“Leading the pack is Osoba from Nigeria, racing ahead of the group with a strong lead at the 200-metre mark, followed behind by Jameson representing the United States with Thomas closely behind in from New Zealand. The three speedsters are sure to take their medals respectively and are closing in on the finish with… wait what’s this? From way out in the rear, it’s Tan from Singapore working himself into a boost! At 100 metres left, can he catch up to the leaders? He’s catching up to Thomas- oh there’s Jameson and Tan’s gaining on Osoba, the Nigerian Nitro, will he take the gold from underneath- HE’S DONE IT! TAN THE UNDERDOG TAKES THE GOLD FROM THE HEATED FAVOURITE IN A GLORIOUS UPSET VICTORY! MY GOODNESS LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS IN MY LIFE!”

 

On an unremarkable night as the last of the twilight descended upon the horizon, stood a mysterious stranger, leaning against a nearby lamppost, lolling his head left and right and wearing a bored countenance upon his middle-aged face.

His long slender fingers ran up the lapels of his watery, crimson-red trench coat and into the inside of his jacket pocket, extracting a single, black cigarette.

The night was accursed with the cawing of crows in the distance and the light fluttering of moths hanging above his head. He brought the cigarette to his lips and held it there, tuning his ears, and waiting. Just waiting…

The sun had set upon the town in the distance and he watched as the shadows of the buildings stretched their dark reach to him. He enjoyed the darkness; he doubted anyone in his line of work could do their jobs in anything but. And as the shadows crept over the last vestiges of sunlight on the street, he felt more at ease, yet still bored.

As the minutes crawled by, he felt his boredom diminish, replaced only with the neck-itching sensation of annoyance. He reached into the outer pocket of his coat and produced an ancient, worn, jet-black pocket watch. ‘Where the fuck is he?’ He clicked open the ebon chronometer, staring at the strange clock face that only he could understand. The white clock face had two long hands: one red, sitting idle at the 12 o’clock position. And one black, ticking backwards rapidly from 4 o’clock. ‘Fucking wind demons!’ he thought, as the black hand froze between three and two.

His glaring eyes scanned the upper path of Kallang Way, still straining his ears for any sounds of movement. A small bell chimed from his hand as the black hand on his pocket watch finally reached 12 o’clock. He snapped the black chronometer closed and pocketed the trinket, scanning the upper path again with his blood-red hawk eyes.

Coming down the pathway was a youthful Singaporean man with very short black hair, pressed down against his skull by a large pair of Beats by Dre headphones. The man paid no heed to the crimson stranger that stood down the road, holding his groceries in a paper bag under one arm and adjusting his iPod Nano with the other.

‘You are late,’ the red man spoke as the citizen passed, his unlit cigarette still dangling between his lips.

The music-lover stopped in his tracks and, although his lips did not open, a voice was heard growling from his body. ‘Qui estis vos?’ He turned to face the red man with widened eyes as he watched the stranger’s cigarette explode into light, a graceful seam of smoke rising from the tip.

‘I am Nyxanoth Faust,’ said the crimson man with a sarcastic bow, ‘the Black Prince Belphegor sent me.’

‘Contractor’. The Asian man spoke without speaking, ‘quid agis hic?’

‘It’s time, you forfeited our property. Your meat-sack, Tan, made a deal with your master. It’s high-time you pay up. You were due back hours ago.’

The demon occupying Tan growled, showing no indication of relinquishing his newfound toy.

‘Listen you, little shit,’ he hissed, spitting his cigarette at his feet, ‘you’ve kept me waiting for hours now. I’m tired, I’m bored and this place reeks of life. Give me the soul and you can go back to Hell where you belong.’

‘Aut?’

‘You don’t wanna know.’ He stared down at the still-burning cigarette, staring at it with his intense burning eyes before the entire cigarette, filter to tip, burst into flames.

The demon threw Tan’s head backwards in a mad cackle, as the groceries crashed onto the ground at his feet. ‘Boldly stated,’ said Tan, the voice of the demon still growling through him, ‘but how can you catch the fastest man on Earth?’

‘Don’t you dare…’

But before Faust could react, the human puppet rocketed down Kallang Way towards James Cook University at a speed impossible for any human to achieve.

Faust remained frozen in place, half bewildered, half incredulous at the stupidity of the wind demon in Tan. Unable to comprehend what just happened, he let out his frustrations in a single, crudely-formed sigh of ‘fuck’.

