“Ladies and Gentlemen, on behalf of the bride and groom, I’d like to thank you all for coming out today.

“My name is Tim Hodges, Jeff’s best man and best friend since high school. So, what can I say about Jeff? A lot really! You all remember him as the guy that would always be single… always.

“We all used to hang out at bars together picking up girls and forgetting their names the next day, but not Jeff. The guy thought he was Ted Mosby or something… he was always talking about finding ‘the One’.

“Well, ‘the One’ was waiting around ‘the Corner’ when he ran into a café to hide from the rain and he met her: his beautiful new wife, Chloe.

“Now, as his best friend and best man, I can tell you for sure that I’ve heard her name more times in the last six months than my own name in the last twelve years.

“Chloe this and Chloe that and it went on forever!

“When Jeff told me that he was going to propose, I had to do what all best friends do: I asked him if he was sure, then I slapped him in the face, and I asked him again.

“And he says to me, he says ‘Tim, I would give my mind, my body and my soul for her.’

“So, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to raise your glass…

“To Mister and Missus Jeff and Chloe Jackson!”

 

The sun was setting on the 13^th Fairway at a golf course in Jack’s Point just west of Queenstown, New Zealand where a man stood, hidden amongst the foliage that bordered the green next to the lake. The cool mountain air ruffled through his flowing, crimson trench coat as the sounds of rustling trees and rippling water cursed the night.

He let out a deep, beleaguered sigh as he watched the horizon snuff out the last of the sunset. It wouldn’t be much longer. Not much longer at all. And then he would be able to leave this life-infested world.

His slender arm travelled up the buttons of his coat and into his inside pocket, retrieving an ebon pocket watch. He clicked it open and stared upon its face. The red hand sat still at 12 o’clock but the other hand, the black one, ticked backwards from 1 o’clock.

The last of the wildlife seemed to have stopped their incessant singing when Faust heard the crunching of footsteps upon the freshly manicured lawn – a rabble of rowdy men approached the green in the dusk-light, talking loudly and taking good-natured jabs at each other.

‘… but seriously, guys, I’m really happy you all made it today.’

‘What? And miss out on my best mate making the biggest mistake of his life?’

‘Ah, don’t look so huff, bro. Tim’s just jealous that you found a hot wife and he’s still dating his laptop.’

The chorus of men roared with laughter.

‘Fuck off! I can find a girl like Chloe any day, mate.’ He belched loudly, causing nearby birds to take off. ‘By the way, she got a sister, mate? I can only assume a sibling would be as hot as Chloe.’

‘Yeah, she’s ah… she’s something special, guys. I just can’t believe we’re married, you know?’

‘Get your head in the game, boys. We talking or we finishing this birdie?’

The Contractor strained his ears in the dark before hearing a loud thwack! Although it was darkening on the 13^th Fairway, he could see, as clear as day, the pearlescent Callaway HEX golf ball that rolled towards his feet.

‘What the Hell was that? You hit like a girl, Jeff!’

‘Said your mum!’

‘Go on then, go grab your ball. At least you got one now that you’re married, right?’

More jeering ensued as Faust heard the footsteps of someone crunching towards him, until his target, the man called ‘Jeff’, approached the tree behind which he hid.

The pocket watch chimed as the black hand struck twelve.

‘You took your sweet-ass time, Jeff,’ he said to the stranger stooping down for his golf ball.

The human, Jeff, paused and, with an inhuman voice that growled through the very trees themselves, replied to him. ‘Faust!’

Unsurprisingly to the Contractor, Jeff collapsed onto the ground – his body twitching and contorting as a green pentagram glowed under his white shirt. His chest heaved and heaved before the sickly-green head of a wood demon poked out, staring at Faust with its dead black eyes.

Faust waited with uncharacteristic patience as the demon’s twiggy shoulders emerged, bringing forth its stick-like arms and raked talons. And there it was – in the demon’s sharp claws was a golden orb that swirled with a yellow, radiant light: a human soul.

‘Good, numbnuts,’ Faust remarked casually, watching the demon fully crawl out the human, ‘now, hand it over’.

