Soul Fraud Weaves Together Sarcasm, Urban Fantasy, and Deals With the Devil

Dan the Demon

“Hey,” a voice whispered at my left elbow. With a strangled yell, I jumped in my seat. Cut me some slack—when the movie started, I was the only person in the theater, so no one should have been there to talk to me. Plus, talking while a movie is playing is a sin. I glanced over, and my jaw hit the horrific, sticky floor.

The creature sitting next to me looked about five feet tall. He had a neatly trimmed thick, black beard accompanied by a comically long handlebar mustache. His bright teeth were so white that they seemed to glow as he flashed a smile in the dim theater. Two black horns curled out of his forehead and pointed inward. In his left hand, he held a pitchfork, and the end of a pointed red tail (which I assumed was his) was wrapped around the tines. Oh yeah, and his skin was a bright red, like tomato soup. I probably should have mentioned that first.

“Are you Matthew Carver?” he asked.

I nodded stupidly, too shocked to formulate a more intelligent response. Technically, most of my friends called me Matt, but I wasn’t prepared to correct this thing, whatever it was.

“Great,” he said with another quick smile and a rush of breath as he inhaled. “My name is Dan. I work in the Sales Department of Hell. I was hoping to take a few minutes of your time to speak with you about some of the exciting offers we currently have available. Would that be all right with you?”

I glanced down at my bottle of tequila and gave it a betrayed look. This was not what I had signed up for. “Maybe I got one of those bottles with a worm or something. That’s supposed to make you hallucinate, right?” I mused. The dem— No. I couldn’t bring myself to even mentally call him a demon. The red horned guy sighed flamboyantly and pinched his nose between two clawed fingers.

“There’s so much wrong with what you just— No. The worm isn’t even used in making tequila. It’s a marketing ploy to mess with stupid gringos like you who don’t know better. Either way, you’re thinking of wormwood and absinthe. And that stuff will mess you up.”

I looked up from my bottle and shrugged at him. “I guess you would know, wouldn’t you?”

Dan the Alleged Demon stared at me for a few seconds, his smile flickering once before freezing in place. My sarcastic jab seemed like something he was completely unprepared for. I graciously gave him a moment to collect himself. Then the moment passed, and his smile returned to life, resting easily on his face.

“Exactly,” he said with a little too much gusto and a creepy wink. “But Mr. Carver, while I have you here, let me take a moment of your time to run you through the exceptional deal I can offer you right now.”

I took another swig of tequila and shrugged. I had no idea what was going on, but it was a lot more entertaining than whatever old movie was playing. I had no idea who Kane was or what he was a citizen of at this point. I must have missed something.

“It’s actually so simple,” the demon said, his smile widening far enough that I could see that his teeth were pointy, more like a shark’s than a man’s. Had they been like that the whole time? I couldn’t remember. “If you could have anything in the world right now, absolutely anything you wanted, what would it be?”

I’d like to blame my answer on a strong drink and a low tolerance. But I am not certain I’d drunk enough alcohol to blame it on that. Furthermore, I cannot in good conscience say that my answer would have been any different if I had been stone-cold sober.

“There’s this girl,” I started.

“Mm-hm, there always is,” Dan agreed.

“We’ve been friends since freshman year of college, and I’ve always secretly been in love with her, but she’s marrying my best friend—”

“And you wish she was with you instead?”

“Yes. No! I don’t know?” I sighed. “Of course I wish that. But Connor is my best friend. I wouldn’t want to…”

Dan nodded sympathetically and placed a clawed hand on my left shoulder. It emitted a strange warmth that I could feel through my jacket.

“Say no more, my friend. I understand. But I’m happy to say that we can help you with this. In fact, it’s our specialty. I can offer you ten years.” As he talked, his pearly whites flashed like the moon in the dim theater.

“What do you mean, ‘ten years’?” I asked.

“Ten years of everything you want. You get the girl, you live out your dream life. It
will be literally the best possible outcome you could have.”

“Then what happens?” I asked.

His smile winked out again, a momentary flicker like a power surge to a room’s light fixture. “Then you’ll need to pay for your wish,” he said in a somber tone. “The, uh, price for that—the ten years of bliss—is your soul.” He stared at me, his enormous smile suddenly absent, and in its place was only a nervous, frozen patience, like a fisherman waiting to see if his bait had hooked me.

Now, this was my first demon sales pitch, but according to every bad TV show I’ve ever seen, this was the part where I was supposed to be overwhelmed by my crippling depression, desperate for one thing to go right with my wretched life. The crushing weight of this should have made Dan’s deal seem worth considering.

