Is Silco in the afterlife watching Mel and Sevika together like "good for them” or is he having the spiritual equivalent of a full-blown stroke?
Dig, if you will, the picture:
Silco: absolutely in Hell conducting the most elaborate labor negotiation the Devil has ever witnessed.
“There must be precedent,” he says, seated across from the Devil with a whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “You cannot tell me no soul before me has ever petitioned for conjugal furlough.”
The Devil: “Boy, you are in Hell because you flooded your own city with narcotics and made a career out of literal and political violence.”
Silco: “Yes, yes, dreadful business. We all make mistakes. Let’s stay focused.”
The Devil, exhausted already, pinches the bridge of his nose: “You want twenty-four hours on Earth solely so you can be — and I quote — ‘sandwiched between my two favorite wenches like the decadent old whore king I was born to be.’”
Silco nods gravely: “Correct.”
“I return willingly to eternal damnation.”
“You would trade Heaven for this?”
“My good man,” Silco says, scandalized, “have you ever gone down on Sevika?”
At this point even the lesser demons are invested. The Union of Succubi has started a betting pool. One imp in the corner is openly weeping over the horny romance of it all.
The Devil leans back in his throne: “You understand that they moved on.”
Silco scoffs. “Of course they did. What did you expect? Them to throw themselves on my funeral pyre? I chose two fierce, independent, emotionally resilient women."
The Devil: “And this does not bother you?”
Silco: “Oh, it bothers me tremendously. I am, spiritually speaking, experiencing the world’s most sophisticated aneurysm in the form of a spectral cockstand. But I can also admit they have exceptional taste.”
“They’re alive. They loved each other enough to survive me. That has to count for something.”
The Devil stares at him for a long moment.
Silco, triumphantly, stubs out his cigarette. “I knew sound jurisprudence would prevail.”
That night, far above the underworld, Sevika wakes abruptly at three in the morning, bathed in cold sweat, nerves firing with the instinctive certainty of a veteran soldier sensing incoming artillery.
Something, somewhere, has shifted.
Like the universe itself, cracking one fiery red eye open.
Beside her, Mel stirs groggily. “What’s wrong, darling?”
Sevika sits there in the dark for a long moment, staring toward the window like she expects something to crawl through it smiling.
“…That motherfucker’s on his way back.”
And somewhere deep beneath creation, Hell’s gates open with the slow grandeur of a WWE championship wrestler entering an arena after a long hiatus.
Ghost!Silco walks out, adjusting his cuffs, and begins swaggering his way toward the Mitra-Medarda estate.