Stroke of Luck

“Circle of salt? Check. Full height mirror? Check. Protective candles? Check. Sacrificial offering? Check. Time? One minute until midnight. Okay, Jacob. You’ve got this.”

Yeah, that’s me, sitting there, preparing to perform a ritual to summon Satan that I learned about on the internet. You might ask why I was feeling so desperate. Well, you see, there was this stock. And then a crypto. Then another stock. But that’s not where the story begins.

I married my college sweetheart five years back, just after I graduated. Melody and I met when I was helping a buddy of mine with his webcomic back in freshman year. Apparently she was a fan of my art and found out that the creators went to our school, so she came from her high school to hang out and see if she could find us.

Well, she was persistent, that’s for certain, because find us she did.

I fell head over heels for her the moment I laid eyes on her. So we started dating, and we were engaged two years later, with plans to tie the knot the summer after I graduated. It’s trite to say that your high school or college years were the best of your life, but for me, there’s little chance the rest of my life will hold a candle to those college years. Not unless I get the devil’s help, anyway.

Because I screwed up bad.

I’d given up my art in the latter part of college to focus on my studies, and I got a great job working in software development for a banking company when I got out of school. I mean, a couple of the higher ups were tools, of course. But my direct manager, Jerry, he was a great guy. Super understanding, always had my back. We all adored the man.

Two years after that, Melody told me that she was pregnant. I was over the moon, as you might imagine. But as the due date neared, I started doing the math. How was I going to afford to provide for my family? So I started brainstorming. And then there was the stock. The one for the game store.

It was on fire! It was at about two hundred bucks and still climbing. I was certain it was going to hit a thousand, easily. So I took everything we had in savings and invested, getting in while it was still in the mid four hundred dollar range.

And then it dropped down to two hundred bucks, almost overnight. So I sold. I couldn’t afford to lose everything.

On the day Jacob Junior was born, I was too worried about what Melody would say when she realized how badly I’d screwed up. She might leave me. So I dumped all my money into some cryptocurrency. Okay, it was at sixty cents and still climbing. I might be okay. But I’d learned my lesson. I couldn’t keep all my eggs in a single basket. Only, I needed more eggs.

So I took out an equity loan on the house and dumped all of that into a couple other crypto-coins and a stock that was soaring. And for a week or so, I watched them continue to rise. And that billionaire who liked my first crypto, well, he was going on SNL. Surely that would make things even better.

Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, tanked completely within the next two weeks. I was basically completely busted. I couldn’t even scrape together enough to pay back half of the loan. And with the new baby, we couldn’t afford the additional payment.

Melody found out. She wasn’t even angry at me. But I will never forget the look of disappointment in her eyes.

As the financial pressures mounted, we began to fight. Eventually, she took our son and moved back in with her parents. And I sold the house – at a loss, ultimately, thanks to the discovery of termites in the foundation by the home inspector.

So here I was, sitting in my one bedroom shithole apartment, just hoping against hope that I would get to meet the devil tonight. Because if he didn’t, then my only other option was to step in front of a bus and hope that the insurance money would be enough to take care of Melody and Junior. Because I’d failed at that.

Even my parents were disappointed in me. The only person who had optimism that I could turn this around was my kid sister, Megan. “Just draw some comics and sell those,” she’d suggested. “I bet with some work, you could make millions!” She was a junior in high school now, and just didn’t have any idea how the world worked. I envied that naiveté.

No, there were only two options. So I spoke with my boss and took a two week vacation. Told him that I wanted some time to decompress and work on my art. I didn’t want them to worry about me. We really were a close knit bunch. So close that, on the day before my vacation started, Jerry presented me with a gift card from him and the rest of our team to an art supply store.

“Wouldn’t want you to run out of supplies too early in the week and get into mischief out of boredom, my boy,” Jerry had said. “Besides, maybe what you really need is try another medium. Charcoal, or maybe oil paints? The challenge of something new might give you just the perspective you need.”

He didn’t want me to get into trouble. He had NO idea just how much trouble I was planning to get into. Assuming this worked. I spoke the incantation. It was in ancient Sumerian, I think.