The demon’s beady eyes were transfixed on the precious orb in its rotting talons, its maw dribbling hungrily with saliva.

‘Oi!’ Faust shouted, snapping his fingers at the demon, ‘don’t even think about it!’

The demon broke its gaze from its bounty and stared at Faust fearfully, no doubt remembering the Contractor’s reputation and brutality in Hell, but its greed was greater than that of its fear. It reared its ugly head and opened its drooling maws, sinking its rotten yellowed fangs into the orb.

A loud crack of shattering glass filled the night. The swirling golden light from within the sphere unleashed into the demon, its pallid body glowing from underneath its skin. As if suspended by invisible string, the demon lifted only a few feet from the ground. Its scrawny shoulders growing broader by the second and tiny nubs that developed into large sinister wings. The demon landed on the ground clutching the puny horns on its forehead as they engorged under its talons, sprouting in giant, curled monstrosities.

Its large raked feet hit the ground with a dull ‘thud’, and it reared to full height, towering over Faust, no longer the tiny imp that it was, but an eight-foot tall, hulking behemoth.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said the Contractor, cracking his knuckles and staring up unfazed at the demon, ‘now I’m going to have to beat the shit out of you until you puke soul.’

The wood demon threw back its head and roared with laughter. Faust, sensing a moment to strike, lunged at the demon but felt strong, stinging sensations travel along his entire body, holding him in mid-air. He glanced down at his chest and saw, what looked like, thousands of long, green needles impaling his entire body – the grass beneath him had germinated almost instantly into strong, thin blades, lifting him off the ground.

He was trapped.

Pain ripping through his body and the grass growing through his flesh, all he could muster was a defiant whisper as he watched the evolved wood demon bound into the lush bushes along the green: ‘you… better… run…’

 

The wood demon, giddy with the power of the soul within him, now leapt through the 17^th Fairway, turning back only occasionally to watch the ground behind it – with every step it took, the green beneath its feet exploded into an entangled mess of grass at least three feet tall. Creating life under its talons – the wood demon truly felt like a god. It bounded further and further along the golf course until something hard and dull collided with its distracted face, dislocating its jaw.

‘Abore ramus?’ It growled, doing its best to reset its crooked maw.

But it was no tree branch. Hanging in the air, where its face was only moments ago, was a pale fist, trembling with anger and behind it the stern, scowling face of Faust, the Devils’ Contractor.

The wood demon scrambled to its feet, kicking the ground away from itself as Faust slowly marched towards him, cracking his knuckles still.

‘All the times I’ve killed you little shits,’ he growled, now cracking his neck, ‘all the times, you’ve run, hid, and fought back and lost… horribly,’ his jaw now cracked and jutted, ‘you little FUCKS never seem to learn your place.’

Seeing the Contractor only a few steps away, the demon turned on the ground and leapt through the mess of tall grass ahead of it.

But it did not get far.

The 17^th Fairway was split with an unworldly shriek as it was hoisted into the air by clusters of snake-like vines and bladed stalks of grass. Faust grabbed the demon by its tail and, almost effortlessly, slammed the imp back into the ground. He made sure the demon learned its place by placing a heavy boot onto its chest, glaring through it with his blood-red eyes.

‘Placere… non!’ it squealed, unable to take its hollow eyes off the Contractor.

‘Oh, I won’t kill you,’ Faust hissed, his eyes narrowing dangerously, ‘I need you to send a message to your brothers and sisters.’

He  laid his hand on the demon’s chest, muttering an incantation under his breath.

‘… ego praecipio tibi, reverti quod furati!’ He finished and stepped back to watch the wood demon’s muscular chest heave up and down, glowing faintly with a soft golden light.

Faust could feel his spirits being lifted – as if all his troubles and stress in the world would melt away – as the light grew stronger and stronger. The demon, however, looked to be in complete agony. However painful it was to have been impaled by grass blades, it looked like nothing compared to having a human soul ripped from its chest.

