Lucifer and Luca Pty Ltd - a Deal with the Devil

Lucifer and Luca Pty Ltd – a Deal with the Devil

My third knock to the door of the penthouse suite of the luxury Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan missed as the door was opened from the inside. “Welcome Mr. O’Connor, the Devil is most delighted you’ve come,” - said the most exquisite woman I have even seen in my life, in the sultry voice of a 1940’s actress - “Please see yourself through to the next room.” She said pointing to a door that had been left ajar. She turned and left and with trepidation I walked through the doorway into a luxurious room filled with the odor and smoke of Cigars. A large well-built, good-looking man in an immaculately tailored grey suit came from behind huge oak desk to greet me. He looked to be in his early 50’s, pitch black hair, only greying around the temples a little and clean shaven so it was hard to get a read.

“Welcome Mr. O’Connor,” - he said in a prim voice - “Please, have a seat.”- He pointed with an upturned hand to a large Leather swivel chair on the opposite side from where he’d come - “You met Luca I see?”

Taken back, looking around the large room adorned with huge portraits of this man, I could only nod, then stutter, “Yes, ah yes.”

He laughed, “Most men are like that around Luca,” - laughing to himself again he added - “She sold her soul for those looks only 40 years ago. With the rise in population, more people contacting me, well, frankly my admin workload was getting too much. I offered a deal – soul back in 200 years’ time and the look of the day. And there you have it! Now look how far she’s gone,” - he said motioning around the room at all the portraits - “She’s turned into a sycophantic interior decorator.”

Looking across the desk to him I felt at ease, he seemed genuine. I also saw for the first time he wore a name badge similar to the attendants at the Waldorf which read, ‘The Devil’. He said, “Oh yes, the nametag. People expect a red-scaled Demon with yellow eyes and little horns, so I wear this to identify myself.” Laughing again.

Gaining confidence as this man had a tone that put me at ease, I asked., “So you and Luca are an item?”

“Dear no, though it does come with the expected fringe benefits, as you would expect.” Gauging my look he added, “She’s no different to them,” and he pointed straight down, “and I don’t mean the ones in my supposed dungeon being the fiery pits of hell. I mean the streets 46 floors below selling their souls for 50 bucks a piece in some back alley. Shop around I say, I pay far better.”

“You said you only got Luca 40 years back, I thought you’d been around for eternity?” I asked. I’d had quite a bit to drink before coming here to build some courage and it was paying off.

“Myth,” he laughed. “Best analogy I can give you is that you should liken my existence to dog years. Dogs aged seven for every one human year, multiply that by about somewhere between a hundred and five hundred, take the inverse, that’s me, frankly I haven’t done the math. That is why the bible is ridiculous, timeframes, who came about and when, who can remember back that far? I just watch people come and go, look at their time in existence, how they look at certain stages in life and make a rough estimate based on how I look. I’ll be gone in maybe another 1500 years, give or take… Rotting in hell for eternity, a story made up to scare children.”

Luca appeared beside me, “You had been drinking Animus Gin and Tonic at Peacock Alley downstairs, here’s another.”

“Thank you, Luca, that will be all” – the Devil said as she left, he then turned his gaze to me, “Now, let's get down to brass tacks” - Taking a folder from a drawer in the desk he spoke while reading, head down, - “You first pleaded for my help July 11, 2022, just over a year ago. I presume several attempts with God had failed by that stage?” He looked up to me, indicating he wanted an answer.

“Yes, nothing changed.”

“And when nothing changed, you begged to me with the willing to sell your soul spiel” - He was still looking to me with his steel blue eyes but held up a finger - “Before you answer, I didn’t immediately get you results, you went back to God, no luck again, so back to me?”

“That about sums it up.”

“Usual recipe.” He said, “What people don’t understand is there is a process and I’m a busy man. One plead to me, well put it this way, I’ve acted on one pleads and always find the person wasn’t serious, it was a throwaway line, wasted my precious time.” He shook his head, “No, now I gauge how genuine people are by multiple parameters. Time between pleads, nature of the plead, character of the person, the list goes on. I’ve developed a 23-point checklist that will ultimately give me a score out of 100. Tally to above 92 and I will act. Previously the pass mark was set at 87 which is still tough to meet but I found still too many ‘Tyre kickers’, you scrapped in right on 92.”

