Unsoul'd (2 page)

"You're kidding, right? That's all there is to it?"

He shrugged. "I don't like to mess around with all the niggling little details. Just because I invented lawyers doesn't mean I have to use them. There are some things even I won't do."

"But... What's the definition of a 'hit book?' How do I know you won't--"

He sighed largely, expansively. "Come on, Randy. You've seen this movie before. You know how it goes. I'm going to give you what you want and try to screw you somehow. You're going to try to figure out a way around it. Do you really think if this contract was thirty pages longer and had all kinds of details that that would change anything? This isn't one of those stories."

He had a point.

"I want a big hit," I told him. "Like Stephen King big. J. K. Rowling big."

He chuckled and leaned in. "I know what I'm doing, Randy. How do you think Stevie and JoJo got where they are today?"

"You could be lying to me. You're the devil."

"I have no reason to lie. If you don't want to sell me your soul, someone else will. Hey!" He cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted, "Anyone here want to sell their soul for a hit book?"

Five hands shot up.

"See?"

"Fine. Fine." I straightened the contract in front of me. "Do I sign it in blood?"

The devil recoiled in disgust. "Dude! Gross! What would that accomplish?"

"I don't know."

He tossed a cheap Bic pen in my direction. "Just sign it. Then the good stuff happens."

I wish I could say that I hesitated, that I took a moment to contemplate what I was about to do to my immortal soul. But I didn't. I thought only of finally doing more than just getting by, of finally being able to say, "Definitely" when people at parties asked, "Have you written anything I might have heard of?"

I signed my name.

The devil grinned his lazy hipster/surfer grin. I half-expected him to vanish, but instead, he just gave me a thumb's up from across the table and then ordered a half-caf macchiato.

Wherein the Devil Comes Over

The next day, the devil rang my doorbell.

I was surly and out-of-sorts, having eaten nothing but plain rice cakes and drunk nothing but ginger ale and Pepto-Bismoll since the previous day's Olympic-level bathroom breaks. Needless to say, with my stomach still churning and clenching, I did not greet the devil with bonhomie or open arms when he showed up at the door of my cramped little Brooklyn apartment. Rather, I snapped, "What are you doing here? You did this to me, didn't you?" gesturing vaguely in the direction of my rebellious intestines.

He arched an eyebrow. He was dressed almost identically to the first time I'd seen him. Maybe the shirt was a different color. "I didn't do anything to you. A barista who forgot to wash his hands and a little
escherichia coli
'did this' to you."
 

I regarded him suspiciously, which, I believe, is the best possible way to regard the devil. "What are you doing here?"

"Can I come in?"

"I guess."

He glanced around my abode as though it and everything within was exactly as he had anticipated. "You weren't at the coffee shop today. Not pounding the keys. Thought maybe you were having second thoughts."

"No, I just didn't get any sleep last night because my guts were trying to prove their strength by squeezing out of me everything I've eaten since 1999."

"Ah, 1999. Good year." He gazed wistfully in the general direction of my kitchen, perhaps appropriate since I believe the stove dates from 1999, possibly earlier.

"I thought maybe this is what it felt like when you lost your soul," I told him.

"No, this is what it feels like when you lose your lunch and a significant percentage of sphincter control."

At this point, I began to wonder: Had I really sold my soul to the devil? Was this guy really the devil at all or just a freeloading slacker?

"I know what you're wondering," he said with a grin. "They all wonder at some point. Got anything to drink around here?"

I waved him in the general direction of the fridge and shuffled off to the sofa, where I lay my groaning self down. My stomach gurgled, trying to convince me that I was hungry, but I was wise to its tricks now. It just wanted more fuel to shoot out of my nether port at top velocity.

"You're a tremendous host," the devil deadpanned, joining me with a beer in one hand and a glass of fizzy, ginger-ale-y delight in the other. "I mean, I feel like I'm family."

I sipped the ginger ale gratefully as the devil settled into a seat opposite the sofa. In my apartment, "opposite the sofa" meant "almost on top of the sofa," so we weren't far apart.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Hanging out."

"You don't have anywhere better to be?"

"This whole planet is one big eyesore to me. Makes no difference."

"But why
my
apartment?"

"Where else should I be?"

"I don't know. Out in the world. Causing misery among people."

The devil shrugged. "You people do a fine job making yourselves miserable. You do have cable, right?"

I threw the remote at him and closed my eyes, sipping more blissful ginger ale. "As I was trapped in the bathroom last night, I really thought this was how my soul was being taken from me," I told him as he clicked on the TV. "Or maybe God was punishing me for selling it."

"You flatter yourself that of the billions of souls on the planet, the Old Man would be paying attention to yours. Oh!
Real Housewives
. I love this shit."

"So are you here for it now? Are you going to take my soul now, while I'm in agony?" The thought wasn't as disturbing as you might think. Perhaps having my immortal soul ripped from my body would distract me from the contractions in my gut.

The devil made a
pfft
sound and flapped the notion away with his hand, staring at middle-aged, silicone-enhanced cleavage on the TV screen. "Dude, chillax. You still have your soul. I haven't lived up to my end of the bargain, after all."

"But--"

"Trust me," he said in a voice that was disconcertingly soothing. "I work in mysterious ways."

"I thought that was the other guy."

"Who do you think he copied it from?"

On that note, I laid my woozy head down on a pillow and drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up, hours had passed -- the light in my living room/kitchen/dining room/office's sole window had gone slightly gray, and the devil was now idly flipping channels.
Law & Order
zipped by, replaced by
Law & Order: Criminal Intent
, then
Law & Order: LA
, then
Law & Order: SVU
.