As the light grew brighter, Faust could see the demon’s features becoming more and more diminutive – its engorged horns detracted back into the little flaccid stumps as before and its large, leathery wings disintegrated into corpse dust, blowing away across the fairway.

The light melted out of its chest into a small, golden, glowing orb again – no bigger than a golf ball. The soul rolled off the demon’s chest and onto the ground at Faust’s feet. He knelt down and scooped it up in his hand, checking it carefully before pocketing it. He stepped over the demon, taking extra care to kick it in the ribs as he so did, and headed back towards the bright lights across the fairway, to the loud chattering of humans.

 

There was a loud commotion when the Contractor returned to the lodge – paramedics and concerned revellers all crowded around Jeff the Newlywed as he waved them away, repeating the words ‘a little too much’ to them.

Next to him sat a young, attractive woman, dressed in an elegant white gown, clasping onto his hand and rubbing his arm comfortingly. Almost immediately, Jeff noticed the dark silhouette of Faust standing amongst the shrubbery across the course. He excused himself from the concerned onlookers and made his way across the green.

‘… no, no, it’s fine. Just dropped my wallet that’s all… no, It’s okay. I’ll grab it.’ Faust heard him call as the mortal made his way over.

‘So, that was interesting,’ Jeff chuckled nervously, ‘demon leaving me for dead and all.’

Faust grunted in acknowledgement, lighting a cigarette in his mouth.

‘I feel weird, Faust,’ he continued, ‘things just feel… numb. Is that normal?’

Again, Faust did not speak. He took a long drag and blew the smoke into the air.

Jeff, sensing the conversation dying, tried again at small-talk with the Contractor. ‘So… did you get my soul back?’

This attempt seemed to have worked. ‘I did.’

‘Then our agreement?’

‘Your agreement will continue with Asmodeus – 50 years, Jeff. That’s what you asked.’

‘I guess – what was that?!’ he jumped, hearing a bush rustle violently behind the Contractor.

But his question was soon answered in the form of a simpering, purposely-coy, scabby-green imp bounding out of the hedge and landing at Faust’s feet.

‘The fuck do you want?’ Faust barked at it.

The demon’s bat-like ears drooped slightly and it lowered its head, like a dog being told off by its master.

It pawed at its nose with its rotting talons – to Jeff, this would have been a cute display, had the thing not looked so… hideous.

‘Im-Imperator,’ it whimpered, tugging at the hem of Faust’s coat and blinking its large black eyes at him, ‘placere.’

‘You try to kill me and now you think I won’t do the same to you?’

The wood demon recoiled at Faust’s words, almost exaggerating its hurt on purpose. One of its fetid talons crawled along the ground towards his coat again, but Faust quickly ripped the hem out of its reach.

‘Fuck off!’ he snapped, aiming a kick at the imp’s jaw.

The demon leapt back yelping, and dived into the bushes behind it, disappearing in a sea of noisy rustling and strange grunts.

‘Yeah, keep running, you little shit!’

Faust turned back to Jeff, who wore a strange look on his face – a peculiar mix of astonishment, disbelief and amusement. Like he found the situation funny but did not dare smile or laugh.

‘W-what was that all about?’ asked Jeff carefully, as though Faust was a bundle of dynamite.

‘Little shit wanted the soul,’ answered Faust, patting his pocket, ‘it won’t get it a second time.’

‘… a second… time?’

‘Never you mind,’ snapped Faust, and Jeff could swear there was a hint of shame in his voice.

After a long moment of awkward silence, Jeff tried his luck again. ‘Do you… do you think I’m shallow, Faust?’ he asked.

‘Why the fuck do you care what I think?’ the Contractor shook his head, unable to comprehend the neediness of humans.

‘I don’t know.’ Jeff replied, shifting some grass beneath his feet, ‘I guess I just wanted to know if this was… a noble cause, I guess.’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Faust, unable to hide the sarcasm in his voice, ‘because nothing screams nobility more than freezing the clock on your young wife’s hot ass for fifty years. That’s some Mother Teresa-level shit right there.’