As he was explaining this to me, the Devil lit another Cigar and had reached down to the bottom draw and taken a bottle of Cognac out along with a crystal looking glass and poured himself three fingers.

“You’ll no doubt have questions of me?” he asked politely.

I had been waiting for this moment. “What happens to me, I mean in the near future if I am soulless?”

“You won’t notice a change for the most part. You’re of an age where you have formed your conscience, convictions, emotions, desires, how you view the world. It will be after your death, your soul won’t move on into the next incarnation, the soul of the last incarnation, being you, Joel O’Connor won’t be reinstated until after my death. That’s when the being that your soul is inhibited will wake up on day and find serenity. Along the lines of how people say they found happiness or hate to say it but ‘found God’.” He held up two fingers on each hand making commas.

Taking all this in seemed preposterous, though when looking around the room of the Waldorf Astoria, as smoke filled the room once again, I had the overwhelming feeling the man, if that is what he was, was being truthful. “Next question I have is, what do you do with the souls?”

“Easy, they mostly go into unborn children, the ones who are criminals from day one. Sometimes souls are put into those people who just snap one day, it all depends on my needs at the time”- He gave a long-drawn-out sigh, interlocked his fingers and stretched pushing his hands outwards - “And this is where everybody’s moral dilemma kicks in…” Again, he looked at me waiting for a response.

“But why?” I asked.

“How do you think this place is paid for? I’ll tell you how, credit card theft. I need bank robbers, murderers, car thieves, arsonists, you name it. You would not believe how hard that other guy tries to get one up one me. He doesn’t understand their needs to be a balance, besides, I’ve grown accustomed to certain luxuries in life. Yes, most of my disciples end up doing time, pleading their innocence, ‘No your Honour, I didn’t use the stolen credit card to stay three nights at the Waldorf!’”

“Why not just make all this happen for yourself, through your magic or whatever it is you do?”

“I don’t create, I manipulate. The other guy creates.”

Looking around one more time at the opulence, astounded at what I was hearing, that sultry voice came from my left, “Why don’t you two gents take a ride to uptown to the Bronx?”

“Yes, good idea. Are you up for a little field trip Mr. O’Connor?”

With no reply from me, Luca spoke up. “Limousine is waiting out the front”.

The Devil stood and headed for the door. I simply followed his lead. As we headed uptown, the lights of stores names transitioned from being lit from behind with the associated marketplace sparse but with women dressed in black stalking the floor to signs being lit from below to simply stores where you couldn’t read the sign because there was no light illuminating and they were covered in grime. Enjoying the drinks afforded on the Limo, but also feeling in this part of the world I had the ultimate protection, I took in the different world this was, I was from Charlotte, North Carolina, and an upper-class area there.

“Driver, slow, really slow around this next left.” – as we rounded the bend, he pointed to a man in the shadows who seemed to want to approach the slow-moving Limo but knew something was off – “That man there, his name is Paul Rigby, my best drug dealer in the Bronx, used to be number two to one of the other guy's men.”

“You mean God?” I asked.

