The "In Perpetuity" Loophole

I met the Devil in a dive bar on a Sunday morning.

He told me this was the best time to make a deal because God was always busy. Then he winked and laughed obnoxiously at his own joke.

I gave him what I hoped was a polite smile from across the booth. I should be offended, I thought.

Instead, I found myself staring at him across the table, dry-mouthed, as he straightened his cufflinks. He was entirely too tailored for this environment. Too tailored, and too handsome.

“So, you got the $20,000 I sent you,” he said, startling me out of thoughts.

I nodded.

“And you followed the instructions,” he continued. He sounded pleasantly surprised, like no one ever followed the instructions.

“Well, I—I really needed the money,” I said. What kind of person would receive instructions from the Devil and not follow them? I wondered.

“Cheers to that,” he said with small, closed-mouth grin. We clinked glasses and I took a fortifying gulp.

The Devil shot me a mischievous glance. “So, what made you pray to me for a deal instead of to God for a miracle?”

“I—I guess I thought that you were more likely to answer,” I admitted, feeling myself flush. Had I seriously just implied that the Devil might not have anything better to do?

“And because I’m not really…” I paused, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans. “I’m not someone who’s in church every week or anything like that. And miracles are really, like—they’re miracles. They’re big. But a deal, that’s just like finding a loophole or something, right?”

The Devil chuckled.

“And if I—If I’m already not sure where I’ll be going in the end, I might as well take advantage of that loophole and make my time on Earth enjoyable, right?” I said anxiously, sure that he would laugh and inform me that I had already doomed myself to Hell by attempting to make a deal in the first place.

Instead, he reached into the inside of pocket of his suit jacket and retrieved a small, black leather-bound notebook and a pen.

“Loopholes,” he repeated, looking amused, and began to scribble something into the notebook, a bit wildly. Was he writing out a contract? Taking notes about me? Doodling?

“You’ll be pleased to know that I don’t take souls as payment,” he said. “And there’s no formal contract—unless you want one.”

“Oh, so—?”

“Putting pen to paper,” he said, as if that explained everything. “Always helps me think.” He grinned, and I thought I saw a pair of snake-like fangs peeking out from his under his top lip.

I just nodded again, listening to the sound of his pen scratching against paper in the quiet bar.

“Listen,” he said. “When people think about me—about me and God, anyway—a lot of them think of us in equal terms. Like, he’s out there exerting this good force and I’m out there exerting this bad force, but we mostly balance each other out… Or maybe, the good wins out by a little. But that’s not really the case.“

“God is like nature. Humans are always going on and on about destroying nature, but in the long-term scheme of things, nature is here to stay,” he waved the pen in my direction. “Humans are the ones in danger. Hurricanes, drought, rising sea levels, viruses—you’re all just sitting ducks, waiting to be wiped out. But nature will be fine. Nature will just adapt and carry on.”

“Nature just is. That’s what God’s like. He just is,” he said, tapping the pen against the notebook for emphasis.

“But me—I’m not like God. If God is Nature, I’m a… I’m like a cockroach. I’m just something he created that he can’t get rid of, because I’m too good at slipping through the cracks whenever he’s trying to step on me,” he gave a self-deprecating laugh and swigged his beer.

You’re not a cockroach, I wanted to say, but instead, I just leaned forward, waiting to hear more.

“When I was exiled from Heaven,” he continued. “I was tossed out into the void, into nothingness.” He gestured at the grimy windows of the bar, as though we could look out and see the void beyond the glass.

“I skittered around out there, kept my feelers out until I found a little pocket of somethingness down in the dark, dank bowels of the universe. That’s how I survived,” he said, rolling his tongue in his mouth as the if bitterness were too much to take. The room seemed smaller, the air thinner.

He studied me for moment before resuming his work in the notebook.

“The thing about Hell is, there’s no fun,” he scowled down at the page. “And I don’t mean fire and brimstone and torture and all that. I mean no joy, no comfort, no happiness—they just don’t exist there natively.”

“I tried to change some of that. I even tried playing into the stereotypes. I created gladiator arenas for the murders and torturers, casinos and buffets for the greedy, and brothels for the lustful, but none of it worked. I couldn’t create anything good there. God’s design, I guess,” he shrugged, twirling the pen between his fingers. The room went back to its normal size.

“But, like you, I decided to look for a loophole. I went back out there and skittered around some more until I found my way to Earth, through another little crack,” he grinned. “And Earth is full of good things. I loved it. And I loved humans.”

He paused suddenly, tense.