‘You’re interpreting this wrong, Faust,’ Jeff defended, albeit meekly under the Contractor’s blood red glare, ‘I want her to outlive me, that’s all. And besides, she wants this too.’

‘Bullshit,’ Faust spat, ‘you just want eye-candy dangling off your arm when you’re too old to wipe your own ass and having to pop little blue pills like Tic-tac’s.’

‘I don’t care about her looks, I care about her health.’

‘So, living the Heffner lifestyle means no-never-mind to you? Think for a second, will you? You reckon a hot chick like her would stay with you when you’re old and mouldy, especially considering she’ll look exactly that way for fifty years and can probably score someone way hotter than you just by flashing her hot, perky tits?’

‘You’re wrong – I love her, and she’ll always love me.’ Jeff defended again, clenching his fists, ‘I spent a lifetime looking for the one – looking for her. I’m… I’m Ted Mosby!’

‘The only things you and Ted Mosby have in common are shitty dad-jokes, an entitlement complex, and you both seem to think only with your dicks.’

Jeff smirked a cocky, almost defiant, smirk at the Contractor. ‘Oh boy, I’d love you to visit us on our ten-year anniversary, Faust. I really would. Chloe and I will show you we love each other, truly –’

‘Madly, deeply. Yeah, whatever.’ Faust retorted, rolling his eyes. ‘Remember this feeling, Jeff: peace. You’ll come to regret your decision soon enough, and, shit, you’ll probably forget what peace even is.’

‘W-what do you me–‘

‘One sec,’ Faust interrupted, and, without another word, dived into the bushes behind him, rending the peaceful night with angry cursing. ‘I fucking told you never to come back, you fuck-stain!’

Jeff stood there, dumbstruck, trying to decipher the odd symphony of cursing, demonic growling, more cursing, yelping, what sounded like a harmonica whistling, and, yet again, more cursing. He thought about going back to the venue to be with his guests, but no sooner had he turned his heels, the Contractor emerged, straightening his hair with one hand, while the other clutched tight around a greenish imp’s neck.

‘Smelled the little fucker from a mile away,’ Faust spoke, shaking the demon violently, ‘little shit was probably trying to get the drop on me again.’

‘Wha… again?’

But Faust ignored him. He raised the wood demon so that they were both now eye to eye. ‘Thought you could come sneaking back, did you?’

‘Pl-placere,’ it choked, holding both of its clawed-talons up in surrender, ‘amicis…’

‘Oh? You want to be friends?’ Faust sneered, as though being friends with a demon was something as vomit-inducing as… well… being friends with a demon.

‘Ita, ita!’ the demon nodded, baring its yellow and grey teeth into, what looked like, its best attempt at a smile. But the smile was quickly wiped from its decaying face, as Faust tossed it into the air, and, with a strength unimaginable for any mortal, punted it. The wood demon let out a high-pitched ‘wee’ as it soared higher and higher into the night sky, disappearing completely from view.

‘Looks like Team Fuck-head’s blasting off again!’ Faust shouted after it. He stared into the sky as the last echoes of the demon disappeared into the night and smirked a satisfied smirk when he was convinced the demon had gone. He then proceeded to pick the leaves and twigs from his trench coat and straightened his jet-black hair.

‘What I mean is,’ Faust continued as though nothing had happened, ‘after tonight, you won’t feel shit, Jeff.’

Jeff blinked mutely at the Contractor, still dusting dirt and blades of grass from himself. ‘What did you mean,’ he asked Faust as the Contractor lit another cigarette and puffed the smoke into the air, ‘when you said I’d regret it, what did you mean?’

Faust exhaled another plume of smoke, but it was more like a long, billowing sigh than anything – another stupid mortal.

‘Let me ask you, Jeff, what is it that lets you feel love?’

‘It’s… it’s my heart.’

‘Wrong! Don’t buy into that Disney Magic bullshit.’ Faust reached into his pocket and extracted the golden orb, waving it about in Jeff’s face, ‘it’s this here. This thing: your soul. Without it, your hot Chloe may as well look like Donald Trump.’

