Devil's Advocate

I know my life has taken a turn for the worst when I find myself finishing a Little Caesars pizza with my right hand and scrolling through the WikiHow page for “How to Find Love: 10 Steps (with Pictures)” with the other. Grease smears my computer’s trackpad as I read in the dingy overhead light of my studio apartment. 

I’m wallowing for undoubtedly silly reasons. I’ve just watched the 1926 adaptation of Faust. I remove the flashdrive Tom gave me with a pirated copy of the tale where a scholar makes a deal with the demon Mephistopheles, selling his soul in exchange for knowledge, earthly pleasures, and doomed romance. In this version of the story, Faust and the charmed Gretchen find true love through the devil’s influence, narrowly escaping Hell’s wrath. I’m jealous. Honestly, I’m down so bad, I’d too bargain my eternal damnation for love.

Instead, I’ve pivoted from the demonic film to the sage advice of WikiHow (with pictures).

Part 1: Know Yourself

Step 1: Understand What You Have to Offer (with picture of cartoon man forming a heart with his hands)

I’m 32, average, and have a fascination with the supernatural and occult that turns off most women. Believing in ghosts is a bit of a red flag. At least I’m aware of my flaws. Check.

Step 2: Build Confidence (with picture of cartoon man crossing arms, looking upward, smiling)

I can hardly talk to Susan at work without the support of Tom. My prescription Lexapro doesn’t quite do its job eliminating my social anxiety. No check.

Step 3: Know What You’re Looking for in Someone Else (with picture of cartoon man smiling in the direction of cartoon woman)

Like most people in this world, I want someone hot who also loves me and thinks I’m hot. Specifically, I want Susan, but she’s too cool for me. Check, I guess.

Part Two: Reach Out.

Step 4: Try Dating Services like Online Dating (with picture of cartoon man with heart above his head, smiling, and scrolling on phone)

I pull out my own phone and open Hinge. Unlike the cartoon man, there is no heart above my head, smile on my face, or likes in my inbox. I’ve gone on exactly four dates from this app that all ended after about an hour of stilted conversation. 

I move back to WikiHow and try to scroll to Step 5, but the site is glitching. I’m not surprised. It’s littered with trashy ads full of credit card offers and dermatologist-hated silver-bullet solutions for enlarged pores.

I wait for the screen to load for a moment while I finish my last slice of pizza, but it turns black. I click a few keys at random to revive the thing. Nothing. I hold the power button. Nothing. 

I brush crumbs from my lap and move the dead laptop to the charger by my bed. When I plug in the USB-C, there’s no indication on the screen that it’s getting any juice. Maybe it finally died on me.

Or, maybe this is some sign from God to stop even pretending to try. He’s reminding me it’s a work night and it’s 3 AM and this is embarrassingly pointless. 

But then, red text flickers across the screen in a dramatic calligraphy font. The letters sag in jagged edges trailing toward the bottom of the screen like dribbling ink or drops of blood.

When I read the words, my heart skips a beat.

This isn’t a sign from God. It’s a message from the devil.

***

Susan and Tom are already laughing about something when I meet them for lunch in the office cafeteria the next day. We work in completely separate departments but bonded because we all started on the same day with the same orientation. I’m a financial analyst, Tom’s in IT, and Susan does web design.

When they see me, they stop talking abruptly.

“Dude, you look tired as hell,” Tom says.

“Up late.”

“Doing what?”

“Communing with the devil, probably,” Susan jokes. She laughs. Tom laughs. I laugh too because she has no idea how accurate the statement is.

For all the doubt those two have shed on my superstitions over the years, I’d been proven right. I always thought my first genuine supernatural encounter would be with an aimless spectre in one of the supposed haunted abandoned buildings I drag Tom out to explore with me. I didn’t expect to accidentally summon the famed messenger of the devil himself, Mephistopheles, through my laptop screen.

But I had, and we made a deal.

The terms were simple and promised a lifelong love:

Step 1: give my eternal soul to Hades upon death. 

Easy.

Step 2: Before the clock strikes 12, I must speak these exact words to one I wish to enamor: “Do you want to grab a drink?” 

