Getting Ice Cream With the Devil

Did you know that the devil’s favorite ice cream is vanilla? Vanilla. You’d think it’d be something wild, like Rocky Road or Mint Chocolate Chip with Rainbow Sherbert. Something chaotic. Something clashing or bitter. But no. It’s vanilla. Plain vanilla.

I know a lot about the devil. And most things you wouldn’t expect to be true. Like the vanilla thing. Or the fact that they love to go shopping for socks. They are all about the socks. Witty socks. You know like a picture of rocks reading and the little talking bubble says, “Reading Rocks!” You know. Stuff like that. They love it. They. The devil is genderless as one would expect.

The devil and I are not friends. But we’re not enemies. At least, not anymore. I hated them for a while. But then I realized that they were just being themselves. Doing what they do. Taking souls. Keeping hell alive. And that they’d been doing it for eons. And who was I to judge an eternal being? I was in no place to judge anyone or anything. Not even a little bit.

For as long as I can remember, all I ever wanted to be was rich and famous. Not an actor or a writer or a singer. I didn’t want to work for anything. I just wanted to exist and have people adore me and get paid for breathing. Like the Kardashians. But unless you come from a rich family, like the Kardashians, it’s difficult to gain celebrity status. Especially when your natural body type is short, round, with a big, crooked nose in the middle of your face, small beady eyes, and long, dark, oily hair. I looked like a troll. I looked like I should be asking Snow White to take a bite from my poison apple. So, how in the world was I ever going to be famous?

From the time I was 12 to the time I was 18, I spent most days and nights scrolling on my phone. Looking for inspiration from influencers on how to become an Influencer myself. But most of them, all of them really, were beautiful. And the ones who weren’t naturally beautiful were very skilled with makeup. Which I thought about learning but was too lazy to really try. Some of the Influencers were famous for being funny, but I wasn’t. Others were famous for hurting themselves. Doing life threatening activities that ended with them getting hurt which was also supposed to be funny. I tried that for a while but it didn’t seem to catch on. There were other people out there already who were funnier than I was and honestly, it was too much work.

And then on my 18th birthday, having no friends and not wanting to spend any time with my toxic parents, I took myself out for a walk. I walked without knowing where I was going and I ended up in the downtown area near my house in front of the theater that played classic movies. And that night they were showing The Little Mermaid and I had never seen it. So I bought a ticket with the $20 I had stolen from my mom’s purse and went inside. And when Ariel makes the deal with Ursula, I thought to myself, Wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t that be the best? If I could just make a deal with the devil, all my problems would be solved. It was my last thought before my whole world changed.

The theater went pitch black. At first I thought it was an electrical outage. I waited for about five seconds before I realized that it was quiet. Too quiet.

“Hello?” I asked, my voice sounding like it was underwater.

And then I began to panic.

I stood up and started to walk toward what I hoped was the exit but it was like I was moving through water too. Everything was slow and the air was thick and there was a pulsing sound in my ears like a loud bass.

And then suddenly, there they were.

The devil.

On the theater stage.

With a spotlight, dressed in a suit and top-hat and a cane.

Looking back, it was so cliché. Even for them.

But at the time, I was stunned.

I wondered if maybe the concessions guy had put something in my coke.

“Samantha, come on up here!” they said, lights flashing and music coming from somewhere above, as if I was on a game show.

I felt my body propel me forward.

I’m on something, I thought, I am most definitely on something.

“This is real, Samantha,” they said, reading my mind, “Just think of me as Ursula. Or the genie from Alladin, which you haven’t seen yet, but you should. Some of Robin Williams’ best work.”

“His best work was The Birdcage,” I replied, my passion for that movie surpassing the fact that I was fairly certain I was hallucinating.

The devil laughed.

“Fair,” they replied, “Now. Samantha. Tell me why you’re here.”

I stared in response.

I felt a hot light on my face and turned to see what looked like an audience staring back at me.

A game show.

Was I on a game show?

Did I think I was going to watch The Little Mermaid but accidentally wandered on to the set of the Price is Right?

I wasn’t sure anymore.

Everything was fuzzy.

“Samantha,” the devil repeated, snapping my attention back toward them, “Tell me what you want.”

“Who…who are you?” I asked, my throat dry, my voice feeling like it was scraping against sandpaper.

The devil smiled at me and replied, “You know who I am. And you know why I’m here. Just tell me what you want. All you have to do is say the words.”

