When those with souls tainted or enlightened enough to discern Steve’s true nature and inquire why he, a half-demon, would choose to live amongst mortals in the city of St. Louis rather than traipse amongst the denizens of hell, Steve would simply state that the rent was cheaper on Earth. In truth, it was to oversee the beginning of the apocalypse, but Steve didn’t like to have this come up in casual conversation.

The tale of how Gore, Dawn, Burney and Steve became friends in hell remains a story yet to be told, and one involving far too much promiscuity of character for the faint of heart to hear. Therefore, it need only be known that when Steve decided to move into an apartment in the St. Louis suburbs, down the street from a liquor store and a block away from an independent movie theatre that doubled as a coffee shop and discount pottery maker, his friends joined him. And since none of the others could or chose to hold an actual salary-earning positing, Steve woke every morning, as he did the day after the restaurant burnt down, in the early hours to get to the coffee shop/movie theatre/pottery studio before the early morning art student rush.

Donning his fedora and tightening his tie, Steve walked past Dawn’s gray-trimmed door, just down the hall from his own room. Just beyond the bathroom floated the black ichor-coated portal that led to the gap between realities where Gore slept. Even now he snored loud enough to shudder the barriers between multiple planes of existence. The apartment was leased as having only two bedrooms, so this portal between realms of dimensional relativity had been the source of multiple arguments between Steve and their landlord.

Burney, too, was a source of contention. But the residents of the apartment had largely controlled this problem. Steve spotted Burney sitting at his usual spot in the living room/kitchen. Burney was trying to sleep, screaming only faintly inside the bathtub that sat adjacent to the mismatched furniture, singes in the tiled floor showing his pattern of steps.

Steve knew that Burney would be up soon. The tortured soul would most likely try to follow Steve to work again. So Steve rushed out the door, hoping that Gore would be able to keep Burney entertained with some sort of pigeon burning at the park game like they typically did on Wednesdays. Dawn would do whatever it was Dawn did, which was anything but provide money for rent, so Steve got in his car and braved traffic to the air conditioner-shaped office building where he worked.

Advertising is the calling of many the evil at heart. It attracts those who want to deceive others into thinking an object of little value is worth purchasing, or that a brand symbol is enough to double the asking price of an object. It is also the position of the good, those pure at heart who, through honesty and integrity, are able to come across as genuinely in a consumer’s best interest, and thus earn financial loyalty through satisfactory business interaction. Steve was still trying to figure out which commercialization technique the advertising firm where he worked utilized, and mentally raised the question once more as he parked in front of Purity Advertising Company.

“Soybean paste: it’s better than kale paste!” Steve mumbled as he walked into the simple ten story suburban office building. “No, no. Kale paste probably tastes better. Soy joy, boy it’s good. Wow, that ad belongs in the nineteen fifties. And even then it wouldn’t work.”

“Good morning, Mr. Steve,” the semi-walrus-shaped, smiling secretary said from behind her small switchboard and desk at the building lobby. She didn’t know everyone’s last name, and in fact didn’t know the last name of most of the people in the building. So she called everyone Mr. First Name or Miss First Name. She said it in the most heightened voice as well, as if it were a terrific joke she was sharing with those blessed enough to pass by her desk.

“I said good morning, Mr. Steve,” the round woman said, possibly breaking her chair as she tried to get Steve’s attention from where he stood waiting for the lobby’s elevator.

“Yeah, hi,” Steve answered.

“Warmer outside than it was yesterday, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Steve pressed the elevator button again.

“Rained late last night too. My rain meter showed three quarters of an inch. The news said it was half an inch, but I had three quarters an inch of water in my rain gauge.”

“Uh-huh.” Steve wondered if it would be a good idea to climb eight flights of stairs.

“We’re supposed to get another quarter inch here in the next—”

Before the talking, possible human-manatee hybrid could divulge the forecasted rain measurements for the coming week, the elevator opened and Steve rushed inside, pressing the close door button. Only once it was closed did he press the eighth floor to get to his office.

At the third floor, the elevator doors opened, and a rail-thin man and a rail-thin woman stepped inside, chatting up close against each other with rapid-fire statements before pressing the sixth-floor button.

“Two thirds an inch is what I got,” the woman said.

“I got five eighths,” the man replied.

“Two thirds is average for this time of year.”

“Really? I’d have thought we should get more.”

“No, it’s average. Half would be down.”

“We’re supposed to get half an inch today.”

“Half an inch today we’ll be up.”

“Hopefully not too much.”

“Not too much. Just an inch or two.”

“We could use being up an inch or two.”

“Couldn’t we all,” Steve interjected.

Like twisting posts, the two conversing occupants of the elevator turned to regard Steve with lowered brows. They stood that way, staring silently, till the elevator doors opened on the sixth floor and they exited in two hasty steps.

“I heard they had nearly a full inch at the Arch,” the man stated.

“They always inflate the numbers at the Arch,” the woman said as they both walked into whatever office occupied the sixth floor. They continued chatting as the doors closed, leaving Steve once more alone in the ascending elevator.

“I didn’t even know it rained last night,” Steve noted, and went back to worrying about soybean paste slogans. Then he started to worry if it was better to be thinking about the rain he’d missed than soybean paste. This thought made him want another cup of coffee.

“My rain gauge had only a third of an inch,” a copy writer at the coffee machine said as Steve entered the Purity Advertising Company offices.

Another copy writer, whom Steve also didn’t know the name of, responded, “I got half an inch where I live. Should really help — we need more rain.”

Quickly barreling past a third conversation about rain gauges, Steve walked down the main path that cut through the sea of cubicles that was the advertising company’s offices. Customizable-colored walls and posted images of children and sports teams dotted each miniature office as people set to work on projects and campaigns. Ringing the disjointed sea of varied cubicles were the glass-walled full offices of campaign managers and executives.

