The devil, the old man, and the valet

“So that’s what a million dollars in cash looks like.”

“Sure is,” said the older gentleman, “and guess what? It’s all yours.”

I stared at him in disbelief. He hadn’t told me anything about giving me the money, and as I starred at the cash, I felt tears of joy starting to leak out of my eyes. “How could you just do that? Just give me a million dollars? Like it’s nothing. Sir, I hate to ask this, but have you thought this through? I mean, really, thought this through.”

I looked at the man with tears now rolling down his cheeks as well, but the only response that I got was a nod. He quickly bobbed his head twice in affirmation of what I hoped for. Reflexively, I threw my arms around this man, this saint.

In the midst of my gratitude, something slowly started to claw towards the surface. Between my eyes, my brain started churning, trying to find a reason why anyone would give me a million bucks. Out of that churning, all that arose was suspicion. Surely this man wanted something in return. What was he waiting to tell me that I had to do? But as I examined the man’s face of pure joy upon my reaction to the gift, my initial reaction left me feeling guilty for thinking that this man had an ulterior motive behind his generosity.

“There is one condition though,” the man said to me. “If you accept this money, you must save half of it for your first born son. You can not spend all of it in one place, and you must find a woman and marry by the end of this decade. If you can not, or simply will not do what I ask of you, I will be back to collect my money.”

“But sir,” I started, “how am I to get a woman to marry me? I do not know many, and those that I do know are quite horrible.”

“That is not my concern young man. All that you have to do is accept these standards, and all this is yours.”

I contemplated whether or not my freedom as a bachelor was worth selling. On the other hand, it wasn’t going to be for five more years until the decade was done. Five years of being a young, single millionaire. For the first time in my life, I felt lucky.

“Sir,” I said to him, “you got yourself a deal.” Then adding, “And thank you, thank you so much. You have no idea how great of a service you have done. I owe you everything.”

“Anything,” the older man corrected. “You, my young boy, owe me anything.” And with that, the old man snapped the briefcase of money closed, spun it around so that the handle was facing me, and walked out of the room, pulling an umbrella out of his coat pocket and extending it just before walking out the door and into the rain.

Through the rain, I heard him say something about seeing me in five years to see if I came through with my side of the bargain, but before I could assure him, the door to his limo closed and the car wheels started rolling down the road.

“Surely that man is a saint,” I thought.

Now, there isn’t really a formula for acquiring a million dollars through a gift. Actually, the fact that it happened to me is an exception to the rules in life. Normally speaking, people have to work very, very hard just to make a million dollars over the course of a lifetime. But not me. Like I said before, lucky.

I’d like to think that my luck was deserved though, after all, while I am young, I have had a difficult life. I have seen more sorrow and pain in my quarter life then most men would want to have to bear over the course of a full lifetime. My story is not a merry one, that’s one thing that I am certain of, but looking back now I wouldn’t have had it any other way. If it had been different, I probably wouldn’t be sitting healthy on a brief case filled with one million dollars cash. It’s like my grandfather said to me, “Jack, life sucks, but trust me, in the end, it’s all worth it. Every last damned thing about it.”

Just one week ago, I was a valet at a nice hotel in Baton Rouge, working forty-plus hours a week. It was easy and it was good money, but it was a mediocre job and, I’m not gonna lie, I hated it. It was so monotonous. So similar all the time, nothing really changed over the course of the past three months I had been working there. Nothing, until I met this old guy, the saint.

He really was an amazing man, the kind of man whose funeral will be pact. You know the kind of man that starts to speak, and everyone in the room shuts up out of respect? That’s what this man was. He had worked hard all his life, and now had more money and power than he knew what to do with. So really, it isn’t all that surprising that he dished out a million dollars to me. He had plenty more than that, of this I was certain, so I can’t really feel guilty for excepting his generous agreement.

As I sat there, staring at the cash, I started thinking about the times in my life when I could have desperately used this cash. I used to be a drug addict; I could have used it then to buy drugs. After that, I was kind of suicidal, maybe, if I had had this money, I would have been happier. Then something happened to me that has changed my life ever since. After I tried to kill myself, I was laying on the operating table while doctors and nurses clamored over me. Suddenly, my heart stopped beating. I found myself having an out of body experience like no other, standing at the scene occurring around me, no longer the center of attention, but a spectator, watching myself die.

Then I saw him, staring at me from the opposite corner of the room. The devil sat there, staring at me like I was or a new toy for him to play with. He smiled the whole time as he watched my thoughts. When he spoke, it was like someone had turned off the rest of the sound in the room. Even if I had been interested in anything that was being said around me, there is no way I could have concentrated on anything else. It was beautiful, elegant. It rose and fell like a a soft tune, ever playing and musing it's audience, but never playing the same note twice. It kept me guessing as to what he was about to say.

Now, when I say I met the devil, the idea that always jumps into peoples head's is that I met a demon, a monster, but quite to the contrary, he was a true gentleman. He was very charming and delicate, not imposing or pushy. He had a very quite determination about him that was possibly the most terrifying thing about the man. He was not big, actually, he was quite skinny, weighing no more than a hundred and forty pounds. His face was sharp, defined. His jaw bone was set, not quite forward, but definitely a defining feature on his beautiful face. But perhaps the most "stand-out" attribute that the devil had was his smile. As he tactically flashed it at me, I couldn't help but feel comfortable with him.

The scariest thing about him was the ironic fact that he was not scary. He was so normal and so everyday that I found myself having to remind myself to be afraid of The Beast. But he cursed me. He destined me to be the father of him son, the anti christ. So now I am responsible for raising the man who will doom all of man kind. It's been a while since he was born. Nearly six years now. He really is something special.

But I didn't always feel this way. When I first found out what he was, my initial reaction was that we must abort it. Kill the evil, or the evil will destroy you. But the more I thought about it, the more I found that humanity deserved this. My race hates all other races, and all other races hate each other just the same. Societies, religions, governments, economies, all clash. It seems that mankind has always tried to make things to difficult. Religions especially. They Make so many laws and specifications about rigid guidelines to salvation that they often loose focus on what truly would do some good in the world, and that is to simply do good. That's my opinion at least. But while the world wages war over which god is real, perhaps focus should be shifted to the possibility that we are not special, and the time that we have on this earth is all that we have. To fight over who is right, and what is normal is nothing more than a waste of time. There is no right, there is no wrong. There is only good and evil. Mankind lost its way from the beginning. We went in the wrong direction with our first mistake. We chose destruction and continue to do so every day.

So I decided that we had it coming to us. If it wasn't going to be me, it would just go off to be the responsibility of someone else, and that just could not do. It might just change the way that things went.

Now here I am, six years later, and this random old man comes up to give me a million bucks. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the devil played a hand in this, but I'd be lying to you if I let you believe that I cared.