Better Life

Better Life

By Matthew Sager

I was unemployed for a few years when my life radically changed. My name is Jessie Meyer and everything in this story is true.

It started the day after a long night of drinking with friends. Sitting at the bar of the local pub it was way past happy hour and I was chatting up a sexy blonde who even I knew was out of my league. I was dead drunk when the girl, I can’t even remember her name asked me for my phone. I see her there often but never have the nerve to talk to her. She handed it back in two seconds. I thought it was weird and hoped she had put her phone number in my contacts list. She then said she had to use the rest room and would be right back. I didn’t see her again that night. I had a few more drinks and headed home.

I woke up to a pounding headache the next day in my one room bachelor apartment and was unfortunately alone. I looked in the contacts and no one new was there. Now depressed and severely hungover I started my day with watching sitcoms and emailing resumes to job offers I seen posted on Craigs list.

The hours go by, I decide to crack a beer and check my Facebook and twitter accounts same old stuff just a different day. Flipping through my I phone XR I notice a new app on my screen. The new app was called the little black book. I think to myself the girl added an app? Curious I click on the app. On the screen a message shows up. In bold red letters with a Pentagram in the background comes up

“WELCOME TO YOUR BETTER LIFE “, in small black letters it reads go no further if you value your soul. I don’t exactly believe I had a soul so I go further. Icons appear one by one, they read CASH, CAR, HOUSE, and WOMEN. I click on cash waiting to see when they will ask for a credit card number as the headache dissipates. More pictures appear, there is three sacks of money Icons with $1000, $10,000 and $20,000 scrawled on each sack. I click the $20,000. I take a sip of beer and wait to see what happens next. As I watch the screen goes black, then behind me I hear pounding on the door. Then nothing. I get up and walk to the door scanning the room for my phone charger wondering how my phone went from a ninety percent charge to dead. I open the door no one is there, I call down the empty hallway, ‘Hello” nothing, not even footsteps on the stairs down the hall. Then to the right of the door I see it. A sack just like the one on the app. A little freaked out I pick it up, the buzz I got from the beer is gone.

I bring the bag inside and I dump the contents onto the coffee table. I counted it once, I count it again. Both time it adds up to exactly $20,000 in twenties, fifties and hundred-dollar bills. I look at my phone and then pick it up. Two words appear on the screen. You’re welcome, it reads with the red pentagram in the background as the message slowly fades to black. I hide the money then that night go out to try and find the girl at the pub to explain this. She’s sitting at the bar flanked by a girl on her left and a guy on her right. I wait until the girl leaves then order a draft and sit beside her. “Hi” I say,” I didn’t get a chance to get your name last night”. She responds coldly “If you were told to go no further on the app and you did then you are on your own”. She then gets up, takes a sip of some drink with an umbrella in it and heads quickly for the door. I take a swig of my beer and follow. Once outside I look left and right the street is completely empty and I find my self alone.

The years have passed and I have grown older and rich beyond my wildest dreams. It started with the twenty thousand but over the years I have clicked on more and more options. I have more money than I could ever spend and am surrounding by beautiful women, art and the most luxurious homes and vehicles. Now I worry and wait. Death comes to everyone sooner or later and I dread the day I have to pay for my life of gluttony with the deal I have made. I know it was Satan that night in a woman’s form as I have spent years trying to find her and have turned up nothing. I f anyone finds this app, just delete it, the devil is always in the details and a contract made with him is eternal damnation. I don’t enjoy life anymore as my time runs out. The doctors tell me they are running out of options to treat the cancer growing in me. Out of the corner of my eye I sometimes see her, always smiling at me and my wasted body.