Visit from an old friend

The first person I noticed as I opened the door was Aly lying lazily on the couch, watching TV and eating a pack of cookies. She hadn’t noticed us yet, she was engrossed in her drama show. The second person I noticed, however, was wearing a black suit, had pale skin and had a sarcastic little smile on his face, as he was leaning against the stair's rails. It was the devil who gave me the contract.

"What the hell are you even doing here?!" I yelled at him from the entrance.

The reaction from the girls was not what I was expecting. Aly, who'd barely registered us entering yet, jumped from the couch and hid behind it, covering her head, away from both my view and the devil’s. Bianca dropped her bags and took a protective stance in front of me, scanning the room for hidden threats.

"They can't see me, silly." The devil answered, smiling. "Come on up, let's have a chat in your room." And he went up the stairs.

"What is it owner?" Bi asked me while she still looked around. She apparently didn't notice when the devil had talked to me or when he went upstairs, so I guess he was telling the truth.

"It's, hum, it’s nothing. I saw a shadow and thought it was someone. Sorry I scared you Aly."

The weakest “Uhum…” could be heard from behind the couch.

“And sorry I startled you Bi. Let me go upstairs real quick.” And with that, I went to my room to meet the devil.

***

When I got to my room, he was already laying on the bed, tossing Aly’s bundled up shirt up and down. Her shoes were actually neatly placed near the door, probably a side effect of me wishing for her to be a good guest. Which meant he took her neatly placed shirt from somewhere and was purposefully bundling it up right now.

“Way to go dude! Two women in just as many days, I absolutely underestimated you and I love it that I did.” He had a playful, but genuine smirk on his face.

I almost yelled at him, but I remembered the girls downstairs, so I quickly closed the door and, with as much control in my voice as I could muster, I exclaimed:

“What are you even doing here?!”

He got up from the bed, with a confused look.

“I said I’d be visiting soon, didn’t I? To check on how you were dealing with the wish.” His smile came back up and it was radiating just pure trickster energy, without much malice behind it, but clearly having a lot of fun at my expense. “And you seem to be doing very fine for yourself, wouldn’t you say?”

“What did you even do to these girls?” I did my best to contain my anger and keep my voice down. “You made them and the whole world believe they are just objects to be used and to satisfy?” I wasn’t a fool, I knew I was complacent in his actions, but he was the one who put them in a position of objects to be owned in the first place and I was glad to be hypocritical enough to point it out.

“You seemed to be enjoying those objects very much not until 5 minutes ago.”

I took a deep breath to calm myself. If I was going to do this, I needed a clearer head to deal with this devil.

“Look, I won’t say I didn’t know what I was doing, or that it didn’t feel good to indulge in it. But I didn’t think I’d have another chance to talk with you so soon after our deal, so this is all taking me by surprise. You can consider it like a customer that had a problem with a product he bought, didn’t go to complain because he forgot where the store was and still got the manager on his doorstep two days later anyways.”

“Already objectifying them in your speech, I see. Good. Go on.”

“What the… fuck you dude!”

“I would, but I also know you don’t like men, so…” his smirk was insufferable. But I knew this was what he wanted, so I took a deep breath to calm down yet again. This was going to take more out of me than I thought.

“What is up with all of this, anyway? I just wanted some friends and you end up taking away some girls’ free will.”

“Ohh… alright, let’s do this.” He rubbed his hands and took some deep breaths like he was preparing for a long speech. That was going to be gold, I wanted to see how he could possibly explain or justify everything he did. And then he went for it. “Let’s start at the beginning, right? What you wanted most in your heart, at the time you signed the contract, was for you to never be alone again, never to be locked in your room for weeks at a time without anyone to talk to that wasn’t through texts or through a wall. And then what did you get, huh? Girls who swear to never ever leave your side and that, and I quote, ‘will all be healthy’. You’re welcome, by the way, haven’t heard your ‘thank you’ yet.”

That made me stop and think for a second. He was right. He was also distorting my words for his own amusement and my own corruption, but he did give me people who would treat me as a dear friend, or even more, and that would never even consider leaving me.

“Is that a ‘thank you’ I hear?”

“Don’t try to bullshit me with your bullshit logic, you still made them objects to be owned for no reason! Why did you even do that for?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, you are the only one able to use and **** of them, owner.” He gave me a conspiratorial wink, as if he expected me to start abusing them any day now. “Everyone else still treats them semi-normally and with respect. Hell, you got one of them a couple days off from work, and the other one… well, if she hasn’t told you, it’s not my place to say it.” I filed that information for later and tried to not react to it. Had I done something special to Aly by taking ownership of her? “And, just to be clear, I still gave you everything you asked of me in that contract. I just put some cherries on top of your ice cream, my dude.”

He got up from the bed, carelessly threw the shirt above his shoulder without looking and continued his speech, while pacing around the room.

“But, to answer your question, those girls are yours to use and **** because I had hoped it would help in your eventual degradation into sin. And yet, what was the first thing you did when you got one of them? You go on a fucking date with her. Eating ice cream in the park. Could you stop being so wholesome? Thank the hells Alyssa decided to take matters into her own hands and give you a fucking ride afterwards. I was afraid I wouldn’t have a return on my investment after all!”

“So you really didn’t have anything to do with that? She did it all on her own?”

“Yes! Spectacular girl, isn’t she? She was one of my favorites, glad you got to meet her first.”

“What do you mean ‘your favorite’?”

“I’m talking about the screening process, of course. What, did you think I would just make any rando near you a Friend when you asked? What if you didn’t click as friends or, even worse, what if you ended up hating each other? No, no, no, I had to make sure that, whenever you would call for a Friend, any person that could appear would be totally compatible with you and that you two could become friends pretty much instantly. And to do that, and to follow the stipulations you set when you signed the contract (and to pick who would be best to corrupt you, of course), I couldn’t just rely on luck, so I had a screening process.