‘That’s not true!’ Jeff insisted. Faust couldn’t help but be amused – this was the bravest, albeit stupidest, he had ever seen the human. He shook his head as he took a long drag from his cigarette. ‘I love Chloe,’ the mortal insisted, ‘no matter what she looks like!’

‘You say that now, but in a few hours, all that you’ll remember of her is –’ he blew a large plume of smoke into Jeff’s face.

Jeff coughed, waving the smoke out of his eyes. He opened his mouth to argue but, to Faust’s relief, was interrupted by a soft, girlish voice coming through the bushes behind them.

‘Jeff, honey? Oh, there you are.’

Emerging from the shadows was a face that was, even to Faust’s standards, flawless. He could see why Jeff would want to preserve the Age-Clock for this girl – she was stunning. Her slightly curled hair fell to her ample hips, accentuated by the elegant evening gown she wore. But perhaps the most striking of her appearance were her glittering hazel eyes. Even in the dark, they radiated with sensuality and smoulder, like you could fall in love just by staring at them.

As she glided across the grass next to Jeff, even Faust felt slightly flustered. He pocketed the soul and immediately dropped his cigarette, snuffing it out with his foot. Was this to be chivalrous?

‘Darling,’ she spoke in her breathy, ethereal voice, ‘the whole club is wondering where you’ve run off to. They’d like you to fill out an incident report over your little fainting spell.’

Jeff nodded. He planted a hard, passionate kiss on his new wife’s lips, all while glaring at Faust as if to prove that he and Chloe were in love. He finally peeled his lips from hers and marched off through the bushes towards the flashing lights ahead. ‘I’ll see you in ten years, Faust!’ He called through the darkness.

Faust smirked and shook his head. What a moron! Humans… always so full of hubris. Always thinking they can predict the Engines of the Damned. This, Faust had always thought, was the flaw of giving them free will – of letting them choose–

‘Sorry for interrupting your meeting with my husband, sir.’

The Contractor tilted his head and blinked mutely. He’d completely forgotten about the other stupid mortal while going on his own internal monologue about the first stupid mortal.

‘Y-yeah,’ he shrugged, trying to keep her glittering hazel eyes from affecting him, ‘whatever.’

‘It’s sometimes hard to be attached to someone like Jeff – popular boy, he is.’ She giggled girlishly.

Faust could not understand what was happening – the more he stared at Chloe, heard her speak, the hotter he felt under his collar. He could only fixate on her as she droned on about the wedding and how it was so nice seeing their friends and family. He, of course, wasn’t paying attention. He merely watched her plump, red lips move, feeling hotter and hotter by the second. Was this… infatuation? If it was, it was a strange feeling, but it also felt familiar. Like something he felt eons ago. There was just something about Chloe that he couldn’t put his finger on.

‘Anyway, listen to me rambling on about my life,’ she spoke, smiling softly at Faust and interrupting him from yet another internal monologue, ‘how have you been, Faust?’

At the sound of his name, Faust knew immediately that it was, without a shadow of a doubt, not infatuation. The strange hot feeling under his shirt quickly deciphered itself and he recognised it all too well: jet black hate.

‘Cleopatra,’ he seethed, lips curling into an ice-hot, contemptuous sneer. ‘I almost didn’t recognise you for the whore that you are.’

‘Oh, god!’ she laughed, ‘no one’s called me by that name in so long. It makes me sound so… ancient.’

‘Well, that’s what you are – a two-thousand-year-old slut who seduces poor saps into giving their lives.’

‘Two thousand, eight five, darling,’ she replied, casually staring at her perfectly polished fingernails, ‘but who’s counting?’

‘You should’ve died at thirty-nine,’ Faust growled.

‘And I technically did.’

‘Bullshit! You tricked Antony – the first of the many idiots to fall under your spell.’

‘I haven’t a clue what –’

‘Paris in Troy, Attila across the Danube,’ Faust interrupted, checking the names off his fingertips, ‘Louis-Sixteen in France. Want me to keep going? I got more.’