“You have to know," he told me. “That whole thing with the Tree of Knowledge—I was just trying to help. I mean, would you want to be ignorant for all of your existence? They say ignorance is bliss, but if you’re ignorant, do you even know what bliss is?” He gave an exasperated sigh. “The entire situation was just idiotic.”

I laughed before I could stop myself. The Devil relaxed.

“So, I had helped humans come into knowledge of bliss, but Hell still had none. I did the only thing I could think of—I decided to import it,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Import it?”

“Exactly. It took a bit of trial and error, but how it works now is, I give a human something they want, for example, $20,000, and they give me a happy memory. I take the memory to Hell, where it's made available to the residents through our memory streaming service. Access to happiness achieved. Actually, we were way ahead of the entertainment industry up here in that regard,” he laughed nervously. “We’re working on emotional transfusions, you know, so that someday residents can experience the whole spectrum normally again but… that’s more than you need to know right now.”

I stared dumbly at him from across the table. Right now…?

“Anyway, so, if you’d like to keep the $20,000, your end of the deal is to give me one of your happiest memories,” he explained, setting the notebook down on the table.

“Do I get to choose the memory?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, no,” he answered.

What if I lost my best memory of my family? Or the most amazing experience of my life? Would that change me? Would I become… less?

“When you think about it,” he said, sliding a bit closer over the table. “It’s not that much different from existence in capitalist society, anyway. But, instead of laboring away long hours and not creating any new happy memories or missing out on special moments because you’re trying to make money, you’re just giving up an old one. You won’t even know it’s gone.”

“Does anyone ever regret it?” I asked. His argument was convincing, but he was the Devil.

“Sure. But I’ve been continually surprised by the level to which most people don’t,” he answered. I could believe that.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not at all,”

“Will I go to Hell because I made a deal with you?”

“Only,” he said, as if choosing his words carefully. “If you don’t regret it.”

“Oh,” I swallowed. “So, kind of a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation?”

“I guess you could put it that way,” he nodded.

I thought for a moment. Then I held out my hand.

“Ok,” I said. “It’s a deal,”

“Perfect,” he grinned, and we shook on it.

“Now,” he said, taking both my hands in his. “Look into my eyes.”

His eyes, which I’d avoided before, were marvelous. They were, somehow, every eye in the world all at once—every color and every shape, all laid on top of each other and staring back at me. And where his pupils should have been, there were two tiny, beckoning blackholes.

I let them pull me in, and for a while, I was nowhere, floating in warm, comforting darkness. Just when I thought I could stay there forever, a pleasant vibration ran from the crown of my head to my toes. I opened my eyes.

The Devil was gone.

On the table in front of me, there was a piece of paper—a page ripped from the Devil’s notebook. It was a sketch of me, signed Call anytime. Luci.

-

The second time I saw the Devil was on my third-floor balcony, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

“You don’t seem like you need another deal,” he said, squinting out at the beach. “You took that money and ran with it. Great views.” He turned to me and smiled—a real smile, putting his fangs on full display.

“The thing is,” I said, turning from him to watch the waves. “I don’t regret it.”

“It wasn’t just the money,” I continued. “It was the confidence. Whenever I was worried about how something might turn out, all I had to do was look at that drawing you gave me. And I’d remember that something totally improbable and amazing had happened to me, and I could keep going, with whatever it was. And I did good work. Not just my career, but I—I helped people, you know?”

The Devil nodded. It occurred to me that he knew this very well.

We stood in silence for a moment, both studying the sea. I tried not to think too loudly, but he heard me, anyway. What surprised me was that, suddenly, I also heard him.

Loopholes.

Loopholes, and cockroaches.

From his suit jacket, he pulled a notebook just like the one he’d drawn my picture in fifty years before.

“You know,” he said, holding it out to me. “One thing about cockroaches—there’s strength in numbers. That’s how they take over. Remodel the landscape.”

As I took the notebook, I noticed that my hands were young and smooth again.

Happiness.

Emotional transfusions.

More happiness.

I helped people, you know?

I turned the notebook over, examining it, as I walked towards the house. The Devil followed, only jumping ahead at the last second to get the door for me.

“You’ll help a lot more,” he said, hand paused on the doorknob. I knew it was true. I looked into his eyes, but instead of the swirling masses, I only saw my own.

“Ok,” I said. “It’s a deal.”

The door swung open.

“Welcome to Hell,” he said, spreading his arms wide.

When I laughed, I felt strange, sharp teeth scrape against my bottom lip. It’s a deal.

I tucked the notebook away into my new suit jacket.

I was in a dive bar on a Sunday morning, and I had just become the Devil’s assistant.