What If the Devil Sold You His Soul?

chapter 1

Nathan Scott was not a "nice" man by any means. He spoke his mind, acted as he pleased, and made his fair share of enemies. Nathan knew how to put on a show for his clients, whom he sold tech to at a new tech company, but every one of his coworkers will tell you he doesn't extend them the same courtesy. It's not than Nathan isn't likeable, he just takes some time to get to know him and one has to make sure they don't get on his bad side. In fact, he was famous around his office for having some of the greatest BBQs in the state. He often had them for major playoffs and whatever games people around the office got excited for, which quickly became all of them as people took any excuse to eat Nathan's cooking.

Nathan was sitting alone in his abandon office building, trying to converse some large store in the area to spend their money on a new, "upgraded" security system that was almost identical to the system they already owned. It took him almost 4 hours of calling around and sweet talking any living thing that answered the phone no matter how dumb, but he made the sale. Accomplished, Nathan made his way out of the office and finally noticed it was almost 8pm. The person I was talking to probably just bought the system to get him off the line so they could go home Nathan thought to himself scoffing. It wasn't like he needed to rush home for any reason, he lived alone.

Nathan leisurely walked to the deli down the road to pick up some ribs for the BBQ he was hosting latter that week, only the entire office stopped by his cubical to make sure he was having one for the playoff game that Sunday. Nathan grabbed three of the biggest sets of ribs in the shop and a pulled pork sandwich for dinner. The shop owner wrapped everything up with great care seeing as Nathan was the shop's best customer. Nathan packed his ribs into his car and drove them home.

Nathan ate his sandwich as he made a marinade for the ribs to sit in until Sunday. He set the meat in the refiguration, figuring a day and a half was a good amount of time for it to marinade. After Nathan was satisfied with the ribs, he poured himself a glass of whiskey and water, then made his was to bed to read until the whiskey put him to sleep.

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Nathan woke up in a haze, not recognizing anything round him. The first thing he noticed was the heat, it felt like he was in an oven. But while it was hot, Nathan could tell he wasn't burning. he was just really warm. While it was uncomfortable, the heat was tolerable for Nathan.

The second thing he noticed was the lack of... Anything. Nathan could tell he was standing on some kind of rocky ground but was unable to see anything due to a thick fog, or maybe it was steam from the heat, obscuring everything. Nathan could barely see his own hand in front of his face.

Nathan was about to yell out when a big booming voice interrupted him. "HOW ABOUT THIS ONE?" it yelled, echoing off unseen objects. "THIS ONE IS RARE." Responded another voice. "HE BARES THE AURA OF EVIL BUT HOLDS NO ILL WILL TO ANYONE OR ANYTHING." Nathan figured they were talking about him and didn't like it.

"Who the hell are you calling evil?!" Nathan called back to the voices, becoming very nervous at how small his voice sounded in comparison to theirs. He heard the second voice chuckle is response. "YES, THIS ONE WILL DO."

Nathan bolted up in his bed, grasping at fragments of the dream he just had. He was still sweating from the heat of... wherever that place was. Nathan remembered a loud voice calling him evil or something, but the more he tried to grasp at the details of the dream, the more they slipped away. shaking off the lingering sense of fear, Nathan decided to take a cold shower to cool off.

Nathan took the coldest shower of his life, just trying to get away from that intense heat from his dream. Throughout the shower, Nathan's mind gradually drifted to stuff he needed to get ready for the BBQ the next day. He figured he better get a couple kinds of BBQ sauce, corn, and plenty of beer. He figured he might as well pick himself up some booze too, a little day drinking never hurt anyone.