She yawned and stretched her arms into the air so that Faust could see the tight evening gown stretch against her feminine curves. ‘You seem awfully interested in me, Faust,’ she smirked, biting her lips flirtatiously at him, ‘I wonder if Hell’s Greatest Weapon is above even my wily charms.’

Faust, still admittedly feeling hot under his black shirt, could not help but glue his eyes to her as she rubbed her slender fingers against her neck bones and down towards her ample cleavage that seemed to glitter in the moonlight.

‘I guess not,’ she giggled, staring at his ogling red eyes.

‘How is it you’ve managed to elude my radar after all these years, Cleo?’ asked Faust, snapping out of his daze at her annoyingly girlish laugh.

‘I make it a point to stay underneath the gaze of demons, darling,’ she spoke, gliding around him, ‘with the amount of souls I broker through the Fiery Gates, I doubt your Masters would object to little old me slipping through the cracks.’

‘Pity,’ Faust spat, trying to keep his temper down and maintaining his usual, sarcastic visage, ‘you’d make a better Contractor than me.’

Her eyes sparkled at him, staring at his body up and down. ‘I would, hon, but crimson trench coats only look good in Japanese cartoons. Not on people.’

‘Doesn’t it bother you, at all, what you’re doing?’

‘Not really, no,’ she replied, seeming more interested in the curls of her long hair than the conversation, ‘and, why should it?’

‘Because it’s wrong – it upsets the natural order.’ Faust reached into his pocket and extracted the golden orb once again, shoving it into Chloe’s face. ‘Human souls are supposed to be judged not fucking traded. They’re not Pokémon cards!’

‘Aren’t they?’ She fluttered her long, curled lashes at him, ‘these men pledge themselves to me – mind, body and soul. Technically, I’m only giving away what was rightfully mine in the first place.’

‘Semantics! Your wedding vows don’t constitute a binding agreement!’

‘I know Seven Black Princes who disagree, Faust, and one Simpson’s episode. These men made their pacts with Asmodeus of their own free will.’

‘Free will? They were having their strings pulled by an ancient soul-digging whore!’

Her hazel eyes narrowed at him, but still Chloe kept her composure. She let out an impatient ‘tut’.

‘Well, I can see this conversation becoming unpleasant so I’m going to go back to my adoring friends and family, and you,’ she added, shooing her hands at him, ‘can deliver that little ball back to your masters.’

Faust growled audibly at her.

‘Down, boy, down,’ she replied, laughing at her own response. She turned her back to him so that he could, for one last moment, appreciate her sexy figure, ‘ta-ta, Faust, close your mouth while you watch me walk away or you’ll attract flies.’ She turned her head back to him and winked, ‘here’s looking at you, kid.’

Her hips swayed hypnotically as she glided back towards the crowd in the distance, and Faust, for all his power and wisdom, could only stare after her.

He was ashamed of himself. He was angry that he was ashamed of himself. And, even more so, he was ashamed that shame could possibly make him so angry. Wanting to quickly get the last word in, Faust cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at her disappearing silhouette.

‘One day you’ll regret it!’ he shouted at the woman who was once Cleopatra Philopator the Seventh, ‘maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life!’

He heard her fading laughter disappear across the green, and then, he was alone.

He could have taken solace in the fact that a human’s soul was taken back from a demon. He could have taken solace in the fact that one bargain made, is one less idiot to walk the Earth. But all he could think about was that beautiful radiant face and the bitch on top of whom it rests.

‘Fuck!’ He barked. He vented his frustrations at a nearby tree, punching it with all his might and dislodging not only leaves and bark and branches, but also something loud, scaly and heavy that fell on top of him. He opened his eyes to find he was lying on the ground, with a large, excitable wood demon scampering across his body, pawing at his pockets.

‘Oi!’ He snapped, aiming punches at its face, ‘get the fuck out of there!’

The demon, apparently too caught up in its excitement, scampered around him even harder. This was clearly not a good night for Faust, and the quiet night thundered with his voice as he struggled with the imp.

‘FUUUUCK!’

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