Devil's Soul

Chapter 34 (a favor from the Devil)

After my last midterm, I was in the mood to celebrate. The two untouched problem sets that were due on Monday felt strangely irrelevant to my life. Tonight, I would laugh with friends and drink, and tomorrow I would worry about the pile of assignments that had accumulated while I'd been studying. The professors thought they were cute for not cutting us some slack during midterm season, but I'd been going to college for over three years, and I knew how to pull that slack right out from under them: by not giving a crap. I'm the kind of person that usually does give a crap, but I've had a lot of practice in temporarily shutting down my flamboyant crap-giving charity. No crap would be given tonight.

I immediately ambushed Chung and Abhinav. Chung had finished his exam long before us, but he had stuck around and waited until we were done.

"What's the plan, guys?" I asked.

"Call of Duty?" Chung offered.

I smacked him (gently) with the back of my hand. "What kind of lame idea is that?!" I demanded. "I want to celebrate in style tonight!"

"You didn't let me finish!" Chung protested. "We take shots every time we die."

"Abhinav, don't you have any better ideas?" I asked.

"Some of us still have another midterm to take, okay?! If I start thinking about that stuff now, I won't be able to turn back."

I held up my hands to signal I would back off. "Sorry, sorry! I forgot. We can talk about it when you're done." I began to lower my hands, but they never made it back to my sides. Because they landed on a steering wheel. Of a car. A car that I was inside of and driving. A shot of adrenaline rushed through me, causing me to jerk the steering wheel. The car veered off the road, into the desert land surrounding. I yanked the wheel in the opposite direction, but I overcorrected and almost smashed into giant cargo truck in the other lane. I screamed and managed to tug the steering wheel with minimal force, putting me safely back into the correct lane. The road seemed to go on straight ahead of me forever, so I stiffened my arms to prevent any more unnecessary swerves.

"Are you trying to kill me?!" I demanded. I didn't dare take my eyes off the road to look at him, but I knew the Devil was sitting in the passenger's seat, probably grinning his stupid head off.

"Why would I try to kill one of my demons?" he asked, and I realized that even though his appearance seemed to shift each time I saw him, his voice was always the same: charismatic, yet strangely chilling.

"I don't know," I said between gritted teeth, "but I've never driven a car before, and now I'm going...," I paused to glance at the speedometer, "...seventy miles an hour on some alien planet!" I had no idea where we were, but this was definitely not Massachusetts. The land was nothing but pink dirt and wiry plants. The only interruption to the horizon was some sort of geometric rock formation in the distance.

"Well, I've got to say, you're a pretty fast learner! Look at how well you're doing, Mavis! Most beginners would have crashed the car in your situation."

"So you were trying to kill me," I grumbled. I thought I could feel a bead of stress sweat forming on my temple. This was not what I had in mind for my post-midterm celebration.

"I just wanted you to experience the joy of driving. I thought that since you never had a father to teach you to drive, I should step in."

Even though I was holding my arms as stiff as possible, I was still rattling the wheel, making the car dance to the hum of its engine.

"Gosh, I always hoped that the Devil would one day fill the role of my father," I said with a girlish inflection.

"My, my. Look who grew a sharp tongue," the Devil commented. He almost seemed proud.