The Long Con (Patreon)

I'm always looking for interesting ways of starting a transformation. While thinking about genies tricking the one making wishes, probably after having read some story of that sort, and demons granting a wish in exchange for a soul, I begun thinking of what the reverse would look like. I quickly realized that the standard demon trade, something you want for something it wants, is exactly the same in reverse, but perhaps that could be made into fooling someone. Then the main plot for the story quickly shook out. Sign a contract where you are subject to the whims of the demon for years.

The first draft kind of ended there, with no actual changes happening, so I injected the start of a transformation only to indicate that this wasn't some kind of "I might call upon you at any time to demand your assistance" but more like "you are no longer in control of anything, not even what you look like". 

I showed the draft to someone who remarked that this could easily be a story to add chapters to. The various tasks and transformations throughout those 500 years. While I don't really have a plan, I don't know what the demon could want from they guy that it couldn't do itself, I decided to scrub the text a bit from too modern concepts and words. The first Islay distillery was Bowmore in 1779, so it puts a start date that is reasonable, so I could keep things like apartment and pen. It actally also changes the word "cosmic" to an older definition "of this world" that fits even better.

Given the small thing about the eyes of the demon I long considered using a photo without any face. The first text only talked about amber eyes that you couldn't really tell if they were glowing or not. With the final photo I changed the text to also make the color hard to pinpoint as well.