A Deal with the Devil Ch. 00 (Prologue)

"Abuse is the means in which violence retards love."

--Inga Muscio

CHAPTER ONE: How Complex is Oedipus Complex?

Jake was kind of a normal kid with kind of a normal life. He lived in the suburbs, didn't have a lot of friends, and after COVID-19 had hit the already strained relationship he had with them was fatally put to the test. He still occasionally talked to people, but... it just wasn't the same. Due to that fact, he slowly started going outside less and less, because "there wasn't anything to do out there". Really, it was because he wanted to run and run and run away from all those people and things, and never look back. He wanted to sink in the ground and die.

He was too much of a coward to kill himself after all of the loneliness. He came close a few times, when he couldn't bear it anymore. But for Christ's sake, he had just turned 18! His life was starting anew! But then the ugly thoughts would start coming in again, about how he still didn't have a job, didn't have any sort of tangible relationship with any other human, didn't even have a girlfriend, hell, he never even touched a girl before, and all he could do to battle these thoughts were to watch YouTube or TikTok or...

Or Porn. It started off as a thing he would only occasionally do, before the pandemic had hit. Yet once that isolation kicked in and destroyed his life, well, that's when it began to become an addiction. His interests started off as relatively normal - he just scrolled and watched what was recommended to him. But when he started to realize that there was an infinite landscape, a world only defined by rule 34, he started exploring. And if he had to trace it back, that was probably where it all ended. His sanity, his chance at being something important.

He started watching porn centering on trans people. Not bad, not bad at all - maybe he just had different interests, that kind of thing didn't matter. But then it escalated. He started masturbating to porn about older women, which was strange, but still not... amoral? Was that the word? He guessed not, since the entire idea of porn was kind of amoral.

But then he went into stepmom porn. It wasn't like he was attracted to his own mom, it was just... that idea. That taboo idea, that existed only because it shouldn't.

This went on for far too long. It started off as stepmom sex, then just biological mom sex, then mom rape, then actual videos of real mothers fucking real sons. He went down that rabbit hole, and once he went down, he couldn't come back. He fucked himself silly to that kind of stuff, and it sucked. All of it sucked.

Then one day the worst of all worlds happened. His mother had gotten suspicious, he had left his computer open, his history undeleted (he had went to the bathroom to clean the cum off his underwear for what felt like the millionth time), and that's when she saw. She saw all of it. The sex, the rape, the fantasies, all of it.

She had screamed at him, in horror and disbelief. He had counterargued in total desperation that it was just because it was an easier way to look at older women, but she both didn't believe him and didn't care. She stormed out of that room, and went for a drive. Jake was left alone in that empty house.

But he didn't stop there. What was the most ironic part? A few hours later, his horniness overcame him and he looked it up again. After jerking off to some more stepmom porn, he cried after his climax. Cried and cried and cried. He texted his mom to forgive him, please to just forgive him.

He fell asleep like that. Naked, cum dripping off his now flaccid dick, his laptop still open with porn video after porn video autoplaying, grown women crying out in fake ectsasy as they faked sluttery.

His mom saw him like this, and didn't even care. She closed his bedroom door. She went to her own bedroom. She didn't shed a single tear, she just went to sleep. All she could feel towards him was hatred.

A few days later, she couldn't take it anymore and told Jake that he couldn't live there anymore. He was 18, he had been for a few months. He didn't have any money, but he could easily make some money. He wished he had a father so he could take it up with him, but alas it was just her. Just his mom.

After leaving with a backpack filled with clothes and not much else (she had smashed his laptop on the kitchen counter - bits and pieces sprayed everywhere), he tried to get a job. After an unsuccessful day, he decided he could only sleep on a park bench. But after scouring the nearest parks, after walking for miles upon miles, the only park benches were "homeless proof"; he couldn't sleep on them because of the seat-like structure, and he couldn't sleep under since there was no "under".

He slept in an alley, next to a verile and stinky garbage dumpster that night. He slept in that same alley almost every night. He grew some crazy facial hair; he eventually looked years older than he had originally. Begging for money didn't do him wonders - he gained, maybe if he was lucky, about eight dollars per day.

He didn't have the motivation to save up, so he spent the money on food and cheap things. His life was an empty shell, an emptier shell than it had ever been. If he was a more motivated man, this would've been his redemption story. Instead, it was just his further downfall.

Eventually, his mother found him months later and tried to forgive him. But he felt so much shame that he ran off; the authorities couldn't do anything, he was his own person.

A year and a half later, he went into the forest never to be found again. There were no legends, there were no myths, because nobody cared.

CHAPTER TWO: Have You Heard the Legend of Faustus?

Jake looked up into the trees, the shadowy night making it very hard to see far into the forest at the edge of the highway. He itched his long beard. It was getting itchier nowadays. He didn't know why. He hated it.

With a deep sigh, he dropped his backpack behind him and walked into the forest with nothing but the clothes on his back. The cars on the highway didn't take notice.

He walked a long ways like that. It was dark, so so dark. And so so cold. But he liked it that way. He was sick and tired about humanity's bullshit, and his own bullshit, that he just wanted that. Just that. The darkness and the cold.