 

In a span of seconds, Tan had cleared three different suburbs as he raced alongside trains, sped past freeways and was currently gaining speed on a passenger jet flying overhead. He had only just made it to the National University of Singapore before a blurred glint of light from the corner of his eyes caught his attention.

He stopped in his tracks, frantically staring around for the source before something heavy fell onto him from the skies, pinning him onto the cold concrete by his neck. The momentary blackness in his eyes gave way and he found himself staring into two, burning red orbs blinking back at him.

‘Give me the soul, asshole,’ growled Faust.

Again, the human puppet cackled. Faust released his grip from the human’s neck and stepped back, watching Tan’s chest heave unnaturally against his ribs. It looked as though someone was pumping oxygen through a tire that can take no more until suddenly, through Tan’s plain white t-shirt, a rotting, sickly, purple claw emerged from his chest, bringing with it a horned head and a fetid torso of the wind demon.

As the demon emerged from Tan’s chest, Faust took notice of the golden orb it held between its decayed fingers; it shone bright with an unworldly radiance foreign to this plane of existence.

‘Good,’ said Faust, keeping a trained eye on the demon that now sat hunched over the human soul, ‘now, hand it over.’

The demon’s lifeless violet eyes stared hungrily at the glowing orb in its talons, its putrid jaws salivating. But before it could do anything stupid, Faust lobbed a sharp kick into its chin, sending it crashing through the glass windows of the university and into an empty classroom.

It raised itself from beneath the mountain of desks and chairs in time to see the rippling of a crimson cloak flutter through the window.

‘Morior!’ it shrieked, opening its mouth wide and far. Desks, chairs, computers went flying across the room as a strong gust of wind flew from the maws of the demon and at the Contractor who stood firm.

‘Winds?’ he shouted through the squall, ‘don’t you know what I am?’ He raised his hands and in an instant, the gusts were devoured into his palms. ‘See?’ And without even a sweat of effort, pushed the winds he absorbed back at the demon, sending it hurtling again through the wreckage of office fittings.

‘Q-quomodo facitis?’ it stammered, picking itself up from the pile.

‘You should read more.’ He reached down and gripped the demon around its decaying throat and lifted it from the ground. As the demon gnashed and flailed in the air, the Contractor pulled him close and whispered, ‘I wrote the fourteen laws that allowed demons to have power in the first place. You’d be nothing but an imp if it weren’t for me.’

‘C-confuto,’ it whimpered.

‘Not until you hand over the soul,’ replied Faust, tightening his grip around its throat.

‘C-CONFUTO!’ the demon’s tail cracked through the air, its sharpened spines slicing Faust’s arm. Feeling the Contractor’s grip loosen, the demon kicked off of his chest and scampered into the corner, its eyes fixed hungrily on the soul.

‘Don’t you do it,’ Faust warned, nursing his bleeding arm.

And then, almost as though all other sound was muted in the world, he heard it – the unmistakable crack as though someone had smashed a hammer against a thick glass table. The demon’s fangs had pierced the orb. The soul was broken.

Faust could only watch, his eyes screwing against the radiant light that now enveloped the demon, lifting it into the air and permeating through its skin. Large, sinewy wings shot through its pitiful shoulders; its tiny horns erupted into engorged, large abominations upon its forehead.

The light receded, leaving the demon more formidable looking than it before. Its putrid head twisted, inspecting every inch of its new body before it threw back, laughing a cruel, mirthless laugh. ‘Ubi erant nos?’

‘We’re getting to the part where I kill you,’ Faust replied through gritted teeth, ‘and then I take your head back through the fiery gates as a fucking trophy!’ He leapt at the demon, fingers reaching towards its chest.

The demon, now much quicker than before, leapt aside and wrapped its spiny tail around Faust’s neck, feeling the Contractor’s head lift further and further away from his shoulders. ‘Quomodo habet sentire mori lente?’

Faust, barely choking for air, replied in rasping, wheezing voice. ‘You… tell… me.’

A twisted grin curled across the demon’s face as it heard the grim sound of his neck snap – there he held, suspended in mid-air by a scaly, snaking tail, was the limp body of Hell’s most fearsome reaper. ‘Flebilis,’ it grunted, casting Faust’s body aside like a ragdoll.

It then turned and tramped towards the opening in the broken window, stretching its newfound wings across the room as it so did, preparing to take flight. But with each flap of its wings, each beat of its mighty new extensions, it could not achieve lift. It was almost as though its clawed feet were rooted to the floor somehow.