I found the language here shockingly modern and colloquial, but I guess Satan keeps with the times. 

Step 3: Live happily ever after. At least until death when I’ll descend into the pits of Tartarus.

I hardly thought twice. I was desperate, and while these steps did not include pictures, they beat WikiHow. I just have to imagine the picture of cartoon man selling his soul. After I accepted the terms, my screen refreshed like nothing had happened.

As Susan, Tom, and I chat, I know I can never tell them the truth. There was no stipulation in the agreement that I couldn’t, but they’d never believe me. Though Tom humors me with horror movies, ghost tours, and the like, we have a classic believer/skeptic dynamic. He’d think I'm full of shit, and if Mephistopheles’ magic actually worked, Susan might not be so warm to the idea of a hellish influence in our love life. 

My armpits are wet with anxious sweat when Tom gets up to leave first, and it’s just me and Susan.

She looks at the time on her phone, 11:57, and groans. “I don’t wanna.”

Susan and I usually bond over surface-level things like a general loathe of work. As much as I find her incredibly attractive, remarkably cool for our corporate environment, and relentlessly charming, I know she’s too good for me. Until now, pursuing anything romantic was completely out of the question.

“Susan,” I say more seriously than I intend.

“What’s up?”

“Are you doing anything after work today?”

“Just praying Mortimer hasn’t peed on the floor when I get home.”

“Oh my god is he still doing that?”

“Unfortunately. At least he’s cute.”

“He is certainly adorable.”

“Yeah look at this.” Susan pulls up a photo of the black cat stretched long and silly on his back. Susan’s committed to exclusively adopting black cats. She hates that they get a bad rap and fights against their disproportionately low adoption rates. I see her as a beautiful witch accompanied by a shadowy feline familiar.

As I admire Mortimer, I note the time in the corner of the phone: 11:59. I need to steer this conversation back to my question. If this is going to work, I need to ask now.

Susan starts packing her lunch up, pauses, and says, “Oh wait, sorry. Why were you asking?”

“Asking what?” I know damn well what. I have seconds left.

“...If I’m doing anything after work?”

I hear my heart thumping through my ears. If this doesn’t work, if I’ve been victim to some bizarre scam, then I don’t know how I could ever talk to Susan again. 

I try to sound casual when I follow the devil’s instructions and utter the magical and mundane words provided at last night’s witching hour: “Do you wanna grab a drink?”

And then it happens. The corners of Susan’s lips curl into a smile. Her shoulders relax. I swear I see her pupils dilate.

“That’d be nice, Jared. Like…as a date?” 

***

At the bar that day, Susan and I completely hit it off. We went out again. And again. And again. Soon, my nightly routine transformed from late nights lying in piles of pizza crumbs and empty beer cans to bar hopping with my girlfriend, movie nights with my fiancé, and eventually, dinners with my wife. 

We were like a Hallmark movie: too good to be true. Sure, like characters in a Hallmark movie, we still had our fights. Sometimes we violated the age-old marriage advice and went to bed angry. But we also apologized, came back together, kissed, and made up. Because our love was true.

Except, it wasn’t.

It’s two years after that fateful first date when Susan and I return home from our anniversary celebration. Normally, when you have a lovely and expensive dinner with your wife who you love more every day, you’re happy, or at peace or, like, ready to go have sex. But Susan had said something at the restaurant that I hadn’t expected. 

Eyes twinkling in candlelight, she reminisced about when we got together.

“Honestly,” She’d said. “I’d been into you for some time before you finally had the courage to ask me out. I’d joked with Tom it would take an act of God himself for you to get the nerve. Or with your tastes, the devil.”

The gravity of what I’d done hit me. She hadn’t been into me before that day. I’d manipulated her using the literal forces of darkness. Susan had saved me from an embarrassing depression and made the last two years the best of my life, but what I’d done wasn’t fair.

I need to tell Susan the truth, my soul be damned.

So there I am staring at myself in our apartment’s double-sink bathroom mirror, working up the courage to say what I need to, rattled with guilt, fearing eternal damnation, and brushing my teeth while Susan takes off her make-up. I rinse the toothpaste from my mouth and floss. If I won’t see the pearly white gates of Heaven, at least I’ll still have my wonderful smile. 

