text: No one really knew what would be a good and quite seemingly random number to remember, except the old Devil, and that number was seventy million and forty one. As the Creators of the Underworld created the finality visions of all the realms - the big picture, if you would - the Devil contemplated all things precision, so he worked for Hell Office. He was in the detail after all; no other creatures but him put that out there. Millenia passed and he’d still got it. Filing tons of paperwork in no time flat. All marketing schemes, the plans, the blueprints, the contracts, the arts of the deadly deal are all under his surveilance. He smiled stupidly to himself because as of today, he would collect his final folder. And in the folder would be the final contract containing all of the information of his last human, before he retired, for he was old, giving it all up for newer and bolder Devils to take up his horny helm. He liked to joke. Now the Devil liked to sort out his victim’s folder the night before he went to sleep in order of likes and dislikes first, then to family, education, then lastly to secrets, then he would tell you because it would rather be obvious. Secrets were the trump cards that he often used when all other things about his victim didn’t work. When it did, he traded whatever they wanted for their soul as a price. He had to - The Devil had got too many needs to fulfill. It was just standard work. Souls were highly inflated nowadays in the underworld anyway, but it was still a somewhat good working commodity for centuries. Humans were making more deals than ever as populations piled up, and thanks to the deals they made, they lived longer lives. Who knew. But it was not also very lucrative because souls in the underworld were running out fast. He could still buy all sorts of daily products with just a soul or two, sometimes less with a proper contracted bargain, but that was no way to hellishly existing. Maybe after he got his severance package from Hell Office, or The Office, he’d be able to barter an abandoned, gloomy and doomed castle somewhere on the Lava Sea Archipelago. It sounded like a delightfully peevish idea. The Devil shrugged as he woke up from his spiked bed. He bathed in boiled human blood because those inferno bedbugs swarmed him while he slept, and they didn’t like anything human so it worked fine. He dried himself with hellfire because charcoal-infused towels tended to cleanse his tapered skin too well, and that was too pleasant so it made him feel a little too guilty. He reminded himself that he had to raise some hell with the head manufacturer at Hades Incorporated about that particular towel product. No one and no chance in hell that any beings of the underworld would like something like that. Maybe the tortured and enslaved humans were too disgruntled and put something in their products for some avant-garde way to rebel. He would never know. They did well with their perfumes, however, especially the Death Stench - that one was right on the soul- rotten to the core with a light touch of sulfur. He didn’t need to shave because he didn’t have hair - he appreciated his Creator for that. He dressed up in his white suede suit from a former human stockbroker he knew that turned fashionista of the underworld. A rare occurence indeed, and it was his deal too. His best work he might add. Best soul he ever collected. They turned into good friends after the stockbroker was murdered. the stockbroker said as he would trade most of his clothes and his soul for a chance to have a beautiful family when he was alive because he had already had everything he possibly could in life except for wife and kids. The Devil took that deal as he rolled his eyes. It was all these people ask for. Such a lack of imagination, he thought. No one ever asked for a three-headed hound, and it was getting a little crowded in all the houses he had to build. The amount of human souls he had to pay the hellhound walkers everyday were starting to stack up. But alas, without his pets, he would be very lonely. The Devil said he would not take the Stockbroker’s family away from him. The Devil kept that promise, and he kept the clothes. But a Reaper showed up and took him away from his family. Phrasing was important, and that the Devil shouldn’t be drinking human blood before making deals with a human - it made him forget his file template in his wretched home so he winged it. Badly, the Reaper said. It was his only and the one failure he made in all of his time being the Devil. The Stockbroker and the Devil laughed on it after a couple of centuries. Mostly because the Devil made him. Thank the Hell Office’s Ultimate Law for torture, man, The Devil said. He was serious. He put on white pointed shoes because he felt his mood allowed for it; light blue cravat because it reminded him of the last look of the domed Earth sky. He ate wheat toast: he liked his food burnt black and as charred as coal. He ate two; because he liked how the first one settled in his stomach. He told himself not to drink some human blood before work because it would be disrespectful to the human he was going to make a deal with. In order for him to walk the Earth, he swallowed a human soul from one of his own favorite