A Devilish Solution - Chapter 3 (Patreon)

The demon Mack smelled of crisp wood and burning autumn after he stepped out of the rip in space. Brenna dared to think that it could be harnessed into scent for a Yankee Candle. It wasn’t unpleasant but it was also striking and alerted her olfactory nerves. He spoke in slow, enunciated words, speaking in a drawl that was not quite Southern but not quite Northeastern American. Something old. An Old English accent perhaps? How old was he?

The most surprising thing she found about Mack was how casually human he was and acted, both in words and in mannerisms. From the moment he introduced himself after stepping out of the portal, he walked around Mason Hall admiring how long the building had been kept up since he last was there.

“When was the last time you were here?” she asked.

Mack didn’t answer. He had his back turned to her, caressing the stone wall with a finger and muttering something to himself. He spent maybe ten whole minutes pacing the hall, gazing up at the walls and the tapestries and touching the furniture lightly. He seemed to be passing through memories, wondering where things were placed since he last saw them.

Brenna crossed her arms and sighed loudly, hoping he would get the message. She surprised herself by how quickly she had become accustomed to the fact that she was talking to a demon. After all, she was a scientist, and she took whatever new information with caution and scrutiny. She never did drugs but it was entirely possible she had gone to a party, someone slipped something in her drink, and was now hallucinating.

Mack turned around. “Right. So.” He grinned ear-to-ear. “Let’s get down to business.”

Brenna shuddered; his finely sharp teeth bared like daggers, and he looked ready to eat.

Mack was broad shouldered but not necessarily scary. The only scary thing about him were probably those teeth. His sunglasses hid an extra ounce of lasciviousness in his tone, like he was ready to grab her and take hold of her. She curled her fingers into a fist.

“What do you want from me?” he asked.

“I-I want…” Brenna stopped to clear her throat and speak with more confidence. “I need help with my thesis.”

He picked a leather chair to lean on.

“All right…”

“And I’m ready to sell my soul,” she said.

Mack chuckled in his throat.

Brenna looked up at him. “What?”

“You don’t need to do that,” he said.

“I don’t? Isn’t that...what we all have to do in order to make a deal with the devil?”

“Didn’t you read the full terms of agreement?”

“Yes,” Brenna insisted, followed by a long blank stare.

Mack sighed. “That thing was written in Middle English. Some words mean different things by now. It told you that I was the most depraved demon ever, right?”

“Yes.”

“Mhm. Many demons take different things away in exchange for what the human wants. I have...certain interests that are not fulfilled down below.”

Brenna raised a brow. She didn’t expect a demon of all things to be neurotic and unfulfilled. When Mack noticed her expression he grumbled something incoherent, and then said stately, “You will give up your dignity in exchange for your wish.”

Brenna didn’t know what that meant at first. Then she stepped back. “My dignity?”

“Willingly. Of course. It won’t be a deal otherwise.”

Brenna gulped. She instinctively clutched the buttons on her chest and looked away. She could feel herself blushing, and that made her blush even harder. She needed a moment to remember the last time she had sex; it was that long ago. Ah! Liam. Back in prom. High school prom. She wasn’t one to dive deep into relationships ever since college. Her life became a strict path towards making a name for herself, lest her parents and family get fed up with her, lest she’d be stuck in a shitty apartment with a shittier roommate.

She then remembered how she had to gorge on three bowls of black bean soup in order to conjure up this demon, and then it hit her.

“You don’t just mean sex, do you? You mean to ridicule me?”

Mack dug a fingernail into the chair he leaned against. “In a manner of speaking...yes. In certain ways.”

“What ways? Why don’t you just tell me exactly what it is you want?” she said, rather loudly and harsh. She hated it when people beat around the bush. The sudden outburst seemed to take Mack aback, and then he gave an impressed grin.

“I will make you eat and drink beyond your capacity. You will be so gassy that you won’t be able to hold it in, oftentimes belching or farting in front of others. You will revel in booze and drugs with your colleagues.” He took a step closer, making her step back. That smell again – crisp wood. She actually liked it, but shook her thoughts away fearing he might pull something. “And yes…” he added, grinning ear-to-ear again, “there will be sex.”

The storm outside had abated, somewhat, though there was still a patter of rain.

Mack stepped back.

“And...that’s it really.” He sat down at the edge of the chair, smirking.

She pursed her lips before speaking.

“So let me get this straight…I don’t have to sell my soul?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“I just want to be absolutely clear. I was ready to do that getting into this but now that it seems like I don’t have to I want to be sure about that and not be surprised when you pull some shit under the rug.”

“Heh. I know you’ve probably never made deals with demons before, but a deal is a deal and what’s written is bound by Satanic law. I can’t go back on it.”

“And…all I have to do is eat, drink…” Brenna winced saying the rest. It sounded ridiculous to say out loud. “…fart, burp…have sex...and get drunk?”

“And stoned,” Mack added. He chuckled deeply, revealing his wide array of sharp teeth.

