"I once knew a man who swore he sold his soul to the devil. Can you believe that?"

Throaty laughter punctuates the rhetorical question. The old man sits in a wheelchair that is as old as me, a worn pillow between him and the fraying vinyl of the seat. He keeps chuckling as he unwraps his McDonalds cheeseburger, plain, no onions, his one eye tracking the movement of the yellow wrapper while his other hides beneath a blue-white cataract.

Wispy white hair, thin, unbrushed and unwashed, pokes its way out from beneath the sides of his black "Veteran" trucker cap. His denim jacket is faded with dirt and memories of better days. It looks like he's been wearing it since before Bon Jovi had a number one hit, complete with pinholes and patches that aren't intended to be decoration. Somehow, though, they still are; half a dozen military unit patches in different colors and from different branches litter his jacket.

He smiles a gap-toothed grin as he takes his first bite of the still-warm cheeseburger. This is our Wednesday routine; on my lunch break, I bring him a sackful of burgers and a Coca-cola. He doesn't care for fries, but the burgers can actually stretch into a couple of meals, and he doesn't mind them cold. This week, I drop a twenty into his little three-gallon bucket he uses to panhandle. Some Wednesdays, it's the key to a room at the Motel 6. Others, it's just a fiver. I don't want him to think I feel too sorry for him.

Besides, we have a business arrangement. He tells stories, and I listen.

Every Wednesday, I feed him and we chat. He grabs his bucket and I wheel him over to a shady spot where I can sit on a low wall and listen to his stories. I'm sure some of them are probably even true.

I hope some of them aren't.

I believe he really is a veteran. His demeanor, word choice, and knowledge base are mighty good to be fake, but I'm no expert. It could all be a carefully constructed fairy tale to earn a few extra dollars from sympathetic strangers. I don't believe that's the case, but if so, I tip my hat to his commitment to the role.

Overall though, the man is a mystery, and I am content to let him stay that way.

He doesn't blame his tours for where he is now. The lost leg he left behind in a motorcycle wreck near Miami in the summer of 79. The cancer, though, that he firmly believes is due to his relationship with a foreign agent. Codename: Orange.

But he doesn't dwell on it.

I've offered to try to get him into treatment under indigent care. He just shakes his head and refuses to go when it's warm outside. "Talk to me again after the first snowfall," he says and laughs when I bring it up.

I know he has some mental health issues. I know he has some physical health issues, too. But I also know he's lived this way for almost as long as I've been alive, and some people don't want to be saved. So I do the next best thing; I listen.

"The devil, eh?" I ask, biting into my own McDonalds fare. This week, it's a quarter pounder. I don't skip the fries.

He nods. "Yep. Prince of Lies himself." He slurps his Coke, looking over at me. "Do you believe in God, Jack?"

I've told him my name a dozen times. It doesn't matter. To him, I'm Jack.

"Yeah, I do, Chief."

"Just Jon will do, Jack."

"Yes, I do believe in God, Jon."

"Why?"

I take a bite. Chew. Look over at him. His one good eye locks in on mine.

"Why not?" I finally ask in response.

He laughs. "That's cheatin', Jack. But I'll take it."

He reaches for his second burger, and we eat in silence for a few minutes.

"Jack, I believe in God because I know the devil is real."

His statement is delivered so matter-of-factly, so absolutely convincingly, that I am struck with a chill that travels down the nape of my neck into the red brick where I sit. That is quite a trick, to be chilled in August.

"How do you know that, Chief?" I slip right back into old habits; he is Chief Warrant Officer Jon Michael Sparks from Carey, Idaho, and once a CWO, always a CWO.

"Because I've seen him, Jack. I saw him with my own two eyes, and I saw the fella he was talking to. I couldn't hear nothin', but I can guess what was up. That same cat the devil was talkin' to, he eased over my way one evening after it was all said and done. Asked me what I seen. What I knew. What I heard."

I notice Jon's hand is shaking a little as he balls up his empty wrapper.

"So, let me get this straight. You saw a guy sell his soul, and you saw the devil, and then this guy came up to you?"

He shakes his head. "No, man. You got the timeline all wrong. See, you know I got a couple of purple hearts, right?" I nod, remembering when he had told me a little about one of them. "Anyway. That first one, I got when I was co-piloting. Bad LZ, bullets zipping, I'm the only bastard catches any. It wasn't bad, it burned, stung for a while, got me a few days back in the city with cold air conditioning and hot food. Nothing major. Anyway, while I was there, this young guy, he comes in, and he's all fucked up. Screaming at night, always sweaty, yelling about how pretty the Morning Star was and shit. Really weird. He had a wound, but I think he was mostly psyche."

