The devil goes to Georgia on a Greyhound bus. He loves to travel incognito, and he always uses trains or buses when possible. The most interesting people travel on buses and trains.

He is currently riding the body of an obese woman, and she is no fun. Her head is filled with thoughts and images of food. She ate all the junk she brought with her hours ago, and since then she has been fantasizing about being locked in a convenience store overnight. Fuck! Healthy people fantasize about having money or power or wild sex! This fat bitch gets all the pleasure she needs from stuffing her pie hole instead of her fun hole. As soon as possible he will vacate this cunt, but he wants to have some fun first. Patience is virtuous!

The bus rolls into La Grange, Georgia, a little bit after two in the morning. As expected, fat-ass gets off to use the restroom and buy something to eat. She is too big to use the restroom on the bus. Just getting off the bus takes some squeezing and straining.

Halfway to the gas station convenience store the devil took over and steered her fat ass away into the dark. He guides her to a little patch of grass with a well-kept flowerbed, and then hooks into her senses.

***

Carol is hungry, and she needs to take a dump. Like always she could not stretch the stuff she brought to last the whole trip. Eating is so good! When she masticates on a mouthful of sugary or fatty food, the pleasure sensors in her brain light up like the Vegas strip at night. It is better than sex! She shoves the thought of sex out of her head. She hasn’t had sex in years, maybe decades. And when she did, she never enjoyed it.

Halfway to the gas station store she suddenly turned left, and after walking a few dozen steps she saw the food. Right there next to a storefront she saw a pile of bacon, sausages and French fries on a table. The table was standing in a pond of chocolate pudding, with marshmallows floating on top of it. ‘It’s all yours’, the devil whispers in Carol’s head, and she almost runs the last few steps before falling on her knees to scoop pudding and marshmallows into her mouth.

The devil steps back and enjoys the scene. Carol is on her knees and stuffing her mouth with mulch and rocks. When she starts breaking pieces of shrubs and gulping those down, the devil steps out of her body. Carol choked and toppled over. He intently watches Carol’s convulsing body until she stops moving. Jesus! She ate a fucking hole in the ground! ‘See you later sis!’, the devil grins as he looks into Carol’s glassy eyes and watches as life leaves her. He pats her huge belly, gets up and floats back to the bus, to grab another butt that has a ticket to a seat on the bus. Atlanta is the next stop.

***

The devil has a name. It’s Stan. He has no idea where Satan comes from. Some fucking idiot probably misspelled it, and the error wasn’t noticed until that name was written into history.

Stan hops the body of an attractive brunette with big eyes and full lips. Women make the best rides. They have way more imagination and richer vocabulary, and they actually finish their thoughts. Men’s thoughts are all over the place and easily distracted by butts and boobs, which then result in the same old fantasy where the man gives the woman multiple orgasms. Most men cannot even talk to a woman properly, never mind shagging them rotten.

The brunette’s name is Lila. She reminds him a little of that hot piece of ass Delilah, the one that fucked Samson. Samson from the Old Testament. What a dumb shit he was! Lila fell on hard times. Her boyfriend realized he was really a woman, then kicked her out so the new boyfriend could move in. She had nowhere to go and just enough money to finance this trip back to her parents. She put this betrayal to the side for now. She will deal with it later. Her parents begged her to not go with Dale to San Francisco. They believed him to be a spineless man that would not be able to give her the future they wanted for her. They were wrong to call Dale a man but were spot on with the spineless part.

Stan loved pride. People do the craziest things for their pride. They lie and cheat others and themselves to feed this powerful emotion. He would love to see how Lila’s reunion with her parents turns out, but he has other business in Atlanta. The best he can do is tweak her pride to make her positively homicidal if her parents dare tell her ‘We told you so!’.

Stan gives Lila another pride boost before he leaves her to write her own future. Pride uses a sharp pen, so it’s bound to be interesting. Stan makes a mental note to look her up later to see how it turned out.

***

Stan never misses the ‘Little five points Halloween festival’ in Atlanta. This is one of the few times that Stan can appear in broad daylight as ‘almost himself’ without causing hysteria. That first year he joined a ‘devil lookalike’ competition as a much-muted version of himself. He did not want to cause panic, so he toned down his appearance, and then lost to an Indian guy that carried a fucking pitchfork. What the heck is the use for the pitchfork? Ever since that loss he has returned every year, and with each new year he reveals a little more of his true self, just enough to win. Pride! He knows all about it!

***

The organizers of the festival have always resisted the use of technology to allow people to display their creativity with physical masks and costumes. Because they were forced to skip a year with Covid lockdowns, they allowed 3D projection this year in the ‘devil-lookalike’ competition. They hoped this would result in spectacular displays of digital creativity and even attract a new demographic as attendees.

On the day of the festival Stan watched every competitor closely, formulating his final appearance to best them all. He always appears last on stage, allowing him to top the last contestant with just enough devilish flare to remain the champion.

Stan was already congratulating himself when his father appeared on stage. He stood 12 foot tall, sporting horns that spanned 8 foot and his spiked tail was moving as if alive. His eyes and gaping mouth were holes filled with fire that shone like the sun, and his heavily muscled and scaled body awash in flame. When his father extended clawed hands to the audience they went wild with excitement. The clawed hands disappeared as the projecting beams were obscured by stage loudspeakers.

Stan realized this was not his elderly father, but some sort of mirage generated by the digital magic of these people. Fuck it! He has his pride and will show them the devil, the whole fucking thing!

***

The video of Stan in all his glory became the most watched ever, and then continued to set new records as everyone watched it over and over.

The full Stan is a much taller version of the projection that mimicked his father. It has four arms, and its head resembles that of a crocodile with horns and snakes for hair. Its tail was thick and powerful, and it stood on hoofed legs.

The crowd was going bananas, enjoying this over-the-top performance. They first realized something was not quite right when Stan extended his wings, and they pushed over the scaffolding behind him. Moments later the stage collapsed under his weight and the audience panicked, overcome with an ancient terror awakened by the presence of the devil.

They started screaming for a different reason and ran to save themselves. Stan, now completely present, saw this and it triggered his appetite for destruction. He spewed flames like a dragon and beat his wings to fuel the resulting fires, then advanced on those in the crowd frozen in fear and ripped them apart with his powerful claws and jaws.

When Stan took to the air a drone followed him and streamed the death and destruction he brought to Atlanta. At some point Stan cooled down and set down at a small lake. He folded his wings and walked into the water, producing steam that obscured him from the drone. When the steam cleared, he was gone.

***

’Show me Lila, from Atlanta’, Stan spoke into the cloudy crystal ball on his desk. He is back from his trip to earth. He fucked up really good. Really good because he is the devil, and everyone has been reminded of that. His only regret was not using this opportunity to set the records straight about his name.

The crystal ball clears and an image form. Lila and an older couple are sitting around a campfire, laughing and appearing happy.

‘Fuck’, Stan mutters to himself, ‘you can’t always get what you want, even if you are the devil himself.’