by David Kempf
Christopher accomplished this because he made a selfless wish that took away their power.
David got off easy.
Now he was selling his soul to the Devil like Faust but it would not be romantic like the Christopher Marlowe story, and it would not be like the lovely music of Jessica Harper singing “Faust.”
The Devil was real and so was Hell and so was eternal damnation. It was as real as a Sunday Baptist preacher telling folks they were heads straight for the fires of hell if they did not accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.
Then she saw herself fucking this Svengali Wells.
Swimming back to reality, the professor smiled a wicked and lustful smile at her.
Sarah did not return the favor. This asshole smiled too much at her. She cried hoarsely.
“Enough!”
“Yes, of course, my dear.”
David tossed the crystal across the room, where it hit the wall and smashed into a dozen pieces.
“My God,” Sarah said.
She saw the unnatural life of a wicked man who truly cheated life and death. She wanted to throw up.
David smiled yet again.
“My long and… unnaturally long life. Now you have seen, now you understand…”
“It’s unbelievable,” Sarah said.
“Perhaps it is but it’s also true.”
Dark fiction was always unbelievable. The Devil would be using Sarah and David as tools to build a road of his not so good intentions. David had already helped the late, great Jinn destroy the world with every word he had written. They needed dark fiction to understand the human race. Satan needed a book so that the human race could understand him.
“How can you live with yourself?” she asked.
“I find ways; I don’t really have much of a choice.”
“What ways?”
“Oh, narcissism and writing novels,” David said sincerely.
“What?” she asked.
“That’s as good as life gets.”
“Narcissism and writing are the same goddamn thing.”
“That is indisputable,” David said.
“You’re creepy as sin,” Sarah said.
“But I’ll bet you are incredibly aroused.”
She fought the urge to smile.
“Sorry that I terrify you, Sarah.”
“You don’t; you excite me.”
Wells nodded.
“I want you to fuck me and paint me nude.”
“I don’t think so,” David said.
She frowned in a sexy and childish way.
“We’ll have to paint the picture first. You’ll be exhausted after we fuck.”
She blushed.
“You just blushed, baby. Oh, damn I can’t wait to cum inside you.”
“I’m all yours, you evil thing.” The terror and the fear had evaporated burned away by her desire.
David nodded. She was his now.
Sarah saw that the next room over was in fact one of David’s many bedrooms. She was as excited as a little girl in a candy store. Tonight, David could do whatever he wanted with her. He could use, degrade and humiliate her in any way that was his taste.
Sarah stripped off her clothes, slowly and without shame.
David really smiled.
“Take me, any way you want,” she said.
The night of lust between Sarah and David could have created a new pornographic mythology. You talk about fucking, he thought they were done, tangled, exhausted and soaked with perspiration in the sheets. This was amazing, this was almost legendary.
“I want to die inside of you,” he said.
“I want to go,” she said.
Despite their satiation, deep in their lustful hearts, they realized how selfish and terrible they were.
They were not in love for they were incapable of love.
Except for loving themselves.
And the love of the flesh.
Two damned souls.
Two lost souls…
… who just wanted to sleep with each other just to see what it was like?
“It’s a lot of fun fucking you,” David said.
“It’s a lot of fun getting fucked by you,” Sarah answered.
David pointed to another room filled with paintbrushes and such. Sarah Nolan walked her nude and exhausted body into the next room of Eros.
“We need to take a dark leap of faith, “Sarah said, smiling and posing.
“Yes, it’s damn well time.”
She wanted to fuck again real soon but she also enjoyed the way he objectified her with his sleazy art.
The Devil would have his due and he was a voyeur on top of all of his other faults. He watched the two lovers via remote control satellite.
He was jacking off to Sarah.
***
The Devil was at home.
In Hell.
“Have there ever been two more wretched creatures?” Satan asked. He looked around at the damned but they would dare not answer his questions. He held his own magic crystal that revealed what any human on earth was doing.
He looked at Sarah. What great tits she had.
It was He decided a special occasion. Satan brought out a vintage bottle of rum made from the blood of sailors who died. A rare vintage and one he did not partake of very often.
“Goodness, you two fools will bring the masses right down to Hell with you.”
On Earth, David was now beginning to feel Satan’s presence in the mansion bedroom.
As he was meant to, of course, Satan was enjoying what the professor was doing.
“Look at how you two use each other, that’s the center of my message.”
The Devil spilled out two gallons of his own cum. He immediately summoned two damned souls, young girls who did a lot of drugs and entered into a youth suicide pact.
“Swallow it bitches!” They did but they didn’t like it much.
***
Meanwhile back at the fuck cave, the picture was done and Wells was fucking the life out of the make pretend Sarah.
“Never stop fucking me!” she gasped.
“Baby, you’re wicked fun,” David replied.
The two of them looked into each other’s eyes, not the way Satan did but close enough.