“Susan, I need to tell you something.”

“What? Did Mortimer pee again?”

“He better not have, we just changed the carpet.”

She laughs, but my eyes fill with tears at the thought of what I have to do. She’s already noticed that something’s wrong because of course she has. She’s perfect. She can read me like a book. I’m a wretched, evil thing.

“Tell me what’s on your mind.”

“I…um. You know how we were talking about our first date earlier?”

“Yeah?”

“I have to tell you something.”

“Yes, you already said that, babe,” She’s smiling but squints, confused.

“Right, yes. So this is going to sound completely crazy. And I don’t think you’re gonna like it. You remember when I was really into Faust?”

“Sure?” Susan looks up like she’s trying to remember. 

“You don’t love me,” I blurt.

Her gaze snaps back at my face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You didn’t have a choice.”

“I don’t follow.” She frowns.

“The night before I asked you out, I’d reached an all-time low. I was so lonely and desperate it’s embarrassing. Hell, I was literally scrolling through the WikiHow for How to Find Love when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“My computer glitched out. Or so I thought. It’s probably more accurate to say it became possessed. This strange message appeared on my screen. I thought it was fake at first but…”

Susan’s eyes widen. 

“...but it knew your name. It offered me a deal: Give my soul to the devil, and it would make you love me. And at first it was so great because you did. I said what it told me to, and you responded how it said you would, and, gosh, I know I’m probably not making sense right now, but it said its name was Mephistopheles, like straight from Faust, an—”

“—Shut up.” Susan’s…smiling?

“What?” 

“Shut. Up. Mephistopheles?”

“...Yeah?”

“He actually did it.”

“Wait what? Who?”

“Tom.”

“Tom?”

“This is actually crazy. Honey, you’re so cute.” She grabs her phone from the bathroom counter and taps the green phone icon. 

“Who are you calling?”

She holds the phone out. Tom. She turns on speaker mode, and I’m so confused. He picks up. 

“Tom, I have you on speaker with Jared right now. I can’t believe you.”

“What?”

“Well Jared and I were discussing our first date, and Jared brought up Mephistopheles.”

Tom laughs. “I can’t believe it took two years for you to say something. Jared, you absolute maniac.”

“Can someone please tell me what is going on?” 

“Dude, you remember that flash drive I gave you with the old Faust movie on it?”

“There’s no way. You didn’t.”

“I did. Man, two years? You are so incredibly gullible. It was a bitch to code, you know. But you were so pitiful and totally blind to Susan’s constant signals. You needed a push.”

I look at Susan. “And you knew about this??”

“Well, I thought it was just a joke. Tom told me his plan. He said it wouldn’t be terribly hard to code a creepy computer takeover and that you were so into occult stuff you’d probably fall for it. It was so absurd, I didn’t think he’d actually do it. Or, I guess, that you’d actually believe it.”

I don’t think I’ve ever felt sillier in my entire life.

“So you just let me believe this for years?” I say to Tom.

“It’s not my fault you believed it.”

“I hate you,” I say and hang up on the man I now know to be the strangest wingman of all time. I can barely handle facing Susan. I look at her through the mirror. My face is red hot. “Well. That’s…embarrassing.”

Susan gets off her stool and moves behind me. She wraps her arms around my waist and we lock eyes in the mirror. There’s a moment of silence, and the hilarity of the moment wears off her face.

“Did you really think that I couldn’t love you on my own?”

“I mean, I don’t know...”

“As ridiculous as this is, Jared, that kind of breaks my heart.”

“I’m sorry.”

She sighs into my neck. “I will forgive you for making a fake deal with the devil to make me love you.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re a funny man.”

Susan kisses me, and a weight is lifted. The picture of cartoon man crossing arms, looking upward, smiling comes to mind.

“Damn,” I say. “WikiHow was right.”

“What?”

“I needed to build confidence.”

“Thanks Mephistopheles,” Susan says.

“Thanks Mephistopheles,” I echo.