"How long have I been--"

"Hush!" the devil admonished, finally coming to a halt on an episode of
Law & Order: Trial by Jury
. "No one
ever
reruns these. Wait for the commercial."

I felt better. The nap had been the final tonic needed. My stomach clenched a bit, but in genuine hunger this time. I enjoyed the sensation of lying on the sofa without the fear that I would unexpectedly test the Scotchgarding of the cushions.

At a commercial break, the devil glanced at the nonexistent watch on his wrist and said, "You've been out for four hours, twenty-seven minutes, and nineteen seconds. Long enough for me to finish the
Real Housewives
marathon, which -- and hear me on this one -- is the Old Man's
real
gift to humanity."

"You've been sitting here for--"

"Four hours, twenty-seven minutes, and nineteen seconds, less my trips to the fridge." He belched. "You're out of beer. And chips. And hummus. And those little mini carrots. I didn't eat the carrots -- I just noticed that you're out of them."

"Right. Thanks." I craned my neck to look at the TV and saw a commercial for the newest Kiki Newman movie. Kiki ran from a massive explosion, her lithe form barely confined by strategically-shredded khakis and a white t-shirt. "God, she's amazing," I sighed. "I would totally sell my soul to--"

The devil clucked his tongue and waggled a finger at me. "You already signed the contract, buddy. If you wanted a rider to ride her, you should have said so before."

"Fine, fine. But when do you start coming through for me?"

"It's been twenty-four hours, Beavis. Besides, you haven't even written your next book yet."

That was true. I was under contract to an obscure imprint of Random House for my novel-in-progress. "Lucky number six!" my agent was fond of chortling, swearing that my next book would be my breakout. I wanted desperately to believe him, but he had also sworn that my first through fourth novels would be my breakout, too. With my fifth novel coming out shortly, I was justifiably cynical on two issues: my likelihood of ever breaking out, and my agent's ability to scry the future.

The commercial ended and one of those annoying newslets came on, fifteen seconds of news you can't use because there's no context.

"Police announce no new leads in the case of missing Rutgers co-ed Lacey Simonson!" a newsdoll chirped, having clearly not received the memo that a missing co-ed was nothing to chirp about. "More news at eleven, or visit NewsChannel13.com!"

"I feel so much more informed," the devil said. "Don't you?"

"Is that you? Are you responsible for that?" I asked. It seemed likely, after all. At least as likely as the devil channel-surfing for
Law & Order
episodes in my apartment.

"That's just like you people," he sniffed. "Blaming me for everything. Believe me, you guys are--"

"Is this the part where you tell me that there's plenty of evil in the human heart and we don't need your outside influence to maim and murder each other?"

"Well, it
was
going to be that part," he fumed. "You just can't let me have any fun at all, can you?" And then he stormed out.

I actually said "Thank God" out loud before I realized that was sort of ironic.

Wherein My Ex Stops By and Does Not Have Sex with Me

The devil was eating cold cereal and watching an old episode of
Three's Company
when I woke up late the next morning. One of the perks of the freelance lifestyle is that I wake up when I choose. But usually I'm alone.

"Are you kidding me? Seriously? This wasn't in the contract, this bit with you hanging around all the time and eating my food."

The devil pulled a wounded face. "Dude, if it's bothering you, just say so. No need to drop a sarcasm bomb on me. I have feelings, too, you know."

"You do?"

He thought about it. "Probably not. But I simulate them pretty well. And you have hurt my simulated human feelings."

"I apologize."

He smiled and wolfed down a big, dripping spoonful. "There. Now was that so horrible? Oh, hey, by the way -- a package came a little while ago. I signed for it because I'm helpful like that."

I wasn't expecting anything, so I made my way to the front door, where a large brown box squatted just inside.
 

"You could
thank
me, you know," the devil complained. "And since when is your name Fiona Weller?"

Ugh. Looking at the box, I saw that, yes, Fiona's name was on the label. "That's my ex-girlfriend." I called her and got voicemail. "Hey, Fi, it's Randall. That package from Amazon arrived. I'll be around today if you want to pick it up."

I put down the phone, and turned around to the very disconcerting sight of the devil glaring at me in disapproval. The fact that the devil looked like a slacker hipster didn't make the glare any less disconcerting -- I knew it was the devil behind those lazy, cool-green eyes.

"Why is your ex-girlfriend having packages sent here?"

"She was out of town when it was supposed to--"

"Uh huh."

"Look, I'm not getting into this with you. It's complicated."

"I bet."

"Look, it's not a big deal. We're still friends--"

The devil reared back and howled with laughter. "I love it! I love the 'We're still friends.' I wish I could congratulate whoever invented that. It's responsible for a nice, hefty chunk of human misery and deception. At least tell me that when she gets here, she's not just picking up
that
package, if you get my drift."

A brief image of Fi's lean torso, sweat-glimmering in the half-light of the bedroom, blazed before my mind's eye so powerfully that I thought I could reach out and touch it.

"It's not like that," I told him.

He grinned. "But you wish it were. Good for you! You're letting her drop stuff off here; you deserve a little knob-polish for that."

Another image: Fi's pert, heart-shaped ass turned up at me the one time--

I shook my head. Was the devil doing this to me? Making me see these things? I wanted to believe he was -- I was proud that I had finally stopped fantasizing about Fi six months after our breakup -- but the truth was sadder, I suspected.

I changed the topic. "What name did you use? When you signed for the package?"