Brenna grimaced. That was, funny enough, the most uncomfortable thing on the list for her. She had never been high before. She hated the smell of weed. Nowadays the shit was legal. When she was an undergrad, she caught whiffs of it here and there, but now, years later as a grad student, she smelled it everywhere. There wasn’t a single college student who hadn’t smoked weed. She never understood how people dealt with it.

After sighing heavily, she said, “I suppose there are worse things…”

“Oh yes,” Mack said gravely, “believe me when I say this is nothing.”

He had said it so straight that Brenna instinctively shivered. She was just proven that Hell existed. That meant an objective view of morality existed. Objective punishment. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure if this was a good idea. Would she be condemned just to make a strange deal with a demon?

As if he read her mind, he said, “I’m one of the lesser demons, just so you know. I’m not as powerful or deadly as some of my superiors. Making deals with them is a guaranteed path to eternal damnation. With me, however…” He shrugged. “A few months in purgatory?”

“How will you be able to help my thesis? Is it some magic? Will I be lying?”

“No,” he said sharply. This appeared to be something he was firm about. “I’m not a demon who deals in lies. Lies are not my forte. No, I’m all about truth. Most demons are, actually.”

“Truth?” She found that hard to believe. “How is there truth in what you do?”

He smiled even wider than before. In a flash, he was in front of her. Brenna nearly cried out. The stench of burning was overwhelming. She was too afraid to move or say anything. He hissed like some exotic wild animal and sniffed her all around. Smoke lingered as he paced around her. “There is truth in lust. Everyone who has ever lived, and who will ever live, has denied their deepest desires. I will reach in and wrench them out from you.”

Brenna held her breath. “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”

Mack seemed genuinely hurt by the assumption. His eyebrows went up. “No, no! Of course not!” He narrowed his eyes again with deviousness. “But you may find yourself admitting things that you would never admit even in your own head. What is lust but suppressed truth? Drunk words are sober thoughts, as they say.”

She moved her shoulders, as if he were a fly she was trying to shrug off. “So…that didn’t exactly answer my question. How are you going to help me pass my thesis? I have an experiment that’s failing in the lab. My cells are dying. I don’t know what to do. Will you tell me the answers? Or is it all some esoteric bullshit?”

Mack opened a hand. Smoke hung in the air above it and took shape. Brenna recognized shapes of molecules, hints of equations, and ancient drawings of human anatomy. “I will tell you the answers and more. I will guide you to the truth.” He closed his fist and the misty visages disappeared.

“But what does that mean? What truth? That my thesis is wrong?”

“If I told you now then that would defeat the purpose of making a deal, wouldn’t it? Tsk, tsk. Can’t do that now, can I? You do something for me, and I do something for you.”

“But until when? How long do I have to be your...slave?”

Mack grimaced at the word. “Oh please. Don’t use that word. I prefer...subordinate. And that will be up to me. I will decide when to stop and finally give you the knowledge you seek.”

“Well, it better be before the year ends. School year, I mean. That’s when my thesis is due. I have to defend it in May. That’s about three and a half months away.”

“Like a true student, leaving things until the last minute.”

Brenna stamped her foot. “I’m serious!”

There seemed more he wanted to joke about, but he bit his tongue. He must have been one of those devil-may-care types. Oh. Funny. “Devil-may-care”. Brenna had to think of another word to describe him. She couldn’t at the moment, but he came off as one of those typical roguish men who never took anything seriously. He looked perfectly innocent crossing his legs on the chair and sitting back with that dumb grin on his face. He knew she was weighing the odds in her head. He hummed a makeshift tune lightly, taking pleasure in seeing her ponder this over.

Dr. Dunn, Brenna’s advisor, had told her that she wasn’t fit to be a scientist. And that was back when she was an undergrad, when her major was “just biology” according to him. He joked in front of the entire molecular biology class back in junior year that Brenna was only studying “just biology”, nothing more. Darla was studying to be a general practitioner. Dan a pulmonologist. Kristen a brain surgeon. Those were his favorite students, so favorite that he even put a serious question on a test about what was Darla’s favorite TV show. Five points on the exam.

That pissed her off.

Dr. Dunn’s aggressive nature did push her to pursue something more specific – neuroscience. The search for a cure to Alzheimer’s. That was something profound and noble, wasn’t it?

“Everyone and their mother are looking to cure Alzheimer’s,” Dr. Dunn said, in a droning voice. “Get in line.”

Now as a grad student, Brenna was stuck with him too. He carried on that air of self-importance, of quick judgment. Brenna was on a roll with her cell line, trying to make the neurons retain their connections as long as possible. When they started dying out, it happened to be just when Dr. Dunn was checking in on her progress. He looked up from the microscope and said, “I’m not sure you’re fit for this. You spent so much time on this already only for THIS to happen.”

Brenna clenched her fists.

 There were other people in the lab too when he said that. All eyes had glanced at her. She had never been more humiliated in her entire life. Now she was going to be humiliated even more?

She weighed that humiliation against the prospect of actually succeeding in grad school.

She stared at the demon, wondering what his eyes looked like underneath those shades.

 “I’ll do it. I’ll make the deal.”