Copyright © 2013 Alby Stone
With no apologies at all to Christopher Marlowe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Peter Edward Cook.
My seven years were up and it was time to settle but I really didn’t fancy paying the bill. Somehow an eternity of sulphur fumes, intense heat, jabbing with pitchforks and rectal probing with red-hot pokers did not appeal. It wasn’t as if I’d got anything worth having out of the bargain – a few nights of admittedly satisfying passion, some extra cash, a modicum of fame and some glitzy toys were all very well but in the end I had nothing of real value. Nothing lasting had been achieved and I would wind up as little more than a few lines in the local newspaper and a bundle of bones buried in a wooden box whose location was marked with a stone rectangle inscribed with my name, a couple of dates and a cringeworthy epitaph dreamed up by whatever member of my family had remained sober enough to think of composing one. At least I would be leaving them enough money for a decent piss-up to mark my passing. OK, it wasn’t really that bad, but even so.
Still, I’d made my bed and now I had to lie in it. A deal is a deal and my word is my bond, et cetera. There’s nothing like imminent damnation to get the creaky old adages rolling.
*
In retrospect, I’d made a bad deal; though at the time it had seemed not only a great idea but the logical next step in the circumstances. It was a dark and stormy night, and a bitterly cold one. I was unattached, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future; I was unemployed, broke, sober and hungry. And my Christmas stocking was as empty as my bank account, my bed and my prospects. At twenty-five minutes to midnight on that dreary Christmas Eve, I raided my almost-empty tobacco pouch for a matchstick-thin cigarette. I looked around my miserable, undecorated bed-sit and its one-candle illumination, and wondered how things had become so bloody bleak and depressing, so utterly hopeless.
Of course, there was no-one to blame but myself. I’d moved to London from my home town almost a year before, with bright eyes and high hopes of making it big in the city. After years of slaving in dead-end jobs and marking time with short-term relationships and long-term underachievement, I felt I had no choice but to get away from all the things I knew, the people and activities that held me back, and make a fresh start armed with nothing but my undoubted talent and a new-found ambition. I was going to be a success. I was going to be a sensation. I was going to be a star.
Inevitably, I failed to take account of one small factor that was to prevent me from realising my dream. I had no talent at all. I flunked one audition after another – minor roles in theatres, bit parts in television productions and films, faces in crowds in commercials, spear-carriers, third policemen… I cast my line into the water time after time and never had a single bite. It seemed being a well-known figure in local amateur dramatics wasn’t enough to merit being even an anonymous visage in a celluloid mob. Eventually, my savings ran out and I was forced to live first on minimum-wage casual work then, when even that dried up, on benefits. I fell behind with the rent, couldn’t pay the utilities, and joined the ranks of the freegans just so I could eat. The gas had been cut off and I had no coins for the electricity meter so I couldn’t cook anything I’d liberated from the supermarket bins, and I was sick to death of stale sandwiches and crushed biscuits. A dead dog and a divorce, and they would have been writing songs about me in Nashville.
Sure, I could have gone home, if I’d been able to scrape enough money together for the coach or train fare. But that would be to admit defeat, and that was unthinkable. I could picture my siblings’ smug, told-you-so faces, and hear the insincerity in my friends’ voices when they pretended to soothe my battered ego. On the whole, I would rather have starved to death or perished from hypothermia before going there.
The clock nudged its big hand a little closer to the twelve. The timepiece had been a flat-warming gift from my mother. Thinking about it, I was impressed with the longevity of the single AA battery I’d inserted almost exactly one year earlier. As I watched it moved forward another notch, then another. I fancied a mug of coffee but had no way of heating the water, and nothing to mix with the water anyway. I kept looking at the clock. I had nothing else to do. Then the hand stopped moving.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I sighed. Despondently, I rolled another cigarette, resolving to go to bed when it was smoked. But although the lighter sparked, there was no flame. It had run out of gas. I had no matches. The candle flickering on the mantelpiece was my last one. There was exactly seven pence in my pocket, a long way short of the price of either matches or candles. If I blew the candle out, I’d have nothing to relight it with. If I let it burn down, I would be without light on Christmas evening.
I lit my cigarette from the candle. As I puffed at it to keep it alight, I coughed and the candle was extinguished. There wasn’t much I could do about it. For a moment I thought I might actually cry. God knows I wanted to. But I merely sat there in the dark and smoked, too fed up to even swear. Outside, the local church bells were ringing and people staggering home from the pubs were singing carols and shouting: ‘Merry Christmas!’
