The Devil on Tuesday

I passed the Devil on the Road today.

I pass him every Tuesday, actually. Rain or shine or snow he stands on the side by the bramble and thicket, waiting for me. He always wears the same dapper black jacket and pants. He grins from under a black bowler hat. The Devil wears a blue tie, which I found odd, and asked him why.

“Red is so cliché for my line of work.” He told me. Then he asked for my soul.

“Talk to my cousin, he won it in a poker game.” I called over my shoulder as I made my way down the Road. He always asks for something, gave up trying to trick me a long time ago. Once it was my sweetest memory, but I told him that it was still sour. Another time he wanted a dollar. I gave him that. The next Tuesday I asked him what he bought.

“For a year of your life, I’ll tell you.” The Devil giggled. I told him to fuck off.

“Same time next week.” He called.

The Devil has a cane, ebony and gold. He leans on it so casually I expect him to slip right off and make a fool of himself, but he never did, so one day I kicked it from under him, and he rolled forward and back onto his feet, without hardly getting dust on his jacket, nor losing his bowler hat.

“Asshole.” I muttered.

“I’m offended.” He replied, dusting himself off. He made a ‘shoo-shoo’ motion at me with his hands.

“Doesn’t anything ever go wrong for you? Would it kill you to fall in the dust?”

“No, nothing goes wrong for me, that’s one of the perks of what we in the business call ‘being a deity’. And I want your shoes, today.”

“No.”

“But mine are so… immaculate. I’ll give you my shoes.”

“Are they soul sucking, possessed, demonic, acidic or in any way bad?”

“No.” The Devil was so sincere we traded shoes.

And the next week we traded hats.

Then we traded jackets, and so on and so forth.

And then I stood by the Road, waiting.