collection to get him acclimated to the environments. The Office never provided him with any standard souls to use so he had to get it from his own stash, complaints had been made since the beginning of Hell but no Devils really did anything about it. He preferred the smell of rotten flesh and nicely brewed cup of spleen juice from many philosophers (they were always so conflicted and full of sophistication). He could always tell what religion the philosophers were brought up on, from what country, down to the town they were raised on. He had never forgotten a taste once he experienced it. It was a quaint habit. He drank children’s blood that died from wars sometimes; when he wanted something heavy and bitter, perhaps to take his minds off of a rough work day, like when he couldn’t close a tough soul trade, and it always seemed to perk him right up. The more sorrowful the death, the better he felt. Once, a long time ago, humanity become almost extinct, he had found that he did his job a little too well, but he found no real meaning in doing such a thing well. Hell’s Office had to convene an experiment, defecting a human with a tarnished soul, creating a real villain, in order to repopulate the Earth. Someone was not very happy about that, but they did it anyway, and it worked. It was a devilish little scheme, but it created jobs again for the Underworld so everyone was quite grateful for it. Otherwise, they had to somehow take a chance to make a deal with the last pure human to mutate or copulate with other creatures and populate the Earth with a new species. It was a tall order. The Office wanted him to make the deal because he was experienced and had nothing to lose, unlike the up and coming Devils that were to take his place after his retirement. No hellish family to contend with, so he was perfect for the job. They just didn’t account for the fact that because he put all of his energy on his work that he absolutely HAD something to lose - His seventy million and forty souls he obtained for the Office - so he declined. But the Office said he was just another decent Devil like the ones that came before him, and there will absolutely be other Devils that will surpass him. And that was that. And he didn’t like that they pointed out that if he didn’t do it, there would be literal dead end jobs for all of them. He still didn’t cave. In order to not make the same mistakes again, leaving Earth barren of humans. He urged the Underworld to learn new languages, and update their ways of thinking to maybe making deals with dimensionally challenged beings or some other creatures of Earth. The Underworld was always set in their ways. The Devil was a little bit too old for this, trying to scream sense into them, but most of his own work on the soul was quite mediocre so nothing changed. It took them so long just to deal with one species, now possibly an infinite number of creatures, bugs, microbes, macro-organisms and all; They complained even though they were immortal. Other species might not be as compromising as humans too, they said. Sales would be tough, they said. So his attempt at creating a legacy that way before he retired didn’t work. He thought maybe if the new Devils should quit and work for Hell’s kitchen instead if they don’t have the guts for such work. He knew the butcher, maybe he could ask for a favor. He didn’t have a stomach for human butchering but what was there for an old Devil to do after retirement. The Devil sighed and climbed his own stairway to Earth. He felt like he didn’t belong to the Underworld anymore. Eventually, he would only be ceremoniously revered for all the work he did with no real foundation or infrastructure behind it. What a terrible thing to happen to an old Devil! Case number seventy million and forty one, he said. His whole death work, he sighed. And it came down to a eighty three years old woman on her death bed in a nursing home as his last. What a boring notion. He was determined that he made his last deal the most memorable one. Maybe he should have a conversation with her first, he thought, as he pulled a half broken chair that caught his dark eyes and sat next to her. The room was as dimly lit as could be, setting the perfect mood for him. He touched her hand with his hand. She woke up. “Who is it?” She said. “Can’t you see? I’m the Devil.” The Devil perplexed. “Do not mess with me, little boy. My cataracts had gotten better nowadays, and you look nothing like the Devil.” the old woman said, annoyance in her voice, almost in a sing song screeching kind of way. “How would you know how the Devil look?” The Devil asked. The old woman tried to put her hand up but failed three times, but finally had the strength to hover and she found his face. The Devil was deeply confused as she felt his bony face, and lack of nose, and slimy head because of the shiny lotion he put on his bald skull. “What an ugly child.” She shouted. “You need some milk, boy, and some bread while you’re at it. And you have got to stop playing jokes with the elderly, my boy. I might be dying, and you will soon if you don’t take care of yourself more.” “I do take care of myself. More than you know, old hag.” The Devil pouted as she said nothing else about it for five minutes. “I’ve