“I won’t refer to him as that, but you’re on the mark” he said continuing, “Paul was a pre-birth 26 years ago. One of the other guy's grapes turned sour and was forcing my disciple out of business. Now if we were to take a trip to Rikers you could meet the other disciple that put Paul in number one, a little drive by the cops got him on. He’ll die there, but I’ll still own his soul, at least for another 1500 years. I think that soul has been being recycled since the days of Alexander the Great, don’t quote me though, I lose track, maybe early onset dementia?” he laughed. I did too which scared me. We continued on down the dark streets with people about, only they were loitering like they didn’t want to go home whereas back in Manhattan everyone seemed to have a purpose, accomplish something so as to be able to get home. The Devil pointed out at least another 4 souls ‘implanted’ over the next hour, apologizing there were no ‘donors’ he could find but in this neck of the woods, odds tipped implants. Heading south toward the hotel the Devil visibly tensed, “Next right driver, next right!” - he demanded, giving a series of left and rights we pulled up outside a dingy bar – “come let’s go meet someone interesting.” Again, I dutifully followed. The place had a scattering of people, all men outside of the bar tender. Booths lined the wall opposite the bar and around it in the back making an ‘L’ shape of booths. It was generally one man per booth, two in some in quite conversation. Everybody was keeping to themselves, all looking very solemn, dressed in dour, dirty clothes, staring at their beers like the beer was trying to purvey a message to them. There was a man in the back who looked like the others who I could see the Devil was heading for, only this man appeared jovial. The man who I was introduced to as Leroy looked to be in his early 30’s, wore a dirty big green overcoat and black beanie. He looked up as we approached and slurred laughing “You again? I’ve only one soul to give, isn’t that the line out of a song…. Or let me guess, you want a refund?” he laughed harder this time.

“No Leroy, I just want you to Joel here a very brief run down on what happened in Afghanistan”.

Leroy smiled and nodded, “Easy, Intel got it wrong, that village was full of Taliban, the woman and children had left, the men were tying up loose ends when we took them out. God, whoops sorry Devil” – he put his hand over his mouth to silence a laugh – “Who knows how long we shortened the war by on that one hit?”

The Devil threw a $100 bill on the table and said, “Be seeing you around Leroy.” And we turned and left.

He called after us, “You’re a good man, you know that right?” breaking out into hysterics.

We made our way back to the Waldorf, the lights again grew brighter, sidewalks fuller, people moving with more speed.

“Leroy, he’s a donor, isn’t he?” I asked.

The Devil smiled, “His story is true. He was the commander of a platoon in Afghanistan that took out an entire village of 40 people one night. Snuck up on them and hit the place with huge amounts of mortar fire. Something like 12 huts, then went in and sprayed anyone trying to escape with machine gun fire. Cold light of day showed the Intel had been correct, it was a small village of peasant farmers and their families, predominately women and children. A Court Marshal ensued, somehow, he only got a dishonorable discharge but returning Stateside found he couldn’t live with himself.”

“And that’s why he came to you, he wanted to be able to live with himself.” I stated as the Devil nodded along. “But why not ask for more, he looked like he was living a rough life?”

“I can only grant so much; things seem to have to be within the realms of possibility for the individual. Don’t ask me why, I don’t have a teacher I can go to, any books at the library I can research. I learnt that back in the Roman days, people asking for untold amounts of gold and jewels, they’d end up with a couple of gold bracelets, enough to pawn for a decent life but nothing near to what they’d asked.” – there was a pause in the conversation as we made our way through the Lobby and back up to the room. Taking our seats at the desk once again, where there was a fresh G&T and Cognac poured, the Devil continued – “What I began to find was the souls of the people who didn’t end up with their full request underperformed in the implanted person. That’s another factor considered on my scorecard.”

I looked around the room, thought of Luca, looked at the Devil who had a look of contentment on his face, he seemed to be a happy businessman.”

“One last question?” I asked.

“Fire… and brimstone away. Sorry, insiders' joke.”

“While my soul is waiting out these 1500 years to come back as previously having belonged to Mr. Joel O’Connor, what happens to me, the soulless person?” It was hard to grasp the concept of myself dead but no soul moving out, or however the whole thing works.

“I’ve been told it’s akin to being asleep, or more so like being under a general anesthetic, not that I’d know but that’s how it has been described to me.”

Luca appeared by my side. She had a magnum with ice containing a bottle champagne and three glasses. “A celebratory drink is in order!” she stated.

“But wait, how did you know?” I asked incredulously.

“Oh, I get these feelings, besides, the Devils scorecard is very well refined!”

As the Devil popped the cork and filled the three glasses. Holding his up for us to join he said, “You shall have your wife, and life back within a month, and because I’m in a good mood, maybe a job promotion to help with the wife and life… cheers!” - We clinked glasses, and all took a sip. Putting his glass down, the Devil held out an outstretched hand – “Pleasure Mr. O’Connor, Luca will see you out.”

The end