Stepson of the Devil

-OR-

"The Other Mark's Gospel"

The thing about stories that involve hell, the devil, or otherwise ruinous powers is that they always seem to build up to the main characters trying to stop the end of the world before it gets started. If they don't start out with that in mind, they tend to ramp up to it as the story/episodes/<media of choice>/ progress. So here's a story about what's going on with hell when the world's not ending.

Mark lived a very boring life.

(Ok, that's not completely true. There was that whole incident with the squirrel, but more on that later.)

Mark -mostly- lived a very boring life. He graduated high school, went to a four year college for several years before deciding industrial design just really wasn't for him, and moved back home with his mom and his recently acquired stepdad to get a year or so of work in while he figured out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

After trying and repeatedly failing to hold down a job, his stepdad gave him a shot with an entry level job in his company, where Mark met his new best friend, Michael "Cueball" Balowski, and Kimberly Blothe, for whom he quickly started stumbling over his words.

Things went well for a while, until Mark was asked to retrieve some forgotten files from the study, and with a little snooping, discovered what would turn his entire world upside-down.