seen the face of the real Devil once. And you are definitely not it.” She turned her face away to the other side of the bed. “I was twenty years old. The world was a lot different then. I was home from a long day of work and find my husband bound and beaten. I shared the same fate as I realized too late we were robbed. He killed my husband after he sexually assaulted me. Left me alive long enough to see my husband bleed to death and then stabbed me two more times in my gut. But somehow I survived. However, it was quite a long time ago. I since remarried and though I couldn’t have kids anymore, I managed to marry a good man and lived a good life despite all that. So believe me when I tell you, if I saw the Devil, I did. And he was not you. I heard years later that the robber died, of a heart attack of all things. I just wish I could see him die a painful death instead of that easy a way out. Fat and greasy and pathetically easy.” The Devil seemed to have realized something here as he stood up. He puffed in black smoke back to his den of inequities, scurrying through two tons of paperwork, all of the files and contracts he did the last century. And it only took him an hour or so before he found it. A red file with the name Ponte Mytron, looked through it diligently and then he went to the prison of hell, reserved for the worst scums of humankind. And then he floated to Hades Incorporated for more traces of the name holder, and lastly to Hell’s kitchen to see where this name took him. He finally found what he came for and in a second of pure spite, he took the soul and body that possessed that name with him back to the nursing home. A wretched thing indeed, he thought as he sat the man with the name on the broken chair, looking scared and squirrelly. “Is this the robber?” The Devil asked the old woman. After the old woman took a long look at the craven man trembling in a nervous wreck wondering what was happening, she said. “This was the man. Yes, he was. The Devil, in the flesh. And he even looked young. What a nonsense. What a curse. I think I believe you now. Maybe you are the real Devil. Are you here to take me away?” “He died young.” The Devil answered. “And I’m not here to take you away. That’s the Reaper’s job, a real bore of a career choice if you ask me. The Reaper was there when your husband died too. I looked through the file. But I am here to make a deal with you. Like a deal I made with your husband. He had wished for a family, which I granted him. But it was my bad that the contract was flawed, and for that you suffered. My apologies. If it makes you feel better. This robber was sent to Hell Prison, and you do not want to imagine the things they did to him there to rehabilitate him. And then he was sent to do years of menial labor job at an office where he had to do the thing he hated the most when he was alive. Reading. And when that was done, they sent him to a place made for human butchering and he was killed and made into food and eaten and be defecated by his own sick kind. And then we resurrected him and start his suffering all over again.” “I see.” The old woman said. “Then I have no more regrets. I wish for nothing now, and that there are no deals that I would make with you except that maybe you keep making that man suffer. Anything I can help you with now is my deal. Anything.” The Devil could see her soul lit up, the brightest he had ever seen. A fulfilled wish was the healing one needed for a rested soul. But that was just corporate talk. Maybe a resilient one that persevered through a meaningful life was better for a soul. And maybe this was that novel idea that would inspire the new generations of degenerates throughout the Underworld. That neat little idea popped up as the Devil wrote his terms down, and he did it with care. He thanked the old lady as she passed away peacefully. He sat with her through her moment of death, waited for a couple of minutes before handling her to the Reaper. He thanked the Reaper as her soul floated away bright and shiny, which surprised every creatures of the Underworld. When Hell’s Office handed the Devil his severance, they asked him how he managed that brightness of the soul; all he said was that it was the beauty of an elaborate mistake. And it was the art of managing such a mistake to a very sophisticated level of paperwork that any aspiring Devils could carefully duplicate the process in order to make the Underworld a greater place than it was, and possibly made it beautifully fair, even in the deepest parts of the Underworld. He lied. It was a long time after his retirement that he told the Stockbroker that his wife, whose soul now in heaven, made the deal for her soul to be the brightest there ever was, and that it somehow would help the Devil with everything he wanted. And all the Devil wanted to do was finding that balance he yearned for, in his own slice of heaven in hell; and the seventy two million and forty first soul cured him of his own derelict isolation, by solidifying his legacy, not a glum castle by a sea of lava. And so he sipped the spleen juice of the old woman as part of his deal with her that he sneaked into their contract, finding a new flavor he liked. “The Brightest Soul achieved” - thus spake the Devil.