“I feel like we’re going to take the world to Hell with us,” David said.
“Yes!”
And that’s when the Devil made his cliché grand entrance, appearing in an explosion of smoke and gore.
“Hello, lovers,” he said in his oily voice.
“God,” David said.
“No, not quite,” said the Lord of the Fire with a pleased grin.
Sarah, speechless, could say nothing.
“Louis Diablo, I presume,” David said.
“Please to meet you, glad you guessed my name…”
“I think it’s time to cut a deal, guys.”
David could not speak. For one brief moment, he was terrified to go to Hell.
“Speechless now are we Mr. Proctor? Ah well.”
“I guess there is a first time for everything.”
“We’ve already met, sir,” David said.
“Yes, sorry I called you mister instead of doctor by the way.”
“Why… are you here…?”
“Am I interrupting your debauchery?” Satan asked innocently.
“Yes,” David replied.
“Well, I am the Devil and I can do whatever the hell I want!”
David and Sarah both looked at Satan as if he was a spoiled child.
“I can!” Satan shouted.
“You’re cute,” Sarah said.
“This isn’t about fucking, whore…”
Sarah blushed.
“I don’t know why the fuck you’re blushing, I was talking to the very, very old man,” Satan said.
“Let’s get to the bottom of why you’re here, okay?” David said angrily.
Satan nodded in agreement. “Very well.”
Sarah, wide-e
yed, wanted to hear what Old Scratch had to say.
“You two fools know what I want and what I am after, at least in regards to the two of you. I watched you carefully, Sarah.”
“I felt that,” she answered.
“Yes, I know you did,” Satan said.
“You know what we want?” David asked.
“Sure but why don’t you tell me out loud for the hell of it!”
“I want immortality, I hate this limbo called mortal life,” David said. “I want to have life until all natural life has vanished from the earth. I need this again so I need new masters.”
Satan smiled.
“I mean a new master, now,” David said hastily.
“Sure,” Satan said sarcastically. “That’s alright. I am the king of deceit and I have now deceived everyone – including myself.”
She stared into the Dark One’s eyes when he was looking at David.
Satan turned to her. “And you, my dearest?”
“Fame, I want fame.”
“Yes, you will have that if you succeed. You will have immortality as well.”
“You will give us both fame and immortality?” asked David.
“No, only one of you because there will be a great wager of sin. You see I could never figure out what kind of art damns souls the quickest. I need to corrupt men very rapidly so that I can rule over them once again. They need to know I am still relevant.”
The Devil frowned almost as if he doubted his own existence.
“What kind of art damns people the quickest?” Sarah asked, shaking her head in puzzlement.
“Why explicit sex and violence, my dear… or perhaps a bizarre combination or the two. Since you two are writers, books are your art…”
“What?” David asked.
“You write your violent horror stories, Wells, Sarah, you write your erotica. I will pick which I think is the most corrupting to mankind and…”
“And then offer one of us immortality?” asked Dr. Wells.
“No, fool, I will allow the winner to write my book. It’s to be the story of my life from my point of view, not Dante’s or Milton’s or any the fools who so unjustly accused me in the Bible but my story, in my own words!”
To his delight, Satan saw that Sarah and David were stunned. He knew that Dr. Wells was particularly frightened that Satan knew what a devious fuck and liar he was. The fool had made a deal with the Jinn and now he was ready for another Faustian bargain.
Devil-may-care was David’s attitude towards life and his own soul.
“And immortality? The winner gets that?” Sarah asked.
Satan smiled.
David was all ears.
“Oh, sure, sure,” he said. “One of you can have immortality and fame and the other will have hell to pay for entering this dark wager of human vanity.”
“Won’t we both ultimately be damned anyway?” Sarah asked.
“Yes… but one much sooner and more painfully than the other one.”
“I see,” said the young woman.
Satan looked into David’s eyes and knew he had no patience to make such a shameless narcissist, in other words a writer tries to succumb to his spells.
“Look, David,” he said. The Jinn were fools; don’t try to cheat me like you did them.”
“You did not care for the Jinn?”
“No.”
“I wish I could have seen them,” Sarah said.
Devil-may-care attitude was for humans; Satan cared very deeply about himself. He looked into her eyes but to his great surprise, this young, silly thing was possessed of great strength. Sarah Nolan was a writer to the core. His usual ways of making her feel ashamed would not work. One look at her naked body and he knew she was simply without shame. She is the real deal, he thought. A real writer and her seductive powers of influence would be an asset for his future plans.
“So, I’m not enough for you to meet and strike a bargain with?”
“I meant no disrespect…”
“Please have some sympathy for the Devil,” David said.
Satan laughed in mild amusement.
“Glad to know you have a sense of humor,” Sarah said.
“Well, you know, I’m a man of wealth and taste. Okay, I’ll stop now. It’s an old song anyway.”
“What are you hoping the effect of your book will be on humanity?” asked the professor.