Merry Christmas? What did I have to be merry about? I toyed momentarily with the idea of going out onto the street and begging. Surely some of those mellow drunks and the boys and girls wide-eyed and excited from Yuletide snogs would have it within them to donate a quid or two to some poor bastard down on his luck? Then I thought back to my own pre-London Christmases. For every merry drunk there had been two vicious buggers spoiling for a fight; and for every snog-happy bloke there were a couple more who’d come away from their Christmas do with unpressed lips and a need to take out their frustrations on someone. And drunks make mistakes – with the way my luck was going some sodden fool would probably think I was a mugger and I’d end up at the nearest nick sharing a cell with a human vomit machine. Though at least it would probably be warm and well-lit and they’d give me a cup of tea and breakfast in the morning. Now that was a temptation indeed.
‘You call that temptation? That’s amateur stuff. I could show you real temptation.’
I didn’t see where he came from – or indeed, how he’d got into my poky little flat, as the door was locked and the security chain was on to make sure my dodgy neighbours couldn’t get in. I had nothing worth stealing but that doesn’t stop some people.
‘Who the hell are you? How did you get in? What do you want?’
My questions were hardly original but they were all apposite. The bloke now sitting on the end of my bed laughed. It sounded like someone unblocking a sink with a bull terrier.
‘Who the hell indeed,’ he replied.
I took a good look at him. Yes, my flat was pitch-dark – I hadn’t bothered to open the curtains when the candle went out – but I could see him clearly, as though he was somehow lit from within. He was about my own age, mid-thirties, with a Guy Fawkes goatee and moustache, and short dark hair brushed back from his forehead. He wore a black suit with a white shirt and black tie. His eyes were solid black orbs that either glowed with an inner fire or were reflecting orange light from a source that wasn’t there. He bore an uncanny resemblance to José Mourinho.
‘Aren’t you sick of living like this?’ He gestured to take in my distinctly shabby home. ‘Aren’t you fed up with being poor and lonely and a failure? Wouldn’t you like things to be better than this? I mean, short of contracting a disfiguring, painful and ultimately fatal illness, things really couldn’t get worse for you, could they?’
I had no answer to that. ‘No, they really couldn’t,’ I agreed. ‘But you haven’t answered my questions.’
He laughed again. This time it sounded like a grizzly bear scraping a blackboard. ‘You know who I am,’ he said. ‘You let me in. And what I want is what you want.’
‘I don’t know who you are,’ I told him crossly, though I was beginning to get an idea. A man who looked like Satan incarnate, who had gained entrance to my home through apparently supernatural means, and who seemed to be about to offer me – something… Well, who else could it be?
‘Liar,’ he said, with a grin so smug it would have graced the features of a Cabinet Minister. ‘You may be an untalented idiot but you’re not stupid. You’ve read the stories and you know the deal. Seven years of good times, the very best times you can imagine, with all your wildest dreams and fantasies realised, then I collect on the debt. All you have to do is sign on the dotted line.’
I thought about it for a couple of minutes. He was patient. He had all the time in the world, after all. I realised he was smoking a cigar.
‘Can I have one of those?’
‘If you sign I’ll leave a whole box of these here for you, to sweeten the deal.’
‘Could I have a lighter that works as well?’
‘You drive a hard bargain,’ he chuckled, a horrible noise like a corpse being dismembered with a rusty chainsaw. ‘OK, why not? A box of cigars and a fully-functional lighter it is. And seven years of good times.’
‘And the price would be the – er – usual, I suppose?’
‘Correct: one soul of which you are the sole owner, payable at the end of the specified period.’
‘I’m guessing you have the contract already drawn up?’
He reached into his inside jacket pocket and produced what looked like a parchment scroll. ‘Human skin,’ he said proudly. ‘Cost me a fair bit but just look at that finish. Smooth and silky as a baby’s bum. Actually, it probably is a baby’s bum. Do you want to read it?’
I thought I’d better. Fortunately, unlike most legal documents I’d seen, this was fairly short and concise. In return for seven years of pleasure and good fortune, to be spent in the manner of my choosing, a box of cigars and a working cigarette lighter, I was to forfeit my immortal soul. The payment would be demanded in exactly seven calendar years from the moment of signing.
It didn’t take me long to decide. After all, what did I have? My life was nothing but poverty, misery, futility and loneliness. What good was my soul anyway? It didn’t pay the bills or get the drinks in or feed me or get me laid. If I understood correctly, its sole post-mortem purpose was to spend all eternity singing the praises of a supreme being I didn’t even believe in. That didn’t sound to me like much fun. Mind you, if this bloke sitting on my bed existed then maybe the other one might. No, I wouldn’t even think about that. Besides, getting into the heavenly glee club was supposed to be a tricky business and I was pretty sure I hadn’t racked up anywhere near enough brownie points for a harp and wings.