"The darkness and the cold? Is that all?", an inquisitive voice asked from behind him.

Jake whirled around, confused and scared. "What the hell?! Who's there?"

There was a snicker from the darkness, then nothing. His eyes were adjusted by now, but he still couldn't see whoever had just said that. Finally, after what felt like ages, he saw a person just standing about fifty yards away from him. Had they ran that far away? Or was he finally starting to lose it?

"The only thing you're starting to lose is your chance at living, my friend", that mysterious voice practically snarled from behind him. He whirled around, yet there was no figure besides the one that peered at him from so far away. "But I can fix that."

Suddenly, his panic was gone. Just like that.

"Because you don't care", it whispered. "Because you just realized you have absolutely nothing to live for."

He looked at that faraway shadow, saw its stillness. "What are you? Because you're not a 'who', you're a 'what'. Aren't you?"

It was silent for a couple seconds. Then, it seemed to consider. "That depends on your definition of those words. Personally, my own native language is Latin. Everything else is just secondary. So words like 'what' and 'who' just don't mean much to me."

Jake looked at it. It still hadn't answered his question. "So. What... or who... are you?"

Again, the inquisitive silence. Then, it answered. Almost like it was heavily calculating.

"Have you ever heard the legend of Faustus?" It inquired.

He shook his head.

It seemed to have caught the movement. "Faustus, when he dull and depressed, was chased by a tiny poodle after an unsuccessful attempt from his friend at trying to cheer him up."

Jake sat down on the foliage. "At least he had friends."

The thing tittered. "Yes, yes. But that poodle was none other than Mephistopheles, hell-bent on devouring his soul after a deal-gone-wrong with his Creator."

"Satan?", Jake mumbled.

"God." The thing responded.

Jake seemed to be quiet and inquisitive this time. He responded after calculating his own response, "Which one are you?"

"Both." It said. "Neither. Whichever one you want me to be!"

The shadow moved maniacally, dancing in a strange elf-like way. Raising its legs above its head, whirling its arms around wildly. Cackling insanely.

"So what do you want from me?", he yelled over.

It stopped in its tracks. "See, I fucked up. On my way over here, I put some paprika in Poseidon's scrambled eggs, and since he is allergic to none other than that, he laughed and cried and DIED!" His accent was transforming into a slightly German accent. "As me, as Faustus, I ran off and went wailing off into the darkness. I am Mephistopheles. I am the God of this realm. And I am... NOT... allergic to ze paprika!!" It paused for a moment, then made a wild cowboy HYUCK-HYUCK!!

It started dancing wildly again, humming its own circus-y tune. Finally, it stopped.

"But as for you? You have a task. You, my friend, will be... will be-" It paused. "Will be my MURPHY'S LAW!! You will bring chaos onto this world that screwed you up so phenomenally" - now it was a dark and subtle British - "and may death come to those who spite you and even darker things to those who don't."

It stopped for a moment. Then, it galloped towards Jake until they were face-to-face. It was... sort of human. Its flesh shifted like water, but made the vague frame of humanity. It had six horns jutting out from its skull, and its torso was covered with dark eyeballs. Its legs were goat legs, covered with mangy fur. Between its legs was a large, tentacle-like penis and a gaping vagina.

"I vill givez you my pooosssyy book", it said in an overexagerrated Transylvanian accent, and reached its clawed hand into its vagina. As it did, wet white cum started dripping out and onto the ground. Where it splattered, the foliage instantly shriveled up and died.

After a moment of rummaging around in there, moaning in pain and pleasure, its arm now elbow-deep into itself, it pulled its arm back out - now with an ancient, leatherbound book.

It now spoke in his mother's voice. "Give the first few words a try, and see what happens."

He now had the cum-covered book in his hands. On the cover, surrounded by strange and vaguely frightening symbols, were the words, "THE LITURGY OF EOS". With an ounce of hesitation and dread, he opened the book. On the front page were a string of Latin words.

The creature looked right into his face, with its water-like face shifting confusingly. "Well, what are you waiting for?", it now spoke in his own voice.

He looked at the words. He took a deep breath, and decided why the fuck not. It's not like he had anything else to worry about.

"Sit mentula accipere... potestatem." He still looked down at the book. He didn't like looking in its face.

After a moments silence, it spoke again, this time in a bad impression of Yoda. "Bad mistake... you just made." Then, it just cackled.

It bewilderment and dread, he looked up at it. "What-"

But he didn't finish his sentence, since it was nowhere to be seen anymore. He looked around - no menacing silhouette, and he hadn't even noticed but there was noise in the forest again. The birds and the insects must've been quiet during his little deal with the Devil, he just hadn't noticed.

But what exactly had been the deal? As far as he knew, the creature just gave him a weird book and disappeared after... taunting him?

He decided, after a deep breath, that he would let the book rot on the ground on this particular patch of grass. After all of that weirdness, and dread, he just... still didn't care.

His action would affect the world, he just didn't know it. But honestly, I don't even know if he would care.