At this, he pauses. It's his turn to have a visible shiver, but it's different than the fear response I had earlier. His shiver is memory-based, and then he regains his composure. "Mental stuff in a hospital, man. Scary shit. Anyway. So back then, especially in-country, the main hospital non-critically wounded were in, it was a big bay. More serious or higher ranks, they got private rooms and the good life. Hell, the big bay was plenty good, the AC was reasonably cool and the nurses were plenty cute. Nobody was shooting at us. Life was great for a little while. So everybody is asleep, 'cept for me and this guy. And then there was this . . . wind. Like, hot. Smelled like shit, kinda wafted through the air like hot asphalt, yknow? It was weird. And then there he was."

"The devil?"

"Yes, Jack. The Devil. Whispering to this long range recon guy, the one who was spazzing out."

"So what did he look like?"

Jon paused and stared off into fifty years ago.

"He was pretty."

"Pretty?"

"Yeah. Not handsome. Not gruesome. Not, like, Greta Garbo or Farrah Fawcett, but not like Clark Gable, either. He was pretty. Like some kind of . . . I don't know. I don't know. I aint gay or nothin', but he was just beautiful. And terrifying. Because I knew it was wrong, all that prettiness."

As I finished my last fry, my eyes didn't leave his face. "So what happened?"

"They just talked. And then the Devil, he kissed that guy on the forehead. It was strange. And sweet. And scary as fuck."

"You saw the Devil kiss a man on the forehead? Sweetly?" I sipped my drink.

He shifted his gaze to me. Cyclops, regarding Odysseus. At least he wasn't hungry anymore.

"Jack. Yes. And the next night, that soldier, he came up to me. Got real close-like. Started asking me what I'd seen, what I knew. I just shook my head. He told me he'd sold his soul, and that he was scared. He told me he knew I had seen them together."

"Did he threaten you, or anything?"

"No. He laughed. He told me the Devil saw me watching, and that he had a message for me."

"What is that? The message? What did he say?" I couldn't help it. I was fascinated.

"The Devil would be watching me, too."

"Oh?"

"Oh? What the fuck you mean, 'oh'? Ain't that some scary shit right there, Jack? Could I not just end this goddamned story right there and it be about enough to have you pee your pants?"

I had to admit, yes, it was, but still. I had questions.

"So did anything happen? After? To you?"

Jon just looks down at his wheelchair. Back up to me. Over to his panhandling bucket.

I feel pretty stupid.

Imagine how I felt later, when I actually googled CWO Jon Michael Sparks on a whim.

Chief was a Huey pilot, alright. Shot down in 1973 in an operation over the Ho Chi Min trail. His door gunner was the only one to make it back home.

To this day, Jon Sparks is officially listed as Missing in Action.

I still take him cheeseburgers on Wednesdays, but we don't talk about religious stuff anymore.

Mostly because I'm pretty sure that the infantryman he told me about wasn't the only one to work a deal.

And / or, maybe Jon is still being watched.

Honestly, I'm afraid to discover how thick the border is between lies and truth.

Whatever side of that line I'm living on, I'm happy.

But I'm not afraid to admit that I've started going back to church.

Especially on Wednesday nights.

Dr. Victor Stewart, a man who had, at the age of seventeen, sold his soul to an entity resembling in some ways the devil, was universally acknowledged to be a man who tolerated no mention of spirits. Not only that; he found religious beings and other folk histories as nothing but fear-induced delusions of the masses bearing no ties to reality other than the inscription of their alleged traits in works of ancient literature. No, dr. Stewart was an educated man; he knew better than to partake in superstition and indulge in comforting rituals unless those rituals were conducted in the comfort of his own home and dedicated solely to appeasing he who had granted him a multilingual lexicon vast and organized enough to warrant admission into a top language school; he who had enabled his rise to the office of professor of linguistics; however, primely, he who did not exist.

And so it was apparent to all that dr. Stewart would not exhibit irrational behavior, at least until the strike of one or another age-induced mental impairment. And so it was a shock to all that dr. Stewart had in his late fifties taken to favoritism; and the subject of his admiration had become the undergraduate student and valedictorian Martha Anastasia Harrow. Few knew of this for certain, of course. To many an ear the notion had transpired from inconclusive observation and long-term exposure to campus gossip, not from cold, hard fact, the importance of which dr. Stewart had always stressed in his lectures on cultural anthropology. It was not spontaneity that governed the work of man but virtue, experience and mature emotion. So it was widely suspected that there was a cause for dr. Stewart's deviation from the path of an impartial teacher; and it was widely suspected that this cause provoked change, change only towards the worse.

