Deal with a Devil
by Anthony Lukas
“It is time, Candence,” said the devil, as he appeared in the chair in front of her desk.
“Sure,” she said, “just let me finish this.” And she continued to type.
He had gotten used to this waiting and, besides, he was feeling indulgent. After all, this was the day he claimed her soul. After a long lifetime — hers of course — of waiting, it was the bottom of the ninth, as he liked to say. And then he bemusedly thought, Where did I pick up that phrase?
Ah, yes, he thought, seeing the autographed baseball sitting on her desk. He had first heard her say it and remembered how she had explained its baseball origins and how they had ended up going to a game. He’d eaten a hot dog, his first and the first of many by members of his cohort over the several decades of games they had attended.
He sat and looked about her tidy office. Nothing fancy, he noted not for the first time. Very utilitarian. Outside the office door. he could hear the bustle of people about their business. He could not quite recall what kind of business it was. A foundation of some kind. No evidence of wealth or power here, contrary to almost all of his other clients.
She was a puzzle. He looked at her longish hair that had grown gray over their years together. “Together,” an odd phrase under the circumstances and yet fitting. He and the other members of his cohort had made a great many visits to her over the years, she always invoking the provisions of their Contract to get their assistance in some project or other. Most unusual, really, the whole arrangement. Usually, once the bargain was struck, he would not see the client again until Collection Day. Not with this one, though.
He shifted in his chair. “I never really understood your bargain,” he said.
Candence stopped typing and looked at him. “No?”
“You sold your soul to me for this?” waving a hand at her modest office “And I have been to your apartment. Nothing grand about that, either.” He shook his head. “Seems to me you didn’t make much of a bargain.”
She didn’t say anything, just sat listening with that small, enigmatic smile of hers.
“You sold your soul to me in exchange for a lifetime of success. But you did not use that success to amass riches or power.”
She just shrugged and returned to her typing.
Power, wealth, status, he had offered all the usual. But she had not wanted any of those, just to be successful in whatever she pursued. Looking back, he wondered if he would have agreed to it, had he known all the effort it would entail.
His cohort had taken to referring to her as That Woman, as in “That Woman has invoked the Contract again.”
“A contract is a contract,” she had often argued, “obligations run both ways.” Infuriating.
His cohort would all claim prior commitments when she summoned them, until he had to raise his voice and force one of them to go see what she wanted now. Or at least in the beginning, he now realized. Later, there were few protests. He even had gone himself occasionally.
He looked at the pictures on the wall, pictures of her surrounded by children, walking through fields of crops, in a hospital in Africa and another in Latin America somewhere. No, he remembered that place. In fact, now that he thought about it, he recognized several these places.
She had summoned him to that clinic in Latin America, Honduras it was, because the staff was being threatened by a local drug lord. “Lord,” smirked the devil, petty nitwit more like, undoubtedly bound for Satan’s domain by his own efforts. She had requested that he solve the problem so he had appeared to his ‘lordship’ and scared the crap out of him so that he had gone running off into the rainforest. He had heard that his “lordship” had hidden in a cave and become a hermit. The devil smiled to himself.
That village in Africa — Nigeria was it? — he hadn’t been involved in that one. Something about providing a clean water source and improving farming conditions. He sighed remembering how she had had several of the cohort scurrying around for resources to get the job done. But they had got it done, he recalled, finally coming back to Hades looking rather frazzled, but also rather pleased with themselves.
More pictures, more projects. And in many — he hadn’t been aware of just how many, he now realized — she was standing with others at the completion of some project. And he saw with a start that standing with them in some of the pictures were members of his cohort! Standing with her and others and smiling for the camera! He would have words with them.
He stood and wandered, looking at more photographs, more projects and more people. Here was a picture of her addressing some assembly or other and was that the United Nations? And was that Congress? And letters, letters of thanks, many from children, from doctors and aid workers. Even some from leaders of this or that country. He suddenly felt an undefinable unease, but couldn’t think why. Oh well, he thought, pushing the feeling aside.
He returned to his chair. “You’ve spent your life working out of this unassuming office. Lived modestly. I don’t see the point.”
She smiled and leaned back in her chair. “Not surprising. Not for an immortal sociopath,” she said.
His jaw dropped.
“You never did get it. I used you to do a great deal of good in this world.”
“Wherever I turned my hand, I succeeded. A lot of work of course, never easy. But easy wasn’t part of the bargain, just success. Do you know the work I have been doing at this non-profit foundation? Eradicated diseases, fought child slavery, provided fresh drinking water to African villages, set up farms so that people could become self-reliant and live lives of dignity and not poverty.
“You have helped me aid a great many people.” She smiled. “You’ve done a great deal of good.”
He was speechless. No, no that couldn’t be right! He couldn’t have been cheated, outsmarted, out-maneuvered.
“You have been playing me your whole life!” he whispered.
“Took you long enough,” she smiled.
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it before,” he muttered.
“Blinded by your vanity, perhaps?”
He was gruff when he said, “Well, you are mine now. You’ll come to Satan’s kingdom. You’ll serve our cohort for all eternity! You will suffer!”
“Will I? All the help your minions did, all the good and positive things. It’s habit forming you know. It sneaks up on you.”
He stood. “It’s time,” he growled.
There was a knock on the office door and it was opened by a tall, elegant man, dressed casually in sweater and slacks.
The devil turned to look and gasped. “Your Eminence.” He breathed and bowed his head.
“Go home,” said the man, casually waving a hand.
The devil disappeared.
The man sat. “I am Satan,” he said.
“I gathered,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
Satan shook his head. “I almost hesitate to bring you to Hell, Murphy. You are quite the subversive.”
“How so?”
“Oh, please,” Satan said. “You know exactly what you have done. You have subverted his entire cohort! Do you know while they were on another assignment, I saw them being kind. Small things. Holding a door open for an elderly lady, dropping a coin in a homeless person’s hand. When I asked why they were doing these things, they couldn’t explain.”
“Good is habit-forming.”
“So you have said. Can’t imagine what effect you would have in Hades.”
“We can always rescind the contract,” she smiled.
“I’m thinking about it,” he said.
She sat back and felt the beginnings of a discomfort in her head, an ache within the right side of her brain. She looked about her office at all the photographs and letters and sighed, satisfied.
Satan also looked about the office and also sighed. “All right, the Contract is rescinded. And heaven help... well, Heaven.” He smiled and disappeared.
Copyright © 2023 by Anthony Lukas