“I just want to be number one on Amazon,” Satan answered.
The three fiends laughed at this absurdity.
“What do we do now?” asked Sarah.
“We leave and take the tour,” answered the Lord of the Fire.
David looked like he was about to swallow his own tongue.
“What?” she repeated.
“He means,” David said that we’re going to go to Hell with him, to really see Hell.”
“My God,” Sarah said.
Satan frowned.
“I guess he doesn’t even like his name being mentioned as an expression or vulgarity,” Sarah said.
“I knew you would take us there,” David said.
“Well, I can’t very well take your old protégé Christopher. He’s gone to the other side and he won’t likely end up in my dark kingdom.”
Even writers under extreme duress could feel fear. This brought a joy into Satan’s heart that was marvelously indescribable. Sarah and David looked terrified. Sarah because sexually uninhibited women feel like men can have a questionable past but they can’t…
And why was David afraid?
He had already bargained with the Jinn and became a hideous thing that looked like something on the late, late horror show. Ghouls were simply foul things but like Satan, he did have his wicked spells. He could trick people into thinking he didn’t look like a monster. Now he just looked old. He was human again. David wanted to look human and still be immortal. This, he decided, was what he would bargain for.
“Are you afraid of Hell? All men are afraid of Hell,” said Satan. “And yet all still believe on some level that they will go there. They think grace and good works are not going to be enough for them. They fear their own dark hearts, even the ones revered as saints.”
“That’s why you want to write your book,” said David.
Satan, in his present form of a young man, cracked his knuckles. “Yes, not to put too fine a point on it.”
“What will your book do?” Sarah asked.
The Dark Angel temporarily ignored her question. Instead, he held up the Jinn crystal, magically restored to its full power. The sight of it brought David Proctor into a state of shock and awe.
“It will either bring them into my fold,” he said, “or drive them to madness.”
Sarah smiled as if she was demonically possessed.
“Come along, let’s go to Hell,” said Old Scratch.
6
“Hell is not what I thought it was,” said David.
“No, of course not,” Satan answered.
They were naked and alone. And they were freezing. Hell was a frozen ice tundra. All the poor souls were frozen all over the barren and desolate land of the eternally cold.
“What are you doing?” Sarah asked the evil one.
“I’m trying to make fire,” he said.
Satan rubbed his claw like hands together and a tiny flame appeared. It was quite small. Perhaps not even big enough to light a cigarette.
“Finally, at last, there is fire in hell again.”
“Yes, that was a true dark miracle,” David said.
The three lost souls walked around for a bit. David and Sarah were shivering with cold and even more frightened at the sight of the once-human figures frozen in ice forever.
“Who is that one?” David asked, pointing.
“Her name was Jezebel,” Satan said.
“What is she in this place for?” David inquired.
“The worst sin of all…”
David grimaced. “Which is?”
“Self-righteousness or pride. How d
o you think I ended up in this place?”
“A fallen angel,” Sarah said.
“Yes.” Satan smiled. The grey-haired woman was thin and cadaverous but still beautiful. Frozen naked and holding a bright red apple. The irony being she thought she was one of God’s servants. “She resembled the people that crucified Christ more than those who followed his commandments.”
“I see, I thought as much,” Sarah said.
“That poor creature was in the belly of the beast,” Satan said. “Then the monster died and so did she. And now she is here for all eternity.”
“Sounds like an interesting story,” said David.
“Yeah, someone should write a book about that,” Sarah said.
“They’ll write a book about anything these days,” said Satan.
“Even Satan,” said David.
Satan scowled. “Be careful my friend. You are in serious competition with this beautiful young woman here. She has a distinct advantage over you. Despite what religious fundamentalists say about me, I like women and have no taste for men. This whole Anti-Christ has no use for women rumor it really pisses me off. Now you insult me?”
“Ahh, sorry dark lord,” David said, tongue in cheek.
“That’s a little better. Show some damned respect. All you need to do is prove that violent images corrupt the soul faster than sexual ones do.”
“My money is on sex,” Sarah said slyly.
“I know, you would bet your life on that and you may end up the victor of my little game.”
“Even more, I would bet my soul…”
“You’re a woman after my own heart, Sarah.”
Sarah smiled at Satan.
“She’s still a novice,” said David. “Remember who really sold his soul to write a bestseller?”
“That would be you, my vain, arrogant, opportunistic man.”
“Well, hell yes,” he said.
“Hell yes, indeed,” said the Dark One.
They walked a little further, still frozen to the core. He was beginning to make more sense to the infamous Dr. Wells. He finally saw real evildoers eternally frozen in their place, never to commit unspeakable acts again.
“Yes, here we have the wall of dictators,” Satan said in an almost bragging manner.
“Hitler, Stalin, Bin-Laden, Pol Pot, Napoleon, they’re all here,” David said. The professor was dazzled by a reluctant admiration for the Dark Lord now.