Eternity

This is a short story from a recent contest I entered. The criteria was it had to be under 800 words and be about the topic 'the writer'. Warning - may be inappropriate for minors. Enjoy.



Nothing writes smoother than warm blood dispensed from the tip of a fine fountain pen. A clear tube, originating just beneath my client's skin, dispenses drops of living ink into a sterile bowl for writing. It takes a while to collect enough for an entire contract, but this is of no concern to me; time is a concept that does not exist in Hell and Eternity knows no boundaries.

The ambitious nature of this young woman reminds me of myself some three hundred years ago - the unwavering energy of a mortal willing to trade everything for power, fortune, and glory. Rational sense, that common trait instilled in most people from birth, vacated her long, long ago. It is only after centuries of experience I can say this without doubt, because it is this same desperation which seeps from all patrons wishing to make a pact with the devil.

Joyful memories from the life I lived so long ago have disappeared, drowned under the heavy weight of regret. Everybody knows a pact with the devil means selling your soul, but there is something else that is not common knowledge - a much more important aspect. Although your soul is stripped to never be felt again, your conscience is left behind to rot within you until the end of time, forever tortured from the atrocities your contract expelled upon the innocent living. For the precious one life I traded, many lifetimes have already soared by, each one harder to endure than the previous.

The content of my original contract, to be a world renowned writer, has allowed me the one exception to be able to remain in the mortal world. I write contracts for Hell. For this reason, I dare not share my apprehension with this woman in front of me about the devastating consequences of her decision. Lose a client, lose your writing gig - so it goes. I wouldn't be able to warn her anyway; Hell claimed my free will the moment I died.

She is the last of my clients ... today; five contracts written from a list that will never end - because this part of human nature doesn't respond well to change. Like my own work ethic back in the seventeenth century, hard work is not an option for these people, but in a hundred years it will be a trivial concept to them. Such a simple principle...

When I lived, before the contract, I didn't believe in an afterlife. I would have said the soul just burned out to nothing - blackness. The concept drove me mad with fear. And now, when I think of such an event, it is my perceived heaven. I would trade a thousand more of my souls ... just to not be.

"So then," I say with expressionless remorse to this woman, "What is it you would like while you are alive on Earth?"

She looks to be in her thirties. My guess is the boss will grant her forty good years to live her dream. Forty years, in the grand scheme of things, is but a flash in Hell. I've written thousands of contracts, for people just like her, which have already been exercised. Their names are engraved in my mind. Tonight I will recite every one of them, like I do every night. Then tomorrow I will write five or six more contracts. The first hundred years numbed my emotions enough to quell my tears at night and I fear I can no longer decipher the difference between sadness, anger, joy, or even fear. I just am.

I pass a man, Conrad, in the streets on occasion. He is a man I despised for a long, long time, until I forgot how to feel. He was my writer. I make no attempt to be cordial or friendly with him. What's the point? My clients would eventually form the same feeling toward me, only they will not be as fortunate as I am to stay here.

The hunger which pours from this woman's eyes attempts to bore through a soul I no longer have. Even if I were able to warn her -- stop her -- it wouldn't make a difference. I know that look.

"I want", the African American woman blurts out. "I want to become the most powerful talk show host that has ever lived!"

Some contracts I feel less guilty about writing than others.