‘Where do I sign?’
‘At the bottom, where it says signed.’ He removed a fountain pen from his breast pocket. ‘But first we need ink. This may hurt a little bit.’
He stabbed the fountain pen into my wrist and pressed the lever to fill the barrel with my blood. It hurt like buggery, but I gritted my molars and let him get on with it. When it was full he handed me the pen and I signed away my soul. He breathed on the signature to dry it, rolled up the parchment and stood.
‘It’s been a pleasure doing business with you. Oh, you’ll need these.’ He placed two one-pound coins in my hand. ‘One for the lottery the day after tomorrow – any numbers will do – and one for the electricity. It’s bloody freezing in here.’
I blinked and he vanished. The church bells were still ringing. The drunks were still shouting. I had a cigar in my hand.
*
As soon as he left I put a coin in the meter and switched on the electric fire to warm the flat enough for me to get undressed for bed without dying of exposure. The next lottery draw was a couple of days later. In the interim I had to last nearly two more days without food and came close to blowing the deal on a Mars bar, and would probably have starved anyway if I hadn’t found a fiver in the street on the way home from the newsagent. And I forgot to tick the ‘no publicity’ box.
You know the rest. I won an improbable sum of money on the lottery – an eight-digit windfall that turned my life upside-down. Consequently, I was not only suddenly astonishingly wealthy but inundated with begging letters and besieged by attractive women – and my bloody family, naturally – and like all ‘undeserving’ lottery winners became the stuff of tabloid legend, the good-time geezer with a different woman for every night of the week, and fifty-two different sets of those ladies every year. I was a prize rotter, a cynical love-’em-and-leave-‘em bounder of the first order, the carelessly wealthy guy who’d think nothing of writing off his Mercedes because, what the hell, there were more in the garage. I was the man who lived on champagne, cocaine and caviar when he couldn’t get anything better. The papers were full of my exploits – the starlets, the private jet hires, the hotel orgies, the drunken fights and iffy financial dealings, the kisses and the telling.
It was all bollocks, of course. In reality I had a decent but modest new house, a shiny but nondescript Renault, and a few non-celebrity girlfriends to whom I was always faithful and treated well. I never took drugs, partied excessively hard or indulged in outrageous gastronomic extravaganzas. I spent a bit of money on artwork and books, nights at the theatre – the one love I could never forget – or travel. I actually gave a lot of it away, to charities or people in need. I looked after my family and my friends. On the whole, I led a fairly decent and restrained life. The simple truth was that I didn’t have the appetites and vices expected of a twenty-first century celebrity. All the status symbols and decadence money could buy were not things I wanted to have, and I had no desire to make anyone else’s life a misery. But I never denied anything. I let the tabloids write what they wanted and allowed people at large to believe what suited them. People need entertainment and after all, it was all theatre really, wasn’t it?
It was the best performance I’d ever given, but it was hollow. Because I would never find lasting fulfilment and I didn’t actually do anything. Tabloid hacks and the public imagination did all the work for me.
So there I was, sitting at home on a Christmas Eve seven years on from the day I signed my soul away. I was watching the clock, the same one I had when the deal was made. I’m not sure why I kept it – maybe out of superstition, or maybe it was as a reminder that my time was short. I was alone, as I had been that night, only this time it was by choice. My current girlfriend – someone I cared for deeply and thought I might actually have a future with, if only I had a future – was away, visiting her parents. She’d come back the next day to find only an empty piece of meat, the soul departed in more ways than one. She’d grieve but she’d get over it, I hoped.
It was different from that night in other ways. There was a cheerful fire in the hearth and it was warm enough for me to be comfortable in only a dressing gown. The electricity was on, with a decorated Christmas tree shining with baubles and twinkling with fairy lights. I’d had a good dinner: a full Christmas job, only with a nut roast instead of turkey. I gave up eating meat shortly after selling my soul – somehow the prospect of an eternity of torment made it impossible to ignore the suffering of animals in abattoirs. I was smoking a cigar, with a box of them for my expected visitor, in red and white Christmas wrapping paper; and there was an open bottle of good brandy with two balloons at the ready. If I was going to be damned, I’d be civilised about it.
The clock’s hands approached midnight. In the street outside the church bells began to chime and the drunks cheered and shouted: ‘Merry Christmas!’ They were wishing the world a Christmas I would not see. That was OK – as I said, I didn’t much fancy the red-hot pokers up the bum or whatever Satan’s horned minions did to the eternally doomed, but I’d made my bed and was prepared to lie in it. I just wished I’d done a little more with it all. I just wished – well, what was the point of wishing? I shrugged and poured two decent measures into the brandy balloons. Then the clock stopped. I blinked and there he was, sitting in the armchair opposite.