But like I said, I’ve seen those TV shows. I’ve read those books where the characters do that. I listened to my college professor drone on about Faust. The universal takeaway from all of them is that taking the deal is a bad idea. Maybe it’s postmodern American cynicism or something, but I wasn’t even a little tempted. Which seemed odd to me, since temptation was what creatures like Dan were supposed to be the best at.

“Nah,” I said, pausing to take another sip of tequila. “I’m good, thanks.” My refusal appeared to hit Dan the Demon with an almost physical force. He slumped forward in his chair and placed his head in his hands.

“I don’t get it,” he said into his palms. “Why am I so bad at this?” He raised his head to glance at me with a pitiful stare. “Were you even a little tempted?” he asked hopefully.

“Not really. Sorry, man,” I replied. I felt strangely bad for him. Wordlessly, I offered him my bottle of tequila, which he casually accepted.

“Balls,” he muttered after taking a sip. “Do you realize what you just did? I can’t tempt a miserable human into changing his horrific life, but you can hand me a bottle of liquor without any setup at all. And I took it without a thought!” He pushed the bottle back to me and buried his head in his hands again. He muttered something that sounded vaguely like, “Mpphgr denkin Australia.”

I didn’t know how to react to his pity party. We sat in awkward silence as whatever black-and-white movie continued to drone on. I had some more tequila. Part of me, the ever-present self-aware portion of my consciousness, was very aware of the fact that I was in the process of getting inebriated while hanging out with a demon at a movie theater. What would my mother say? I don’t really know. No one ever taught me how to prepare for a situation like this. In all the stories I knew, people always accepted the deal. Maybe when the movie was over, we would both go our separate ways. Maybe demons actually like old movies. Maybe that’s all Hell is: endless old movies. I could see that, come to think of it.

“I’m gonna do it,” Dan said after a solid ten minutes of silence.

“Hmm?” I asked, trying to not seem rude.

“It’s unethical, but who cares. I’m screwed either way.”

I realized at this point that Dan was talking to himself. He turned away from me and pulled a briefcase, which had apparently been resting out of view, up into his lap. It was black and looked to be made of cheap faux leather with two flimsy brass clasps holding it shut. Dan held it in his lap for a moment, still closed, hesitating, like a man about to dive into frigid water. After a few seconds, he nodded to himself and opened the case. A reddish glow emerged from the inside, highlighting his face. I felt a blast of heat consistent with the theme of the night.

“Listen, Matthew, you seem like a nice guy,” Dan said as he fished around inside the case. He leaned into it, his scaly red arm vanishing past his elbow, which was trippy because there wasn’t enough depth to the briefcase for him to be going that deep. “But I have a quota to hit, and as you can see, that’s not going well for me.” He pulled his hand out, holding a stack of pages with dense printing between his claws. “There it is,” he muttered. He snapped the case closed and set it aside.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear you are having such trouble, I guess?” I said. My mother had raised me to be polite. I guess that extended to demons too. She hadn’t ever specified them as an exception to the politeness rule. Dan ignored me and produced a pen from somewhere. I say pen, but it was probably more accurately a quill, made with a large black feather. Maybe a raven’s? I’m not really up on my quill knowledge. He licked the end with a forked red tongue and began filling out his paperwork.

I sat quietly next to him, content to watch the moving pictures and listen to the fuzzy sound without paying attention. Usually, my brain doesn’t stop moving. It is always in search of something interesting. If there was a mental equivalent of a treadmill, my mind would be constantly on it. My brain had decided it was time to take a breather for once. The old thought box had kicked its shoes off and was lounging on the couch. It was a nice feeling. I was starting to see the appeal of alcohol.

“Let’s see, initial here,” Dan murmured to himself. “MSC, MSC, and MSC.” Each time he said my initials, he made a mark on his paperwork, and I felt a weird tingling in my fingers and toes.

“Wait, what are you doing?”

“Matthew Steven Carver,” Dan said, ignoring me and signing the bottom of a piece of paper with a flourish. But Dan didn’t say my name. His mouth moved, but I heard my mother’s voice. We all have a true name—anyone can call me Matthew, and I’ll know that they probably want to talk to me—but when your name is said a certain way (usually by your parents), it grabs you as though someone reached through your chest and squeezed your heart with their bare hands.

“What the hell was that?” I asked angrily. My heart was racing. I had a terrible feeling I knew the answer. Dan froze for a second, blood-red shoulders hunched away from me. If he weren’t a demon, I’d have said he was scared of me. He turned back to face me, his glowing smile replaced with a stony expression.

“Like I said, you seem nice, but I’ve got a quota to hit. I’m in between a rock and a fiery place. Best of luck. I hope you enjoy your life, I really do. We will see you in about ten years.”