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Incubus
18 years ago
General
I bought the soul of a man last night. It was a moment of desperation. But what he was desperate for was not a matter of life or death. It was not to save a loved one, or recover his own character... it was his hunger for vice that compelled him.
My charity had been drawn to its limit... sixty dollars was what he begged for. Sixty dollars to do this just 'one more time'. Sixty dollars, for one more chance. He offered everything he had. He offered everything he didn't have. And then when he pressed the issue of agreement... I looked him in the eye, and I knew within before I knew without what I was about to say.
I told him that this was his last chance. His final opportunity to escape. That he'd been in this place for far too long, and with this act he would be failing himself, his family, his friends, and anyone who ever remotely, genuinely, cared about him. I told him it would be his soul that would be traded. I told him, Acknowledge.
Repeat.
Shake.
I now own the soul of a man for sixty dollars. Surely the transaction was symbolic, but I think he knows, as a god-fearing man, what he's done even in his own mind. He is now awake and aware of what his vice has done to him; it has compelled him to sell his own soul. And I know that if I did not get it...
...something else would have.
This is what is convincing me day in and day out that I am an incubus of some kind, or that there is a genetic or mystical presence of it within my bloodline. I was suspicious when I found myself siphoning benefit from the emotional discharge of others... but I BOUGHT HIS SOUL.
I'm giving it back--when he proves he can manage it himself (and that he won't just sell it to something else)--but the fact remains that I BOUGHT HIS SOUL.
This new day dawned with a terrible light, the fact that he is now indebted to me. He's washing the dishes. He's doing the laundry. He's fixing the car. And he knows that the only end in sight is the clean BREAK off from every addiction he has known. Except maybe WoW. We all have our limits.
He will not see the so-called "friends" who would have sold him crack for money he didn't have ever again. I may even make him quit smoking... But it's no mystical, spiritual, or physical harm that hangs over his head; The reinforcement is this: He knows he sold his soul. I didn't even give it to him in fine print. He KNOWS that he made the single most horrifyingly profound pact he could have ever been exposed to, and if he breaks it, it will prove that there is nothing left of his humanity. Would he be an Oathbreaker? Would he destroy the last shreds of his dignity, his sanity, the WORTH of his very ESSENCE?
HE KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF HE BREAKS HIS OATH.
He knows that to do so would place his soul into the hands of others, others far, far less patient and forgiving than me.
My charity had been drawn to its limit... sixty dollars was what he begged for. Sixty dollars to do this just 'one more time'. Sixty dollars, for one more chance. He offered everything he had. He offered everything he didn't have. And then when he pressed the issue of agreement... I looked him in the eye, and I knew within before I knew without what I was about to say.
I told him that this was his last chance. His final opportunity to escape. That he'd been in this place for far too long, and with this act he would be failing himself, his family, his friends, and anyone who ever remotely, genuinely, cared about him. I told him it would be his soul that would be traded. I told him, Acknowledge.
Repeat.
Shake.
I now own the soul of a man for sixty dollars. Surely the transaction was symbolic, but I think he knows, as a god-fearing man, what he's done even in his own mind. He is now awake and aware of what his vice has done to him; it has compelled him to sell his own soul. And I know that if I did not get it...
...something else would have.
This is what is convincing me day in and day out that I am an incubus of some kind, or that there is a genetic or mystical presence of it within my bloodline. I was suspicious when I found myself siphoning benefit from the emotional discharge of others... but I BOUGHT HIS SOUL.
I'm giving it back--when he proves he can manage it himself (and that he won't just sell it to something else)--but the fact remains that I BOUGHT HIS SOUL.
This new day dawned with a terrible light, the fact that he is now indebted to me. He's washing the dishes. He's doing the laundry. He's fixing the car. And he knows that the only end in sight is the clean BREAK off from every addiction he has known. Except maybe WoW. We all have our limits.
He will not see the so-called "friends" who would have sold him crack for money he didn't have ever again. I may even make him quit smoking... But it's no mystical, spiritual, or physical harm that hangs over his head; The reinforcement is this: He knows he sold his soul. I didn't even give it to him in fine print. He KNOWS that he made the single most horrifyingly profound pact he could have ever been exposed to, and if he breaks it, it will prove that there is nothing left of his humanity. Would he be an Oathbreaker? Would he destroy the last shreds of his dignity, his sanity, the WORTH of his very ESSENCE?
HE KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF HE BREAKS HIS OATH.
He knows that to do so would place his soul into the hands of others, others far, far less patient and forgiving than me.
Sometimes I wonder the limit, the testing of the human soul.
What one would do for an addiction, a habbit, a what have you.
Will a human catch the hint, clean up the act for good. Or, for just a little while.
Will they say 'fuck it' because they've already done themselves in, and believe it can't get any worse?
Will their habbits renew into something else?
What would happen, like you say, if this confused human was in the hands of someone else?
Sometimes one person can make all the diffrence.
Sometimes, that one person is the person themselves.
I know I can trust you because you care about me. I'll never NOT appreciate that.
Personally, I would have tied his ass securely to a heavy piece of furniture and made him sweat it out, reminding him that if he really wants to give it up, it will start now, I would stand by him all the way unless he went back on it, and I wouldn't be taking "tomorrow" as an answer. If you mean to do something, you do it in the now, not the future--what if he had that last fix and overdosed/got a bad batch/ had heart failure/ died? There's no future in which to clean himself up! And THAT I would have also reminded him of as he sweat it out all night.
I also have serious issues with accepting someone's soul, I am not the Devil nor (for all my joking) a goddess. I find that a severely presumptuous move. But that's me, and like I said, we differ on the semantics of it all.
I know. That's what I told him. I told him that he had an opportunity to escape RIGHT NOW. He had a chance to get out and get away and never look back. RIGHT NOW could have been the turning point. He begged, and pleaded, and whined, and that's what I told him. "Just one more time will NEVER WORK. Because when you will start tomorrow, tomorrow never comes. You know it. I know you know it.", of course I'm paraphrasing, I don't know what my actual terms were... But his act of completing the statement with "I swear" was the moment where the option arose about his immortal soul.
K-san... I don't think it was really even the act of me accepting it that was the pivot in this system; it was the fact that he was willing to give it up in the first place. As I said... I don't think I really -have- his soul. but the fact remains, that in the symbolic bargain, he knows that he made a conscious decision that he WOULD have forfeited it... and in his mind, he believes he did.
Honestly... I think I'd rather have it than a real devil. Or at least a devil that didn't care about him, or a devil that didn't WANT him to succeed... if he sold it to someTHING else, that something would have a greater interest in him losing whatever he was striving to gain in the transaction. IT would have a vested interest in his failure and misery, so that it could keep the soul. I don't even want it. I just want him to learn how to be responsible with it.
I can't, and won't, go around accepting souls for favors. but in the end... it was his deal after all. He didn't have to. I gave him every option to back out...
..hah... I really am starting to sound like it, aren't I.