Martha, being an intelligent woman in higher education, had, of course, her own deliberations on the topic. This, tragically, did not stop her from ringing the doorbell to dr. Stewart's apartment on a clear Saturday evening. Immediately, the door swung open, pulled by an invisible yet formidable force that could not have possibly been the muscle power of a poorly aging professor. Inexplicably to Martha and rather obviously to you, dr. Stewart's hand it was; though whether a hand attached to the torso of a man remained his if an external party controlled the limb remains an ambiguous dilemma.

"Ah!" Martha shrieked, rather comically, if I may say so. What must, however, be attributed to her credit is her impressive reaction time following being thrust onto the carpeted, cat-pee-smelling floor. Utilizing this clear-headedness, she rolled over and stood. In her line of sight landed the silhouette of dr. Stewart. The door slammed shut.

"Apologies," he said sheepishly.

"Excuse me?" Martha choked out incredulously.

"For this," he continued as if she hadn't spoken, sidestepping to reveal an open doorway and behind it - your standard Satanist's kit; a chalk-drawn pentagram, red candles already dripping molten wax, an array of obscene and gory photographs taped to the walls, and most importantly, iron shackles slung over the backrest of a sturdy wooden chair.

Martha blinked once and then, for good measure, once more.

You see, reader, this occurrence, in her view, satisfied all the necessary and sufficient conditions for being an absurd and borderline comical event, as it does for me and perhaps for you, if I'm doing my job right. However, to dr. Stewart it was neither absurd nor comical, because these qualities were substantially dimmed by the presence of deep existential dread and grim expectation as well as pure terror - call that funny! Absurd.

"Follow me," dr. Stewart said. Martha heard a voice at the back of her mind, and, dear reader, I am afraid I have been keeping a crucial piece of information from you. For with terror did Martha realize that to rid herself of the cruel progressive disease that was childhood dementia, she too, at the age of fourteen, had made a pact with the devil. Her mistake laid in assuming that her apathetic emotional constitution and diminished drive to maintain interpersonal relations were the only consequences of the lack of her soul. Oh, how the devil had fooled her! He whispered taunts in her ear, what an intelligent little girl you are!

"Please sit," instructed dr. Stewart, and Martha, staggered, complied.

I am afraid that some details of Satan's subsequent actions and his servant's procedure are, dear reader, strictly classified. For I too have made a deal with the devil, sold my fragile soul, which remains the only reason for my lighthearted tone as I share with you this last inkling: dr. Stewart, after years of teaching, has been deemed redundant by the dean, which spun him into a cycle of manic depression resulting in his seduction and murder of an upcoming student, Martha Anastasia Harrow, in his own apartment, one clear Saturday night. An investigation led to the discovery of a note written in a strange code to which there was no key or previous history. Dr. Stewart himself - tragically - appeared to have burned his throat with a candleflame, narrowly missing his esophagus and hitting the trachea dead-on, the cause of his untimely and disgraceful death.

All, both good and bad, I'm afraid, comes to an end.

He watched her come in, every day, for two years. She was a regular at the Starbucks he works at. She was never very social, a keep-to-herself type, and always waited patiently for her white foam, three-pump vanilla latte. He knew he was doomed the moment she came into the coffee shop. She was the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, He was in love at first sight.

she wasn't very tall, standing at 5'2 but she had a soft face that was framed by her red curls; a vision of cottage core if there ever was one, complete with freckles dotting across her nose and a smile that never stopped to awe him. They only ever had small conversations but with each conversation, the more he fell deeper and deeper for her, drowning in his love for her.

Before his work-day, he decided to take the plunge, he was going to ask her out on a date.

He clocked in, got the morning prep ready, greeting his coworkers before finally opening the store. within a half hour of being open, she walked in.

She was tenth in line so he at least had a few minutes to think of what to say to her.

The time flew by and finally, she was up, greeting him with that damn smile, tucking a red curl behind her ear. "Morning Stephen."

He felt butterflies in his stomach and his hands shake. "Morning Beth, the usual?"

"Yes please."

He checked her out, handing her a small piece of paper. "One more thing, before you go. this is my number and I was wondering if you'd like to go on a date sometime?"

She looked at the paper in his hand. "oh, I'm really sorry, I'm not interested in dating right now."

He felt all the blood leave his face. It took him all night to work up this kind of courage. "Oh." Is all he can say to it. She frowned. "I'm really sorry, I'm just going through a lot of personal shit and my therapist doesn't recommend dating right now." He just nodded and she left the line to wait for her drink.