“I spent the entire night going around making deals and used the morning after for any deal that required preparation. In your case, I went around searching for people who fit all my parameters and marked them, so I knew who could be activated beforehand. After that, it’s pretty easy: whenever you activate the contract asking for a friend, the closest of those people is activated, and fate guides you to each other shortly after.” He boasted with a proud smile, like he had accomplished some amazing feat and was proud of himself. Instead of giving him the gratification he wanted, I just followed up with a question.

“And how many people with all those traits could you possibly find?”

“Oh, pfft. Loads, you’ll see.” He dismissed the matter like it was nothing. “And I didn’t even tell you the most important trait of them all.”

“And what could that possibly be?”

He did a big exhale, before inhaling calmly. He was preparing for yet another speech. This guy really did like to listen to his own voice.

“You’re not a demon or a devil, so you might very well not know the answer to this question, but do you know what the best way to corrupt someone is?”

“I imagine you will tell me in a second?” I answered sarcastically. It didn’t even faze him as he continued.

“It is to give them something they already want and then just see the magic happen. You said I took those girls’ free will. That is not exactly true. I put them in a situation they would have never agreed to be in, sure. But there is something you, nor anyone else, know about them: every single person on my list for you has, in their heart of hearts, the deepest desire to submit completely, for someone else to take control of them, and not just in sex, this desire runs so deep that it wants to infect every area of their entire lives. And all of them never got to make those wishes come true.”

“You expect me to believe that those people’s deepest wish is to be treated like slaves, like property?”

“Have you ever heard, by any chance, of some strange cases where someone pretends to be an actual dog? Walk around in public on all fours, has their ‘owner’ lead them around in a collar or a leash?”

“I mean, I’ve heard about them on the news once or twice, what of it?”

“Well, those people aren’t so dissimilar from the ones you’ve met, except those have come up with a very **** and unhealthy way to express their desires. These girls downstairs got to express themselves without fear of being judged at all, something that was never possible before. Be it because of societal expectations, because their job demands a lot of autonomy or authority, because people in their lives would never accept it. Whatever they were, circumstances would never have let them realize this deep wish of theirs, so I just killed two birds with one stone and did it for them. Think about it like this: I just made possible for the deepest unrealized desire of those people to be not only made true, but completely normalized by society. If anything, they should be thanking me.”

“And you expect me to just believe you?”

“No, actually, I don’t. But I’m telling you this so you can be free of guilt. You’re not forcing those girls on a life they didn’t want, you are making their deepest wishes come true.”

I couldn’t really take his word for it, but it was true that he hadn’t lied to me on other matters before. He had distorted the meaning of my words, sure, but at the end of the day, he had given me exactly what I had ordered and more, even if I didn’t agree with this “more”. I guess the only way to know more about this was to ask the girls themselves, I just had to come up with a pretense before that.

I took a big breath to calm myself after this infodump about my situation and realized I was calmer already, or at least calmer than when I entered the room. This devil was painting himself as a benevolent figure, as someone who had used his opportunity with my deal to “””help””” a bunch of people with their deepest unfulfilled desire and make it socially acceptable. If that were true, any pressure I had about taking these girls away from their lives would be mostly gone, and I would feel even freer to act in this new environment we found ourselves in. I took a seat on the bed, it felt like too much.

“Is it all true? Why would you even tell me all of that?”

“I told you, if you know everyone is doing this voluntarily and taking something they want out of this deal, you are way more likely to get into it and get corrupted a little bit as a result.” He plopped down on the bed beside me. “It’s like I told you when we met too, I don’t need a lot of corruption from you, as long as I get a little bit from everyone I made a deal with.”

“Ok, that reminds me: I gotta ask about those other wishes.” I was getting excited again, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know what other people in the same situation were like. “Did any of them fuck up reality as I knew it and you are just making me accept the new world like everyone else? Did anyone ask for a cure to the pandemic? Did you have the guts to screw this person over? Did any of them make a stupid wish that backfired at them?”

“I hate to be that guy, but you aren’t my only visit today and you are making me stay longer than expected again. Did you know that you talk a lot? Has anyone ever told you that?” he had a knowing smile as he said this.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“No, no one ever did.” He got up from the bed, with the smirk still on his face. “I’ll tell you what: let’s do this rapid fire.” And he started counting on his fingers as he moved towards the door to leave. “In no particular order: yes, a guy was stupid enough to ask for ‘a pile of money this instant’. He was crushed to **** by that pile almost instantly. He’s in hell now, the easiest soul I’ve ever collected. Don’t worry, he was a piece of shit anyway. Second, what I can say is this: you don’t see people in lockdowns anymore, right? And if I screwed them over: from what I told you, do you think I’d be that heartless with someone wishing for the greater good?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Third, if I altered reality, that matter would stay between the signer and me unless stated otherwise by them. Unrelated question, do you ever remember living in a world where gigantic cat women hunted and subjugated men sexually every day?”

“No… wait, what?”

“Great, because that definitely never happened! And fourth, don’t assume just because I shared some details about how your contract works that you know everything about it. I know you found out about the customization feature today, clever boy. On your second try, no less. There’s much more stuff to find, as well as exploits to make, so keep exploring. Encouraging your curiosity is a great way to get you deeper and more corrupted by this, so dive deep!”

That last part made me a bit icky and he could tell. He was already beside the door with his hand on the handle, so he said his parting words.

“And to leave you with a taste of ‘I want more of this’ in your mouth, here’s a little treat.” He mimed opening the door and the door opened on its own. What I saw on the other side made my jaw hit the floor.