Steve was amongst those possessing a cubicle. On the way to his little box, he made sure to wave at Damien, the agency’s website programmer. “Hey Damien,” Steve said.

Damien made no further motion than to raise a sausage-thick finger half a hair off his computer’s mouse. It was his only way of acknowledging any greeting.

Damien dominated his cubicle like an over-grown tree bursting through a crack in the sidewalk. Discarded cans of empty energy drinks lay stacked at the bottom of his chair like the bones of the vanquished. It was not yet nine o’clock, but Damien had apparently finished all of his website programming duties. He was now focused on pulling his throne-like computer chair closer to the monitor as he launched into a video game.

Leaning inches from the screen, Damien sweated in concentration over the video game called The World, shoving a beef jerky stick into his mouth with triumph as the character he controlled swung a pixilated sword into the pixilated throat of another character who had challenged Damien’s power.

Steve had introduced Damien to The World about a year ago. In that time, Damien had become the most powerful player in what was apparently a very popular game. Steve didn’t pay much attention to the game, but it seemed to make Damien happy, so Steve brought him lunch and energy drinks now and then.

“If you only eat one soybean paste, this has got to be it,” Steve said as he reached his cubicle. He sat down with a sigh and flipped on the little computer that sat at his L-shaped desk. “And we have some celebrity say it. Some big actor, just so we can see if they keep a straight face. It’ll be an award-worthy performance.”

Of course, none of this was productive thinking, as the company that had hired the ad agency to create an advertising slogan could not afford to hire someone famous to claim that it was good. They could barely lay claim that it was food.

“How do you sell a product no one knows exists, no one likes the taste of, and is more expensive than other stuff?” Steve pondered while leaning back in his chair.

He took a moment to gauge his surroundings, as he often found himself doing while working on a project. While other cubicles were customized with photos, walls of varying shades of pink and purple, and a few tie-dyed to the color of melted crayons, Steve’s walls were plain white.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want a multi-colored wall to distract and encourage him. It was that the simple walls allowed Steve to forget they were there. They let him imagine that he was somewhere else. But that idea would sometimes make him nervous, and he needed reminding that this was a good job, and that he wasn’t half bad at it. So he put up a little abstract painting on the wall. The painting cost him two hundred dollars at a local arts festival, and he had no idea what it was.

The swirls of oil, acrylic, and some kind of burnt ceramic formed together in a collaboration that seemed ready to break apart or coalesce depending on if you tilted it too far one direction or the other. The strange painting always gave Steve solace, made him a little happy, and allowed him to focus on what he was doing. It also made him wonder if it would look better hanging on the wall of a farmhouse, or on the side of a food truck.

“Wednesday status meeting,” Black Goatee announced, knocking on Steve’s cubicle as he passed. Steve referred to the utterly average-featured supervisor as Black Goatee because Steve had never been able to remember the man’s name. He thought it was Joe or something, but that never seemed right.

Black Goatee continued to knock on cubicle walls, notifying employees of the meeting that some other manager whom Steve did remember the name of would soon be holding.

“Wednesday. What is it about Wednesdays?” Steve said, rubbing his face and wondering if he needed another cup of coffee. “Wait. Wait! Soybean Paste: Makes Wednesday Feel Like Sunday.”

It was meaningless. Trivial. Deceptive, and wholly untrue. But it made you feel good. Just reading it made Steve think soybean paste might actually taste good, especially if it could make Wednesday feel like Sunday.

“I’ve got it!” Steve said, and stood in a triumphal pose the Dark Lord Gore would have been proud of.

Two and a half hours later, during a meeting that had gone through lunch, Steve found out that the account manager thought the slogan was terrible, and sent Steve back to work on it.

His growling stomach heralding his exit from the conference room, Steve made his way down the maze of cubicles back to the safety of his own. He adjusted his hat as a way to distract himself from the embarrassment and hunger competing to wrench his guts inside out. As he did so, twisting his fedora once more securely over his horns, Steve rounded a corner in the cubicle walls to see a miasma of blackness.

A void of light and existence and goodness that pulsated with inaudible intonations of despair had come into being inside the confines of Steve’s three cubicle walls. The sphere-like aberration extended itself partially out of and above the cubicle and seemed moments away from drawing in all those who dared gaze at it into a pit of endless sorrow.

Now, since this was the office of an American corporation, no one seemed to take mind. In fact, most of Steve’s coworkers took a look at the miasma of endless suffering and just sort of shrugged. It was Wednesday, after all.

A humming resonance, imperceptible by mortals, crept forth as a low laugh when Steve came to a stop in front of the sphere.

“Yeah. I’m gonna get lunch,” Steve said as casually as he could, and just kept on walking.

“He who is known as Steve!” a voice called forth the miasma as a smoke-like tentacle struck out and grabbed Steve by the shoulder.

“He’s Steve. You want that guy.” Steve pointed to a file clerk walking down the hall with a cart full of mail.

The tentacle loosened its grip a moment, and turned toward the file clerk.

The file clerk took a look at Steve, took a look at the tentacle, and promptly fainted.

“He’s new here,” Steve said. “But I assure you that he is Steve. Boy that Steve, always passing out at the slightest odd sight. Pass-out Steve, that’s what we call him. Anyways, I should let you and Pass-out Steve—”

“I do not need to speak with this Pass-out Steve!” the miasma roared as it once more drew Steve forth into his darkness-encased cubicle. “I know who is He who is known as Steve and who is not. It is time, He who is known as Steve.”

“Lunch time?”

“Time.” The voice purred with malignant excitement.