I gestured to the brandy. ‘Have a drink,’ I said. ‘It’s a good cognac. You’ll like it.’
Satan took the balloon, warmed it in his hand and inhaled the vapour. He sipped and savoured it. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Yes, this is a good one.’
‘I thought you’d like it. Nice and smooth but fiery. Just like you.’
He laughed and for a second I thought a bus full of small children had crashed into a petting zoo. He glanced at the wrapped box, read the gift tag. ‘For me? That’s very kind.’
‘I may be about to be dragged into a fiery pit forever but that’s no reason not be civil.’
He took the parchment scroll from his pocket and unrolled it. ‘Five minutes left. So, then – no pleading? No begging for mercy? No wailing and rending of garments? No last-minute repentance?’
‘No. A deal is a deal. It was made fair and square; and I knew what I was doing. Anyway, what would I repent to? I don’t believe in God. Mind you, I wouldn’t believe in you either if you weren’t sitting there, so maybe I’m wrong. It doesn’t matter. It’s time to pay my debt – one immortal soul, as specified.’
He studied me closely, stroking his goatee. ‘What if I told you God does exist?’
‘I probably wouldn’t believe you.’
Satan smiled crookedly. ‘Actually, there is a God but it’s very different from what the Scriptures say. The Buddhists are much closer to the truth. God is indifferent, unknowable and ultimately not the Creator of All Things. It is a creation itself – a by-product of the universe. In fact, God is the universe. Everything is God. Even I, the creation of human fear and greed and hate and stupidity – which is probably why I’m such a bloody cliché – am God. As are you, my friend.’
‘I don’t feel much like God. I don’t think I’d want to.’
He laughed once more, chisels hammering into a squealing rhinoceros. ‘You’re a strange one. I gave you what you wanted and you didn’t do anything bad with it. I’d even go so far as to say you’ve used it for good. You accepted damnation so you could be moderately comfortable and used most of what you got out of the deal to do the right thing. And you’re even honourable. It’s impressive – sad, but impressive.’
I finished my brandy, extinguished the nearly-finished cigar and sighed. ‘Come on, let’s get it over with. I’ll just take off this dressing gown. Let’s not go all Doctor Faustus here.’
‘You’ve got one minute left.’
‘It’s only a bloody minute, less than that now. Let’s go.’
‘Can you hear the bells?’
I could indeed hear the bells. ‘Do they have bells in hell?’ I couldn’t say why but I was genuinely curious.
‘No, the Devil hates the sound of bells, or so they say. That’s why churches have them, to keep me away. It doesn’t really work but that’s tradition for you. I actually quite like bells, especially at this time of year. They also say the Devil has all the best tunes but there’s no music in hell. All we have down there is fire and the reek of brimstone, and pain and suffering and despair and the screams of the damned, on and on, ceaselessly, for eternity.’
He stood abruptly and tore the parchment in two then tossed it onto the fire, where it instantly caught and became flakes of ash that quickly disappeared up the chimney.
‘It’s no place for a man like you.’ He picked up the box. ‘Hell’s for really unpleasant bastards. Having you down there would be embarrassing. You’re so bloody soft you wouldn’t even be much use as a member of staff. Anyway, I’ve got to dash – a date with a well-known MP in his “second home” in Mayfair, where he’s been spending some quality time this evening with a lot of cocaine and a woman who lives there and isn’t the one he’s married to. Family values, my diabolical arse. I might get some decent begging and pleading there, maybe even some gnashing of teeth. And I’m really looking forward to seeing him with a red-hot poker rammed up his Khyber, the smug, hypocritical bastard.’
This wasn’t at all what I had expected. ‘You’re releasing me from the contract? Why?’
‘It’s Christmas,’ he said. ‘Peace on earth and goodwill to all men, and all that. Even the Devil can get into the Christmas spirit. The religion’s immaterial – it’s the thought that counts. Mind you, I draw the line at politicians. Thanks for the Christmas present. I hope I don’t see you again, so be a good boy.’ Then he vanished, popping out of existence like a soap-bubble, taking the box of cigars with him.
When I looked up at the clock, still unable to comprehend what had just happened, it was one minute past twelve. It was the Christmas Day I thought I’d never see. The telephone rang.
‘Merry Christmas, my love,’ she said when I picked up the handset. And outside, the drunks were singing and the bells kept on ringing.