And I did know.

It was like a flood of knowledge rushing to my brain.

This was the devil.

A beautiful genderless creature who was dressed like Mr. Peanut.

And they were there to grant me my wish.

But having just seen the deal Ariel made with Ursula, I needed to ask the question.

“What’s the catch?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” the devil asked, smiling, knowing perfectly well what I meant.

“You know what I want,” I said, “But what’s the catch?”

The devil looked at me for a while, and I wondered what they were looking for. And I wondered at myself for staring back so bravely. Their eyes were bottomless. Are bottomless. It was the first and last time I ever looked because when you look into the eyes of the devil, you realize just how meaningless everything is. How small you are. How insignificant. How everything you care about will eventually end and be forgotten.

“The catch,” the devil repeated, taking a step closer to me and me automatically taking a step back, “Is that, you will get what you want. But the more you get it, the less you’ll enjoy it.”

“But I’ll get it?” I asked, not caring about the last part. I hadn’t enjoyed my life up until that point so it didn’t really matter to me. What was more years of misery as long as I got what I wanted?

The devil smiled wider and nodded, “Oh, you’ll get it. You’ll get it good.”

They looked like the Cheshire Cat- wild and insane but also oddly beautiful. I had an urge to reach out and stroke their cheek but I had a feeling they would bite my hand off if I tried.

I nodded.

“You have to say it,” the devil repeated, putting their face close to mine, “You have to say it. Tell me what you want.”

I swallowed and the sound echoed in the theater, the audience took a breath, the already bright lights grew brighter-

“I want to be rich and famous.”

The devil disappeared. Or rather it morphed. All of a sudden I was looking at a giant blue genie, one I can only imagine was a replica of the one from Aladdin,

“Your wish is my command!” said the devil/genie with the voice of Robin Williams.

As suddenly as the vision came, it vanished.

I was sitting in my seat, holding my flat coke and Ariel was marrying Prince Eric.

I stared at my coke and put it in the cup holder near the seat.

Definitely some shrooms or something, I thought.

Having missed the entire movie, I got up, and my legs felt like jelly.

Like I had walked a million miles or something.

I made my way to the empty lobby where the concessions guy was cleaning the popcorn machine.

I wanted to ask him if he had slipped something into my drink but decided to just leave. Accept the weird-ass trip I had just had and make my way home.

As I made my way to the front doors, the concessions guy looked up. Looked down. Looked up again, his eyes widening.

“It’s you!” he screamed, making me jump.

I stared at him.

“Huh?” I asked.

“It’s you!” he said, rushing out from behind the counter, making his way toward me.

He stopped, inches from me, he held his face in his hands, his body practically convulsing.

“Can I, um, oh my god, can I take a picture?”

“Can you take a picture?” I asked, “But, why?”

I watched as he turned bright red, “You’re right, I’m so sorry, you’re clearly wanting to be by yourself and-

“No, why do you want to take a picture of me?” I asked.

It can’t be, I thought, It just can’t be.

The concessions guy stared at me, his eyes so wide, drool dripping from his mouth.

“Why?” he repeated, as if he couldn’t believe I asked, “Cause, well, it’s YOU.”

“It’s me,” I repeated.

He nodded and his hands reached out to me. He gently touched my arms as if he couldn’t believe I was real.

“It’s you,” he said again, “You’re…you’re wonderful.”

“I…I need to go to the bathroom,” I stammered and ran toward it.

“Of course!” he shouted, “I LOVE YOU!”

I pulled open the bathroom door, and headed straight for the mirror.

Nothing had changed.

I looked the same.

“Are you ok?” asked the concessions guy from behind the door, “I’m sorry if I scared you! I just…I just love you so much.”

I stared at the mirror.

He loved me.

Me.

“It’s true,” I whispered, “It came true.”

I walked out of the bathroom and came face to face with the concessions guy.

“You can take a picture,” I said.

He screamed and took out his phone, his hands shaking, he pulled me toward him and raised his arm to take a selfie.

“THANK YOU, THANK YOU SO MUCH!” he squealed as I walked out the theater and into my new life.

On the way home, people got out of their cars to take pictures.

“It’s SAMANTHA!” they yelled, “SAMANTHA, CAN WE GET A PICTURE?!”

It took me six hours to walk what was normally about 15 minutes.

