The Devil Knew Me First

I didn’t know that I had been praying for the Devil. The first time I saw him, we did not meet. He slipped into my car's backseat and to say that I had seen him was a bit of an overstatement. Really, I could only catch glimpses of him out of the corner of my eyes. When I turned my head to face forthright he would disappear like smoke during the fourth of July barbecues of my childhood. I was scared of him at first. He crept up on me like a rain cloud most days. Haunting me. That had been the first of May.

       I saw him at night when I would wake, heart pounding and drenched in a cold sweat. He plagued me both asleep and awake. He would fill my dreams with images of pestilence and plague, and when he caught me awake and unaware he would shove depictions of death down my throat. It was not until he produced a scene portraying my dead sister: rising silently from the floor only to caress my face with a bloated and blue hand rank with the stench of decay before fading away; that I spoke to him. Rather I had screamed at him. Asking ‘why are you doing this to me?’, my throat was raw and red by the time I quieted down. After this outburst, he didn’t appear to me again until the thirteenth of May, my anguish must have been enough to satiate him for a short while. It was only when I saw him again that I had realized I had forgotten my mother’s birthday. 

       No one else could see him. It was just him and me, rotting together in a sea of our own misery. Except, I think my misery had been feeding him. Of course I didn’t know that at the time, quite the opposite. I thought it was a case of that old saying, “misery loves company”, I had assumed after a short while that this wayward spirit was just lost and in need of some help. So I started talking to him on the seventeenth of May. It was nothing much at first. When he would slip quietly into the empty seat beside me in lectures I would say hello, and ask after his morning. I am sure I must have looked mental talking to someone no one else could see, but it was better than before, a welcome change.

      He had this air about him, and I don’t know if I was just sensitive to it or it was permeating. However, I felt it all of the same. He felt like losing a litter of sickly kittens in the heat of the summer, or just catching the news that your grandmother with dementia had finally succumbed. He felt like expected tragedy and somehow that was worse than the feeling of sudden unexplained misery. When he would sit silently in my car, I would try again to speak to him, of course receiving no answer. Although, after some time I would have to cease my mammering due to the torrent of heavy tears pouring down my cheeks. He did not encourage hearty sobs, but rather a steady set of weeping. So, I started offering him shotgun instead of allowing him to skulk in my backseat because if he was going to make me cry the least he could do was watch me while I did.

    I started praying for him on the twenty-first of May. Certain that if I could not help him on my own that divine intervention would be the answer. He would join me sometimes. Never in prayer, but he would pace behind me or sit beside me fidgeting with his thumbs. He had odd hands, thin like a skeleton, but instead of a bone white, his skin was dark and rich like the soil of the earth. When I could catch glimpses of him through my periphery I was struck by his beauty. He had golden ringlets that fell like ribbons around his face and large shoulders that never hunched. However, his true nature was reflected in his eyes. They were not the eyes of a man. They were large and pupilless, like big white voids ready to capture those that may dare peer for too long into them.

       I had grown used to his company, and had managed to keep up a running one-sided commentary for most of the time we had spent together. He never gave any indication that he could hear me, not even so much as a sidelong glance, Yet, I knew he was listening. For when I cracked a particularly well-timed joked, I could physically feel the air around us lighten. I longed for those moments more and more often. When we would pray, or rather, when I would pray and he would watch, the air was lighter then too. I could only assume it was the divine intervention I had been asking for. Now, I believe that it was God taking pity on the girl that fell in love with the devil. 

      That was a strong description for the way I felt about my new companion. I did not necessarily love him, and certainly nothing I felt for him was more than platonic, but I did care for him. I was naturally drawn to his torment, as he was to mine. We were written in the stars destined to find each other, so it was only natural that I would soon develop a distinct concern for him. I wasn’t certain that he cared about me in any discernible way until our last day together. It was the thirty-first of May. He had climbed into my car much like he had on numerous other occasions, but this time it felt different. He did not only emanate despair, he felt it too. I knew something was going to go horribly wrong.

      Nonetheless, I started up my car and started on my way back home. Part way, a semi-truck failed to come to a stop behind me. It took both me and itself off of the side of the road and careening into the adjacent ditch. I landed upside down, my seatbelt the only thing keeping me in my seat. Through the passenger window I could see the truck, right side up on its wheels, with the company name “Genesis'' in red on the pure white cargo container. There was a phone number too, with an area code for just outside of the Atlanta area. 

    I didn’t have to look out of the corner of my eyes to see him anymore. He was sitting in my car plain as day, holding my hand. His thumb rubbed smooth circles into the palm. He knew I was dying, and I knew it was his fault. Yet, here he was comforting me in my final moments. The harbinger of torment, the father of lies, coming to my aid at the time of my demise. He held my hand the whole time, and when I began to feel myself fading he spoke to me. Uttering a simple apology, and planting a chaste kiss on my temple. His chapped lips against my hairline were the last thing I felt before I slipped away. I may not have known that I had been praying for the Devil when I met him, but he sure as hell did.