He couldn't take it, after the morning rush, he handed in his apron and went home to figure out a way to win Beth.

Once he found a way, nothing stopped him. He went to Walmart to get everything he would need to do the craziest thing he's ever done; make a deal with the devil.

Once home he moved everything from the living room floor, taking up the carpet and starting on making the summoning circle and putting the right symbols and sigils in the right places. He lit the candles and then stood outside of it, looking at his phone before reading what was needed.

"o obscura unum voco te, auxilium meum vota vera fiunt"

At first, nothing happened then the flames on the candle danced wildly, the air got cold, cold enough he could see his breath and suddenly a seemingly human-looking man in a suit stood with a clipboard.

Stephen swallowed. "You.. you're not the devil."

the man smiled. "Oh absolutely not. Did you think the devil would come to every humans wish and whim? No, I'm one of his many helpers. let's get to business, why did you try to summon the devil?"

"uhh there's a girl-"

The man was already checking off boxes on his clipboard.

"She rejected me and I wanted a way to win her over."

The man nodded. "A classic love wish, easy enough." He handed Stephen a small handful of papers. "I need you to read over this before you agree to sign your soul over to the devil and his dominion of hell for all eternity."

Stephen glossed over a lot of the papers. "When is payment due exactly?"

"Ten years time."

Stephen looked surprised. "Ten years? I get a whole decade-"

"Yes but I implore you to read-"

Stephen was already signing the papers and handed them back with a huge smile. "Here, when will it start? when will she love me?"

The man took the papers with a strained smile. "No time at all. Now Stephen this is your last chance to read over the fine print and what it would mean for your soul."

Stephen just waved him away. "I'll deal with it then, I got ten years."

The man smiled. "Right. Enjoy your time." And then he was gone.

Within moments there was a knock on his door. When he opened it Beth was standing there. "beth?"

She smiled. "Hi. I'm so sorry about earlier, I'd love nothing more than to go on a date with you." Stephen smiled back. "Lets go then."

Ten years later

Stephen sighed as he pulled into the drive way , turning the ignition off.

When he stepped out he was greeted by two children, hugging him around his waist. "Whoa, love bugs."

They both smiled up at him, walking with im and telling him about their school day.

when he stepped through the door though, everything suddenly felt different. he felt ill.

no not ill, hungry.

so hungry he felt nauseous.

He went to the fridge, Beth seeing him as he walked to the fridge.

Beth saw him. "Stephen? how was work?"

He didn't answer, just opened the fridge, staring at the marinating steak.

"Stephen?" He took the steak out and took a bite of it. and another and another and found he couldn't get enough, he ate the whole thing.

Beth just stared in shock. "Stephen, are you ok?"

He felt a lot better now. his mouth was red with the beef blood and various herbs of the marinade. "Yeah. why?"

"You just ate the entire dinner. Raw. Maybe you should lay down."

Stephen smiled, getting a towel. "Why? I feel great now. I'm sorry about dinner, lets's order pizza, you know how much the kids love that."

Beth swallowed. "Alright. we can do that."

He woke in the middle of the night, curled in pain, trying to hide it from Beth who was sound asleep.

He felt like he hadn't eaten in weeks, or months. the hunger pain coiled deep in his stomach. He looked over at Beth, able to smell her blood, feels like he can see it going through her veins like a steady river. He felt his mouth drool at the thought of eating her.

He moved over her without any thought, staring at her neck before he opened his mouth, fangs instead of teeth showed and he tore into her. she woke, screaming in agony, blood painting her neck, Stpehns face, and the white sheets below.

the door opened and the light was suddenly on and he looked, seeing his two children.

Not children.

Prey.

"Daddy?" One of them asked and he ran for him before the door slammed in his face and he realized what he was doing. he looked at Beths now dead body, neck completely eaten and exposed and bleeding.

"Looks like you should have read that fine print."

Stephen turned, seeing the man that took his wish ten years ago.

Stephen ran over to him, pleading. "What's happening to me?"

"Well, you no longer have a soul. I took that just a few hours ago and often when something like a soul is suddenly missing, well, the body does all manners of things to overcompensate for it; the most common is hunger."

Stephen glared, trying to grab the man by his blazer labels but he was gone, on the other side of the room. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I did. I distinctly remember trying to get you to read the fine print of the contract you signed. But you didn't care. You just wanted to live happily ever after with a girl who had no interest in you. and now you will do the same to your children and your neighbor until the police kill your body and your consciousness will live in hell. Have a good rest of your time on earth Stephen and thank you for your patronage."