Give the Devil his Due

Jemma Dodge

Why did it have to be me? It definitely didn't seem fair. I grew up in a small town, always got good grades and went to an excellent university. I graduated in the year 2025. The same year that wretched laptop came out. I don’t know why everyone wanted one. It didn’t have many different features to a regular laptop. The only thing it could do that was different was it could send physical objects through some type of force field to another person who has the laptop. It seems like a glorified fax machine to me but as soon as it was released, people went crazy for it. It sold out in every store in about 4 hours. My parents bought three, even though they each cost the same a as small car, because in their words, “just in case”. Just in case of what though, I had no idea. They gave me one when they realised they didn’t actually need three. As soon as I bought that machine into my flat, things started to go wrong. But to understand why, you’d need to know a bit about my life.

When I was 5, I was playing on my mother’s phone. I was outside and got stung by a bee. This only seems like a mild inconvenience to most people but for me, this was when I found out I was allergic to bees. When I was 11, I was texting someone on my new phone whilst eating lunch at school. Suddenly, a piece of bread from my tuna and sweetcorn sandwich lodged itself in my throat and wouldn’t come out until someone squeezed me so tight I broke a rib. When I was 16, I was writing an essay on my laptop. I tried to staple something at the same time as staring at the screen and ended up stapling my thumb to my desk. That was the moment I realised technology was trying to kill me.

I managed to bring in the new laptop without too much issue. As soon as I had connected it to the wifi, I noticed someone was trying to send me something. I opened the notification and suddenly, a blue light appeared, glowing right out the screen. I had to shield my eyes from fear of being blinded. A second later the light disappeared and in its place was a mini frosted cake with just, ‘Jemma!’ written on it. That’s my name. I just started to get worried about why someone would send me this when I noticed I was getting a video call on the laptop. I clicked the answer button and my parents smiling faces immediately filled the screen. They were just checking I had received their cake okay. I quickly said yes and thanked them before hanging up and rolling my eyes. I put the cake in the fridge and went to walk out onto my balcony but instead walked smack bang into the glass sliding door that I thought was open. I put my hand to my nose and it came back bright red. I ran to get a tissue and decided I would be safer staying in my bedroom, far away from the machine.

If you’re wondering why this only happens to me and no one else, then join the club because I have been asking myself the same question since I was 5. 

Mrs Dodge

I love my daughter - of course I do. However, she does seem to have some sort of aversion to technology. We were constantly getting phone calls from her school about some incident she’d been involved in. I became worried every time she left for school that I would get a call saying she wouldn’t be coming home. I gave her a phone when she was 11 because I thought this would give her better protection but after she came home with a broken rib I started to wonder if maybe technology was the issue. 

At first I just thought it was coincidence that she got in accidents around technology but after the stapler incident I wondered if it was possible to have this much bad luck without some kind of divine intervention. Not that I believe there was any, but it does make one curious. I’ve often speculated whether greater forces have been at play in my family. Ever since the incident at the hospital. I had just given birth and was lying in the hospital bed, hopped up on medication. My husband was beside me, watching over newly born Jemma. He picked her up abruptly and rushed to the bathroom. I was curious of course but knew she was safe because I would trust Mr Dodge with my life. It had been about two minutes when I saw smoke coming out the gaps between the door. Suddenly, a red light was glowing from inside the bathroom. I never thought anything of it, if I’m honest, because I assumed I was just overtired and imagining things, which was highly likely with all the drugs I was on. But after the stapler incident with Jemma I began to wonder if maybe that did really happen. 

Mr Dodge

Family has always been a top priority in my life. Well, I suppose not always. When I was a teenager I was rather more interested in drugs and money than family. One could say that desire to be rich never left. I, on the other hand, choose to believe that I have changed. Ever since I saw my little baby girl in the hospital I swore I would do everything I could to protect her. She does seem to need a lot of protecting though. She’s always been a rather accident-prone child. But I’ve always been there at the hospital with her. I was there when she had to get an epi-pen for her bee allergy. I was there when she stapled her thumb to the desk and had to get it stitched back together. I’ve been there for her all her life.

Although, if I’m being completely honest with you, my wealth obsession ended rather late in my life. It was spurred on when I was doing some gardening one day and found a small wooden box buried in the vegetable patch. I dug it up completely and took it to my office for a closer examination. It had been carved decoratively and around the edges were words but they weren’t english. Luckily for me I studied latin in school so knew what language I was looking at. There was a small latch on one side, which, after much consideration, I decided to open. Inside were two pieces of parchment paper. I unraveled one and started to read it. Luckily these words were in English. The title read Contract of Wealth. Being quite a greedy person, this enticed me in. Having said this, I wouldn’t class myself as greedy so much as resourceful. I like to look out for things that bring me fortune and if this means someone else misses out then so be it. So I decided to read the rest of the parchment and to save you from the same fate I had I better not tell you what it said. I can tell you though that it gave me strict instructions for the 5th March 2004. This date meant nothing to me until a few days later when my wife excitedly told me that she was pregnant. Naturally I was ecstatic. I counted 9 months on to find out the due date and was shocked to find that it as none other than the date on the parchment.

Finally once the 5th March 2004 rolled around, my wife went into labor. She gave birth that day to a beautiful girl we named Jemma. She instantly became the love of my life. I knew then and there that I would do anything for her. 

While Mrs Dodge was sleeping, I grabbed Jemma and went into the bathroom, just as the parchment had instructed. A couple minutes later smoke started to billow out the toilet, soon accompanied by a figure with a glowing red aura. The smoke started to fill the entire room. That coupled with the bright red light, it was hard to see what the figure looked like. As I glared into the smoke, I thought I could see the hint of a yellow eye.  My heart was racing and I turned my back slightly to shield my daughter from this frightening figure. The monster held out a smoky hand and a light appeared out of it. It was circular so there a hole in the middle. He looked from his hand to me and just as instructed I put my hand in the light. The monster then extinguished the light and touched his hand to Jemma’s forehead. A red light flowed over her but soon went out. The monster then seemed satisfied and left the same way he appeared. According to the parchment, I would now be rich. I rang up the bank to check how much was in my account and I was, in fact, extremely wealthy. I was so overwhelmingly happy that it hadn’t occurred to me I had just made a deal with the devil. 

Detective Nate Wild

The day after the new laptops came out was an odd one for me. I came into work as usual and was given the case of a young woman. She had died in her flat, lying on her bed. There was no blood, no strange marks on her body but she was definitely dead. I went round to her flat and found her in the same place she died. She was lying face up, fully clothed. The only thing on her bed side table was her new laptop. I was stumped for weeks about what happened to her. I was reading the parents statements late one night. They had been the one to find her. They had seemed a little crazy to me. The father kept waffling on about how he had killed his own daughter. We couldn’t charge him of course as there was no evidence of this. He was obviously a religious person as he kept saying the devil had finally taken her. The parents told me about their daughter’s track record with technology and were convinced the machines were working with the devil to take their daughter to hell. I don’t believe in hell myself, so I just assumed they were grief stricken about losing their daughter. After a few more weeks of trying to crack the case, I finally had to give up and put Jemma Dodge’s murder in the unsolved folder.