And then it heard it – a spine-chilling sound from the corner that made its body shudder with fear.

‘What will it take for you to get it? I don’t play by the same laws here on Earth. I am the law!’

The demon clawed at its legs, desperate to get free by any costs as the body of the Contractor rose from the corner.

‘Under Section 48 of the Pacts of Hell – Ante Bellum,’ he said, cracking his neck nonchalantly back into place and brushing his ebon hair from his burning red eyes, ‘I, Nyxanoth Faust, find you in violation of the Balance. I now judge thee, damned!’

The demon spluttered in Hellspeak, begging for mercy but the Contractor had already begun executing its sentence.

Reaching inside his crimson trench coat, he produced a small silver bible and flicked to find a passage. ‘Mors ultima linea rerum est!’ Faust read, ‘in morte requiesces!’

As the silver bible snapped shut, the demons body began to char and burn into ash. It shrieked an unimaginable shriek of pain as the flesh from its infernal body deteriorated before its eyes.

But the Contractor was unfazed by this sight. He watched as the remnants of the demon’s body crumble into a pile of ash and he, for all the trouble it caused him, spat on its remains. ‘Filthy sack of shit!’

 

Outside the university, Tan’s body stirred into consciousness. He found himself staring into the starry night sky, the wind blowing gently through his hair. He tried to move but felt a sharp, burning pain in his chest like someone had just ripped out all his internal organs and ironed his flesh back together.

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ said a snide voice next to him.

Tan’s eyes focused onto a middle-aged stranger marching towards him from the building, donning a strange, liquid-like, crimson trench coat.

‘What… what happened?’ he asked the Faust.

Despite the occurrence of the night, Faust maintained a calm visage to the idiot human. ‘You made a deal with the Black Prince, Belphegor. Do you remember?’

He half-expected Tan to react with shock, but, to his surprise, Tan only nodded slowly. ‘He… he sent me a demon that made me run faster.’

‘And do you remember what you were supposed to give him in return?’

The colour drained from Tan’s face. ‘He wanted my soul. He said I had two weeks after the closing ceremony to hand it over.’

‘Well, shit luck for both of us,’ Faust snapped, unable to hide the bitterness in his voice, ‘the demon he sent you made off with it.’

‘You… you don’t have it?’

‘Didn’t you hear me? I don’t have your fucking soul!’

‘So, what happens to me now?’ Tan asked, gingerly sitting up, ‘are you… are you going to kill me?’

The Contractor scratched the annoying tick on the back of his head. How he wished mortals would read their contracts before signing them in blood. ‘Listen,’ he said with a beleaguered sigh, ‘you’re going to live up to the point where your heart stops beating. At which point, all your accomplishments, all your achievements will account for nothing. You’ll be dragged into Limbo, kicking and screaming, where you, the soulless little shit you are, will exist in nothingness ad aeternium. Are we clear?’

Tan’s pale face ticked into a soft grin. ‘You mean, I get to live a normal life? With all my sponsors and medals? I’ll still get paid?’

‘Is that all that matters to you? Easy money for the rest of your life? No wonder Belphegor took this deal. You’re a Class-A moron.’ He knelt down and grabbed Tan by the shoulders, penetrating through his eyes with his angry, burning gaze. ‘Your soul is gone, you idiot! Your very existence on this Earth is now a God damn blight – an unholy abomination against all Creation! Can’t you fucking grasp that?!’

‘B-but, I’ll live my life normally.’

‘Normally? Your soul is the catalyst for all that’s happy and harmonious in your life and your afterlife! The stepping stones for love, life and good health and prosperity and you just threw all that away for money and fame!’ Having had enough of this conversation, Faust pushed Tan back onto the floor and shook his head, turning his back on the idiot mortal that lay spread-eagled on the ground.

‘Well, what can I do then?’ Tan asked, sitting back up and rubbing the back of his bruising head.

‘What can you do? You can go back in time and tell yourself that deals with Devils always end badly. See if you can’t engrave that onto a fucking medal!’

And with that, Faust’s cloak wrapped around its wearer and in flurry of crimson, the Contractor was gone.

Tan sat on the ground, staring at the sponsored Adidas runners on his feet. Was the Contractor right? After all, he was from Hell. How could he be trusted? If a soul was so precious, there was no way in the world that a Creator would let mortals part with it so easily, would they?

He shook his head. No, the Contractor was wrong. Tan was set for life. He was going to be fine.

Or so he thought…

And so ends the tale of the Athlete… and the Contractor.