The Devil clapped his hands together, the sound louder than a gunshot in the still night as a grin sprung up on his mouth, bathed in red light. His teeth weren’t sharp, but long and narrow.
“Shall we make a deal?” he asked.
The wind became a gale and slammed into me from all sides, both holding me in place and tossing about at the same time as the corn stalks shrieked and bent down, kneeling towards the Devil.
It felt ecstatic. All around the world had gone mad, the wind kept picking up till it felt like my guitar would be ripped off my back. I couldn’t breathe, I could barely see, and I loved it. The wind curved under my arms, lifting me to my toes. My spine stretched like dough until every kink snapped out of existence, the pinch in my side vanishing as warmth flooded my nerves. I felt like a corpse come back to life, like all I had lived through had been a lie, dulled and muted and bleached, and only now I felt what living truly could be. My fingers moved, free and loose, and I contorted them into impossible chords on imaginary frets. The blood on my tongue disappeared. The bile hovering in my chest had become a full breath of air, my throat ready to burst out in song.
Something felt wrong, but I couldn’t remember what. My jaw seized, but the pain was distant. I had little fight to give as my mouth was coaxed open, my tongue pulled out inch by inch to hover on the edge of my lips.
And Old Scratch just laughed, his long fingers reaching up and turning the moon like a dial, increasing the shine until a spotlight circled around me.
“There we are,” he said with a grin, sunglasses flashing like extra moons rising on the horizon. “You feel it already, don’t you? What so many of your trudging, strumming, cover-song humming counterparts will never feel. I should be charging you for a taste this strong, but hey, no one can say I’m not generous.” He pulled a hand through the wind and a curtain of brilliant colors split from his skin, following in a jetstream trail of beauty that shriveled to gray as the gale whipped it away.
“Life, my friend,” said the Devil, tossing his hands in the air and letting the colors fall like streamers, the bands twisting around as they caught on the corn stalks and flew off into the night. “I give you the gift of a life worth living, and all it takes is tuning a few strings on my part, and the sale of your soul from your hand.” He dropped close, raising a single finger that swung from side to side as my eyes followed it.
“Can you feel your soul right now? Is it in your fingers, your eyes, your skin that feels the touch of this wind? Can you honestly tell me you’d even know it was gone? It’s a steal, don’t you see? I don’t just make men masters of their instrument. I set them on the path to eternal earthly glory, and I don’t charge so much as an extra dime for it! How is that cruel? How is that cheating a man?”
He began to pace around in a circle, and the wind pulled at my shoulder and spun me around, following his stride.
“How far do you think you can make it now? Hmm? You’ve got a nice little tour going on, hopping between bar and pub and playing for whatever slot another gig abandoned that night, all for some great gathering in Memphis where you’ll be a face in the crowd, another brick in the wall, a mere drop in a boundless sea!”
He grew taller as he walked, and I felt myself rising with him. I glanced down and watched the ground, ten feet below my shoes. The Devil didn’t float like me though. His legs had stretched twice as high as the corn, and my throat went dry as I saw he didn’t have any feet. His shins went straight into the muck, moving and rising like a deadhead log in rough water as he continued to pace.
“Don’t you do this because you want to be above the rest?” he said with a laugh, and a gloved hand landed on my shoulder. “Shock and awe them? This is the land of the masters, masters of the instrument on your back, and your already-aching back will never stand beneath the weight of their knowledge, no matter how tall you grow.”
He let go of me and pulled his hand to his chest, fingers curling into an imaginary grip on a six-string’s neck, playing invisible chords in the air.
“Give me that guitar. I’ll tune it, and when you play, it’ll be like playing with an extra set of hands and all the time in the world to get to the right chord. You’ll never be out of tune, never miss a beat.”
Those glasses flashed again, now reflecting stadium spotlights and a million lighters lifting into the air.
“Can’t you imagine it? Perfection. The kind of thing money can only buy a view of, yours to hold.”
The string on my tongue started to pull again, and I realized that it wasn’t a guitar neck the Devil was holding: it was a long puppeteer thread that led all the way into my mouth. He curled his fingers, and I felt words rise up from my lungs.
With all my strength I clamped my mouth shut a second time and shook my head. His grin faltered for a moment, a flickering red light growing behind his sunglasses before fading. We sank to the ground. I landed hard and dropped down to my knees.
“I can see you’re scared,” Old Scratch said, smile returning. “Of course, that’s perfectly natural. You’ve heard the stories of my past deals, been scared so bad you couldn’t sleep, thinking of me dragging poor souls down to damnation, leaving their corpses to sit mid-way through counting their gold.”
He stopped. The wind went still, and everything hung in the air as he reached up and fully grabbed the moon, pulling the glowing orb down and holding it out in his hand, a tiny marble in his palm.
“But history’s a liar, don’t you know?” he said, rolling the marble around the grooves of his glove. “The past loves a good lie, and nobody’s past lies better than that of a musician’s. Plenty of people I’ve sponsored have lived long, long lives. Punk bands who made the deal signed lucrative deals, joining producers and getting set for life. I brought bands together that never would have met otherwise and gave them all a life worth remembering!”
He closed his hand, crushing the moon and plunging us both into complete darkness. A glow appeared, two red eclipses in the dark. His eyes were flickering again, shining out from behind the edges of his sunglasses. The string tugged much harder this time, making me retch. I couldn’t help myself anymore. My back and fingers full of music believed every word he had said to me, and a single word of my own spilled up into my mouth as the red glow spilled down the Devil’s cheeks, washing across the ground and over me in another harsh spotlight.
My head rolled, and as my eyes unfocused, a glint of silver made me blink. The faint thrum of a hand running down guitar strings pushed into my ears, and the world went silent save for the low notes. The cacophony of the Devil had been deafeningly loud, but I hadn’t even noticed the noise until it stopped.
My sight refocused, and I saw everything around me moving at a quarter pace. The towers of corn bent and snapped their stalks, bowing down in circular waves as their threaded tips of silk clawed the air, trying desperately to reach the neon glow that shone out from Old Scratch’s eyes. Still bathed in red, I watched his finger curl again and again, winding the string on my tongue tighter and tighter. He almost had my answer, and I almost had his promise.
The promise of the Devil.
My lip curled. Shifting upright, I swayed on my knees for a moment until my hand caught the edge of my guitar case. I pulled it in front of me. My eyes still locked on the Devil and his slow, reeling finger, I unlatched the lock and lifted the cover. His smile went so wide it looked like a full piano of white teeth were stuck in his jaw. I reached for the neck and took as deep of a breath as I could through my nose, holding my mouth still.
My hand slid under the smooth wood of my guitar, and my fingers found the leather latch of the accessory box, where I kept my tuner, fret clamp, spare picks… and spare guitar wires. I opened the small, plush-lined door. Grabbing the thickest wire I had, I pulled out the length of the metal thread and wrapped it taut around both of my hands. And before the Devil’s grin could falter into confusion, I made a loop in the cord, twisted it, lifted it onto my scalp and under my jaw, and pulled both ends tight.
The wire screeched, rubbing against itself as it clamped my mouth shut hard. A line of blood appeared on the underside of my chin as I forced the wire tighter around me. Still I smiled through the pain when I saw the Devil’s finger jump as the thread on my tongue was severed.