All the electric lights went out at once, only leaving the candlelight illuminating the room. And there, in the mirror…it was him.

He was a little over six feet tall, with black hair and glowing red eyes. He wore a tasteful suit that looked like it came from Victorian England. No top hat, though. I guess that might have been a little much.

“Holy shit,” I breathed. “It actually worked.”

“Well, yes,” the man in the mirror said, his gravelly bass voice causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. “And no.” He then stepped through the mirror, smudging the circle of salt as he did so. I nearly pissed myself. Then he bent down and blew out the candles. Okay, that really did cause me to piss myself, just a little.

I heard him tsk in the darkness. Then he flicked the switch by the door, turning my lamp back on. “Please don’t kill me!” I begged.

He chuckled. “My boy, if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already. I’m here because you obviously needed someone to talk to. After all, who bothers to learn the correct pronunciation of ancient Sumerian if they’re not truly desperate? Well, mostly learns. You butchered that third word.”

He sat down on my armchair and gestured at my computer chair. I took his meaning and sat down. “Please, help me,” I said, finally, doing my best to suppress my fear, which was helped by the fact that his eyes had become a pale blue now that the candles were out. “I messed up bad.”

“I can see that. So tell me, what is it exactly you need from me?”

“The winning lottery numbers would be nice. Or if you could tell me of a stock I could get into and exactly when to get out? I can sell my car.”

The devil rolled his eyes at me. “My boy, I must say that I love you humans, but sometimes you infuriate me with how stupid you are. For a little money, you’ve called me here. And let me guess, you’re willing to trade your soul for it?”

“Well, I mean, that’s the way this works, right?”

He shrugged. “Not usually. I rarely make bargains for people’s souls. I don’t have a ton of use for them. For your time, for favors? Those I have use for. But the truth is that if you don’t ask me for help with what you really need, I can’t help you.”

“But I need the money to get Melody back!” I pled.

He raised an eyebrow. “Do you really?”

“She’s mad because I lost all our money with my bad luck. All I need is some good luck to turn it around!”

“Is that why she’s mad? Really? My boy, I’ve been watching you humans since before you learned that fire was hot. And let me tell you, that woman is in no way angry because of the money.”

“What else could it be, then?”

“What else indeed,” the devil said, sipping from a glass he hadn’t been holding a few moments before. From the scent, I think it was bourbon. He didn’t speak. He just kept looking at me, taking occasional sips.

I replayed our fights in my mind, over and over. “She’s mad…because I didn’t talk to her about it. I took all those risks, but I didn’t let her have a say.”

The devil smiled at me. “Bingo, give the boy a prize.”

“So, it doesn’t matter how much money I get.”

“I wouldn’t quit your job or anything, but more or less.”

That was terrible. If it wasn’t the money, then how was I going to convince her to come back? “Is it just as easy as saying I’m sorry?”

“If you can show her that you understand – truly understand – how you messed up? It might just be that simple. Of course, simple doesn’t always mean easy, my boy.”

I nodded. “I lost sight of what was really important. I need to tell her. No…I need to show her.” He raised his eyebrow at me. “We met because she loved my art. And while I don’t think drawing something for her will be what sways her to come back…maybe it’ll be enough to get her to listen to my words, so I can make the apology she deserves. Yeah…maybe I will try a new medium after all.”

He gulped the last of his bourbon. “Now, my boy, that sounds like a plan. Guess you don’t really need my help, after all. If this works, you’ll have turned your luck around, all on your own.”

I shook my head. “No, if I hadn’t talked to you, I never would have figured this out. You said you like favors? Well, as long as it’s not something horrible, if you ever need a favor from me, I’m willing to hear you out. I feel like I owe you that much.”

The devil laughed. “I may one day take you up on that. Now just don’t go forgetting this lesson, or your luck may turn sour on you once more.” He walked to the mirror and placed his hand on it. “Good night, Jacob.” The lights flickered off once more, for just a moment. When they came back on, he was gone.

I sat in my chair for quite some time, thinking about what I was gonna paint. Then it hit me. I’d paint that which was most important in my world… Melody and Junior, just as I remembered them from the night they’d come home from the hospital.