Thousands of years ago, long before Dante became inspired the Divine Comedy, another living human travelled down to Hell.  Unlike Dante, this man was but a child, only eight years into his life.  The young child was elfen in appearance, with bright red hair and ears that tapered into points.  Scarlet freckles speckled his face, and devilish mischief shone from his startling emerald eyes.  The rumor in the village was that his father had been the Devil himself.  One day, while walking in the woods, the boy was drawn to a peculiar circle of trees.  Directly in the middle of the circle was a decrepit stump.  The young lad stepped cautiously into the circle and towards the stump.  As he neared it, a sense of dread filled his soul, but the child had never been afraid, thanks to his mother’s whispers about his true patronage.  Curiously, the boy laid his hand on the moribund stump, pushing his hand through the moldy, soft wood.  All of a sudden something grabbed his wrist, yanking the child down to whatever horrors lay below.  The boy awoke to the crackle of flames and a burnt aroma in his nose.  Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the dim, flickering lighting.  All around him were skeletons; they were built into the walls, arranged as chairs and tables, their morbid smiles stretched into tortured screams.  Sitting upon one of these skeletal thrones was a monster in the form of man.  Cracked, ivory horns protruded from his temples, and his face was elongated, almost to resemble a horse, the flesh pulled tightly over a loveless face.  His eyes burned with a fiendish fire.

“Infant.  How come you by my lair?” the demon roared.  His voice reverberated around the chamber.

“I fell,” the child asked, undaunted.  The beast leaned forward, placing one of his hoofs on a staff constructed of a human spine.

“You do not cower,” he observed, “Nor are you dead.  What are you?”  The boy, with a mischievious halfgrin, repeated what had been told to him:

“I am the devil-son.  I am evil.”  Upon hearing this, the beast stood and approached the boy.  He leaned his gruesome face down to the boys, and the burning eyes met the emerald ones dead-on.

“Do you know who I am?”  he asked eventually.

“You are the Devil.  I am the devil-son,” he repeated calmly.

“Ha!  You know nothing of being a devil.  You are merely a human infant, lost,” he paused, “Yet you do not fear me.  Tell me, interesting child, why do you not fear me?”

“You are my father.  You are evil, and therefore I am evil. Why would I fear you?”

“You know nothing of evil.”

“I know evil.  You are my father.  How could I not know evil?” the precocious child challenged.

Lucifer regarded the child for a long moment.

“Tell me what you understand of evil, and I shall judge whether you are my son.”

The child paused, thinking.

“Evil is no different than good.  Both exist inside every human, or else you and I wouldn’t exist. Good and evil constantly fight in every man, woman and child. Good won the original war, and you were banished.  That’s why good is valued.  But Evil never left.  You never left.  When I look in a pool of water, I see your reflection, but I also see mine.  Such is the same with every human.  I just chose to embrace my father rather than my mother,” the child finished, “That is, if you are indeed my father.”
“You doubt me?”  the beast’s voice blasted the child back a few steps.  “No, you are my true son.  You and I alone comprehend the truth of evil.  Come, join me now, devil-son.”

The child hesitated.  “There’s one thing I don’t comprehend, Father,” he said.

“What is it, devil-son?”

“If you are evil, why did you choose to have a child?  Children are meant to choose good.”

“Perhaps I am a little good as well,” Lucifer replied quietly.  The boy smiled his devilish grin and took his seat upon the piles of dead, and in the back of his emerald eyes now glowed the fires of Hell.