The Devil Went Down to…

“Let's make a deal, Johnny,” the stranger walking beside him on the road had said out of nowhere.

Now Johnny was down on his luck, he had just lost his job, his wife was sick and expecting baby number four and five, the bank was trying to foreclose on his house, he could barely get food on the table let alone pay the hospital bills, and everything was falling apart. He had left on a walk alongside the dirt road leading out of town and straight to the old church on the outskirts, just to clear his mind, sing to himself, and come up with a plan in the meantime, he had done this a million times when things were going wrong, it hasn’t failed him yet. Well, at least it is better than going to the bar and cheaper too.

This time a strange man started walking beside him and talking to him ten minutes into his walk. Johnny knew everyone in town, or at least heard of them before. This man matched no description he could think of. He was tall and a bit bulky, he looked around late forties to early fifties. He had a well-trimmed gray and white beard on a well-chiseled face. He wore a white button-up, a spenders, dress pants, leather shoes, and a black blower hat. Johnny thought he must have been some kind of preacher by how the man spoke and carried himself; almost like a self-important and condensing salesman. And what he was talking about at first: the guy started by going on about the book of Job, then about Genesis and original sin, and the next topic was angels and demons and how they are walking among us, etc. Johnny guessed the man was on his way to the church, the road only led there. His guess was he was a visiting or new pastor and was practicing his sermon on a stranger before getting in front of the congregation. Johnny was never really too big on the church, he just did not get it, he believed in God and anything else in the Bible, but he believed in private and small group studies of the bible where opinions are shared and people learn from each other, not an old man just talking for over an hour and making people feel bad for seeing the world in another way than how he does.

Every pastor he has talked to just sounded like he was doing him a favor by pushing the “right way” to believe in the Lord. Whenever he brought his family or friends or just went alone everyone there sent dirty looks his way, as if he had brought the devil himself.

The two were almost to the church at this point when the man said, “Let's make a deal, Johnny.” This caught him off guard because Johnny never gave the man his name. He continued, “Let us see, your wife, Maira, that woman is something else, hm, so kind, so brave, and those paintings of hers, wow, she just takes a scene and puts it on a canvas. Too bad she has that tumor in her head, she has one year, two years max if she is lucky.”

Johnny stopped walking at that, “How did you-” was all he could get out. The way the man had said it unnerved him, and Johnny wasn’t a man who got unnerved. Only a few people knew about Maira’s tumor, only close friends and family, no one else.

The man turned and smirked at him then went on, “Don’t worry the babies are fine, the doctors are right about something. You will have a baby boy and a girl. You are a great father the two will be loved, even if they’ll never meet dear old Ma. I know your other kids will in sure they know who she was. Bianca is her spitting image, after all, she has your singing voice as well, your beautiful little songbird, right?”

Johnny was frozen. How does this guy know this? He called Bianca that it is a cute little nickname, it was not common knowledge.

“As for Castle,” the man’s grin grew even larger, his blower covered his eyes, “what a storyteller he is, and so adventurous as well. Sad thing that he can’t walk too well, and, will eventually be unable to talk let alone move. And then there is Vinny, blind at b-”

Johnny grabbed the man by the collar and raised his fist, “I don’t know who you are, or why you no so much about my life. But stay the HE-”

“I’ve been Johnny and trust me Dante got a lot right.”

Johnny dropped the man and backed away, “ What are you?”

“You know who I’m Johnny.”

“You are the devil.”

“Ding ding, we have a win, folks.”

“What do you want with me?”

“Like I said Johnny, I want to make a deal with you.”

“What?”

“A deal. Look Johnny you are down on your luck you have little to no other options. I am giving you something that will save your family. You make the term, but one way or another and I will get a soul you care about whether it is yours or one of your family member’s. Remember Jonathan I always come on top: Doctor Johan Georg Faust, Jack, Robert Johnson, Oliver Cromwell, Niccolo Paganini, Theophilus of Adana, Giuseppe Tartini, Eve, etc.”

Johnny thought for a second, sighed, and said, “I want my family safe, Maira her tumor is gone and unable to come back, and she is not allowed to die from another deadly disease or accident. She can not be taken from this world anything other than old age, nothing that is debilitating or will destroy her mind. Protect the babies neither of them is your payment let them live full happy lives. Same with my three other kids. Let Castle regain full motor function and give Vinny sight. All the rules I gave to my wife apply to them and anyone else who becomes a member of my family by marriage, blood, or another way. I want to enough money to get my back on our feet and keep us safe for a few years. As for payment that is me, the death rules still apply to me, but once I die reincarnate my soul, once my new life reaches the same age I am now approach them in the same way you did with me now and make a deal, repeat this until one of my future lives makes no deal or any internally evil deal. Then you do with as you wish all of the lives in the line.”

“You thought that through, deal-” the man pulls a contact, “-sign on the dotted line.” Handing Johnny a pen.

He pauses for a second then signs, after he asks, “Why did you agree so easily?”

The man starts to disappear with the contact until his smile is left saying, “Because that's what your past life set for his deal.”