A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

When someone wants to have something almost impossible, or really impossible but highly desirable, he or she may choose to deal with a powerful entity. God, saints and other benevolent deities might be the choice, but there’s a low record of success in those demands. Evil creatures are maybe more prone to fulfill some ardent desires, at a usually high cost, it must be said. He wanted no fortune, no gold or a harem full of beautiful women, just to be a writer was his goal. Well, to be a writer does not seem to be that difficult, let alone imposssible. World is full of them, good and bad ones. So, what is it that drive him to a deal with supernatural forces instead of doing what every writer to be does. Send manuscripts to editors and good friends.
He knows it all, but figuring out the probabilites, he dreamed a magical entry in the world of literature. Otherwise he feels bored and inept to the task of searching someone to publish his writings. More disturbing: he has nothing he deems as a book to be shown to a publisher, so he has first to be inspired to produce it. To pass through a special and unique drama and then write it down is a way to bear a book.
In general, these are not good experiences, and it’s common that a death threat and suffering is involved. Joyful and happy stories are not the more impressive, hardship and possible death is always more luring. He is ready to give up his comfort and even his life to make a good book, but he does not know where or how to begin with. Although he is sure he wants to do it, he is not crazy in starting something preposterous and useless. He needs some light from the otherworld.
In a spiritual session a shaman makes him some enchantments to open his mind and permit a contact with the entity. By the medium mouth, spoken in a twisted way, he hears the word fever.
Afterwards he is dizzy and not sure he got what he wanted. He went out and entered some bushes near the building, there he wandered with no aim, trying to make sense the words listened. At that very moment he didn’t know but the word fever is setting up his task.
He has got a flavivirus in a mosquito bite. The place he is in harbours the yellow fever virus in its monkeys and he got the injection of a deadly disease in his veins. Not aware of what is going on, he is now feeling better after breathing the fresh and fragrant air amid the trees.
Back home, he is still lost in his thoughts about the spiritual session and unwilling to do a move, just wait for a signal. Moreover, his body is somehow flatten, lazy, and his mind incapable of to much thinking. Few days later he is already in a hospital, his entrails burning and his head as sensible as a exposed nerve. He came in walking but few hours later he is not able to stand up and his life is wearing out in rapid pace.
They tried ribavirin besides giving him high doses of antipyretic drugs. Afterwards, the respiratory assistance and hemodialysis. Now he is attached to life by these wires, if it fail he dies. His mind, meanwhile, is far from that room. In one of hell’s circles he is dealing with the devil. And the prince of darkness is surprised to hear someone asking not for gold, power and fortune, but just to be given the chance to be a writer. There is some difficulties in that point because the doing of good is not the expertise of demons. Just to be honest, the devil argues that he cannot promise to much. Imagine that you write and publish a book and no one likes it. Of course he was thinking in a successful book and the devil has the power to mingle in people’s mind and make them like it. Otherwise where are the devil’s power if he cannot change people’s will. Ultimately they reach an agreement and the price is the writer’s soul, as usual.
When he wakeup and realized he was still alive, all parts of his body where in pain. To be dead would be better than to pass through the ordeal he had to. Nonetheless, he was still alive and the dream was emerging from his confused head. He got better rather quickly and start writing down all the story about the days he passed in the hospital.
He have never experienced that fulfillment. His fingers typed as commanded by another mind, he felt like psychographing what a superior spirit dictates. As he ended writing he was interviewed as a yellowfever survivor, amid a public unrest caused by a unexpected outbreak of that for long time controlled disease. From then on things happened the way he whished and he was living his best days.
But he didn’t know that the virus attack has had sequels and his liver is to be nonfunctional in a while. All of a sudden he is dying in a hospital bed and, he knows, the devil is waiting for his fresh soul in the back exit or the morgue.