And each time someone asked me to take a picture, each time someone shouted my name, I felt like I was dying. Fading away. The more that people saw me, the more I felt like I was disappearing.

When I finally made it home, I stopped in front of my house.

There was a crowd behind me, shouting my name.

My house was no longer my house.

The modest two-bedroom home that I had grown up in with parents that I hated, had been replaced with a Beverly Hills style mansion and a wrap around gate with two bodyguards standing at the entrance.

“Welcome home, Samantha,” they said in unison, blocking the crowd from getting to me and helping me inside.

The house had three different gardens, three different pools.

The inside looked like something out of a magazine- designer furniture and a fridge stocked with all of my favorite foods.

There was a chef standing at the kitchen counter waiting for me to tell him what I wanted.

“Are you here all the time?” I asked him.

He stared at me confused, “Well…yes,” he said as if I was testing him.

I nodded and made my way upstairs.

There were so many rooms.

All of them empty.

All of them for me.

My parents were nowhere to be found.

It was as if they vanished.

I didn’t have parents.

I was just me.

Correction.

I was SAMANTHA.

I went to the window and looked down at the front gate where the crowd was growing, paparazzi lined the streets aiming their cameras in my direction, the screams getting louder as people noticed I was standing at the window.

I stepped back.

I pulled out my phone and clicked on my Instagram account.

My feed was flooded with pictures of me.

Nothing but Samantha.

Samantha walking down the street.

Samantha sipping her coke.

Samantha watching The Little Mermaid.

Every moment of my life within the past several hours was all over social media.

And as I scrolled, and as the screaming outside got louder and louder, all I wanted was for it to end. For it to stop. The more I saw, the more I existed in the perfect house, with the dream I had always wanted, the more I just wanted it to end.

“You knew there was a catch,” the devil said, appearing suddenly in the bedroom doorway.

“I know,” I replied, “I guess…no one really realizes the catch, do they? We agree to it, but we don’t know what it means. Not really. We think we’ll be better. That maybe because I got everything that I ever wanted, I would be able to surpass it. Surpass the catch. Stupid, huh?”

The devil smiled, “Not stupid. Deliciously human.”

I laughed and the devil looked surprised.

“What’s funny?” they asked.

“You,” I said, bravery again coming from somewhere in me that I didn’t know had ever existed, “You prey on us because you want to be us. You want to be us so badly and you never will. No matter how many souls you take. You will never be us.”

The devil’s smile vanished and for a moment, I saw their true face.

It’s a face I never want to see again.

And then, just as quickly, they smiled again, looking somewhat impressed.

“Let’s get ice cream,” the devil said and suddenly we were in an empty ice cream parlor with just the clerk behind the counter.

“What would you like?” the devil asked me.

“Strawberry,” I said.

“Vanilla,” the devil told the clerk.

I looked at the devil, “Vanilla?” I asked.

The devil shrugged, “It’s delicious. Why get something else when the best flavor is already there?”

It was the first of many dates between the devil and I.

The more miserable I became, the more the devil showed up.

We would go shopping for socks. Get ice cream. We would go to the racetrack in San Diego where they would bet and of course always win.

And I began to notice that the devil mainly wanted to do old things. Vintage things. They only wanted to see old movies. They only liked going to places that had existed for at least a century.

One day when we were in my kitchen eating ice cream, I asked them if they used social media.

The devil looked at me as if I had just vomited all over their face.

“I don’t do social media,” they said, clearly insulted, “I stick to the classic form of soul taking, thank you very much. I don’t need your modern devices to do my job.”

I shrugged and began to show them the perks of social media. How wide they could throw their net if they simply utilized the tool.

They pretended to not care, to not want to have any part of it, but I could see those dark eyes glow with interest.

In a week I was basically the devil’s assistant.

I set them with up with an Instagram, TikTok, Threads, Facebook.

I used my fame to help them reach the biggest celebrities, politicians, artists, world leaders. So many souls just waiting to be taken.

I was the devil’s partner.

About a month into our partnership I asked them if they spent as much time with all of their victims the way they were spending time with me.

The devil shook their head.

And then they said, “You are one of the more interesting ones. You…You never really had a soul to begin with. In some ways, we are very similar.”

I never really had a soul to begin with.

I suppose that’s true.

In some ways, the devil’s curse didn’t work.

Yes, I am miserable, but I have always been miserable.

And though, the devil and I are not friends, they are the closest thing to a friend I have ever had.