more church-goers and there are no more environmentalists, so every weekend day is Hangover Day.
I don’t know why Christians used Sunday as the day of Sabbath and Jews used Saturday (though Saturday is the last day of the week and makes more sense). I think Christians made Sunday the Sabbath because God and the sun are — more or less — the same entity.
Christians made Monday the first day of the week. Monday means Moon Day. Tuesday comes next. It means War Day, named after Tiw, a god of Germanic mythology. Wednesday was also named after a god — Woden, the chief god. Thursday is Thunder Day. Friday is Love Day, named after Fria, Goddess of Love. And Saturday is Saturn Day.
A while back, somebody explained that having an eight-day week would be sacrilegious, but these days one person can’t make a difference. Hell, a whole barnyard full of people can’t make a difference.
As we pull into the Satan Burger parking zone at the bottom of a hill, we see a chair holding a sign that reads. “GRAND OPENING,” and a ceiling fan that promotes, “TWO SATAN BURGERS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE.”
Satan Burger is at the top of the hill — a jagged steep prick with blackened earth and a step-path seven minutes long. The drive-thru is a lift that pulls your car up the side of the rock face to a pay window. I can see the lift rocking about way up there, and there’s a menu on it so you can decide what deep-fried burger you want before you reach the top.
We can’t see much from here, so I use my God’s eyes to climb up the steps. I see that it is a white building with the red letters S and B established on the rooftop. It doesn’t seem different than any other fast food chain, aside from the fact that Satan himself is the owner/manager and not to mention the strange vegetation that grows on the top of the hill.
The vegetation looks like a forest of black thorn-weeds, tall as trees, wrinkled and crawling like vines, squirreling and generating small scratchy-twitter sounds. The plant leaks a red liquid that people are supposed to believe is blood, so it appears like an evil place. Maybe they are man-eater trees that came out of the walm, or maybe Satan brought them from hell. We keep away from them, in any case. No telling what they are capable of.
Richard Stein said that Satan was kicked out of Heaven for being a snob. He thought he was the best angel up there, because God loved him the best. And when God decided to love something else (Child Earth) Satan had a hissy fit and called God a chum-chum, which was considered an insult back in the days before Man was created.
Sometimes you’ll hear someone call a friend a chum. Whenever God hears this from Heaven, He starts laughing his ass off at the someone’s friend, who just smiles clueless of the insult. One thing God does not like to be called is a c hum-chum. Another is an idiot. Another is wrong. Telling God that He is wrong is probably the stupidest thing you can possibly do, because He is never wrong, and He’ll make your life wrong and your brain wrong and your face wrong just to make you regret putting the words God and wrong in the same sentence, unless the sentence is this: God is never wrong, he knows everything about everything.
Strangely, however, God finds being called a fuck-o or a fuck-face an amusing performance: after all, these are very fun words to say when you’re angry. They launch off your tongue like fists.
I go back to my skin to step out of the Gremlin autocar, preparing my wire muscles for a steep hike, rubbing them with needlelike fingers. I replace some old Gremlin breath with the coldy-crisp air, fresh for the system, wakens me up for the premature morning. It is still silent out, and the streets are still dead, not a living thing in the vicinity. It doesn’t bother me right now. The morning light is comforting. It is a shame that most people miss this time of day. Personally, I’d prefer to sleep through twilight than dawn.
Satan Burger is not actually on the top of the hill. It’s a little closer than halfway. We get there pretty easily, although irritated by Vodka’s moan for German food instead of corporate death burger.
Near the door of the restaurant, a box holds a sign up that says, “Help NEEDED!”
Behind the restaurant, there’s a small trail that continues up the steep hill, and near the opening of the trail there’s a table with a sign telling us, “Now approaching scorpion fly zone. NO female baboons allowed!”
Upon entering Satan Burger, the only customer we notice besides ourselves is a small troll that only speaks ancient druidic languages. He sits in the corner and minds to himself, drinking a black cup of coffee and reading a collection of surfing anecdotes.
A cigarette machine greets us in the entranceway. It has two signs: “Come this way” and “Two Newports for the price of one!”
The cigarette machine can’t speak, because it doesn’t own a voice box, but I can tell that it would be complaining if it could. It doesn’t have any arms either, so there is no way that it wrote the signs all by itself. Our job is to follow it, maybe decide whether or not the cigarettes are worth buying.
The cigarette machine is our hostess because Satan wants to make it known right off that Satan Burger is a smoking restaurant. It is divided into two sections: smoking and heavy smoking. The machine also sells kaffa-bud cigarettes and dippy bob rocks, if you’re into that sort of thing.
We follow the hostess, hobbling all fat-heavy on its tiny legs, toward the front counter, where a cash register winks and waits for our orders. A crowd of tables and chairs watch us as we travel, staring, shifting, screeching across the tile. The entire restaurant — it’s empty of all human employees, run entirely by living furniture.
Satan appears behind the counter.
He is shorter than me, looks middle-aged, with a gray beard and brown-gray hair, a queer smile stretches out his face, wearing a dark suit and red tie, and there’s a pin that says Gay Pride with a picture of a smiling penis that resembles a cartoon worm going into a butthole.
Mortician sees the pin and hides behind Christian and Vod, whispering, “I told you. I told you he’s gay.”
Mort is what Richard Stein would have called homophobic. It’s a phobia usually caused by one of three things:
1) Being raised to believe homosexuals are socially unacceptable.
2) Not coming in contact with any homosexuals during the adolescent period.
3) Being gay and afraid to accept it.